A couple of days ago we read the shocking news that 49-year old Carinthian-Slovenian poet and translator Fabjan Hafner has died.
Although we in Krems – located on the other side of Austria – did not have too much of personal contact with late Fabian, he was so often present in our longterm exchange program with Slovenia (since 2003) as we had quite a few Slovenian poets in Krems, who had been translated by Fabjan Hafner into German. He was something like our „poetic bridge“ to Slovenia.
He deservedly received a lot of prizes and awards, among them the European Prize for Poetry by the German city of Muenster (2007) for his German translations of the poems of famous Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun.
Besides being a recognized translator he was also an editor and a poet himself.
Thanks a lot to VERSOPOLIS-poet Helwig Brunner for dedicating his thoughts to Fabjan Hafner:
WENN DIE ZEIT VERGEHT
für fabjan hafner (1966–2016)
ich weiß nicht was geschieht
wenn die zeit vergeht
geht sie durch uns hindurch
oder wir durch sie
wenn die zeit vergeht
vergehen wir
wir sind die zeit
https://www.facebook.com/helwig.brunner?fref=ts
WHEN TIME PASSES
for fabjan hafner (1966–2016)
i don’t know what happens
when time passes
is time going through us
or we through time
when time passes
we pass
we are the time
(translated by Wolfgang Kühn)