In which Geri and I Play a Game.

Last year when I was in Berlin, I was crossing Potsdamer Platz on my way to or from somewhere. On that day they were having a market, which is when various and random vendors set up tents on city squares and sell random wares, good food, and usually some kind of beer or Bratwurst as well. Walking through I noticed a vendor selling a beautifully carved chess set in what looked like a well constructed case with drawers to hold the pieces. It was only 25 Euro. The problem was, I was feeling poor that day, having just spent most of my liquid assets for tickets to a concert in the Philharmonie for me and my students. So I didn’t get the chess board. I felt bad, even though I already have several chess sets, and really display exactly none of them. And even though it was probably made in Poland or somewhere else in eastern Europe, I still like the idea of a chess set as a souvenir. A good one has beauty and function. When I told my dad about it, who also likes chess sets, even though he hasn’t played me since the first time I beat him, he told me I should have bought the board anyway if it were only 25 euro. I thought this was odd, since he is, if anything, even more conservative with his money than I am.

Which leads up to this year. When I took the students to Dresden, there is a market place near the Frauenkirche with all the typical shop tents and wooden huts set up – I had some roast rabbit and Rotkohl with klöße there that was amazing. I also saw a chess board with stone figures and a stone-inlaid playing surface. 25 Euro. So without thinking too long. I bought it. I broke it in at the train station on the way home by beating one of my students in its first game. I don’t like to brag, but I demolished him, sucking him into a gambit and then picking him apart piece by piece. I still don’t like to brag, because he wasn’t a bad player, – but the game wasn’t really that close.

So now the board sits in my room, and I have no one to play. So I have been playing myself–Geri’s game style. If I wait long enough between moves, the left half of my brain can’t remember what the right half was thinking, and it is a pretty fair fight. We can’t play for false teeth, since neither of us has any, just a few crowns we both share. Maybe the loser will have to buy the winner a chocolate bar. Winner chooses the flavor.
By the way, no stone lions were injured in the composition of this post, but 3 of the four stone horsemen have already left the game. My apologies to Ron Weasley.

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.

On the Dificulty of Experiencing the real Germany

I had a culture class today with my students in Berlin. The first question I asked them was to tell me the most remarkable thing about their stay so far in Germany. They made comments varying from having to pay to use the public toilets, to the great art we have seen in Berlin and Dresden to the street music played in the subways. All of them were great answers. Then I thought myself about the most remarkable thing I have experienced. For me it was Sunday dinner with a family I came to know in 2001 when I was here last.

I have explained to whoever will listen that Germans are like their bread. They tend to be hard and crusty on the outside. In other words, one of my students remarked that on the subway, no one talks to each other, they stare ahead, or at a book, but they seem to avoid eye contact at all costs. I think this is a defense mechanism to living so close on top of one another that they establish a sphere of privacy about them that can be difficult to pierce. But German bread is only crusty on the outside. Inside it is fresh, and warm, and contains a great deal more flavor and substance than American bread. I think the analogy holds true for the German people as well. Once you succeed in getting past the tough exterior, they are warm and generous beyond what one would normally experience in America. The German word Freund is so much richer than the English equivalent. There is an intimacy in German Friendship that suggests a closeness akin to family. This is what I experienced this weekend. Two families shared in the birthday of a 13 year old daughter, who has grown into a beautiful and accomplished young woman since I saw her last. They invited me into their circle and it felt as if I had always belonged there. Instead of making a big deal of me as their guest, I felt as if I were a natural part of the event. I felt taken for granted–not in the usual negative way that phrase connotes, but as one whom they took for granted as belonging–a friendship resumed as if there had been no break.

I don’t know if my friendship means as much to them as their friendship means to me, but it does not matter, really. For me it is enough to know how privileged, how fortunate I am to be a part of such relationships-not just once, but many times over with many families. I want my students to experience Germany and come to appreciate it the way I do. But I don’t know how to recreate the relationships for them that I have had the good fortune to have made while I have been here. It is not something that anyone else can create for them. Some experiences have to come as they will.




Oh and Dresden was amazing too.