Wednesday 10 February 2016

Ballad of Outward Life

My attempt at translating one of the young Hugo von Hofmannsthal's most famous lyrics, "Ballade des äußeren Lebens", in terza rima (the metre used by Dante but rarely by anyone else):

"Ballad of Outward Life"

And children grow up with their eyes so deep,
Yet knowing nothing - they grow up and die,
And all men go their ways, as if asleep.

And bitter fruits shall turn sweet, by and by
And shall, like dead birds, drop upon the ground,
And there a few days festering they'll lie.

And the wind blows still. We hear the sound
Of so many words, and our words leave few traces,
And we feel our bodies by sweet weariness bound.

And roads run through the grass, to places
Torchlit, that with trees and pools exhale,
Or threaten with their deathly, withered faces.

Why were they constructed? And if they'll
All differ, will each bear a different name?
In turn must we then weep, laugh, and grow pale?

What use all this to us, what use this game
To us, grown men that we are, lonely still,
Who, wandering, long ago forgot our aim?

Was it to see these things that we left home?
Yet speak out loud, now, this one word -
"Evening"; from it deep and sad thoughts spill

Like thick, dark honey from the hollow comb.

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