Robert Chen
on translating Erich Arendt
Erich Arendt’s works of this period are characterized by the “timelessness of time” and the “spacelessness of space,” and “Valet” is no exception. Arendt pushes the limits of comprehension to an extent where even he, narrating in the third person, is disoriented by his memories.
The poem is not difficult to translate, with the exception of some nuances. For example, Verrollen implies not only a dull, roaring sound but also the act of thrashing and twisting, and there is no direct translation that preserves the dual meanings. Additionally, while it is clear in German that ihn (“him/it”) in “Er kennt ihn” refers to Schrei (“scream”), clarity is lost when translating because English lacks grammatical gender. It is also important to note that although German sentence structure differs significantly from that of English, there remains room for choice, and I have replicated Arendt’s choices wherever possible.
Because Arendt’s poetry was an exploration of both the private and political spheres, it is difficult to understand “Valet” without knowledge of his circumstances; translation alone does not alter this requirement. The mention of bird bones, Eurydice, and mussels seem unrelated until one considers Arendt’s frequent visits to Greece, where he sought in mythology and culture a better understanding of his own existence. The keywords “waves,” “cloud,” “sea,” and “wind,” among others, were common throughout his poems and conveyed the idea of the ever-changing personal and political landscapes. Surrealism and ontologic contradictions — the sky reduced to a “grain of sand,” “shovels [digging] / the scream out of the air” — represent Arendt’s rebellion against bourgeois conformism, although it is clear he does not equate artistic freedom (which he nonetheless was continually denied) with social liberation.
about the author
Erich Arendt spent the last three decades of his life a prisoner of the German Democratic Republic (GDC), transforming the story of his life into poetry. Born in 1903 in Neuruppin, Germany, he first published his poetry in 1925 in Herwarth Walden’s expressionist magazine Der Sturm. He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1926 and the Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors (BPRS) in 1928; however, his works were criticized by BPRS chairman Johannes Becher for being too bourgeois, causing Arendt to pause his writings. In 1933, Arendt and his half-Jewish wife, Käthe, fled from Nazi Germany to Switzerland, and subsequently to Spain in 1934, France in 1939, and Colombia in 1942. In Colombia, he became active in anti-Nazi political organizations (the AFNB and the NKFD), wrote his first book, and toured the Caribbean; the mention of “hairy fishermen” in “Valet” likely refers to the Caribbean fishing village of Tolú and its inhabitants, whose contemplativeness and beauty left a deep impression on him. Due to political instability in Colombia in the late 1940s, he and his wife returned to East Germany in 1950. Aligning himself with reform socialism, he was denied admission to the East German Communist Party (SED), was continuously monitored by the Stasi (the state security service for the GDC) after 1957, and had his poetry censored. Following the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Prague Spring in the 1960s, he increasingly distanced himself from the SED regime and found popularity in West Germany. Arendt died in 1984 in his home in Wilhelmshorst.
about the translator
Robert Chen studies chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He pursues German because German is the language of chemistry, which in turn is the language of life.
