The Expressionism of Georg Heym: A Note and Two Translations Author(s): Werner Vordtriede Reviewed work(s): Source: Wisconsin

Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 4, No. 3, Studies of Recent British & Continental Literature (Autumn, 1963), pp. 284-297 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1207280 . Accessed: 23/05/2012 16:24
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THE EXPRESSIONISM OF GEORG HEYM: A NOTE AND TWO TRANSLATIONS

WERNER VORDTRIEDE

The art and literature of German expressionism have just reached the stage when they are both old and new as works of the last recognizable movement or school still belonging to our century. One might say that they have, for Germany at least, created the twentieth century, while it, oblivious of historically obliging dates, tried, in iso many other fields of public consciousness, to linger on to the year 1918. The peculiar quality of the expressionists can now be distinguished, the weaker talents, the imitators, the ideological counterfeit having sunk into oblivion. We can now see which of their once startling innovations were imbedded in some tradition, and which have become the starting point for artists and writers to follow: "Expressionism," we now know, as method and technique, can have two meanings. The term can, and mostly does, mean a historically fixed period, 1910-1925 or so, in which certain manifestoes and works of art proclaimed a new style and a new experience. But expressionism is, at the isame time, an ever-possible form, just as are romanticism or surrealism, of artistic experience. Most mystics are expressionists. Since in the now famous seminar of Juliuls Petersen in 1928 a new estimation of German baroque poetry was won (while in England the metaphysical poets more and moire strongly emerged), both the imagery and the diction of expressionist poetry - the crowded line, the delight in the outcry, the apocalyptic vision and the fascination with the terrible details of slow physical decay - have received some posthumous sanction. What once seemed intolerably modern in poetry sounds to us, who no longer are ready to see in baroque literature the clumsy and somewhat touchingly imperfect forerunner of a greater age, almost familiar. Georg Heym's "Morgue," one discovers, has both theme and exaltation in common with the nearly fifty stanzas of Andreas Gryphius' "Gedanken," the thoughts "about the churchyard and the resting place of the dead." If Heym wants to shock a sophisticated reader into a sceptical view of his epoch, so Gryphius, describing at length the "fleshless skeletons, cranes without hair or ornament, faces without nose and lip" and "the yellowish-green feet" wants to 284 Wisconsin Studies

shock the proud Christian into humility. The resulting stench in both poems is not that of Zola, but has rather a metaphysical origin. And Heym's is, with all the poet's professedi defiance, his reminiscences of Rimbaud and the poetes maudits, still a Christian stench, which tries to educate our souls while offending our noses. And Gryphius certainly goes much farther even than Heym in this malodorous practice. Certain words, the classical allusions of one who flaunts his humanist education, which are almost forbidden in contemporary poetry, as are the reversed position of adjective and noun, the loud pathos and the direct confession, are still permissible for Heym: he still can speak of "Lethe" and the "Icarides" and can say "Im Meere weit, wo fern die Woge flog," as might have Gryphius. Yet, certain new themes and new combinations of images have found an echo in what was to follow: the demonization of the great city, the drowned man who continues to move in a private universe, the deromanticized suicide. Bertold Brecht's famous poem about the floating Ophelia continues Heym's Ophelia poems, an echo of which we find in stanza fifteen of the "Morgue." A well-known contemporary poem, Ingeborg Bachmann's "Gestundete Zeit," contains some lines which seem as tholugh they were written by a Georg Heym put on ice, without ecstasy and rhetoric, and therefore grimmer, more terrible, for Ingeborg Bachmann, unlike Heym, does not try to be terrible by being a poetic enfant terrible: Denn die Eingeweide der Fische Sind kalt geworden im Wind. Xrmlich brennt das Licht der Lupinen. Dein Blick spurt im Nebel: Die auf Widerruf gestundete Zeit Wird sichtbar am Horizont. "Umbra Vitae," not the description of a war-threatened city, but written before the First World War, reads like the text to some expressionist picture, as indeed expressionism, vague and simplifying as the term may be, was an art form in which poetry and pictorial art went hand in hand more closely than in many other artistic movements. Both forms of expressionism often seem direct translations of each other, the poem painting the world in vast images of a non-natural coloration and in a crowded and floating disequilibrium, and the picture telling a visionary story. The first stanza!sof "Umbra Vitae" put in all those oblique lines and sloping masses which give a picture by Franz Marc or Lyonel Feininger its crystalline transversals. The static right Heym's Expressionismn 285

angles of observable reality have been abolished in favor of a tremendous movement of obliqueness. The people in the streets of the city are "standing forward" (stehen vorwiirts), leaning in improbable and dangerous angles, oppressed by the impending ruination of the city. In the sky the comets have "fiery noses" (Feuernasen), irregular protuberances of light in all directions. They creep around towers whose shape no longer is straight like that of reliable bastions, but "craggy" (gezackt), lending their contours to the inexorable geometrical arrangement. All the roofs are covered with star gazers. The "tubes" (grosse R6hren) which they push into the sky are surely not erect and seen at a straight angle with the roofs which themselves are certainly gabled, adding the triangle to the apocalyptic crystal. And to undo the straightness of the walls of houses, magicians trying to move or exorcise the threatening stars grow "athwart in darkness" (im Dunkel schriig), long sloping bodies, out of attic windows. The large crowds of suicides go with a "stooped" posture (gebiickt). With an appropriate palette one can follow the poet's every direction and paint an unmistakable expressionist picture. When the last war was over no new expressionism arose, indeed could arise; pathos, rhetoric, the tremendous confession in 'sounding phrases seemed, fortunately, a thing of the immediate past which now demanded a sober, almost silent re-interpretation of the world. But a new interest in expressionist painting and literature became visible almost at once. For the first time collected works were issued. Georg Trakl, Ernst Stadler, Gottfried Benn, and Walter Hasenclever have appeared, and now Georg Heym, in several volumes with notes and annotations that were formerly reserved to the classic authors.' Heym was born in 1888 and died, in his 24th year, in 1912, leaving among other posthumous papers, a diary which has now been published for the first time. These re-issues, new collections, and studies gave many writers sharper contours. Yet, in the process, the term "expressionism" tends to become more and more diffuse. Should Brecht and Kafka, Walser and Else Lasker-Schiiler all be seen as members of the same literary school? What have Diubler and Benn in common? One will have to look for family relations, genealogical trees, as it were. There, one line of relationship clearly emerges. One might call them the black line of writers, those whose visions evoke the antilife, the poetic dangers, the unpoetic terrors, and whose ecstasies spring from despair: Biichner, Grabbe, Strindberg, Rimbaud, Benn, and the early Brecht. Georg Heym is in a line
1 Georg Heym, Dichtungen und Schriften, 3 vols., ed. by K. L. Schneider. Hamburg: H. Ellermann, 1960-63.

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with these. His poems and his few short pieces of prose might serve as the very yardstick with which to measure this particular aspect of expressionism.

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DIE MORGUE

Die Wirter schleichen auf Iden Sohlen leise, Wo durch das Tuch es weiss von Schadeln blinkt. Wir, Tote, sammeln uns zur letzen Reise Durch Wisten weit und Meer und Winterwind. Wir thronen hoch auf kahlen Katafalken, Mit schwarzen Lappen garstig iiberdeckt. Der Mortel fallt. Und aus der Decke Balken Auf uns ein Christus grosse Hiinde streckt. Vorbei ist unsre Zeit. Es ist vollbracht. Wir sind herunter. Seht, wir sind nun tot. In weissen Augen wohnt uns schon die Nacht, Wir schauen nimmermehr ein Morgenrot. Tretet zurtick von unserer Majestit. Befasst uns nicht, die schon das Land erschaun Im Winter weit, davor ein Schatten steht, Des schwarze Schulter ragt im Abenldgraun. Ihr, die ihr eingeschrumpft wie Zwerge seid, Ihr, die ihr runzelig liegt auf unserm Schoss, Wir wuchsen iber euch wie Berge weit In ewige Todesnacht, wie Gotter gross. Mit Kerzen sind wir lacherlich umsteckt, Wir, die man friih aus dumpfen Winkeln zog Noch grunzend, unsre Brust schon blau gefleckt, Die nachts der Totenvogel iberflog. Wir K6nige, die man aus Biiumen schnitt, Aus wirrer Luft im Vogelkonigreich, Und mancher, der schon tief durch Rohricht glitt, Ein weisses Tier, mit Augen rund und weich. Vom Herbst verworfen. Faule Frucht der Jahre, Zerronnen sommers in der Gossen Loch, 288
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THE MORGUE

Silently on their soles the wardens slip Where through the cloth white skulls gleam in the bins. We dead ones gather for the final trip Through deserts wide and sea and winter winds. We are enthroned on We lie with black rags The mortar falls. And A Christ is stretching high bald catafalques, hideously spanned, from the ceiling's balks toward us his large hands.

Gone by is our time. And done the rite. We are beneath. Look how we now are dead. In white eyes dwells for us already night, Not evermore we see a morn rise red. Step backward from our majesty away, And do not touch us who can now espy The land in winter wide, where shadows stay Whose blackened shoulders hide the evening !sky. You who like dwarfs are shriveled up and shrunken, You who are lying wrinkled on our knee, We grew above you, we like mountains high, As great as gods, to night's eternity. With candles are we laughably bedecked, We whom they once from hollow corners drew Still grunting, now, see, our chests are flecked With blue over which at night the deathbird flew. We kings who, dangling, have been cut from trees From whirring air, the kingdom of the wings, And some who glided deep through many reeds; An animal white, its eyes like round soft rings. Thrown up by autumn. Foul fruit of the years, At summer to the holes of gutters swept Heym's Expressionismn 289

Wir, denen langsam auf dem kahlen Haare Der Julihitze weisse Spinne kroch. Ruhen wir aus im stummen Turm, vergessen? Werden wie Welle einer Lethe sein? Oder dass Sturm uns treibt um Winteressen, Wie Dohlen reitend auf dem Feuerschein? Werden wir Blumen sein? Werden wir V6gel werden, Im Stolze des Blauen, im Zorne der Meere weit? Werden wir wandern in den tiefen Erden, Maulwiirfe stumm in toter Einsamkeit? Werden wir in den Locken der Friihe wohnen, Werden wir bliihen im Baum und schlummern in Frucht, Oder Libellen blau auf den Seeanemonen Zittern am Mittag in schweigender Wasser Bucht? Werden wir sein, wie ein Wort von niemand gehiret? Oder ein Rauch, der flattert im Abendraum? Oder ein Weinen, das plotzlich Freudige st6ret? Oder ein Leuchter zur Nacht? Oder ein Traum? .. Wir, Namenlose arme Unbekannte, In leeren Kellern starben wir allein. Was ruft ihr uns, da unser Licht verbrannte, Was st6rt ihr unser frohes Stelldichein? Seht, den dort, der ein graues Lachen stimmt Auf dem zerfallnen Munde fr6hlich an, Der auf die Brust die lange Zunge kriimmt, Er lacht euch auus,der grosse Pelikan. Er wird euch beissen. Viele Wochen war Er Gast bei Fischen. Riecht doch, wie er stinkt. Seht, eine Schnecke wohnt ihm noch im Haar, Die sp6ttisch euch mit kleinem Fiihler winkt.
Ein kleines Glockchen -. Und sie ziehen aus.

Das Dunkel kriecht herein auf schwarzer Hand. Wir ruhen einsam nun im weiten Haus, Unziihlige Sarge tief an hoher Wand. 290 Wisconsin Studies

We over whom slowly on bald hair and ears The fallow spider of July heat crept. Do we now rest forgotten in the mute tower? And shall we as a wave in Lethe flow? Or tossed round chimneys by the winter shower Like jackdaws riding on the fire glow? Shall we be flowers? Shall we turn into birds, In azure's pride, in wide seas' angry mood? Or will we wander in the depth of the earths As moles and mute in the dead !solitude? Shall we be dwellers in the locks of dawn, Or bloom in trees, slumber in fruits at day, Blue dragon flies over sea anemones Trembling at midday in a silent bay? Shall we be like a word by no one heard? Or smoke that flutters in an evening beam? A cry by which a joyful man is stirred? Or a beacon at night? Or a dream? . . . We unknown beings, poor and without names, Why do you call us with our burnt-out flames, Why trouble this our happy rendezvous? See him there out of whose large mouth unhinged Gray laughter in a mirthful chuckle ran, And on his chest his long long tongue is crimped, He laughs at you, that husky pelican. And he will bite you, for he was a guest Of fishes many weeks. Smell how he stinks, Look, in his hair a snail still has its nest That mockingly at you with feelers winks.
A little bell -. And we are moving out. We died in empty cellars you

To us on blackened hands will darkness creep, In loneliness we rest in the vast house, And countless coffins on high walls are deep. Heym's Expressionism 291

Was kommt er nicht? Wir haben Tiicher an Und Totenschuhe. Und wir sind gespeist. Wo ist der Fiirst, der wandert uns voran, Des grosse Fahne vor dem Zuge reist? Wo wird uns seine laute Stimme wehen? In welche Diimmerung geht unser Flug? Verlassen in der Einsamkeit zu stehen Vor welcher leeren Himmel Hohn und Trug? Ewige Stille. Und des Lebens Rest Zerwittert und zerfiillt in schwarzer Luft. Des Todes Wind, der unsre Tiir verliisst, Die dunkle Lunge voll vom Staub der Gruft, Er atmet schwer hinaus, wo Regen rauscht, Eintonig, fern, Musik in unserm Ohr, Das dunkel in die Nacht dem Sturme lauscht, Der ruft im Hause traurig und sonor. Und der Verwesung blauer Glorienschein Entziindet sich auf unserm Angesicht. Ein' Ratte hropstauf nacktem Zehenbein, Komm nur, wir st6rep deinen Hunger night. Wir zogen aus, gegiirtet wie Giganten, Ein jeder klirrte wie ein Goliath. Nun haben wir die Mause zu Trabanten, Und unser Fleisch ward diirrer Maden Pfad. Wir, Ikariden, die mit weissen Schwingen Im blauen Sturm des Lichtes einst gebraust, Wir horten noch der grossen Ttirme Singen, Da riicklings wir in schwarzen Tod gesaust. Im fernen Plan verlorner Himmelslande, Im Meere weit, wo fern die Woge flog, Wir flogen stolz in Abendrotes Brande Mit Segeln gross, die Sturm und Wetter bog. Was fanden wir im Glanz der Himmelsenden? Ein leeres Nichts. Nun schlappt uns das Gebein, 292 Wisconsin Studies

Will he not come? We have the shrouds all on, And death shoes too, and all of us are fed. Where is the Prince, he whol will lead us on, Whose large flag marches, when we go, ahead? Where will his loud voice blow for us its tone? Into what twilight's dusks shall we now fly? Forsaken stand in solitude alone Before what empty heavens' scorn and lie? Eternal stillness. What was life before Now weathers and decays in blackened gloom. The wind of death that now leaves our door, The dark lungs filled with dust from this our tomb, Heavily breathes outside where rustles rain, Dull-toned and far, like music in the ear That darkly listens to the storm at night, And through the house run calls full-voiced and blear. And our festering's blue and shining halo Is kindled over our face, a light. A rat hops over our naked toe, Come on, we have enough for you to bite. Once we set forth begirded as are giants, Each one was clanking just like a Goliath. Now we have only mice as satellites, And all our flesh became lean maggots' path. We, Icarides, who with their once white wings, Have blustered once in the blue storm of light, We could still hear what the great towers sing, When we rushed headlong into black death's night. On distant plains of the lost heavenly lands, On oceans wide where far the billow went, We proudly flew in the red brand of dusk With sails so large, which storm and weather bent. What did we find in beams of heavens' ends? An empty nothing. Slack are now our feet, Heym's Expressionism 293

Wie einen Pfennig in den leeren Handen Ein Bettler klappern lasst am Strassenrain. Was wartet noch der Herr? Das Haus ist voll, Die Kammern rings der Karavanserei, Der Markt der Toten, der von Knochen scholl, Wie Zinken laut hinaus zur Wiistenei.

UMBRA VITAE Die Menschen stehen vorwirts in den Strassen Und sehen auf die grossen Himmelszeichen, Wo die Kometen mit den Feuernasen Um die gezackten Tiurme drohend schleichen. Und alle Dacher sind voll Sternedeuter, Die in den Himmel stecken grosse R6hren, Und Zauberer, wachsend aus den Bodenlochern, Im Dunkel schriig, die ein Gestirn beschwo'ren. Selbstmorder gehen nachts in grossen Horden, Die isuchen vor sich ihr verlornes Wesen, Gebiickt in Siid und West und Ost und Norden, Den Staub zerfegend mit den Armen-Besen. Sie sind wie Staub, der halt noch eine Weile. Die Haare fallen schon auf ihren Wegen. Sie springen, dass sie sterben, und in Eile, Und sind mit totem Haupt im Feld gelegen, Noch manchmal zappelnd. Und der Felder Tiere Stehn um sie blind und stossen mit dem Home In ihren Bauch. Sie strecken alle Viere, Begraben unter Salbei und dem Dome. Die Meere aber stocken. In den Wogen Die Schiffe hingen modernd und verdrossen,

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Just like a cent that in his empty hands A beggar rattles at the edge of streets. The Lord still waits? The house with us abounds, The chambers round the caravanseray, The market of the dead, whose bones did sound Like comets into the deserts loud away.

UMBRA VITAE

All men are standing forward in the streets And look upon the large celestial signs, There where the comets with their fiery noses Creep threatening round the towers' craggy lines. And all the roofs are full of those who gaze At stars, who push large tubes into the sky, Magicians growing out of attic-caves Athwart in darkness star-bewitching lie. Self-murderers go at night in crowded hordes. They search ahead of them for souls they lost, Stooped down in South and West and East and North, And with their pauper-besoms sweep the dust. They are like dust that for a while might stick, Their hair upon their ways already yields, They run that they may die, and all are quick, With dying heads lie down upon the field, Still fidgety sometimes. Beasts of the lands Stand round them blind and ram their pointed horns Into their bellies. They stretch out their hands, Lie buried under sage and under thorns. But all the seas are faltering. In the waves The ships are hanging mouldering and amiss, Heym's Expressionism 295

Zerstreut, und keine Stromung wird gezogen, Und aller Himmel H6fe sind verschlossen. Die Baume wechseln nicht die Zeiten Und bleiben ewig tot in ihrem Ende, Und iiber die verfallnen Wege spreiten Sie holzern ihre langen Fingerhande. Wer stirbt, der setzt sich auf, sich zu erheben, Und eben hat er noch ein Wort gesprochen, Auf eimal ist er fort. Wo ist sein Leben? Und seine Augen sind wie Glas zerbrochen. Schatten sind viele. Triibe und verborgen. Und Triume, die an stummen Tiiren schleifen, Und der erwacht, bedruckt vom Licht der Morgen, Muss schweren Schlaf von grauen Lidern streifen.

"Die Morgue" and "Umbra Vitae" copyright by Heinrich Ellermann, publishers of the new collected edition of the works of Georg Heym 296 Wisconsin Studies

Distracted, and no current is that saves, And all the heavens' courtyards close their bliss. The trees no longer change, for ever dead, With tide and season, barren stark they stand, And over the decaying ways they spread Their large and wooden stretched-out fingerhands. And he who dies sits up and tries to rise, And just a while ago his word was spoken, Then suddenly he goes. Where is his life? There shatter both his eyes, as glass is broken. Shadows are many. Hidden, dim, forlorn, And dreams that slither round mute doors are deep. He who wakes up, oppressed by light of morn, From his gray lids must rub off heavy sleep.

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