Dark Soliloquy: The Selected Poems of Gertrud Kolmar

by Gertrud Kolmar, Cynthia Ozick (Foreword), Henry A. Smith (Translator/Introduction)

Gertrud (Chodziesner)) Kolmar (1894-1943) remained virtually unknown until years after her death. She wrote her best work during the 1930s, an unlucky hour for a German poet, and a hopelessly tragic one for a German Jew. Unable to escape the Third Reich, she was first sentenced to hard labor and then deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and murdered.

Genres: Poetry

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

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.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I too am a continent.
I have unexplored mountains, bushlands impenetrable and
lost,
Bays, stream-deltas, salt-licking tongues of coast,
Caves where giant crawling beasts gleam dusky green,
And inland seas where lemon-yellow jellyfish are seen.



I thought this collection would be rooted in the troubles of Kolmar's German homeland, but that is very much not the case. There are lots of imaginative and sensual poems here of faraway lands and of nature, animals, and the sea. The interesting in-depth introduction of her life and works states that she closely resembled the great american poet Emily Dickinson, in regards to the fact that both had very little work published during their lifetime. Kolmar herself might not have survived the holocaust, but her poems did, and were published in 1955 to high priase.


With her black flowers and her painted eyes,
With silver chains and silks of spangled blue.
She knew more beauty when a child and free,
But now forgets the better words she knew.

- - -

My pale pillow is an iceberg buoyed by night.
It melts away beneath my tropic hands
That bloom like iris blossoms, veined with golden blood;
They hold the grey-blue ribbon of an adder
Who whispers to me wonders that he knows.

- - -

Sea-virgins came and swan mysterious dances;
Dark music from the wild harps resounded free.
The moon poured out its light in silverly lances
On pearly scales and submarine romances;
And all my sheets smelled of the sea.

- - -

I am the toad.
I love the stars of night.
The coals of sunset, evening's ruddy lode,
Smoulder in purple ponds, barely alight.
Beneath the rainbarrel's sodden wood
I crouch, low, fat, and wise.
My painfull moon-eyes wait and brood
To view the sun's demise.

- - -

Oh dearest one!
My arms embrace you
Like a basket of flowers.
Springtime island: snow-white hyacinths,
A deep blue crocus, honey-colored narcissus,
The gray and lilac hues of rarest tulips.
And your floral eyes fall open like a fan
And look at me.

[Aila Dominguez Ramonet · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I was no worse than other women in my thoughts and deeds. But I knew I did not live the way I should have, and I was always ready to do penance. And all the grief that came over me and may come over me I will take upon myself as atonement, and it will be just. And I will bear it without complaining and somehow find that it belongs to me and that I was born and have grown to endure it and somehow outlive it”

[H L · Rating 3 out of 5]

The foreword mentions that her life was not one of experience but tranquility and contemplation. It shows. Landscapes and nature rather than people define these poems. I think if she had lived longer she could have achieved something bold and unique, even feminist in her poems. “Worlds” really demonstrates her best work in my opinion.

[Agustina Chiarante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una mezcla entre la experiencia humana y la de la naturaleza en un compendio sencillo y con algunos poemas con versos simbólicos. No soy de leer mucha poesía y no me interpeló del todo por eso pero si marqué algunas frases destacables

[katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

very beautiful nature-inspired poetry + the Worlds section was magical

[Sofía Delia Nowendsztern · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best poet from the 20th century.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kolmar's one of those poets whose career was tragically cut short just when it seems they were on the cusp of attaining something bold, grand, and new with their poetry. Sure, her earlier stuff is pretty great (though I confess to not being a fan of straightforward sonance rhyming) with its focus on the natural and naturalistic. Kolmar is very much a landscaping poet, whether it's actual environments or those that move among them, as with the various poems on individual animals, but it's her later works that really break out, especially those collected here from 'Worlds' and 'Prussian Coats-of-Arms'. These poems seethe with an almost heady sensuality, doom-laden breaths over the necks of those about to perish. It's often silly to associate artists with their unforeseen (if, to us, imminent) dooms, but the period Kolmar lived in, feverish with Nazism and fascisms of all ilks couldn't help but demand, via its dark muses, poetry like that that Kolmar produced later. A testament to the grandeur of horror.

[Mills College Library]

831.912 K815d 1975