Night and Revolt (1892)
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Two poems, printed together under the single heading »Gedichte.« in the Allgemeine Kunst-Chronik, XVI. Bd., Nr. 13 (Vienna, 1892, Zweites Juniheft), p. 321. They arrive a fortnight after the last of the four studio surveys she had been filing from Rome since January, in the same paper — and neither poem is Roman, and neither mentions art. After six months of writing about other people's studios she prints two poems about a train, a sea coast, a broken vow and death. Both were later collected in Via passionis (1895), and the book calms them down: a whole stanza of »Nacht« is cut, every em-dash in »Aufruhr« is replaced by a comma or a semicolon, and the word Wahnsinnsglück — madness-happiness — is edited out. It survives only here.
Night and Revolt
By Hermine v. Preuschen
Night
When I had lately left you, Flew through the world in the gloaming, The express train with hissing and crackling Drew past along the lake —
Up flared the sky abruptly In gold and gleam and fragrance, The mountains radiant purple And scent-heavy the air.
Over the fire-glow Drew a hunt of clouds, Flashed out of the rain-floods Phosphor-jagged splendour.
Then — when that too had burned away, Came deep and heavy the night In trailing black velvet — The eternal, highest power.
But to me it seemed my life, Blazing up in madness-rapture1 — And must go back into the dark Back into the great dark!
Revolt
The wind whips the waves in wild revolt, That break dull and heavy on their cliff shores, Above them white gulls went fluttering by, But I — though the soul was drawn along Into the distance — my body lies in chains.
Indeed only my word have I given in pledge, My word of honour — though the soul jeer at it In longing-anxious, refractory trembling, And though it cost me my happiness, all my life, The rigid compulsion, I must, I m u s t serve it
No longer may I climb the rock-lookout And there among flowers long into the distance, Where earth and heaven swim into one another, There voices of promise could lure me, Only madness it must be, to draw one's time out here.
Loud and growling the sea rages, the winds hunt, Only up on the height do I feel it, my privation; When the elements lament unfettered, I hear them ask me always the one thing only: Why then do you let the parting have its way?
Yours is love and its faith in miracles, Whoever has loved much, to that one much is also forgiven2. Laugh at your oath, that foolishly longing-deaf thing, Let not one more day of happiness be stolen from you Out of this poor, brief human life!
Notes
Sources, identifications, and points where the German carries something English cannot. Added by this project; not in the original.
- ↑madness-rapture — „Wahnsinnsglück" — her coinage: a happiness indistinguishable from insanity. This word and the exclamation mark that ends the poem are precisely the two things the 1895 book takes out. In Via passionis (p. 110) the stanza reads „Aber im Gluthgefunkel / Seh' ich mein jähes Glück, / Das doch zurück sinkt in's Dunkel, / In's grosse Dunkel zurück." — „mein jähes Glück," my sudden happiness, for „Wahnsinnsglück," and a full stop for the shout. The magazine printing of 1892 is the wilder text; the book calms it down. „Wahnsinn" and its compounds run through everything she wrote — „Wahnsinnkühnes Denken," „des Wahnsinns Nacht," „Der Wahnsinnskönig" all stand elsewhere in that same collection, and the second poem printed here turns on the word again.
- ↑much is also forgiven — Luke 7:47, in Luther's wording. „Wer viel geliebt, dem wird auch viel vergeben" is Luke 7:47 — Luther's „Ihr sind viele Sünden vergeben, denn sie hat viel geliebt," spoken of the woman who washed Christ's feet. Set in the mouth of the answering voice, it turns the last stanza of the poem into an absolution: the speaker is told to laugh at the oath that binds her and to stop letting it rob her of days. That she reaches for that verse in particular — the one always quoted about a fallen woman — is worth noticing in a poet who had been divorced in 1890 and was living in Rome. (Luke 7:47, Luther 1545)
About the book
Under the single heading »Gedichte.« — poems, plural — the Allgemeine Kunst-Chronik printed two of hers on one page in the second June issue of 1892: »Nacht« (Night), five quatrains in the light three-beat measure of Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo, and »Aufruhr« (Revolt), five quintains of iambic pentameter, every line of it ending on a feminine rhyme — the Italian measure, and she was living in Rome.
They arrive a fortnight after the last of the four studio surveys she had been filing from that city since January. Neither poem is Roman. Neither mentions art. After half a year of writing about other people’s studios she prints, in the same paper, two poems about a night train, a sea coast, a broken word of honour and death.
Both were collected three years later in Via passionis (1895), and the book is the quieter text. »Nacht« loses an entire stanza — the sunset — and the railway’s Fauchen und Prassen, its hissing and crackling, becomes “the blue peace” of the lake. Every one of the three em-dashes in »Aufruhr« is replaced by a comma or a semicolon, and the intimate du is capitalised to Du. The line the poem builds towards is not repunctuated but rewritten: “why do you let the parting have its way” becomes “why do you let it last any longer” — the 1892 line accuses, the 1895 line pleads.
And Wahnsinnsglück, madness-happiness, is gone from the book altogether. It survives only in this printing. Anyone quoting that image from Via passionis is quoting the version she took it out of.