I don't know why, but this song gets me every single time, no matter where I am or what I'm feeling or wht else is going on when I hear it. The part that gets me the most is Nina Hagen's chorus:
Du hast mein Herz geklaut,
Ich weiß nicht, ob du's gewusst hast,
Du Schuft hast es getan,
Hab dich geliebt, als ob es keinen Morgen gibt, bis der Morgen kam
This part always reaches its hand down my gullet like something from an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon and stirs up my blood and phlegm and bile like nothing else has since Shakespeare's Sonnet 29.
So what does it mean?
You broke my heart
I don't know whether you knew that
You cad, you did it
I loved you like there was no tomorrow until tomorrow came.
It doesn't work nearly so well in English, does it?
When I was in uni, it was fashionable to aspire to literary translation, but I completely wrote it off as an option. This is why. Translating the meaning? Dead easy. Translating the connotations? 100% is not always possible, but I can consistently exceed 90%. Translating the beauty? Not gonna happen.
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