Am I in?

Now that I have avoided posting on my blog for long enough that it is just me again talking to the air, I will probably do two posts here maybe even tonight. A while ago my brother joined an exclusive group started by one of my friends from high school. The stone lions are the biggest rage of the internet. I hate being shown up by my little brother. So I had to find a stone lion that was stone-lion-y in a Deutschlehrer kind of way. This lion is in fact over a fireplace in the Goethe-Institute that I visited in Boston last month. I saw it in an assembly room during a very crowded reception for German teachers during a convention for language teachers in general. It was the bright point of the evening--except I didn't have a camera with me. Luckily there was another reception the next night, which I was late for, which meant I had to stand in the back next to the wine for an hour--which would have been fine, except I don't drink--but great accomplishments sometimes require sacrifice. When the talk was over (it was an author talking about her book about--and I am not making this up-- two siblings with a sick cat that they cured by feeding it a very specific type of coffee bean that they then recycled after the cat was finished with it, by roasting the passed beans, grinding them, and making coffee out of them--which they then sold. The high point of the evening was when friends of the author served coffee according to the recipe in the book. There are days when the Word of Wisdom really comes in handy. Anyway, when everyone got up to enjoy the "refreshments" I snapped this picture. So, Charlotte, am I in?

You may not get it, but to me this is really funny

Poetry and living life

Several years ago, one of my professors introduced me to a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called “Selige Sehnsucht.” (Maybe blessed yearning). It is one of the staples of German literary history and well known by most in German Studies.

Sag es niemand, nur den Weisen,
Weil die Menge gleich verhöhnet:
Das Lebendge will ich preisen,
Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.

In der Liebesnächte Kühlung,
Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest,
Überfällt dich fremde Fühlung,
Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.

Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen
In der Finsternis Beschattung,
Und dich reißet neu Verlangen
Auf zu höherer Begattung.

Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig,
Kommst geflogen und gebannt,
Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig,
Bist du Schmetterling verbrannt.

Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und Werde!
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.

Once again my poor attempt at a translation. Sorry for the lack of rhyme and meter:

Blessed Yearning

Tell no one, only the wise,
For the masses will only mock:
That which lives I will praise,
That yearns for death in flames.

In the cool of the nights of love
That begat you, where you begat.
Falls over you the foreign feeling
When the silent candle shines.

No distance is too far,
Spellbound, you come flying,
And at last, covetous of the light
You, butterfly, are burned.

And as long as you cannot grasp that,
This: Die and Become!
You are but a dreary guest
on the darkened Earth.

There is far more in this poem than I can probably discuss at the moment. Obviously the final stanza makes a powerful statement for roll death plays in one’s life and in one’s existence. The butterfly’s flaming death suggests that it is not just death but the manner of death–the striving toward light–that brings meaning to life.

But the part that has always made me wonder was a claim by my professor that the Greek word for butterfly was psyche , a fact that I have had a hard time verifying, but that may be substantiated here. In Greek mythology (at least as we have this story handed down by the Romans–nothing is ever simple) Psyche is a mortal so beautiful that all the worshipers of Aphrodite have left the temples to go and worship Psyche. Angered, Aphrodite sends her son Eros to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest thing possible. Instead, Eros pricks his own finger with the arrow intended for Psyche and falls in love with her. The two are married, but Eros refuses to appear in daylight, coming to her only at night. Her sisters, jealous of her happiness, convince Psyche to light a lantern and discover her husband’s identity. In response, Eros flees and Psyche is left heartbroken (and angry at her sisters). Eventually, Psyche must enter into Aphrodite’s service and perform a series of impossible tasks in order to win back her husband. In the last of these, she must descend into Hades and bring back a jar containing Persephone’s beauty. When she tries to partake of this beauty, however, she falls down, as if dead. In the end, Zeus intervenes, and she is reunited with Eros and becomes immortal with him as she joins the other deities.

On my recent trip to Germany, I ran into Psyche once or twice and it got me to thinking. In the Berlin museum of art, there is a statue in one of the stairwells of Pan consoling Psyche. It is hard to imagine the debaucherous Pan of having very pure intentions in his efforts. The statue is intensely sensuous and seeing it, I wanted to warn her against what the old goat had on his mind. But Psyche is more resourceful than one might think looking at her and I suspect that in the end her beauty (so often a stand in for goodness, a trope I have no desire to deconstruct at the moment--and excuse me for using the words deconstruct and trope in the same sentence) will save her again.

My second encounter was a family grouping outside the Zwinger in Dresden. Here, Psyche, Eros, and presumably Aphrodite appear to have reconciled and the happy end seems assured. I wonder at the placement of the statue and what the sculptor intended with his composition, but I like this one, too. There is also this representation that I found on the web that is intriging.

In both sculptures, Psyche’s butterfly wings are clearly visible, establishing the connection that I had wondered about earlier. The word “psyche” in Greek means breath or air and has by extension connotations of spirit and soul.

So in this context, the figure Psyche becomes a symbol for the longing of a mortal soul to be joined with the divine, and the efforts one will take, even if it means descending into death to do it. The more I learn of the story, the more impressed I am in Goethe’s ability to weave the various elements of it into his poem. For me there is something vividly mystical about the poem and the mythology in the idea that the soul, psyche, wants to be united with the heavens. At first reading, Goethe’s poem may seem to be a justification for suicide. But in reality, I think it is an appellation for life lived to it’s fullest, for a Thoreauean effort to suck the marrow out of life and live deeply and deliberately so that in the end, we will not discover that we have not lived at all.

a new paper proposal

I want all of my readers out there to comment on the idea I am working on for a new conference proposal. I recently read a book by Daniel Kehlmann called Die Vermessung der Welt. It is a novel about the natural scientist/ explorer Alexander von Humboldt and Mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß. The book takes a somewhat satirical or humorous look at the lives of these two Gentlemen, and the ways in which their lives intersect.

Compared to many works of German literature, Die Vermessung der Welt is refreshingly open and positive, while it avoids being frivolous or "fluffy." In other words, I think it is successful in appealing to a wide audience--i.e. casual readers as well as those who are more literary minded. This is unusual in the bulk of what is considered literature in Germany. Much of the high modern and post-modern and hermeneutic works still have a great deal to offer if you are interested in philosophy, literary theory, politics or other specialized topics, but it isn't what I would call entertaining. (Recent nobel winner Elfride Jelinek being an exeption--her work has neither entertainment nor intellectual value for me.) Peter Handke, for example, is not very entertaining, even though I find his works both challenging and stimulating intellectually.

Mind you, I think the best stuff is able to transcend the typical German stodginess. Today I introduced my class to a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe entitled Grenzen der Menschheit:

Wenn der uralte
Heilige Vater
Mit gelassener Hand
Aus rollenden Wolken
Segnende Blitze
Über die Erde sät.
Küss´ich den letzten
Saum seines Kleides,
Kindliche Schauer
Treu in der Brust.

Denn mit Göttern
Soll sich nicht messen
Irgend ein Mensch.
Hebt er sich aufwärts
Und berührt
Mit dem Scheitel die Sterne,
Nirgends haften dann
Die unsichern Sohlen,
Und mit ihm spielen
Wolken und Winde.

Steht er mit festen,
Markigen Knochen
Auf der wohlgegründeten
Dauernden Erde,
Reicht er nicht auf,
Nur mit der Eiche
Oder der Rebe
Sich zu vergleichen.

Was unterscheidet
Götter von Menschen?
Daß viele Wellen
Vor jenen wandeln, ein ewiger Strom:
Uns hebt die Welle,
Verschlingt die Welle,
Und wir versinken.

Ein kleiner Ring
Begrenzt unser Leben,
Und viele Geschlechter
Reihen sie dauernd
An ihres Daseins
Unendliche Kette.

And now the translation, since I can't manage to print them both in two columns:

The Limits of Humanity

When the age-old
Holy Father
With a tranquil hand
Sows blessed lightning
Over the Earth
From rolling clouds.
I kiss the last
Hem of his gown,
A child-like thrill
Staunch in the breast.

For with the gods
Should not be measured
Any man.
If he lifts himself upwards
and touches
The stars with his head,
Then nowhere hold fast
his uncertain soles,
And with him play
Clouds and wind.

If he stands with firm
Marrowed bones
On the well-grounded
Abiding Earth,
It is enough to compare
himself only
with the oak
or the vine.

What distinguishes
The gods from man?
That the countless waves
Continue before Them, an eternal stream:
Us the waves lift,
They swallow us,
And we sink away.

An insignificant ring
Delimits our life,
And many generations
Link continually
To the existence of its
Unending chain.

Maybe not a very good translation, but I think fairly accurate. I really like this poem. It is very humanistic and beautifully captures the relationship between the mortal and the immortal without really devaluing either of them. We mortals have our own version of eternity in which we participate every day. It is just that we have a different perspective than the gods, and we should appreciate where we are at the present time. I do not think this poem contradicts what I believe as a latter-day saint--that I have a potential for eternal progression and may one day participate in godhood. The unending chain reminds me very much of our concept of eternal families bound one to the other throughout the ages. This realization allows me, like the poet to wonder at the greatness of God's creation, even though I don't comprehend even a fraction of it.

But I have gotten off track. My interest in the moment is Kehlmann's novel. Perhaps not completely off track, however. Denn mit Göttern /Soll sich nicht messen/ Irgend ein Mensch reverberates not only in the Vermessung of the title of Kehlmann's novel, but throughout the text as well. Kehlmann describes a time when greatness walked the earth. Looking back it seems impossible to turn around in Germany at the end of the 18th century without running into one genius or the other: Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Gauß, von Humboldt, and others were making discoveries and expressing ideas that still affect us today. It was a time when it was still thought possible to know all there was to know, to be truly and comprehensively educated. Theirs was a time of the pioneering discoveries, we are left with the mere task of filling in the minor details.

The irony is, of course, that we are expanding humanities knowledge at a pace beyond the comprehension of the explorers and thinkers of the 18th century. The further irony is that today's discoveries would not be possible if we were not standing on the shoulders of the accomplishments of the earlier generations (another link in Goethe's chain, perhaps?). The third irony is (also of course,) that Kehlmann's description of Germany's golden age and his representative heroes is a work of fiction. It gives the impression of historical veracity while flagrantly inventing and reinventing characters and events to suit the needs of the story. Daniel Kehlmann is aware of and exploits all of these ironies in his book. He readily admits sacrificing reality for the sake of his definition of truth. It is clear that the author is aware of the irony as he invites the reader in numerous literary winks to join him in the joke.

My interest in this book centers ongoing interest in Germany in the classic period and with the apparent fascination with the cult of the genius. Obviously, the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century marks the German Blütezeit, its golden age, and it is natural that The Germans as a people would look to that time with a certain degree of nostalgia. What Die Vermessung der Welt reveals, I think, is that the modern desire to connect to this era, which appears from our perspective to be a time of giants, runs deeper than one might have expected.

In my paper, I explore the manner in which Daniel Kehlmann describes Germany's golden age and the cult of genius. I also trace the German fascination with greatness through Nietzsche, Mann and others up to the present as I examine how Kehlmann taps into the modern reader's desire to link one's self to past greatness and the irony involved in the process of doing so.