I completed the below translation for DoubleSpeak, a journal for poetry in translation, while an undergraduate at Penn.

English

Glowing sand grain in sight, 
the sky, 
            he sat 
            countless years 
facing the surveyed sea: 
cavernous, 
otherworldly white, the waves. 
Within the chest
Reply: 
            the beach pebbles
            ancient tumbling. 

By the black cliff 
            washed aside 
hard-shelled ejecta, cold. 
His fingers within 
played 
mussel-dead with time. 
As if time 
changes something,
            the cloud. 
Shrinking 
a bird bone in sight (has 
        the stone sung).
        He froze, 
listening: above, 
spear in rock, 
shovels dug 
the scream out of the air. (He 
recognizes it), sat,
the unrivaled void
enveloping
him.

            Backwards 
            the death-rakes upwards: 
antennas, sung by 
children under the roof 
of the thousand-year-old
	    Eurydice. 

        Still
in front of the hut, wooden 
silence, he stood, 
women, broad-hued shadows (he 
brushes them). 
On iron rust sand-
liberated fruits.
Under his tongue the sea, 
he ate, 
he drank 
bitters to the hairy fishermen. 

As in the cracked wood late 
the village 
slept upon death, 
		its veins, 
it is said, have in other flesh
sung, which
bent — 
	or was it 
outside? Wind, 
which into the slicing shells 
of the clams
reached — 

German

Glühendes Sandkorn im Auge,
den Himmel,
            er saß
Jahre ungezählt
vor der befragten See :
hohlhallend,
jenseitiges Weiß, die Wellen.
Innehausend dem Brustkorb
Antwort:
            der Meerkiesel
            altes Verrollen.

Ans Schwarzkliff
            beiseite gespült
hartschaliger Auswurf, kalt.
Seine Finger darin
spielten
muscheltot mit der Zeit.
Als ob Zeit
etwas ändert,
            die Wolke.
Schrumpfend
ein Vogelknochen im Blickkreis (hat
    der Stein denn gesungen).
    Er fror,
aufhorchend : oben,
Spitzmesser in Fels,
Schaufeln gruben
den Schrei aus der Luft. (Er
kennt ihn), saß,
den unerreichten Hohlraum
eng
um sich.

        Rücklings
        die Todesharken aufwärts :
Antennen, die sangen
Kindern unter das Dach
das tausendjährig
	verjährte Eurydike.

	Noch
vor der Hütte, hölzernes
Schweigen, er stand,
Frauen, breithüftige Schatten (er
streift sie).
Auf Eisenrosten sand-
entwundene Früchte. Ihm
unter der Zunge das Meer,
er aß,
er trank
Bittres den haarigen Fischern zu.

Als im rissigen Holz spät
das Dorf
anschlief den Tod,
        seine Adern,
sagt man, haben in anderem Fleisch
gesungen, das
bog sich — 
	oder war's
draußen? Wind,
der in die schneidenden Schalen
der Muscheln
griff — 

Translator’s note

Erich Arendt’s works of this period are characterized by the “timelessness of time” and the “spacelessness of space,” with Valet being no exception. Arendt pushes the limits of comprehension to an extent where even he, narrating in the third person, is disoriented by his memories.

The poem is not difficult to translate, with the exception of some nuances. For example, “Verrollen” implies not only a dull, roaring sound but also the act of thrashing and twisting, and there is no direct translation that preserves the dual meanings. Additionally, while it is clear in German that ihn (him/it) in “Er kennt ihn” refers to Schrei (scream), clarity is lost when translating because English lacks grammatical gender. It is also important to note that although German sentence structure differs significantly from that of English, there remains room for choice, and I have replicated his choices wherever possible.

Because Arendt’s poetry was an exploration of both the private and political spheres, it is difficult to understand Valet without knowledge of his circumstances; translation alone does not alter this requirement. The mention of bird bones, Eurydice, and mussels seem unrelated until one considers Arendt’s frequent visits to Greece, where he sought in mythology and culture a better understanding of his own existence. The keywords of “waves,” “cloud,” “sea,” and “wind,” among others, were common throughout his poems and conveyed the idea of the ever-changing personal and political landscapes. Surrealism and ontologic contradictions—the sky reduced to a “grain of sand,” “shovels [digging] the scream out of the air”—represent his rebellion against bourgeois conformism, although it is clear he does not equate artistic freedom (which he nonetheless was continually denied) with social liberation.

Poet’s biography

ERICH ARENDT spent the last three decades of his life a prisoner of the German Democratic Republic, transforming the story of his life into poetry. Born in 1903 in Neuruppin, Arendt first published his poetry in 1925 in Herwarth Walden’s expressionist magazine Der Sturm. Arendt joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1926 and the Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors (BPRS) in 1928; however, his works were criticized by BPRS chairman Johannes Becher as being too bourgeois, causing Arendt to pause his writings. In 1933, Arendt and his half-Jewish wife, Käthe, fled from Nazi Germany to Switzerland, and subsequently to Mallorca in 1934, France in 1939, and Colombia in 1942. In Colombia, Arendt became active in anti-Nazi political organizations (the AFNB and the NKFD), wrote his first book, and toured the Caribbeans; the mention of “hairy fishermen” in Valet likely refers to the Caribbean fishing village of Tolú and its inhabitants, whose contemplativeness and beauty left a deep impression on him. Due to political instability in Colombia in the late 1940s, Arendt and his wife returned to East Germany in 1950. Aligning himself with reform socialism, Arendt was denied admission to the East German Communist Party (SED), was continuously monitored by the Stasi after 1957, and had his poetry censored. Following the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Prague Spring in the 1960s, Arendt increasingly distanced himself from the SED regime and found popularity in West Germany. Arendt died in 1984 in his home in Wilhelmshorst.