In June I was contacted by my friend Barrie Tullett. His wife Jantze had “an idea to illustrate a poem (or three) by Wassily Kandinsky, from his book Klänge, which was published in 1913”. I was asked to translate the eight-line poem from the German, which I did, and recently they sent me a copy of the finished article, a book featuring one line of the poem (in Russian, German and English), with illustrations, on each page-spread. You can read more about it here.

Apparently Kandinsky originally wrote the texts in Russian, but then found a German publisher, so translated them himself. The idea was that after the German edition, they’d make a Russian one – but the German edition didn’t sell, so it never happened.

This is the complete eight-line poem in German, followed by my translation (in which I’ve prioritised the rhythm, and to a lesser extent the rhymes):

Innen wiegt die blaue Woge.
Das zerrissne rote Tuch
Rote Fetzen. Blaue Wellen.
Das verschlossne alte Buch.
Schauen schweigend in die Ferne.
Dunkles Irren in den Wald.
Tiefer werden blaue Wellen.
Rotes Tuch versinkt nun bald.

Within the breaker blue is swaying.
Cloth that’s red is ripped and torn.
Red is shredded. Blue is wavey.
Padlocked shut the book that’s old.
Silent look into the distance.
Err in darkness in the woods.
Deeper darkens blue that’s wavey.
Cloth that’s red will sink down soon.

You can see the pages of the original if you search for ‘Klänge’ here.

There is a recent edition of the woodcuts available on issuu.

And if you want a bit of background, there is always wikipedia.