The divided poet: Translations of Pablo Neruda into German by Erich Arendt and Hans Magnus Enzensberger

The West and East German authors and translators Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Erich Arendt both extensively contributed to the reception of foreign literatures after 1945 by translating Latin American poets. This article explores the asymmetrically intertwined literary conditions of the two authortranslator figures with regard to the poetics and politics of translating Pablo Neruda. In this context, the terms intertextuality and transculturality provide a promising methodological and theoretical framework with which to reveal the dialogic potential of translation, that is, the ways in which engaging with a foreign text on the one hand opens up a perspective on the author/ translator's own poetology, and on the other hand on the literary discourse of post-war Germany. The article argues that Neruda translations by Enzensberger contain traces of the recontextualizing language of a postmodern condition, whereas Arendt's language evokes the notion of time-transcending totality. This gives rise to the image of a divided Neruda whose textual manifestation, as formed in the act of translation, transgressed existing styles, genres, and discourses. © W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2012.