Kleist

The Tragedy of Fate and the Tragedy of Culture: Heinrich von Kleist’s The Schroffenstein Family

On 21st November 1811, on a lake’s edge near Potsdam, a 34 year old Kleist shot himself dead in a suicide pact with his terminally ill lover. He left behind him just under a decade of intense literary output which has established him as one of the most important writers of the German romantic period. On the bicentenary of his death, Kleist scholar Steven Howe explores the importance of his first dramatic work and how in it can be seen the themes of his later masterpieces.

Chalk-drawing reproduction of a now lost miniature which Peter Friedel made in 1801 to be presented to Kleist's fiancée at the time Wilhelmine von Zenge

Heinrich von Kleist is without doubt one of the most challenging figures in German literary history. In a career lasting a little under a decade, from 1802 through to his premature death in 1811, he produced a remarkable body of creative work that radically called into question the prevailing intellectual, aesthetic and ethical orthodoxies of the age. Today, Kleist is perhaps most familiar, certainly to British audiences, as the dramatist behind the violently tragic Penthesilea and the brilliantly enigmatic The Prince of Homburg, and as the author of a series of daring and dramatic short stories, including Michael Kohlhaas, The Marquise of O…, and The Earthquake in Chile. Altogether less well-known, however (notwithstanding Eric Bentley’s adaptation in German Requiem), is his first major literary production, the five act play The Schroffenstein Family, published in 1803. Aside from a brief premiere at the National Theatre in Graz in January 1804, the drama found little immediate resonance, and it has traditionally been regarded as belonging to the second class of the author’s imaginative work. Kleist, for his part, also seems to have attached little value to the piece, referring to it in a letter to his sister, Ulrike, as a ‘wretched botched job’. That the drama suffers from the defects one might expect of the first work of a young poet is a point that few would demur: the language is overwrought, the plot convoluted, and the entire exposition lacks the refined touch which Kleist was later to perfect. That being said, the play nonetheless contains a number of scenes and episodes which provide an early glimpse of the author’s promise and genius, and introduces several of the most significant themes and features which were to subsequently become a hallmark of his poetics.
The action of the drama revolves around the conflict between the rival houses of Rossitz and Warwand, and the fate of two star-crossed lovers, Ottokar and Agnes. The imaginative debt to Romeo and Juliet is plain to see, and Kleist hews closely to the model of Shakespeare’s tragedy, though with one significant variation – the two feuding houses are here different branches of the same family. The origins of the conflict extend from a testamentary contract, according to which the property of either house should fall to the other branch if the line of descent is broken. This breeds an atmosphere of mistrust, as both houses suspect one another of pursuing its demise, and particularly that of its heirs. When the younger son of Count Rupert, head of the Rossitz branch of the family, dies in unexplained circumstances, his suspicions thus fall directly on his counterpart, Count Sylvester, and the drama opens with him compelling his immediate family to swear an oath of bloody and absolute vengeance against the entire house of Warwand.

The cast of characters of Die Familie Schroffenstein as featured in a 1922 collection of Kleist's works for the stage.

The tragic trajectory of the play is set by the issue that Ottokar, the elder son of Rupert, partakes in this oath-swearing, unaware that the girl with whom he has fallen in love, Agnes, is the daughter of Sylvester. Once alerted to the fact, he is convinced by Agnes of her father’s innocence in the matter of the child’s death and attempts to negotiate a reconciliation between the warring counts. His efforts are thwarted, however, by Rupert’s burning hatred for Sylvester and his untameable lust for revenge. Upon learning of his son’s clandestine affair, Rupert resolves to murder Agnes, and when the two lovers secretly meet at a mountain cave, he and his vassal, Santing, accost them. In an attempt to deceive his father and protect his beloved, Ottokar exchanges clothes with Agnes; failing to note the switch in the darkness, Rupert stabs his own son to death, whereupon the presently arriving Sylvester follows suit by murdering Agnes in the mistaken belief that she is Ottokar. Ironically – or perhaps appropriately – it falls to the blind grandfather, Sylvius, to recognise the true identities of the two victims and reveal the double filicide. At the play’s end, an old widow, Ursula, discloses the true state of affairs, namely that Rupert’s son’s death was accidental – he drowned in a forest brook. With the misunderstanding resolved, a despairing reconciliation follows, and the drama closes with the mad-driven bastard son of the Rossitz house, Johann, addressing Ursula as master and personification of fate.
That the mechanisms of fate and chance do serve as an important motor for the action of the drama is very much an accepted commonplace in interpretive criticism. In his personal letters, Kleist reveals a fascination with the unknowable powers of contingency and coincidence that intrude upon and shape the life of the individual, and such concerns penetrate to the core of many of his literary works: time and again, he confronts his characters with situations over which they have no control and to which they must then react. In Schroffenstein, chance happenings are heaped upon one another in such a way as to both blunt much of the originality of the constellation, and to strain reader credulity after the fashion of the Gothic tale – it is not without reason that Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk has been cited as a possible source of inspiration. The outcome is a demonstration of the operations of fate and contingency which, viewed in a narrow sense, seems at times laboured and contrived. The design of the inquiry is, however – in a further parallel to Romeo and Juliet – overlaid with a deeper disquisition on the limitations of human awareness. Ursula’s laconic words to Rupert and Sylvester, ‘If you kill one another, it is an error’, acquire, in this context, special relevance, pointing as they do towards the movement of error and the instances of misunderstanding that drive the action to its tragic close. Here one can detect the influence of Kleist’s encounter with Kantian philosophy, which appears to have shattered his faith in the possibilities of absolute truth and knowledge. The fallibility of perception emerges, as a consequence, as a dominant theme and subject of reflection in Kleist’s work, and remains so across his entire literary corpus. In Schroffenstein, this manifests itself through the frequent recurrence of error and confusion, bred by the characters’ inability to communicate and their attendant susceptibility to misreading reality. Typically, Kleist drives the issue towards aesthetic extremes, crafting an enveloping atmosphere of illusion, deceit and suspicion within the extended family which, in turn, calls forth gruesome acts of vengeance and retributive violence. In this regard, the drama can perhaps be seen as the most Jacobean and Sturm und Drang-like of Kleist’s works – as a grizzly, though at times darkly comedic, exploration of the workings of fate and the human capacity for misunderstanding, and of their effects in unleashing man’s violent potentialities.

Kleist's grave alongside that of Henrietta Vogel, his terminally ill lover whom he shot before shooting himself in a suicide pact on the banks of Kleiner Wannsee near Potsdam. The inscription on Kleist's grave reads 'Now, oh immortality, you are all mine'.
(Photo by Jochen Jansen, published under a CC-BY-SA license).

It would be misleading, however, to suggest that the tragedy be approached solely through the lens of metaphysical and epistemological concerns. For the very issue of error that stands at the heart of the drama raises the question of interpretation, and with it that of the extent to which cultural and social codes give shape to the individual’s understandings and perceptions. In particular, the text displays how the nature of the conflict between the two houses fosters a socially-conditioned prejudice that colours and impairs judgement, and which speaks to a deeper cultural critique embedded within the drama. The major point of reference and orientation here is Jean-Jacques Rousseau who, in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, both put into question the Enlightenment faith in human progress and delivered a searing assault on the conditions of modernity. The opening scene of the play already bears the mark of Rousseau’s sway: when Rupert’s wife, Eustache, refers to her natural feminine tenderness in response to his calls for her to swear the oath of vengeance, he objects, ‘Nothing more of nature. It is but a sweet, delightful fairytale from childhood’. What follows does so under the sign of Rousseau’s condemnation of man’s fall from natural goodness into socio-moral decay: the terms of the inheritance contract, for instance, as both agent and symbol of the conflict between Rupert and Sylvester, casts into relief the lure of wealth and property, the original idée fixe, which Rousseau identifies as a root cause of modern inequality and conditions of violence. In its presentation of the trials of the lovers, meanwhile, the text also plays on the anthropology of identity laid down in the Discourse, in which the dilemma of man’s ruinous modernity is diagnosed in terms of the tensions between subject and world. In this instance, that dilemma is telescoped through the relationship between love and society, with Ottokar in particular forced to struggle with the contrast between the demands of his father and his feelings for Agnes. In such a way, the text also points to a modern view of identity as an active positioning of the self in relation to cultural discourses – a theme to which Kleist was to frequently return, perhaps most notably in his portrayal of the cross-cultural relationships between Gustav and Toni in The Betrothal in St. Domingo, and between Achilles and Penthesilea in the drama of the latter name.
These fundamental tensions between nature and culture, between individual and society, serve as a central axis for the greater part of Kleist’s literary oeuvre, and it is perhaps in this sense, above all, that Schroffenstein can be seen to point the way towards his later – and greater – dramatic achievements. On the one hand, his works dwell on the onslaught of fate that upsets the secure ideals of enlightenment rationalism; on the other, however, this aspect is only ever a corollary to a deeper sense of the cultural rift between subject and world, and the attendant instabilities of agency and identity. Behind this lies the experience of the French Revolution and the turmoil it left in its wake, as existing hierarchies of power and status collapsed, and Europe was plunged into a period of instability and conflict. Against this backdrop, Kleist, like so many of his Romantic contemporaries, critically explores the paradigms of eighteenth-century humanist discourse, taking up the tensions and paradoxes embedded therein and exhibiting them in the full light of his imagination. In particular, it is the complex relationship between nature and culture to which he time and again returns, with most of his texts turning upon an exploration of the psychological and moral conflicts between the individual and his or her environment. Frequently, such struggles escalate to a sudden unleashing of the self, to acts of violent rebellion or assimilation. It is this readiness to plumb the extreme depths of human psychology and conduct under conditions of stress that lends Kleist’s work its peculiar modernism, and which ensures that even now, some two hundred years on from his death, he retains the ability to excite, engage and trouble his readers.

---

Steven Howe is Associate Research Fellow in the College of Humanities at the University of Exeter. He is currently working, together with Ricarda Schmidt (Exeter) and Sean Allan (Warwick), on a large-scale, AHRC-funded project – timed to coincide with the bicentenary of the author’s death – exploring discourses of education and violence in the works of Heinrich von Kleist (Kleist, Education and Violence: The Transformation of Ethics and Aesthetics). He has previously written a full-length study on Kleist’s engagement with the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and published further articles regarding the representation of violence in Kleist’s texts, and on aspects of their popular and critical reception.

Links to Works

• Text version of Die Familie Schroffenstein (in German)
  • text
• Sämtliche Werke und Briefe – Vol. 1 (1908) by Heinrich von Kleist featuring Die Familie Schroffenstein.
  
  • pdf online
  • Internet Archive link
• Tales from the German, comprising specimens from the most celebrated authors (1844) containing Kleist’s classic Michael Kolhaus translated into English by John Oxenford and C.A. Feiling.
  
  • pdf online
  • Internet Archive link
  • text version of Michael Kolhaus on Wikisource

Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin

In English translation by David Constantine

A sampling from the book

Friedrich Hölderlin Selected Poems translated by David Constantine

Second, expanded edition 1996 Published by Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle upon Tyne

Ages of Life
Euphrates' cities and
Palmyra's streets and you
Forests of columns in the level desert
What are you now?
Your crowns, because
You crossed the boundary
Of breath,
Were taken off
In Heaven's smoke and flame;
But I sit under clouds (each one
Of which has peace) among
The ordered oaks, upon
The deer's heath, and strange
And dead the ghosts of the blessed ones
Appear to me.

'Another day'
Another day. I follow another path,
Enter the leafing woodland, visit the spring
Or the rocks where the roses bloom
Or search from a look-out, but nowhere
Love are you to be seen in the light of day
And down the wind go the words of our once so
Beneficent conversation...
Your beloved face has gone beyond my sight,
The music of your life is dying away
Beyond my hearing and all the songs
That worked a miracle of peace once on
My heart, where are they now? It was long ago,
So long and the youth I was has aged nor is
Even the earth that smiled at me then
The same. Farewell. Live with that word always.
For the soul goes from me to return to you
Day after day and my eyes shed tears that they
Cannot look over to where you are
And see you clearly ever again.

'Once there were gods'

Once there were gods, on earth, with people, the heavenly muses
And Apollo, the youth, healing, inspiring, like you.
And you are like them to me, as though one of the blessed
Sent me out into life where I go my comrade's
Image goes with me wherever I suffer and build, with love
Unto death; for I learned this and have this from her.
Let us live, oh you who are with me in sorrow, with me in faith
And heart and loyalty struggling for better times!
For such we are! And if ever in the coming years they knew
Of us two when the spirit matters again
They would say: lovers in those days, alone, they created
Their secret world that only the gods knew. For who
Cares only for things that will die the earth will have them, but
Nearer the light, into the clarities come
Those keeping faith with the heart's love and holy spirit who were
Hopeful, patient, still, and got the better of fate.

The Journey

Suevia, my mother, happy land!
You also are like your more shining sister
Lombardy over there
Flowed through by a hundred streams
And trees in plenty, white with blossom or reddish
And the darker, deep, full green, the wild trees
And the Alps of Switzerland overshadow you too,
Neighbourly; for near the hearth of the house
Is where you live and you can hear
Inside from silvery vessels
The spring rushing that issues
From pure hands when touched
By warm rays
Crystal ice and tipped over
By the lightly quickening light
The snowy summit drenches the earth
With purest water. For that reason
You are born loyal. Hard
Living near the source to quit the place.
And your children, the towns
On the long lake in the haze
On the willowy Neckar and on the Rhine
All think
Nowhere would be better to live.

'When I was a boy'

When I was a boy
A god often rescued me
From the shouts and the rods of men
And I played among trees and flowers
Secure in their kindness
And the breezes of heaven
Were playing there too.
And as you delight
The hearts of plants
When they stretch towards you
With little strength
So you delighted the heart in me
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your favourite,
Moon. 0 all
You friendly
And faithful gods
I wish you could know
How my soul has loved you.
Even though when I called to you then
It was not yet with names, and you
Never named me as people do
As though they knew one another
I knew you better
Than I have ever known them.
I understood the stillness above the sky
But never the words of men.
Trees were my teachers
Melodious trees
And I learned to love
Among flowers.
I grew up in the arms of the gods.

---

Titles of the original poems: Lebensalter, Wohl geh ich täglich..., Götter wandelten einst..., Die Wanderung, Da ich ein Knabe war...

---

From the back cover of Friedrich Hölderlin Selected Poems:

FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN (1770-1843) was one of Europe's greatest poets. The strange and beautiful language of his late poems is recreated by David Constantine in these remarkable verse translations. This is a new edition of Constantine's widely-praised HÖLDERLIN Selected Poems, containing several new translations, including one of the great elegy Bread and Wine. The odes and hymns are more fully represented and there are further extracts, in an equivalent English, from Hölderlin's extraordinary German versions of Sophocles. Notes on the poems have also been expanded. This new volume is a stimulating introduction to the work of a poet who, writing around 1800, addresses us ever more urgently as the millenium ends.
'Hölderlin is a poet we can read with our own atrocious times in mind. He is a deeply religious poet whose fundamental tenet is absence and the threat of meaninglessness. He confronted hopelessness as few writers have, he was what Rilke called "exposed"; but there is no poetry like his for the constant engendering of hope, for the expression, in the body and breath of poems, of the best and most passionate aspirations' - David Constantine
'Constantine goes for an "equivalence of spirit" in a more familiar idiom. This is at once a bold and humble undertaking, and has produced poetry of a remarkable luminosity and intensity, written in rhythms and cadences which recreate, both in their extremities of grief and their urgent hope, the immediacy of the original' - Karen Leeder, Oxford Poetry

---

David Constantine has published five books of poems, three translations and a novel with Bloodaxe. His latest poetry books are Selected Poems (1991), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and Caspar Hauser (1994), a poem in nine cantos. His co-translations include editions of Henri Michaux and Philippe Jaccottet in the Bloodaxe Contemporary French Poets series. His critical introduction to the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin was published in 1988, and his translation of Goethe's novel Elective Affinities in 1994, both from OUP. He is Fellow in German at the Queen's College, Oxford.

---

Copyright © by David Constantine and Bloodaxe Books. Published here by permission of David Constantine.

A lot of Chicago's Bootlegs

CHICAGO - This is the beginning of what will become the Most Ultimate Megapost featuring Chicago which will span basically their entire career. When i am done there should be around 100+ shows in either an MP3 or M4A format in various formats (FM, SDB, AUD, etc, etc,). I will be adding shows throughout time to this thread ONLY until i am finished so please keep checking back to see what more has been added.

I know that there are shows in here that have been added here onto Guitars 101 before by myself and many others and i am not trying to step on anyones toes and am very greatful for what has been added onto here in the past. I'm only trying to keep their music alive and to give people something that they might not have had before.

Unfortunately the eve infamous show of December 2, 1977 from Oakland, CA which was Terry Kath's last ever with the band still eludes me to this day.

[DVDfull] Chicago - 1970-07-21 - Tanglewood (pro-shot)

---

[DVDfull] Chicago - 1970-07-21 - Tanglewood (pro-shot)

Related Files: 1294, Download Speed: 9723 kb/s

Chicago - 1970-07-21 - Tanglewood
(DVDfull pro-shot)

FULL CONCERT NO TIME CODE REMASTERED STEREO AUDIO

NTSC
PRO-SHOT
COLOR
STEREO
MENU
CHAPTER
ALL REGION

01 - Introduction
02 - In The Country
03 - Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is
04 - 25 Or 6 To 4
05 - Poem For The People
06 - I Don't Want Your Money
07 - Mother
08 - It Better End Soon
09 - Beginnings
10 - Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon / Make Me Smile / So Much To Say
11 - Colour My World / Make Me Smile
12 - I'm A Man


Notes:
Great Chicago Show From 1970 I Know A Lot Of You Have This Show But This Is The Complete Show With Remastered Stereo Audio

Too Bad The Camera Man Was Too High To Get The Filming Right Still A Great Show Well Worth The Download


http://www.filesonic.com/file/176571....B.E.part1.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/176571....B.E.part2.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/176570....B.E.part3.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/176570....B.E.part4.rar

mirror:
http://www.fileserve.com/file/wYkt6T....B.E.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/Be5PMe....B.E.part2.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/94yB5b....B.E.part3.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/aJ6tbT....B.E.part4.rar

mirror:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc76....B.E.part1.rar
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc76....B.E.part2.rar
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc76....B.E.part3.rar
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc76....B.E.part4.rar

An english translation

---

FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN (1770–1843), whose work has influenced such figures as Rilke, Celan, Heidegger, Adorno, and Benjamin, is considered by many to be one of the most important German lyric poets. NICK HOFF is a writer and translator who lives in San Francisco. His translations have been published in Telos, Left Curve, and other journals. 



Endorsements:

"Hölderlin, the greatest of all German poets, explored the outer limits and the deepest depths of the German language, and has been considered untranslatable. We have waited so long for an English translation that does justice to the inexplicable mystery of his early mature work; with Hoff’s beautiful versions we have one at last."—Werner Herzog, director of Rescue Dawn

  
“The poems come out as English poems, but—as Dryden would have put it—poems Hölderlin might have written, had he been writing in English.”—Keith Waldrop, translator of Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil

From the Book:

Gladly the boatman turns home to the river’s calm
From his harvest on faraway isles;
If only I too were homeward bound;
Yet what harvest have I but sorrow?—

O blessèd riverbanks that raised me,
Can you ease the sorrows of love? Ah, when I come
To you, woods of my youth, will you
Grant me peace once again?
—From “Home”

Hölderlin's “The Poet’s Vocation”

Hölderlin's “The Poet’s Vocation”: But if he must, the man remains fearless. Alone before god, simplicity keeps him safe. He needs no weapons and no cunning, As long as God’s absence comes to his aid.


Hölderlin's "The Poet's Vocation": Fearless yet, if he must, man stands, and lonely Before God, simplicity protects him, No weapon does he need nor subterfuge Until God's being "not there" helps him.



Hölderlin's Original German Text "Dichterberuf":


Furchtlos bleibt aber, so er es muß, der Mann
    Einsam vor Gott, es schützet die Einfalt ihn,
        Und keiner Waffen brauchts und keiner
            Listen, so lange, bis Gottes Fehl hilft.

Texto en español, antología poética, Ed. Cátedra. {Versión completa}

Mas permanece el hombre, como debe, sin miedo,
      a solas ante Dios, su candor le protege
             y no precisa armas ni argucias, en tanto
                    que la ausencia de Dios no acude en su socorro.

Texto en español, antología poética, Ed. 29. {Versión completa}

Pero el hombre puede quedarse, cuando es preciso,
      solo frente a Dios. Su candor lo protege.
             Y no necesita armas ni argucias, hasta el momento
                    en que la ausencia de Dios lo ayude.

Saramago en el País.com

TRIBUNA: JOSÉ SARAMAGO / Dios como problema    

No tengo ninguna duda de que este artículo, empezando por el título, obrará el prodigio de poner de acuerdo, al menos por una vez, a los dos irreductibles hermanos enemigos que se llaman Islamismo y Cristianismo, sobre todo en la vertiente universal (es decir, católica) a la que el primero aspira y en la que el segundo, ilusoriamente, todavía sigue imaginándose. En la más benévola de las reacciones posibles, clamarán los biempensantes que se trata de una provocación inadmisible, de una indisculpable ofensa al sentimiento religioso de los creyentes de ambos partidos, y, en la reacción peor (suponiendo que no haya peor), me acusarán de impiedad, de sacrilegio, de blasfemia, de profanación, de desacato, de tantos cuantos delitos más, de calibre idéntico, sean capaces de descubrir, y, por tanto, quién sabe, merecedor de una punición que me sirviera de escarmiento para el resto de mi vida. Si yo mismo perteneciera al gremio cristiano, el catolicismo vaticano tendría que interrumpir durante un momento los espectáculos estilo Cecil B. de Mille en que ahora se complace, para darse el enojoso trabajo de excomulgarme, aunque, cumplida esa obligación burocrática, se quedaría de brazos caídos. Ya le escasean las fuerzas para proezas más atrevidas, puesto que los ríos de lágrimas llorados por sus víctimas empaparon, esperemos que para siempre, la leña de los arsenales tecnológicos de la primera inquisición. En cuanto al islamismo, en su moderna versión fundamentalista y violenta (tan violenta y fundamentalista como fue el cristianismo en los tiempos de su apogeo imperial), la consigna por excelencia, todos los días insanamente proclamada, es "muerte a los infieles", o en traducción libre, si no crees en Alá no eres más que una inmunda cucaracha que, pese a ser también una criatura nacida del Fiat divino, cualquier musulmán cultivador de los métodos expeditivos tendrá el sagrado derecho y el sacrosanto deber de aplastarla bajo la babucha con la que entrará en el paraíso de Mahoma para ser recibido en el voluptuoso seno de las huríes. Permítaseme, por tanto, que vuelva a decir que Dios, habiendo sido siempre un problema, es ahora el problema.

Como cualquier otra persona para quien la situación del mundo en que vive no le es del todo indiferente, vengo leyendo algo de lo que por ahí se escribe sobre los motivos de naturaleza política, económica, social, psicológica, estratégica, y hasta moral, en que se presume que han echado raíces los movimientos islamistas agresivos que están lanzando sobre el denominado mundo occidental (aunque no sólo en ése) la desorientación, el miedo, el más extremo terror. Fueron suficientes, aquí y allí, unas cuantas bombas de relativa baja potencia (recordemos que casi siempre fueron transportadas en mochilas hasta el lugar de los atentados) para que los cimientos de nuestra tan luminosa civilización se estremecieran y se abrieran brechas, a la vez que se tambaleaban aparatosamente las precarias estructuras de seguridad colectiva con tanto trabajo y gasto levantadas y mantenidas. Nuestros pies, que creímos fundidos en el más resistente de los aceros, eran, a la postre, de barro.


Es el choque de civilizaciones, se dice. Será, pero a mí no me lo parece. Los más de siete mil millones de habitantes de este planeta, todos ellos, viven en lo que sería más exacto llamar civilización del petróleo, y hasta tal punto, que ni siquiera están fuera de ella (viviendo, claro está, su falta) quienes se encuentran privados del precioso oro negro. Esta civilización del petróleo crea y satisface (de manera desigual, ya lo sabemos) múltiples necesidades que no sólo reúnen alrededor del mismo pozo a los griegos y troyanos de la cita clásica, sino también a los árabes y no árabes, a los cristianos y a los musulmanes, sin hablar de los que, no siendo ni una cosa ni otra, tienen, donde quiera que se encuentren, un automóvil que conducir, una excavadora que poner en marcha, un mechero que encender. Evidentemente, esto no significa que bajo esta civilización del petróleo que es común a todos no sean discernibles los rasgos (más que simples rasgos en ciertos casos) de civilizaciones y culturas antiguas que ahora se encuentran inmersas en un proceso tecnológico de occidentalización a marchas forzadas, y que, sólo con mucha dificultad, ha logrado penetrar en el meollo sustancial de las mentalidades personales y colectivas correspondientes. Por alguna razón se dice que el hábito no hace al monje...
Una alianza de las civilizaciones, en feliz hora propuesta por el presidente del Gobierno español y cuya idea ha sido recientemente retomada por el secretario general de la Organización de Naciones Unidas, podrá representar, en el caso de que llegue a concretarse, un paso importante en el camino de una disminución de las tensiones mundiales de que cada vez parece que estamos más lejos, aunque sería insuficiente desde todos los puntos de vista si no incluyera, como ítem fundamental, un diálogo de religiones, ya que en este caso queda excluida cualquier remota posibilidad de una alianza... Como no hay motivos para temer que chinos, japoneses e indios, por ejemplo, estén preparando planes de conquista del mundo, difundiendo sus diversas creencias (confucionismo, budismo, taoísmo, sintoísmo, hinduismo) por vía pacífica o violenta, es más que obvio que cuando se habla de alianza de las civilizaciones se está pensando, especialmente, en cristianos y musulmanes, esos hermanos enemigos que vienen alternando, a lo largo de la historia, ora uno, ora otro, sus trágicos y por lo visto interminables papeles de verdugo y de víctima.


Por tanto, se quiera o no se quiera, Dios como problema, Dios como piedra en medio del camino, Dios como pretexto para el odio, Dios como agente de desunión. Pero de esta evidencia palmaria no se osa hablar en ninguno de los múltiples análisis de la cuestión, tanto si son de tipo político, económico, sociológico, psicológico o utilitariamente estratégico. Es como si una especie de temor reverencial o de resignación a lo "políticamente correcto y establecido" le impidiera al analista entender algo que está presente en las mallas de la red y las convierte en un entramado laberíntico del que no hemos tenido manera de salir, es decir, Dios. Si le dijera a un cristiano o a un musulmán que en el universo hay más de 400.000 millones de galaxias y que cada una de ellas contiene más de 400.000 millones de estrellas, y que Dios, sea Alá u otro, no podría haber hecho esto, mejor aún, no tendría ningún motivo para hacerlo, me responderían indignados que para Dios, sea Alá, sea otro, nada es imposible. Excepto, por lo visto, añadiría yo, establecer la paz entre el islam y el cristianismo, y de camino, conciliar a la más desgraciada de las especies animales que se dice que ha nacido de su voluntad (y a su semejanza), la especie humana, precisamente.


No hay amor ni justicia en el universo físico. Tampoco hay crueldad. Ningún poder preside los 400.000 millones de galaxias y los 400.000 millones de estrellas que existen en cada una. Nadie hace nacer el Sol cada día y la Luna cada noche, incluso cuando no es visible en el cielo. Puestos aquí sin saber por qué ni para qué, hemos tenido que inventarlo todo. También inventamos a Dios, pero Dios no salió de nuestras cabezas, permaneció dentro, como factor de vida algunas veces, como instrumento de muerte casi siempre. Podemos decir "aquí está el arado que inventamos", no podemos decir "aquí está el Dios que inventó el hombre que inventó el arado". A ese Dios no podemos arrancarlo de dentro de nuestras cabezas, ni siquiera los ateos pueden hacerlo. Pero por lo menos, discutámoslo. No adelanta nada decir que matar en nombre de Dios es hacer de Dios un asesino. Para los que matan en nombre de Dios, Dios no es sólo el juez que los absuelve, es el Padre poderoso que dentro de sus cabezas antes juntó la leña para el auto de fe y ahora prepara y coloca la bomba. Discutamos esa invención, resolvamos ese problema, reconozcamos al menos que existe. Antes de que nos volvamos todos locos. Aunque ¿quién sabe? Tal vez ésa sea la manera de que no sigamos matándonos los unos a los otros.

José Saramago es escritor portugués, premio Nobel de Literatura. Traducción de Pilar del Río.

Michael Augustin

Michael Augustin

About Poems

Michael Augustin (Germany, 1953)

---

About Poems

Poems
are not written,
poems
happen.
Poems
were there
before there were poets.
Poems
are scratched
window panes.
Poems
are decomposable
and therefore must not
under any circumstance
be burnt.
Poems
are open around the clock
(even the hermetic ones).
Poems
from foreign countries
do not require
a visa.
A good translator will do.
No one
should be forced
to read a poem
or even to write one.
Poems
cannot be held responsible
for their author.
Poems
don’t read poems.
Poems
can be exchanged
for other poems
at any time.

---

Michael Augustin was born in Lübeck, Germany, in 1953. A poet, translator and radio commentator, he works with Radio Bremen, where he conducts a poetry radio program and works as an editor of the weekly radio documentaries. He is the author of a number of poetry books, dramas and short stories, including: Kleines Brimborium and Das perfekte Glück. Some of his work has been translated into English, Italian, Polish, Gaelic and Dutch. He has translated works by Roger McGough, Adrian Mitchell and Raymond Carver, among others. He has participated in numerous poetry recitals and has received the Friedrich-Hebbel and Kurt-Magnus awards. In 1984 he was part of the International Writers program of Iowa University, and during 2003 he was the Max-Kade resident writer, at Dickinson College (USA).

More

Poem of the week

Michael Augustin delivers a rare treat: comic poetry that isn't reliant on performance or rhyme to raise a genuine laugh

& More

Michael Augustin (Alemania)

---

Sobre los poemas

Los poemas
no se escriben,
los poemas ocurren.
Poemas
había ya
antes de que hubiera poetas.
Los poemas
son cristales de ventanas
arañados.
Los poemas
se pueden convertir en abono
y por ello
de ningún modo
se deben quemar.
Los poemas
están abiertos a cualquier cosa
(incluso los herméticos).
Los poemas
del extranjero
no requieren
permiso de residencia.
Sólo basta con un buen traductor.
Nadie debe
ser obligado
a leer un poema
y mucho menos a escribir uno.
Los poemas
no pueden responder
por su autor.
Los poemas
no leen poemas.
Los poemas
en cualquier momento
se pueden
intercambiar por otros.

Sobre los lectores

‘Los escritores están siempre al servicio’ – Borges

Los lectores tienen que leer todo.
A los lectores les falta un tornillo
en la estantería de libros.
Los lectores sólo leen
lo que se ha escrito para ellos.
Los lectores conocen el mundo
sólo en blanco y negro.
Los lectores se saltan
precisamente aquello
digno de ser leído.
Los lectores persiguen sólo una cosa.
Los lectores se dejan
embaucar por autores
completamente desconocidos.
Los lectores con gusto
se dejan cautivar,
obedecen las palabras
y son voyeurs.
Los lectores pagan
para ser insultados por los escritores.
A los lectores les gustaría,
pero no pueden.
Cuando los lectores están borrachos
leen todo doble.
Cuando están sobrios,
leen sólo la mitad.

En el tintero

A veces,
dice el poeta,
puedo casi
oírlos gritar,
a los poemas,
desde el fondo del tintero.
¡Sácame de aquí!
¡Sácame de aquí!
Traducciones de Ingrid Martínez-Rico

---

Michael Augustin Lübeck, Alemania, 1953. poeta, traductor y locutor de radio, trabaja en Radio Bremen, donde conduce un programa radial de poesía y sirve como editor de los documentales radiales semanales. Es autor de varios libros de poemas, drama y cuentos, entre ellos: Kleines Brimborium y Das perfekte Glück. Algunas de sus obras han sido traducidas al inglés, italiano, polaco, gaélico y holandés. Ha traducido obras de Roger McGough, Adrian Mitchell y Raymond Carver, entre otros. Ha recibido los premios Friedrich-Hebbel y Kurt-Magnus. En 1984 formó parte del programa internacional de escritura de la Universidad de Iowa, y durante el 2003 fue escritor en residencia Max-Kade, en Dickinson College (EEUU)

alpialdelapalabra: Michael Augustin, poemas.

alpialdelapalabra: Michael Augustin, poemas.: Algunas preguntas sobre poemas para Pearse Hutchinson y Martin Mooij ¿Pueden los poetas cambiar el mundo? --Gottfri...

Algunas preguntas sobre poemas

para Pearse Hutchinson y Martin Mooij

¿Pueden los poetas cambiar el mundo?

--Gottfried Benn

¿Es la poesía

un continente

o un océano?

¿Hay más poemas escritos

o más no escritos?

¿Cuánto cuesta

la producción

de un poema?

¿Qué poema

dice más sobre su autor:

el primero o el último que escribe?

¿Cuántos poemas mensuales

necesita una familia

media de cuatro

para poder salir adelante?

¿Debe un poema

contener todo

lo que viene en el periódico

o todo lo que

no viene en el periódico?

¿Qué palabras

no han aparecido

nunca en

un poema?

¿Si se pone

un libro de poemas

sobre una báscula

y muestra 300 gramos,

indica esto

el peso del papel

o de los poemas?

¿Qué es

lo contrario

de un poema?

¿Son los poemas

más bien sonoros

o silenciosos?

¿Cuántos poemas viejos

caben en uno nuevo?

¿Y cuantos nuevos

en uno viejo?

¿Dónde radica la diferencia

entre un poema con título

y uno sin título,

cuando se considera

que uno tiene título

y el otro no lo tiene?

¿Dónde se encuentra

en un poema

la fecha de caducidad?

¿Se da la posibilidad

de prolongar la vida

de un poema antes

de que se le llegue la hora?

¿Pueden los poemas

resucitar a los muertos?

¿Tiene un poema

más o menos vidas

que un gato

y cuantas vidas

tiene un poema sobre gatos?

¿Se puede uno

vacunar

contra los poemas?

¿Adónde deben conducir

entonces los poemas?

¿Qué posibilidad hay

de que un poema

que se tiene que aprender de memoria

se vuelva a olvidar completamente?

¿Cómo se pueden

defender los poemas

de ser enjaulados

en antologías?

¿Qué requisitos

tiene que cumplir

un poema para

convertirse en un favorito?

¿Pueden los poemas

reproducirse

por autopolinación

o precisan siempre un poema sobre abejas?

¿Tiene que ser bueno en la cama

un poema de amor?

¿Qué poemas de amor

son mejores:

los pre coitales

o los post coitales?

¿Están los poemas de amor

unidos a una persona

o son transferibles?

¿Hasta dónde

puede llegar un poema corto

para que no peligre

ser confundido

por uno largo?

¿Se pueden reproducir

los poemas artificialmente?

¿Cuántos poemas

se pueden leer, como máximo,

si se tiene que conducir?

¿Cómo se pueden

prevenir los poemas?

¿Puede un poema

darse cuenta

cuando se le borra

de la historia de la literatura?

¿Se deben

dar poemas

con el apéndice de

“por favor borrar lo que no corresponda”?

¿Deben los poemas

rechazar la evidencia?

¿Se debe lanzar

poemas a los que se ahogan?

¿Qué recuerdan

los poemas memorables?

¿Representan

los poemas políticos

los intereses de

poemas apolíticos?

¿Qué calidad debe tener un poema

para ser prohibido?

¿Se evaporan los poemas

cuando el libro

permanece demasiado tiempo abierto?

¿Es la Tierra

el único planeta

en el que se

encuentran poemas?

¿Se debe

hacer uso de poemas

en lugares de crisis?

¿Se ha asegurado

a la población

el abastecimiento

de poemas?

¿En caso de emergencia

hay reservas de poemas

y cuánto

durarían?

¿Cuánto puede

sobrevivir

un ser humano

sin poemas?

Michael Augustin ( Lübeck, Alemania 1953). Poeta y Traductor.

Traducción Ingrid Martínez-Rico

alpialdelapalabra: Hans Bender: Poesía.

alpialdelapalabra: Hans Bender: Poesía.: Hans Bender, traducción Jorge R. Sagastume Dichtendes Ehepaar Beide schreiben schöne Gedichte. Wie aber sprechen sie...

Hans Bender nació el 1 de julio de 1919 en Mühlhausen/Kraichgau y actualmente reside en Colonia, Alemania. Fue el cofundador de la legendaria revista literaria alemana Akzente. Ha publicado novelas, cuentos, ensayos, poemas y varios volúmenes de notas autobiográficas (“Aufzeichnungen”). Ha editado numerosas y reconocidas antologías poéticas y puede ser considerado uno de los escritores más influyentes del mundo literario de la posguerra alemana. Todos los poemas que aquí se publican son inéditos tanto en alemán como en castellano.

J.R. Sagastume

Jorge R. Sagastume (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963) Realizó sus estudios de doctorado en Vanderbilt University, EEUU, con especialización en literatura y filosofía. Es cuentista y crítico literario, y ha publicado tanto sobre autores argentinos como extranjeros, así como en el área de semiótica teatral y teorías de la traducción. En 2004 fundó la revista internacional y multilingüe Sirena: Poetry, Art and Criticism, publicada por la Johns Hopkins University Press. En la actualidad dicta clases de literatura hispanoamericana y estudios latinos en Dickinson College, Pensilvania, EEUU; universidad en la cual también cada año organiza el festival internacional de poesía Semana Poética.

Novalis: Spiritual Songs

Title:     Novalis: Spiritual Songs
Translated by: George MacDonald [More Titles by MacDonald]


I.

Without thee, what were life or being!
Without thee, what had I not grown!
From fear and anguish vainly fleeing,
I in the world had stood alone;
For all I loved could trust no shelter;
The future a dim gulf had lain;
And when my heart in tears did welter,
To whom had I poured out my pain?
Consumed in love and longing lonely
Each day had worn the night's dull face
With hot tears I had followed only
Afar life's wildly rushing race.
No rest for me, tumultuous driven!
A hopeless sorrow by the hearth!--
Who, that had not a friend in heaven,
Could to the end hold out on earth?
But if his heart once Jesus bareth,
And I of him right sure can be,
How soon a living glory scareth
The bottomless obscurity!
Manhood in him first man attaineth;
His fate in Him transfigured glows;
On freezing Iceland India gaineth,
And round the loved one blooms and blows.
Life grows a twilight softly stealing;
The world speaks all of love and glee;
For every wound grows herb of healing,
And every heart beats full and free.
I, his ten thousand gifts receiving,
Humble like him, his knees embrace;
Sure that we share his presence living
When two are gathered in one place.
Forth, forth to all highways and hedges!
Compel the wanderers to come in;
Stretch out the hand that good will pledges,
And gladly call them to their kin.
See heaven high over earth up-dawning!
In faith we see it rise and spread:
To all with us one spirit owning--
To them with us 'tis opened.
An ancient, heavy guilt-illusion
Haunted our hearts, a changeless doom;
Blindly we strayed in night's confusion;
Gladness and grief alike consume.
Whate'er we did, some law was broken!
Mankind appeared God's enemy;
And if we thought the heavens had spoken,
They spoke but death and misery.
The heart, of life the fountain swelling--
An evil creature lay therein;
If more light shone into our dwelling,
More unrest only did we win.
Down to the earth an iron fetter
Fast held us, trembling captive crew;
Fear of Law's sword, grim Death the whetter,
Did swallow up hope's residue.
Then came a saviour to deliver--
A Son of Man, in love and might!
A holy fire, of life all-giver,
He in our hearts has fanned alight.
Then first heaven opened--and, no fable,
Our own old fatherland we trod!
To hope and trust we straight were able,
And knew ourselves akin to God.
Then vanished Sin's old spectre dismal;
Our every step grew glad and brave.
Best natal gift, in rite baptismal,
Their own faith men their children gave.
Holy in him, Life since hath floated,
A happy dream, through every heart;
We, to his love and joy devoted,
Scarce know the moment we depart.
Still standeth, in his wondrous glory,
The holy loved one with his own;
His crown of thorns, his faithful story
Still move our hearts, still make us groan.
Whoso from deadly sleep will waken,
And grasp his hand of sacrifice,
Into his heart with us is taken,
To ripen a fruit of Paradise.

II.

Dawn, far eastward, on the mountain!
Gray old times are growing young:
From the flashing colour-fountain
I will quaff it deep and long!--
Granted boon to Longing's long privation!
Sweet love in divine transfiguration!
Comes at last, our old Earth's native,
All-Heaven's one child, simple, kind!
Blows again, in song creative,
Round the earth a living wind;
Blows to clear new flames that rush together
Sparks extinguished long by earthly weather.
Everywhere, from graves upspringing,
Rises new-born life, new blood!
Endless peace up to us bringing,
Dives he underneath life's flood;
Stands in midst, with full hands, eyes caressing--
Hardly waits the prayer to grant the blessing.
Let his mild looks of invading
Deep into thy spirit go;
By his blessedness unfading
Thou thy heart possessed shalt know.
Hearts of all men, spirits all, and senses
Mingle, and a new glad dance commences.
Grasp his hands with boldness yearning;
Stamp his face thy heart upon;
Turning toward him, ever turning,
Thou, the flower, must face thy sun.
Who to him his heart's last fold unfoldeth,
True as wife's his heart for ever holdeth.
Ours is now that Godhead's splendour
At whose name we used to quake!
South and north, its breathings tender
Heavenly germs at once awake!
Let us then in God's full garden labour,
And to every bud and bloom be neighbour!

III.

Who in his chamber sitteth lonely,
And weepeth heavy, bitter tears;
To whom in doleful colours, only
Of want and woe, the world appears;
Who of the Past, gulf-like receding,
Would search with questing eyes the core,
Down into which a sweet woe, pleading,
Wiles him from all sides evermore--
As if a treasure past believing
Lay there below, for him high-piled,
After whose lock, with bosom heaving,
He breathless grasps in longing wild:
He sees the Future, waste and arid,
In hideous length before him stretch;
About he roams, alone and harried,
And seeks himself, poor restless wretch!--
I fall upon his bosom, tearful:
I once, like thee, with woe was wan;
But I grew well, am strong and cheerful,
And know the eternal rest of man.
Thou too must find the one consoler
Who inly loved, endured, and died--
Even for them that wrought his dolour
With thousand-fold rejoicing died.
He died--and yet, fresh each to-morrow,
His love and him thy heart doth hold;
Thou mayst, consoled for every sorrow,
Him in thy arms with ardour fold.
New blood shall from his heart be driven
Through thy dead bones like living wine;
And once thy heart to him is given,
Then is his heart for ever thine.
What thou didst lose, he keeps it for thee;
With him thy lost love thou shalt find;
And what his hand doth once restore thee,
That hand to thee will changeless bind.

IV.

Of the thousand hours me meeting,
And with gladsome promise greeting,
One alone hath kept its faith--
One wherein--ah, sorely grieved!--
In my heart I first perceived
Who for us did die the death.
All to dust my world was beaten;
As a worm had through them eaten
Withered in me bud and flower;
All my life had sought or cherished
In the grave had sunk and perished;
Pain sat in my ruined bower.
While I thus, in silence sighing,
Ever wept, on Death still crying,
Still to sad delusions tied,
All at once the night was cloven,
From my grave the stone was hoven,
And my inner doors thrown wide.
Whom I saw, and who the other,
Ask me not, or friend or brother!--
Sight seen once, and evermore!
Lone in all life's eves and morrows,
This hour only, like my sorrows,
Ever shines my eyes before.

V.

If I him but have,[1]
If he be but mine,
If my heart, hence to the grave,
Ne'er forgets his love divine--
Know I nought of sadness,
Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.

If I him but have,
Pleased from all I part;
Follow, on my pilgrim staff,
None but him, with honest heart;
Leave the rest, nought saying,
On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.
If I him but have,
Glad to sleep I sink;
From his heart the flood he gave
Shall to mine be food and drink;
And, with sweet compelling,
Mine shall soften, deep throughout it welling.
If I him but have,
Mine the world I hail;
Happy, like a cherub grave
Holding back the Virgin's veil:
I, deep sunk in gazing,
Hear no more the Earth or its poor praising.
Where I have but him
Is my fatherland;
Every gift a precious gem
Come to me from his own hand!
Brothers long deplored,
Lo, in his disciples, all restored!

[Footnote 1: Here I found the double or feminine rhyme impossible without the loss of the far more precious simplicity of the original, which could be retained only by a literal translation.]

VI.

My faith to thee I break not,
If all should faithless be,
That gratitude forsake not
The world eternally.
For my sake Death did sting thee
With anguish keen and sore;
Therefore with joy I bring thee
This heart for evermore.
Oft weep I like a river
That thou art dead, and yet
So many of thine thee, Giver
Of life, life-long forget!
By love alone possessed,
Such great things thou hast done!
But thou art dead, O Blessed,
And no one thinks thereon!
Thou stand'st with love unshaken
Ever by every man;
And if by all forsaken,
Art still the faithful one.
Such love must win the wrestle;
At last thy love they'll see,
Weep bitterly, and nestle
Like children to thy knee.
Thou with thy love hast found me!
O do not let me go!
Keep me where thou hast bound me
Till one with thee I grow.
My brothers yet will waken,
One look to heaven will dart--
Then sink down, love-o'ertaken,
And fall upon thy heart.

VII.

HYMN.
Few understand
The mystery of Love,
Know insatiableness,
And thirst eternal.
Of the Last Supper
The divine meaning
Is to the earthly senses a riddle;
But he that ever
From warm, beloved lips,
Drew breath of life;
In whom the holy glow
Ever melted the heart in trembling waves;
Whose eye ever opened so
As to fathom
The bottomless deeps of heaven--
Will eat of his body
And drink of his blood
Everlastingly.
Who of the earthly body
Has divined the lofty sense?
Who can say
That he understands the blood?
One day all is body,
_One_ body:
In heavenly blood
Swims the blissful two.
Oh that the ocean
Were even now flushing!
And in odorous flesh
The rock were upswelling!
Never endeth the sweet repast;
Never doth Love satisfy itself;
Never close enough, never enough its own,
Can it _have_ the beloved!
By ever tenderer lips
Transformed, the Partaken
Goes deeper, grows nearer.
Pleasure more ardent
Thrills through the soul;
Thirstier and hungrier
Becomes the heart;
And so endureth Love's delight
From everlasting to everlasting.
Had the refraining
Tasted but once,
All had they left
To set themselves down with us
To the table of longing
Which will never be bare;
Then had they known Love's
Infinite fullness,
And commended the sustenance
Of body and blood.

VIII.

Weep I must--my heart runs over:
Would he once himself discover--
If but once, from far away!
Holy sorrow! still prevailing
Is my weeping, is my wailing:
Would that I were turned to clay!
Evermore I hear him crying
To his Father, see him dying:
Will this heart for ever beat!
Will my eyes in death close never?
Weeping all into a river
Were a bliss for me too sweet!
Hear I none but me bewailing?
Dies his name an echo failing?
Is the world at once struck dead?
Shall I from his eyes, ah! never
More drink love and life for ever?
Is he now for always dead?
_Dead?_ What means that sound of dolour?
Tell me, tell me thou, a scholar,
What it means, that word so grim.
He is silent; all turn from me!
No one on the earth will show me
Where my heart may look for him!
Earth no more, whate'er befall me,
Can to any gladness call me!
She is but one dream of woe!
I too am with him departed:
Would I lay with him, still-hearted,
In the region down below!
Hear, me, hear, his and my father!
My dead bones, I pray thee, gather
Unto his--and soon, I pray!
Grass his hillock soon will cover,
Soon the wind will wander over,
Soon his form will fade away.
If his love they once perceived,
Soon, soon all men had believed,
Letting all things else go by!
Lord of love him only owning,
All would weep with me bemoaning,
And in bitter woe would die!

IX.

He lives! he's risen from the dead!
To every man I shout;
His presence over us is spread,
Goes with us in and out.
To each I say it; each apace
His comrades telleth too--
That straight will dawn in every place
The heavenly kingdom new.
Now, to the new mind, first appears
The world a fatherland;
A new life men receive, with tears
Of rapture, from his hand.
Down into deepest gulfs of sea
Grim Death hath sunk away;
And now each man with holy glee,
Can face his coming day.
The darksome road that he hath gone
Leads out on heaven's floor:
Who heeds the counsel of the Son
Enters the Father's door.
Down here weeps no one any more
For friend that shuts his eyes;
For, soon or late, the parting sore
Will change to glad surprise.
And now to every friendly deed
Each heart will warmer glow;
For many a fold the fresh-sown seed
In lovelier fields will blow.
He lives--will sit beside our hearths,
The greatest with the least;
Therefore this day shall be our Earth's
Glad Renovation-feast.

X.

The times are all so wretched!
The heart so full of cares!
The future, far outstretched,
A spectral horror wears.
Wild terrors creep and hover
With foot so ghastly soft!
Our souls black midnights cover
With mountains piled aloft.
Firm props like reeds are waving;
For trust is left no stay;
Our thoughts, like whirlpool raving,
No more the will obey!
Frenzy, with eye resistless,
Decoys from Truth's defence;
Life's pulse is flagging listless,
And dull is every sense.
Who hath the cross upheaved
To shelter every soul?
Who lives, on high received,
To make the wounded whole?
Go to the tree of wonder;
Give silent longing room;
Issuing flames asunder
Thy bad dream will consume.
Draws thee an angel tender
In saftey to the strand:
Lo, at thy feet in splendour
Lies spread the Promised Land!

XI.

I know not what were left to draw me,
Had I but him who is my bliss;
If still his eye with pleasure saw me,
And, dwelling with me, me would miss.
So many search, round all ways going,
With face distorted, anxious eye,
Who call themselves the wise and knowing,
Yet ever pass this treasure by!
One man believes that he has found it,
And what he has is nought but gold;
One takes the world by sailing round it:
The deed recorded, all is told!
One man runs well to gain the laurel;
Another, in Victory's fane a niche:
By different Shows in bright apparel
All are befooled, not one made rich!
Hath He not then to you appeared?
Have ye forgot Him turning wan
Whose side for love of us was speared--
The scorned, rejected Son of Man?
Of Him have you not read the story--
Heard one poor word upon the wind?
What heavenly goodness was his glory,
Or what a gift he left behind?
How he descended from the Father,
Of loveliest mother infant grand?
What Word the nations from him gather?
How many bless his healing hand?
How, thereto urged by mere love, wholly
He gave himself to us away,
And down in earth, foundation lowly,
First stone of God's new city, lay?
Can such news fail to touch us mortals?
Is not to know the man pure bliss?
Will you not open all your portals
To him who closed for you the abyss?
Will you not let the world go faring?
For Him your dearest wish deny?
To him alone your heart keep baring,
Who you has shown such favour high?
Hero of love, oh, take me, take me!
Thou art my life! my world! my gold!
Should every earthly thing forsake me,
I know who will me scatheless hold!
I see Thee my lost loves restoring!
True evermore to me thou art!
Low at thy feet heaven sinks adoring,
And yet thou dwellest in my heart!

XII.

Earth's Consolation, why so slow?
Thy inn is ready long ago;
Each lifts to thee his hungering eyes,
And open to thy blessing lies.
O Father, pour him forth with might;
Out of thine arms, oh yield him quite!
Shyness alone, sweet shame, I know,
Kept him from coming long ago!
Haste him from thine into our arm
To take him with thy breath yet warm;
Thick clouds around the baby wrap,
And let him down into our lap.
In the cool streams send him to us;
In flames let him glow tremulous;
In air and oil, in sound and dew,
Let him pierce all Earth's structure through.
So shall the holy fight be fought,
So come the rage of hell to nought;
And, ever blooming, dawn again
The ancient Paradise of men.
Earth stirs once more, grows green and live;
Full of the Spirit, all things strive
To clasp with love the Saviour-guest,
And offer him the mother-breast.
Winter gives way; a year new-born
Stands at the manger's alter-horn;
'Tis the first year of that new Earth
Claimed by the child in right of birth.
Our eyes they see the Saviour well,
Yet in them doth the Saviour dwell;
With flowers his head is wreathed about;
From every flower himself smiles out.
He is the star; he is the sun;
Life's well that evermore will run;
From herb, stone, sea, and light's expanse
Glimmers his childish countenance.
His childlike labour things to mend,
His ardent love will never end;
He nestles, with unconscious art,
Divinely fast to every heart.
To us a God, to himself a child,
He loves us all, self un-defiled;
Becomes our drink, becomes our food--
His dearest thanks, a heart that's good.
The misery grows yet more and more;
A gloomy grief afflicts us sore:
Keep him no longer, Father, thus;
He will come home again with us!

XIII.

When in hours of fear and failing,
All but quite our heart despairs;
When, with sickness driven to wailing.
Anguish at our bosom tears;
Then our loved ones we remember;
All their grief and trouble rue;
Clouds close in on our December
And no beam of hope shines through!
Oh but then God bends him o'er us!
Then his love comes very near!
Long we heavenward then--before us
Lo, his angel standing clear!
Life's cup fresh to us he reaches;
Whispers comfort, courage new;
Nor in vain our prayer beseeches
Rest for our beloved ones too.

XIV.

Who once hath seen thee, Mother fair,
Destruction him shall never snare;
His fear is, from thee to be parted;
He loves thee evermore, true-hearted;
Thy grace remembered is the source
Whereout springs hence his spirit's highest force.
My heart is very true to thee;
My ever failing thou dost see:
Let me, sweet mother, yet essay thee--
Give me one happy sign, I pray thee.
My whole existence rests in thee:
One moment, only one, be thou with me.
I used to see thee in my dreams,
So fair, so full of tenderest beams!
The little God in thine arms lying
Took pity on his playmate crying:
But thou with high look me didst awe,
And into clouds of glory didst withdraw.
What have I done to thee, poor wretch?
To thee my longing arms I stretch!
Are not thy holy chapels ever
My resting-spots in life's endeavour?
O Queen, of saints and angels blest,
This heart and life take up into thy rest!
Thou know'st that I, beloved Queen,
All thine and only thine have been!
Have I not now, years of long measure,
In silence learned thy grace to treasure?
While to myself yet scarce confest,
Even then I drew milk from thy holy breast.
Oh, countless times thou stood'st by me!
I, merry child, looked up to thee!
His hands thy little infant gave me
In sign that one day he would save me;
Thou smiledst, full of tenderness,
And then didst kiss me: oh the heavenly bliss!
Afar stands now that gladness brief;
Long have I companied with grief;
Restless I stray outside the garden!
Have I then sinned beyond thy pardon?
Childlike thy garment's hem I pull:
Oh wake me from this dream so weariful!
If only children see thy face,
And, confident, may trust thy grace,
From age's bonds, oh, me deliver,
And make me thine own child for ever!
The love and truth of childhood's prime
Dwell in me yet from that same golden time.

XV.

In countless pictures I behold thee,
O Mary, lovelily expressed,
But of them all none can unfold thee
As I have seen thee in my breast!
I only know the world's loud splendour
Since then is like a dream o'erblown;
And that a heaven, for words too tender,
My quieted spirit fills alone.

[The end]
George MacDonald's poem: Translations From Novalis: Spiritual Songs