In poking around a bit, I notice - you left the final two words off the end. The final line should end: Nothing is certain. But write. (Nulla รจ sicuro, ma scrivi.)
Hamburger's translation removes the comma from the original, and makes the end a new sentence - which seems to me a strange choice, and leaves me not exactly sure how to read it. (And, possibly, I'd even prefer your accidental or un-accidental reconfiguration, without "but write" at all).
2:49 PM
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Franco Fortini
Translating Brecht
All afternoon a thunderstorm hung on the rooftops, then broke, in lightning, in torrents. I stared at lines of cement, lines of glass with screams inside them, wounds mixed in and limbs, mine also, who have survived. Carefully, looking now at the bricks, embattled, now at the dry page, I heard the word of a poet expire, or change to another voice, no longer for us. The oppressed are oppressed and quiet, the quiet oppressors talk on the telephone, hatred is courteous, and I too begin to think I no longer know who's to blame.
Write, I say to myself, hate those who gently lead into nothingness the men and women who are your companions and think they no longer know. Among the enemies' names write your own too. The thunderstorm, with its crashing, has passed. To copy those battles nature's not strong enough. Poetry changes nothing. Nothing is certain.
"Hate those who gently lead into nothingness"
1 Comment -
In poking around a bit, I notice - you left the final two words off the end. The final line should end:
Nothing is certain. But write.
(Nulla รจ sicuro, ma scrivi.)
Hamburger's translation removes the comma from the original, and makes the end a new sentence - which seems to me a strange choice, and leaves me not exactly sure how to read it. (And, possibly, I'd even prefer your accidental or un-accidental reconfiguration, without "but write" at all).
2:49 PM