(Cincinnati) In 1947, Hannah Arendt wrote a short poem, “Ich bin ja nur ein kleiner Punkt,” which Samantha Rose Hill accurately and ably translates as “I am just a little point / no more than a spot. …”

I took more liberty to make this translation, imitating Arendt’s strong rhyme-scheme:

I’m nothing but a little dot
No bigger than that black spot,
The beginning of a square.

When I want to expand from there
I start to daub spots everywhere.
My pencil lead (or ink is worse)
Casts on everything my curse.

But--I am nothing but a dot,
Not even a very well-made spot,
Radiant as the start of squares.

I think this is a poem about writing. The middle verse describes someone like Hannah Arendt in the midst of a project, spreading argumentative words in every direction, cursing (or perhaps bewitching) her surroundings with her ideas. But she had started with a single mark. Sometimes she identifies more with that humble first dot than with her whole, ambitious project.

The third stanza almost repeats the first, with the crucial difference that a single geometrical square has become plural, and her little dot (Punkt) “shines” or is “resplendent” (prunkt). It may be humble, but it has potential.

In the original:

Ich bin ja nur ein kleiner Punkt 
nicht grösser als der schwarze 
der dort auf dem Papiere 
als Anfang zum Quadrate.

Wenn ich mich sehr erweitern will,
beginn ich sehr zu klecksen, 
mit Stift und Feder, Blei und Tint 
die Umwelt zu behexen.

Doch bin ich nur ein kleiner Punkt 
nicht einmal gut geraten, 
der auf den Papieren prunkt 
als Anfang zu Quadraten.

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German text from What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt (Liveright, 2024), translated by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill. See also: “Complaint,” by Hannah Arendt