Maria Luise Weissmann
(* 20.08.1899, † 07.11.1929)
Gedichte übersetzt von James Reidel
Maria Luise Weissmann (Fotografie von Mary Hausner in München, 1926)
Dank James Reidel kam ich in Berührung mit den Gedichten von Maria Luise Weissmann. Sie wurde am 20. August 1899 in Schweinfurt als älteste Tochter des Oberstudienrates Dr. Karl Weissmann geboren. Unter dem Pseudonym M. Wels erschienen 1918 Beiträge von ihr im “Fränkischen Kurier”, in diesem Jahr arbeitete sie als Sekretärin des Nürnberger “Literarischen Bundes”, 1919 war sie in München für den Verlag Oskar Schloss sowie der Gesellschaft für Buddhistisches Leben tätig. Im Juni 1922 heiratete sie den Verleger Heinrich F.S. Bachmair mit dem sie in den folgenden Jahren abwechselnd in Pasing bei München, Dresden und München lebte. Am 7. November 1929 starb Maria Luise Weissmann in München an einer schweren Angina.
Publikationen: “Das frühe Fest”, Gedichte (1922), “Mit einer kleiner Sammlung von Kakteen”, Sonette (1926), Übersetzung von Paul Verlaines “Les Amies / Freundinnen”, Sonette (1927)
Weissmanns Gedichte ein Jahrhundert später zu lesen und bei jeder Zeile innehalten mit dem Gedankenflug ins heute, wo sich Europa und die Welt an Kriegsrändern entlang dreht, von einem Großteil der Gesellschaft negiert.
Milena Findeis, November 2023
Maria Luise Weissmann was born in the Bavarian city of Schweinfurt in 1899. Little is known about her childhood, but she undoubtedly benefited from being the daughter of a high school teacher who taught Greek, Latin, and Classical literature. As a young adult, she lived in Nuremberg, where she published her first poems in the newspaper feuilletons as well as in modern literary reviews. Her work is often identified with the Young Franconia movement of the World War I period. In 1919 she moved to Munich with her companion, the poet and publisher Heinrich F. S. Bachmair. They married in 1923 and that year he published her first book, Das frühe Fest (The Early Feast) followed a year later by Robinson, persona poems based on the novel by Daniel Defoe. During the remaining years of the 1920s, she translated the lesbian poetry of Paul Verlaine and Pierre Louÿs. She had completed many of the poems that were to comprise her third book, Imago, but she died of angina in 1929. Most of her work was published posthumously by Bachmair during the last years of the Weimar period. Only a very limited selection of her poetry has appeared in English. The selection here is from a volume of collected poems, prose pieces, and translations from the French.
James Reidel has published in many journals, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review. His recent appearances include Poetry, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Fiction Southwest, Wax Paper, Adirondack Review, Shift: A Journal of Literary Oddities, and elsewhere—including The Best Small Fictions 2016. He is also the biographer of the poet Weldon Kees and a translator. In 2013, he was a James Merrill House fellow.
Daniele Pantano
Childhood
Once more a cut-glass die filled the bedroom
As soon as it was evening, which he often
Held and stood beaded by its glancing light.
Outside the heavy flight of dark birds
Flew by and felt like a cool breeze
About his forehead. Sometimes, wonderfully,
These strange songs stood still around him,
And a flower would sing in his hair.
Often he crept timidly, bent by a dull burden,
And saw himself as a fire that blazed up.
Eyes were a torment to him and detested,
The forest called him and was strange, menacing:
The antlers of a stag, which stood white in the dark,
Would have born him. But, in a wicked blow,
The tree limb lifted its knotted hand.
Kindheit
Ein glasgeschnittner Würfel füllte das Zimmer
Sobald es wieder Abend war, den trug
Er oft und stand umtaut von Schimmer.
Draußen ging dunkler Vögel schwerer Flug
Flatternd vorbei und war wie kühles Wehn
Um seine Stirne. Manchmal, wunderbar, ‘
Blieben die fremden Lieder um ihn stehn
Und eine Blume sang in seinem Haar.
Oft schlich er scheu, gebückt in dumpfer Last,
Und sah sich wie ein Feuer, das entlohte.
Augen waren ihm Qual und tief verhaßt,
Der Wald rief ihn, und war doch fremd, und drohte:
Geweih des Hirsches, der weiß im Dunkel stand,
Wollte ihn tragen. Doch der Ast erhob
In bösem Schlage die verkrümmte Hand.
The Strange City
The sky is walled in by so much cement,
So very near. And brightly whitewashed over
By the same blue, a poster pillar spreads it;
From every recess, musty and dank, doom lurks.
And corners project, oh so walled in deadly chills—
Cliffs—where I am a wave suddenly breaking,
Until the flood dashes me further along.
In this motorcar’s catcall persisting for nights
On end, eternal bliss was lost to me.
Oh the angelic voices, oh their harp songs,
Prayer’s breath, the palm smell, oh wings waving!
I am shoved against strongly barred gates,
I stare around me among a thousand ghastly masks,
I am so tired and not allowed to go to sleep.
Note: lines 2 and 3, And brightly whitewashed . . . blue, “blue” whitewash (Tünche) still serves as an inexpensive coating for fences, walls, and the like, even greenhouse glass, and was once believed to reflect the healthful rays of the sun and even ward off flies—but the conceit makes it merely an advertisement; line 3, poster pillar, the German, Litfaßsäule, is from Ernst Litfaß (1816–1874), the inventor of ubiquitous, free-standing cylindrical advertising columns still found in Berlin and other German cities; line 8, catcall (Pfiff), early automobiles were equipped with whistles—if not horns—to alert other motorists and pedestrians.
Die fremde Stadt
Der Himmel ist aus viel Zement gemauert,
Sehr nah. Und grell mit Tünche übermalt
Von jenem Blau, das Litfaßsäule strahlt;
Aus Winkeln, dumpf und schwer, Verhängnis lauert,
Und Ecken starren, oh so todumschauert, -
Klippen, - ich Woge, jählings dran zerschellt,
Bis mich die Flut zerschmettert weiterwellt.
In diesem Autopfiff, der Nächte überdauert,
Ging mir die ewige Seligkeit verloren.
- Oh Engelstimmen, oh Gesang der Harfen,
Gebetshauch, Palmenduft, oh Flügelwehn! -
Ich stoße mich an fest verrammten Toren,
Ich starre rings in tausend Schreckenslarven,
Ich bin so müd, und darf nicht schlafen gehn.
The Homecoming
Perhaps the slender shaft of the birch carried me.
Now my feet root into the roots of the blackberry canes.
On the blue pond of my eyes: dragonflies in flight,
The grass sways in the southerly wind of my breath
And it streams blowing in gentle waves:
A wheat field of blond hair, leaning groundward.
A beetle’s dream grows in finger stalks, a cricket
Fiddles from the leafy hollow of an arm—
Oh I became deepness, vastness, and the forest
That shadows weary lashes in a green dusk,
And I listen: to my heart like a small woodpecker,
Softly hammering over from a distant hill.
Note: line 8, hollow of an arm (Achselhöhle), given the rural setting, allusion is to the folk-method of playing bowed instruments below the shoulder or held in the armpit as in an “armpit fiddler.”
Die Heimkehr
Vielleicht, daß mich der schlanke Schaft der Birke trug?!
Nun wurzelt Fuß ins Wurzelwerk der Brombeerranken.
Auf blauem Teiche meines Blicks: Libellenflug,
Gräser im Südwind meines Atems wanken
Und das in sanften Wogen wehend fließt:
Kornfeld des blonden Haares, erdgeneigt.
Ein Käfertraum an Fingerstengeln sprießt,
Grille, die aus umlaubter Achselhöhle geigt –
Oh, ich ward Tiefe, Weite und der Wald,
Der müdverhängter Wimper grün entdämmert,
Und lausche: wie der kleine Specht, mein Herz,
Aus fernem Hügel sacht herüberhämmert.
June 1919
The early dark carries me heavy in the womb,
The dying dark that bore me on a pale morning;
Slowly I increase in size along the hedge roses,
A mountain borrows its blue shadow from me,
When noon sears me in a pitched blaze.
The narrow plank fording a stream comes
Into evening laden by its tired burden.
Silently white walls collapse in the night,
The black forests pace around my bed.
Note: title, June 1919, the title alludes—and relates, ironically—to the German people facing the postwar realities of that historic month, such as the prospect of renewed warfare with the Allies, giving up Germany territory, agreeing to war reparations, and the like. Momentous events occurred—the government fell in Weimar, High Seas Fleet was scuttled in Scapa Flow, and, ultimately, a new government signed the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June.
Juni 1919
Die dunkle Frühe trägt mich schwer im Schoß,
Sterbend die mich gebar dem blassen Morgen;
Mit Heckenrosen werd ich langsam groß,
Berg muß mir seine blauen Schatten borgen,
Wenn Mittag mich in steiler Glut versehrt.
Zum Abend führt, von müder Last beschwert,
Bachüberwankend scheu das schmale Brett.
Stumm stürzen nachts die weißen Wände ein,
Die schwarzen Wälder schreiten um mein Bett.
The Carousel
They stood silent and listened to the blare
Of instruments out of tune, deep in sleep:
The rigid animals, parti-colored and pretty.
As they met the children’s pained look,
They awoke. The lion’s mane fluttered
In the wind. An elephant’s tusk
Loudly rang the bell. Its trunk snorted. Then
The proud caravan drew into a long train.
Before its arduous departure lay
A palm forest tangled in adventure.
The hot day shot from rockets of light.
Cactus burned crimson, monstrous.
Das Karussell
Sie standen stumm und lauschten dem Getön
Verstimmter Instrumente tief in Schlaf:
Die starren Tiere, bunt und wunderschön.
Da sie ein Kinderblick in Schmerz betraf,
Erwachten sie. Die Löwenmähne flog
Im Wind. So klang vom Elefantenzahn
Geläut der Schellen. Rüssel schnob. Es zog
In langem Zug die stolze Karawane
Dahin. Vor ihrem steilen Aufbruch lag
Ein Palmenwald, verstrickt in Abenteuer,
Aus Lichtraketen schoß der heiße Tag,
Kakteen brannten, purpurn, ungeheuer.
