photographs|poems
Remembrance
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae (1915)
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Moonlight
To the Moon (1778)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Bush and vale are filled by thee
With a silver haze,
And my soul thou hast set free
With thy soothing rays.
And thy gentle beams descend
Kindly where I go,
Like the mild eye of a friend
On my joy and woe.
Echoes of the times gone by
Tremble through my heart,
'Twixt delight and grief I ply,
Evermore apart.
Dearest river, flow, oh flow!
Joy cannot abide.
Play and kisses vanished so,
Faithfulness beside.
Once—oh, could I but forget!—
It was mine: the rare!
And it is a torture yet
Memories to bear.
River, flow the vale along,
Without rest or ease,
Murmur, whisper to my song
Gentle melodies!
Swelling in the winter night
With thy roaring flood,
Bubbling in the spring’s delight
Over leaf and bud!
Blessed is he who walks apart,
Though no hate he bears,
Holds a friend within his heart;
And with him he shares
All that steals, by men unguessed,
Or by men unknown,
Through the maze of his own breast
In the night alone.
To the Beyond
Do you hear the fountain rushing?
Clemens Brentano (1811)
Do you hear how the fountains murmur,
Do you hear how the cricket chirps?
Silence, silence, let us listen,
Blessed are those who die in dreams.
Blessed are those whom the clouds sway,
To whom the moon sings a lullaby,
O how blessed can he fly,
To whom the dream swings the wing,
That on a blue sky
Stars he picks like flowers:
Sleep, dream, fly, I'll wake you
Up soon and am happy.
Die Loreley
The Lorelei
Heinrich Heine (1824)
I know not if there is a reason
Why I am so sad at heart.
A legend of bygone ages
Haunts me and will not depart.
The air is cool under nightfall.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain is sparkling
With evening's final ray.
The fairest of maidens is sitting
So marvelous up there,
Her golden jewels are shining,
She's combing her golden hair.
She combs with a comb also golden,
And sings a song as well
Whose melody binds a wondrous
And overpowering spell.
In his little boat, the boatman
Is seized with a savage woe,
He'd rather look up at the mountain
Than down at the rocks below.
I think that the waves will devour
The boatman and boat as one;
And this by her song's sheer power
Fair Lorelei has done.
Das Tränenkrüglein
The Teardrop Jug
Ludwig Bechstein (1845)
Once upon a time there was a mother and a child, and the mother loved the child, her only one, with all her heart, and could not live or be without the child. But then the Lord sent a great sickness, which raged among the children and seized also this child, that it sank on its bed and sickened to death. For three days and three nights the mother watched, wept and prayed over her beloved child, but it died. Then the mother, who was now alone on the whole of God's earth, was seized with a tremendous and nameless pain, and she did not eat and did not drink and wept wept wept again for three days and three nights without ceasing, and called for her child. As she sat there on the third night, full of deep sorrow, at the place where her child had died, tired of tears and pain until she fainted, the door opened softly, and the mother cringed, before her stood her dead child. It had become a blessed little angel and smiled sweetly like innocence and beautifully as if transfigured. But it carried in its little hands a jar, which was almost overflowing. And the child said: "O dear sweet mother, weep no more for me! Behold, in this jar are your tears which you dropped for me; the angel of sorrow has gathered them into this vessel. If you drop one more tear for me, the jar will overflow, and I will have no rest in the grave and no bliss in heaven. Therefore, O dear sweet mother, weep no more for your child, for your child is well taken care of, it is happy, and angels are its playmates." With that the dead child disappeared and the mother wept no more tears. In order not to disturb the child's peace in the grave and in heaven, for the sake of the child's bliss she wept no more tears, she conquered her immense deep pain of soul. Motherly love is so strong and powerful!
Gauche du Rin
The Battle of the Poets
The following poems are the result of the Rhine Crisis of 1840 caused by the French Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers, who again demanded that France should own the left bank of the Rhine (described as France's "natural border").
„The German Rhine"
Nikolaus Becker (1840)
An Alphons de Lamartine
They shall not have him,
The free German Rhine,
Even if they cry like greedy ravens
Until their voices are hoarse,
As long as he, flowing calmly,
Is of green colour,
As long as rudders sound
On his waves.
They shall not have him,
The free German Rhine,
As long as hearts still feast
With his fiery wine;
As long as on its surface
The rocky cliffs still gaze,
As long as big cathedrals
Are mirrored in his waves.
They shall not have him,
The free German Rhine,
As long as valorous youths still woo
Slim maidens on its shore.
As long as fish still flick their fins
Down there on the river bed,
As long as songs still resound
From every minstrel’s mouth.
They shall not have it,
The free German Rhine,
Until its waters have submerged
The mortal remains of every man.
"The German Rhine”
Alfred de Musset (1841)
Answer to the poem Nikolaus Becker
We once possessed your German Rhine;
We’ve often had it in our glass.
Say, poet, does thy measured whine
Blot out the trace, on plain or pass,
Our chargers’ hoofs have marked in German blood the grass?
We once possessed your German Rhine.
An open wound it e’er has been
Since Condé, conquering Palatine,
Asunder tore its dress of green.
Where once the father passed, the son may yet be seen.
We once possessed your German Rhine,
When Teuton courage was afraid,
When Bonaparte, as one divine,
Covered your meadows with his shade.
O’er every German field was waved the French-man’s blade.
We once possessed your German Rhine.
If you forget your history.
Your maidens poured the thin, white wine,
For Frenchmen with due courtesy.
And of the gallant French they’ve best kept memory.
If it is yours, your German Rhine,
Go wash in it your livery;
Your words should be much less malign,
For on your day of misery
Your ravens were the sport of eagle’s butchery.
Let flow in peace your German Rhine;
Let churches with their double prongs
Gaze at their own reflections fine.
But fear ye, lest your drunken songs
Should wake again the dead, who might avenge their wrongs.
„A Winter’s Tale”
Heinrich Heine (1843)
Answer to the poems Becker and Musset
And when I reached the Rhine-bridge,
Where stands the harbour bastion,
There, in the moonlight, I could see
The father Rhine flowing on.
“Greetings to you, old father Rhine,
Tell me, how have things been going?
I have often thought of you,
With deep yearning and longing”
Thus I spoke. From the watery depths
Came a voice, strangely moaning,
Like an old man’s coughing,
A grumbling and a groaning.
“Welcome, my boy, that you still remember,
Renders me so pleased and so glad!
I haven’t seen you in thirteen years,
Meanwhile, my affairs have gone bad.
At Bieberich, I swallowed some stones,
They were hardly tasty, at best.
Yet, the verses of Niklas Becker
Are much harder to digest.
He sang me as if I still were
The purest virgin in town,
Who would never let anyone lift
Her little honour’s crown.
Whenever I hear this stupid song,
I begin to feel so weird:
I feel like drowning myself in me,
Or tearing my old white beard!
The French know better than anyone
That I am not a virgin anymore:
They mixed so often in the past
Their victorious waters on my shore.
What a stupid song! What a stupid chap!
I am now shamelessly despised,
And, in a certain way, I am
Politically compromised.
For, should the French ever come back,
With shame, my cheeks will burn,
I who so often tearfully prayed
That one day they may return.
Those darling little Frenchmen!
For them I’ve always had a soft spot.
Do they still were white pants?
Do they still sing and spring a lot?
I’d really love to see them again,
Yet, I’m afraid I could be hurt
On account of this accursed song
And the mocking that would result.
Alfred de Musset, that guttersnipe
Would come at their head, I fear;
Perhaps as a drummer boy, he’ll drum
His nasty jokes into my ear.”
Thus poor father Rhine complained.
Insecure, o how he must have suffered!
And, in order to raise his sinking heart,
These comforting words, I uttered:
"O fear not, dear father Rhine,
The nasty jokes that come from France;
These French are not the French of old,
They even wear different pants.
Their pants are red and no longer white,
New buttons are now on display,
They sing no more, they spring no more,
But hang their heads in a nostalgic way.
They’re thinkers now: Kant, Fichte, Hegel
Are the subjects of their talking;
They smoke tobacco, they guzzle beer
And many even go bowling.
They’ve become philistines, just like us
And carry this change to extremes:
They’ve started to follow Hengstenberg,
Voltaire is out, or so it seems.
It is true that Alfred de Musset
A guttersnipe remains;
But fear not that vile tongue of his:
We’ll tie it up in chains.
And if he drums you an evil joke,
We’ll whistle back uglier airs,
We’ll whistle aloud what happened to him,
Mixing in pretty women’s affairs.
Cheer up, old father Rhine,
Those evil songs treat with disdain,
You’ll soon hear a better song,
Farewell, until we meet again.”
Napoléon Bonaparte
Napoleon
"My glory is not to have won forty battles; Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories; But what will not be erased by anything, what will live forever, that is my Code Civil".
- Napoléon Bonaparte, Arrêté consulaire of 24 thermidor of year VIII (August 13, 1800).
CODE CIVIL
•Freedom for everyone
•Freedom of trade and choice of profession
•Abolition of the guild obligation
•Equality before the law
•Laicism: complete separation between church and state
•Protection of private property
•Creation of the legal basis for the market economy
•Recording of births and deaths (civil status)
Liebe Glaube Hoffnung
Hope
Friedrich von Schiller (1797)
All humans converse and daydream a lot
Of better days to come;
Toward a fortuitous, golden goal
One can see them hauntingly running.
Old grows the world, it turns young then again
Likewise, for the better does hope a man.
Hope introduces man to life,
And it flutters about the cheerful boy.
A youth is enraptured by its magic shine;
It is not buried with the grey-haired aged man,
For although he ends his weary run in the grave,
He still plants by his grave - Hope.
It is no empty, flattering delusion
Generated in the mind of a fool.
It proclaims itself loudly in the heart:
"We were born for something better!"
And what is the truth of the inner voice call
Can never let down a man’s hoping soul.
Circle of Unity
Symphony
Clemens Brentano (1778-1842)
Silence! - the graves tremble;
Silence! - and fiercely forth
Life rushes out of the calm,
Rises from itself among
The crowd, scattered in song.
Working the master opens
Graves - born dance
Floats the sounding spirits;
Shimmering in their own brilliance
Of the tones colorful changing crown.
All entwined in one,
Each in its own sound,
Powerfully swinging through the whole,
The spirits' song
Shaped down the stage along.
Holy roaring waves,
Serious and voluptuous glow
Flow in shimmering arches,
Sprays in sounding roar
The ghost dance silver flow.
All risen in one,
They are not even aware
That they joined one by one;
Feeling in their own chest
Each of the whole the lust.
But in the inner life
The master fetters the being;
Then makes them struggle and strive;
Acting through the lines
The whole in the individual shine.
Grenzgänger
Friedrich Schlegel (1803)
"Nowhere are the memories of what the Germans once were, and what they could be, more awakened than on the Rhine. The sight of this royal river must fill every German heart with melancholy [...] Here would be the place where a world could come together and from here be overlooked and directed, if not a narrow barrier confined the so-called capital, but instead of the unnatural natural border and the pitifully torn unity of the countries and nations, a chain of castles, towns and villages along the magnificent stream once again formed a whole and, as it were, a larger city, as a worthy center of a delighted part of the world."
Der Klang der Zeit
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
"The world is not here to be improved. You, too, are not here to be improved. But you are here to be yourselve. You are here so that the world may be richer by this sound, by this tone, by this shadow. Be yourself, so the world is rich and beautiful! Don't be yourself, be a liar and a coward, so the world is poor and seems in need of improvement ."
Political Reflections, Collected Works Vol. 10
Imperfect
I love you, gentle law
Rainer Maria Rilke (1899)
I love you, you most gentle law,
on which we matured as we were wrestling;
thou great homelonging, which we never vanquished,
thou forest, from which we never to go forth,
thou song that we sang with every silence,
you dark web,
in which feelings are caught in escape.
You began to be so infinitely great
on that day when you began us, -
and we have matured so much in your suns,
so broadly grown and so deeply planted,
that you, in men, angels and nuns.
You can now complete yourself rested.
Let your hand dwell on the slope of the sky
and tolerate silently what we do to you darkly.
Mädchenaugen
Bettine Brentano, later von Arnim
Letter to Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1800)
"You can perhaps easily explain that I am sad - to have such vital force and fortitude, and no means to use it! How may it be to a great warrior's bravery, to whom the heart glows for great ventures and actions, and who is in captivity, burdened with chains, may think of no rescue! This everlasting, restless desire for deeds often overwhelms my soul, and yet I am only a simple girl whose destiny is far different. When I think that yesterday was a day like today is one, and tomorrow will be one, and such many have already been, and many still will be, it often becomes utterly dark before my senses, and I can hardly think to myself how wretched this will make me, never to come into a relationship in which I can work according to my abilities."
Karoline von Günderrode (1780-1806)
"I search in poetry, as in a mirror, to collect myself to look at myself and to pass through myself into a higher world..."
Morgenröte
Not ripe for freedom?
Immanuel Kant (1798)
"I confess that I am not at ease with the expression which wise men also apply: certain folks (which are in the process of legal liberty) are not ripe for liberty; the servants of a landowner are not yet ripe for liberty; and so also: men in general are not yet ripe for freedom of faith.
According to such a presupposition, however, freedom will never come about; for one cannot mature to it if one has not first been set at liberty (one must be free in order to be able to use one's powers expediently in liberty). The first attempts will, of course, be raw, generally also connected with a more burdensome and hazardous condition than when one was still under the orders, but also under the care, of others; but one never matures for reason in any other way than through one's own attempts (which, to be allowed to attempt, one must be free)."
Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason. Ed. by Klaus Vorländer, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1956, p. 212 (In the original edition of 1798 p. 291/292).
Die Weise
He who learns wisdom only from books
Friedrich von Bodenstedt (around 1858)
He who learns wisdom only from books
And does not think and live wisely himself,
Will be more and more distant from it,
The more he strives to get close to it.
Life shall be the earth,
in which wisdom takes root,
And if you do not plant the core here,
No tree will grow that bears fruit.
Euphony
From olden tales it flings out
Heinrich Heine (1822)
From olden tales it flings out
A beckoning white hand;
It sings out and it rings out
From an enchanted land:
Where blossoms tall and slender
In the gold-lit eventide
Look up with eyes as tender
As the eyes of a loving bride; –
Where all the trees have voices
And sing their choral chants,
And every rill rejoices
In music for the dance; –
And songs of love are thronging
Such as you never heard
Till hearts with sweetest longing
Are wonder-sweetly stirred!
Ah, could I only go there
And free my heart of pain,
And banish all my woe there,
Be free and blest again!
Ah, land of bliss undying,
I see it oft in dreams.
When dawn comes, it goes flying
Like foam in the morning beams.
Siegfried
Siegfried’s Sword
Ludwig Uhland (1812)
Siegfried was young, and haughty, and proud,
When his father’s home he disavowed.
In his father’s house he would not abide:
He would wander over the world so wide.
He met many a knight in wood and field
With shining sword and glittering shield.
But Siegfried had only a staff of oak:
He held him shamed in sight of the folk.
And as he went through a darksome wood,
He came where a lowly smithy stood.
There was iron and steel in right good store;
And a fire that did bicker, and flame, and roar.
“O smithying-carle, good master of mine,
Teach me this forging craft of thine.
“Teach me the lore of shield and blade,
And how the right good swords are made!”
He struck with the hammer a mighty blow,
And the anvil deep in the ground did go.
He struck: through the wood the echoes rang,
And all the iron in flinders sprang.
And out of the last left iron bar
He fashioned a sword that shone as a star.
“Now have I smithied a right good sword,
And no man shall be my master and lord;
“And giants and dragons of wood and field,
I shall meet like a hero, under shield.”
Rheingold
Presence
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1813)
ALL things give token of thee!
As soon as the bright sun is shining,
Thou too wilt follow, I trust.
When in the garden thou walk'st,
Thou then art the rose of all roses,
Lily of lilies as well.
When thou dost move in the dance,
Then each constellation moves also;
With thee and round thee they move.
Night! oh, what bliss were the night!
For then thou o'ershadow'st the lustre,
Dazzling and fair, of the moon.
Dazzling and beauteous art thou,
And flowers, and moon, and the planets
Homage pay, Sun, but to thee.
Sun! to me also be thou
Creator of days bright and glorious;
Life and Eternity this!
Naturalised
Novalis (1772-1801)
What fits must come together,
What understands itself, finds itself,
What is good, to join,
What loves, to be together.
What hinders, must escape,
What is crooked, must be alike,
What is far away, must reach itself,
What sprouts, that must prosper.
Give me your hands in trust,
Be my brother and bend
Your eyes before your end
Away from me again.
A temple - where we kneel
A place - where we go
A happiness - for which we glow.
© christa maria
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