Sunday 8 March 2009

one small fish swimming alone, then next to one big fish, then they become three, later four and in the end many colourful stories







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Christian Morgenstern (Fisches Nachtgesang)











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[sorry, I seem to be floundering for words. -The translator]
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Fish's Night Song
(English translation from Fish Language,
by Emily Ezust)































Das Vollkommene zu kommentieren ist eine unfruchtbare Übung. Jeder unbefangene Leser wird diesem Satz zustimmen. Aber gibt es das: einen unbefangenen Leser? Goethes wohlgemeinter Ratschlag, das Unerforschliche ruhig zu verehren, ist bei Philologen und Kritikern stets auf taube Ohren gestoßen. Also meinetwegen! [...]
Lakonischer als "Fisches Nachtgesang" kann ein Gedicht nicht sein; das Wort einsilbig wäre bereits eine Übertreibung. [...]
Das Gedicht, soviel steht fest, hat keine Silbe zuviel und keine Silbe zuwenig.
Es ist das außerdem einzige Gedicht, das ich auswendig rezitieren kann.


Hans-Magnus Enzensberger



To analyse perfection is a sterile exercise. Every unprejudiced reader cannot but agree. But is there such a thing as an unprejudiced reader? Goethe's well-meant advice, that one should adore the inscrutable silently, has always fallen on deaf ears when it comes to philologists and literary scholars. Well then... [...]
A poem can hardly be more laconic than 'Fish's Night Song'; the word 'monosyllabic' would already be an exageration. [...]
The poem, so much is clear, has no syllable too many or too few. Furthermore, it is the only poem that I can recite by heart.


Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, when asked to write about this poem

34 comments:

  1. couleur du ipon certes la lumière est entrer par là ,les yeux gâté surréel imaginaire pur comme une sculture d'art total.

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  2. Quite fish-ish caliography. I thought the shape of the language of fishes is more or like bubble-ish.. combination of different size of spherical bubbles together with gesture of fins.. :p And I love your photos.. seemingly taken at the Japanese style ponds full of carps..

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  3. Colour! Hurrah! :-)

    do you get fish and chips in Romania?..just asking.

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  4. good lord these are gorgeous!

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  5. Cata culoare in seria asta si ce sensibila e prima, e superba!A treia e ca o ebosa...In unele imagini pestii sunt lipsiti de materialitate, par atat de usori, parca zboara, in schimb in a doua si in special ultima,au greutate, sunt carnosi...
    Atat de difetite de la prima la ultima si atat de frumoase!!

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  6. Beautiful photos. I think you have a sly sense of humor that surfaces in subtle flashes of color ... maybe it is here more often than we see it....

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  7. mmm, competition

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  8. After your snow-photos the colours of these were almost a shock, the eyes had to re-adjust, refocus. Strangely the silence should be similar, but it felt very different too, and then the signs/marks of the Morgenstein-poem linked everything up again. As ever beautiful, moving to be here.

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  9. I love that bottom photo, stunning colours. only you could make a photo of fish look almost like a bunch of bright flowers :)

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  10. Intriguing photography. Loved the floundering comment!

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  11. un vis devenit realitate...
    un haiku colorat si ambiguu

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  12. siam, j'adore cette description, 'surreel imaginaire' - bien que les poissons fussent tres reels :-)

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  13. Peter, yes, those marvelous ponds... I have another post on them here:
    http://roxanaghita.blogspot.com/2008/06/green-leaf-falling-upon-little-red-fish.html

    you make a very interesting description of the poem! there is also another way to read to it (now the teacher in me wants to speak, sorry :-) - because these signs are used in prosody to mark the difference between a short/unstressed (‿) and a long/stressed vowel (—). this way the poem can be read as a manifesto of the poetic avant-garde: the poem is nothing but music, and the reader is free to imagine the content. I don't know how one could express the same idea through a photograph!

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  14. hi, b! why this sudden joy, were the b&w pics too oppressive, even for a Black Sun? :-)


    fish and chips? :-) no, we have them only in mcdonald's.

    thanks for trying :-P you managed to make a comment that nobody else would have thought of :-)

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  15. sz, they _are_ gorgeous in reality, it's a dream to watch them...


    edith: ah, ce ma bucur ca ti-au placut. si ce frumos i-ai descris, de la imaterialitate la carnos :-)


    James, yes, this post had a more humourful side than my habitual style :-)

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  16. eneles, I'm glad to see that Goethe's advice hasn't fallen on deaf ears when it comes to some of my readers (if I can consider you to be one of them), you have managed to avoid any aesthetical analysis of the pictures :-P [and I hope you appreciate the self-irony here :-)]

    or is the analysis condensed in the 'mmm'? :-) of course, I am not sure how to understand 'competition' in this case, so maybe here lies the clue!

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  17. Michiko, I imagine you have seen thousands of koi-pictures, so I am really pleased that you enjoyed them :-)




    Marjojo, I think some of my readers had grown bored with too much b&w and would have liked this re-focusing. I am grateful that you saw the silence, I wished so much to be able to convey it even here.



    ha, Sorlil, I'd love to take credit for that but mother nature made such colours in Japan (diligently helped by man, because they have started to breed the carps for colour in the 19th century) :-)

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  18. Dave, it is a good one, isn't it? :-)



    Cornel, ce frumos, 'un haiku colorat si ambiguu' imi place tare mult! multumesc pentru trecere.

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  19. Emese, din cand in cand ma apuca un dor nebun de culori pline si violente, apoi de pasteluri, sepia - totul depinde de starea momentana de spirit...

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  20. there are times when i need to know how things work and then I deconstruct them, but most of the time the whole is not made of the pieces, so there is no use in pointing at separate aspects like "color" or "interaction". when one ponders on the sound of one hand clapping one does not consider how many muscles are engages in that process.

    "mmm" was the evaluation, whereas "competition" was a statement that these pictures are in a direct competition with my "dreams with fishes" series

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  21. Oppressive?
    Er..why do I get the feeling that that's a trap
    ?!:-)

    No, that's not the case; it's just that the colour ones are wonderfully, dazzlingly refreshing right now...it's like that scene from the wizard of oz where she walks into a world full of colour from the black and white one...and "always remember the colours"

    mcdonalds? what is that?Do tell.

    Hmm..I don't know if your last comment is a compliment of sorts or what :-)
    I'd like to think the former..but be warned..flattery will get you everywhere m'dear :-)

    keep well,

    b.

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  22. eneles, wouldn't this lead to a philosophy of losing oneself in a sound/image/feeling/impression without trying to understand the neurophysiological mechanism underlying it? how strange to hear that...

    of course I have to agree, I have learned that sometimes I have to dread 'deconstruction', no matter what type of it. and in many cases it doesn't lead to anything (here I suspect you would disagree), especially when one is faced with the hasard. which makes me remember that I have the hasard to thank for these fish pictures, I have accidentally found a Japan-film that I had thought lost and so the fishes were saved from time's erasure.


    I think 'mmm' is quite precious, invaluable even, as a comment :-)
    as to 'direct competition', I feel of course humbled, but I am sure it cannot be the case. and I don't know the series you are talking about, as you know, of course.

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  23. "wonderfully, dazzlingly refreshing"? as a multi-fruit punch? sorry for the gastronomical reference, just keeping in line with your comment :-)

    and yes, you should always doubt, this is a sane attitude :-)

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  24. eneles, 'hasard' should be read here in French, of course. or 'zufall'. I think 'hazard' means something else in English, but even in this case what I said remains true: confronted with a 'a situation which poses a level of threat to life, health, etc' (like that tidal wave you talked about previously, for ex), deconstruction is of little help. not that losing oneself in it or embracing it would be a better option.

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  25. The pictures are AMAZING, really more like paintings.
    And as a pro translator, I loved the Note of the Translator poem!

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  26. it would lead to philosophy, but definitely not the one that favors either perception or deconstruction. sun is a huge sustained thermo-nuclear bomb, yet it is lovely at sunset. and why some [oh fools] give it divine powers, they still might want to protect themselves from UV light. Others, who may moan that the world is growing cold, may find comfort in knowing that we are at the lowest point of an 11-year circle and the sun isn't dying.

    it is silly to be able only to walk or only to run, one should be able to alternate ;)

    speaking of has(z)ards, which are pretty much the same word [think "Accident"], as we learned from the evil world of finances, no matter what you do, it doesn't help much, no theory can work at the singular point.

    I'll show you the fishes once they hatch.

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  27. Mary-Laure, I loved that too :-) and I envy your pro-translator abilities!

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  28. eneles. I am out of words now. and my eyes have grown blind looking at dark pictures. turned inside out. I see now, strangely, through all this darkness.

    thank you.

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  29. koi is loved by bengalis. fried in mustard oil. it smells almost as great as these colors look.

    But it seems that nothing at all can escape the interrogation of your eyes... beauty it seems, has nowhere to hide!

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  30. Starea de spirit, starea de spirit şi de starea de spirit! Mood în Szin o, starea de spirit în cafea alb. Minunat de impresii! Parerea alb-negru, fotografii separate experienţă!
    Örölök, am aflat că blog-ul dvs.!
    Felicitări! Frumoase lucrari!
    János

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  31. zuma, it seems somehow that all my oriental readers think of food when they see fish, even poetic fish :-) (see billoo's comment). HMM.

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  32. János, multumesc mult pentru vizita si pentru cuvintele frumoase! ce inseamna Örölök? suna asa frumos :-)

    Imi pare rau ca nu pot raspunde in ungureste :-(

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