Stefan George as presented on POETS The Original

The following text was written for POETS The Original. It didn't contain the pictures.

Yesterday +Jasmine reminded us of Pablo Neruda and I thought of introducing Stefan George, who was born in Büdesheim (Germany) on July 12^th 1868 (150^th  Birthday) and died in Minusio (Switzerland) on December 4^th 1933. But then I didn’t do it because “George's concepts of "the thousand year Reich" and "fire of the blood" were adopted by the NSDAP and incorporated into the party's propaganda” [1]. I never liked the heroism and self-sacrifice in his poetry, not his styled appearance as the master or the George-circle. The Nazi offered George the presidency of the new Academy of Literature, which he refused. He also didn’t attend the pompous 65^th birthday reception, the Nazis had staged, but had been on his way to Switzerland, already fatally ill.

Today I’ve seen an ad while on my way to a shopping mall. The whole story is here: [2]. After 1904 George had his poetry published in a special typography, which is form of grotesque. Grotesque fonts are sans serif – and actually I prefer sans serif fonts myself. The Stefan-George-Grotesque had been styled after his hand writing. His E looked more like an ɛ. Have a look at a facsimile [3]. And have a look at the advertisement here.

So this made me telling you about Stefan George. What can we learn from George? Structure, formalism, symbolism – maybe.

Here’s part of a poem by Stefan George:

„Und übers jahr als sie im dunkel / Einst attich suchte und ranunkel / Da sah man wie sie sank im torf – / Und andere schwuren dass vorm dorf / Sie auf dem mitten weg verschwand .. / Sie liess das knäblein nur als pfand / So schwarz wie nacht so bleich wie lein / Das sie gebar im hornungschein.“ [4]

If you put this text to automatic translation, you’ll get:

"And over the year when she was looking for dark / once attich and ranunculus / There you saw how she sank in the peat - / And others swore that in front of the village / she disappeared in the middle .. / She left the boy only as a pledge / So black as night as pale as linen / Which she gave birth in hornungschein."

Maybe it reads better like this:

“And through the year when she in darkness / Once searched for dane weed and ranunculus / There you saw her as she sank into the peat - / And others sware that before the village / She disappeared in the middle of the path .. / She left the boy child only as a pledge / So black as night so pale as linnen / The she gave birth in February glow."

(schwuren is a lost form, meaning schwörten, so I used sware instead of swore; auf dem mitten weg would be mitten auf dem weg; Hornung is old German for February, old English had hornungsunu)

You can find something here: [5] – only don’t listen to the German, because it’s wrong – automatic reading of a German text assuming it is English. Here’s a song: [6] – good translation, but you can see the difficulties, as some lines are longer than the German one and it should be vice versa.

Is Stefan George important? For a German yes, as he was the first to overcome epigonism at the end of the 19^th century. For the rest of the world, probably not.

Links:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_George

[2] http://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/07/stefan-george-und-die-werbung.html

[3] https://ia802502.us.archive.org/27/items/hymnenpilgerfah00georgoog/hymnenpilgerfah00georgoog.pdf

[4] https://www.welt.de/kultur/literarischewelt/article179198506/150-Geburtstag-Vergesst-sein-Getue-Lest-Stefan-Georges-Gedichte.html

[5] https://www.poemhunter.com/stefan-anton-george/

[6] https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/2222