On Transitoriness, in Terza Rima

Original version (German):

“Terzinen über Vergänglichkeit” by Hugo von Hotmannsthal

Noch spür ich ihren Atem auf den Wangen:
Wie kann das sein, daß diese nahen Tage
Fort sind, für immer fort, und ganz vergangen?

Dies ist ein Ding, das keiner voll aussinnt,
Und viel zu grauenvoll, als daß man klage:
Daß alles gleitet und vorüberrinnt.

Und daß mein eignes Ich, durch nichts gehemmt,
Herüberglitt aus einem kleinen Kind
Mir wie ein Hund unheimlich stumm und fremd.

Dann: daß ich auch vor hundert Jahren war
Und meine Ahnen, die im Totenhemd,
Mit mir verwandt sind wie mein eignes Haar,

So eins mit mir als wie mein eignes Haar.

English version:

“On Transitoriness, in Terza Rima” translated by Raymond Youngs

These days that passed me by so fleetly
Whose breath I still can sense upon my cheek
How could they die and vanish so completely?

This is a thing no human words can say
A thought too dreadful to lament about it
That everything glides by and drains away.

And that my self, my personality
Came gliding from my former self – a child
Who like some dog is dumb and strange to me.

And yet one hundred years past, I was there
And all my forbears who are in their shrouds
Are as related to me as my hair,

Are really part of me like my own hair.

Commentary:

Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was an Austrian author. His few lyric poems were written between the ages of 17 and 25. He then turned to writing plays and opera texts such as the text for Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. He was an admirer of English culture. This poem is written in terza rima, an Italian stanzaic form, used by Dante Alighieri in Commedia (The Divine Comedy), consisting of tercets with interwoven rhymes (ABA BCB DED EFE, and so on). A concluding couplet rhymes with the penultimate line of the last tercet. (I have not been able in the translation to carry each rhyme through to the next verse).