I was not aware that Michael Hamburger had died until I read this moving tribute by Micahel Braun in Freitag. Hamburger is perhaps best known as a translator of German poetry, although he was a very good poet in his own right. As a young soldier in the British army he was ordered by his commanding officer to translate a poem by the "enemy". Was it chance or destiny that Hamburger chose to translate a poem by Hölderlin - one of the most difficult? In any event, Hamburger discovered his true calling, and his subsequent Hölderlin translations have become the standard.
As a young student I was wrestling with Hölderlin, and my professor encouraged me to attend a reading by Michael Hamburger in Boston. He did, in fact, read one of his Hölderlin translations; I can no longer recall which one. But it was something else he read that would have a profound effect on me. In his soft voice, Hamburger read aloud Paul Celan's Todesfuge - first in German, and then in his English translation. I had never heard of Paul Celan, who had only recently committed suicide in Paris, but Hamburger read other poems as well from Celan's early collection Mohn und Gedächtnis. It was only later, when I had immersed myself in Celan's poetry, that I was able to understand Hamburger's great achievement in translating this great but difficult - almost hermetic - poet. Without Hamburger, it is unlikely that Celan ever would have become known outside of Germany.
Alhough we honor Michael Hamburger primarily for his gifted translations, he was an accomplished poet who deserves wider recognition for his own work:
Ave Atque Vale
Moments remain, the sculpted, painted, drawn
Split second millennia long,
Current word silenced, ambered into song
Where nothing can change, no bee molest these petals
Which, met, undo me, leave me unborn or dead,
Unable to compare,
Let hand, make memory meddle.
Momentous did they seem? Not now, so still.
They are, are, are, are, are, the things I see
And will be when they’re lost, obliterated,
The model passed away.
On this old empty vase glazed patterns dance,
Above it fixed wings beat, the migrant’s flight.
Good morning, present, absent ones, good night.-Michael Hamburger, March 22, 1924 - June 7, 2007
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