Copy Typed Letter Hilde Spiel to W. H. Auden 1972-07-01--1972-07-18

PID
Author
Editor(s)Fruehwirth, Timo; Mayer, Sandra
PublisherAustrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH), Vienna 2027
Licence(s)
Source Information
  • Austrian National Library
  • Literary Archive
Origin
  • 1972-07-01T00:00:00+01:00--1972-07-18T23:59:59+01:00
  • St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut


[Juli 1972]


15|B870|4


                            xx O6138/515


Dear Mr Auden,


       reading in Robert Craft's journal
that you were confident once of making Goethe
sound like a limey did not make my task any
easier, nor did your avowed pride about
your knowledge of metre. I don't know what
you will think of my poor attempts to render
your beautiful and meaningful poetry into
anything like adequate German. There is no
hope of getting the metre right, I'm afraid.
It is probably worst where I have tried to
rhyme as wellm, as in 'Under Sirius'. Anyhow,
if I don't succeed it is not for want of
traying.


       A few short remarks on some doubtful
points. In 'Since' I have translated rank
cheese as scharfer Käse, but one might also
say krasser Käse which is more wilful. In
'Up there' I have allowed myself for once


the poetic licence od translatigng aloft with
lufthoch. In 'Profile', if you don't want to
do without the alliteration in hungry or horny
I could use hitzig instead of geil. Where
you speak of the night in the Freud poem I am
not sure whether yuou mean Wunder or Staunen
when you talk of a sense of wonder it alone
can offer. And in 'Mezzogiorno' I was stymied
by one word : vendages. This is not be found
anywhere, but nearest to expressions of feud,
wine-harvest or a commercial sense. Please
enlighten me there.


     I am at the above address until September.


                             Yours sincerely,


Robert Craft's journal