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 12th 1868 (150th
Birthday) and died in Minusio
(Switzerland) on December 4th 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 65th 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 19th century. For the rest of the world,
probably not.
Links:
[3] https://ia802502.us.archive.org/27/items/hymnenpilgerfah00georgoog/hymnenpilgerfah00georgoog.pdf
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