Deutsch-hebräische Symbiose: Zur Poetologie der Selbstübersetzung in Manfred Winklers Kafka-Adaptionen

Abstract

This paper investigates the poetics of self-translation in the bilingual oeuvre of Manfred Winkler (1922–2014), an Israeli poet from the Bukovina, writing in both German and Hebrew. At the heart of the analysis lies Winkler’s poetological concept of a “symbiosis” between German and Hebrew, which serves as a point of departure for examining the tension between German-speaking Jewish heritage and Zionist Hebraism in his translingual work. Focusing on Winkler’s German and Hebrew adaptations of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the article demonstrates how lyrical self-translation enacts the transformation of the self as a dialogical process of translingual creativity and poetic evolution. Building on the botanical metaphors found in Winkler’s theoretical reflections, the study proposes a model of autogamous and allogamous translingualism—distinguishing between different modes of poetic self-translation, from internal variation to external inspiration.