Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy

captive,” where “picture” is not the only (or even necessarily the most ade-
quate) translation of the German word Bild. Do the “limits of language,”
as Wittgenstein construed them, then have nothing to do with the actual
language being used?
The answer is perhaps so obvious that we don’t usually take it into ac-
count. In formulating his aphoristic propositions, Wittgenstein is not inter-
ested in the subtleties of ¤gurative language but, on the contrary, in the
dif¤culty of determining the denotative meanings of ordinary words and
phrases placed in particular syntactic constructions. Hence, although, as in
the case of any discourse, there are more and less adequate translations—
translations that render as fully as possible the author’s intended meaning—
Wittgenstein’s propositions are by no means untranslatable in the sense that
Rilke’s Duino Elegies or Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” are untranslatable.
Consider the following from the facing pages (German-English) of Philo-
sophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe in 1958:

Warum kann ein Hund nicht Schmerzen heucheln? Ist er zu ehrlich?

Könnte man einen Hund Schmerzen heucheln lehren? (§250)

Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Is he too honest? Could one teach a dog

to simulate pain? (§250)

Or again:

Warum kann meine rechte Hand nicht meiner linken Geld schenken?—

Meine rechte Hand kann es in meine linke geben. Meine rechte Hand kann

eine Schenkungsurkunde schreiben und meine linke eine Quittung.—

Aber die weitern praktischen Folgen wären nicht die einer Schenkung

(§268)

Why can’t my right hand give my left hand money?—My right hand

can put it into my left hand. My right hand can write a deed of gift

and my left hand a receipt.—But the further practical consequences

would not be those of a gift. (§268)^5

And for good measure, here is §268 in French, as translated by Jacques Bou-
veresse:

Pourquoi ma main droite ne peut-elle pas faire don d’une somme d’argent

à ma main gauche?—Ma main droite peut rédiger un acte de donation et

Wittgenstein on Translation 63