I

“Der Schwan” (1905–06)

Diese Mühsal, durch noch Ungetanes
schwer und wie gebunden hinzugehn,
gleicht dem ungeschaffnen Gang des Schwanes.

Und das Sterben, dieses Nichtmehrfassen
jenes grunds, auf dem wir täglich stehn,
seinem ängstlichen Sich-Niederlassen—:

in die Wasser, did ihn sanft empfangen
und die sich, wie glücklich und vergangen,
unter ihm zurückziehn, Flut um Flut;
während er unendlich still und sicher
immer mündiger und königlicher
und gelassener zu ziehn geruht.

—By Rainer Maria Rilke

Leishman's translation (below) is faithful enough to retain much that is poetic with Rilke's version, but the at once awkward and elegant constructions—e.g. Nichtmehrfassen—in German are merely awkward in English (“no more hold-providing”), perhaps a tad ironic in a poem about grace.

And death.

It's a gentle twist on the subject. Leishman maintains the macro-level rhetorical & poetic structure.

II

This afternoon after class L suggested I attach a timer to my baked goods so as to see how long it takes for them to disappear. I'm not sure the banana bread was “all that,” but I must admit that it had not only a fine flavor but a fine texture, and it was seemingly appreciated by quite a few residents of our madhouse, our Irrenanstalt, if you will.

Irrenhaus oder Irrenanstalt ist eine veraltete, heute als abwertend empfundene und nur noch in der Umgangssprache gebräuchliche Bezeichnung für eine psychiatrische Klinik.

My dorm in Marburg used to belong to the psychiatric clinic; it was easy to be locked into your room or even your hall. There was an office at the entry, and while it at that time occasionally housed someone to make sure only the right people entered, you got the feeling that it had once served the opposite purpose.

I suggest moving all the psychiatric wards to Halle, Bitterfeld, and Magdeburg, and rename the state Sachsen-Anstalt.

I have more Good Eats to watch, but I won't begin watching it for a while. Torchwood is now ready for consumption, but it, too, will wait, for tonight is Heroes.

I eventually left the building after a good chat with the former chair about 3rd-year pedagogy and the current materials available. We're both critical of what's out there and have a few ideas for some in-house improvements.

Alvin Goldman's Simulating Minds: the Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (Oxford UP, 2006) is a fine volume but at points dryly unreadable. I'm not sure why I ever checked it out in the first place. Chapter 8, “Ontogeny, Autism, Empathy, and Evolution,” was, in the end, the only thing that interested me. It was impossible not to enjoy the following sentence from page 195:

Psycholinguistic research shows that among the child's earliest words are “uh-oh” and (in England) “oh bugger.”

The section on role-playing interested me a bit, primarily because of its pedagogical relevance. The book was recalled on me, so after photocopying a chapter I returned it to the library.

Up to Fair Trade I strolled, saw my sorry reflection once or twice in the glass, and determined that I need a haircut. The coffee shop was curiously not full and I found a table against the wall and an outlet. I made it through a few chapters further in Something Rotten; perhaps post-Heroes I'll finish it. The crowd tended toward the polite, reserved, and quiet today; few mouth-breathers or cell-phone conversation broadcasters. Alas, the people-watching opportunities were limited.

Since A's new girlfriend, M, works at Westfield Comics, why not pimp one of the few comic shops in Madison?

T told tales of driving back from Texas to Wisconsin via Missouri this weekend and mentioned that the roadside signage in that state is as scary as ever.

III

Sure, I find “through the still-to-do” a poetically weak rendition of “durch noch Ungetanes” and I've commented on “no more hold-providing” already, but the bit that bugs me is the insertion of commas toward the end. English speakers tend to throw in commas for all sorts of verbal pauses; Germans do not. The addition of commas after “maturely” and “composedly” has two effects: the spoken flow in the German is here broken up, and what was a series of three parallel modifiers is now two modifiers and a parenthetical aside, an appositive of sorts, that is equivalent to the previous expression. Leishman also removed an and, and perhaps he felt the lack of commas and use of several ands lent the verse a run-on flavor, but I'm all for the run-on here.

“The Swan”

This laborious going on and on,
bound and heavy, through the still-to-do is
like the unshaped walking of the swan.

Dying, too, that no more hold-providing
by the ground we daily trusted to, is
like his so unconfident subsiding

into waters that receive him gently
and, as though departed and contently,
wave on wave retire from under him;
while he, infinitely still and surely,
ever kinglier and more maturely,
more composedly, condescends to swim.

—Translated by J.B. Leishman