The Thousandth Regiment - 7. "On the lime-washed partitions of our latrine"

This sonnet is so deep emotional and personal. The endless humiliation through the circumstances he feels and his longing for Wilhelm to comfort him or to just to be with him. Oh and I can understand his longing for books! You wrote a magnificent translation in every aspect and detail. Thank you. 🙂 Muha

P.S. I am so fascinated, how you brought specific German grammar, which has no equivalent in English, in your translation, so the message is completely preserved. Awesome.

(I gladly take every cultur shock on me, about any linguistic theme, if it is you, who translate it. 😉 Just teasing you a bit. Muha)

I’m grateful for your continued efforts to bring Ehrenbaum-Degele’s poems to us who follow him in a different land and different century. We, too, understand being spat upon and the need to pour out our pain, if only in private. And the yearning for comfort and the touch of one’s beloved is universal. 

this one.. this time i was ready for ... the first time you showed me this.. well it made me gasp for breath and cry a bit .. it was so touching.  i found the sadness crushing xoxo

On 8/13/2019 at 8:17 AM, Lyssa said:

This sonnet is so deep emotional and personal. The endless humiliation through the circumstances he feels and his longing for Wilhelm to comfort him or to just to be with him. Oh and I can understand his longing for books! You wrote a magnificent translation in every aspect and detail. Thank you. 🙂 Muha

P.S. I am so fascinated, how you brought specific German grammar, which has no equivalent in English, in your translation, so the message is completely preserved. Awesome.

(I gladly take every cultur shock on me, about any linguistic theme, if it is you, who translate it. 😉 Just teasing you a bit. Muha)

Thank you, Lyssa. This is a very emotional poem: sparse and personal. I hope I have been able to bring that across in my translation. I worry about if the "temperate hand" hits as hard as it should. As for the grammar and images in the poems, I just try to present them intact but in a way that seems composed in English. But I do have to follow his line structures fairly closely to maintain the line-to-line flow. 

Thank you as always for your comments and help with these. Muah  

On 8/13/2019 at 11:31 AM, Parker Owens said:

I’m grateful for your continued efforts to bring Ehrenbaum-Degele’s poems to us who follow him in a different land and different century. We, too, understand being spat upon and the need to pour out our pain, if only in private. And the yearning for comfort and the touch of one’s beloved is universal. 

Thank you, Parker. This poem is a special one. It took me a few readings to have the significance of "400 days" sink in. That is about a year and six weeks...to imagine being focused on such a distant point as one in which you could get some rest is heartbreaking. And everyone of those days in between is one that could see the death of him. 

You are right about this poem being universal. Thank you again for reading, commentating and offering your support. Muah  

On 8/13/2019 at 5:47 PM, Mikiesboy said:

this one.. this time i was ready for ... the first time you showed me this.. well it made me gasp for breath and cry a bit .. it was so touching.  i found the sadness crushing xoxo

Thank you, Tim. I sort of sprung this poem on you while I was working on it. I get tunnel vision in the process of working on these (seeing the little details that need tweaking),  forget how impactful the over all work -- and collection -- is. This is a devastating poem, and one that reaches out for our humanity. It will always be a great work of art, and I hope I capture the spirit of the original well. 

Thank you again. Muah