My blue piano (book of poems)

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My blue piano is Else Lasker-Schüler's last volume of poetry from the time after her emigration from Germany, published in Jerusalem , Palestine in 1943 .

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Cover picture of the volume of poetry with drawing "Farewell to Friends" by Else Lasker-Schüler

My blue piano - New Poems was published in the summer of 1943 as the last book by Else Lasker-Schülers (1869–1945). The narrow volume was printed in an edition of 330 copies by Jerusalem Press Ltd. The volume contains 32 poems and a short prose text “To me” at the end. Of the poems, 18 had already been published, 7 in Germany, the rest by the exile press in Zurich, Paris, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv and New York. My blue piano addresses pain and loneliness as well as deep mourning for the lost homeland. The blue piano becomes a metaphor for unfulfilled longings and an expression of deep homelessness, which she experiences in the very country that has always served as a projection surface for her fantasies.

The volume also contains the poem of the same name, first published in 1937, My blue piano . This poem has rightly been called an elegy . The complaint is not only about the poet's flight and expulsion, but also about saying goodbye to childhood and the lost ideal of art. The blue piano is then seen on the one hand as a symbol of a lost childhood possession, on the other hand as a symbol of art that is badly damaged. The poet's instrument, the German language, threatened to become voiceless and functionless in exile, becoming “a piano without strings”. In this famous and much-discussed poem, Else Lasker-Schüler counters the subdued simplicity of choice of words and meter with the quiet, lasting triumph of the poetic imagination, also “against the prohibition”, as the last line of the poem ends . The poem Die Verscheuchte is a moving document of an end-time consciousness, which in the German literature of those years of barbarism was expressed so clearly and poetically in no other poem. In the poem I know , which was read at Lasker-Schüler's funeral, the poet suggests that she is aware that she will soon die.

Emerge

As early as 1941, Lasker-Schüler announced in a letter from Ernst Simon the planned volume of poetry under the title The Blue Piano . After that it should appear soon. However, the project made little headway. In September 1942 she mentioned it again to Simon. At that time, she had planned title changed to "I love te you" (italics sic). The small volume should be dedicated to Ernst Simon, whom the poet adored and loved. However, she quarreled with the dedication of the twelve love poems it contained and rejected several ideas, initially "To ES", and finally she decided on "To him", which she wanted to change back to "To -". But that never happened. The dedication at the beginning of the volume reads: “To my dear friends in the cities of Germany - and to those who, like me, have been expelled and now dispersed into the world, In Treue!” The poet Gottfried Benn belonged to this group of friends in Germany, along with many others , Paul Zech , Paul Leppin , the poet Albert Ehrenstein and the director Max Reinhard . The philosopher Martin Buber and the writer Werner Kraft , who both emigrated with her in Jerusalem, had promoted the publication in German.

Lasker-Schüler was in close contact with the publisher Moritz Spitzer in Jerusalem, who published the volume at his own expense. His publisher's name is missing from the cover. The poet asked Moritz Spitzer in the creation phase of the poetry volume for the possibility of correction and warned the printer to copy the poem texts verbatim and not to change anything.

In a biographical novel about the poet , Christa Ludwig addressed Lasker's love and admiration for Ernst Simon at the time the volume of poetry was written . The book title A Bundle of Plantain comes from a line of poetry from the poem Die Verscheuchte in My blue piano .

It was extremely difficult to publish German-language literature during the war, especially at the time of increasing knowledge about the murder of Jews in concentration camps by the Nazis and also during the British mandate in Palestine . A year earlier, to the horror of the Jewish residents of Palestine, German troops of the Africa Corps were only a few hundred kilometers away from Palestine in Egypt. The German language was in disrepute. German Jews were considered arrogant. The few publishers who were ready to publish received threats.

A few days before her death, Lasker-Schüler had invited to a reading from My Blue Piano in the Kraal lecture group she had set up in Haifa . It never came to that.

cover photo

The cover picture on the front of the cover is a line drawing by Lasker-Schülers showing her with a group of close friends. The drawing bears the handwritten title “Farewell to Friends”. The author herself can be seen in the group on the far right with a page head. Under the figure is "Prince Jussuf (EL-S.)". Prince Jussuf von Thebes is the fantasy name that the poet has used in letters many times since her time in Germany.

Early review

After almost five months, 118 copies were sold. There was unanimous positive criticism from those who took notice of the ribbon. There was talk of "spherical sounds, seraphically shimmering", of "Apollonian beauty" and "shining magic". Gerson Stern praised "the unique features of these verses, in which the German language blossoms to a perfection that will carry the poet's name far beyond her life". According to Sally Grosshut (1950), the volume of poems is one of the “most beautiful and moving parts of German poetry”. The doctor and writer Paul Goldstein wrote to the poet in a letter from London on June 12, 1944: “In front of me is your blue piano, and I drink its starlit chords as greedily as someone dying of thirst. It is good to know that whatever ugly things happen, beauty is and remains. It became consolation and revelation for me and I wanted to thank you for that. "

New edition

My blue piano was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2006 in the Jewish publishing house as a new edition with the title picture of the first edition and an afterword by Ricarda Dick.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Ricarda Dick. Epilogue in My Blue Piano - New Poems . Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006. ISBN 3-633-54220-5
  2. ↑ Expression of deep homelessness. Else Lasker-Schüler: “My blue piano” Reviewed by Maike Albath. Deutschlandfunk culture. (On-line)
  3. ↑ Michael Braun : My blue piano. Poetry against the prohibition in: Interpretations - Poems by Else Lasker-Schüler. Reclams Universal Library No. 1735. Stuttgart 2010. ISBN 978-3-15-017535-4
  4. ↑ Norbert Oellers : Die Verscheuchte - Lost Home, Destroyed Love in: Interpretations - Poems by Else Lasker-Schüler. Reclams Universal Library No. 1735. Stuttgart 2010. ISBN 978-3-15-017535-4
  5. ↑ a b Heidrun Loeper: On Else Lasker-Schüler's poem "My blue piano" (Planet Lyrik. Reproduced from: Heidrun Loeper, from Peter Geist, Walfried Hartinger et al. (Ed.): From dealing with modern poetry, Volk und Wissen Verlag , 1992)
  6. ↑ Christa Ludwig: A bundle of plantain , Verlag Oktaven, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-7725-3008-1
  7. ↑ Else Lasker-Schüler: My blue piano (Planet Lyrik)