Post by moira on Jul 14, 2008 22:02:10 GMT 2
Karoline von Günderrode (1770 - 1806)
The Prime Lament (1804-5)
Whom in soul and mind oppresses
The profoundest of distresses,
Parting's bitter smart,
Who had cherished what was taken,
By his dearest was forsaken:
The beloved heart,
Tastes within delight the burning
Tears, and love's perennial yearning
To be one in twain,
Find in one the other ever,
Thus the bounds of self to sever
And all being's pain.
Who with all her heart and nature
Came to love a human creature
Ah! is not consoled
By the thought that joys departed
Usher in some newly started --
They can't match the old.
That sweet state of living, learning
Both accepting and returning
Words and looks and airs,
Eager search and joyous ending,
Sentiment and apprehending,
Not a god repairs.
* * *
Once a Dulcet Life Was Mine (1804-5)
Once a dulcet life was mine,
For I seemed all of a sudden
But a fragrant wisp of cloud;
Nothing to be seen above me
But a deep-blue ocean sea,
And I sailed now here, now yonder
Lightly cradled by the waves.
Gladly in the heavens' ether
Did I flit the livelong day,
Then would settle, gaily tumbling,
By the rim of Earth, recumbent,
As she, steaming, incandescent,
Having loosed the Sun's embrace,
Hies to bathe in vesper cool,
Be refreshed by evening breezes.
Then the Sun, by parting's sorrow
Seized, embraced myself instead,
And her lovely lambent rays
Laved and loved and kissed me all.
Colorful lusters
Toward me descended,
Skipping and sporting,
Cradling on zephyrs
Balmy bodies;
Purple and gold
All their attire,
Like the profounder
Riches of Fire.
But they grew wan,
Paler and paler,
Sunken their cheeks,
Breaking their eyes.
And of a sudden
Vanished my playmates,
And when my eyes sought
Sadly to hold them,
I saw the hulking, hurrying shadow
Eager to snatch them, --
Bent on pursuit.
Deep in the west
I still saw the flash of
Gold on their garments.
Then, lo, I spread out
Small wings of my own;
Fluttering to and fro,
I rejoiced in the aerial life,
At rest in the lucence of ether.
I saw rare and wondrous objects,
Figures also, move in space,
In the sacred, deep, unfathomed
Ranges of the firmament.
Gods immortal
Seated on thrones
Of brilliant stars
Eyeing each other,
Blissfully smiling.
Clanging shields,
Ringing spears
Wielded by towering
Heroes in combat;
Powerful wild-beasts
Fleeing before them;
Others were wreathing
Earth and Heaven
With wide-flung rings,
Pursuing themselves
In eternal orbits.
Blossoming grace
Amongst those crude ones,
A maiden was poised,
All overmastering.
Lovely children
Played in the midst of
Poisonous snakes. --
Thither I meant to
Flutter my way next,
Play with the children,
Also to kiss
The maiden's feet;
But a deep-down longing held me
Prisoner within myself;
And I felt as if I had been
Wrenched from such sweet flesh at one time,
And were feeling only now
The bleeding wound of pain gone by.
And I turned my flight to where
Lay sweet Earth in blissful slumber
Cradled in the arms of Heaven;
Softly now the star-song sounded,
Lest it rouse the lovely bride,
And the ether's breezes wafted
Softly by the tender breast.
Then I felt that I was sprung
From the Mother's inmost life,
And I staggered about
The spaces of ether,
An erring child.
I had to weep;
Streaming with tears I sank
Down to the Mother's lap.
Colorful cups
Of fragrant flowers
Caught up the tears,
And I passed through them,
All those calyxes,
Trickled downward
On through the flowers,
Deeper and deeper
Down to the womb,
To the shrouded Wellspring of life.
(both poems translated by Walter Arndt)
*************
[/b] imitation, The History of Lady Sophie Sternheim[/b] (I've read that and some other prose works by her). Eighteenth-century German cultural circles were very small, and often people who belong to them seem to be related to one another. Karoline fell in love three times; in two cases the man preferred to marry another woman writer who is said to have been less intense and "absolute in her feelings." The third time she became involved with a man already married; when this man ended the affair, Karoline committed suicide. All three men were learned types; the third a classics professor in Heidelberg.
There is a life in wikipedia but it is in German:
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoline_von_G%C3%BCnderrode
The poems come from Bitter Healing: German Women Writers, 1700-1830, edited by Jeannine Blackwell & Susannze Zantop. They are prefaced by a brief life by Marianne E. Gooze where you can learn that she was born in Karlsrueh on
February 11, 1780, the eldest of six children, her father was a court advisor and writer who died when she was 6. Her mother, Louise, was learned, had studied Ficht's philosophy and anonymously published essays and poems. In 1797 Karoline entered a convent: this was a place a respectable young woman could stay, be educated, and study, and Karoline did study, and ade close friends with two other educated German women and the family from whom Bettina von Arnim came. Karoline met Bettina at the home of Bettina's grandmother Sophie von La Roche. La Roche is known for her novels, particularly the Clarissa
Two volumes of her poems were published under a pseudonym, Tian in 1804 and 1805; a third was prepared and not published in her lifetime. According to Gooze, she did not enter the literary canon even after Armin wrote the biography. Karoline was discussed as a romantic suicide until Christa Wolf, a well-known East German iconoclastic writer "rediscovered" her. The first writer in English to have recognized and praised both Bettina von Armin and Karoline von Günderrode was Margaret Fuller, who translated Bettina's book in 1842.
There were very many strong obstacles preventing German women from becoming writers or publishing. I reviewed a book which included an analysis of Katherine R. Goodman's Amazons and Apprentices: Women and the German Parnassus in the Early Enlightenment. Goodman showed that although German women wanted to imitate the French salonieres, they were hampered strongly by norms for writing and marriage. They were judged by impossibly high standards at the same time as they were to devote their lives to children. Goodman's book on (among others) Christiane Mariane von Ziegler (1695-1760), an "Amazon" who published under her real name (not a nom de plume), urged women to follow a French model, and found herself the object of cruel personal slander. When thinking about Gunderrode's suicide and how she was thrice thrown over, probably one should take into account the repressive milieu.
Christa Wolf is a controversial writer in Germany; she's accused of having been a collaborator with the East German police. There was a movie recently where it was shown how so many people in East Germany collaborated. Her books include Cassandra and Medea.
There are articles about her on the Net:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_Wolf
Medea is on one of my TBR piles:
www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0498/wolf/
Ellen[/blockquote][/size]