(c) Modern Humanities Research Assn HEINE’S RUSSIAN DOPPELGA• NGER: NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRANSLATIONS OF HIS POETRY

Heine’s poem ‘Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen’ (‘The night is still, the streets are dumb’), written in the early 1820s, describes a nocturnal encounter between the poet and his double. The poet returns to stand under the window of the house where his beloved once lived, only to find his double on duty in his place. To the poet, the double’s sighs and hand-wringing seem to be a mocking parody of his own genuine, deeply felt emotions, which leads him to ask: ‘Was • a·st du nach mein Liebesleid [. . .]?’ (p. 167) (‘why do you ape the pains and woe that racked my heart on this same spot?’ (p. 85)). Readers may feel something similar when confronted by a less than inspired translation of a poem which they know well. A translation, like Heine’s double, purports to be the same as the original, but is not and cannot be identical with it. In all probability, some aspects of the original have been omitted, other elements added, and, in mediocre translations, certain features may have been exaggerated in ways which verge on unintentional parody. Certainly Russian literary critics of the mid-nineteenth century believed that some contemporary translations of Heine’s poetry came dangerously close to parody. One likened Heine’s Russian translators to huntsmen pursuing the poet as their unfortunate quarry, while another commented that if Heine were alive today and knew Russian, he would sue his translators for damages. The idea of Heine’s clumsy translators as unwitting parodists inspired humorous verse: