The poem by Sarah Kirsch, 'Edelstein wird er genannt", has an underlying theme common to a great deal of literature: the way death waits unexpectedly to destroy things. Here is the translation by w. D. Jackson (2000:78-79):
He Shall Be Called Jewel
The kingfisher left the nest
For the finst time / fluttered among
Twigs/while behind the
Millstone/the cunning
Old cat lies waiting. A waste
Of beautiful colours/recently acquired
Grace.
The stylistic clues to the theme in the original include a change from past tense when speaking of the kingfisher to present used of the cat lying in wait, a contrast Jackson has carefully kept in the translation. The title, in the translation as in the original, suggests the Bible. The reader of the German is able to supply many possible contexts for the understanding of this poem. The Biblical reference, the tenses, the generic use of "der Eisvogel" (the kingfisher) and "der ... Kater" (the cunning old cat) suggest universality. A German reader might see the Holocaust, a war,a cot death, the strictures of a state, as possible contexts. The translation allows all these possible contexts, and whatever others are compatible with the readers' background knowledge, to be constructed for the poem.
But the title is a more difficult matter: the German word Edelstein (jewel) is literally a "noble stone". Edel, meaning noble, valuable, better than average, is commonly seen in concatenation with materials in German compounds such as Edelgas (inert gas), Edelholz (fine wood), Edelmetall (precious metal), Edelstahl (stainless steel). In this poem, the superiority of "Edelstein" in the title contrasts strongly with "Mühlstein", a millstonc. The kingfisher is up in the twigs (though not far enough up) and the cat on the ground, waiting. Thus the two stones, the "Edelstein" and the "Mühlstein" could be seen as
metaphorically representing the position of kingfisher and cat (Edel is etymologically related to Adel, the highest class in a society, and Mühlstein, as in English, appears in idioms relating to its weight). This metaphorical linking of "Edelstein" with the kingfisher and "Mühlstein" with the cat works in German because the two types of stone are linguistically contrasted, but also because "Edelstein" suggests bright colours and "Mühlstein" grey and because of the conceptual metaphors GOOD IS UP and BAD IS DOWN which cognitive metaphor specialists such as Lakoff & Johnson (1980) suggest we all carry in our minds. It is thus a pity that Jackson's translation uses "Jewel" rather than, say, gemstone in the title. Because the contrasts in types of stone (the higher Edel- and the lower Mühl-) are lost, so too are the contrasting positions of kingfisher and cat and all that they entail. In many ways "jewel" sounds better in English; one could argue it is the more natural word. But losing some of the metaphorical import of the contrast is a high price to pay.
Being aware of metaphor, and of recent views which stress the centrality and ubiquity of metaphor and how it structures our thinking, might thus affect the way we саrry out a translation. As an example, let us consider a poem by Rose Ausländer (1984:142):
Snow
Schnec fällt
snow falls
Die Welt wird weiss
the world becomes white
In der Sonne
in the sun
glitzert das Weiss
sparkles the white
in allen Farben
in all colours
Weisse Sterne
white stars
bluhn in der Luft
blossom in the air
Am Horizont
on-the horizon
hinter den Bergen
bchind the mountains
sieh Schneewittchen
see snow-white
und die sieben Zwerge
and the seven dwarves
Nachts
at-night
ist das Weiss schwarz
is the white black
wie die finstere Koenigin
like the dark queen
hinter den Bergen
behind the mountains
There are several conceptual metaphors here and several different types of stylistic realization. The main conceptual metaphors could be seen as:
GOOD IS WHITE
BAD IS BLACK
LIFE ISA LANDSCAPE
LIFE ISA FAIRY STORY
Stylistic representations of these vary from the unspoken -the world turns white suggesting the world appears to be good, safe, in order-to the explicit but cognitively complex: white is black in the same way as the dark queen (who appeans good but is sinister). This is in contrast to the notion of poetic metaphor suggested by Stockwell (2002a:108); metaphors which "tend to have low clarity but a high degrec of richness". In fact,this metaphor has high clarity in one aspect (white is black like ("wie") the dark queen) but low clarity in another (we are left to assume that it is the dissembling nature of the queen that is being compared with the deceptive appearance of the snow).
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