Poets From Germany

"Die Macht einer Weltanschauung bewährt sich ja nicht durch die Antworten, die sie zu geben weiß, sondern durch die Fragen, die sie abzudrosseln versteht."

"Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (1956)"

"I've watched thee, Scarab! Yea, an hour in vain ⁠I've watched thee, slowly toiling up the hill, ⁠Pushing thy lump of mud before thee still With patience infinite and stubborn strain. Strive as thou mayest, spare neither time nor pain. To screen thy burden from all chance of ill; Push, push, with all a beetle's force of will, Thy ball, alas! rolls ever down again. Toil without end! And why? That after thee Dim hosts of groping Scarabs too shall climb This self-same height? Accursed progeny Of Sisyphus, what antenatal crime Has doomed us too to roll incessantly ⁠Life's Stone, recoiling from the Alps of time?"

"There was intoxication in the air; The wind, keen blowing from across the seas, O'er leagues of new-ploughed land and heathery leas, Smelt of wild gorse whose gold flamed everywhere. And undertone of song pulsed far and near, The soaring larks filled heaven with ecstasies, And, like a living clock among the trees, The shouting cuckoo struck the time of year. For now the Sun had found the earth once more, And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss; Who thrilled with light of love in every pore, Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his. Then all things felt life fluttering at their core— The world shook mystical in lambent bliss."

"Tall as they grow, the flowers Are pale here, as if dead. Just one right in the middle Stands there so dark and red. Its hue is not from the daylight, No sun has burned this bud, Its red is from the earth bed, And that drank human blood!"

"Was du teurer bezahlst, die Lüge oder die Wahrheit? Jene kostet dein Ich, diese doch höchstens dein Glück."

"Den Ich-zerfall, den süßen, tiefersehnten, Den gibst Du mir: schon ist die Kehle rauh, Schon ist der fremde Klang an unerwähnten Gebilden meines Ichs am Unterbau."

"Gott zieht an einer Hand, der Teufel an beiden Beinen."

"When the word 'Dada' came to me [in German: 'mir begegnete'], I was called upon twice by Dionysios [Areopagita]. D.A. – D.A. (H...k [= Huelsenbeck] wrote about this mystical birth [of the new word, Dada], as did I in earlier notes)"

"So, Huelsenbeck has put our feud in print -- HA HA So he sneers at my bourgeois home -- my child who cries, who has to be changed and fed So he laughs at my solid wife -- that she's no Anna Bloom.. ..The one who makes art -- he's the artist.. .So I spit back at you, Huelsenbeck But where you spit venom, I spit art I laugh at you -- HA HA -- I laugh at you"

"Have you seen the fish that have been standing in front of the opera in cutaways for the last two days and nights..? Ah ah ye great devils – ah ah ye keepers of bees and commandments With a bow wow wow with a bow woe woe who does today not know what our Father Homer wrote..."

"That is the lavender landscape Herr Mayer was talking about when he lost his eye Only the fire department can drive the nightmare from the drawing- room but all the hoses are broken..."

"I hold peace and war in my toga but I'l take a cherry flip Today nobody knows whether he was tomorrow They beat time with a coffin lid If somebody had the nerve to rip the tail feathers out of the trolley car it's a great age..."

"The dissection of words into sounds is contrary to the purpose of language and applies musical principles to an independent realm whose symbolism is aimed at a logical comprehension of one’s environment.. ..the value of language depends on comprehensibility rather than musicality"

"[ Tinguely is a] Meta-Dadaist... [who had] fulfilled certain ideas of ours, notably the idea of motion."

"The cows sit on the telegraph poles and play chess The cockatoo under the skirts of the Spanish dancer Sings as sadly as a headquarters bugler and the cannon lament all day..."

"The professors of zoology gather in the meadows With the palms of their hands they turn back the rainbows the great magician sets the tomatoes on his forehead Again thou hauntest castle and grounds The roebuck whistles the stallion bounds (And this is how the world is this is all that's ahead of us)"

"Dada hurts. Dada does not jest, for the reason that it was experienced by revolutionary men and not by philistines who demand that art be a decoration for the mendacity of their own emotions.. .I am firmly convinced that all art will become dadaistic in the course of time, because from Dada proceeds the perpetual urge for its renovation."

"As Arp and I are sitting in the large living room of my house on Central Park in November 1958, we try again and again to understand the significance of Dada for ourselves and for others. Many elements surfaced in me and in the 'Fantastic Prayers' [his poems Phantastische Gebete, Zurich 1916] at the same time; resistance against the 'civilization' we live in, fury about a purely factual world which leaves out personality and thus creative power, the means of irony and underlying religiousness. Ball turned religious during the times of dadaism, Arp is a religious person today, and I have always been one, without wanting to realize it, perhaps without knowing it."

"There is a difference between sitting quietly in Switzerland [Dada in Zurich] and bedding down on a vulcano, as we did in Berlin."

"Huelsenbeck has arrived [from Berlin]. He pleads for an intensification of rhythm (Negro rhythm). He would prefer to drum literature into the ground."

"Among the reforms necessary for the triumph of true refinement and true morality, which ought to be our earnest aim, is the Dietetic one, which, if not the weightiest of all (allerwichtigste), yet, undoubtedly, is one of the weightiest. Still is the ‘civilised’ world stained and defiled by the remains of a horrible barbarity; while the old-world revolting practice of slaughter of animals and feeding on their corpses still is in so universal vogue, that men have not the faculty even of recognising it as such, as otherwise they would recognise it; and aversion from this horror provokes censure of such eccentricity, and amazement at any manifestation of tendency to reform, as at something absurd and ridiculous — nay, arouses even bitterness and hate. To extirpate this barbarism is a task, the accomplishment of which lies in the closest relationship with the most important principles of humaneness, morality, æsthetics, and physiology. A foundation for real culture — a thorough civilising and refining of humanity — is clearly impossible so long as an organised system of murder and of corpse-eating (organiserten Mord-und-Leichenfratz System) prevails by recognised custom."

"The disdain for culture expressed by Johst and Fanon is not identical, however. Both despise the deceit of culture, but for opposite reasons. For Johst, culture is in itself a fraud, the cheap talk of weaklings; for Fanon, culture deceives by reneging on its promises. Johst and the Nazis hated culture itself; Fanon hated its hypocrisy, a very different notion."

"Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!"

"An intellectual who accommodates the ruling caste betrays the spirit. For the spirit is not conservative and grants no privileges. It dissolves; it equalizes; and it pushes through the ruins of hundreds of castles toward the final fulfillment of truth and justice, and their completion, even if it is the completion of death."

"Es schlug einer,"

"What's there"

"As harsh as Love-Kiss might sound in your ears it will resonate more swetly to your heart."

"My poem (Love -Kisses XL1) is like a nugget of gold or clump of earth it contains within itself the seeds rhetoric, ethics, philosophy, mathematics,geography, music, astronomy, medicine, nature, law, writing, the more you seek within it, the more you will discover. If you love Heaven, take all this with sympathetic eyes and accept my zealous suggestion, then we shall not hesitate to inform others of this matter, with mature judgement and ripeness of experience, wheresoever divine grace might give us the life and opportunity to so do."

"First one should write no more or no less letters than the sound of the word requires.Second, one should write as one speaks and not try to pay attention to the style of other writers , particularly academicians."

"All things do change:All things do love:All things are locked in hate:, Whoever fully thinks things through/holds the key to man's estate."

"Unsere übertragungen, auch die besten, gehen von einem falschen grundsatz aus, sie wollen das indische, griechische, englische verdeutschen, anstatt das deutsche zu verindischen, vergriechischen, verenglischen. ... Der grundsätzliche irrtum des übertragenden ist, daß er den zufälligen stand der eigenen sprache festhält, anstatt sie durch die fremde gewaltig bewegen zu lassen."

"Angels, living light most glorious! Beneath the Godhead in burning desire in the darkness and mystery of creation you look on the eye of your God never taking your fill: What glorious pleasures take shape within you!"

"Now, O son of God, set in the valley of true humility, walk in peace without pride of spirit, which, like a precipitous mountain, offers a difficult, or near-impossible, ascent or descent to those who attempt to scale it, and on its summit no building can be built. For a person who tries to climb higher than he can achieve possesses the name of sanctity without substance, because, in name alone without a structure of good works, he glories in a kind of vain joy of the mind."

"O Eternal God, now may it please you to burn in love so that we become the limbs fashioned in the love you felt when you begot your Son at the first dawn before all creation. And consider this need which falls upon us, take it from us for the sake of your Son, and lead us to the joy of your salvation."

"O venerable father Bernard, I lay my claim before you, for, highly honored by God, you bring fear to the immoral foolishness of this world and, in your intense zeal and burning love for the Son of God, gather men [cf. Luke 5.10] into Christ's army to fight under the banner of the cross against pagan savagery. I beseech you in the name of the Living God to give heed to my queries."

"Father, I am greatly disturbed by a vision which has appeared to me through divine revelation, a vision seen not with my fleshly eyes but only in my spirit. Wretched, and indeed more than wretched in my womanly condition, I have from earliest childhood seen great marvels which my tongue has no power to express but which the Spirit of God has taught me that I may believe." Steadfast and gentle father, in your kindness respond to me, your unworthy servant, who has never, from her earliest childhood, lived one hour free from anxiety. In your piety and wisdom look in your spirit, as you have been taught by the Holy Spirit, and from your heart bring comfort to your handmaiden."

"O dawn, you washed them away in a woman who was clean. O form of woman, sister of Wisdom, how great is your glory! For in you there rose a life unquenchable that death shall never stifle. Wisdom exalted you to make all creatures fairer in your beauty than they were when the world was born."

"Everything purposeful is meaningless, and everything meaningful is purposeless."

"Christianity is the war against sleep and dream."

"I have never endorsed the claim that the Nazi big-wigs belonged to a superior race. However, I must also add that I have consistently refused to accept the claim of another such race as the chosen people. The arrogance is identical in both cases, but with this important distinction: after waging war against mankind for more than three thousand years, Judaism has finally achieved total victory over all nations of the earth."

"Many first possess wealth, and are then possessed by it."

"The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the “public opinion” that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid “progress” enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc."

"The profundity of truth varies with the seeing power of the spirit which seeks it."

"Thus, the United States in 1917 went to war against Germany in sincere indignation because the newspapers had told them that Prussian "militarism" was rioting in devilish atrocities as it attempted to conquer the world. Of course, these transparent lies were published in the daily rags because the ruling lords of Mammon knew that American intervention in Europe would fatten their coffers. Thus, whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded slogans as “liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l’homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality."

"A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never having fallen out of one."

"Beauty is but the cloak of happiness. Where joy tarries, there also is beauty."

"This is understood by none but the Children of Christ, who have known it by Experience. When Christ the Corner-stone stirreth himself in the extinguished Image of Man, in his hearty Conversion and Repentance, then Virgin Sophia appeareth in the Stirring of the Spirit of Christ in the extinguished Image, in her Virgin's Attire before the Soul; at which the Soul is so amazed and astonished in its Uncleanness, that all its Sins immediately awake in it, and it trembleth before her; for then the Judgement passeth upon the Sins of the Soul, so that it even goeth back in its Unworthiness, being ashamed in the Presence of its fair Love, and entereth into itself, feeling and acknowledging itself utterly unworthy to receive such a Jewel. This is understood by those who are of our Tribe, and have tasted of this Heavenly Gift, and by none else. But the noble Sophia draweth near in the Essence of the Soul, and kisseth it in friendly Manner, and tinctureth its dark Fire with her Rays of Love, and shineth through it with her bright and powerful Influence. Penetrated with the strong Sense and Feeling of which, the Soul skippeth in its Body for great Joy, and in the Strength of this Virgin Love exulteth, and praiseth the great God for his blessed Gift of Grace."

"Jacob Boehme has to be termed the greatest of Christian gnostics. The word gnosis I employ here not in the sense of the heresies of the first centuries of Christianity, but in the sense of knowledge basic to revelation and dealing not with concepts, but with symbols and myths; contemplative knowledge, and not discursive knowledge. This is also a religious philosophy or theosophy. Characteristic for J. Boehme is that he had a great simplicity of heart, a child-like purity of soul."

"The mystery of God's creation, the creative mystery of the creature involves not only the being saved from sin, but also of bearing within it the imprint of the Creator and being pervaded with Divine energies, this has remained hidden over time. Upon this mystery have touched only a few Christian mystics and genuine theosophists, gnostics, ahead of their time. The greatest of them was J. Boehme. But the thought of modern times has tended to naturalise Boehme's intuition about the mystery of the world-creation, the mystery of the creature, and it has become bereft, of what Boehme revealed."