Goethe says somewhere that one can’t create anything worthwhile in a foreign language, yet I’ve always thought this was wrong… What is writing poetry but translating, from a native [i.e., inner-NK] tongue to a foreign one? —Whether French or German doesn’t make any difference. …For that reason I don’t understand why people speak of French, Russian, etc., poets. A poet may write in French yet not be a French poet…I’m not a Russian poet and am always puzzled when I’m seen as one. This is just why one becomes a poet (if it were possible to become one, if one were not born a poet!)—in order not be French, Russian, etc., in order to be all of them. In other words, one is a poet because one is not French. Nationality—the shutting out and shutting in. Orpheus bursts nationality, or extends its boundaries so far and wide that all (the bygone and the living) are included in it. [translation by N. K.)
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