Poetry in Translation

The mission of Circumference Magazine is essentially to introduce a new array of poetry by translating poets that would normally be unavailable to American readers. The poems are published in a biannual publication and appear side by side with the original poem and its translation. The online journal is relatively plain in design and contains a complete list of the magazine issues and included works. The site also contains links to samples of a select few of the works as well as a few video clips of the works being read aloud. One of the works which is sampled is

“Death was Waiting for us Elsewhere”

Written by: Ivan Wernisch

Translated by: Jonathan Bolton

Wernisch provides a wartime description of a village that he passed through as a soldier. Wernisch’s journal-like description of the landscape displays a heightened sense of awareness of his surroundings. He describes the landscape saying, “The sun warmed us,/ the yellow and purple forests were fragrant
/ The red of cranberries was everywhere”. However, his romantic descriptions of the landscape are abruptly broken by the harsh realities of the war. He writes, “But the strange thing was: you could smell fish more than the stench of corpses.” Wernisch juxtaposes the use of monotone statements of fact with similarly dull statements about death to suggest the inevitability of his own death. This theme is apparent as the poem concludes, “
but death was waiting for us elsewhere/ 

The night was white and pink.” The poem appears in translation below its original form on the website, however, the quote from the beginning of the poem is not translated which keeps a feeling of originality about the work. The poem appears in the same format in the original work as in the translation with regard to structure and punctuation. Although the translator's contribution to the work is unapparent, the content of the poem would suggest little room for the translator to alter much of the work.