![]() ![]() One of the examples for the verb sein in Inga’s dictionary is a translation of Hamlet’s famous line ‘To be or not to be’, translated into German as: sein oder Nichtsein. The first part is the noun (der) Tot – death – and the second the verb sein – the future tense of the verb ‘to be’. ![]() Totsein is one of those German words that’s comprised of two other words joined together. I had a bit of a wrangle with the word Totsein, and chatted with Inga about it. It’s a little like the opening line of Don Quixote, which can be used as a litmus test for any new translation of the work as a whole.įor me, however, one of Rilke’s most intriguing lines in the first elegy is the deceptively simple: Und das Totsein ist mühsam, which literally means ‘and death is hard/hard work/laborious’ or perhaps, if you’re willing to transform the noun Totsein into an adverb: ‘and dead is hard/hard work/laborious’. Lots of people speak about the difficulty of translating the first line of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, perhaps because it’s so well known ( Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel/Ordnungen?). ![]()
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