Abstract
Translating the sound. Elke Erb as poet and translator of Marina Tsvetaeva's poetic oeuvre Elke Erb (*1938) attaches immense importance to the sound-aesthetical dimensions of poems both within her general poetic considerations and in the context of her translation poetry. She addresses linguistic sounds at various points in essayistic texts;
... read more
in her essay Zum Thema Nachdichten she calls for not only a word-by-word German paraphrase, but also a "Lautgestalt" (≈ "sound shape" or transcription) of the text to be translated. Erb emphasises the tonal qualities especially in respect of Marina Tsvetaeva's (1892-1941) poetry. Referring to the biographical circumstances of the Russian poet, Erb attributes to Tsvetaeva a particular closeness to music. In Tsvetaeva's texts, which other readers also characterise using terms culled from the realm of music, Erb seems to have found an embodiment, as it were, of her own poetic considerations. The central role of the sound-aesthetical dimensions is related not least to the respective literary and historical context of the two lyricists. As a poet of the Russian 'Silver Age', Tsvetaeva was familiar with considerations of linguistic sound structures from Symbolist and Futurist circles. In Erb's case, who began writing in the context of the 'Saxon School of Poetry', the emphasis on the material (and thus the tonal) dimension of language also functions as a key component of language. In Erb's poems from the volume Sonanz (2008) and Tsvetaeva's poetry, figures of repetition and variation appear on all levels of the signifiant side. Given that the work of both poets contains complex sonic and rhythmic structures, Erb and Tsvetaeva's texts certainly possess similarities. Moreover, as witnessed by the existence of figures of repetition and variation, there exists a link between the two poets and the lyrical tradition. Both Tsvetaeva and Erb, however, push the boundaries of this tradition to the limit by extending the usual repertoire of tonal recurrences with further repetitions of sounds and words that deviate from the traditional sound figures. That said, the texts of the two poets differ in the way in which the sound structures are constructed: while the figures in Tsvetaeva's poems are characterised by regular (positional) forms, Erb's poems are more loosely structured with regard to the various sound, word and sentence figures. This difference between the two poets also manifests itself in Erb's translations of Tsvetaeva's poems: she often loosens up strictly regular structures at a word and sentence level. The reduction of regularity in the translations can only partly be ascribed to differences between the German and Russian languages; to a large extent, it is also due to Erb's own poetics of translation. On the other hand, Erb reproduces recurrences in terms of sounds that are specific to Tsvetaeva's poetry and the innovations of Russian poetry in the early decades of the 20th century. By emphasising the sound-aesthetical dimensions of language – both in the context of poetological considerations and in the poems and translations themselves – Erb's personal poetical oeuvre and her translation poetry are closely interwoven.
show less
