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Death
To the fretful mother of a sick child it comes in the form of the long-awaited doctor. To a feeble old man it arrives as an obliging stranger who helps him to his feet and out through the garden gate. To the hapless workers of an overtaxed factory it is an industrial disaster with a paranormal dimension.
Death
comes to them all, yet the stories in Anna Croissant-Rust’s cycle are charged with life. The ever-changing personification of mortality appears amid scenes of unexpected enchantment, full of light and wonder, of reverence for the mercurial passions of nature. An inventive revival of the medieval danse macabre,
Death
was issued in Germany on the eve of World War One. It is paired here with the author’s earlier collection Prose Poems, which fused free verse and fragmentary narrative to create something sublime and entirely original. The intense emotional register and singular style confounded critics when it was first published in 1893, and by the time other writers were producing comparable work in the early 20th century it had been forgotten. This major English-language debut confirms Anna Croissant-Rust as a hugely powerful writer well overdue for recognition.
- GenresPoetry
170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1914
100 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 10, 2021
A collection of modernist prose pieces in the tradition of ‘The Dance of Death'. The staccato titles such as ‘Old Man’, ‘Midday’, ‘Mother’, and ‘Whore’ indicate the person and the location, the manner in which they expire differing in each case, from those who are resigned or fearful to others oblivious of their imminent fate.
Although most of the seventeen pieces are just a few pages long, their rich language and evocative prose give them an intensity and depth of longer works. Much of the tale is in its ‘scene setting’, Croissant-Rust builds up to the moment with great care and acute observation with an almost romantic use of nature symbolism. This ranges from the grandeur of 'the great outdoors'; “He looks up. Above him is a little dark cloud, motionless, The light sprays around it like a phosphorescent ring, turning pale and dull at the edge of the sky. He strides on, then looks up once more. Again the cloud, again it is above him. Is it not growing larger, is it not coming closer?” (‘The Bird’) through the rural farming environment; “Flashing scythes move across the field and girlish laughter resounds amid the jubilant larks…” (’Harvest’), to the more intimate setting of the garden, ’Old Man’ and ’White Roses’.
In less poetic hands these could so easily become mawkish or cloying in the manner of typical Victorian novels, but potential tropes such as a fevered little girl in ‘Corn Mother’ or multiple child deaths in 'Dark Night become more ‘folk-horror' or Maupassant style Conte Cruel rather than Dickens sentimental or bathetic.
Croissant-Rust’s urban-based tales are equally imaginative. A lonely young man in a cafe stares at the clock and watches his life tick away; a factory becomes its own malevolent entity; a young woman experiences a literal dance of death while another expires in her lonely self-absorption. The symbolism is perhaps obvious but the vibrant language carries it off well.
'Death' is twinned with another of her books, the 1893 volume 'Prose Poems'. One can only imagine how they must have been received when first published, no rhymes, sometimes only a single word per line and no capital letters at the beginning of each line. I am not a big poetry fan but I was surprised at just how much I liked these pieces and they complement/enhance 'Death' very well.
Croissant-Rust remains largely unknown in her native Germany even though she was a founding member (and the only woman) of Michael Conrad’s ’Society for Modern Living’ which aimed to "cultivate and spread the modern, creative spirit in all areas: social life, literature, art and science", and whose membership included Otto Julius Bierbaum and Oskar Panizza, both authors undergoing something of a revival. This translation together with James Conways (as always) excellent afterward marks her first appearance in the English language.
I highly recommend this book. The stories are uniformly excellent and after reading this volume I left it for a week or so and then re-read them more slowly, a few tales a day. I found them just as enjoyable the second time out.
Although most of the seventeen pieces are just a few pages long, their rich language and evocative prose give them an intensity and depth of longer works. Much of the tale is in its ‘scene setting’, Croissant-Rust builds up to the moment with great care and acute observation with an almost romantic use of nature symbolism. This ranges from the grandeur of 'the great outdoors'; “He looks up. Above him is a little dark cloud, motionless, The light sprays around it like a phosphorescent ring, turning pale and dull at the edge of the sky. He strides on, then looks up once more. Again the cloud, again it is above him. Is it not growing larger, is it not coming closer?” (‘The Bird’) through the rural farming environment; “Flashing scythes move across the field and girlish laughter resounds amid the jubilant larks…” (’Harvest’), to the more intimate setting of the garden, ’Old Man’ and ’White Roses’.
In less poetic hands these could so easily become mawkish or cloying in the manner of typical Victorian novels, but potential tropes such as a fevered little girl in ‘Corn Mother’ or multiple child deaths in 'Dark Night become more ‘folk-horror' or Maupassant style Conte Cruel rather than Dickens sentimental or bathetic.
Croissant-Rust’s urban-based tales are equally imaginative. A lonely young man in a cafe stares at the clock and watches his life tick away; a factory becomes its own malevolent entity; a young woman experiences a literal dance of death while another expires in her lonely self-absorption. The symbolism is perhaps obvious but the vibrant language carries it off well.
'Death' is twinned with another of her books, the 1893 volume 'Prose Poems'. One can only imagine how they must have been received when first published, no rhymes, sometimes only a single word per line and no capital letters at the beginning of each line. I am not a big poetry fan but I was surprised at just how much I liked these pieces and they complement/enhance 'Death' very well.
Croissant-Rust remains largely unknown in her native Germany even though she was a founding member (and the only woman) of Michael Conrad’s ’Society for Modern Living’ which aimed to "cultivate and spread the modern, creative spirit in all areas: social life, literature, art and science", and whose membership included Otto Julius Bierbaum and Oskar Panizza, both authors undergoing something of a revival. This translation together with James Conways (as always) excellent afterward marks her first appearance in the English language.
I highly recommend this book. The stories are uniformly excellent and after reading this volume I left it for a week or so and then re-read them more slowly, a few tales a day. I found them just as enjoyable the second time out.
May 28, 2021
The afterword hopes that this author will be rediscovered and set up high again in the literary pantheon. Not on this evidence. 2.5*s
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Is6...
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Is6...
June 28, 2021
Remarkable short vignettes about mortality and nature, and another wonderful cultural export by Rixdorf. Besides the prose poems and stories by Frau Croissant-Rust, this volume provides an excellent short account of her life and work, useful for yanks like me who are new to her mordant visions. There are two books under this cover, the titular Death and an earlier collection called Prose Poems, that is an exploration of life as the cycle of a year. The Death stories are less subtle but stronger, modern riffs on the dance of death with a personified reaper that is both benign and merciless. Apparently the author is generally regarded as a German naturalist with the traits of an early expressionist, but I find much here of latter day romance, especially in stories like "Corn Mother," a quiet chiller about a dying child and the rites of spring fertility. Thanks are due once again to the publisher for sharing extraordinary work that is almost unknown in the English speaking world.
January 26, 2019
Written over 100 years ago, "Death" is probably most notable less for its subject than a woman with seemingly morbid tendencies wrote it: 17 imaginings of final ends, some horrific, others blissful. Croissant-Rust matches morbid fascination to romantic anthropomorphizing, with results that are more often cloying than chilling. The prose poems also published in this volume, date from circa 1893, and the near constant emoting (back of wrist against forehead; fainting couch nearby) added to the mix significantly weakens one's ability to stifle a yawn or eye-roll.
While Croissant-Rust's writing hasn't aged terribly well, her place in Munich's literary scene of the will certainly be of interest for anybody filling in the gaps of their knowledge of the literary and artistic figures in German culture around the turn of the 19th/20th century.
While Croissant-Rust's writing hasn't aged terribly well, her place in Munich's literary scene of the will certainly be of interest for anybody filling in the gaps of their knowledge of the literary and artistic figures in German culture around the turn of the 19th/20th century.
September 8, 2022
This is actually two books in one. The first is the title collection. All short tales about the last few minutes of life from varying perspectives. The last third is a collection of prose poems (some more like straightforward poems) from about 20 years earlier. Both have a richness of life that is surprising given the morbid content. Overall, I found the both collections a little uneven. Some stories and poems were incredible and really got under my skin. Others didn't speak to me. Also, it really is hard sometimes (from the perspective of the 21st century) to really get underneath the skin of something like the prose poems and realize just how radical they were. Some of these seemed somewhat commonplace (now). This is the odd sort of collection that might strike me differently at different times and so I really want to revisit this one in a few years.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews