Category: Literature

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Literature Poetry

Frühlingsglaube von Johann Ludwig Uhland (26 April 1787 – 13 November 1862 – Tübingen)

Frühlingsglaube (Faith In Spring)

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Die linden Lüfte sind erwacht,
Sie säuseln und wehen Tag und Nacht,
Sie schaffen an allen Enden.
O frischer Duft, o neuer Klang!
Nun, armes Herze, sei nicht bang!
Nun muß sich alles, alles wenden.
Die Welt wird schöner mit jedem Tag,
Man weiß nicht, was noch werden mag,
Das Blühen will nicht enden.
Es blüht das fernste, tiefste Tal:
Nun, armes Herz, vergiß der Qual!
Nun muß sich alles, alles wenden.

Faith In Spring

The gentle winds are awakened,
They murmur and waft day and night,
They create in every corner.
Oh fresh scent, oh new sound!
Now, poor dear, fear not!
Now everything, everything must change.
The world becomes more beautiful with each day,
One does not know what may yet happen,
The blooming doesn’t want to end.
The farthest, deepest valley blooms:
Now, poor dear, forget the pain!
Now everything, everything must change.

Johann Ludwig Uhland
images
Categories
Literature Poetry

Gewitter im Winter by Karl Kraus

Gewitter im Winter

Allbekant sind jene Blitze                                                                                                                    Winter2
hergebracht vom blauen Dunst.
Wettern sie durch Sommerhitze,
ist’s Natur und keine Kunst.

Aber wenn im Frost erzittert
jeglicher Naturbesitz,
welch ein Wunder, wie’s gewittert!
Und den Winter traf der Blitz.

• The Kraus Project by Jonathan Franzen is published by Harper Collins on 1 October. To pre-order it for £15.19 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.

There is a review of this at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/13/jonathan-franzen-wrong-modern-world

Clive James on Kraus can be found at http://www.clivejames.com/karl-kraus

Kraus 2

Winter

Ich möcht liegen und schlafen
und schlafen die ewige Ruh
ich wollt’, die Engelein kämen
und drückten die Augen mir zu.

Ich wollt’ ich wollt’ es wär Winter
und Alles in ewigen Schnee,
und Winter, ewiger Winter,
er deckte auch mich und mein Weh.
O Winter, ewiger Winter!
Mir bangt vor der eisigen Ruh

Doch weiss ich, die Engelein kämen
Und drückten die Augen mir zu.

Karl Siebel

Winter1

Categories
Book Reviews Literature

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

PFA major and intelligent novelist like Penelope Fitzgerald has happily become the subject of a sensitive and engaging biographer, Hermione Lee. The result is enthralling; a work which is entertaining, informative and profound. In an earlier essay, A Quiet Ghost, Lee mentions interviewing Fitzgerald on the radio in 1997. Two impressions struck the interviewer. First, how her novels always seemed to leave something unsaid. They contained some mysterious, perhaps even transcendental quality to stimulate the reader’s imagination. On the other hand, Fitzgerald thought that the writer ought not to be impartial and indeed should be clear about her own moral position. This viewpoint drew her to write both eloquently and sympathetically, of those who are born to be defeated, the weakness of the strong and the tragedy of…..missed opportunities.

Penelope Fitzgerald came from an earnest and renowned academic family, the Knoxes, which included several prominent clerics; her grandfather was the Bishop of Manchester. A considerable biographer herself, she wrote a book on the Knox brothers, these included two Oxford pastors (one of whom, Ronald Knox, converted to Catholicism, was famous as a biblical translator and whilst chaplain at Trinity College became a mentor to the future prime minister, Harold Macmillan), a top Bletchley cryptographic analyst and Penelope’s own eminent father, ‘Evoe’ who was editor of Punch. Fitzgerald wrote prolifically from childhood and fulfilled some of these high expectations by gaining a brilliant First at Somerville. Graduating in 1938, she was already known for her membership of the smart set, for her student journalism and a reticent, indeed peremptory manner. Women could not actually graduate at Oxford until a statute was passed in 1920. Hence she was amongst Oxford’s early women graduates. Her striking appearance within the smart set earned her the nickname of the blonde bombshell.PF5

Hermione Lee usefully reminds her readers of other contemporary writers throughout her account; that Iris Murdoch was to arrive at Somerville in 1939. A.S.Byatt is referred to somewhat wryly and the influences of Rose Macaulay and Stevie Smith as friends outlined. This is an unashamedly literary biography and wonderfully so. The importance of the Georgian poets and the Poetry Bookshop in Bloomsbury to Charlotte Mew, whose biography Fitzgerald’s wrote, are entertainingly conveyed. Hermione Lee conveys her subject’s deep capacity for diligent background research and put this across deftly. Her account too shows great depth of feeling for the plight of that generation of women who had to face both the devastation of bombing and the scars of war on men like her husband, Desmond, who had fought bravely in Italy with the Irish Guards. Post traumatic stress was not then fully recognised. Her attempts to cope with his drunkenness and criminality and still look after her three children underline Penelope Fitzgerald’s tenacity and courage.

During the Blitz, Fitzgerald was writing as a recording assistant at the ocean liner of Broadcasting House. The courage shown by the staff, their tasks and relationships, quarrels and difficulties became the material for her novel, Human Voices. This work showed her ear for conversation, propaganda and announcements. Not only was this a war where radio played a historical role in rallying the nation, it broadcast De Gaulle’s speeches to invigorate the Free French. Hermione Lee is magnificently instructive on how the writer’s experiences are turned into a thought-provoking novel.

Hermione Lee
Hermione Lee

In the early fifties Desmond Fitzgerald, then an Irish lawyer, became the editor of an influential literary review. However, Penelope provided the drive behind the international World Review. This project was successful in publishing a panoply of significant authors including major figures like Bertrand Russell and Walter de La Mare as well as the about to become successful J.D.Salinger. Not only did this publication crumble in this era of austerity but it seemed to herald the most distressing period of her career. Although, she was associated in two great enlightened projects that many will recall; BBC school broadcasting and writing for Marcus Morris who brought out the Eagle, Girl and Swift. Not the least of the pleasures of perusing this book is the facsimile reproductions, little drawings and evocative photographs.

The difficulties which the Fitzgerald family faced in the early Sixties culminated in the sinking of the houseboat on which they were living in Battersea. This and the consequent homelessness are heart-rending to read. However, the resulting novel, Offshore was to win her the Booker Prize in 1979. Her greatest work is considered to be her short enigmatic historical novel, The Blue Flower (1995). It retells the entrancing love story of the German Romantic poet, Novalis. Hermione Lee’s exposition of this short work is a tour de force in itself. To conclude, this is a marvellous biography that shows how Fitzgerald’s remarkable determination finally gained her recognition in her sixties. Author and subject demonstrate the same exuberant curiosity.

The poet Novalis -about whom "The Blue Flower" is concerned
The poet Novalis -about whom “The Blue Flower” is concerned
Categories
Art and Photographic History Book Reviews Literature

Inventing the Enemy: Essays on Everything by Umberto Eco

Imagine a sumptuous Italian feast in the sunlit bathed ancient countryside near Milan. Next to you a gentleman talks and eats with furious energy. He tells of Dante, Cicero, and St Augustine and quotes a multitude of obscure troubadours from the Middle Ages. He repeats himself, gestures flamboyantly, nudges you sharply in the ribs, belches and even breaks wind. His conversation contains nuggets of information but in the flow of his discourse there is a fondness for iteration and reiteration. He throws bones over his shoulder and when he reaches the cheese course. Definitely, too much information on the mouldy bacteria! When you finally get up things the elderly gentleman has said prompts your imagination. You are better informed, intrigued and prodded to examine his discourse again and again, even if only to challenge what you have heard. Such are the effects of reading Eco’s essays in “Inventing the Enemy”.

Eco1

The first essay, discloses what your choice of opponent or indeed those you victimise says about yourself. Eco splendidly quotes from Cicero’s Orations against Catiline lecturing the Senate on his opponent’s seditious moral perversity. Within a few pages we read of Pliny, the Younger on his persecution of Christians, Odo of Cluny’s disgust with women and, time and again more poisonous invective against the Jews. The reader will recall Peter Porter or perhaps, Cavafy:-

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.

Since theology is never distant from Umberto Eco’s thought there is an echo of the unkindness mentioned in Matthew Chap45 v25” And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

This eclectic collection covers matters as varied as St Thomas Aquinas on whether Embryos have souls to this famous cultural critic’s latest thoughts on Wikileaks. The philosophical chapter comparing Absolute and Relativism is particularly interesting. Touching on questions about the nature of contingency, the verification principle, positivism and post-modernism Eco provides the reader, given an interest in such matters, plenty to stimulate the little grey cells. Significantly, he mentions how Pope John Paul II thought modern philosophy had become dominated by questions about the theory of knowledge rather than issues about the nature of being (ontology). The orphic resonances of Mallarmé’s symbolic communication, Kafka’s opinions on interacting with the Absolute, quoted by Elie Wiesel, and Nietzsche’s advocacy of the subtlety of art all get a mention. This is not an easy read; it is indeed something of an intellectual tour de force.

Eco 2

The lengthy chapter concerning Victor Hugo, The Poetics of Excess begins by outlining Gide and Cocteau’s concern that the writer’s insufferable style is thoroughly bombastic. However, Eco is entranced by Hugo’s lengthy descriptions, his penchant for making lists and constructing unstable rough-hewn characters. Frequently Eco seems attracted by the ugliness and brutality that conveys the cruel forces of destiny which characterise Hugo’s highly romantic writing. Memorably, the guillotine on its rough wooden scaffold with its glinting sharp blade becomes a devouring beast. Umberto Eco concentrates on Hugo’s novel about revolution and reaction, [[Ninety Three]] where the lengthy lists of villages, crossings and homesteads provide the reader with a convincing panorama of the scale of the social upheaval. Redemption it seems to Hugo, quoting de Maistre, necessitates human sacrifice. Eco is explaining how in becoming more radical by 1870 and supporting the Communards he feels too he must justify The Terror. This engaging chapter with the portrayal of the Royalist Vendée, led by the clergy and by peasants who were chosen in each locale, cost more than 240,000 lives. The trendy professor convinces us of the necessity of reading Hugo’s inimitable contribution to the historical novel. Even attempting a few selected paragraphs in French would prove a rewarding challenge!

umberto_eco

Plunging deeper into this very varied collection, “Inventing the Enemy”, the reader becomes beguiled by Eco’s verbal fire display. The chapter on [[Imaginary Astronomies ]]delves into the curiosities of approaches, ancient and modern to explain the structure and shape of the firmament. First as a glorious tabernacle progressively he illustrates cosmologies linked with how man’s inventions alter too his conception of himself and society. Humour and irony are freely sprinkled through the text which leaps into convolutions that mirror the Ptolemaic system of epicycles of the planets that are described. The story is enlivened too by an engaging display of strange maps. By the end of these essays, the reader will have a sense of the strange, entertaining pleasure of Umberto Eco’s company and an introduction to the diversity of ingenuity and fun to be found among otherwise neglected archives.

Two other interesting links are this Guardian Review by Nicholas Lezard is at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/27/nicholas-lezard-inventing-enemy-umberto-eco

and an interview with Jeremy Paxman is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLblYsHc7uI

Categories
Literature Uncategorized

A beautiful Poem by Georg Heym

Entblättertem AbendrotGeorg Heym 1887-1912

Meine Seele ist eine Schlange,
Die ist schon lange tot,
Nur manchmal in Herbstesmorgen,
Entblättertem Abendrot
Wachse ich steil aus dem Fenster,
Wo fallende Sterne sind,
Über den Blumen und Kressen
Meine Stirne spiegelt
Im stöhnenden Nächte-Wind.

More at http://ingeb.org/Lieder/

Entblättertem Abendrot2

Categories
Book Reviews Literature Uncategorized

Russian Stories by Francesc Serés -A Review

imagesRP2This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is the product of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translation. Francisco Guillen Serés is a Catalan professor of Art History from Aragon. A Russophile, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan and then into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some 21 of them written by 5 writers read fluently and engagingly. They form an informative tapestry of Soviet and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with the older, earlier writers like Bergchenko, who died in the siege of Stalingrad, at the end.  Ranging over mythic and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals of personal relationships; love Trysts in St Petersberg, ferocious bears in the deep heart of the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recounted.

downloadKP1

In the preface Russian translator, Anastasia Maximova, sets the changing scene in an industrial suburb where she grew up in the 1990s. The esplanade in front of steel blast furnaces is littered with defunct statues of Stalin and Lenin about to be reprocessed. Unforgettable, is her description of the trucked in lines of heads made from incredibly tough alloys. These are so durable that a special technique must be evolved such that the heads must be drilled with holes, and then buried below ground where inserted explosive charges are necessary to blow them apart. Throughout these stories, such descriptions also represent hazardous transitions in Russian society, the effects on individuals are sometimes stultifying, often painful but also meliorated and transformed by generosity, friendship and kindness.

The first two authors, both of whom are women, born in 1967 and 1949 respectively, deal with personal issues against the backdrop of economic failure and authoritarian misrule. In Low Cost Life, Low Cost Love, Ola Yevgueniyeva writes of the sad and drab lives of the ground staff hostesses on the Russian airline, SAS outside St Petersburg. There is a feeling of being unable to attain the attractive standards of the more fortunate western European crews. Even the bus transport to the airfield has hard wooden benches and the roads contain bumps and potholes. This disappointed sadness creeps into relationships with men; low self-esteem leading to lowered expectation of their dates. A sorrowful but somehow poetic realism penetrates this writer’s stories. She writes too of resurgent nobility in St Petersburg’s great houses by the Neva which have survived the revolution, war and famine. In “The Russian Doll’s House” the ardent but impoverished Juri must wait for years distanced from the aristocratic and beautiful Mia. She must marry an oafish industrialist in accordance with her family’s demands. The story is written in a spell bounding, elegant style that brings out the tragedy of restricted, almost unrequited love.51DKTx6AjlL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_SX385_SY500_CR,0,0,385,500_SH20_OU02_

These stories have all been carefully chosen and reminiscent of the language and tradition in which Chekhov and Gorky once wrote. Indeed the book is dedicated to Mikhail Bulgakov. There are tragic-comic stories about the possibility that Elvis might have sung in Red Square, of the last lonely hours of an orbiting spaceman suffering the consequences of yet another system failure. Here then is a parable of a superpower in a state of freefall. The terrible ecological disasters of the Aral Sea and Chernobyl are treated. The latter portraying the return of an old, yet determined, couple to the dangers of an irradiated countryside and how their dutiful daughter is torn between fulfilling their wishes and what she thinks is their imminent demise.

downloadFrancesc SerésAs the tales pass backwards along the brutal path of Soviet history, misplaced idealism and naivety are revealed. “The Russian Road ”  long, hot and dusty finds the exhausted revolutionary Akaki returning the many versts to his home village. When he arrives he finds that among the peasants in the countryside little if anything has changed. His attempts to persuade folk there that in exchange for their potatoes they will receive a transforming new culture are met with astonished disbelief. Curious, thought-provoking and allegorical, Volkov’s “The War against the Voromians” tells of a peculiar area where there is a gravitational field anomaly. The inhabitants are subject to a corresponding increase in weight, have thicker necks and an affection for their homeland. They sadly become subject to state sponsored research and suspicion by the authorities. Population dispersal is forced upon these unfortunate Voromians, victims of external manipulation that seems to prevail in so many of  these accounts.

Kafka once wrote, “A book should become an axe for the frozen sea within us.” This collection, carefully selected, fulfils such a criterion. They have the transformative edge of original writing.

Further details at http://www.lletra.net/en/author/francesc-seres

Categories
Literature Poetry Uncategorized

The Walk; A collection of short stories by Robert Walser

Newly published collection
Newly published collection

The publication of this collection of around forty short stories from Serpent’s Tail books affords the English speaking public a unique opportunity; that of reading Walser, possibly the leading modernist writer of Swiss German in the last century. He has received high praise in A Place in the Country, W.G.Sebald’s recently published posthumous collection and he is well-known as being a significant influence on Franz Kafka. His work here dates from 1907 to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlin’s avant garde. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism of brash commercialism. The fine writing in this volume strives to achieve a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges the reader and provokes him to new insights.

Referring to Walser’s ten page account, Kleist in Thun, written in 1913 Susan Sontag in her introduction states, “Wasler often writes from the point of view of a casualty of the romantic visionary imagination”. Walser describes how Kleist, an intense poet of High German Romanticism arrives in a villa in the beautiful Bernese Oberland. Kleist is overwhelmed and disturbed by his own response to what appears to him as the artificiality of his surroundings, as though it were all a sketch by a clever scene painter in an album with green covers. “Which is appropriate. The foothills at the lake’s edge are so half-and-half green, so high, so fragrant”. The changes in the weather and the seasons are portrayed as Kleist struggles with his own historical writings which he is forced to destroy over and over. This piece portrays with sensitivity Kleist’s struggle for the peaceful moments when he can feel again the outright happiness of a child. All that now remains is a plaque on the wall to commemorate the poet’s visit.

Robert Walser, Swiss poet and writer
Robert Walser, Swiss poet and writer

Written over an extensive period these tales vary in tone from the surreal “Trousers” to the strange voyage of a captain, a gentleman and a young girl over the luminous course of the Elbe in “Balloon Journey”. In the more psychologically interesting “Helbling’s Story”, a bank clerk finds that he is feckless in time keeping and prefers the self-forgetfulness of dancing. His pursuit of his lively fiancée reveals that her sweetness tempered by her faithlessness. He seems caught between how he is perceived by his colleagues at the bank and his deep yearnings for isolation to the point of oblivion. There is a degree of Weltschmerz in some of these tales but worth the effort. Gradually, they repay the reader with their strange charm.

The longest story of sixty pages, “The Walk”, is an account of the writer venturing forth in his English yellow suit and recording his strongly felt impressions of the people, countryside and architecture that he encounters on a fine morning. As he gets into his stride, he remarks,” Spirits with enchanting shapes and garments emerged vast and soft, and the country road shone sky-blue, and white and precious gold”. Written in 1917, it also reveals his impressions of noisy cars passing by and of intrusive advertising in all its brashness contrasting with this rural idyll. He visits the post office, his tailor and goes to pay his taxes. Nothing escapes his eye, wild strawberry bushes, rivulets, the innocent play of children, honest black-jet dogs and he is almost hypersensitively given to reflect too upon the impression he makes upon others. Into this prose poem enter curious character like the odd lanky beanpole of a fellow called, Tomzack, who travels restlessly and devoid of human connection. Then with Swiss punctuality he dines with a cordial gracious lady that had previously been an actress. His self-justification and need for recognition attain huge and angry proportions when he negotiates his tax payments and it is at this point that his writing brings Kafka to mind. Out of this dense writing emerge passages with a sense of monumental grandeur and an awareness of transcending grace.

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In addition to his value as a great writer, Robert Walser also affords the delights of entering a past world, that of Switzerland, a land isolated by the partial protection of its neutrality. The elegance of this past together with his sensitive impressions, including the already crowding and wearying pressures of commercialism, adds an extra level of piquancy. Joseph Roth, a well-known contemporary who also had a developed taste for irony, on arrival in Berlin, wrote in 1921, “The diminutive of the parts is more impressive than the monumentality of the whole”. In Walser’s writing we continually encounter this same fascination with the fine entrancing detail of small and beautiful things.

The cover image by August Sander shows three smartly dressed young farmers in Westerwald, although not entirely appropriate, makes an elegant jacket to these varied stories of imagination and vision.

A You Tube programme for German speakers is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twMopurvK8g  Portrait und Erinnerungen

Berlin Stories Another available selection
Berlin Stories
Another available selection
Categories
Literature Uncategorized

NIGHTHAWKS nach Edward Hopper’s Bild – Wolf Wondratschek

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Es ist Nacht

Und die Stadt ist Leer.

Die Glücklichen sind zu Hause

oder noch wahrscheinlicher,

es gibt keine mehr.

Auf Hoppers Bild sind vier Menschen übriggebleiben,

sozusagen die Standardbesetzsung:

der Mann hintererm Tresen zwei Männer und eine Frau.

Kunstfreunde, Ihr könnt mich steinigen

aber diese Situation kenne ziemlich genau.

Zwei Männer und eine Frau,

als ob das ein Zufall wäre-

Ihr bewundert den Bildaufbau,

mich packt das Lustgefühl einer

volkommenen Leere

Geredet wird nichts, was auch?

Beide rauchen sie aber nirgendwo Rauch.

Ich wette, sie hat ihm einen Brief geschreiben.

Was auch immer drin stand, er ist nicht Mehr der Mann,

ihre Briefe zweimal zu lesen.

Das Radio ist Kaputt,

Die Air-condition dröhnt,

Ich höre das Heulen einer Polizeisirene.

Zwei Ecken weiter steht im Hauseingang ein Fixer,

stöht und sticht eine Nadel in die Vene.

So sieht das aus, was man nicht sieht.

Der andere Mann ist allein

und erinnert sich an eine Frau,

auch eine in einem roten Kleid.

Es ist eine Ewigkeiter.

Es gefällt ihm, daß es solche Frauen noch gibt,

aber es interessiert ihn nicht mehr.

Wie könnte es damals

zwischen ihnen gewesen sein?

Ich wette,er wollte sie haben.

Sie sagte, ich wette: “Nein“.

Keinwunder Kunstfreunde,

daß dieser Mann Euch den Rücken zudreht.

More information at http://mapyourinfo.com/wiki/en.wikipedia.org/Nighthawks/ a Mind/Concept Map

Soir Bleu http://mapyourinfo.com/wiki/en.wikipedia.org/Nighthawks/
Soir Bleu
http://mapyourinfo.com/wiki/en.wikipedia.org/Nighthawks/
Hopper.self-portrait
Hopper.self-portrait
Categories
Literature Uncategorized

Else Lasker-Schüler; Es gibt Worte, die sich dem Herzen des Lesers für immer einweben werden

Ein alter Tibetteppich

images

Deine Seele, die die meine liebet,
Ist verwirkt mit ihr im Teppichtibet.Strahl in Strahl, verliebte Farben,
Sterne, die sich himmellang umwarben.Unsere Füße ruhen auf der Kostbarkeit,
Maschentausendabertausendweit.Süßer Lamasohn auf Moschuspflanzenthron,
Wie lange küßt dein Mund den meinen wohl
Und Wang die Wange buntgeknüpfte Zeiten schon?

http://lyrik.antikoerperchen.de/else-lasker-schueler-ein-alter-tibetteppich,textbearbeitung,145.html

Else Lasker Schüler “Du machst mich traurig-hör” gesungen von Mieze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kySme9eIHXI

 

mp0Xi3IjuT93uw_ChLwZ3og

Katja Ebstein http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUWxsciDyvw

c

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Das Gebet

Ich suche allerlanden eine Stadt,

Die einen Engel vor der Pforte hat.

Ich trage seinengrossenFlügel

Gebrochen schwer am Schulterblatt

Und inder Stirne seinenStern als Siegel.

Und Wandle immer in die Nacht …

Ich habe Liebe in die Welt gebracht –

Dass blau zublühen jedes Herz vermag,

Und hab ein Leben müde mich gewacht,

In Gott gehüllt dendunklen Atemschlag.

O Gott,schliess um mich deinen Mantel fest;

Ichweiss, ich bin im Kugelglas der Rest,

Undwennder letzte Mensch die Welt vergiesst,

Du mich nicht wieder aus der allmacht lässt

Und sich einneuer Erdball um mich schliesst.

images (9)

Categories
Literature Poetry Uncategorized

The Home is the Word Itself;Rose Ausländer 1901-1988

 

 

 

Wort an Wort

 

Wir wohnen

Wort an Wort

 

Sag mir

dein liebstes

Freund

 

meines heißt

DU

Kirsten Krick-Aigner  of the Jewish Women’s Archive  writes of Rose Ausländer, “a German-speaking Jewish poet from Czernowitz/Bukovina who spent much of her life in exile in the United States and Germany, wrote that her true home was the word itself.”

There is a very useful biography at http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/auslander-rose. Her poems are short, aphoristic and beautiful. There is some more about her life at http://www.tierradenadie.de/archivo6/rosebiographie.htm and also in German at http://www.ursulahomann.de/RoseAuslaender/ and in considerable detail at http://www.literaturepochen.at/exil/

 

Das Schönste

Ich flüchte

in dein Zauberzelt

Liebe

Im atmenden Wald

wo Grasspitzen

sich verneigen

weil

es nichts Schöneres gibt

Which might be very freely translated thus:-

The very best thing

I seek the protection of your magic tent my love,

Beneath the whispering forest,

Where the springy grass bows under us;

Nothing is more beautiful……

Regenwörter

Regenwörter

überfluten mich

Von Tropfen aufgesogen

in die Wolken geschwemmt

ich regne

in den offenen

Scharlachmund

des Mohns

Rain-words

Are overwhelming me

So that absorbed into droplets

into the floating clouds

I rain

into the open mouth of the scarlet poppy                                                            

It is worth pausing at this point to view some old postcards of the elegant, fascinating city of Czernowitz, Rose’s home city and also that of the celebrated poet Paul Celan. These are on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkR7JGthjwk&list=HL1352998582&feature=mh_lolz

Czernowitz before the Second World War

Peaceful hill town
encircled by beech woods

Willows along the Pruth
rafts and swimmers

Maytime profusion of lilac

About the lanterns
May bugs dance
their death

Four languages
Speak to each other
enrich the air

The town
breathed happily
till bombs fell

Rose Ausländer translated by Vincent Homolka

Czernowitz vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

Friedliche Hügelstadt
von Buchenwäldern umschlossen

Weiden entlang dem Pruth
Flösse und Schwimmer

Maifliederfülle

um die Lanterner
tanzen Maikäfer
ihren Tod

Vier Sprachen
verständigen sich
verwöhnen die Luft

Bis Bomben fielen
atmete glücklich
die Stadt

This translation comes from a Poetry in Translation website where there are further engaging comments on Rose Ausländer at http://poetryintranslation.org/category/german/

Manchmal spricht ein Baum …

Manchmal spricht ein Baum

durch das Fenster mir Mut zu

Manchmal leuchtet ein Buch

als Stern auf meinem Himmel

manchmal ein Mensch,

den ich nicht kenne,

der meine Worte erkennt.

Sometimes a tree speaks…….

Sometimes a tree speaks

to me through the window courage which

Sometimes lights a book

like a star in my sky, and

Sometimes a person

whom I do not know,

recognises my words.

Loneliness I

My pores suck it up
until it’s evenly distributed
throughout my body

Days ceaselessly tattoo
lines upon my cheeks
signs none but the sibyl
can interpret

My friends are sewn up
their breath inaccessible
upon their lips there hangs a colourless flag:
a frosty smile

When I turn around
I see footprints
trailing away in the sand

The windmill on the horizon
moves its sails in time
to a lullaby
It’s time
to put an end to solitude
with bed and sleep

Rose Ausländer    (translation by Vincent Homolka)

Einsamkeit I

Die Poren saugen sie auf
bis sie im ganzen Körper
gleichmäßig verteilt ist

Tage tätowieren
unablässig Linien
in die Wange
Zeichen die nur die Sibylle
deuten kann

Die Freunde sind zugenäht
man kommt nicht heran an ihren Atem
auf ihren Lippen hängt eine farblose Fahne:
frostiges Lächeln

Wenn man sich umwendet
sieht man Fußspuren die
sich verlaufen im Sand

Die Mühle am Horizont
bewegt die Arme nach dem Pulsschlag eines
Wiegenlieds
Es ist Zeit
dem Alleinsein ein Ende zu bereiten
und schlafen zu gehn

Czernowitz is situated in the area known as Bukovnia and its complex history is quite remarkable; once part of Poland-Lithuania, as Galicia, Moldavia it has an extremely varied population. For example, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukovina we read that in the late Eighteenth Century,” The Austrian Empire occupied Bukovina in October 1774. Following the first partition of Poland in 1772, the Austrians claimed that they needed it for a road between Galicia and Transylvania. Bukovina was formally annexed in January 1775. On 2 July 1776, at Palamutka, Austrians and Ottomans signed a border convention, Austrians giving back 59 of the previously occupied villages, and remaining with 278 villages.”

Tensions over identity, unsurprisingly, following the difficult history remain:-

“The fact that Romanians and Moldovans were presented as separate categories in the census results, has been criticized by the Romanian Community of Ukraine – Interregional Union, which complains that this old Soviet-era practice, results in the Romanian population being undercounted, as being divided between Romanians and Moldovans.”

 

Mit fremden Augen

Mit fremden Augen

kommt der Morgen

mit den vertrauten Augen

der Fremde

kommt der Mittag

mächtig sein Licht

die Fremde mächtig

morgens mittags

und abends

melden sich Stimmen

mit dunklem Klang

der Fremde

altbekanntem Klang

Der Mond lodert rot

auf den Lippen

des Fiebernden

Hörst nachts

das Echo

wenn deine Stimme schläft

erkennst den Körper

die schwarze Wange

aus blauen Poren

fremd vertraut