A couple translations and notes

 I decided to share a truly awesome poem with the rest of you English-only speakers. A little background: Goethe can be described as Germany's national poet. He is to the Germans what Shakespeare is the the British, what Poe is to the Americans. He was, by the way, also way more than just a poet. ("just a poet"?!?! I ought to shoot myself for saying that). Nevertheless, he was also a playwright, essayist, and knowledgeable critic of many, many things, ranging from poetry to literature to art and architecture. He is most famously remembered outside Germany for his amazing poem written in play form (or play, written in rhyming poetry) Faust, a magnificent piece of work redone and referenced and copied and so forth by many people and artists in many languages, the foremost of which comes to mind is the Trans Siberian Orchestra's album Beethoven's Last Night which replaces the doctor/philosopher Faust with the musician conductor Beethoven, then follows the exact plot, and even much of the dialogue. It has been reworked for the modern stage, and for television by the BBC, and for the big screen as well.

His second most famous work, and a poem that can be recited by almost any German, apparently, is Der Erlkonig, ofttimes mistranslated as "The Elf King" but should actually be rendered as "The Erl King," a mistranslation from a Scandinavian flower, alder, as old Danish folklore was the source of inspiration for this poem. Here is the original and my translation on the right.

A word on the translation: I am not fluent in German, and have chosen to translate more literally than beautifully, as any attempt I made at rhyming while keeping true to form and meaning would have undoubtedly fallen drastically short.

A word on the poem itself: Besides the narrator, the father, the child, and the Erl King all speak. The first three are easy to spot, in case you are wondering about the Erl King's lines they are stanzas 3, 5, and the first two lines of 7. Unfortunately, we never get to hear the Erl King's daughters (see below).

Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?                
                                                                Who rides, so late, through Night and wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;                            It is the father with his child;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,                      He has the boy tight in his arms,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.                      He holds him safely, he keeps him warm.

"Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?" 
                                                                  “My son, why do you hide your face with fear?”
"Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?                    “Father, don't you see the Erl King?
Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif?" —             The Erl King with crown and tail?”
"Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif."                           “My son, it's only a wisp of fog.”

"Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir!                     “You lovely child, come, go with me!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir;                        Many beautiful games I'll play with you;
Manch' bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand,             Many colorful flowers are on the shore,
Meine Mutter hat manch gülden Gewand."           My mother has many golden robes.”

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,    “My father, my father, and don't you hear,
Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht?" —             What the Erl King quietly promises me?”
"Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;                     “Be quiet, stay calm, my child;
In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind." —               The wind is rustling in the withered leaves.”

"Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir gehen?         “Dear boy, do you not want to come with me?
Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön;           My daughters shall well wait for you;
Meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen Reihn,     My daughters lead the nightly dance,
Und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein."  And rock and dance and sing you to sleep.”

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort 
                                                                    “My father, my father, and don't you see there
Erlkönigs Töchter am düstern Ort?" —         The Erl King's daughters in the gloomy place?” 
"Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh es genau:          “My son, my son, I see it fine:
Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau. — "           The old willows appear very grey.”

"Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;  “I love you, your beautiful form entices me;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt."  
                                                             And if you're not willing, then I need to use force.”
"Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an!   “My father, my father, now he's grabbing me!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!" —                    The Erl King is hurting me!”

Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind,            The father shudders, he rides swiftly,
Er hält in Armen das ächzende Kind,                    He holds the moaning child in his arms,
Erreicht den Hof mit Müh' und Not;                 He reaches his farm with trouble and misery;
In seinen Armen das Kind war tot.                        But in his arms the child was dead.

Besides being a national treasure and a masterpiece of a great poet, this is a good example of German poetry at the time. Even though in the twilight of its popularity, this type of unexplained mysticism can still be found in German culture. The dark forests of Tolkien's world was heavily influenced by German folklore describing their own Black Forest, which once covered most of Germany, and the various elves, nymphs, faeries, and spirits they invented to explain the other-worldliness of that ancient place.


One of the reasons I like this poem so much is the dynamic of the various voices. I imagine it being performed as one of the ancient Greek plays. A very common (even to the point of necessary) element of Greek plays was the presence of the "chorus." This was usually performed by a group of men standing to one side, singing their lines rather than speaking them. They could narrate, describe the characters or settings, act as an emotional guide to the audience by bemoaning all the horrible things going on onstage, or even speak directly to the characters. If Der Erlkonig had been an ancient Greek play, the Erl King himself, being never actually seen, would probably have been voiced by the chorus.


An interesting take on this poem is a remake/tribute to it done by the modern German hard rock band "Rammstein." Their version is set on an airplane, and so, in typical ironic/mocking Rammstein fashion, is named Dalai Lama, because the actual current Dalai Lama is afraid of flying. The song, though, is very much just a modernization of the original poem. What is very interesting, though, is that Rammstein chose to include an actual chorus, sung by women, throughout the song, voicing the Erl King's daughters, whom we never get to hear in the original. I have underlined their lines. Here is their song with my translation.


Ein Flugzeug liegt im Abendwind                An airplane lies on the evening wind
An Bord ist auch ein Mann mit Kind           On board is also a man with his child
Sie sitzen sicher sitzen warm                      They sit there safe, they sit there warm
und gehen so dem Schlaf ins Garn             and fall into the snare of sleep
In drei Stunden sind sie da                         In three hours they will be there
zum Wiegenfeste der Mama                        at mother's birthday party
Die Sicht ist gut der Himmel klar                The view is good, the sky is clear

Weiter, weiter ins Verderben                     Further, further, into destruction
Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben              We must live until we die
Der Mensch gehört nicht in die Luft         The man hears nothing in the air
So der Herr im Himmel ruft                      Thus the god in the heavens calls
seine Söhne auf dem Wind                        his sons on the wind
Bringt mir dieses Menschenkind             “Bring me this man-child!”

Das Kind hat noch die Zeit verloren        The child has yet lost time
Da springt ein Widerhall zu Ohren           Then an echo springs to his ears
Ein dumpfes Grollen treibt die Nacht       A muffled rumbling drives the night
und der Wolkentreiber lacht                     and the cloud-driver laughs
Schüttelt wach die Menschenfracht         He shakes the human cargo awake

Weiter, weiter ins Verderben                    Further, further, into destruction
Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben              We must live until we die
Und das Kind zum Vater spricht              And the child speaks to his father
Hörst du denn den Donner nicht            “Do you then not hear the thunder?
Das ist der König aller Winde                That is the king of all the winds,
Er will mich zu seinem Kinde                 He wants me for one of his children.”

Aus den Wolken tropft ein Chor              Out of the clouds a choir drops
Kriecht sich in das kleine Ohr               Crawling into his little ear
Komm her, bleib hier                           Come here, stay here
Wir sind gut zu dir                                We will be good to you
Komm her, bleib hier                            Come here, stay here
Wir sind Brüder dir                              We are brothers to you

Der Sturm umarmt die Flugmaschine   The storm embraces the flying machine
Der Druck fällt schnell in der Kabine    The pressure falls quickly in the cabin
Ein dumpfes Grollen treibt die Nacht    A muffled rumbling drives the night
In Panik schreit die Menschenfracht     In panic the human cargo screams

Weiter, weiter ins Verderben                  Further, further, into destruction
Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben           We must live until we die
Und zum Herrgott fleht das Kind           And to the god the child begs
Himmel nimm zurück den Wind             “Sky, take back the wind!
Bring uns unversehrt zu Erden                Bring us unharmed to earth.”

Aus den Wolken tropft ein Chor             Out of the clouds a choir drops
Kriecht sich in das kleine Ohr                Crawling into his little ear
Komm her, bleib hier                             Come here, stay here
Wir sind gut zu dir                                  We will be good to you
Komm her, bleib hier                             Come here, stay here
Wir sind Brüder dir                               We are brothers to you

Der Vater hält das Kind jetzt fest           The father is now holding the child firmly
Hat es sehr an sich gepresst                     He has him pressed tightly against himself
Bemerkt nicht dessen Atemnot                 Not noticing his labored breath
Doch die Angst kennt kein Erbarmen      But fear knows no mercy
So der Vater mit den Armen                    So the father, with is arms,
Drückt die Seele aus dem Kind                Squeezes the soul out of the child
Diese setzt sich auf den Wind und singt:   Which goes upon the wind and sings:

Komm her, bleib hier                                    Come here, stay here
Wir sind gut zu dir                                        We will be good to you
Komm her, bleib hier                                   Come here, stay here
Wir sind Brüder dir                                      We are brothers to you

As you can see, they changed the meaning somewhat (though I imagine the argument could be made that that was what Goethe was insinuating, but I don't believe it) but much of the feel of the poem is the same. In place of the horse, you have the plane. In place of the fog, you have turbulence. And just like in the original, you have the child hearing the voices on the wind. The addition of the chorus (if you heard the song, you'd agree) I always found creepy and disturbing, thus totally in keeping with the feel of the original. Please do not think, though, that I am really comparing Rammstein to Goethe. I show their song merely for interest's sake.

A side note for those who actually payed attention to the original German: When I translated "komm her" as "come here" and then "bleib hier" as "stay here" I did not make a spelling mistake. "Bleiben" does mean "to stay,  remain" and "hier" is pronounced the same and has the same meaning as the English "here," and "komm" is from the verb "kommen," meaning "to come," but "her" (pronounced like the English hair) is actually a part of the verb "kommen." This forms what is called a separable-prefix-verb. These are a class of verbs in German that have a prefix, usually a preposition or pseudo-preposition attached to it, that separates and goes to the end of the sentence, though even in that case they are not treated as prepositions of the verb, but rather as an actual part of the verb, modifying the verb itself. "Her" is a difficult preposition, not translatable by itself into English, but usually used with verbs of motion, insinuating motion towards the object of the subject's attention. Therefore: "hergehen" separates to "ich gehe her," "I'm going to 'that place we were speaking of'." As you can see, in this case, considering that the verb "kommen" is used in the imperative (command) sense, the object of the speaker's attention would logically be the speaker's own locale in this instance, both "come here" and "come to me" are perfectly adequate translations. I merely chose the former for the sake of brevity (which, I now realize, has long been forsaken).

Book Review: Farthest Star, by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson

 Or, more aptly titled, "A Discussion of Morality." But first...

First of all, let me say that collaborative efforts are rarely very good. This is no exception.

Secondly, let me say that I am a huge Frederik Pohl fan and even his bad stuff is pretty awesome.

Thirdly, let me start this review with a few thoughts on science fiction novels and short stories written from the 50s through the 70s. Much like the roaring twenties in hollywood, the first century of the Roman Republic, that brief period between 1870 and 1890 in the American west, this was the true golden age of science fiction writing. Our first step into space, putting a man on the moon, was during this time first a dream, then reality, then food for futuristic thought. The atom bomb laid open whole new doors of speculation, and the newly propagated chaos theory gave science fiction writers entire new worlds of imagination in which to expound their theories.

And expound they did. Modern "hard science fiction" is a term to describe sci-fi written with a knowledge of our modern understanding of astrophysics, and incorporating that into whatever worlds the writer cares to dream up. "Soft" science fiction didn't really rely on an understanding of science, but rather the setting of a story in a fantastical world, like Robert Heinlein did. Science fiction, as it dealt with and relied upon space-related subjects, but left out the physics. But the thing is, the more the understanding of our universe has given us, the closer the boundaries these worlds find themselves wrapped in.

But in the days before Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize for Physics for drawing his little squiggly lines to describe certain sub-molecular particles pathways through the strange and unknown gravitational wells that the atom possesses, writers like Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Larry Niven, and others built entire universes starting only with the foundations of modern science. The gateway to the universe was open, and as of yet, few constrictions and boundaries existed. These were writers who not only knew the craft of telling stories, like Robert Heinlein, but also possessed a great amount of knowledge of what was known about astrophysics, and many other areas of science, at the time. They were able to make very real and believable universes and situations and to describe the awesomeness of the unknown with such scientific clarity as to baffle the minds of the readers. Anyone who has read Protector by Niven can grow to understand and appreciate the complexity of the theory of evolution, even with the entirely fantastical twist he gives it. Anyone who has read World at the End of Time by Pohl will never look at the night sky again without feeling a pressing sense of terror at the infinite magnitude of both time and distance that he describes and portrays so well, and then theorizes about so fluently. Reading anything in Asimov's robot series will tell you more about human psychology by contrasting it to robot psychology than you would think possible in a fictional novel, despite the fact that, though based on modern understanding of both the human mind and what steps we have made with artificial intelligence, it is entirely theoretical.

So, with the universe open and unaccounted for, these writers in this time period had a far greater area of freedom within which to work. And they took full advantage of that. If the genre of science fiction had not been invented, there is little doubt in my mind these writers would have been great psychologists, behaviorists, and sociologists. They took advantage of these free worlds by using the ideas of "aliens" to shine a mirror on humanity itself. They put man outside his element and into space to better describe mankind. Science fiction afforded them a far larger arena to explore human psychology, by pushing the mind to its limits in the never-ending terror of the unknown. They were able to explore evolution thoroughly, because they weren't bound by Darwin's rules, as they took his rules then added to them as they saw logically fit. They were able to discuss religion and philosophy in ways that had never been done before, letting us as a species see these subjects from an outsider's perspective. When it comes down to it, science fiction was just a by-product of academic curiosity, and the search for new areas in which to shine light on the culmination of the human experience.

All of which is to explain, by the way, my appreciation and respect for science fiction written during this time period. Which leads me to the current review of a most interesting book, which has brought up a most perplexing question regarding morality; one which I have wrestled with now for some time.

But first (or fourth or fifth or one hundred and fifth, sorry), a little lesson in science.

The tachyon is not quite scientific fact yet, but has been theorized about for some time, especially after observing certain particles behaviors. Years ago I found an article (and clipped it and kept it) in the science section of the Houston Chronicle about paired particles. Now, I had heard about these before, and the tachyon is merely an extension of this theory (I think, more or less). The weird thing about paired particles, that is still baffling scientists the world over, as it totally defies all modern understandings of the universe, is that you take a couple of particles that come in pairs, measure them, catalog them and so forth. Then you send one of them way over there. Could be miles, could be light years away, distance doesn't matter. Then you take the one here, affect it in a way as to give it an opposite spin (say, for simplicity's sake, that it had a clockwise spin, and you nudged it counter-clockwise), you will find that the other particle, already millions of miles away, will automatically spin the exact same way that the particle here spins. That means that there is some form of communication between these particles, and it happens faster than the speed of light. Crazy, yah?

So now we have a theoretical particle that can basically be thought of as two particles at an undefined distance from each other, yet inexplicably connected. Nudge one, and the other is nudged the same way. How is that relevant or practical? How else do you think you could construct an inter-galactic telegraph system? Put it in binary, use them to describe colors, bump them in timed series to produce acoustic waves and send the latest top-40 hit to Alpha Centauri with no time delay; anything is possible given the ability to manipulate them.

So what Frederik Pohl does in Farthest Star, getting back to the book review (finally! I know...) is take this idea one step further. Given the ability to use these tachyons as messages over distance, and the ability of a tachyon receiver to receive these messages and organize them as a blueprint, then use that blueprint to organize matter on the receiving end in the appropriate way, you basically come out with a copier/transporter. You take something here, map it out, send the blueprint via tachyon there, which reads it, copies it, and arranges the matter and voila! You have a perfect copy sent light years away.

Frederik Pohl raises the morality issue by posing the question of copying a human, and using this ability to send the copy on a suicide mission.

Think about this carefully. Say there is a space probe in dire need of repair. The knowledge it could accumulate can help humanity very much. You volunteer to copy yourself/send yourself out there to fix the probe, which is bathed in radiation due to its power source to the extant that anything organic on that probe will die within a week.

Now YOU volunteered for this. This is YOU going out there. But when you step out of the tachyon transmitter, YOU are still here, able to grab dinner and go to bed then go to work as usual the next day, while a perfect copy of you, with all your memories and feelings, including volunteering, steps out of the tachyon receiver on the probe with the full knowledge that *you* have a job to do, and after you do it, you die.

You remain here, and you go there. At the same time. Which one of you is YOU? You volunteered for this, and the you that is on the probe is the same you that volunteered, but really, the you that volunteered still gets to live back at home. When you step out of the tachyon sender, do you breathe a sigh of relief that YOU are still here? And when you step out of the tachyon receiver, do you curse that you lost the coin toss, and YOU are the one that was sent?

Could you, in all conscience thought, really send this copy to die, knowing that your selfless act of sacrifice was really sacrificing a part of you that was merely a copy (though in every way possible, exactly as real as the you here, making you both, essentially, a copy of the original you)?

Messes with the mind, yah? There's an ethics question that you won't find in text books. This is what I love about good science fiction. It is able to pose questions like these because it has the advantage of a far larger vocabulary than most other writing.


On a side note (seeing as how this started, or was supposed to start, as a book review) the book itself is quite enjoyable, though the parts written by Pohl and the parts written by Williamson are too easily definable, and I'm afraid that Pohl, in exploring the morality issue, lets the plot get away from him a bit. But if you can read Charles Dickens (who, in my humble opinion, though one of the greatest novelists in the English language of all time, couldn't hold onto a plot to save his life) this mightn't bother you too much. Williamson is a rather bland and far-reaching novelist himself, and may have bitten off more than he could chew in doing this with Pohl.