.
Landscape with fields (Kreuzberg near Krumau): Egon Schiele, 1910 (Albertina, Vienna)
And often I wonder
How things were with us in the beginning.
Were we perhaps wandering victims
Of sleep, performing every action
Like somnambulists, in those days?
Inside that halo of echo, we're far apart
Now, and when within me you again emerge
I hear myself in the rustle of your awakening
From a slumber in which all this was foreseen long ago.
Summer Landscape: Egon Schiele, 1917
Sovente mi domando
Come eri ed ero prima.
Vagammo forse vittime del sonno?
Gli atti nostri eseguiti
Furono da sonnambuli, in quei tempi?
Siamo lonfani, in quell'alone d'echi,
E mentre in me riemergi, nel brusio
Mi ascolto che da un sonno ti sollevi
Che ci previde a lungo.
The Little Town: Egon Schiele, 1912-1913 (Sammlung Leopold, Vienna)
Giuseppe Ungaretti: Sovente mi domando (And often I wonder) from Ultimi cori della terra promessa (Last choruses for the promised land) in Il Taccuino del vecchio (The Notebook of an old man), 1960: translated by TC