My miracles (poetry book)

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Meine Wunder is Else Lasker-Schüler's third volume of poetry , published in spring 1911 by Drei Lilien Verlag, Karlsruhe / Leipzig. With him, Lasker-Schüler achieved the breakthrough as the most important poet of avant-garde modernism and expressionism .

My miracles - cover picture of the original edition from 1911 by Drei Lilien Verlag

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The volume Meine Wunder contains 58 poems. 33 of them are from the previously published collection of poems The Seventh Day . Of the remaining 25 poems, 24 had already appeared in magazines, 17 of them in the monthly magazine Der Sturm published by her husband Herwarth Walden . The most famous poems in the new volume are an old Tibetan carpet , my people , reconciliation , homesickness , my mother , the end of the world . These stand next to less well-known verses such as Arrival , My Silent Song , Night Sounds or My Death Song . The volume bears the dedication “My faithful mother”. In addition to the oriental influences, love, sadness and religious experiences are recurring motifs in this work, in which linguistic creations and free handling of the lyrical form emerge. In some poems, Lasker-Schüler deals with the disappointment of the partner's love that has died out and is no longer returned, for example in I am sad . But she also speaks to the inexplicable passing of love in the love flight . In the many poems in which she praises love, love always appears ephemeral, fragile and mortal, so in Now my soul slumbers , reconciliation , in your eyes , my death song , love , a love song and others.

The moving poem Weltende expresses a deeply depressed mood, in which it is even imagined that the immortal, God himself, is dying. These dark premonitions are juxtaposed with a lyrical self that prompts them to turn away from the gloomy world.

The volume of poetry Meine Wunder represented Lasker-Schüler's breakthrough to become the most important poet of avant-garde modernism and expressionism and made her famous in one fell swoop.

Emerge

In contrast to the two previously published volumes of poetry, Styx (1902) and The Seventh Day (1905), Meine Wunder was able to be published without great effort and a long search for a publisher. The poet probably did not write to the well-known publishers in Germany who had already rejected their earlier submissions. At the end of December 1910, Lasker-Schüler was able to report on the successful sale of her poems. Herwarth Walden had unceremoniously withdrawn the remaining edition of The Seventh Day . The band was not very successful. His poems were to be incorporated into the new work and reprinted. My miracles were "hymnically received" in the poetry circles of Berlin and Vienna. Lasker-Schüler became the most successful poet of her time. The band's success is mainly due to the praise of the Viennese art and literary critic Karl Kraus . After the bankruptcy of Drei Lilien Verlag in 1912, the publisher Kurt Wolff took over both bound copies and unbound raw sheets for his imprint publisher “Verlag der Weiße Bücher” in Leipzig. In 1914 a new edition of Meine Wunder appeared there . In 1918 a new title was published by Paul Cassirer in Berlin. Until the new edition by Insel-Verlag in 2011 there was no longer a single edition.

The poem “ An old Tibetan carpet ” first appeared on December 8, 1910 in [...] “Der Sturm” (Vol. 1, No. 41, p. 328), the leading organ of the Berlin avant-garde. The poem occupies a prominent position in Else Lasker-Schüler's lyrical work: It is considered one of her most beautiful poems and one of the best-known texts that have been published by the poet; it has been included in numerous anthologies and has a permanent place in school reading. "

The end of the world , one of Lasker-Schüler's best-known poems , was first published in 1903 in the anthropology Modern German Poetry edited by Hans Benzmann . It appeared in other magazines, only to be reprinted in the volume of poetry The Seventh Day in 1905. It was published a total of 18 times during the poet's lifetime. The poem is dedicated to Herwarth Walden.

Criticism and selected individual reviews

The volume of poetry is called a closed work. The criteria for this are seen firstly in the generous edition of the book, secondly in the authorized arrangement by the poet, and thirdly in the thematic and formal coherence of the collection. Thus, in successive poems, there are repeated words that bring about a link between the poems. For example, the last word of the poem Saying Quietly is "tissue". The following poem, An old Tibetan carpet, is about that again. If the poet speaks of “kissing” in An old Tibetan carpet , she also takes up the idea of “ I'm sad ” in the following poem .

Die Fackel , April 1911 edition with the poetry review of Lasker-Schüler's Meine Wunder by Richard Weiß

An early review of Meine Wunder comes from the writer Paul Zech in the expressionist magazine Saturn (1912). Zech praises Lasker-Schüler's language, which he sees as free from vulgar rudiments of stale lyrical idioms. He puts Lasker's students in line with Stefan George , Rainer Maria Rilke and a few others in the top category of German poets of the time.

Richard Weiß wrote a comprehensive appraisal of Lasker-Schüler's volume of poetry in the magazine Die Fackel published by Karl Kraus . Weiß emphasizes the poet's ability to express the “never suspected” and “never said” and describes her poetry as “real word art”, which he distinguishes from “bad art” because of its avant-gardeism. Word art as in Meine Wunder is “built from words” in the sense of white and resembles an architectural masterpiece. “Every art expresses - a true transubstantiation - the world in its material completely. Words are the material of word art. The words are not only meaning, they are also sound. "

An old Tibetan carpet

Weiss describes the poem An old Tibetan carpet as “the most beautiful poem”. “The tangles of the rug are the tangles of the beloved's soul with one's own soul. [...] The linking of the meshes is also their chronological sequence. The world has become the Tibetan carpet, the lover meshes in it, the Tibetan carpet word world. The things that science tries to make known in isolation , art makes questionable again and is therefore all the more hated the greater it is. ”The reviewer sees this poem as a“ living organism ”and writes:“ A later time may turn out to be wise to be amazed at the silence received by a book of poems, in which the poem "An old Tibetan carpet" can be read comforting the world. "

Herwarth Walden wrote in a footnote in Die Fackel about the poem An old Tibetan carpet as the strongest and most impassable appearance of modern Germany and one of the “most delightful and moving that I have ever read”. He would give all his Heine for it.

End of the world

The poem End of the World is one of the most famous poems of the 20th century. On the one hand, this gloomy lament can be seen against the background of the crumbling marriage of Else Lasker-Schülers with her first husband Berthold Lasker and the emerging new relationship with Herwarth Walden. On the other hand, the allusion to the biblical apocalypse shows a socially critical content. In Lasker-Schüler's bibliography, the unconventional connection with Walden provoked a final break with bourgeois society. The poem is thus understood as a love poem and at the same time as a social criticism. It is “the dear God” who seems to have died in the poem End of the World . This is the all-preserving and protective childhood god. Without him, hopelessness grips the whole world. As in other poems, Lasker-Schüler's childhood memories are an important element here. Life dies with God. The longing and hope in the second and third stanzas of the poem no longer counter this loss. "The kiss is just a desperate rebellion against the inevitable, in the end death triumphs again." With the inclusion of the background of the Nazi crimes, the poem became a universal lament in contemporary history of the 20th century and is always quoted in this context .

Using the example of the poem End of the World, Karl Jürgen Skrodski explains that the poet today is wrongly attributed to the expressionist art movement, even though she was an eccentric person even in her outward appearance. “A poem like» Weltende «, which is often found in anthologies of Expressionism, was not only written years earlier, it lacks the anti-bourgeois pathos of Expressionist poetry. The »end of the world«, of which Else Lasker-Schüler speaks in her poem, is not a historical one - for example the end of the bourgeois art epoch - rather it manifests a basic human condition which she expresses in verses that seem timeless and spaceless ".

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ricarda Dick: Afterword. In: Else Lasker-Schüler: My miracles . Insel-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-458-19345-6 .
  2. ^ Hans W. Cohn: Else Lasker-Schüler - The broken World . Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 39.
  3. ^ A b Daniela Anna Frickel: End of the world. In: Birgit Lermen, Magda Motté (ed.): Interpretations - Poems by Lasker-Schüler . (= Reclams Universal Library. No. 1735). 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-017535-4 .
  4. ↑ Else Lasker-Schüler: An old Tibetan carpet Karl Jürgen Skrodzki
  5. ^ A b Else Lasker-Schüler: End of the world Karl Jürgen Strodzki
  6. ↑ Claudia Benthin, Inge Stephan (Ed.): Masterpieces - German-speaking women authors in the 20th century. Böhlau Verlag 2005, p. 238.
  7. ↑ Calvin N. Hinse: The Literary Reputation of Else Lasker-Schüler: Criticism, 1901-1993 . Camden House, 1994, p. 11 (online)
  8. ↑ Claudia Benthin, Inge Stephan (Ed.): Masterpieces - German-speaking women authors in the 20th century. Böhlau Verlag, 2005, p. 236.
  9. ↑ a b Richard Weiß: Else Lasker-Schüler. In: Karl Kraus: The torch. Double Volume No. 321/322, April 29, 1911, pp. 30–35 ( online)
  10. ^ Karl Wellenberg: Poem interpretation: Else Lasker-Schüler: An old Tibetan carpet . GRIN Verlag, 2012.
  11. ↑ a b 50 Classics - Poetry . Important poems presented by Barbara Sichtermann and Joachim Scholl with the collaboration of Klaus Binder. Gerstenberg Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-8067-2544-6 , pp. 152-154.
  12. ↑ Note: See the poem End of the World by Jakob van Hoddis .