On learning German

[igenlode]

Margaret Drabble on learning German:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/11/14/german-lessons/

Comments

[watervole]

Beautiful article. Learning German has seen me through some bad stress patches. Though I mainly stick to translating fairy stories, as my German is still pretty basic, but I can see the appeal of poetry.

[igenlode]

I have "Deutsche Lyrik" (with the original owner's name on the flyleaf: Marjorie Bardall, 11/5/33) — still with an old opera ticket marking Goethe's "Heidenröslein". Poems make for good train/interval reading, because they're short and self-contained.

The result was that at one point I could read German black-letter print quite fluently, and accidentally acquired a lot of vocabulary in 19th century spelling (Röslein, röslein, röslein roth... the Rothschilds are Rot[h]-schild, Redshield, not Roth's child!)

The interesting thing is how much my ability to read Gothic type at a glance depends on recognising words in context; when I subconsciously know what to expect, I don't have any trouble differentiating k, t and r, u and n, or f and s. As soon as I had to start spelling out words I didn't know, I could get horribly confused!

I discovered Heine for myself, thanks to the pages of "Deutsche Lyrik", and found him very accessible. Simple, beautiful and dreaming; one can see why so many of his verses were set to music.

Here's "Auf Flügeln des Gesanges", inspiration for Mendelssohn:

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges,
Herzliebchen, trag' ich dich fort,
Fort nach den Fluren des Ganges,
Dort weiß ich den schönsten Ort;

On the wings of song, my heart's dearest, I will carry you away, far away, to the plains of the Ganges, where I know the loveliest of places.

Dort liegt ein rothblühender Garten
Im stillen Mondenschein,
Die Lotosblumen erwarten
Ihr trautes Schwesterlein.

There lies a garden with red blooms beneath the still moonlight, where lotus blossoms await their beloved sister.

Die Veilchen kichern und kosen,
Und schaun nach den Sternen empor,
Heimlich erzählen die Rosen
Sich duftende Märchen ins Ohr.

The violets exchange giggles and caresses, and gaze aloft to the stars. The roses whisper their fragrant stories privately to one another.

Es hüpfen herbei und lauschen
Die frommen, klugen Gazelln,
Und in der Ferne rauschen
Des heiligen Stromes Welln.

The gazelles bound up to listen, gentle and wise; in the distance the waters of the sacred river murmur.

Dort wollen wir niedersinken
Unter dem Palmenbaum,
Und Lieb' und Ruhe trinken,
Und träumen seligen Traum.

There we shall sink down under the palm tree and drink of love and peace, and dream our blessed dream.

(My — rough and poetic — translation, with use of dictionary! Note the almost invisible k in "trinken" etc...)

[watervole]

That is absolutely beautiful.

The German words flow so well, and the translation helps one pick out how to say it as well.

How do you know the k is silent, or is that just by comparing the scansion to previous verses?

[igenlode]

Inflected languages have a massive advantage when it comes to writing closely-rhymed verse (see also Pushkin) and making it flow naturally; even my prose rendition isn't quite literal, because to speak in English of "The waves of the holy river" or "the red-flowering garden" doesn't really give the right effect. A rhyming English verse version is apt to sound more Betjeman than Byron:
"Oh, let us lie down by it,
Where the moon on the palm tree beams;
And drink deep of love and quiet
And dream our happy dreams."
https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/838
It's a brave attempt at the impossible, but it is not Heine!

---

The k isn't silent; k in German is always sounded, even in words like Knecht (cognate to English 'knight'). It's just virtually indistinguishable in the Gothic type in the photo, which shows the actual book with the poem in it. If you click on the picture, 'trinken' is the word at the end of the third line on the second page — the penultimate line of the poem. (Still scaled down, I'm afraid; my original photo was bigger and clearer than that.)

The lowercase letter k in traditional German blackletter type is basically a t with a small extra bar across the top: