Hilde Domin: From Cologne to Vinalhaven

When I'm not traveling, I live in a coastal town in Maine, a remote but beautiful state with 5000 miles of spectacular Atlantic coastline.  The beauty of the sea and the rocks has been an inspiration for poets, and we are blessed with great poets in Maine. The 19th-century stalwart poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a Maine native.  The great American poet of erotic love, Edna St. Vincent Millay, was born up the coast in Rockland, and later owned an island just across the bay from where I live. Our greatest poet of the last century, Robert Lowell, divided his time between Boston and Maine, and many of his best poems (such as Skunk Hour and Waking Early Sunday Morning) were written in Maine and reflect the spirit of the place.

While Maine has been a magnet for American poets and writers, very few European writers find their way to the place, preferring the exotic landscapes of the Pacific coast or the electric vitality of New York City. One notable exception was the great French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, who lived for many years with her female lover on Mount Desert Island. Now, I just discovered that Hilde Domin -the postwar poet of exile and return -  spent some time on the island of Vinalhaven.  Her longest poem Wen es trifft, was written on the island in 1953, as Domin and her husband, the architectual historian and Lorca translator Erwin Walter Palm, were making their way back to Germany in 1953, after 20 years in exile. The poem always had a special meaning for Hilde Domin - and she chose to read a section of it when she accepted the Konrad Adenauer prize in 1995. What brought her to Vinalhaven, Maine in 1953?  The only clue I can find is a short passage in her collection of autobiographcal sketches, Fast ein Lebenslauf.

Ich erzähle hier nicht von dem winzigen Haus auf Vinalhaven in der Penobscot Bay im Staate Maine, wo man so hoch im Norden ist, daβ das Meer schon wieder südliche Farben hat, und wo in den Basaltbrüchen der Lorbeer wächst wie in Italien, und die Möwen die Müllabfuhr besorgen. Obwohl ich dort “Wen es trifft” geschrieben habe, das letzte Gedicht, das ich vor der Rückkehr schrieb, und das, wie ich jetzt weiβ aber damals nicht wuβte, die Rückkehr in ihrer ganzen Ambivilenz vorwegnimmt.  (Fast ein Lebenslauf, s. 121)

Perhaps Hilde Domin's future biographer will be able to say how she got to the island of Vinalhaven and what she and her husband did there.  Or perhaps it will remain a mystery.

Hilde Domin Maine

Comments

[Mark S. Burrows]

I just found your query about Hilde Domin. I address this in the long introduction to my new translation of her poems, THE WANDERING RADIANCE. Marion Tauschwitz, has a lengthier treatment of her summer on Vinalhaven in her biography of the poet (in German).

Regards,
Mark Burrows
(Camden, ME)

[David]

Mark - Great to know there's a Hilde Domin scholar in Maine! Actually, I did read Marion Tauschwitz's biography. My review:

https://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2010/08/review-marion-tauschwitzs-biography-of-hilde-domin.html

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