Triple distilled flowers

Pent in walls of glass

Today’s post reprints an experimental “re-translation” of Paul Celan’s German version of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet V; my version previously appeared in this post. I will be discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets online this evening at 7pm EST, as part 1 of a two-part reading group for

Interintellect

. Some tickets are still available here.

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SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET V 
(retranslated from the German of Paul Celan)

They, that first formed the glance where glances rest,
that worked it from what's gentlest: the hours —:
they're coming back, to do another thing:
they founded, now they level to the ground.

Is summer? Summer was. Already time
leads onward into winters and eclipses.
Leaf greened, sap climbed . . . At one time. Oversnowed
beauty. And bareness, stripped-down, everywhere.

Then, did not summer stay behind in glass
as summer's ghost, extracted and imprisoned:
beauty were not, were orphaned of all sense
and unremembered and long since departed. 

But so, as spirit, shapeless, stored away,
it lasts, the flower, further, winterhard. 

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Sie, die den Blick, auf dem die Blicke ruhn,
geformt, gewirkt aus Zartestem: die Stunden–:
sie kommen wieder, Anderes zu tun:
was sie begründet, richten sie zugrunde.

Ist Sommer?  Sommer war. Schon führt die Zeit
den Wintern und Verfinstrungen entgegen.
Laub grünte, Saft stieg… Einstmals. Überschneit
die Schönheit. Und Entblösstes allerwegen.

Dann, blieb der Sommer nicht als Sommers Geist
im Glas zurück, verflüssigt und gefangen:
das Schöne wär nicht, wäre sinnverwaist
und unerinnert und dahingeganen.

Doch so, als Geist, gestaltlos, aufbewahrt,
west sie, die Blume, weiter, winterhart.

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Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
   But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
   Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

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