Today's posts

It is time to give you an idea of the readers of this blog. Most are from USA, Spain and the UK but you also come from Russia, Germany, Belgium, Ukraine, France and Italy. It is always good to see a reader from a new country.  Your numbers are small, but then this is poetry and not cookery recipes, and today poetry is largely forgotten and rarely makes its voice heard. You who read poetry are in the minority, I’m afraid!

The poem today is ‘Die Lorelei’.    Translating poetry is tricky, and translating poetry that rhymes is trickier. Translating poetry that rhymes as perfectly as this is impossible. But that is no reason for not giving it a go.

In Heinrich Heine’s poem not a word is out of place. The line about the evening sun which shines on the mountain peak is just two words: ‘im Abendsonnenschein’.  Marvellous! Every line of Heine’s poem flows as surely as the River Rhein as it passes by the rock of the Lorelei.