Herr X says by Martin Greenberg

Poems

May 1998

Herr X says

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem with matching translations from Martin Greenberg

Burke

was right!

Ein Quidam sagt: “Ich bin von keiner Schule;
Kein Meister lebt, mit dem ich buhle;
Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt,
Dass ich von Toten was gelernt.”
Das heisst, wenn ich ihn recht verstand:
Ich bin ein Narr auf eigne Hand.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Herr X says “There’s no school or group can claim me,
I don’t court big names, call no one dear master,
Nor have the dead a single thing to teach me,
I go my own way, don’t need any mentor.”
—That is, unless I quite mistake his meaning:
He’s a fool and it’s all his own doing.

—translated from the German by Martin Greenberg

Martin Greenberg's translation of Goethe's Faust is available from Yale University Press.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 16 May 1998, on page 26

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Herr-X-says-3050

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