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Then freed at last
I rushed out of the door,
Fast, the stairwell
warm, aflame, it helped,
And I would rather
cry to cobblestones
Than in the cramped
and ever-listening rooms!
This is the flight
from relatives too near
Who touched me even
before knowing me,
As if I were still
in their hollow lap
Parental pressure
won’t release its young.
I’ll take the
hatred of this desert city
Instead of your
unfounded love for me,
We never chose each
other! You begat
And suckled me, is
that where feeling’s from?
No, departed from
the lamp’s false peace
Of mind, and from
your tight security!
And out into the
unknown night instead
Watching over truth
without a bed!
Here they come, like houses steep and cold,
The cars, met only
in the shortest stop,
Unfeeling too and
fast, sinister humans
Seeking out and
preying on each other.
I wander with them
as if all alone-
In lit-up cafés as
in silent glades,
Like leafless
stumps just sitting chair by chair
Each head a throne
choosy and apart.
Regard the couples
without harmony
Going home in icy,
clear alliance,
And creep away
instead to tiny stars,
By lifeless
lanterns, blacked-out window panes.
And finally I raise
my own true hands-
Like a trumpet, my
heart spreads all walls-
Down with cold and
lusty solitude
And lukewarm,
swampy mutuality.
Related blood from
parents’ night of love,
We are akin without
our wanting it,
Divided blood is
paired in prostitution-
O may a new call
banish both of you!
A call to
friendship! That in gloomy rooms
The walls may
tumble and the naked gleam,
Laid bare of dull
and invisible covers,
And exercised of
ghostly sentiment.
O may the unfulfilled arise from their
Impoverished time,
waft out of graves into
Our spirit realm,
be born anew with hearts
In bloom and
gestures full of feeling.
A call for sun! To breathe into each other
Prouder souls,
instead of bullying-
A call to freedom!
To be blended in no more,
But unified, an
army’s rank and file- !
The square is full
of still strong lilac-air,
It lights up like
an echo calling on,
Red beams shine in
from all the streets around
And boldly paint
themselves a brand-new world.
These are wills
entirely wrought of light
Who love that
willful look in one another,
This is the light’s
ascending melody,
The sweet and near
and vast camaraderie!
“Why do you seek
Light
Not love?”
Speaks
A voice just now
above my eyes.
“Why do you blink,
Squint,
blind yourselves,
Play
With your poor
eyes?
Why do you never
Rest,
Poke stars
Through them,
You murderers of
your eyes!”
- You don’t
Scare me!
My storm
To light
I needn’t betray
for love:
Unextinguished
It still glows,
As I cooler
And yet
More passionate
swing on a brighter love!
Not consumed
By the head
But also not
Dusted
With the womb’s
burying love.
Just as the sun
Tanned
Burns me,
A friend is
Protective fire,
spur and freedom, light and love.
Alfred Wolfenstein
was born on December 28, 1888 in Halle. After his family moved to Berlin, he
earned a law degree and lived there as a writer. From 1916-1922 he resided in
Munich, but later returned to Berlin. Warned of his imminent arrest, he fled to
Prague, then to Paris in 1939. Unable to flee Paris when German troops marched
in, he was imprisoned for three months, after which he lived on the run. In
1945, suffering from heart disease and mental illness, he took his own life. He
published several volumes of poetry, as well as novellas, stories, and plays.
The theme of friendship is central to his work.
“Kamaraden!,” which was originally dedicated to Ernst Joël, was first published in 1917 in a volume of poetry entitled Die Freundschaft. It was included in Pinthus’s 1919 anthology of Expressionist poetry Menschheitsdämmerung, along with several other of Wolfenstein’s works. Today, Wolfenstein is virtually unknown, which begs the question: Why translate his work at all? One answer is that our current focus on only a few Expressionist poets has left our understanding of this movement and its goals incomplete. We tend to equate Expressionism with mental anguish, alienation, and a fascination with modern technology, but this poem demonstrates that ideals such as friendship and camaraderie were important to the Expressionists as well. This insight is significant in that camaraderie, in particular, has been closely linked with Nazism, but here we see that the concept had attained cultural relevance much earlier than 1933, when Hitler and his cohorts assumed political power.
In translating this poem I attempted to capture something of the intensity and freshness of Wolfenstein’s diction. Neologisms (such as “Sumpfgemeinsamkeit”) and unusual word choices in the German original are intended to surprise the reader, and I hope that readers of the English version will be equally surprised and drawn in to the text. Early on, I abandoned all hope of achieving a rhyming translation as this would have taken me too far away from the vocabulary of the German original. Instead, I satisfied myself with preserving the strong rhythms of Wolfenstein’s poem.