Poetry Revisited: Genius des Herbstes – Genius of Autumn by Anton Wildgans

Genius des Herbstes (aus Buch der Gedichte: 1929) Jetzt ist er leise wieder eingetreten, Der stille Mann mit seinem müden Segnen, Und alle Wesen, die ihm ernst begegnen, Verneigen sich im letzten, stummen Beten. Wie liegt der Fluß in diesen Erntetagen Blank, eine Sichel, die ihr Werk verrichtet, Und Garben über Garben, goldgeschlichtet, Lasten wie Glanz auf hochgetürmten Wagen. Jetzt spenden alle Kelche ihre Neige Zu letzter Lust, denn dunkel ist das Morgen, Und stille Gräber, sommers blattgeborgen, Erschimmern jetzt durch schwarze, kahle Zweige. Der Meister doch in regloser Gebärde Blickt wie ein Arzt am Bette eines Weibes, Das sterbend liegt in Wehen seines Leibes, Und fühlt den Puls der erntemüden Erde. Dann wendet er sich ab von all dem Sterben Und weiht dem jungen Leben sein Erbarmen, Und aus der Mutter toderstarrten Armen Hebt er das Kind, den Frühling, ihren Erben! Anton Wildgans (1881-1932) österreichischer Dichter und Dramatiker

Genius of Autumn (from Book of Poems: 1929) Now he has quietly reentered The silent man with his tired blessing, And all beings who meet him sternly, Bow in the final, silent praying. How is the river in these harvest days shining, a sickle that does its work, And sheaves over sheaves, gold-plated, weigh like lustre on piled cars. Now all goblets are giving their dregs To last lust, because dark is the tomorrow, And quiet tombs, leaf-fed in the summer, Now glint through black, bare branches. The master, however, in still gesture Looks like a doctor at the bed of a woman, Aho lies dying in labour-pains of her body, And feels the pulse of the harvest-tired earth. Then he turns away from all the dying And devotes to the young life his mercy, And from the mother’s death-stiff arms He raises the child, the spring, her heir! Anton Wildgans (1881-1932) Austrian poet and playwright Literal translation: Edith Lagraziana 2018

Book Review: Vipers’ Tangle by François Mauriac

Exclusion happens every day and even in the family as the most intimate social group. Often it results from misunderstandings that nobody cared to clear up out of pride, shame or simply lack of concern and that were thus allowed to grow without measure. As time passes, the excluded may try to compensate the estrangement from the group or/and develop bitter feelings towards the others. It’s how the protagonist of Vipers’ Tangle by François Mauriac, who was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature, became a rancorous miser expecting the worst from his surrounding. Feeling death approach, he decides to put into writing all the exasperation at his family’s indifference and selfishness that he bottled up for decades. He sets out to write a pungent letter to his wife, but as he advances he gradually understands that he added his own to getting estranged from his family and everybody else.

Poetry Revisited: Autumn Song by Edith Nesbit

Autumn Song

(from Songs of Love and Empire: 1898)

“Will you not walk the woods with me?
The shafts of sunlight burn
On many a golden-crested tree
And many a russet fern.
The Summer’s robe is dyed anew,
And Autumn’s veil of mist
Is gemmed with little pearls of dew
Where first we met and kissed.”

“I will not walk the woodlands brown
Where ghosts and mists are blown,
But I will walk the lonely down
And I will walk alone.
Where Night spreads out her mighty wing
And dead days keep their tryst,
There will I weep the woods of Spring
Where first we met and kissed.”

Edith Nesbit (1858-1924)
English author and poet

Bookish Déjà-Vu: Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher

Society doesn’t like intruders and if they come to stay despite all they risk to be treated like lepers if not worse. It seldom matters if they arrive as aggressive conquerors, as powerful representatives of the government (be it accepted or not) or as peaceful immigrants looking for refuge or for a decent livelihood. There’s no way round it. They are outsiders and it’s almost inevitable that they’ll have a hard time to overcome the mistrust, maybe even hatred keeping them at bay. When the new commisioner in my Egyptian bookish déjà-vu Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher takes charge of his post in the Siwa Oasis in North-Western Egypt about 50 km from the Libyan border in the 1890s, he knows all too well that he isn’t welcome and that he shouldn’t have given in to his Irish wife’s unreasonable wish to accompany him for the sake of archaeological research. 

Read my review»

Back Reviews Reel: October 2015

Three years ago I read two classics illustrating the aftermaths of World War I and three very different novels about love. While the forgotten English classic The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold shows new life sprouting from battlefields, the classical Austrian novel Little Apple by Leo Perutz portrays a man seeking revenge for atrocities suffered in a Russian prisoners-of-war camp. Set in modern-day Tōkyo, the contemporary Japanese novel The Briefcase by Kawakami Hiromi follows the budding love between a woman and her former teacher. In contrast, Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, the 1982 Nobel laureate in Literature, is a contemporary novel set in eighteenth-century South America that surrounds a doomed teenager who awakens passionate love in her exorcist. The Japanese historical classic A Tale of False Fortunes by Enchi Fumiko evokes the love of Emperor Ichijō and his first Consort Empress just before the year 1000.

Poetry Revisited: The Autumnal Walk by George Crabbe

The Autumnal Walk

(from Tales of the Hall: 1819)

It was a fair and mild autumnal sky,
And earth’s ripe treasures met the admiring eye,
‘As a rich beauty, when her bloom is lost,
Appears with more magnificence and cost;
T3ie wet and heavy grass, where feet had stray’d,
Not yet erect, the wanderer’s way beiray’d;
Showers of the night had swell’d the deepening rill,
The morning breeze had urged the quickening mill;
Assembled roots had wing’d their seaward flight,
By the same passage to return at night,
While proudly o’er them hung the steady Idle,
Then turn’d them back, and left the noisy throng.
Nor deign’d to know them as he sail’d along.
Long yellow leaves, from osiers, strew’d around,
Choked the dull stream, and husb’d its feeble sound,
While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees,
Our squire beheld not with his wonted ease;
But to his own reflections made reply,
And said aloud, “Yes; doubtless we must die.”

“We must” said Richard; “and we would not live
To feel what dotage and decay will give;
But we yet taste whatever we behold;
The morn is lovely, though the air is cold:
There is delicious quiet in this scene,
At once so rich, so varied, so serene;
Sounds, too, delight us—each discordant tone
Thus mingled, please, that Ml to please alone;
This hollow wind, this rustling of the brook.
The farmyard noise, the woodman at yon oak—
See! the axe falls! —now listen to the stroke;
That gun itself, that murders all this peace,
Adds to the charm, because it soon must cease.”

“No. doubt,” said George, “the country has its charms!”
My farm behold! the model for all farms!
Look at that land — you find not there a weed,
We grub the roots, and suffer none to seed.
To land like this no botanist will come.
To seek the precious ware he hides at home;
Pressing the leaves and flowers with effort nice.
As if they came from herbs in Paradise;
Let them their favourites with my neighbours sec,
They have no — what?— no habitat with me.
Now see my flock, and hear its glory; — none
Have that vast body and that slender hone;
They are the village’s boast, the dealer’s theme,
Fleece of such staple! flesh in such esteem!”

“Brother,” said Richard, “do I hear aright?
Does the land truly give so much delight?”

“So says my bailiff: sometimes I have tried
To catch the joy, but nature has denied;
It will not be — the mind has had a store
Laid up for life, and will admit no more:
Worn out in trials, and about to die,
In vain to these we for amusement fly;
We farm, we garden, we our poor employ,
And much command, though little we enjoy;
Or, if ambitious, we employ our pen.
We plant a desert, or we drain a fen;
And— here, behold my medal! — this will show
What men may merit when they nothing know.”

“Yet reason here,” said Richard, “joins with pride: — ”
“I did not ask th’ alliance,” George replied —
“I grant it true, such trifle may induce
A dull, proud man to wake and be of use;
And there are purer pleasures, that a mind
Calm and uninjured may in villas find;
But where th’ affections have been deeply tried.
With other food that mind must be supplied:
‘Tis not in trees or medals to impart
The powerful medicine for an aching heart;
The agitation dies, but there is still
The backward spirit, the resisting will.
Man takes his body to a country seat,
But minds, dear Richard, have their own retreat;
Oft when the feet are pacing o’er the green
The mind is gone where never grass was seen.
And never thinks of hill, or vale, or plain,
Till want of rest creates a sense of pain.
That calls that wandering mind, and brings it home again.
No more of farms: but here I boast of minds
That make a friend the richer when he finds;
These shalt thou see; — but, Richard, be it known.
Who thinks to see must in his turn be shown: —
But now farewell! to thee will I resign
Woods, walks, and valleys! take them till we dine.”

George Crabbe (1754 -1832)
English poet, surgeon and clergyman

Book Review: Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

Undeniably, it’s an innate impulse to go in search of a better place to live in when for some reason things turn tough where we are and it’s thanks to it that, in the course of tens of thousands of years, human race colonised virtually the entire planet. However, as soon as our ancestors began settling down, migration became a problem because it’s in our nature, too, to protect kith and kin as well as resources from rapacious outsiders. Huge migration waves as in ancient times no longer happen, but a stream of refugees like in the summer of 2015 suffices to put us into a state of alarm. In Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck a recently retired classics professor gets involved in the lives of a group of asylum seekers who camp on a central square in Berlin to become visible as human beings in need.

Poetry Revisited: Sonnet On the Approach of Autumn by Amelia Opie

Sonnet On the Approach of Autumn

(from The Warrior’s Return and Other Poems: 1808)

Farewell gay Summer! now the changing wind
That Autumn brings commands thee to retreat;
It fades the roses which thy temples bind,
And the green sandals which adorn thy feet.

Now flies with thee the walk at eventide,
That favouring hour to rapt enthusiasts dear;
When most they love to seek the mountain side,
And mark the pomp of twilight hastening near.

Then fairy forms around the poet throng,
On every cloud a glowing charm he sees....
Sweet Evening, these delights to thee belong:....

But now, alas! comes Autumn's chilling breeze,
And early Night, attendant on its sway,
Bears in her envious veil sweet Fancy's hour away.

Amelia Opie (1769-1853)
English author of the Romantic Period

Bookish Déjà-Vu: Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys

No matter where, the lot of an immigrant can be terribly hard, especially when all hopes are crushed and things still continue to turn from bad to worse barring even the way back into the bosom of the family. It needs a strong character and an unbending will to go on struggling under such adverse circumstances instead of giving way to such deep desperation that drifting through life seems just as well because nothing that could happen really matters anymore. Sometimes they even watch their own fall in amusement like the protagonist of Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, which I chose as a bookish déjà-vu. By the late 1930s, the Englishwoman who rather stranded in Paris than she settled down there has gone so far downhill that she has no strength left to even try to get back on her feet and to take life into her own hands… 

Read my review»

Poetry Revisited: In October by Bliss Carman

In October

(from Later Poems: 1921)

Now come the rosy dogwoods,
The golden tulip-tree,
And the scarlet yellow maple,
To make a day for me.
The ash-trees on the ridges,
The alders in the swamp,
Put on their red and purple
To join the autumn pomp.
The woodbine hangs her crimson
Along the pasture wall,
And all the bannered sumacs
Have heard the frosty call.
Who then so dead to valor
As not to raise a cheer,
When all the woods are marching
In triumph of the year?

Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
Canadian poet