in the dream

In the Dream

english translation

In the Dream

original German poem

Im Traum sah ich ein Männchen klein und putzig

Im Traum sah ich ein Männchen klein und putzig,
     Das ging auf Stelzen, Schritte ellenweit,
     Trug weiße Wäsche und ein feines Kleid,
     Inwendig aber war es grob und schmutzig.

Inwendig war es jämmerlich, nichtsnutzig,
     Jedoch von außen voller Würdigkeit;
     Von der Courage sprach es lang und breit,
     Und tat sogar recht trutzig und recht stutzig.

„Und weißt du, wer das ist? Komm her und schau!“
     So sprach der Traumgott, und er zeigt mir schlau
     Die Bilderfluth in eines Spiegels Rahmen.

Vor einem Altar stand das Männchen da,
     Mein Lieb daneben, beide sprachen: Ja!
     Und tausend Teufel riefen lachend: Amen!

 

Terese Coe

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in Able Muse, Agenda, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, the Moth, New American Writing, New Writing Scotland, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, Stinging Fly, Threepenny Review, and the TLS, among many other journals. Her collection Shot Silk was listed for the 2017 Poets Prize, and she has received grants from Giorno Poetry Systems and Vermont Studio Center. Copies of her poem “More” were heli-dropped across London as part of the 2012 Olympics Rain of Poems.

 

Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in either 1797 or 1799. In 1831 he took exile in France, where he often struggled financially despite irregular patronage from a millionaire uncle. With freedom of speech, he developed an international reputation for the lyricism, wordplay, irony, and excoriating satire of his poems, and was called the last of the Romantics. In 1841 he married Crescence Eugénie Mirat (“Mathilde”), who cared for him during eight years of paralysis; he wrote from bed until his death in 1856.

 

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