The Antichrist

The Antichrist
translation of “Der Widerchrist” from 1907 by Stefan George (1868-1933)

“There—from the mountain! there—in the wood!
We saw it ourselves • he speaks with the dead
And changes water to wine.”

Oh if you could hear how I laugh in the night:
My hour has struck • my grain is piled high.
The fish come to me to be taken.

The wise and the foolish—the people run mad •
The trees are uprooted • the fields laid flat •
Make way for the Savior’s procession!

There’s no work of heaven I do not produce.
It’s off by a hair’s breadth, but you are all fooled.
Your senses have been overmastered.

In return for what’s rare and what’s hard I create
The simple • a semblance of gold from the clay •
Of the tang and the juice and the perfume.

And the art the great prophet did not dare to touch:
Without clearing or planting or building, to suck
Vitality stored over seasons.

The Prince of Vermin now tightens his grasp •
He is missing no treasure • he misses no chance •
To hell with the rest of the rebels!

Caught up in the devilish fake, you rejoice •
You squander the fruits of your ancestors’ toil
And only at last do you suffer.

Your tongues will hang down as the water trough dries •
You’ll wander bewildered like sheep through the fires ..
And the terrible blast of the trumpet.
4 March 2012
Peter Viereck made a quite different translation of this poem, published in 2001.

The odd punctuation is of course from the original.

The Prince of Vermin on the face of it should be Beelzebub, a prince of hell. Most commentators that I’ve read say that the Prince of Vermin is the Antichrist. It can be both. The rebels are usually taken to be those who do not go along with the Antichrist, but other views are possible. For these two terms specifically, I tried to preserve the range of interpretations in the original.

On other points, I made willful changes. In the last stanza, the original says “like livestock”, which I take to be a reference to the separation of the faithful “sheep” and the disobedient “goats” at the Last Judgment. It seemed in the spirit of the original and more natural in English to put only sheep, which I imagine means that I misunderstand something.