Editorial Notes

In February 2018, I was a guest at the University of Milan for a panel discussion about »Die Leinwand« (The Canvas), which had been published in Italian at the time. A student asked a specific question that touched on both the interpretation of a passage and my intention as an author. The professor intervened: my intention was irrelevant. In the end, only the work speaks. And authors themselves never know what they have actually created anyway.

That was a cold shower. Whether I like it or not, the professor was probably right at heart. Why should an author say even one more word about their own work that isn't already contained in the text? I don't want to comment on the content and thus on interpretations. But I would like to tell something about the chosen form, my encounter with it, and my handling of it. It was a struggle—but a productive one. I owe the existence of these poems to my engagement with the form.

It could have been another classical meter. But I had reason to lament and wanted a song; and the elegy is the prototypical form of the lament-song.

The classical meters come from Greek and are based on peculiarities of the Greek language. They were adopted into Latin because it shares some of these peculiarities with Greek, and for this reason they function very similarly there. These meters work with long (quantities) and short syllables (breves). When they were transferred to German in the Classical period by poets like Goethe, Schiller, and others, the long syllables became stressed syllables (stressed positions) and the short syllables became unstressed syllables (unstressed positions), due to the lack of true equivalents in German. In the following examples, I will annotate stressed positions with — and unstressed positions with ◡. Here are some examples:

Halberstadt: —◡◡
Euphrates' banks: —◡◡—
Revolution: —◡—◡
Rarely do matters that matter: —◡◡—◡◡—◡

The backbone of the elegy is the elegiac distich, a double verse consisting of a hexameter and an elegiac pentameter:

—◡(◡)—◡(◡)—◡(◡)—◡◡—◡◡—(◡)
—◡(◡)—◡(◡)— ‖ —◡◡—◡◡—

The unstressed positions in parentheses can be omitted. They can also be replaced by a true length—in German!—that arises, for example, from a semantically necessary pause.

There is an example from the Classical period that makes audible how an elegiac distich sounds. We owe it to Friedrich Schiller and his adaptation of the Thermopylae epigram into German:

Nehmt euch vor allem in acht, die Gebrechen der Mädchen zu rügen,
    ja, es hat manchem genützt, dass er mit Fleiß sie nicht sah.

(Above all, beware of criticizing the faults of girls,
    yes, it has benefited many a man that he deliberately did not see them.)

—◡◡—◡◡—◡◡—◡◡—◡◡—◡
    —◡◡—◡◡— ‖ —◡◡—◡◡—

The hexameter has two possible endings, »masculine« »feminine,« depending on whether they end on a stressed position (—) or on a stressed position plus unstressed position (—◡). The hexameter owes its name to its six (hex) feet, which consist of dactyls (—◡◡). The first three feet can be shortened trochaic (—◡), so that possibly a blank verse emerges in which stressed and unstressed syllables alternate: ◡—◡—◡—. English poetry and drama (Shakespeare, Milton) are particularly known for this. But the hexameter should continue dactylically, in any case in the fifth foot, to maintain its special sound.

The second verse of the distich is a hexameter with a finesse. Actually, it consists of only five (penta) feet because the third is shortened by two unstressed positions. Hence the name »elegiac pentameter.« (The shortened foot is completely subtracted from the count as punishment.) But like the hexameter, it has six long syllables, with the peculiarity that in the middle of the verse two of these long syllables meet (caesura). In German, this always means a pause (‖) in the flow of speech.

We also owe Schiller a mnemonic distich for potential adepts, which on the one hand shows us that one may "cheat," but on the other hand also makes audible how such a distich sounds:

Im Hexameter steigt des Springquells silberne Säule,
    Im Pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch herab.

(In the hexameter rises the spring's silver column,
    In the pentameter then it falls melodiously down.)

◡◡—◡◡—◡—◡—◡◡—◡
    ◡◡—◡◡— ‖ —◡◡—◡◡—

There, several syllables are already omitted, especially the stressed verse beginnings, and two dactyls are »invalid.« And this is supposed to be a teaching example? So be it! We don't notice it at all. And that we don't notice it—that's what we remember.

One may now ask: What is all this for? Isn't this all formalistic frippery?

It is not. The meters have fulfilled at least two functions, one of which they still fulfill today and will continue to fulfill. Poetry was oral tradition for millennia. It was freely recited from memory. In Kyrgyzstan, there is still the tradition of the Manasi, who freely recite the national epic »Manas« — 500,000 verses! — in multi-day recitations before an audience. There are only a few left who master this art, but they exist.

Meters — in other languages also rhymes — greatly facilitated memorization. But the more important and lasting function is their emotional effect on the audience. A blank verse (◡—◡—), which resembles our heartbeat, triggers different emotions than a dactyl (—◡◡), which is more reminiscent of the basic element of a waltz. Here the rhythms appeal to something archaic in us that will not disappear so soon. One can call this manipulation. These rhythmic effects are a legitimate and powerful means of poetry to produce an emotional reaction almost irresistibly.

By the way, prose authors should be told that they have exactly the same arsenal of poetic weapons at their disposal. Their use in prose is even more insidious because no reader of a novel expects to be hit via the limbic system.

The properties described so far make us welcome meters. But there is also plenty of reason to struggle with them. The uniformity that helps with memorization quickly becomes monotonous and tiring when reading and listening. It becomes difficult to design a text dynamically, that is, to change the tempo or the tonal mood. But worst of all is the corset of the sequence of stressed and unstressed positions, which almost inevitably leads to strange word order in the sentence and to ellipses and elision apostrophes in languages like German or English, which replace the Greek-Latin quantities and breves with stressed and unstressed positions, in order to get rid of an unsuitable syllable.

Let us invoke the first lines of Johann Heinrich Voß's German translation of the "Odyssey" to illustrate this:

Sage mir, Muse, die Taten des vielgewanderten Mannes,
Welcher so weit geirrt, nach der heiligen Troja Zerstörung,
Vieler Menschen Städte geseh'n und Sitte gelernt hat,
Und auf dem Meere so viel' unnennbare Leiden erduldet [...]

(Tell me, Muse, the deeds of the much-wandered man,
Who so far had erred, after holy Troy's destruction,
Many people's cities had seen and customs learned,
And on the sea so many unspeakable sufferings endured [...])

There it could only weakly say »sage mir« (tell me), instead of the stronger: erzähle (narrate), berichte (report), or flüstere mir (whisper to me). »Welcher so weit geirrt« (who so far had erred)—the »ist« (has) is missing. The phrase »der heiligen Troja Zerstörung« (holy Troy's destruction) is a semantic catastrophe. The holy destruction of Troy or the destruction of the holy city of Troy? With »geseh'n« he gets rid of a syllable—unnecessarily at that—and with »viel'« once again.

Goethe already scolded Voß for this, but did not escape these problems in many places of his »Roman Elegies« either.

Now imagine what these problems hold not only for an original text in such a meter, but also what it means for a translation of such a work into another language that is equally »unsuitable« for this kind of formal design. Because of all these problems, Raoul Schrott decided to abandon the classical meter in his new translation of the »Iliad.« He had to translate. Rilke, on the other hand, wanted to write modern elegies about 100 years ago and made a different decision. In the »Duino Elegies,« he uses the elegiac distich, but in a very free form, with shortened verses and the use of semantic pauses as true lengths. He carries semantic arcs across verse boundaries to have more freedom in shaping the statement. And he does not shy away from occasionally not starting a verse with a stressed position if the sentence requires otherwise.

Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.

(Who, if I cried out, would hear me then from the angels'
orders? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me to his heart: I would perish from his
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still just endure,
and we admire it so because it serenely disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.)

—◡◡—◡|—◡◡—◡◡—◡
—◡◡‖◡◡—◡◡—◡
—◡◡—◡◡—|◡◡—◡|—◡◡
—◡◡—◡|◡◡—◡◡—◡◡—
◡◡—◡◡—◡|—◡◡—◡◡—◡
—◡◡—◡◡— ‖ —◡◡—◡◡—
—◡◡—◡◡‖◡—◡—◡◡—◡

Rilke still sounds thoroughly elegiac. The form leads but does not shackle him. When poetic expression or grammar requires it, the form must bend. And it turns out to be more supple than one might have trusted it to be.

Even Rilke's elegies will make an old-fashioned impression on a younger reader today. One probably has to go a step further than he did in the 21st century. I asked myself whether one could distill which elements of the elegiac distich are responsible for the characteristic mood and sound, in order to lay these elements as an elegiac foil under a poetic text that outwardly appears to be written in free verse.

There are a few elements on which the effect depends. It begins with the dactyl (—◡◡), the »waltz« beat. And one must remember this when thinking about dynamics in terms of tempi: one can dance waltz very slowly and equally intoxicatingly fast.

But just as the waltz cannot get by with just one beat, the elegiac sound also needs more than just one dactyl. We have already mentioned that in both the hexameter and the elegiac pentameter, the freedoms lie in the first three feet, but never in the fifth. The sixth is shortened anyway.

I proceed from the thesis that the actually supporting element for the sound and the supporting rhythm are the two possible combinations of the hexameter ending: —◡◡— (strong) and —◡◡—◡ (weak). The typical sound emerges from a verse length of three feet, for example —◡◡—◡◡— or —◡◡—◡◡—◡. One can also have four, five, six, seven, as long as this finale remains. If one deviates from the dactyl in the text flow for semantic or artistic reasons, one can return to the elegiac tone with three such feet.

In addition, there is another element of the elegiac pentameter. It exists instead of a second hexameter for good reason. The pauses caused by the meeting of two stressed syllables, the typical caesura in the elegiac pentameter, oppose the dactyl.

Denn wo der Daktylus treibt, hält die Parese zurück.

(For where the dactyl drives, the caesura holds back.)

—◡◡—◡◡— ‖ —◡◡—◡◡—

I wondered whether this approach also works in English and looked at the common translations of the »Duino Elegies« into English. These rhythmic aspects do not consistently appear in the existing translations, so they lack part of the tonal-rhythmic aura of the original.

I could have attempted a new translation of the »Duino Elegies,« but I had just at hand a new cycle of elegies, my own, and with this text I undertook the attempt to translate it semantically and rhythmically as close as possible to the German version. This has led not only to an astonishing re-encounter with my own text but also to corrections of the »original.« I put »original« in quotation marks because in the end I had and have the feeling of having two originals before me, which is why I wished for them to be published side by side.

Benjamin Stein
Berlin, May 2025