Before a pinstriped and pleated crowd, poet Durs Gruenbein made a brief appearance at Stanford yesterday to read his poetry. He read in German, while three graduate students read the corresponding English translations. The event drew people than expected and the venue had to be switched to a room much larger than anticipated.

Enlarge
#gallery http://www.stanforddaily.com/image/full/5042
Adrian Gaitan

Durs Gruenbein reads his poetry in German, pausing occasionally to allow Stanford grad students to translate the pieces into Enlgish.

Gruenbein was the 1995 recipient of the Georg Buchner Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Germany. Born in what was then the East German city of Dresden, Gruenbein was in his mid-twenties when the Berlin Wall fell in 1988. In the years following, he became one of the chief chroniclers of reunited Germany. He has published five books of poetry, a collection of essays and translations of John Ashbery, Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux, Aeschylus and others.

“In the 50 years of separation, there were almost two national literatures,” said Stanford Literature Prof. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, who attended the reading. “Gruenbein was so young when Germany reunited, that many see him as representative of a generation that identifies itself as neither East nor West.”

Indeed, The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper, called Gruenbein the first poet to overcome the division of Germany.

“Ashes for Breakfast,” Gruenbein’s first volume of poetry to be translated into English, has only been recently released in the United States. It took four years for Michael Hofman, the son of a German writer living in England, to translate the text.

Quoting Robert Frost, Gruenbein said that “the first thing that is lost in the translation of poetry is poetry itself.” He was quick to add that “the whimsicality that many people see in Ashes for Breakfast comes directly from the translator.”

Whether the poem was a description of an everyday activity such as shaving or showering, a scene from Berlin, or a memory from Dresden, Greunbein’s tone in German was consistent and melodic throughout.

“What I like most about his poetry is the striking moments of brilliance, which are almost sarcastic and bitter,” said Michael Hoyer, a graduate student in comparative literature who read the translations alongside Gruenbein. She said it was difficult to imitate his tonality in a different language, comparing it to musical interpretation.

In a poem about Los Angeles entitled “Greetings from Oblivion City,” Gruenbein observed a quick pace of “life in the solarium,” which invoked images that may have resonated particularly well with some members of his Stanford audience.

The reading was organized by the German Studies Department, the division of literatures, cultures and languages research unit and the European Forum. It is the first in a series of readings dedicated to contemporary German literature.