TWIN SPIN
radical translations of Shakespeare Sonnets
by Ulrike Draesner
and equally radical reversions of these translations into English
by Tom Cheesman
1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decrease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
Shakespeare x Draesner
von hellsten kreaturen begehren wir anstieg,
daß das mandelbrot der gekrümmten schönheit nie sterbe,
doch wie die fertigen mit der zeit verschwinden, so mag ein
kopierer
be lockend die erinnerung an sie tragen: in sich.
du aber, getackert an die schlauheit deiner augen
fütterst die flamme des anscheins mit dem selbst
referentiellen öl der sprache des einzelnen,
wo überfluß zu zellen gerinnt, bist dir mit dir
genug, das ornament dieser welt: naturident
blühn im kasten die karten deines kontinents
auf, durch deinen glasstabkörper, steigt sie längst
im spendesaal, die zarte locke DNA.
bedaure die gezeugten, sonst ist es antropophagie,
das ihre zu essen, wie ihr grab, behandelst du sie.
Draesner x Cheesman
from brightness’s creations we desire returns,
that the mandelbrot of crooked beauty never die,
yet as the done-for disappear with time, a sequencer
may tend the loom of their memory: locked within.
but you, gun-stapled to the genius of your eyes,
feed the flambeau semblance with the self-
referential oil of one-man language,
as surplus clots as cells, suffice for you as you,
adornment of this world: second natured, on the slide
arrays your continental charts are sprouting
upward through your glass-rod-body climbs already,
donor-spent, the tender lock, the dna.
pity the procreated, or else cannibalise,
eat what is theirs, like their grave, to globalize.
5
Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same,
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting Time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'versnow'd, and bareness everywhere:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
Shakespeare x Draesner
die stunden, die mit weichem mull den rahmen spannten
deines blicks, in dem so gern ein fremdes auge schwimmt,
werden die transplanteure geben, als sich, an dich,
und ausgeleuchtet wird, was das leuchtendste übertraf:
die in atomen tickende zeit überführt den sommer
in strahlenderen winter, und zergründet ihn dort:
saft, im kühlschrank erstarrt, fleischige membranen, welk,
schönheit überkrustet von frost, nacktheit, an jedem ort:
stünde dann nicht das destillat des sommers im fach,
flüssiger gefangener zwischen wänden und gas,
wäre die fruchtblase der schönheit durch schönheit zerstoben
weder sie, noch erinnerung bliebe, daran, was war.
aber blumenartiges, extrahiert, in den winter geschoben,
schwappt als zellcode, milchiger saft, die zukunft ans glas.
Draesner x Cheesman
those hours that spun soft gauze to frame your gaze,
in which an alter eye so gladly swims,
will give transplanters, as themselves, to you,
arc-lighting what out-lit the fullest flood;
for ticking in atoms time renders summer up
to glow-in-the-darker winter, and unbases it there:
juice, rimed in the fridge, tissuey membranes, shrunk,
beauty hoar-crusted, nakedness at all points:
stood not then the essence of summer in the chiller,
liquid prisoner between walls and gas,
were beauty’s amniotic sac by beauty vaporized,
neither it nor memory ’d be left of what was.
but flower-like-ness, extracted, jammed into winter’s dry ice,
sloshes as cell-code, milky juice, the future against the glass.
11
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest.
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st,
Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase:
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay.
If all were minded so the times should cease,
And threescore years would make the world away.
Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endow’d, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish;
She carv’d thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, nor let that copy die.
Shakespeare x Draesner
du schwindest schnell, schnell schwillst du wieder an
aus deinen scheidungen gemixt, ein andrer – du.
wenn deine zellen auf age konvertieren, nennst frisches
blut dein, in das du jung dich schmuggelst ein.
noch produzieren deine nuclei coolness, fitness, börsenwert,
nimm eine sequenz nur weg: bse, alzheimer, krebs bleiben dir.
wären alle so programmiert, keiner flöge mehr durch raum und zeit,
schon ein schock jahre machte terra den garaus.
laß die, die die weißkittel nicht zu vererbern erkoren
natefakte, kunstlos und grell, sterben steril:
bei goldenem gamet aber gibt’s platin gratis obenauf;
deinen bounty-spender kirschrot aufzurichten, gut aufgelegt,
gezüchtet als siegel und sieg, ist zu spuren dir auferlegt
in vielen anderen; klon und klonesklon, aufgelebt!
Draesner x Cheesman
you quickly shrink, as quickly swell again
from you-exuded splittings, spliced to mix another – you.
when your cells convert to age, you claim as yours
fresh blood you trojan horse your self youngingly through.
your nuclei keep producing cool-, fit-, high-dividendedness;
delete a single sequence: bse, alzheimer’s, cancer, yours yet.
were all so programmed, none ’d fly on through space-time;
down a span of years, terra would be trashed.
let those the white-coats won’t have as hereditators,
natefacts, artless and shrill, be sterile and die:
but buy gametal gold, get platinum top-up free;
your cherry-red bounty-bar-donor raised high, be blithe,
selected as victory-seal, your lot’s to thrive
and spoor in many more; clone of a clone, go live!
Ulrike Draesner - Dolly and Will
In the spring of 1997 – in infinite silence at satellite level but with great clamour down on earth – the image of a lamb and the words commenting on this image wound themselves in ever tighter loops around the planet. Dolly tottering about in her pen. Dolly, the first clone. Another nativity story in a barnyard setting, this time featuring not God and Man, but Man and Sheep.
Reactions to this news, reactions to the reactions, and so on, have been circling the globe ever since, the endless twists and turns of their information flows seemingly evoking the lost natural double helix, recalling it as an image and making it that much easier to forget. While experiments on genetic “material” continue unabated in the labs of the food and pharmaceutical industries; while we console ourselves by nibbling on biscuits full of genetically modified soya we know nothing of because it’s not subject to labelling requirements. The world has changed for good since the spring of 1997. Some have already noticed, while others continue to believe in reality’s semblance of stubborn unchangingness. But Dolly lives, and she always will.
A few weeks “après Dolly”, I happened to take my volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets off the shelf. In a lightning flash of realization, the poems’ words and meanings suddenly sparkled as enigmatically as the dark eyes of the lamb that knows nothing of its own exceptionality. The poems spoke of cloning.
Shakespeare’s sonnets deal with procreation – manically, obsessively, directly. The constellation of characters in these love poems is not always clear. A man is addressed, by a man; a woman is addressed; a man and a woman are addressed, by a man who seems to be a lover to both. But only once one ceases to automatically equate the author’s sex with that of his characters does the true extent of gender fluctuation become clear.
Set against a keen sense of mortality, Shakespeare’s poems are dreams of survival – both in the flesh and in writing, the two prime means of self-reproduction through the creation of memory. The sonnets fantasize marriages; “procreate, procreate, reproduce yourself” their obsessive dream whispers. The interplay of gender roles goes so far and becomes so quick that the sexual determination of those involved more or less cancels itself out. Only one thing counts: to give temporality the slip (for oneself and perhaps for another, or for another and thus certainly for oneself). “Time” is the true third party, the “uncanny other”. It is confronted by Shakespeare with his poems’ unconditional and shameless appetite for life – if there was ever anything scandalous about these poems, then it is this hunger: scandalous, intoxicating and wonderful.
Dolly and the implications of her creation made it possible to “translate” this scandal into our times in a new way. Cloning is the most technically advanced form taken by the dream of survival. The potential for genetic manipulation that became a reality in 1997 has completely changed the frame of reference for procreation, mortality, individuality and reproduction (even these words themselves only appear on the surface to be the same as those we were using ten years ago). In my radical translation, Shakespeare’s sonnets thus mutate into a sequence of a clone being spoken to, of the clone responding, of the speech of clones in a cloned world.
One may be reluctant to classify these “speeches” as translations. They are “radical”. And they clearly display the specific interpretation and historical context of the adapting author.
This specific quality is based on the linguistic approach used, which itself takes cloning as its guide. Cloning is a radical method of transforming “nature” according to human wishes and ideas. “Radical” also in the sense of “from the root”. My radical translations turn Shakespeare’s words around, deliberately picking up on the wrong (i.e. non-canonical) ends of their polysemanticity, standing them on their heads – just as the “natural” world of reproduction is stood on its head by the possibilities of cloning.
