Already

Already

Brad Davis

for Bruce Herman

following the Foreword, on page one
of the Editor’s Introduction, I am
stalled over Bernasconi’s choice
of the 1966 Hamburger translation
for Hölderlin’s Bread and Wine of
1801. Only yesterday, the 1986
Walker translation of Gadamer’s work,
The Relevance of the Beautiful
and Other Essays, arrived kerplunk
on my doorstep, literally—by the grace
of overnight delivery—and like
I said, I’m stalled over Hamburger’s
rendering of a phrase in Hölderlin’s
Bread and Wine that sounds to me
derivative of Eliot in East Coker,
since I can’t imagine a post-Eliot
literary whizkid opting to employ
“unpropitious times” in a translation
apart from and without acknowledging
a prior regard for and debt to Eliot—
there’s only the fight to recover
what has been lost / And found and
lost again and again: and now, under
conditions / That seem unpropitious.
I find myself wishing Bernasconi,
in his notes, had mentioned in which
section and line of Hölderlin’s 9-section
poem the German phrase occurs, so
I could compare Hamburger’s take
with that of, say, the chill, 2022 Lehman
or Bly or any of the online iterations
I’ve spent the last few hours scanning.
But I think I’m ready (finally) to move on,
leave the Editor’s Introduction, and
get to the essay itself—The Relevance
of the Beautiful—my only reason,
following your good recommendation,
for the book’s purchase in the first place.

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Brad Davis
Poet

Brad Davis is the author of several poetry collections, including Trespassing on the Mount of Olives, and Still Working it Out — both from Poiema/Cascade — and his latest On the Way to Putnam: New, Selected & Early Poems (Grayson Books).

Photography by Elina Nova