Headfarm: Problems of Translation
No one here at Headfarm reads Latin fluently. Nevertheless, Magnes forces the others to read the Latin poem of Claudian and not only the English translation. So they start to look for a way through the text using a dictionary, a tiring and “stony” way, but it offers a strange joy.
The joy of spending time in a crystal shop. Now every word seems to have a unique kind of appearance.
Jabès’ favourite words are:
Rubeo/rubere = red = rot sein, schimmern, ergänzen, prangen
Trepidus = quaking = aufgeregt, unruhig
Concutiat/concutio, concussi, concussum = make = dröhnend zusammen schlagen, heftig schütteln, erschüttern.
Hiatus m. = split = Öffnung, Schlund
Fulgur = lightning = Blitz.
Annoyed by this list Magnes gives a rough translation of the first group of verses in German:
Wer aufgerüttelt denkend die Welt verfolgt und die Keime aller Dinge durchsucht, wodurch die Mondfinsternis bewirkt wird, welcher Grund die Sonne erbleichen lässt, woher der bleiche Schweif der rot schimmernden Kometen, woher die Winde fliessen und welche Bewegung die Eingeweide der zitternden Erde erschüttert, wer die Blitz führt zum Spalt, woher die Wolken donnern, durch welches Licht erblüht der Regenbogen, dies möge wer auch immer mir, dem Fragenden, ausführen, wenn denn irgend ein Verstand ausreicht, die Wahrheit zu erfassen.
Maurice Platnauer translated the same Latin text into the following English words (Found at Penelope):
Whosoever with anxious thought examines the universe and searches out the origin of things — the reason of the sun’s and moon’s eclipse, the causes of comets’ red and baneful fires, the source of the winds, the motion that makes the earth to quake, the force that splits the heavens in twain, the noise of the thunder, the brilliance of the rainbow, let this man (if man’s mind has any power to conceive the truth) explain to me something I would fain to understand.