ROBESPIERRE

by Gertrud Kolmar, Sibylle Muller (Translator)

« Ce qui a été retrouvé n’est pas le compte rendu de l’horreur – bien qu’il y en ait –, mais le corps incandescent de sa poésie, intact… Gertrud Kolmar est une mythologiste » (Cynthia Ozick).Entre 1933 et 1934, elle se documente sur Robespierre, rédige un essai sur lui, écrit une pièce dont il est un des principaux personnages, mais surtout compose une série de 80 poèmes brûlants à sa louange. Alors qu’autour d’elle le monde civilisé s’effondre, que partout s’étalent des discours de haine et que les premières persécutions renouent avec les persécutions anciennes, elle est d’abord un témoin ; mais avec « Robespierre », elle fait oeuvre de résistance à la barbarie universelle, portant une parole poétique qui ne s’éteint pas, au-delà de la figure historique et de son propre destin humain.

214 pages, Paperback

Published April 20, 2017

About the author

Gertrud Käthe Chodziesner, known by the literary pseudonym Gertrud Kolmar, was a German lyric poet and writer. She was born in Berlin and died, after her arrest and deportation as a Jew, in Auschwitz, a victim of the Nazi Final Solution. Though she was a cousin of Walter Benjamin, little is known of her life. She is considered one of the finest poets in the German language.

Post-war critics have accorded Kolmar a very high place in literature. Jacob Picard, in his epilogue to Gertrud Kolmar: Das Lyrische Werk described her both as 'one of the most important woman poets' in the whole of German literature, and 'the greatest lyrical poetess of Jewish descent who has ever lived'.

Michael Hamburger withheld judgement on the latter affirmation on the grounds he was not sufficiently competent to judge, but agreed with Picard's high estimation of her as a master poet in the German lyrical canon.

Patrick Bridgwater, citing the great range of her imagery and verse forms, and the passionate integrity which runs through her work, likewise writes that she was 'one of the great poets of her time, and perhaps the greatest woman poet ever to have written in German.