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    AC Benus
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
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Translation Trashbin - 20. Warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich

Huge thanks go to @Lyssa for her invaluable guidance. Her "lyrical I" is a beautiful and penetrating 'eye' as well. She helps me see more clearly. Muah!

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Lyssa turned me on to a book examining the same-sex loves of Goethe. It's called The Tiger's Tender Touch, and many of the cited poems are spurning me to translate them openly and honestly. His work deserves renewed effort in English-language LGBT belle-lettres.

I think the scenario unfolded in this poem will be familiar to any and almost every Gay person.

 

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Translation of:

Warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

 

Warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich

Ach in jene Pracht?

War ich guter Junge nicht so selig

In der öden Nacht!

 

Heimlich in mein Zimmerchen verschlossen,

Lag im Mondenschein

Ganz von seinem Schauerlicht umflossen,

Und ich dämmert' ein;

 

Träumte da von vollen goldnen Stunden

Ungemischter Lust,

Hatte schon dein liebes Bild empfunden

Tief in meiner Brust.

 

Bin ich's noch, den du bei so viel Lichtern

An dem Spieltisch hältst,

Oft so unerträglichen Gesichtern

Gegen über stellst?

 

Reizender ist mir des Frühlings Blüte

Nun nicht auf der Flur;

Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' und Güte,

Wo du bist, Natur.

 

 

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Tell me how you pull me so ardently,

Ah, with such sumptuous lures –

When dull, I embraced it fervently,

But now, this night you've made yours.

 

Secretly locked behind my chamber door,

Lying in dark moonlight haze,

Enveloped, I doze as never before

Watched under his gentle gaze.

 

Dreamlike, presaging these dear golden hours,

A far too passionless rest

Had fixed you already within its powers

Buried deep beneath my chest.

 

Yet, it's still me you saw within the light,

Sitting at the games table,

Surrounded by strangers who glimpsed our sight

And felt it enviable.

 

For more grateful than blossoms of springtime

In the mind's lea pastoral,

Where you are, angel, is kind love sublime;

Where you are, is natural.

 

 

 

 


This unflinchingly modern poem was written when the poet was twenty-four or twenty-five years old. According to Goethes Gedichttitel an exhaustive scholarly work citing and documenting each and every one of Goethe’s poems, their publishing history and contextual details the manuscript bears the name Warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich. Later, when it appeared in the March 1775 edition of Iris magazine, it had gained the spurious title “An Belinden” (To Belinda), which was chosen by the editor without Goethe’s knowledge or consent. The open and erotic nature of the poem, and the fact that only male pronouns appear in it, made the attachment of a female name desirable to the myth of a hetero-dominative society. That’s not to say flaws in the poet’s character kept him in later life from adding his own mythologizing of this poem, because he did to bolster his carefully cultured reputation as a ladies’ man (as opposed to a lady-man, lol).

A second aspect to this poem is the trashy, obfuscating way in which it has been rendered in English. In my recent contact with this poet’s work, I can see the impression of him as a backward-look quaker of thee's and thou's is 100% wrong. This impression is implanted in the English-speaking world by terrible translations from the 19th century hellbent on converting Goethe’s modern, clean, passionate language (rather in the manner of Walt Whitman) into 4th or 5th rate English Victorian drivel to match living-room tastes of the time. It’s not only these renditions’ willfully covering up the same-sex thrust of a poem like this, but burying it in trite clichés of the 1850s that makes them so bad. Sadly for our times, this pitiful schlock means we think of Goethe as monolithic and inapproachable, when the exact opposite is true.

Here is Edgar Alfred Browning’s 1853 translation of the fourth stanza:

 

Now to the card-table hast thou bound me,

‘Midst the torches glare?

Whilst unhappy faces are around me,

Dost thou hold me there?

 

Which compare to J. W. Morrison’s even worse version:

 

Is it I, she at the table places,

⁠⁠'Mid so many lights?

Yes, to meet intolerable faces,

⁠⁠She her slave invites.

 

Neither can be called accurate or interested in Goethe’s crisp, clean language. Both show an agenda to make the poet appear a contemporary of Milton’s. But I cite them, one, because according to the internet, there are the ‘official’ versions you will find today, and because, two, both translations are willfully anti-gay, supplying “she”s and “her”s where they do not exist in the original. These poems are like forgeries meant to deceive. When will Goethe get his day in the English language?

 

 

 

Copyright © 2018 AC Benus; All Rights Reserved.
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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it's lovely.. like waking up with your lover.. and just not wanting to be anywhere else

 

 

And well i know others translate poetry but they never seem to have the 'soul' in them.   Yours ..honestly, i don't realize they are translations until you say they are.  You dont just translate the words.. the heart of the poem still beats when you translate AC.

 

And this nonsense about trying to make these 'straight' is just wrong. There is just something so intimate about same sex couples attachments, a deeper understanding i think. And this poem certainly makes me feel that.

Beautiful, AC xoxo

Edited by Mikiesboy
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4 hours ago, Mikiesboy said:

Thank you! More when I get home.

"More" received and appreciated :)

 

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1 hour ago, Mikiesboy said:

it's lovely.. like waking up with your lover.. and just not wanting to be anywhere else

 

And well i know others translate poetry but they never seem to have the 'soul' in them.   Yours ..honestly, i don't realize they are translations until you say they are.  You dont just translate the words.. the heart of the poem still beats when you translate AC.

 

And this nonsense about trying to make these 'straight' is just wrong. There is just something so intimate about same sex couples attachments, a deeper understanding i think. And this poem certainly makes me feel that.

Beautiful, AC xoxo

The "like waking up with your lover" part is exactly right. This is a remarkably intimate poem, and ironically, that very intimacy precluded any contemporary reader of the poem from thinking Goethe slept with a girl. I mean ironically, because if they did, that would make him a scoundrel and worthy of being brought up to the bar on rape charges.

 

So the first readers winked and nodded, even with the non-existent Belinda person being amended to the title, and knew all was well; knew who had slept with whom. It's like that well-known personality of our times...let's just call him...Bryan Seachest...being accused recently of sexual misconduct by his female makeup artist. Why didn't Seachest get fired from all his jobs because of it...? Cuz everyone in the Biz knows he's Queer as December, so the accusation was motivated by abuse-gold-digging and not any actual sexual contact initiated by him.

 

And so it goes...times do not change....      

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3 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

The "like waking up with your lover" part is exactly right. This is a remarkably intimate poem, and ironically, that very intimacy precluded any contemporary reader of the poem from thinking Goethe slept with a girl. I mean ironically, because if they did, that would make him a scoundrel and worthy of being brought up to the bar on rape charges.

 

So the first readers winked and nodded, even with the non-existent Belinda person being amended to the title, and knew all was well; knew who had slept with whom. It's like that well-known personality of our times...let's just call him...Bryan Seachest...being accused recently of sexual misconduct by his female makeup artist. Why didn't Seachest get fired from all his jobs because of it...? Cuz everyone in the Biz knows he's Queer as December, so the accusation was motivated by abuse-gold-digging and not any actual sexual contact initiated by him.

 

And so it goes...times do not change....      

no i guess they don't ...

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I’m transported to silver-spangled moonlit rooms, and visions of the longed-for beloved. I can feel the yearning the young poet experienced.  But I doubt this is a woman he writes to. Beautiful! 

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No, not to a woman, this. It's very male, and according to social media men are just clods, unfeeling ones at that, but nothing is further from the truth. All you need do is study poetry to understand that. Men feel very deeply and it shows in these beautiful verses. Bravo, AC

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4 hours ago, Parker Owens said:

I’m transported to silver-spangled moonlit rooms, and visions of the longed-for beloved. I can feel the yearning the young poet experienced.  But I doubt this is a woman he writes to. Beautiful! 

No female pronouns are in the poem, and as a man completed his law degree, the saying that his love for a woman "is natural" would be highly strange. That codeword is large enough to drive a carriage through :) 

 

Thanks for reading and commenting, Parker. I really appreciate it. 

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2 hours ago, MichaelS36 said:

No, not to a woman, this. It's very male, and according to social media men are just clods, unfeeling ones at that, but nothing is further from the truth. All you need do is study poetry to understand that. Men feel very deeply and it shows in these beautiful verses. Bravo, AC

I guess we men get a bad rap, but then again, there is a reason why the ladies feel comfortable around Gay men. Straight guys can lose their damn minds when around women, and they know it. It's a weakness (in the head), and probably why they fear the strength of Gay guys in general, but, I'm just guessing :)

 

Thanks for reading and supporting this, Mike. I hope to mine more nuggets from this Goethe book.

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there are beautiful images

your translation is lyrical, and full of passion

so unlike the two examples of "straight washed" translations you provided

 

it's wonderful to read all of these, i hope you do "mine more nuggets from this Goethe book."

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13 hours ago, mollyhousemouse said:

there are beautiful images

your translation is lyrical, and full of passion

so unlike the two examples of "straight washed" translations you provided

 

it's wonderful to read all of these, i hope you do "mine more nuggets from this Goethe book."

Thank you for reading and offering wonderful comments, Molly. He's quite a passionate poet and that gets crushed trying to make him sound like a chum of Byron's. 

 

I have a new poem to try and do; this one he did write to a girl and we can compare how he related to her versus the men in his life. It's pretty interesting. 

 

Again, thanks for reading, Muah

 

Edited by AC Benus
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You bring so much feeling to the surface with your translations, AC.. It truly is an art, and it’s beautiful.  

There is so much I wouldn’t question, so I’m grateful to you on many levels...

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On 1/13/2019 at 12:50 PM, Defiance19 said:

You bring so much feeling to the surface with your translations, AC.. It truly is an art, and it’s beautiful.  

There is so much I wouldn’t question, so I’m grateful to you on many levels...

Thank you, Def! I do hate to see poems lacking female pronouns twisted and contorted through bad translations. The more poetry I read in translation, the more I question what's been censored. Surprisingly, a lot has. 

 

Thanks, as always, for reading my posts. You are the best!  

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