German · New Poems: The Other Part

Auswanderer-Schiff

Emigrant Ship

13 lines · 18 notes

Tap a line to open its words. The mark beside it plays it.

1
Imagine someone fled hot and glowing,
Denkimaginedenken · verb, imperative, second-person, singularmain verb of the sentence
daßthatdaß · subordinating conjunctiondepends on flüchte
einersomeoneeiner · pronoun, nominative, masculine, singularsubject of flüchte
heißhotheiß · adverbdepends on flüchte
undandund · conjunctiondepends on heiß
glühendglowingglühend · adverbdepends on und
flüchtefledflüchten · verb, present, subjunctive, third-person, singularmain verb of the daß-clause
GrammarImperative opens a hypothetical Denk is the bare imperative of denken, 'to think', here meaning 'imagine'. Denk, daß means 'Imagine that'. daß is the older spelling of dass, 'that', and as a subordinating conjunction it sends its verb, flüchte, to the end of the clause.
GrammarSubjunctive for an imagined scene flüchte is Konjunktiv I, present subjunctive, of flüchten, 'to flee', not the plain present flüchtet. German uses this mood for something merely imagined rather than asserted as fact, so the fugitive and the pursuit are held up as supposition.
2
and the victors were close behind,
GrammarWere, subjunctive of sein wären is Konjunktiv II of sein, 'to be', meaning 'were, would be'. It continues the supposition begun with Denk, daß, so the pursuers are imagined, not stated as fact. hinterher means 'behind, in pursuit'.
3
and all at once the
WordFixed phrase split by a break auf einmal is a fixed phrase meaning 'all at once, suddenly'. The line breaks in the middle of the sentence: machte der dangles here, its subject Flüchtende held back to the start of the next line.
4
fugitive, sharp and sudden, wheeled about
GrammarPresent participle used as a noun der Flüchtende, 'the fleeing one, the fugitive', is the present participle of flüchten used as a noun, declined like an adjective. It is the subject of machte from the line before, stranded here by the line break.
WordIdiom for wheeling about Kehr, from kehren, 'to turn', is the turn itself. Kehr machen, more usually kehrtmachen, means 'to wheel about, turn on one's heels'. kurz and unerwartet mean 'sharp' and 'sudden', describing how the fugitive turns.
5
to face the hundreds—: so hard
GrammarGegen takes the accusative gegen, 'against, facing', always takes the accusative. Hunderte is the plural noun 'hundreds', so gegen Hunderte means 'against the hundreds', the fugitive turning to face the whole pursuing crowd.
6
the glowing of the fruit kept flinging itself
GrammarParticiple made into a noun erglühen means 'to flare up, begin to glow'; its prefix er- marks the coming into glow. The present participle is capitalized into a neuter noun, das Erglühende, 'that which glows'. der Früchte, 'of the fruit', gives the subject 'the glowing of the fruit'.
GrammarSich werfen with inverted order sich werfen means 'to throw, fling oneself'. warf, 'flung', stands before its subject das Erglühende because the long daß-clause filled the first position, forcing subject and verb to invert.
7
again and again against the blue sea,
GrammarAn with accusative for motion an takes the accusative when there is motion up against something, and the dative for rest. The accusative an das blaue Meer, 'against the blue sea', gives the fruit's motion a forward thrust. immer wieder means 'again and again'.
8
as the slow orange-boat
GrammarTemporal conjunction, when als here is the temporal conjunction 'as, when', introducing the scene the earlier simile was building toward. It sends its verb, vorübertrug in the next line, to the end of the clause. Do not confuse this with comparative als, 'than'.
WordA compound built from two nouns Orangenboot welds Orangen, 'oranges', to Boot, 'boat': a boat laden with oranges. German fuses nouns into one word, the last noun carrying the gender and number. The fruit glowing earlier turns out to be a cargo of oranges.
9
carried them past, up to the great
GrammarSeparable prefix stays fused vorübertragen, 'to carry past', has the separable prefix vorüber-, 'past, by'. As the verb of the als-clause it sits at the clause's end and stays whole. sie means 'them', the oranges.
10
grey ship, to which, from jolt to jolt,
GrammarArchaic dative ending -e Stoß means 'a push, jolt, knock'. The phrase von zu uses the dative on both sides; the second, Stoße, keeps the archaic dative -e that older German added to many masculine and neuter nouns. von Stoß zu Stoße means 'from jolt to jolt'.
11
other boats hoisted up fish, and bread—
GrammarVerb-final in a relative clause This is the relative clause opened by zu dem, 'to which', in the line before, so its verb hoben, 'hoisted', past of heben, comes last, after both subject and object. In plain order: andre Boote hoben Fische, Brot.
12
while it, full of fleas in its lap,
WordAn older plural for fleas Floh means 'flea'; Flohn is an older, dialect-flavored form standing in for the standard plural Flöhe, 'fleas', chosen here for the rhyme. voll Flohn means 'full of fleas', a detail of squalor aboard the ship.
WordLap or womb, archaic ending Schoß means 'lap' or 'womb', and figuratively the sheltering inside of something. With the archaic dative ending -e and an umlaut for the rhyme, in seinem Schöße means 'in its lap', here the ship's hold.
13
took on coal, open like death.
GrammarSeparable verb aufnehmen aufnehmen means 'to take in, take on, receive' and is separable, prefix auf-. As the verb of the während clause it closes it, während es Kohlen aufnahm, 'while it took on coal'. offen wie der Tod means 'open like death'.

The particulars

The text: Neue Gedichte, Rainer Maria Rilke. New Poems: The Other Part.
Reading aloud: Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
The app: The same text on your phone, your place kept, the audio offline. The first poems free, the rest $4.99.
App Store Google Play
Words: Every word of the text, by letter.
Data: JSON · Markdown · A guide for agents