A.Z. Foreman | Goethe's "Erlkönig"/"Elvenking", read in German and in my English translation @a.z.foreman74 | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 23 hours ago
In which I read one of Goethe's famous poems, first in the original German and then in my English translation of it.

I did a version of this one years ago, but since then I've revised my English translation, and also gotten better at video editing.

The coinages "Erlkönig" and "Erlenkönig" in German, which would actually mean "the king of the alder-trees" are Herder's fortuitous mistranslations of the Danish word ellerkonge: elf king. Erlkönig therefore became associated with trees. In his folksong collection, Herder published his rendering of a Danish ballad in which a knight, riding through the forest is taken by a sprite who introduces herself as "the elf king's daughter." Goethe adopted Herder's hybridized form. I decided to render it as "Elvenking". The form "Elven" only exists in Modern English thanks to Tolkien, but it allows for (what seems to me) a more natural-feeling and natural-looking coinage than anything like "Elfin-King".