{"id":116,"date":"2006-02-27T04:01:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-27T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=116"},"modified":"2006-02-27T04:01:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-27T12:01:00","slug":"eia-wasser-regnet-schlaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/eia-wasser-regnet-schlaf\/","title":{"rendered":"eia wasser regnet schlaf"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Elisabeth Borchers is eighty today. She came to fame with her first publication, a poem called “eia wasser regnet schlaf” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung<\/span> in 1960, because the poem started a scandal that produced endless discussion in the paper around the question “is this really a poem and if so, is it worth printing.” It sound like a very quaint discussion today, especially if you think that that very year Paul Celan recieved the best-known German literary award, the Georg B\u00fcchner prize. Borchers went on to publish some 10 volumes of poems, a number of books of various proses and much commentary on writing and pictures, working all he while for several of the major German publishers, mainly Suhrkamp. There seem to be two<\/a> volumes<\/a> of her work in print in English translation. Here to wish her happy birthday, my early mornign translation of her best-known poem:<\/div>\n

hush water rains sleep<\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

hush water rains sleep
hush evening swims into the grass
who goes to the water becomes sleep
who comes to evening becomes grass
white water green sleep
great evening small grass
there comes there comes
a stranger<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

what shall we do with the drowned sailor?
we take off his boots
we take off his coat
we lay him in the grass<\/p>\n

my child it\u2019s dark in the river
my child it\u2019s wet in the river<\/p>\n

what shall we do with the drowned sailor?
we take off the water
we dress him in evening
and carry him back<\/p>\n

my child you shouldn\u2019t weep
my child it\u2019s only sleep
what shall we do with the drowned sailor?
we will sing him the water song
we will say him the grass prayer<\/p>\n

then he\u2019ll love to return<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

there goes there goes
a stranger
into the great grass this small evening
in white sleep the green wet
and goes to grass and becomes an evening
and comes to sleep and becomes a wet
hush evening swims into grass
hush watersleep rains<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elisabeth Borchers is eighty today. She came to fame with her first publication, a poem called “eia wasser regnet schlaf” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1960, because the poem started a scandal that...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}