Styx (poetry book)

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Styx is Else Lasker-Schüler's first volume of poetry , which she published at the end of 1901 by Axel Juncker's publishing house.

publication

In the fall of 1901, Juncker had expressed interest in publishing Lasker-Schüler's poems. Lasker-Schüler had agreed that the first edition should be 1,050 copies, although they could only expect a fee of 100 marks after 300 copies had been sold. After a slight delay, the volume was published at the end of 1901 and the author cheered: "My book is there, hurray for three weeks, it makes epochs buy buys [...]" And to the editor of Avalun magazine , who had previously refused to print her poems, she now confidently writes: “These days my publisher is sending 62nd lyric soldiers into the world to defeat you, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia. Does your Avalun come in? ”The“ 62 lyric soldiers ”referred to the 62 poems in the volume.

She also asked her publisher to send free copies to the “literary kings of Europe”, to whom she then counted Peter Altenberg , Gerhart Hauptmann , Henrik Ibsen and above all Richard Dehmel . In general, Lasker-Schüler worked hard to get her debut into publicity and to familiarize the relevant people with her poems. She wrote dozens of cards, had a portrait photo taken of herself for the window of the bookstore, asked for additional free copies on credit and had already been eight years younger for the Styx publication when she wrote to the Avalun publisher. Born February 1877.

Some of the poems were set to music by Herwarth Walden , whom Lasker-Schüler was supposed to marry after her divorce from Berthold Lasker in 1903. The ten chants to poems by Else Lasker-Schülers were premiered on March 25, 1902 in a concert. Lasker-Schüler was unable to attend the concert because she was recovering from an illness at the time. She sent her publisher to the concert on her behalf.

content

Of the 62 poems in the volume, 44 were first published. The previously published poems had appeared in the Society of Ludwig Jacobowski , in Rudolf Steiner's Magazin für Litteratur , in other publications from the group of the Coming , as well as in Martin Buber's East and West .

The poems can be roughly divided into three groups. First of all, there are the poems related to the family, that is, to the deceased parents, the sisters and their then two-year-old son. These include the introductory poem Chronica (see below) or Mother , in which she conjures up the mother, who died on July 27, 1890:

A white star sings a song of the dead
In the July night,
Like the peal of death on the July night.
And on the roof the hand of the cloud,
The grazing, damp hand of the shadow is
looking for my mother.
[...]

A much larger group is formed by love and hate poems, some of which are strongly erotically tinged, which suggest a certain influence of the vitalistic lyric poetry of Nietzsche , Hilles and Dehmel , while at the same time finding a completely new tone of their own in the turmoil of the lyrical self that expresses itself. This group includes, for example, Nervus Erotis , Meine Schamröte and Eros . In some, however, there are already ironic-distancing echoes, for example in orgy :

The evening mysteriously kissed
The Budding Oleanders.
We played and built the temple of Apollo
And stumbled longingly into each other
.
And the night sky poured its black scent
Into the swelling waves of the brooding air, [...]

After all, some of the poems show no resemblance to any contemporary benchmarks and rather point to what, as the peculiarity of Lasker-Schülers, will become a concept for the literary world in the following years. As an example, escape from the world :

I want to
return to the limitless to me,
the autumn timelessness of
my soul
is already blooming , maybe - it's already too late to be back!
Oh, I am dying among you!
Since you suffocate me with you.
I want to pull threads around me -
ending in a mess!
Confusing,
confusing you,
To flee
Myward!

When Lasker-Schüler's Gesammelte Gedichte was supposed to appear in the publishing house of the White Books in 1917 , the author partially revised the poems published in Styx . For some, the change was limited to punctuation and stanza structure, for example in Meine Schamröte , for others the title was also changed, so the stars of Fatum became love stars in the second version . And with some poems, the interventions are profound, such as Chronica , the introductory poem of the first edition:

1st version 2nd version

Mother and father are in heaven
And spray their strength
Past singing distances,
Past playing stars
Down on me.
Heaven with trembling passion emblazoned
,
O, my whole longing
to glide through golden sun blood!
Feel mother and father
germinate again on my foreboding mother's widths.
Three souls spread their melancholy from
quiet morning dreams
to Gottland.
Because we are three sisters,
And those before me dreamed in sphinxes in the times of the
Pharaohs. The heaviest artist's hand
shaped me in the deepest part of the world
.
[...]

Mother and Father are in Heaven -
amen.









Three souls spread their melancholy from
quiet morning dreams
to Godland; -
For we are three sisters, who
dreamed before me in sphinxes in the times of the
pharaohs; - The heaviest artist's hand
formed me in the deepest part of the world
.
[...]

In the new version, the volume also received a three-line opening poem Styx corresponding to the title :

Oh, I wanted me to sleep without a wish, if I knew
a river like my life so deep
rafts with its waters.

reception

At the review of Styx, the criticism split fairly neatly into the avant-garde and the bourgeois press. Samuel Lublinski , who was a friend of Lasker's pupils, welcomed the lyrical debutante in the magazine Ost und West and immediately placed herself in a context appropriate to her long-term: “[...] she is proving herself to be the late [...] granddaughter of those ancient singers who once were the Psalms or the book of Job ”and the poem“ Mein Sturmlied ”sounded“ as if the desert and thunderstorm were married, as once at Sinai, and at the same time it is an intimate personal modern love song. ”His conclusion:“ Who over modern poetry has a say […] wants […], read 'Styx' by Else Lasker-Schüler. ”And Edgar Alfred Regener, reviewer of the influential Literary Echoes , was impressed and even said that Lasker-Schüler already had hers with her first volume Zenith reached because a further increase is no longer possible. The volume was also reviewed by Erich Mühsam , but together with two other volumes of poetry under the heading “The youngest German women's lyric”. On the other hand, Paul Remer rejected the “wanted and tormented of this mysticism” in the illustrated entertainment supplement of the day and saw an overexcited nervous system at work in Lasker-Schüler.

expenditure

  • First edition: Axel Juncker Verlag, Berlin 1902 [= 1901]. The anonymous drawing on the title page is by Fidus .
  • Revised versions in: The collected poems. White Books Publishing House, Leipzig 1917.
  • Setting: Herwarth Walden: Ten songs to poetry by Else Lasker-Schüler. For a voice and piano. Op. 1. Reinike, Berlin 1904.
  • Current: Styx. Omnium, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95822-012-6 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The title page shows the year of publication 1902.
  2. ↑ Avalun. A yearbook of new German lyrical word art . Munich 1901, ZDB -ID 282687-2 . The publisher was the later USPD politician Richard Scheid .
  3. ↑ In: East and West . Issue 12 (1904), Col. 931 f.
  4. ↑ In: The literary echo. Vol. 4, H. 24 from September 1902, col. 1719 f.
  5. ^ In: Der Volkserzieher (Berlin). Vol. 7, No. 12 of June 7, 1903. P. 91 f ..
  6. ↑ In: The day . No . 181 (1902). Illustrated entertainment supplement. P. 2 f.