The condor
The first anthology of poetry from early literary expressionism was published in 1912 by Richard Weissbach's publishing house in Heidelberg, entitled Der Kondor .
The editor was Kurt Hiller , who in 1909 founded the New Club in Berlin with a group of students interested in literature . In 1910/11 he was the official organizer of public lecture evenings supported by Tilla Durieux , Else Lasker-Schüler and others under the name Neopathetisches Cabaret . After attacks by Jakob van Hoddis and violent disputes with him, Hiller decided to withdraw from this group in 1911 and founded the rival cabaret GNU with Ernst Blass .
From the preface
“The only people who are skeptical about the meaning of life can doubt the meaning of art, which comes from exuberant life and itself creates life again. […] If it has a meaning, it is: that someone shapes his experience - and others create an experience from the design. Since both kinds of activity involve a mental structure that is seldom an event, art remains a matter for the few. To make them the common property of the inhabitants may be valid as a maxim of do-gooders, as a noble demand of civilizers; as a criterion, popularity is always nonsense. Admittedly not an easy one to eradicate […] And so The Condor plans to be a manifesto. A poet secession; a rigorous collection of radical stanzas. For the first time, artists of poetry living here, only artists, are to be united. With samples that are enough to give a picture: artists of a generation. […] A direction? Der Kondor does not want to promote a “direction” . If the kind of experience of the intellectual city dweller, the simple, more conscious, nervous [...] appears to be preferred here, this is only because it has been quakerically neglected elsewhere. […]
The editor […] believes […] that these pages contain the most valuable verses that have been written in German since Rilke […] but he does not include his own among them. He sees in himself a person who is able to deliver decomposing prose; a dialectician or polemicist; maybe a gloss poet; not: a poet. If, however, like hammers crowing, he “seized the opportunity” to “smuggle in” a few of his own (favorite) verses, he did so not at all at the request of his friends, but out of vanity. Berlin"
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The condor contains 97 poems by 14 authors, among which Jakob van Hoddis is missing:
- Ernst Blass
Kreuzberg, evening mood, the comfort, the nervous, the childhood, March evening dedicated to my friend Kurt Hiller , August night, beach, sunset, the separation, Sunday afternoon, To Gladys O you, my lovely evening star - Richard Wagner
The bath in the country, the edge of the forest, the big and the small world, train journey, the magician
Despair, the invalid, the murderer, young prophet, drunken landscape, monastery, the lover, the suicide, the dancer, the spent
Awakening, autumn, sadness, longing, redemption
Idolatry, The Shadow, Exhibition
Nymphenburg, Halensee, note; At night (2h 45 to 2h 47 matin)
Berlin, the suburb, daydreaming in light blue, the blind man, the tree, after the battle, Louis Capet, the professors, the fever hospital, Ophelia
Ride to the south, Florence eve, Isola, Archipelagos, longing for the south, end of night at Bols, booth, dusk, night, to a friend
The arc lamp, Liliencronesk, acquaintance, spring, Notte Italiana
Streiter, An old Tibetan carpet, My sister's child, Nachweh, Dream, My mother, The Prince of Morocco, Maria, Quiet say -, David and Jonathan
The ruler, the city, the dancer Nijinski
Moon rise, Madame, On Friedrichstrasse at sunset, Potsdamer Platz, The Pope
To the reader, Nocturnal boat trip, The fat man in the mirror, First spring, In the wintry hospital, The poet, The conversation, The mishap, The beautiful, radiant man, The friend of the world sings
Way into early spring, The blind beggar in a thunderstorm, Summer evening in the park, Autumn city park, Towards morning, The drowned
literature
- Richard Sheppard (Ed.): The Writings of the New Club 1908-1914. Volumes I and II. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1980/1983.
- Richard Sheppard: The Early Reception of the Expressionist Anthology "Der Kondor". A Documentation and Analysis. In: Literary Yearbook. 24, 1983, pp. 209-234.
Remarks
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↑ Because of its fame, the poem "To Gladys" should be quoted here in full (Blass chose the third line, which was already repeated in the poem itself, as the title of his first own volume of poetry, which made him famous immediately after its publication in 1912):
That's how strange I am, who
goes through the night, The black hat on my poet's head.
I come blown along the streets.
With soft happiness I am quite leafy.
It's half past twelve, that's not late yet ...
Lanterns slumber sweetly and covered in snow.
Oh, if only no woman gets to me now
With words, disdainful, raw and forbidden!
I come blown along the streets,
The lights seem to suck gently out of me,
What separated me from the people before;
That's how strange I am who goes through the night ...
Girlfriend, if I could meet you now,
I'm so gentle with my blue eyes.