Dialog International

Poetry Month: The Exile Poems of Mascha Kaléko

During this poetry month we have all been shaken by the images of millions of Ukrainians - mostly women and children - fleeing for their lives, as well as hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens forced into exile to escape the growing totalitarianism of Putin's regime.  So much important German poetry and prose was written in exile.  Heinrich Heine was the first great exile poet,  fleeing the anti-Semitism and provincialism of his homeland to Paris, where he spent the last 25 years of his life.  Like Heine, Mascha Kaléko was a poet who was Jewish.  By 1938 in Berlin, where her career had begun to take off, she realized that her time in Germany was over.  She fled with her family just weeks before Kristallnacht, eventually ending up in New York City.  For 17 years she lived in a 3rd floor walk-up in Greenwich Village.  Had she stayed in Berlin Mascha Kaléko no doubt would have suffered the same fate as Gertrud Kolmar, forced to work as a slave laborer, then murdered in Auschwitz.

You can read more about her work and life here.  I also recommend the 2012  biography by Jutta Rosenkranz.

In her poem Im Exil, Mascha Kaléko pays tribute to the "refugee" (Flüchtling ) Heinrich Heine.  With her biting sarcasm she rhymes a line of  Goethe's Heidenröslein - one of the most famous poems in German literature  - with "Kraftdurchfreude"  (Kraft durch Freude  - "Strength Through Joy " - the name of the Nazi mass leisure organization).  The nightingale  - symbol of German Romanticism - has been replaced by the Nazi vulture.  Like Heine, the poet misses her homeland, her beloved Berlin, but recognizes that the land and city she knew will never be as it was:" (Das wird nie wieder, wie es war).

 

Im Exil - von Mascha Kaléko 

"Ich hatte einst ein schoenes Vaterland" –

So sang schon der Flüchtling Heine.

Das seine stand am Rheine,

Das meine auf maerkischem Sand.

Wir alle hatten einst ein (siehe oben!).

Das frass die Pest, das ist im Sturz zerstoben.

O Roeslein auf der Heide,

Dich brach die Kraftdurchfreude.

Die Nachtigallen wurden stumm,

Sahn sich nach sicherm Wohnsitz um,

Und nur die Geier schreien

Hoch ueber Graeberreihen.

Das wird nie wieder, wie es war,

Wenn es auch anders wird.

Auch, wenn das liebe Gloecklein tönt,

Auch wenn kein Schwert mehr klirrt.

Mir ist zuweilen so, asl ob

Das Herz in mir zerbrach.

Ich habe manchmal Heimweh.

Ich weiss nur nicht, wonach.

"Ich hatte einst ein schoenes Vaterland" –

So sang schon der Flüchtling Heine.

Das seine stand am Rheine,

Das meine auf maerkischem Sand.

 

Wir alle hatten einst ein (siehe oben!).

Das frass die Pest, das ist im Sturz zerstoben.

O Roeslein auf der Heide,

Dich brach die Kraftdurchfreude.

 

Die Nachtigallen wurden stumm,

Sahn sich nach sicherm Wohnsitz um,

Und nur die Geier schreien

Hoch ueber Graeberreihen.

 

Das wird nie wieder, wie es war,

Wenn es auch anders wird.

Auch, wenn das liebe Gloecklein tönt,

Auch wenn kein Schwert mehr klirrt.

 

Mir ist zuweilen so, asl ob

Das Herz in mir zerbrach.

Ich habe manchmal Heimweh.

Ich weiss nur nicht, wonach.

https://lyricstranslate.com

#NationalPoetryMonth Rilke: Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens

I was not familiar with this short fragment of a poem until it was featured last year in the Frankfurter Anthologie. I've been thinking about the poem ever since - it's very short, but dense with meaning.  Rilke wrote Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens just as World War I broke out and in a way it fits with a world faced the terror of war - or a pandemic.  I read that the poem again became popular during the Second World War as entire cities faced an existential threat.  It is an existential poem.  Heidegger's Sein und Zeit wasn't published until 1927, but Rilke's language here anticipates Heidegger's idiosyncratic vocabulary.  "Ausgesetzt " can mean exposed or abandoned, and corresponds to Heideggers "Geworfenheit" ("throwness").  The participial phrase Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens is repeated three times, with the variation at the end "ungeborgen hier auf den Bergen des Herzen".  Geborgenheit ("security", "safety" but also implying comfort) cannot be found here in the rock - above the tree line   ("Steingrund").  Geborgenheit corresponds to Heideggers Heimat - or Homeland - that which is near to us.  But here there is no Homeland; the mountain is unheimlich - so far from home, far from security.  There is life here - the "unknowing herb" able even here to "sing forth" while the poet remains silent.  And there are other mountain animals, secure in their safe and sound consciousness - heilen Bewusstseins. And finally the great "secure" bird, circling the peak. These living creature have the security of their Heimat, denied to the poet.  Man's exile from the Garden is a recurring theme in German literature from the Middle Ages, through Heinrich von Kleist. Über das Marionettentheater. and Nietzsche ( "Weh dem, der keine Heimat hat" .) And then there are the limitation of language ("stummen Absturz", "schweigen", "reine Verweigerung?), expressed earlier by Hugo von Hofmannsthal ("Lord Chandos") and culminating with Wittgenstein's Tractactus, published around the same time as Ausgesetzt. Heidegger admired Rilke for his gift of poetically shaping thought.  The fragment Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens is a perfect example. 

Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens. Siehe, wie klein dort,
siehe: die letzte Ortschaft der Worte, und höher,
aber wie klein auch, noch ein letztes
Gehöft von Gefühl. Erkennst du’s?
Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens. Steingrund
unter den Händen. Hier blüht wohl einiges auf; aus stummem Absturz
blüht ein unwissendes Kraut singend hervor.
Aber der Wissende? Ach, der zu wissen begann
und schweigt nun, ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens.
Da geht wohl, heilen Bewußtseins,
manches umher, manches gesicherte Bergtier,
wechselt und weilt. Und der große geborgene Vogel
kreist um der Gipfel reine Verweigerung. – Aber
ungeborgen, hier auf den Bergen des Herzens...

(Exposed on the mountains of the heart. See, how small there,
see: the last hamlet of words, and higher,
and yet so small, a last
homestead of feeling. Do you recognize it?
Exposed on the mountains of the heart. Rocky earth
under the hands. But something will
flower here; out of the mute abyss
flowers an unknowing herb in song.
But the knowing? Ah, that you who began to understand
and are silent now, exposed on the mountains of the heart.
Yet many an awareness still whole wanders there,
many a self-confident mountain animal
passes through and remains. And that great protected bird
circles about the peaks of pure denial. But
unprotected, here on the mountains of the heart.)

 

The German Roots of Longfellow's Poems on Slavery

No other American poet has suffered such a reversal of fortune in reputation as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  In the 19th Century Longfellow was by far the most popular poet in America.  Millions of Americans had his "Song of Hiawatha" on their bookshelves and could recited long passages by heart.  Yet Longfellow's works were quickly rejected by early 20th century critics as "Victorian dross" as America embraced modernism.  A new book on Longfellow - Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - urges readers to reconsider Longfellow and his legacy.  And there is much to admire about Longfellow the poet and the man.  Longfellow doesn't fit in to the two poles of 19th century American poetry - Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, who created vastly different but distinctly American poetic voices.  Emerson wanted his poetry to connect with the European tradition; he embraced Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur.  He spent years traveling and living in Europe, befriending the leading writers and thinkers of the time.  He was fluent in German as well as at least four other languages. And some of his best poems - poems that resonate still today - were strongly influenced by his European counterparts. 

Following an extended correspondence, Longfellow met Ferdinand Freiligrath, the German revolutionary poet and translator of many of Longfellow’s works into German, on his six-month European tour in 1842. Freiligrath vociferously opposed slavery and expressed his radical political views in his poetry. Longfellow also opposed slavery, but was hardly a "revolutionary poet."  Virtually none of Longfellow's poetry could be called "political."  Nevertheless, Freiligrath convinced Longfellow to pen a poem cycle condemning  slavery - he completed the poems during a stormy return passage to America in 1842.  He wrote to Freiligrath:

.thus ‘cribbed, cabined and confined’ I passed fifteen days. During this time I wrote seven poems on slavery. I meditated them in the stormy, sleepless nights, and wrote them down with a pencil in the morning. A small window in the side of the vessel admitted light into my berth; and there I lay on my back, and soothed my soul with songs.

The seven poems in the Poems on Slavery cycle are certainly among his strongest shorter poems.  My favorite of the seven is the haunting poem The Witnesses: 

In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.
Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are the Witnesses!"
Within Earth's wide domains
Are markets for men's lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.
Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare school-boys from their play!
All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life's groaning tide!
These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss;
They cry, from unknown graves,
"We are the Witnesses!"

Longfellow's Poems on Slavery were celebrated by northern abolitionists but excoriated by critics and readers in the southern slave states.  Freiligrath was pleased that his friend had followed through on his urging and translated them for the German audience.  I was unable to find Freiligrath's translations of Poems on Slavery, but his translation of Hiawatha ( Der Gesang des Hiawatha) is still available on Amazon.  I did find a recent German translation of Longfellow's The Slave Singing at Midnight by the writer and poet Annelie Kelch:

Was ein Sklave um Mitternacht sang

Hell klang es gen Mitternacht zu mir her ...
Er, ein schwarzer Sklave, sang Davids Psalm -
kniend - zwischen Stein und Halm,
sang vom Sieg Israels, sang inhaltsschwer,
sang von Zion, hell und – frei.

In jener Stunde, als die Nacht am verschwiegensten war,
sang er hebräische Psalmen aus dem jüdischen Kanon.
Sang mit einer Stimme, so süß und so klar:
Ich konnte nicht anders als ihm zu lauschen im Pavillion.

Seine Lieder erzählten vom Triumph -
davon einst die schwarzen Ägypter sangen ...
als vor der Küste am Roten Meer,
der schreckliche Pharao und sein Heer
erfolglos mit dem Tode rangen.

Seine Stimme klang gottergeben, hingebungsvoll,
erfüllte meine Seele mit einem feierlichen Gefühl.
Mal klang sie froh, dann wieder traurig, wild und toll,
mal ernst, mal heiter, mal süß und mal schwül.

Er sang von Paulus und Silas, zwei Missionare, unfrei ...
Im Gefängnis priesen sie den auferstandenen Lord -
bis Gott ein Erdbeben schickte an jenen Ort,
das die Riegel ihres Kerkertors brach entzwei.

„Aber ach, welch' heiliger Engel, my sweet Lord,
würd' uns Sklaven schicken des Evangelisten Wort ...
Und welches Erdbeben bekäme es wohl vollbracht,
dass u n s e r Kerker sich öffnet um Mitternacht ...?“

Mehr hier: https://www.literatpro.de/gedicht/280317/was-ein-sklave-um-mitternacht-singt

Poetry for the Pandemic: Gottfried Benn's Morgue Cycle

More than 75,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 as I write this.  New York City experienced a tsunami of death: people dying while being removed from ambulances, bodies stacked in refrigerated trucks, bodies rotting in apartments where people couldn't or wouldn't find help, crematories breaking down from overuse, unclaimed bodies piled into mass graves in potter's field. Americans are good at hiding, or at least sanitizing death, but that is proving impossible as the nation confronts thousands of deaths each day from the pandemic. 

Gottfried Benn achieved a succès de scandale with his 1912 poetry collection Morgue und andere Gedichte. In these poems the young medical doctor describes scenes that are capable of shocking even today: a drowned girl is opened up to reveal a nest of rats within her body; a dead prostitute has her gold fillings stolen by a mortuary attendant; the corpses of a dead black man and a white woman appear to be aligned in an erotic pose; the visceral remains of dissected corpses are described in detail, a gruesome autopsy procedure is recounted with dark humor.  Even when the patients are living - as in the description of the cancer ward in the poem Mann und Frau gehn durch die Krebsbaracke  -  death is omnipresent:

Hier schwillt der Acker schon um jedes Bett.

Fleisch ebnet sich zu Land. Glut gibt sich fort.

Saft schickt sich an zu rinnen. Erde ruft.

("around each bed soil already begins to soften. Flesh is getting ready for the ground. The glow of life recedes. Sap prepares for its final flow. The earth is calling.")

My favorite poem in the cycle is Kleine Aster ("Little Aster") where Benn negates the exquisite corpse/Ophelia trope with a graphic description of an autopsy of a beer truck driver. Here the "lyrisches Ich" is unmoved by the inert body, lying mute on the slab - he has cut out the tongue - but has compassion for the little flower, inserting it into the chest cavity next to the heart: "Ruhe sanft, kleine Aster!"

Kleine Aster

Ein ersoffener Bierfahrer wurde auf den Tisch gestemmt.
lrgendeiner hatte ihm eine dunkelhellila Aster
zwischen die Zähne geklemmt.
Als ich von der Brust aus
unter der Haut
mit einem langen Messer
Zunge und Gaumen herausschnitt,
muß ich sie angestoßen haben, denn sie glitt
in das nebenliegende Gehirn.
Ich packte sie ihm in die Brusthöhle
zwischen die Holzwolle,
als man zunähte.
Trinke dich satt in deiner Vase!
Ruhe sanft,
kleine Aster!

 

("A drowned driver of a beer truck was dumped onto the table
Someone had stuck a dark-pale lilac-colored aster
Between his teeth
I cut out the tongue and gums
With a long knife
Working from the chest outwards
Under the skin,
I must have touched it, because it slid
Into the brain right next to it.

I packed it into the chest cavity,
Between the wood shavings,
As it was being stitched up.
Drink up in your vase!
Rest sweetly,
Little Aster!)

Poetry for the Pandemic: Rainer Maria Rilke - Der Lesende

April is National Poetry Month, and this April (2020) is unlike any other, with half the world isolated at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.  Can poetry somehow help us through this period of high anxiety?  Tomasz Kurianowicz wrote an essay in Die Welt about the advantage readers have over others while "sheltering in place" in isolation: "Die Literatur als Impfung" (Literature as Vaccine).

"Gleichzeitig fällt auf, dass es Menschen gibt, die mit der Quarantäne-Situation besser umgehen als andere. Auffallend ist, dass es vor allem die Lesenden sind, also die Introvertierten und Verkopften, die recht gelassen auf die Möglichkeit einer lange währenden Isolation reagieren. Warum? Weil sie gewöhnt daran sind, einsam am Schreibtisch zu sitzen, sich auf dem Sofa mit Bücherstapeln einzudecken und in die Welt der Fantasiekonstrukte hinabzusinken, statt draußen nach flüchtigen Reizen zu suchen."

("At the same time it is apparent that some people are better suited to the quarantine situation than others.  Above all, one notices that it is the Readers - those introverts - who are most relaxed when confronted with the possibility of an extended isolation. Why? Because they are used to sitting alone at a desk, or lying on the couch with a pile of books and immersing themselves in the world of imagination, instead of seeking ephemeral pleasures outside.")

In Rainer Maria Rilke's 1901 poem Der Lesende ("The Man Reading") the words on the printed page function as a conduit to the outer world, fusing the consciousness of the reader with the universe at large.  This is one of the most beautiful poems in the poet's early collection Das Buch der Bilder.

Der Lesende

Ich las schon lang. Seit dieser Nachmittag,
mit Regen rauschend, an den Fenstern lag.
Vom Winde draußen hörte ich nichts mehr:
mein Buch war schwer.
Ich sah ihm in die Blätter wie in Mienen,
die dunkel werden von Nachdenklichkeit,
und um mein Lesen staute sich die Zeit. —
Auf einmal sind die Seiten überschienen,
und statt der bangen Wortverworrenheit
steht: Abend, Abend… überall auf ihnen.
Ich schau noch nicht hinaus, und doch zerreißen
die langen Zeilen, und die Worte rollen
von ihren Fäden fort, wohin sie wollen…
Da weiß ich es: über den übervollen
glänzenden Gärten sind die Himmel weit;
die Sonne hat noch einmal kommen sollen. —
Und jetzt wird Sommernacht, soweit man sieht:
zu wenig Gruppen stellt sich das Verstreute,
dunkel, auf langen Wegen, gehn die Leute,
und seltsam weit, als ob es mehr bedeute,
hört man das Wenige, das noch geschieht.

Und wenn ich jetzt vom Buch die Augen hebe,
wird nichts befremdlich sein und alles groß.
Dort draußen ist, was ich hier drinnen lebe,
und hier und dort ist alles grenzenlos;
nur dass ich mich noch mehr damit verwebe,
wenn meine Blicke an die Dinge passen
und an die ernste Einfachheit der Massen, —
da wächst die Erde über sich hinaus.
Den ganzen Himmel scheint sie zu umfassen:
der erste Stern ist wie das letzte Haus.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926),
September 1901, Westerwede

THE MAN READING

  I’ve read long now. Since this afternoon,

  with its rain rushing, lay against the windows.

  I’d become oblivious to the wind outside:

  my book was hard.

  I gazed into its lines as into faces

  whose looks grow dark from deep reflection,

  and around my reading the hours built up.—

  Suddenly now brightness spills upon the pages,

  and instead of the fearful word-confusion

  stands: evening, evening … everywhere upon them.

  I keep my eyes fixed, and yet the long lines

  tear apart, and the words roll away

  from their threads, to wherever they will …

  Then I know: over the overfull

  glittering gardens the skies are vast;

  the sun was to have broken through once more.—

  And now summer night sets in, as far as one can see:

  what’s dispersed collects into a few groups,

  darkly, on long paths, people wander,

  and strangely far-off, as if it meant more,

  one hears the little that still transpires.

  And when now I lift my eyes from the book,

  nothing will seem alien, everything great.

  There outside exists, what here inside I live,

  and here and there the whole of things is boundless;

  save that I weave myself still more with it

  when my gaze shapes itself to objects

  and to the grave simplicity of masses,—

  then the earth grows out beyond itself.

  It seems to encompass the entire night sky:

  the first star is like the last house.

Pandemic Poetry: Friedrich Schiller's Die Pest. Eine Fantasie

Besides being the greatest dramatist in German literature, Friedrich Schiller was a trained physician.  By 1783 when he wrote the poem Die Pest, the plague or Black Death that had been ravaging Europe for centuries had subsided.  The pathogen had still not been discovered, but Schiller's reference to Gift’ger Nebel (poisonous mists) references the state of science of infectious diseases at the time.  Die Pest employs some of the common themes and images of baroque poetry, but the last line - Schröcklich preiset Gott die Pest - would seem to indicate a degree of ambivalence, or cynicism, with respect to religious faith.

            Friedrich Schiller: „Die Pest. Eine Fantasie“

Gräßlich preisen Gottes Kraft
   Pestilenzen würgende Seuchen,
Die mit der grausen Brüderschaft
   Durchs öde Tal der Grabnacht schleichen.

Bang ergreifts das klopfende Herz,
Gichtrisch zuckt die starre Sehne,
Gräßlich lacht der Wahnsinn in das Angstgestöhne,
   In heulende Triller ergeußt sich der Schmerz.

Raserei wälzt tobend sich im Bette –
Gift’ger Nebel wallt um ausgestorbne Städte
   Menschen – hager – hohl und bleich –
   Wimmeln in das finstre Reich.
Brütend liegt der Tod auf dumpfen Lüften,
Häuft sich Schätze in gestopften Grüften
   Pestilenz sein Jubelfest.
Leichenschweigen – Kirchhofstille
Wechseln mit dem Lustgebrülle,
   Schröcklich preiset Gott die Pest.

 

(Plague's contagious murderous breath
God's strong might with terror reveals,
As through the dreary valley of death
With its brotherhood fell it steals!

Fearfully throbs the anguish-struck heart,
Horribly quivers each nerve in the frame;
Frenzy's wild laughs the torment proclaim,
Howling convulsions disclose the fierce smart.

Fierce delirium writhes upon the bed
Poisonous mists hang o'er the cities dead;
Men all haggard, pale, and wan,
To the shadow-realm press on.
Death lies brooding in the humid air,
Plague, in dark graves, piles up treasures fair,
And its voice exultingly raises.
Funeral silence churchyard calm,
Rapture change to dread alarm.
Thus the plague God wildly praises!}

German-American Poet Lisel Mueller is Dead

 Lisel Mueller came to America as a young girl after her family was forced to flee the Nazis.  English was her second language; she managed to master it well enough to win the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1997.  She died in her adopted city of Chicago yesterday at the age of 96.

"Lisel Mueller fled Germany at 15 and came to America, where she wrote in her poem “Curriculum Vitae”:

“In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually

I caught up with them.”

She caught up and more, using her “new language” to craft ravishing poems in English that would win her the Pulitzer Prize and many other literary awards.

“I think it is the poet’s job to find the unconscious spring that unites all people,” she once told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ms. Mueller, who was living at the Admiral at the Lake retirement home, died Friday of aftereffects of pneumonia, according to her daughter Jenny. She was 96.

“She’s a classic American immigrant success story,” her daughter said, “and also the classic story not just of immigrant success but also of refugee contribution to this country’s culture.”"

Here is her 1992 autobiographical poem Curriculum Vitae in its entirety: 

Lisel Mueller - 1924-2020

1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.

2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into 
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of 
course I do not remember this.

3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The 
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.

4) A cornucopia filled with treats took me into a building 
with bells. A wide-bosomed teacher took me in.

5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.

6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones 
and primrose marshes, a short train ride away.

7) My country was struck by history more deadly than 
earthquakes or hurricanes.

8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother 
told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets.

9) I moved into the too bright days, the too dark nights 
of adolescence.

10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun 
and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents stayed 
behind in darkness.

11) In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually 
I caught up with them.

12) When I met you, the new language became the language 
of love.

13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry. 
The daughter became a mother of daughters.

14) Ordinary life: the plenty and thick of it. Knots tying 
threads to everywhere. The past pushed away, the future left 
unimagined for the sake of the glorious, difficult, passionate 
present.

15) Years and years of this.

16) The children no longer children. An old man's pain, an 
old man's loneliness.

17) And then my father too disappeared.

18) I tried to go home again. I stood at the door to my 
childhood, but it was closed to the public.

19) One day, on a crowded elevator, everyone's face was younger 
than mine.

20) So far, so good. The brilliant days and nights are 
breathless in their hurry. We follow, you and I.

A Poem for Winter: Mörike - An einem Wintermorgen vor Sonnenaufgang

In this poem Eduard Mörike (number 6 of the Top Ten German Poets) captures perfectly that moment between sleep and waking, when the mind is still in a dreamlike state.  The poem also has one of the most beautiful opening lines in all of German poetry - O flaumenleichte Zeit der dunkeln Frühe! - poorly translated as  "O downy-soft time of early morning darkness!".  In the winter darkness the mind is all potential and anticipation (Dem Eindruck naher Wunderkräfte offen) . But the poetic persona  (lyrisches ich) is still captivated by the dream images which swim in his mind like goldfish in a pond (Goldfarbgen Fischlein gleich im Gartenteiche). Soon the mind is slowly awakened to the outside wolrd as the sounds of Christmas begin to fill the darkness, and the dream suddenly vanishes ( Es ist ein Augenblick, und alles wird verwehn!) Throughout the poem the 21-year-old Mörike makes creative use of metaphor  (Kristall ,Gürtel blauer Luft,Goldfarbgen Fischlein, lichte Feenreiche) including an astonishing,  erotically-charged image of "half-opened purple lip" as the sun rises on the horizon (Die Purpurlippe, die geschlossen lag / Haucht, halbgeöffnet, süsse Atemzüge).  Daylight has displaced the dream, the sun begins its royal flight and the poet is now in full command of his creative power ("Der Genius jauchzt in mir!"). 

An einem Wintermorgen vor Sonnenaufgang

O flaumenleichte Zeit der dunkeln Frühe!
Welch neue Welt bewegest du in mir?
Was ist's, dass ich auf einmal nun in dir
Von sanfter Wollust meines Daseins glühe?

Einem Kristall gleicht meine Seele nun,
Den noch kein falscher Strahl des Lichts getroffen;
Zu fluten scheint mein Geist, er scheint zu ruhn,
Dem Eindruck naher Wunderkräfte offen,
Die aus dem klaren Gürtel blauer Luft
Zuletzt ein Zauberwort vor meine Sinne ruft.

Bei hellen Augen glaub ich doch zu schwanken;
Ich schliesse sie, dass nicht der Traum entweiche.
Seh ich hinab in lichte Feenreiche?
Wer hat den bunten Schwarm von Bildern und Gedanken
Zur Pforte meines Herzens hergeladen,
Die glänzend sich in diesem Busen baden,
Goldfarbgen Fischlein gleich im Gartenteiche?

Ich höre bald der Hirtenflöten Klänge,
Wie um die Krippe jener Wundernacht,
Bald weinbekränzter Jugend Lustgesänge;
Wer hat das friedenselige Gedränge
In meine traurigen Wände hergebracht?

Und welch Gefühl entzückter Stärke,
Indem mein Sinn sich frisch zur Ferne lenkt!
Vom ersten Mark des heutgen Tags getränkt,
Fühl ich mir Mut zu jedem frommen Werke.
Die Seele fliegt, so weit der Himmel reicht,
Der Genius jauchzt in mir! Doch sage,
Warum wird jetzt der Blick von Wehmut feucht?
Ist's ein verloren Glück, was mich erweicht?
Ist es ein werdendes, was ich im Herzen trage?

Hinweg, mein Geist! hier gilt kein Stillestehn:
Es ist ein Augenblick, und alles wird verwehn!

Dort, sieh, am Horizont lüpft sich der Vorhang schon!
Es träumt der Tag, nun sei die Nacht entflohn;
Die Purpurlippe, die geschlossen lag,
Haucht, halbgeöffnet, süsse Atemzüge:
Auf einmal blitzt das Aug, und, wie ein Gott, der Tag
Beginnt im Sprung die königlichen Flüge!

Poem for the New Year: Andreas Gryphuis Trawrklage des Autoris

The New Year is a time for new beginnings and resolutions, but also a time for reflection.  We think of past New Year celebrations and the passage of time, which seems to gain momentum with each passing year.  The transitory nature of life was the great theme of the Baroque poet and dramatist Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664) who witnessed enough death and destruction in his life.  I've become an admirer of his Sonnets, which, despite the often gruesome themes, somehow offer solace.  One of his most gruesome and self-pitying poems is Trawrklage des Autoris in which the author laments the decay of his own physical being.  Not happy reading, but many of us as we enter a new year can identify with his opening verse : Ich bin nicht/ der ich war/ Die kräffte sind verschwunden! ("I am not that which I was/ my strength is gone!") .  The poet's breathing has become so weak ("Der Athem wil nicht fort) that he no longer has a voice ("die Zung steht angebunden").  Yet we can take comfort that the poet's tongue was not bound and his poem bears witness.  Gryphius often not only imagined the end of life but also the end of the world ("O Erden gutte Nacht!") .  Let us hope that as we enter the new decade we have the resolve to save the planet.

Trawrklage des Autoris (1636)

Ich bin nicht/ der ich war/ Die kräffte sind verschwunden!

Die Glieder sind verdorrt wie ein verbrandter Grauß/

Hier schawt der schwartze Todt zu beyden Augen auß/

Nichts wird als Haut vñ Bein mehr an mir vbrig funden.

Der Athem wil nicht fort; die Zung steht angebunden.

Mein Hertz das vbersteht numehr den letzten Strauß/

Ein jeder/ der mich siht spürt daß das schwache Hauß

Der Leib wird brechen ein/ gar jnner wenig Stunden/

Gleich wie die Wiesenblum früh mit dem Liecht der Welt

Hervor kombt/ vnnd noch eh der Mittag weggeht/ fält;

So bin ich auch benetzt mit Thränentaw ankommen:

So sterb ich vor der Zeit: O Erden gutte Nacht!

Mein Stündlein laufft herbey! nun hab ich außgewacht/

Vnd werde von dem Schlaff des Todes eingenommen!

Mascha Kaléko Ich werde fortgehn im Herbst / I will go in Autumn

The poet Mascha Kaléko was "almost famous" in the early 1930s; her short, witty, whimsical poems perfectly captured the Zeitgeist of the late Weimar Republic.  But as a Jew, she was forced to flee Germany and found sanctuary in New York City, and then later Jerusalem.  Cut off from the air supply of Berlin dialect she struggled to find her lyric voice.  Her later poems are tinged with sadness and loss - loss of her beloved Berlin, loss of her family (she was predeceased by both her husband and her only child).  In the poem Ich werde fortgehn im Herbst she anticipates her death in obscurity - the promise of her youth vanished in the autumn mist.  The poem was published posthumously - she died in 1975 (in winter).

 

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.)