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.

Dark Matter and Modernism

Much of my research intersects with issues around modernism. When I get into discussions with people about what I do, I am often asked what modernism is. Answer: I don't really know. In fact, I have sometimes been surprised by the people who have asked me--since I was about to ask them what they thought modernism might be. I suspect, that if modernism is anything, then it is this poem "The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

(1919)



That line in the first stanza "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold" is archetypical of all things modern. I just saw a NOVA program about dark matter. It explained how when a central body is not strong enough gravitationally, the objects around it are able to fly away. This, I think is central motive (if you will excuse the pun) around which modernism rotates: that the things we would like to trust in life --governments, God, our parents-- often aren't strong enough to provide stability in a world that transforms itself too quickly for us to adapt. Certainly this is how Yeats must have felt when faced with the one-two punch of the first World War and the Spanish flu epidemic when so many lost their lives.

The poem makes clear christian references, yet the god of his second coming seems to be an amalgamation of greek and egyptian mythology. Nothing is as it ought to be, nothing makes sense. The poem leaves me empty of everything but respect and awe for Yeat's imagery. Even for those who haven't lost their religion like Yeats or maybe REM,I think this poem creates images that ring true for most people. The ever-widening gyre of the falcon or the beast slouching toward Jerusalem--both connote the increasing uncertainty that we all have to confront if we are to make it.

The second question, of course, is always what is post-modernism? Answer: the center cannot hold, but I am ok with that.

(Picture is The Widening Gyre, by Emily Tellez)

More things I like

Dû bist mîn, ich bin dîn:
des solt dû gewis sîn;
dû bist beslozzen in mînem herzen,
verlorn ist daz slüzzelîn:
dû muost och immer darinne sîn.

(Unbekannte Dichterin)

As much as I enjoy modern German literature, there is something about the poetry, the stories, and just the pure language of Middle High German that affects me on a very fundamental level. The stories and poetry are both simpler and more complex. I would probably dismiss this same poem in modern english as the lame lyrics spewed by the music industry through pop-rock starlet-du-jour.

But the original, and most of the other texts from the time period feel completely different. I like the minimalism of MHG that is lacking in the modern dialects. There is a proximity to emotion and raw experience that exists in this poem, in Walter von der Vogelweide, Hartmann von Aue, and many many other medevial texts.

The sad thing is, as hard as it is for a 2oth-century germanist to find a good job, medevialists have it even tougher, and I am afraid that we will soon loose most of our experts in this field and the middle ages will not be taught to the degree that they once were. And that will be a shame. But at least you can still find it on YouTube

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.