In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice not.
Memory.
Do you want to wander on and on?
See, the good is so near.
Only learn to seize happiness,
For happiness is always there.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Memory, from: Poems (Last Hand Edition, 1827), online source)
You had no luck, and I had none;
we took each other, now we have one.
Where did we take it from?
It came from heaven upon us.
(Friedrich Ruckert, You have no luck, In: Four Lines, Second Hundred, from: Collected Poems, Second Volume, 1836, online source)
[Happiness is this.]
Happiness is this: To rest together,
Silent as if bedded in the evening,
And listened to the sound,
that my soul sings to you nightly.
(Walter Cale, Happiness is this, from: Mauthner (ed.), Nachgelassene Schriften von Walter Cale, 1910, online source)
The non-existent.
About a happiness you fleetingly possessed,
Consoling remembering, consoling forgetting,
Comforts the all-healing time.
But the dreams that never come true,
Never forget and never conquer,
Never leaves you her longing sorrow.
(Isolde Kurz, The non-existent, from: Poems, 1888, online source)
Love
Love inhibits nothing; it knows neither door nor bolt,
And penetrates through everything itself;
It is without beginning, forever beating its wings,
And beats her eternally.
(Matthias Claudius, The love, from: ASMUS omnia sua SECUM portans oder sammtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Bothen, Sechster Theil, 1797, online source)
Source: Pixabay
No, I don’t agree that you can only be happy as a couple, but I liked the tenderness of the poems like this. Come well and cheerfully into and through the new week! &
Magic circle
What’s on the hundred sheets of paper
Of the rose all?
What does a thousandfold blare say
The nightingale?
What is written is written on every page
On a leaf;
From every song blows what gewehet
In the first has:
That beauty in itself selb described
Has a circle,
And no one else’s loving
To find knows.
So circles around her with a hundred leaves
The rose all,
And around her a thousandfold butterflies
The nightingale.
(Friedrich Ruckert, Magic circle, from: ostliche Rosen 1819-1820, in: Collected Poems of Friedrich Ruckert, Volume Four 1837, Online Source)
The rose in the night
Hadley
She glows. And their hair creep large
On blood-red dull sammet, black snakes.
She bows wearily in fragrant desire,
The mature woman. And yet is a heart bare,
A hot, gentle heart. And burst, a womb,
Of love to receive the sky.
And becomes a face with painted cheeks.
When evening sails seaward on brown raft,
A tawny owl in the gloom laughing,
Then it opens deep eyes and wakes
And catches the man’s dream on its flight.
And sinks withered tomorrow, on the shrub, in the coffin,
And stood as a rose in the night.
The dark red rose in the night.
(Gertrud Kolmar, The rose in the night. Hadley, from: Picture of the Rose, 1928/29, online source)
Wave dance song
I threw a rose into the sea,
A blooming rose in the green sea.
And because the sun was shining, sun was shining,
the light jumped behind,
with a hundred trembling toes behind.
When the first wave came,
wanted to drown the rose, my rose.
When the second took her gently on her shoulders,
The light, the light had to fall at her feet.
Then the third caught her by the hem,
and the light leapt high, trembling high, as if to ward;
But a hundred dancing petals
swayed red, red, red around me,
and it danced my boat,
And my shadow on the foam,
And the green sea, the sea – –
(Richard Dehmel, Wellentanzlied, from: Richard Dehmel – A Choice from his Work, edited and introduced by Ida Dehmel, online source )
Source: Pixabay
I don’t know much about roses, but for those who are interested, I’ve included a link to the Hadley rose variety here.
Come well and light and sunny through the new week!
You thought you had long been prepared
You thought you were prepared
With willing renunciation;
And now fate denies you,
So you still must lament.
The fighter was bristling with courage,
And you thought how well! prepared;
But when the terror steps out
Of the fight, he will tremble,
What good is it to guide the thoughts
On that in advance, and they lower
Into what cannot be thought at all,
Eh’ one must bear it.
(Friedrich Ruckert, You thought you were prepared long ago, from: Kindertodtenlieder aus seinem Nachlasse, Frankfurt a.M. 1872, S. 365-366, online source)
At night in the forest
Have you never walked through the forest at night,
where you did not see your own foot?
But a knowledge overcame your fear:
The way leads you.
Sorrow and gloom will never hold thee in,
that you tremble, which goal you approach?
But a knowledge overcomes your trepidation:
Thee thy way leads.
(Christian Morgenstern, In the forest at night, from: Melencolia, Berlin 1906, online source)
Fear grabs me
Fear seizes me.
For I foresee days approaching
Full of great lament.
Come, come to me! –
When the leaves die in autumn,
And the rivers duller dye,
And the clouds push into each other
Then come, you, come!
Protect me –
Support me –
Touch my hand.
Help me love!
(Erich Muhsam, Fear seizes me, from: The desert. 1898-1903, online source)
To a stranger
In this great sadness,
Life is called,
Can a distant lamp shine
Often like a dear greeting be
From spirit to spirit.
And a man’s face,
That hardly one knows,
Can be as touching as a poem
And comfort like a soft light,
That burns deep in the twilight.
(Anton Wild Goose, Of a stranger, from: Thirty Poems, 1917, online source)
Source: Pixabay
More than ever: Come well into and through the new week – and stay healthy! And: does not go crazy. Yes, this is also an admonition to myself.
New Year at Pastor’s
Mama draws from the punch bowl,
The father lifts the bosom
And says: "Now it’s four minutes
Only more to twelve, my good ones.
I know you feel with me,
How this old year disappears,
And that their God in his works
– Mama, the punch still what strengthen! –
And thank God with all my heart,
Auch in der Liebe nimmer wanket,
Because all that befalls us
– Mama, do not spare with the arrack! –
Because what happened, and what happened,
Whether we do not understand it freely,
But wisely, by his grace
– Mama, it still tastes bland! –
In this sense my good ones,
It’s only two minutes now,
In this faithful pious sense
– Pour rum again into the tureen! –
We ask God to help us
Even farther – How? It’s already twelve o’clock?
Then cheers! Cheers at all tables!
– I will mix the punch myself."
(Ludwig Thoma, New Year at Pastors, from: Selected Poems, online source)
Now the light is rising
Now the light is rising,
It goes into the new year.
Do not let your courage bow,
It does not remain as it was.
To be so heavy is peculiar
In the beginning forever,
In the end it will show,
What it was all for.
Do not hesitate like the fig
And lamented in the danger!
Swing up to the sun round dance
Thee silent as the carrion!
And if you can’t keep quiet,
So lament beautifully and clearly!
(Friedrich Ruckert, Now the light is rising, from: Kindertodtenlieder, 1834, online source)
WHAT WOULD THEY DO IF THEY COULD RULE THE NEW YEAR?
I’d probably be so excited
Spending the first nights sleepless
And on it for days anxious and petty
Swinging all silly, selfish plans.
Then – hopefully – but laugh out loud
And at last the dear God in the evening
Asking, but again in his own way
To make the new year divine itself.
(Joachim Ringelnatz, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU COULD RULE THE NEW YEAR?, from: However, 1928, online source)
Source: Pixabay
Dear ones, a happy new year 2020 I wish you! May it bring with it as much as possible of what you desire, may it make your hearts, souls and spirits wide, bright and joyful, and may it bring us all more peace.
Don’t hold it against me that I’m not so busy strolling through the blogs these days … I need a little time to myself.
See you soon, here’s to a new one, we’ll read each other!
The seed
A seed lay on its back,
The blackbird wanted to peck it.
Out of pity she spared it
And were richly rewarded for it.
The grain that lay on the ground,
That grew and grew day by day.
Now it is already a tall tree
And wears a nest of soft fluff.
The blackbird has built the nest;
There she sits now and chirps loudly.
(Joachim Ringelnatz, The seed, in: Little creatures, 1910, from: Samtliche Gedichte, Diogenes 1997, pp. 12)
Silent tire
Everything comes together and is fulfilled,
must only be able to expect it
And the becoming of thy happiness
Year’ and fields richly grant.
Till one day you found that
The ripe scent of grains you felt
and you set out and the harvest
into the deep attics lead.
(Christian Morgenstern, Silent hoop, from: Me and the World, online source)
Worship.
See! not a drop of water the chicken swallows,
Without looking up to heaven;
And, without worshipping to the dust
No grain pecks the dove to have inclined.
What they do unconsciously, you do it consciously;
So that you don’t have to be ashamed in front of them.
(Friedrich Ruckert, service., in: Auswahl deutscher Gedichte : fur die unternlern und mittlern Klassen der Gelehrten- und hohern Burgerschulen ; nach den Originalien und mit Anmerkungen, 1842, online source)
Source: Pixabay
Yesterday found at Mystik aktuell and spontaneously liked very much:
Yes, there seem to be several versions of this. Among another I found the following:
"The River Is Flowing" was a chant written in the 1970s by Sun Bear, a member of the Chippewa Tribe. He was born in the White Earth Reservation in the North of the United States on August 31, 1926 and died on June 19, 1992 at the age of 66 in Spokane, Washington. – Additional verses were added by E. Barrie Kavash in her 2005 novel "Sacred Cave" which is set in North America’s prehistoric southeast.
Come well into the new week!
End
Dreamy and tired like a butterfly in September, summer staggers along the terrain. Old wives’ threads tangle around its torn wings and the flowers that still bloom have no more honey.
Over by the high forest, behind which the sun gurgles, the night lurks, like a great spider, and like a close-meshed web it hangs the twilight before the flickering sunset, after which the butterfly takes its flight.
(Caesar Flaischlen, End, in: Songs and Diary Pages, from: Von Alltag und Sonne, 1897, online source)
Breeze of autumn
Heart, now so old and still not wise,
Do you hope from days to days,
What the blooming spring did not carry for you,
Will the autumn still carry you!
Let not the playing wind from the shrub,
Always to flatter, to caress.
Roses unfold his breeze in the morning,
In the evening he scatters the roses.
But the playing wind does not let from the shrub,
Till he completely thinned it.
All, O heart, is a wind and a breeze,
What we have loved and poetized.
(Friedrich Ruckert, Breath of autumn, in: Fourth book. House and year, from: Lyrical Poems, 1898, online source)
Tuesday evening we arrived back in Worpswede with the mail (from Hamburg: Mozart ‘Magic Flute’, Kunsthalle). Beautiful, silent starry night, festive and good for homecoming. Then I decided to stay in Worpswede. Already now I feel how with every day the loneliness grows, how this land, abandoned by colors and shadows, becomes bigger and bigger, wider and wider and more and more background for moving trees in the storm. I want to stay in this storm and feel all the shivers of this great emotion. I want to have autumn. I will cover myself with winter and will not betray myself with any color. I want to snow for the sake of a coming spring, so that what germinates in me does not emerge too soon from the furrows.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Diaries, 27.09.1900, online source)
Source: Pixabay
Come well into the first week of autumn!
The magic garden
Autumn mist steams.
But I stand in my magic garden.
On the mat sunny terraces
kneel the drag bearers of summer.
Light-moving pages,
purple, resplendent.
Soon the night will crush its silken throats.
But who will mourn,
when God’s nightingales
In hoarfrost and blind shrubbery dwell.
They sing.
Oh, how they sing!
Thousand-colored sprays the cloudy morning.
All golden eyes are reflected in my heart.
O heavenly burden!
God, how you give me a gift!
I stand in the heaven of your love.
(Frida Bettingen, The magic garden, from: Poems, 1922. Online source)
Autumn flowers.
In the soft air of autumn
I have picked the bouquet for you,
On the creation’s silent tomb
Still decorated with colors.
All colors are here, look,
As only spring offered,
Violet, yellow, white and blue,
Just no burning hot red.
With the summer airs glow
Is extinguished rose fire,
But pale flowers bloom
Beautiful still at the edge of life.
(Friedrich Ruckert, Autumn flowers, from: Poems, 1841, online source)
The days leave no trace
O rain say, you come so high along,
Even if the day above is without a trace and empty?
You fall to the river and swim to the sea,
Thinking you are escaping suffering and seeking pleasure?
O if only everyone knew what everyone must know:
The days leave no trace, as little as the rain on the river, –
Love only.
(Max Dauthendey, The days leave no trace, from: Weltspuk, in: Gesammelte Gedichte und kleinere Versdichtungen, Albert Langen, Munich 1930, S. 378/379)
Source: Pixabay
Come well into the new week!
Berta and I will go to the masquerade ball
Geese grazing as princesses.
Sheep’s heads that masquerade as sheep’s heads.
Turks that a beggar woman
Titled "Frau Geheimrat,
Cowboys with teacher’s beards. – –
Only those thereby earn and serve,
See the sense of such mischief.
And almost only for these few
Mix we change on colorful plate
To the extraordinary Italian
Salad, as pieces on it and in it.
Berta, do your hair a little faster!
Because I’m a ready-dressed Chinaman.
There’s a call like thunder –
Berta, we’re going to the carnival ball,
To carnival ruckus,
Pot-pickles, mixed-pouri and twist.
For many a thing in life – many a thing! -,
That one does not say, lets dance itself and grohlen.
And delicious is a noncommittal kissing.
Mary Stuart, today you are free.
Rasch! Pour lilacs in the armpits!
Take this mark for streetcar and times must.
I’ll pay for the car.
Am I not kind??
And go tonight with whom you will to the scaffold.
Close up! My little hat – and my little paletotchen. –
Get in! – The keys? – And the ham rolls?
Toff toff rrrr –
The car stops. Porter and lights shine.
I’ll pay for the car as I said.
But, Berta Stuart, now I leave thee.
To adventure one must avoid friends.
As we dress today only for others,
At last everyone experiences only himself.
You!Tomorrow, above the bucket, think of me!
(Joachim Ringelnatz, Berta and I go to the masked ball, from: Travel letters of an artist, 1928, source)
Because I’m not on Shrove Tuesday ..
Because I’m not on Shrove Tuesday
Had to swarm with,
I also have on Ash Wednesday
Not to harden me with.
As I was allowed on Shrove Tuesday
Hardening me in silence,
May I also on Ash Wednesday
In the silence swarm.
(Friedrich Ruckert, Because not on Shrove Tuesday, from: Kindertodtenlieder, 1834, source)
Source: ichmeinerselbst, mask magic 2018, more to come
Original on Facebook from Ankerherz, Source
I think I had this one last year. I still laugh.
Tomorrow there will be more mask magic pictures.
Come well in and through the week, moved or not …&
Chidher, the eternally young, spoke:
"I drove past a town,
A man in the garden fruits broke;
I asked when the city was here?"
He spoke and plucked away the fruit:
"The town stands forever in this place
And so will stand eternally."
And after five hundred years
I came the same way.
I didn’t find a trace of the city there;
A lonely shepherd blew the shawm,
The herd grazed leaves and leaves;
I asked, "How long is the city gone??"
He spoke and blew away on the pipe:
"The one grows when the other dorrt;
This is my eternal pasture."
But after five hundred years
I came the same way.
There I found a sea that made waves,
A skipper cast the nets free;
And when he rested from the heavy train,
I asked how long the sea had been here?
He spoke and laughed my word:
"As long as the waves foam there,
One fishes and one fishes in this port."
And after five hundred years
Did I come the same way.
Then I found a wooded space
And a man in the boiling,
He cut down the tree with his axe;
I asked how old the forest was here?
He said, "The forest is an everlasting haven;
For ever have I dwelt in this place,
And eternally the trees here grow away."
And after five hundred years
I came the same way.
Then I found a city, and aloud
The market resounded with the people’s cries.
I asked, "Since when is the city built?
Whither is forest and sea and shawm?"
They cried out and heard not my word:
"So it went on forever in this place
And will go on like this forever."
And yet after five hundred years
Will I go the same way.
(Friedrich Ruckert, Chidher, from: Friedrich Ruckert: Werke, Vol. 1, Leipzig and Vienna [1897], p. 291-293 , source)
Source: MeMySelf using two images from Pixabay
Friedrich Ruckert, who died in 1866 in what is now Coburg, was "a German poet, linguist and translator as well as one of the founders of German Oriental studies. Ruckert dealt with more than 40 languages and is considered a linguistic genius", Wikipedia knows. The model for the figure of Chidher Grun, the eternal wanderer, whose ballad I have known for a long time, goes back to the Islamic mythical figure al-Chidr. Who in turn is an "Islamic saint who, as a symbol of cyclically renewing vegetation and personification of good, has a firm place in the Muslim imagination" (Wikipedia, a most interesting article, I think).
A note about making good (photo) resolutions: Not that I’m going to make a big deal about it every time now, but this is the first time I’ve been compelled to draw on outside supplies, and it’s not even the end of January yet! But that’s the way it is, I have ideas what I want to illustrate something with (a flock of sheep, no loners on a dike, a wooden STAPLE, not a single felled tree, although that might still have been possible). Therefore the other photos are from me. And sometimes I simply don’t have time to search, this will also be the case more often in the future, instead I prefer to tinker in circles ..