Dante-Verwandlungen

"Fremd bin ich eingezogen, fremd zieh ich wieder aus..." (I moved in as a stranger, I'm moving out again as a stranger...) Franz Josef Czernin quotes from Wilhelm Müller's Winterreise in his most recently published volume of poetry reisen, auch winterlich (Travelling, even in winter), thereby outlining both the motto and the findings of his attempts to transform this cycle of poems and songs. The historical distance that separates us from the works of earlier centuries and thus alienates us from them has not stopped Czernin from now tackling an even more ambitious project and transforming verses by Dante, i.e. rewriting parts of the Commedia into something modern, contemporary. The result is verses with an affinity for sound and rhythm such as "at the place once and always this intermezzo/- also via null- und toten punkt, engst schlund-/ wie schluchts- und längst urkundlich trichtertief" for Dante's famous first lines of the Inferno. The irritation they evoke is, of course, pre-programmed, since nothing less than the question of how to translate Dante into the present is at stake, in order to even have a chance of conveying a similar kind of experience to that which Dante's project conveyed to his contemporaries.

In collaboration with ZeLT. Europäisches Zentrum für Literatur und Übersetzung