Your Diamond Dreams Cut Open My Arteries: Poems by Else Lasker-Schuler (UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA STUDIES IN THE GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES)

by Else Lasker-Schüler

Critics have called Else Lasker-Schuler the greatest of all German women poets and one of the finest Jewish poets. This large and representative selection of translations by Robert P. Newton, supplemented by a biographical and critical introduction and a selected bibliography, was the first substantial presentation of her works in English at its original publication in 1982.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published March 1, 1983

About the author

Else Lasker-Schüler was a Jewish German poet and playwright famous for her bohemian lifestyle in Berlin. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement. Lasker-Schüler fled Nazi Germany and lived out the rest of her life in Jerusalem.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Styx (1902)...

His head has been
Turned by a devil of a woman,
His own sister.

Like a lurking cat
She crouches by the door where he was at
And licked at the coin of his callouses.

At the tavern in wild revelry
They sat and drank for all to see
With rough companions.

And out of the ruby juice that glows,
From the dwarfed and stunted fellows he rose
Like a giant.

And he saw the whole world beneath his gaze,
And she stoked the fire of his drunken craze
And laughed!

And like a crown a cliff of stone,
A gold-veined cliff of stone
Grew from his head.

And all the drunkards began to laugh.
"Goddammit, ah's the Devil hisse'f!"
And the wine spewed the fire of Hell.

And the storms roared like the end of the world,
And flames from the trees on the hillside swirled,
And incest dang . . .

In the dusk they came to take him away
And the urchin yelled in the street, "Hurray!"
And showered him with rubbish.

Since then a spook walks on this night,
And spirits are abroad here on this night,
And the pious people pray -

- Ballad (from the Mountains of the Sauerland), pg. 85

From The Seventh Day (1905)...

So when I read these words to me,
I recalled
A thousand years of mine.

Ages o ice now vanished - Life from all life,
Where lies my life -
And dreams of my life.

I lay in the womb of all valleys,
Clung to all mountains,
And yet my soul never kept me warm.

My heart is the dead mother,
And my eyes are unhappy children
Who walk across the lands.

"Dove that swims in its own blood."
Yes, these words about me are burning drops,
Are my silent dying-open:
"Dove that swims in its own blood."

In the nights sit seven weeping voices
On the stoop of the dark gate
And wait.

On the hedges they sit
Around my dreams
And sing.

And my brown eyes blooms
Half-opened at the window
And chirps -
"Dove that swims in its own blood."

- Dove That Swims In Its Own Blood, pg. 113

From My Miracles (1911)...

You took for yourself all the stars
Above my heart.

My thoughts are curling;
I have to dance.

You're always doing something that makes me watch,
Just to tire my life.

I cannot carry the evening
Over the hedges any longer.

No more do I find my image
In the mirror of the streams.

You've stolen the archangel's
Floating eyes.

But I nibble on the honey
Of their blueness.

My hear is slowly going down
I don't know where -

Perhaps into your hand;
It snatches at my substance everywhere.

- Say It Softly, pg. 135

From To My So Beloved Playmate Senna Hoy (1917)...

Of golden breath
The heavens shaped us.
Oh, how we love each other . . .

Birds becomes buds on the branches,
And roses flutter up.

I'm always looking for your lips
Behind a thousand kisses.

A night of gold,
Stars made of night . . .
Nobody sees us.

When the light comes up with the green
We're slumbering;
Only our shoulders play like butterflies.

- A Love Song, pg. 151

From To My Pure Friend in Love Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele (1917)...

You are everything that is gold
In the great world.

I seek your stars
And have no wish to sleep.

Let us lie down behind hedges,
Never rise up again.

Out of our hands
Let's kiss sweet reveries.

My heart fetches
Roses from your mouth.

My eyes look love at you;
You snatch at their butterflies.

What shall I do
When you're not here.

From my lids
Drips black snow.

When I am dead:
Please play with my soul.

- To the Knight of Gold, pg. 161

From Gottfried Benn (1917)...

Your blood's rough drops
Are sweetening on my flesh.

Don't call my eyes traitoresses,
Since they float around your skies.

Smiling I lean upon your night
And teach your stars to play.

And enter singing the rusty gate
Of your blissfulness.

I love you and come near
White and transfigured on pilgrim's toes.

Carry your proud heart,
Pure chalice, towards the angels.

I love you as after death
And my soul lies spread upon you -

My soul caught up all sorrows;
You're shaken by its painful images.

But so many roses flower
That I want to give you;

Oh, I'd like to bring you all my gardens
In one wreath.

Always I think of you
Till the clouds descend;

Let's kiss each other -
Yes?

- To the Barbarian, pg. 181

From Hans Adalbert von Maltzahn (1917)...

Colourful tears will sometimes play
In his ashen eyes.

But he's always meeting funeral processions;
They chase away his dragonflies.

He's superstitious -
- Was born under a mighty star -

His handwriting rains;
His sketches: gloomy alphabet.

As if they'd lain a long time in the river,
His people puff and swell.

The mysterious lost, with tadpole maws
And rotten souls.

Five dreaming drivers of the dead
Are his silver fingers.

But nowhere a light in the fairy tale gone astray
And yet he is a child,

A hero like Leather Stocking
On familiar terms with the Indians.

Otherwise, he hates everybody;
They bring him bad luck.

But George Grosz loves his misfortune
Like an affectionate enemy.

And his sadness in Dionysian,
His paint black champagne.

He is an ocean with clouded moon;
His God only seems to be dead.

- Georg Grosz, pg. 223

From My Pretty Mother Always Looked to Venice (1917)...

My heart is a sad time
Toneless ticking.

My mother had golden wings
That found no world.

Listen! My mother's looking for me;
Her fingers are candles, her feet are wandering dreams.

And sweet weathers with blue winds
Warm my slumber

In the night always
Whose days are wearing my mother's crown.

And from the moon I drink a quiet wine
When the night comes lonely.

My songs carried the summer's blue
And gloomily turned home.

- You scorned my lip
And speak with it. -

But I reached for your hands,
For my love is a child and wanted to play.

And I assumed your ways
Because I longed for human kind.

I have become poor
From your begging benefaction.

And the ocean will lament it
Unto God.

I am the hieoglyph
Inscribe beneath creation.

And my eye
Is the pinnacle of time;

Its lusters kiss God's hem.

- My Quiet Song, pg. 241

From Hebrew Ballads (1913)...

There will be a giant star fall in my womb . . .
Let us wake through the night,

Pray in the languages
That are incised like harps.

Let us be reconciled in the night -
So much God flows over.

Our hearts are child and child,
They'd like to rest so weary-sweet.

And our lips want to kiss one another,
Why do you wait?

Doesn't my heart border yours -
Your blood always colours my cheeks red.

Let us be reconciled in the night,
Whenever we embrace we do not die.

There will be a giant star fall in my womb.

- Reconciliation, pg. 245

From Concert (1932)...

In rapture and from the glittering heart
Of billowing love-strings

Shyly I stepped forth; night in my eye,
Lips open . . .

But wherever a lake lured,
Golden waters,

There died of refreshment the throbbing deer
In my wild breast.

What use is the wine of your table to me
If you don't serve the manna of your heart.

Sweet for me, if in the rush of love,
I had died for you.

Snow falls on my life now,
Numb my soul;

It sent a Sunday smile of peace
Into your heart.

Happiness I no longer seek.
Wherever under the wedding morn I sat,

The dreaming lotus froze
Upon my blood.

- The Song of Wonder, pg. 267

From My Blue Piano (1945)...

Over and over again you'll die
Away from me in the parting year, my child.

When the leaves flow down
And the branches all turn slender.

Like the rose once red
Death you have tasted bitterly,

You were not spared a single
Wilting throb.

That's why I cry aloud, eternally. . . .
In the nighttime of my heart.

The lullabies still come sighing out from me
Which sobbed you to death's sleep,

And my eyes no longer turn
Towards the world;

The green of the leaves is hurtful to them.
- But the Eternal One resides in me.

My love of you is the image
That one is allowed to make of God.

I saw the angels weeping too,
In the wind and the snowy rain.

They hovered there . . .
In a heavenly breeze.

When the moon stands bloomnig
It's like your life, my child.

And I don't want to watch
How the light-shedding butterfly floats carefree on.

I never suspected death
- Scenting you out, my child -

And I love the walls of the room,
Which I am painting with your boyish face.

The stars that in this month
So many sparkling fall in life
Drop heavy on my heart.

- To My Child, pg. 277-279

From To Him (1945)...

Ah bitter and scanty was my bread,
Pale as death -
The gold of my cheeks was amber.

Into the caves I creep
With panthers
In the night.

So anxious I in the twilight's sorrow . . .
Even if the stars lie down
On my hand to sleep.

You're surprised by their gleam -
But the pain of my loneliness
Is a stranger to you.

Wild animals in the streets
Take pity upon me.
Their howling ends in sounds of love.

You, though, wander freed of such earthly things
Around Sinai, smiling, radiant -
Strange, far past my world.

- To My Transfigured Friend, pg. 291

[Kelsey Hennegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The intense yearning of Lasker-Shüler is palpable from the very beginning of the selection. The speaker seems to crave, to invite, to beg for passion, for sumptuous feeling, in the midst of—well, what sounds to me as something like anhedonia. In “Chaos,” the speaker, “from the heavens of [her] solitude,” where “the stars are fleeing pale with dread,” beckons any feeling, even hurt: “I wish a pain would stir / And hurl me down cruelly / And jerk me to myself!” The landscape has taken on her blanched sentiment—pale stars, lonely heavens. Rather than reprieve, she wants to feel—to feel it all, the high and low, the hurt and joy. Her “motherland is empty-souled,” what hope is there for her? In a soulless land, she seems to have lost herself. Pain may be one means of return to the self. So, still, she craves. I look to “Vagabonds,” wherein she details hopes she’s held—to “seize all the suns,” a yearning “for jubilation.” I hear that anhedonia in the lines: “My soul can barely feel the golden sense of heaven still, / My eyes can barely see.” And, again, an invitation to feel expansively: “Pour fire into my life!” She paints a possibility of such a fiery life, “When our souls growl like hungry dogs; / Let’s when our lusts in hellish heats.” Yes! A bursting, bristling, maddening lust for life, for a return to the self and the self’s capacity, for acting in the world. I’m enthralled by questions of: the weight of recognizing futility in the world, the burden of coming into consciousness, the consumptive yearning that knows no singular object but is nearly obliterative in its need to find realization.