Mascha Kaléko - A Poet in New York

If you happen to wander down Minetta Street in New York City's West Village, you will come upon a plaque on an non-descript apartment building that reads:

"Here lived from 1942 to 1959 the German poet Mascha Kaléko (1907-1975)."

Who was Mascha Kaléko? And how did she end up in the heart of Greenwich Village?  To answer this question I turned to Jutta Rosenkranz's fine 2012 biography Mascha Kaléko.

Mascha Kaléko was born in what is today Poland but picked up German as a young girl when her family moved to Frankfurt as WWI broke out. Eventually, they settled in Berlin, which became Mascha Kaléko's spiritual Heimat.  She eventually went to work as one of the smart, young female office workers described so vividly in Irmgard Keun's 1932 best-seller Das kunstseidene Mädchen.  But Mascha also had a precocious facility with Berliner dialect and started publishing her short, witty poems in the Vossische Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt.  She became a fixture in the Romanisches Cafe, where all of the luminaries of Weimar culture - such as Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht and Max Liebermann - would come and go.

She published her first volume of poetry - Lyrisches Stenogrammheft- in 1933, and it caught the attention of Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Alfred Polgar.  The book sold well and Mascha Kaléko's career as a writer was taking off.  Her short, witty, immediately accessible poems tinged with melancholy reflected perfectly the urban reality of the late Weimar Republic.  Lyrisches Stenogrammheft is "leichte Poesie" - "light poetry" - in the tradition of Christian Morgenstern and Joachim Ringelnatz.  Unfortunatly, we don't have a tradition of "leichte Poesie" in American literature, other than negative examples like Ogden Nash. Mascha Kaléko's work is also similar to Erich Kästner's Gebrauchslyrik - poetry meant to be "useful". If the Zeitroman is the dominant literary form of the Weimar Republik, Lyrisches Stenogrammheft represents the equivalent form in poetry - Zeitlyrik.

Mascha Kaléko seemed destined for a brilliant career as a writer and poet in Berlin. But she was a Jew, and after 1934 it was no longer possible for her to publish her work in Germany.  It is instructive to compare Mascha Kaléko's fate with that of another Jewish poet in Berlin- Gertrud Kolmar.  Gertrud Kolmar was a visionary poet with a unique lyric voice who also was coming into her own as the Weimar Republic collapsed. Her book Die Frau und die Tiere was pulped by the Nazis in 1938. Shortly after that she was forced into slave labor and was eventually murdered in Auschwitz.  Mascha Kaléko managed to leave Germany with her second husband Chemjo Vinaver and young son just weeks before Kristallnacht. Like many German exile intellectuals, they first tried to market their talents in Hollywood (see my review of Pazifik Exil).  When that failed, the family ended up in a fifth floor walk-up on Minetta Street in Manhattan, where they stayed for the next 17 years. Mascha and Chemjo eventually obtained US citizenship.

If I have a quibble with Jutta Rosenkranz's book, it is that she devotes little space with Mascha Kaléko's New York years.  We learn little about how the family lived, how they viewed America. There are twice as many pages covering the poet's six-month "comeback" tour of Germany in 1956. Mascha Kaléko's "comeback" stalled; her whimsical and witty style never gained traction in a Germany traumatized by war.  Still, she was offered the Fontane Prize in 1959, which would have brought some recognition, but turned it down because a member of the jury - Hans-Egon Holthusen - had been in the SS. 

In 1959 Mascha Kaléko and Chemjo moved to Jerusalem- more for the sake of Chemjo's career. It was not a happy move for Mascha:  she spoke no Hebrew and felt isolated in Israel. Still, she and her husband kept their US passports - "just in case."  America meant freedom and security. 

Mascha Kaléko outlived both her husband - Chemjo had been her anchor - and her son Steven.  The last years were difficult, as Mascha battled depression and myriad health issues.  She died in relative obscurity in 1975 (in Zurich).  Today there is growing interest in her work.  Several of her books of poetry remain in print.

Ich werde fortgehn im Herbst

von Mascha Kaléko (aus Heute ist morgen schon gestern)

Ich werde fortgehn im Herbst
wenn die grauen Trauerwolken
meiner Jugend mich mahnen.
Keine Fahnen werden flattern
keine Böller knattern
Krähen werden aus dem Nebel schrein
Schweigen, Schweigen, Schweigen
hüllt mich ein.
Ich werde gehen wie ich kam
Allein.

(I will go in autumn

I will go in autumn

when the grieving grey clouds

remind me of my youth

No flags will fly

No salute will fire

Out of the fog crows will cry

Silence, silence, silence

Envelopes me.

I will go as I came

alone.)

Comments

[Todd Woollen]

I wondered if someone here could help me. One of my favorite authors wrote about a poem by Grillparzer. The only translation I have seen is here: https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Miscellany:Farewell_to_Gastein

Is the translation close, and if not, how would you change it? Is "abate" the word in the 4th line?

Thank you in advance for your time and trouble.

[David]

Hi Todd,
Many thanks for referring to this beautiful poem by Grillparzer. I also found the translation quite charming. Who is the translator? Von Mises himself?

Yes, "abate" is a fine in that verse, although I might have used "allay" for "einlullen“.

Here is the original for anyone interested:

Abschied von Gastein.

Die Trennungsstunde schlägt, und ich muß scheiden,
So leb’ denn wohl, mein freundliches Gastein!
Du Trösterin so mancher bittern Leiden,
Auch meine Leiden lulltest du mir ein,

Was Gott mir gab, worum sie mich beneiden,

Und was der Quell doch ist von meiner Pein,
Der Qualen Grund, von Wenigen ermessen,
Du ließest mich’s auf kurze Zeit vergessen.

Denn wie der Baum, auf den der Blitz gefallen,
Mit einemmale strahlend sich verklärt,

Rings hörst du der Verwundrung Ruf erschallen,
Und jedes Aug’ ist staunend hingekehrt;
Indeß in dieser Flamme glüh’ndem Wallen
Des Stammes Mark und Leben sich verzehrt,
Der, wie die Lohe steigt vom glüh’nden Herde,

Um desto tiefer niedersinkt zur Erde.

Und wie die Perlen, die die Schönheit schmücken,
Des Wasserreiches wasserhelle Zier,
Den Finder, nicht die Geberin beglücken,
Das freudenlose, stille Muschelthier;

Denn Krankheit nur und langer Schmerz entdrücken
Das heißgesuchte, traur’ge Kleinod ihr,
Und was euch so entzückt mit seinen Strahlen,
Es ward erzeugt in Todesnoth und Qualen.

Und wie der Wasserfall, deß lautes Wogen
Die Gegend füllt mit Nebel und Getos;
Auf seinem Busen ruht der Regenbogen,
Und Diamanten schütteln rings sich los;
Er wäre gern im stillen Thal gezogen,
Gleich seinen Brüdern in der Wiesen Schoos,

Die Klippen, die sich ihm entgegensetzen,
Verschönern ihn, indem sie ihn verletzen.

Der Dichter so; wenn auch vom Glück getragen,
Umjubelt von des Beifalls lautem Schall,
Er ist der welke Baum, vom Blitz geschlagen,

Das arme Muschelthier, der Wasserfall;
Was ihr für Lieder haltet, es sind Klagen,
Gesprochen in ein freudenloses All,
Und Flammen, Perlen, Schmuck, die euch umschweben,
Gelöste Teile sind’s von seinem Leben.

[Todd Woollen]

Thank you for your help. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I do not know the translator, but the handwriting is not von Mises's hand. Von Mises is referring to the motivation of genius in the passage, and his introspection is palpable. Von Mises also referenced Nietzsche's poem, Ecce Homo, in the passage:

"Many a genius could have used his gifts to render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation. The genius wants to accomplish what he considers his mission, even if he knows that he moves toward his own disaster.

Neither does the genius derive immediate gratification from his creative activities. Creating is for him agony and torment, a ceaseless excruciating struggle against internal and external obstacles; it consumes and crushes him. The Austrian poet Grillparzer has depicted this in a touching poem “Farewell to Gastein.” We may assume that in writing it he thought not only of his own sorrows and tribulations but also of the greater sufferings of a much greater man, of Beethoven, whose fate resembled his own and whom he understood, through devoted affection and sympathetic appreciation, better than any other of his contemporaries. Nietzsche compared himself to the flame that insatiably consumes and destroys itself. Such agonies are phenomena which have nothing in common with the connotations generally attached to the notions of work and labor, production and success, breadwinning and enjoyment of life."

Von Mises, Ludwig. Human Action