Journal article
Translating the Poetry of the Holocaust: Translation, Style and the Reader by Jean Boase-Beier
- Abstract:
- Dan Pagis’s poem “Written on a Sealed Railway Car” is a fragmentary text that reimagines the first biblical family in the context of the Holocaust. In this spare poem—it consists of no more than six lines, seven if you include the title—mother Eve, accompanied by Abel, leaves a message for her son Cain, letting him know that she is—Alive? Dead? Heading somewhere? Like so many messages from this past, the poem leaves this part of their story unrecorded. And yet, the poem’s unfinished quality makes it an ideal text for considerations of the poetics of fragmentation and displacement that characterizes so much of Holocaust literature, and its poetry in particular. It is also a text that has been translated into many languages. One notable example is a memorial at Belzec, the site of a Nazi death camp, where the poem appears in its original Hebrew alongside (uncredited) Polish and English translations. It goes without saying that each translation presents its own challenges, but the silences, fissures and breaks that shape Pagis’s poem and its language require particular attention, not only because what lies between the lines is also essential to how we read a poem, but also because of the legacy of the Holocaust and the question of how, and with what language, a poet—and translator—invokes that history.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Reviewed (other)
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 292.5KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/07374836.2016.1197636
Authors
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Journal:
- Translation Review More from this journal
- Volume:
- 95
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 80-83
- Publication date:
- 2016-07-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2016-05-24
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2164-0564
- ISSN:
-
0737-4836
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:656092
- UUID:
-
uuid:2d1d45c5-f1c6-4b93-93e7-fe8f8f28d4b6
- Local pid:
-
pubs:656092
- Source identifiers:
-
656092
- Deposit date:
-
2016-11-01
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Center for Translation Studies
- Copyright date:
- 2016
- Notes:
- Copyright © The Center for Translation Studies
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record