Let’s just say, right from the start, that if you’re German you probably will think I’m crazy by the time you finish reading this week’s poem. If you ever have traveled to places where you’re quite obviously the outsider, maybe you won’t think me so nuts. I imagine this type of poem could be written from the point of view of anyone traveling to someplace that is not their home, someplace where, on the surface, things look quite familiar. For example, Germany. Yet, underneath, there’s a foreign-ness that is only overcome with long association, or perhaps never overcome if you are not a native.
I decided to post this week’s poem because of a sort of round-about logic. It starts that I’ve been listening to the recording of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. Or trying to. I keep getting stopped by the thoughts, ideas, in the lines. Especially their odd modern-ness. For anyone who might not know, Beowulf is probably the oldest “English” poem we have. Composed sometime between about 650 and 900 AD, in Old English, which is an Anglo-Saxon precursor to what we speak today.
From my perspective, Seamus Heaney is one of the finest poets of the English language.
Witness to that? I found seven books by him on my shelf, including his Beowulf translation, which I have read.
So why am I listening to a book I’ve already read? For one, poetry–good poetry–bears repetition. For another, what is heard often takes a different emphasis than what is obvious when read silently. And that is why I keep getting stopped by Heaney’s translation–I find lines so striking that I simply stop the recording in order to think about them. As an example, I got stopped very early in the book by these, which are essentially part of Beowulf’s genealogy:
Shield had fathered a famous son:
Beow’s name was known throughout the north.
And a young prince must be prudent like that,
giving freely while his father lives
so that afterwards in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line. Behaviour that’s admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.From Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney, 2000
Well, that doesn’t sound so old-fashioned, does it?
It sounds more or less like a modern point of view. Behaviour that’s admired / is the path to power among people everywhere. Doesn’t that ring true? It could be written about practically any modern culture. . .and therefore Beowulf , at least in Heaney’s translation, connects with a modern mind as if it were something written for us today. As if it weren’t foreign and strange and outmoded and based in another culture entirely. I mean, look at the Old English words on the page. The below three lines are the last three lines in the passage I quoted above. Just because we call it “Old English” doesn’t mean it looks like modern English. Hence Heaney as a translator. You can’t easily argue this is something born of the world we live in today.
This past Saturday, April 13, 2019, would have been Heaney’s 80th birthday.
He died in 2013, and you can read more about him here. But I bring him up because he was a poet that straddled–successfully–the dichotomies of modern polities. And by success, I mean he seemed to manage to remain true to himself, while witnessing others’ situations.
Heaney was an Irish poet, who was steadfastly Irish yet could see, and sympathize, with other views. Who could say his own piece and also say what others struggled to put into words. A rare ability. And possibly what made him a great translator for Beowulf–that ability to inhabit another worldview, at the gut level.
It’s not that easy to acculturate.
Even the small things can trip you up. For example, our son was adopted as a preschooler. He came to the US with no English, and despite appearing now to be the average teenager (learning to drive–please, say a prayer for my husband and I) we still find he has gaps in his knowledge. When he was small, it was the kinds of things you tell a kid thousands of times before they’re five. Things like “no, no, that’s hot.” Or the kid stories, fairy tales, that aren’t covered in elementary school. The Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, Three Blind Mice. (Side question: why so may threes?)
But even now, we find gaps. Like watermelon. We were at a picnic, and I saw him eating watermelon. The rest of us had piles of black seeds on our plates, and he had none. So when he went back to get more, I took him aside, and mentioned that we usually don’t eat the seeds.
He looked horrified, suddenly realizing that his plate didn’t look like ours. It was an error easily remedied, but how many more little gaps are out there, waiting to trip him up? No one knows. In that way, although fully fluent, he will never be 100% acculturated.
Similarly, I felt out of sync when I realized, on a business trip to Germany, that there was a whole hierarchy and etiquette to sausages.
Which ones for which meal, and so forth. In hindsight, it’s obvious. We have something similar–breakfast links and sausage that can be used in sauces and stews, and so on–it’s just not so well-developed a structure.
Germany takes the idea a bit farther. Organizes it. And like anything well-ingrained in a culture, it’s almost invisible. Like the beams that support a house. We know they’re there…but we don’t go around explaining that to anyone.
Which probably doesn’t seem to have much to do with Heaney, except that I like the way he can bring both common ground and differences to play in his poems. We’re all translating, all the time, and we hardly ever realize it. We translate from our homes to work, from our inner thoughts to how we express them, from our neighborhoods to places we visit on business or holiday. From breakfast at home to breakfast in Germany. Which eventually brings us back to Germany, to the poem itself:
How to Know You’ve Been to Germany
Even if the visit was so rapid and sterile, almost commonplace,
you sense the world is not quite carousel and not quite
fun house, which anyway is never fun,
evidence of elsewhere continues to unearth itself,
pushing up out of the should-be-frozen-but-isn’t,
as if winter wasn’t given an option to weigh in.
Evidence such as stamps you find in your passport;
a forgotten taxi receipt, clearly in German; the occasional flashes
of Damen und Herren that rush your memory unbidden,
though anyway there all was also posted in English;
the unaccountable memory you have of sausages
spread out for breakfast, not one but six types,
sprawled and indolent amid 1940s American tunes:
Sinatra, Crosby, Cole Porter riffs.
There’s the pink gaslight fixtures and long cool flutes
of hand-blown glass adorning the lobby chandelier.
Every street clean, so clean, even the curbs, though you recall
your hosts hissed, be careful, you’re too near the train station,
there are drugs there (as if not everywhere?)
and even (murmured) women – which is fine because
you don’t desire either. And then that organizing principle,
the way life’s made sense of. Unspoken but clear. Even
the way those angelic morning sausages laid out like dreams
are strictly verboten at lunch, where other wursts reign.
If you enjoyed How to Know You’ve Been to Germany
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.
Additional links, if you’re interested in a bit more Seamus Heaney:
Heaney’s poem Digging
Commentary on, and links to, 10 Heaney poems you can read on-line
Guardian article regarding Heaney’s 80th birthday and his influence on politics yet today
A Guardian article reviewing the two books of Heaney’s Selected poems