Abstract

This essay examines the itinerary of the word in translation. How does the process of translation unfold? When a work is translated, what is lost, what is gained,what is left behind, and what is carried forward? Is there some quality peculiar to poetic language that makes translation more difficult – or easier? In this essay I articulate the stages that I go through when translating a poem. The work is heuristic in part, but rooted in Heidegger’s essays on Hölderlin and Rilke.