Article
Rogi Wieg talks about 'De Letters'
Chinese Whispers 2007
June 19, 2007
RW: In 2000, I wrote a book which contained around 25 sonnets as well as other poems, and I was particularly interested in that form. I liked to make deliberate mistakes and play with the sonnet form. This poem is my most rigid use of the form. This was as close as I wanted to go to the sonnet and there are still some deviations, it is not totally iambic for example. In my later work, I’ve only used the sonnet form once.
MH: The words scheppen, to create, and schepper, creator appear in this poem. I’ve come across them many times in your work. To me it seems like a common theme.
RW: Creation is a common theme in my work.
MH: But this poem is about something else?
It’s a love poem. I had many relationships, I was married twice, I never really wrote love poems then, but later I did. I understood that a love poem has nothing to do with love, it’s just a form, words. If you love somebody you don’t need to write poems about them. Later I wrote a lot of poems for women, somehow they understood (because they were very intelligent) that it was my job to write a poem, but it didn’t mean I really loved them. You don’t write a better poem for somebody who is close to you than for someone who is not too close. If somebody is too close you have to make sure you don’t become too sentimental or melancholic. The truth is a dangerous thing in art.
Maria Barnas who lived with me for a couple of years wrote a good article in De Groene Amsterdammer in which she says that I know how to play the non-poet as well as the poet. I can make that separation. I think she knows me very well.
MH: Which is your favourite line in the poem?
RW: “Zonneschijn innen, vrouwen de rok opjagen” - collecting sunshine and chasing the dresses off women. You can’t collect sunshine and you can’t chase the dresses off women. I like the combination and somehow it’s weird. You can use clichés and if you write them down in a completely different way you can un-cliché the cliché. You can turn it upside down and then you create, if it’s really good, something people can use. It could become a new cliché, not in the poem itself, but later, people could use it in normal language.
A famous Dutch writer, Herman Gorter once wrote the line De dag opent als een goude roos, the day opens like a golden rose. When he wrote it it was completely new, but now thousands know it and it’s become a cliché. When something becomes a cliché it’s good. Clichés say something about the world which is true, which a lot of people understand. In the same way you can be symbolic without symbols. When people are used to the way you write, they decide to use your symbols like symbols.
MH: I talked to a few Dutch people about your poem and quite a few of them had interpreted “een stinkende roos” as a garlic, and yet earlier you on you told me this was not your intention, you meant just a rotten rose. This is exactly the kind of interpretation which might be magnified through the Chinese Whispers project. What about ‘misreadings’? Can they become new clichés?
RW: A reading can be incorrect but I might like it. It shows an open mind, a different way of reading a poem. It would be strange if this could be the new meaning of this line in general. A stinkende roos could be a garlic in general. It changes language, it’s funny and it’s interesting. This is the way language abstracts things, metaphorical things in life tend to grow and change. It doesn’t have to fit 100%.
My parents are both Hungarian and I speak the language fluently. In Hungarian, metaphors are more commonplace and more complicated than in Dutch. In Hungary nobody would be astonished if you asked for a rotten rose instead of garlic, they have these strange metaphorical things. Dutch is more close to the object itself.
MH: What do you think will be lost in translation?
You can never say what’s going to happen. Maybe if you lose the sonnet form the poem might get better. I like Rilke very much and there are many translations of his work. When you translate from German it’s hard to keep the form. Sometimes in the original his weaker poems rhyme, but in Dutch or English translation, without the rhyme, the poem grows and is stronger. You can lose a lot in translation, on the other hand you can win too. The big battle is accepting that you are going to lose something in translation and realizing that can you win something too. When you show a translation to the poet he will always judge it. But I do think it is possible to win. My poem could lose 50% but win 30%, it remains a subjective thing.
Do you think the common experience you describe will enable the poets translating the poem to convey the feeling if not the words?
It is possible that if you talk about the essence of poetry, a poem might have an essence. But then it would be possible to paraphrase a poem, which you never can. In this case you can look at it as a feeling, an experience, a frustration. I’m describing that I try to write a love poem but they never believe me. It’s really garlic I give them! In the end it’s better not to use words for it. If you look at it that way, you can convey the essence in every language. The only thing is that the translator really has to understand the essence.
[The presentation of the results of the project and the translation back into Dutch will take place on Friday 22nd June during the final programme of the festival.] Links:
‘De Letters’ chinese whispers
‘The Letters’ official english translation
Each year, during the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, the consequences of translation are demonstrated in the Chinese Whispers project. A Dutch poem is translated from one language to another every day of the festival and finally back into Dutch. PIW is following the daily progress of the poem and publishing the translations as they become available. The route this year is from Dutch to Georgian to Russian to French to English to Afrikaans to Dutch.
The chosen poem is ‘De Letters’ by Rogi Wieg. During the festival I talked to the poet about the poem and his thoughts on its translation.
MH: What was your inspiration for ‘De Letters’? The chosen poem is ‘De Letters’ by Rogi Wieg. During the festival I talked to the poet about the poem and his thoughts on its translation.
RW: In 2000, I wrote a book which contained around 25 sonnets as well as other poems, and I was particularly interested in that form. I liked to make deliberate mistakes and play with the sonnet form. This poem is my most rigid use of the form. This was as close as I wanted to go to the sonnet and there are still some deviations, it is not totally iambic for example. In my later work, I’ve only used the sonnet form once.
MH: The words scheppen, to create, and schepper, creator appear in this poem. I’ve come across them many times in your work. To me it seems like a common theme.
RW: Creation is a common theme in my work.
MH: But this poem is about something else?
It’s a love poem. I had many relationships, I was married twice, I never really wrote love poems then, but later I did. I understood that a love poem has nothing to do with love, it’s just a form, words. If you love somebody you don’t need to write poems about them. Later I wrote a lot of poems for women, somehow they understood (because they were very intelligent) that it was my job to write a poem, but it didn’t mean I really loved them. You don’t write a better poem for somebody who is close to you than for someone who is not too close. If somebody is too close you have to make sure you don’t become too sentimental or melancholic. The truth is a dangerous thing in art.
Maria Barnas who lived with me for a couple of years wrote a good article in De Groene Amsterdammer in which she says that I know how to play the non-poet as well as the poet. I can make that separation. I think she knows me very well.
MH: Which is your favourite line in the poem?
RW: “Zonneschijn innen, vrouwen de rok opjagen” - collecting sunshine and chasing the dresses off women. You can’t collect sunshine and you can’t chase the dresses off women. I like the combination and somehow it’s weird. You can use clichés and if you write them down in a completely different way you can un-cliché the cliché. You can turn it upside down and then you create, if it’s really good, something people can use. It could become a new cliché, not in the poem itself, but later, people could use it in normal language.
A famous Dutch writer, Herman Gorter once wrote the line De dag opent als een goude roos, the day opens like a golden rose. When he wrote it it was completely new, but now thousands know it and it’s become a cliché. When something becomes a cliché it’s good. Clichés say something about the world which is true, which a lot of people understand. In the same way you can be symbolic without symbols. When people are used to the way you write, they decide to use your symbols like symbols.
MH: I talked to a few Dutch people about your poem and quite a few of them had interpreted “een stinkende roos” as a garlic, and yet earlier you on you told me this was not your intention, you meant just a rotten rose. This is exactly the kind of interpretation which might be magnified through the Chinese Whispers project. What about ‘misreadings’? Can they become new clichés?
RW: A reading can be incorrect but I might like it. It shows an open mind, a different way of reading a poem. It would be strange if this could be the new meaning of this line in general. A stinkende roos could be a garlic in general. It changes language, it’s funny and it’s interesting. This is the way language abstracts things, metaphorical things in life tend to grow and change. It doesn’t have to fit 100%.
My parents are both Hungarian and I speak the language fluently. In Hungarian, metaphors are more commonplace and more complicated than in Dutch. In Hungary nobody would be astonished if you asked for a rotten rose instead of garlic, they have these strange metaphorical things. Dutch is more close to the object itself.
MH: What do you think will be lost in translation?
You can never say what’s going to happen. Maybe if you lose the sonnet form the poem might get better. I like Rilke very much and there are many translations of his work. When you translate from German it’s hard to keep the form. Sometimes in the original his weaker poems rhyme, but in Dutch or English translation, without the rhyme, the poem grows and is stronger. You can lose a lot in translation, on the other hand you can win too. The big battle is accepting that you are going to lose something in translation and realizing that can you win something too. When you show a translation to the poet he will always judge it. But I do think it is possible to win. My poem could lose 50% but win 30%, it remains a subjective thing.
Do you think the common experience you describe will enable the poets translating the poem to convey the feeling if not the words?
It is possible that if you talk about the essence of poetry, a poem might have an essence. But then it would be possible to paraphrase a poem, which you never can. In this case you can look at it as a feeling, an experience, a frustration. I’m describing that I try to write a love poem but they never believe me. It’s really garlic I give them! In the end it’s better not to use words for it. If you look at it that way, you can convey the essence in every language. The only thing is that the translator really has to understand the essence.
[The presentation of the results of the project and the translation back into Dutch will take place on Friday 22nd June during the final programme of the festival.] Links:
‘De Letters’ chinese whispers
‘The Letters’ official english translation
© Michele Hutchison
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère