Dialog International

National Poetry Month: A Poem for Spring

There are many poems about spring, but one that continues to haunt me is Elisabeth Langgässer's Frühling 1946  (Spring 1946) . This tightly constructed, emotionally-charged poem celebrates a return to life on so many levels.  The poem itself if a triumph of form, imagery, and meter.  But it is the story behind it that makes it almost unbearable.  Frühling 1946  moves from nature to myth, from the spring flower anemone to Nausicaa, the woman who saved Odysseus, from toad's realm ("Reich der Kröte") to the realm of the living.  The Greek anemōnē means "daughter of the wind", and at the end of the final stanza Nausicaa is recognized as the child ("Kind Nausikaa!"). And Frühling 1946 is dedicated to Cordelia, Elisabeth Langgässer's daughter who, as a Volljüdin (a "complete Jewess" by parentage) was taken from her by the Nazis and sent first to Theresianstadt and then to the Auschwitz death camp. It was assumed that Cordelia had been murdered at Auschwitz. Miraculously, in the spring of 1946 Elisabeth Langgässer received word that her daughter was alive, having been rescued by the Swedish Red Cross. 

Spring 1946, an entire nation emerging from the "toad realm", from the terrible music of the "Death-Führer" (Totenführers Flöte), a writer, who for 12 years was forbidden to write because she was a "half-Jew", who endured the deprivations of war,mourning a lost daughter presumed dead,  and who was brought low by the multiple sclerosis that would soon kill her.  She was given new life by Kind Nausikaa.

In Homer, Odysseus says to Nausicaa when he takes leave from her: "I will never fail to worship you all the rest of my days. For it was you who gave me back my life." 

Frühling 1946 (für Cordelia)

 

Holde Anemone,

bist du wieder da

und erscheinst mit heller Krone

mir Geschundenem zum Lohne

wie Nausikaa?

 

Windbewegtes Bücken,

Woge, Schaum und Licht!

Ach, welch sphärisches Entzücken

nahm dem staubgebeugten Rücken

endlich sein Gewicht?

 

Aus dem Reich der Kröte

steige ich empor,

unterm Lid noch Plutons Röte

und des Totenführers Flöte

gräßlich noch im Ohr.

 

Sah in Gorgos Auge

eisenharten Glanz,

ausgesprühte Lügenlauge

hört‘ ich flüstern, daß sie tauge

mich zu töten ganz.

 

Anemone! Küssen

laß mich dein Gesicht:

Ungespiegelt von den Flüssen

Styx und Lethe, ohne Wissen

um das Nein und Nicht.

 

Ohne zu verführen,

lebst und bist du da,

still mein Herz zu rühren,

ohne es zu schüren -

Kind Nausikaa!

 

 

 

 

Spring 1946 

 

So you return

My sweet Anemone –

All brilliant stamen, calyx, crown –

Making it worth the devastation,

Like Nausicaa?

 

Windblown and bowing –

Wave and spray and light –

What whirling joy at last

Has lifted up this weight

From shoulders bent with dust?

 

Now I arise

Out of the toad’s domain –

Pluto’s reddish glare still under my eyelids –

And the hideous pipe of the guide to the dead

Still in my ears.

 

I have seen the iron gleam

In the Gorgon’s eye.

I have heard the hiss, the whisper,

The rumor that she would kill me:

It was a lie.

 

Anemone, my daughter,

Let me kiss your face: it is

Unmirrored by the waters

Of Lethe or the Styx.

And innocent of no or not.

 

And see, you are alive

And here – there’s no deception –

And quiet in the way you touch my heart

Yet do not rake its fires –

My child, my Nausicaa!

 

(Translated by Eavan Boland, from: After Every War, Twentieth – Century Women Poets,  Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford, 2004

ISBN 0-691-11745-4  )

See also:

Review: Burned Child Seeks the Fire by Cordelia Edvardson

Elisabeth Langgässer's "Sophie's Choice"

Review: Elisabeth Langgässer's Das unauslöschliche Siegel 

Theodor Fontane : a poem for the New Year

Und wieder hier draußen...

Und wieder hier draußen ein neues Jahr -
Was werden die Tage bringen?!
Wird's werden, wie es immer war,
Halb scheitern, halb gelingen?

Wird's fördern das, worauf ich gebaut,
Oder vollends es verderben?
Gleichviel, was es im Kessel braut,
Nur wünsch' ich nicht zu sterben.

Ich möchte noch wieder im Vaterland
Die Gläser klingen lassen
Und wieder noch des Freundes Hand
Im Einverständnis fassen.

Ich möchte noch wirken und schaffen und tun
Und atmen eine Weile,
Denn um im Grabe auszuruhn,
Hat's nimmer Not noch Eile.

Ich möchte leben, bis all dies Glühn
Rücklässt einen leuchtenden Funken
Und nicht vergeht wie die Flamm' im Kamin,
Die eben zu Asche gesunken.

(Once more a New Year here on the outside / what will the days have in store? / Will it be as it's always been - half failing, half succeeding? / Will it nurture that which I've started, or ruin it once a for all? / No matter, whatever is brewing in the cauldron / I wish not to die. / How I long to be back in my homeland / To let the glasses ring / and grasp the hand of my friend in mutual understanding. / I'd like to work and create and do / and breathe for a while for a while / For there is no hurry to rest in the grave. / I'd like to live until this glowing leaves behind a gleaming spark, / and doesn't vanish in the hearth like the flames that sink to ash.)    

                                                                              

Til Schweiger rages at the racist comments on his Facebook page

German celebrity star Til Schweiger learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished:

Schweiger, 51, best known to international audiences for his role as a Nazi hunter in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds", had on Saturday posted on Facebook a Hamburg newspaper's appeal for donations to help new asylum seekers.

"My call to Hamburg: everybody take part!!!" he wrote, drawing more than 19,000 "likes" and over 1,000 "shares" on other Facebook pages.

But within minutes the post also drew dozens of viciously racist comments with several questioning why a wealthy celebrity should urge the less fortunate to give money to charity.

"There's room for 1-2 refugee families in your Swiss villa," a Facebook user named Milano Verde wrote in one of the milder entries.

The deluge of negative comments prompted a furious response from Schweiger: "Oh man, I was afraid this would happen!! You make me want to throw up! Get off my page you pitiless people! You make me sick!!!"

Hey welcome to the internet,Till.  

Later, Til blamed the deluge of hateful comments on reality television shows:

"Wir haben eine Menge Leute, die nicht nachdenken, weil sie keine Fantasie haben. Weil sie den ganzen Tag vor dem Fernseher sitzen und in irgendwelchen Reality-Show sehen, wie sich irgendwelche Leute gegenseitig beleidigen, runtermachen, dissen, und das prallt nicht an einem ab. Also ich finde, das deutsche Fernsehen trägt dazu bei, dass die Leute so abgestumpft sind.“

I don't find that convincing. Rather, the trolls are spending day and night on the multitude of conspiracy Web sites - creating a giant echo chamber of hate.

Review: Artists under Hitler by Jonathan Petropoulos

The Weimar Republic represented the pinnacle of European modernism in art, music and literature. Like many students of German history, I had always assumed that the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 brought the modernist movement in Germany to an abrupt end, and the artists were forced to flee the country or retreat into an "inner emigration" and practice their art in secret.  But the history of modernism in the Third Reich is much more complex,as I learned in the fascinating book by Jonathan Petropoulos - Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany. 

Drawing on on his extensive research, Petropoulos convincingly shows that from 1933 to the 1937 Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) Exhibition in Munich there was tension within the Nazi Party and within the artistic community itself between the modernists and the advocates of the bombastic völkisch art we have come to associate with the Third Reich. A number of senior Nazi officials - such a Josef Goebbels - were enthusiastic collectors of modernist paintings- some of which were plundered from private Jewish collections or Jewish -owned galleries.  And the artists and writers themselves saw modernism as completely compatible with the dynamism of a revitalized Germany under Nazi rule.  After all, the modernist movement in Italy - Futurism - had played an integral role in ushering in the first fascist state in Europe.  Expressionism was simply a specifically "Nordic" form of modernism, reflecting a Germanic sensibility. In the end, the völkisch faction would prevail, but that didn't prevent a number of modernist artists and writers from seeking an accommodation with the regime. Some were rebuffed and forced into exile or lost their ability to make a living with their art.  But others experienced amazing success and became celebrities of the Third Reich.

Petropoulos neatly divides his book into two sections.  The first is a series of chapters profiling several key figures  - Gottfried Benn, Walter Gropius, Emil Nolde, Paul Hindemith, Ernst Barlach - who tried but failed to find support and approval for their work from the Nazi regime.   Their reasons for seeking accommodation were very different.  Gropius simply wanted to work and thought that his buildings would benefit a resurgent Germany.  Benn was initially attracted to the brutality, dynamism and irrationality of Nazi ideology. Nolde was a wannabe Nazi (he was in fact a registered member of the Danish National Socialist Party).  Barlach was already an old man when the Nazis came to power and simply wanted to be left alone so he could keep making art. Both Benn and Nolde exhibited deplorable behavior:  Benn forced the resignation of writers he didn't like from the Prussian Academy and in a radio address mocked Klaus Mann and other exiled writers - many of whom had fled Germany for their lives; Nolde - a virulent anti-Semite - falsely denounced a rival artist as a Jew. But despite their professed allegiance to the new German state and their impeccable Aryan bloodline, these artists were all rejected by the Nazis, perhaps because of their association with the hated Weimar Republic. Nolde was psychologically crushed when his work was featured in the Entartete Kunst exhibit.

The second section of the book profiles artists who succeeded in finding acceptance in the Third Reich.  This group includes Richard Strauss, Gustaf Gründgens, Leni Riefenstahl, Arno Breker, Albert Speer.  All achieved spectacular success during the Third Reich. With the possible exception of Richard Strauss, whose support of the Nazis was rather tepid, these artists were happy to put their talents to use on behalf of an murderous regime (Petropolous includes a disturbing photograph of Leni Riefenstahl witnessing the execution of Jewish "partisans" in Poland). Particularly instructive is the portrait of Arno Breker.  An immensely talented sculptor, Breker spent his formative years in Paris, where he was strongly influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin and fell under the spell of modernists such as Pablo Picasso.  In Rome he met Goebbels, who, recognizing a young talent, encouraged him to return to Germany and work for the glory of the Reich.  Breker produced a number of monumental sculptures for the the Nazi state which became iconic symbols of National Socialism.  Petropoulos points out that nothing during this period was strictly white or black: the ambitious opportunist Breker occupied a gray area.  Breker never completely abandoned his modernist roots.  He apparently intervened at the highest level to prevent Picasso from being sent to a concentration camp.

Of course it impossible to cover all the writers and artists who remained in Germany during the Third Reich.  I would have liked for Petropoulos to have included a chapter on Ernst Jünger, the mercurial modernist who despised Hitler but who nevertheless got caught up in the Nazi adventure. Also, a mention of Wolfgang Koeppen - to my mind the greatest postwar modernist novelist - would have been welcome.  For the most part, Petropoulos avoids a discussion of the "Inner Emigration" phenomenon. Still, Artists under Hitler provides a much-needed corrective on our understanding of the continuity of German modernism during the Third Reich. 

Thomas Mann's Mario und der Zauberer

It's been many, many years since I read Mario und der Zauberer ("Mario and the Magician"), which, along with Tonio Kröger and Der Tod in Venedig, is one of Thomas Mann's greatest novellas. I wanted to reread it for several reasons: I just read Daniel Kehlmann's novel "F" (see my review) which begins with a public performance of a hypnotist, which reminded me of Mann's work.  Secondly, the the whole phenomenon of the Pegida demonstrations as well as the adulation of Vladimir Putin made me think about the great theme of Mario und der Zauberer: Free Will (Willensfreiheit) and the longing to submit (Gehorsam) - the Escape from Freedom. 

Mario un der Zauberer is just as enjoyable - and powerful - today as it was when it was first published in 1930.  I especially admire how Mann, in the first half of the novella, builds up the tension which then boils over in Cipolla's (the magician) performance in the second half.  The novella is subtitled "ein tragisches Reiseerlebnis" and indeed it does seem like a vacation from hell.  The upper-middle class German narrator, on vacation in Torre di Venere, Italy with his wife and young children, is subjected to a series of humiliations from the local native population.  There is a sinister sense of aggressive nationalism; even on the beach one could feel the presence of Il Duce.   This unhealthy atmosphere, combined with the oppressive heat, sours the narrator's mood.  He states more than once that he should have aborted his Italian holiday and returned home with his family.  Yet they stay in Torre di Venere, and the performance of the renown magician Cipolla offered a welcome distraction from the misery. 

Cipolla appears as a shabby reflection of Aschenbach, the artist-protagonist in Der Tod in Venedig. The magician is slightly deformed physically, poorly groomed, and dependent on copious amounts of tobacco and cognac to perform his routine.  Yet Cipolla is in total command of his artistic powers as he effortlessly imposes his will on select individuals in the theater; the audience is mesmerized.  Even the narrator, the bourgeois pater familias who knows he should bring his children home to bed, is transfixed by Cipolla and unable to leave his seat at the intermission:

Vor allem gab es nun eine Pause, und unser Gebieter zog sich zurück. Ich gestehe, daß ich mich vor diesem Punkte meines Berichtes gefürchtet habe, fast seit ich zu erzählen begann. Die Gedanken der Menschen zu lesen, ist meistens nicht schwer, und hier ist es sehr leicht. Unfehlbar werden Sie mich fragen, warum wir nicht endlich weggegangen seien, ­ und ich muß Ihnen die Antwort schuldig bleiben... Zu entschuldigen ist es nicht, dass wir blieben, und es zu erklären fast ebenso schwer.

There is no resisting Cipolla's hypnotic power.  Some submit instananeously, as if they had been waiting for this this very opportunity to relinquish their Willensfreiheit.  A few, like the "man from Rome", put up a brave fight when the magician commands him to dance. Cipolla mocks him for attempting to resist: "Is this your idea of freedom?"  And, indeed, the brave soul soon surrenders to the Ecstasy of Submission:

Man sah nun das Gesicht des Unterworfenen [...]Er lächelte breit, mit halb geschlossenen Augen, während er sich "vergnügte". Es war eine Art von Trost, zu sehen, dass ihm offenbar wohler war jetzt als zur Zeit seines Stolzes...

There is a strong sado-masochistic aspect to Cipolla's performance:  he takes obvious pleasure in humiliating his subjects/victims - even erotic pleasure in the case of the waiter Mario - and his subjects are only too happy to submit to his whip.  The social theorist and psychologist Erich Fromm discussed masochism as a component of fascism in his 1941 study Escape from Freedom:

"The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to his own inidividual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden of the self.  Masochism is one way toward this goal. The different forms which the moschistic strivings assume have one aim: to get rid of the individual self, to lose oneself; in other words, to get rid of the burden of freedom."

Mario und der Zauberer has often been interpreted as Thomas Mann's warning to his fellow Germans about the danger of fascism. The warning is just as relevant today, with democracy under attack in Europe.  Fromm wrote:

"There is one way to to define the real meaning of the difference between democracy and fascism.  Democracy is a system that creates the economic, political and cultural conditions for the full development of the individual.  Fascism is a system that, regardless under which name, makes the individual subordinate to extraneous purposes and weakens the development of genuine individuality."

(Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom )

Anti-Semitism at the core of Heidegger's philosophy

 

  For decades students of philosophy have quarreled over Heidegger's involvement with the Nazis.  Was it just a "flirtation", as so many scholars - especially French scholars - have insisted?  Totally irrelevant to his philosophy? Or is there a fundamental affinity between Heidegger and Nazi ideology?  Now, with the final release of Heidegger's Schwarze Hefte - "The Black Notebooks" - we have the definitive answer.

The Black Notebooks contain Heidegger's thoughts on contemporary history and philosophy between 1931 and 1946.  They are not just incidental jottings, for Heidegger, who mapped out the sequence for publication of his Collected Works, saved the Black Notebooks for last.  They would be his final word. Unfortunately for Heidegger apologists, they show him to be an unrepentant anti-Semite who embraced a mystical, racist concept of "das Volk."

Heidegger scholar and CUNY professor Richard Wolins has written a devastating review of the Black Notebooks:

With the publication of the Black Notebooks, what has now become indubitably clear is that racial prejudice against non-Germanic peoples—the English, the Russians, the French, the Americans, and, especially, the Jews—lies at the very center of Heidegger’s philosophical project. It is inseparable from the Volk-concept that he had embraced already in Being and Time (1927) and that he continued to exalt throughout his lectures and seminars of the 1930s. Heidegger’s belief in the ontological superiority of the German Volk underwrites his political view that inferior peoples may be justly persecuted in the name of “the history of Being,”

Heidegger welcomed the "National Revolution" of the Nazis which would lead to a "“a total transformation of our German Dasein" - Dasein in Heideggerian parlance referring to "being-in-the-world". And further:  “The metaphysics of Dasein must deepen itself in a manner consistent with its inner structures and extend to the Metapolitics ‘of’ the historical Volk.”  As Heidegger makes clear in the Black Notebooks, the Germans are the only true "historical Volk" - as heirs to the Greeks. What sets Germans apart is their inherent Bodenständigkeit - a rootedness to the soil - which, of course the "cosmopolitan" Jews lacked completely. 

Jews, in their rootlessness, also carried the contaminant of evil modernity, with which they infected England, the Soviet Union and the United States:

Heidegger believed that the Soviet Union, America, and England, as embodiments of Machenschaft, were expressions of the spirit of “World Jewry”—“a human type whose world historical goal is the uprooting of all beings from Being.” According to Heidegger, the problem with Machenschaft “is that it leads to total deracination, resulting in the self-alienation of peoples.” He continues: Whereas “World Jewry which is everywhere ungraspable, does not need to resort to arms”—since, presumably, it has stealthily infiltrated all global centers of power— “conversely, we Germans sacrifice the most racially gifted representatives of our Volk.” In other words, according to Heidegger, “World Jewry” had everything to gain from World War II without having wagered a thing.

Heidegger never visited America.  But in his eyes Amerikanismus was, next to das Weltjudentum ("World Jewry") the greatest force of evil in the world.

Heidegger’s fears about the planetary spread of “Americanism,” coming from a land that he characterizes simply as the “site of catastrophe” (das Katastrophenhaft), are never far from view in this period. “With Americanism” he says, “nihilism attains its zenith.” The Americans embrace “the condition of nothingness [Nichtigkeit]” as “their future, since with the appearance of ‘happiness’ for everyone, they destroy everything.” Of course, Heidegger never made the slightest effort to investigate America—its politics, its culture, and its intellectual dispositions—since the standpoint of “history of Being” already tells him all that he needs to know.

But surely Heidegger could not have been aware of the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.  Surely he embraced just the ideals of the Nazis- not their actual practices. Right?  In fact, Heidegger was greatly encouraged by the 'barbarism" of the Nazis:

National Socialism is a barbaric principle. Therein lie its essence and its capacity for greatness. The danger is not [Nazism] itself, but instead that it will be rendered innocuous via homilies about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. (from the Black Notebooks)

Heidegger remained a member of the Nazi Party until 1945, and after the war refused to renounce the Nazi regime. 

Heidegger's "Black Notebooks"

It's been too quiet on the Heidegger front for several years.  Time for a new scandal.

A couple of years ago, the New York Times poetry critic Adam Kirsch tried to put to rest the idea of Heidegger as a "Nazi Philosopher".  Other than his famous Rektoratsrede at the University of Freiburg in 1933, there is simply no evidence that Heidegger shared the crude ideology of the Nazis:

"To show that he remained a Nazi until 1945, or even for the rest of his life, would require finding similar kinds of propaganda in Heidegger’s work throughout those years. But [...]overt Nazi rhetoric simply isn’t there."

But now we are about to learn if Kirsch is correct, for a new volume of Heidegger's complete works (Gesamtausgabe) will be published in March.  Some of the new material is certain to trouble Heidegger fans: 

"Eric Aeschimann, writing in Le Nouvel Observateur, reports that Heidegger’s Schwarzen Hefte (“Black Notebooks”) will trouble even the most faithful of his acolytes in France. It appears that the German editor of the notebooks, Peter Trawny, has written an essay entitled “Heidegger: ‘The Black Notebooks’ and Historial Antisemitism” (“historial” being one of those neologisms of which Heidegger, and Heideggerians, were and are fond) in which he argues that these manuscripts, written between 1931 and 1946, contain ideas that are “clearly antisemitic, even if it is not a question of antisemitism of the kind promoted by Nazi ideology.” One of Heidegger’s French translators, Hadrien France-Lanord, has read Trawny’s essay and has pronounced himself dismayed by many of the extracts from the notebooks that it contains. We are, Aeschimann writes, on the verge of another “Heidegger affair”.+

Evidently, some French translations of the Schwarze Hefte are already circulating - Samizdat-style - among French intellectuals, but I have not been able to find anything on the Web. 

Writing in the FAZ, Juerg Altwegg sees the Black Notebooks as a "debacle" for postwar philosophy in France, where Heidegger has a cult-like following: 

Das ist nicht nur ein schwerer Schlag für die unverbesserlichen Verehrer, sondern ein Debakel für die französische Nachkriegsphilosophie schlechthin. Eine ihrer Schlüsselfiguren bleibt Jacques Derrida, dessen Gesamtwerk George Steiner als „Fußnoten zu Heidegger“ bezeichnet hat.

(This is not just a blow to Heidegger's incorrigible admirers, but a debacle for postwar French philosophy altogether.  Jacques Derrida remains one of its key figure, and George Steiner has described his Complete Works as "footnotes to Heidegger".)

But until we are able to read the Notebooks, there is no way of knowing whether these passages are just the unfortunate prejudices of a genius philosopher, or, as Heidegger's greatest critic in France, Emmanuel Faye, titled his book on Heidegger - L’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie -  in other words, central to understanding his thought. 

National Poetry Month: Pope Francis' Favorite Poet

Who would have thought I had anything in common with Pope Francis?  The new pope is more comfortable speaking Spanish and Italian, but in his first address as pope he included a German phrase: "Es ist ruhig, das Alter, und fromm" ("Old age is quiet and devout.") This turns out to be a line from a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) (a poem to his grandmother: Meiner verehrungswürdigen Großmutter Zu ihrem 72. Geburtstag). 

In his book recently released in German - Mein Leben. Mein Weg - Francis talks about a few of his favorite things, including his favorite poet - Friedrich Hölderlin (number two on my list of the Top Ten German Poets).  At first glance, Hölderlin might seem an odd choice for a pope, since the poet found more inspiration in the Greek gods than in the Bible.  But Hölderlin found transcendence in nature, and his exquisite verse is always seeking to express the sense of divinity in the here and now.

So let us honor Pope Francis and mark the end of National Poetry Month with one of Hölderlin's shortest and most beautiful poems:   Hälfte des Lebens ("Half of Life" or "Life's Midpoint").  Here the first stanza, brimming with natural beauty and life is contrasted with the second, where the lyric I stands alone in a harsh manmade world of walls and weathervanes, where even his voice is taken from him ("sprachlos").  

Hälfte des Lebens

Mit gelben Birnen hänget
Und voll mit wilden Rosen
Das Land in den See,
Ihr holden Schwäne,
Und trunken von Küssen
Tunkt ihr das Haupt
Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.

Weh mir, wo nehm ich, wenn
Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo
Den Sonnenschein,
Und Schatten der Erde?
Die Mauern stehn
Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde
Klirren die Fahnen.

(The Middle of Life

With yellow pears the land
And full of wild roses
Hangs down into the lake,
You lovely swans,
And drunk with kisses
You dip your heads
Into the hallowed, the sober water.

But oh, where shall I find
When winter comes, the flowers, and where
The sunshine
And shade of the earth?
The walls loom
Speechless and cold, in the wind
weathercocks clatter.)

 

Transl. by Michael Hamburger

National Poetry Month: Gottfried Benn

April is National Poetry Month in the US and to mark the occasion I offer a poem by one of the Top Ten German Poets.  Benn's late poem Was schlimm ist ("What's Bad") starts off in the seemingly trivial world of beer and English potboilers, but quick moves on to the great theme of all his poems, beginning with the early work Morgue und andere Gedichte (1912) - namely death.  I especially love his backhanded tribute to Hölderlinvers and side-swipe at "die Professoren."

I include an English translation by one of my favorite translators of poetry, Christopher Middleton.

Was schlimm ist

Wenn man kein Englisch kann,
von einem guten englischen Kriminalroman zu hören,
der nicht ins Deutsche übersetzt ist.

Bei Hitze ein Bier sehn,
das man nicht bezahlen kann.

Einen neuen Gedanken haben,
den man nicht in einem Hölderlinvers einwickeln kann,
wie es die Professoren tun.

Nachts auf Reisen Wellen schlagen hören
und sich sagen, daß sie das immer tun.

Sehr schlimm: eingeladen sein,
wenn zu Hause die Räume stiller,
der Café besser
und keine Unterhaltung nötig ist.

Am schlimmsten:
nicht im Sommer sterben,
wenn alles hell ist
und die Erde für Spaten leicht.

 

Judith Butler in Frankfurt: Anatomy of a Witch Hunt

The prestigious Theodor W. Adorno Prize is awarded every three years on September 11 by the City of Frankfurt to recognize outstanding achievement in philosophy, theater, music or film.  This year it was awarded to Berkeley professor Judith Butler. The choice ignited a firestorm of controversy - especially among Jewish organizations - because of Professor Buller's vocal opposition to Israel's policies in the occupied territories. 

Judith Butler is a Jewish feminist, but is demonized by the Israel Lobby in the US and Germany as a "Jew Hater" and "anti-Semite".  Recently, she answered these charges in detail in a piece published in Die Zeit. It is worth reading the entire article, but I'll just quote an excerpt here:

Meine Auffassung ist, dass Juden und Palästinenser einen Weg finden müssen, unter gleichen Bedingungen zusammenzuleben. Wie so viele andere sehne auch ich mich nach einem wirklich demokratischen Gemeinwesen in jenem Flecken Erde, und ich befürworte die Grundsätze der Selbstbestimmung und des Zusammenlebens für beide Völker, ja für alle Völker. Und ich wünsche mir, zusammen mit einer wachsenden Zahl von Juden und Nichtjuden, dass die Besetzung ein Ende findet, dass Gewalttätigkeiten jeder Art eingestellt werden und dass die wesentlichen politischen Rechte aller Völker in der Region durch eine neue politische Struktur garantiert werden.

(I firmly believe that Jews and Palestinians must find a way to life together under common conditions. Like many others I long for a truly democratic governance on that patch of earth, and I support the fundamental rights of self-determination and coexistence for both groups- indeed, for all people.  And along with a growing number of Jews and non-Jews I hope for an end to the occupation, and and end to violence of any kind and that the essential political  rights of all peoples in the region are guaranteed by a new political framework.)

This response has hardly satisfied Judith Butler's critics.  In fact, as Haaretz reports, the witch hunt continues: 

This witch hunt originates in a dangerous strand of American Jewry that has been assaulting freedom of expression even in American universities. An article in The Jerusalem Post by one such person opened with the idiotic sentence, "Judith Butler ... came to prominence as an anti-Israel agitator almost a decade ago."

As Haaretz writes, Judith Butler is continuing the tradition of Hannah Arendt, who criticized certain states for suspending the legal status of certain groups of its citizens:

Butler is coming to Frankfurt in Arendt's footsteps. As she wrote in another work, "Hannah Arendt was hardly brandishing weapons when she argued in the late 1940s and early 1950s against Israel as a state based on notions of Jewish sovereignty. She becomes now a resource for post-Zionism ... Arendt was perhaps in the 20th century the most avid secular Jewish critic of Zionism, and she was able to articulate reasons why she found the establishment of the state of Israel to be illegitimate without thereby calling for a war against that polity."

No doubt today Arendt would be demonized by the Israel Lobby as a "jew Hater" and "anti-Semite".

I cannot find the text of Judith Butler's acceptance speech she delivered in Frankfurt.  According to one report on the speech, Butler did not directly address the hateful criticism of her, but rather offered reflection on the famous sentence from Adorno's Minima Moralia :"Wrong life cannot be lived rightly" (Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen). That in itself is a suitable rejoinder to those who distort Judith Butler's writing and promote an unjust system.