nslation project (contrary to oft-quoted axioms on the matter). For whatever is lost in the transfer, other attributes and elements are gained. Indeed, the art and act of translating poetry is, finally, an art and act of transformation; as Benjamin states, there is “a renewal of something living — the original undergoes a change.” Through that renewal, the original gains a new life it might not have had otherwise — a presence in the world that is, as the epigraph to this piece suggests, “ … the same — different — the same attributes, / different yet the same as before” (H.D.). The language into which the poem is translated is, ideally, also transformed through its wrestling with the foreignness of the original language. In the best cases, the language-wrestling leaves an origin-telling mark on the target language — reminiscent, perhaps, of the mark left on Jacob’s thigh after his own night of wrestling with an unnamed, intimate, other.
As previously stated, Ruebner’s early resistance to having his poems translated dissolved and he eventually became an important translator in his own right. One of his most significant translation projects was the translation into German of the work of Nobel Prize winner S.Y. Agnon, work that played a part in Agnon achieving the world-wide recognition he did. “Gershom Scholem wrote,” states Ruebner in his memoir, “ … that it was my translation [of Agnon] that was before the eyes of the judges on the Nobel Prize committee. I am proud of that” (96). But a different effect of his translations seems to be of even greater importance to Ruebner and articulates most elegantly the power of the literary translation. After journeying to Agnon’s home in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem, precious pages of his translation in hand (a journey that involved Ruebner getting drawn into an antiquarian bookstore beside his bus stop in Jerusalem’s city center, getting distracted by forty five volumes of Goethe in translation, then missing his bus and arriving in Talpiot late — to find Agnon himself waiting for him in the hot sun), Ruebner shares his translation of Shevuat Emunim (The Oath) with Agnon and remembers the moment thus:
After I read for [Agnon] my translation, tears filled his eyes and he called out: “Estherlein, Estherlein, come and hear how beautiful!” I say the following not out of false modesty … but I know for certain that Agnon was referring to the story itself, which he had not engaged with in a while, and not to the translation. The fact that the translation revived for him the original is praise enough for me. (96)
Hence, Benjamin’s aforementioned “renewal of something living” resonates and is expanded in Ruebner’s vivid description of translation as a “reviving,” a restoring of life to that which is already alive. This “revival” of the living text — for the author, the reader and the translator all — is as apt a way as any to describe the translator’s paradoxical work.
Images are translated by time and by circumstances; across years, resemblances make the connections we seek. Thus, I conclude this brief consideration of the translator’s work with an anecdote mirroring the image offered above. In spring 2013, the journal Modern Poetry in Translation published six of Ruebner’s poems in my renderings. On the Shavuot holiday — the Festival of First Fruits — I travelled to Kibbutz Merchavia to visit with Tuvia and his wife Galila, and to give him a copy of the journal. I left the journal with him; the next day, I received the following email:
Rachel my dear,
Something very nice happened to me this morning. I was reading through the journal you left here yesterday, from right to left as is my fashion, when my eyes fell on a poem that ended with the words “A human being can bear almost everything / and no one knows when and where / happiness will overcome him.” I thought to myself, now that’s a very good poem, I wish I had written it; then I saw my name on the poem and realized, with pleasure, I did write it … ~ Tuvia
The art and act of poetry translation precipitates the unexpected across l