Brief Afterthoughts on Versions of a Poem by Hölderlin

Abstract

I have never kept any notes about the process of translating or felt any need to record the unconscious or conscious choices active in the process. So anything I can say about specific translations now is a reconstruction, as unreliable as any retrospective conjecture as to why one did one thing rather than another. Most of my later translations were done in a single session, with no variant drafts, only the odd correction made before or after first publication. One reason may be that I have been translating for forty years, and have come to know in advance whether I can translate a poem or not. There have been abortive efforts, of course, but I have thrown away the evidence. More often than not, the real preparation for my versions has been done not on sheets of paper that would serve as evidence of my choices and rejections, but in my head, over the years and decades, by living with a poem, assimilating it, grappling with its peculiarities.