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Thread: Help, Please

  1. #1

    Help, Please

    Can anyone translate the following passages into English for me or even tell me which books they are from? Our son is marrying a German girl and there is a tradition that the mothers of the bride and groom produce a wedding newspaper which includes relevent quotes. The bride's mother would like to include the following quotes from Hermann Hesse, but I need to have them translated so that the English guests can also understand them.

    Wir verlangen, das Leben müsse
    einen Sinn haben – aber es hat nur
    ganz genau soviel Sinn, als wir
    selber ihm zu geben imstande sind.
    Hermann Hesse

    Es ist nicht unsere Aufgabe, einander näher zu kommen, so wenig
    wie Sonne und Mond zueinander kommen oder Meer und Land.
    Unser Ziel ist, einander zu erkennen und einer im anderen das zu sehen und ehren zu lernen, was er ist: des anderen Gegenstück und Ergänzung.
    Hermann Hesse

    Many thanks

    Christine

  2. #2
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    47
    Neither German nor English are my first language, but I would translate it this way:
    "We demand that life
    must have a meaning - but it has only
    as much meaning as we
    are ourselves able to give to it

    (the last it could be replaced with "life" for a better effect.)

  3. #3
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    47
    Oh Sorry, missed the second quote. I think that should go like this:
    "It is not our task to come closer to each other, just as little as it is the task of the sun and the moon to come together.
    Our goal is to aknowledge each other and to learn to see and honnour what the other person is: The other's counterpart and completion.

    Hope someone else will read this one as well, I'm not too sure about it.

  4. #4

    Many thanks

    Thank you so much for your help - really appreciated.

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