{"id":7400,"date":"2019-11-08T13:31:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T13:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mytwostotinki.com\/?p=7400"},"modified":"2019-11-08T13:31:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T13:31:24","slug":"transylvanian-speaking-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mytwostotinki.com\/?p=7400","title":{"rendered":"Transylvanian Speaking Exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Poetry is a genre that is rather neglected by the book blogging community. And I think that’s a real pity. Therefore I didn’t want to let this year’s edition of German Literature Month pass without including one or two posts about German-language poets.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the best German poetry books I picked up in the last years is the collection <\/strong>Transylvanian Speaking Exercise <\/strong><\/em>(<\/strong>Siebenb\u00fcrgische Sprech\u00fcbung<\/strong><\/em>) by Franz Hodjak. The book collects the best poems of several previous poetry books by him and includes also a few that were published in journals only. An instructive afterword by the poet and editor of the volume Werner S\u00f6llner gives additional valuable information on the author and his background.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hodjak was born 1944 in Sibiu (Hermannstadt) in Romania and lived later for many years in Cluj (Klausenburg). Transylvania and the Banat are home to a German-speaking minority since hundreds of years; also a Hungarian minority lives there. The number of native German speakers is dwindling, migration to Germany has reduced the minority considerably in the last decades. Especially in the villages very few Germans have remained until today and it is not clear if this minority will survive as such the next generation, despite the fact that the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, is a prominent member of this ethnicity.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romania\u00a0has had a\u00a0thriving German-language literary scene until recently; Herta M\u00fcller is the most prominent author among these, but there are plenty of other important writers. In Communist Romania there was a period from the mid 1960s to approximately the mid 1970s when Romanian literature written by ethnic Hungarians and Germans was promoted, and the censorship was for a few years relaxed to a certain extent. During this period, Franz Hodjak published his first poems and worked as an editor in a publishing house that would publish also Romanian-German literature.\u00a0Hodjak, who publishes also prose, is additionally a congenial translator of Romanian literature. In 1992 he emigrated to Germany. He lives in Usingen near Frankfurt am Main.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below you can read two of his poems in the original German and in my translation. Hodjak is an author whose work I like a lot and I am publishing this post in the hope to make a few more people aware of this poet who deserves to be read and also published in other languages. I would love to see a collection by him in English translation or any other language one day.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

small elegy \n\nignorant were even then \nthose who went along. snow dug them in  \nor a blooming torrent of words.  \n\nthe socks are hanging on the balcony, it \nis march. \n\nup in the cemetery,  \nthe blackbirds are conferring. \n\nis there a death that grants death   \na meaning? \n\nposterity beckons from the train. \n<\/strong>\n\nkleine elegie \n\nunwissend waren schon damals \ndie, die mitgingen. schnee grub sie ein \noder bl\u00fchender wortschwall. \n\ndie socken h\u00e4ngen auf dem balkon, es \nist m\u00e4rz. \n\noben, im friedhof, konferieren \ndie amseln. \n\ngibt es einen tod, der dem tod  <\/strong>\nsinn verleiht? \n\ndie nachwelt winkt aus dem zug. <\/strong>\n\n\n\n\nKelling 3\n\nabout ten die per year,\neleven wander off to the city,\ntwelve drive off to the brother.<\/strong>\n\nthe acacias, small and crippled, bloom\nwith the courage of despair.\n<\/strong>\n\nKelling 3 \n\nzehn etwa sterben im jahr, \nelf wandern weg in die stadt, \nzw\u00f6lf fahren zum bruder. \n\ndie akazien, klein und verkr\u00fcppelt, bl\u00fchn \nmit dem mut der verzweiflung. <\/strong><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
(Kelling\/C\u00e2lnic is a\u00a0village\u00a0near Alba Iulia.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Franz Hodjak: Siebenb\u00fcrgische Sprech\u00fcbung, Suhrkamp 1990<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a9 Franz Hodjak\n\u00a9 Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999\n\u00a9 Thomas H\u00fcbner and Mytwostotinki, 2014-9. Unauthorized use and\/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog\u2019s author and\/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas H\u00fcbner and Mytwostotinki with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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