Good morning, good morning!
We talked the whole night through...
(Poem no. 28 out of 54, located pg. 76 of ‘Messer’, 2010 print.)
Disclaimer: Poem copyrighted to Till Lindemann. This post does not include photos/illustrations of said poem from 'Messer'. The original German text is also not included. This is only a interpretive translation and accuracy is not guaranteed.
Good Morning
He rose from the bed
Went to the spa
Looked long and hard into the mirror
Then cut himself open
And lay down under a table to die.
He was, said the girl,
Too old for her.
Original Meter: No consistent meter but most lines appear to work best when read as trochaic lines.
Original Rhyme Scheme: None.
Comments: Well, um, all right then.
The
second stanza gave me headaches when I first translated this in
February, about a week into the first incarnation of this project. Quite
simple to translate really, it was a very amateur mistake. Fixed this
time around.
A German friend says he says "She said he was too old for her"... Certainly that would be a reason for suicide for a vulnerable man.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the last couplet would most likely be "He was, said the girl, too old for her". The "Er sei" is part of the special subjunctive mood which can be really tricky, because it looks the same as the imperative but is actually a paraphrasing tool, especially used in written formats. Good job on it, though! You captured the shocking mood of the first part.
ReplyDelete