Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics) (27 page)

A picture from the past,

In resplendent decline,

Of ruins grand and vast,

O’ergrown with branch and vine.

An ancient realm,

Heaven reclaimed it all, and ah!

Such bygone glory overwhelms –

This is Italia!

When spring winds blow,

Sweeping o’er the green,

A quiet reawakening below

Transforms the scene.

There’s something stirring in our hearts

And in this sanctuary of the gods.

We sense it with a start,

Where once immortals trod.

Listen to the trees,

Their rustling carries voices.

With ardent reveries

The valley rejoices.

And hidden by the fragrant veil

Of spring’s sweet reawakening,

The ancient magic casts the spell

Of gods engaged in secret flings.

Dame Venus hears the call

Of birds in lively chorus,

Enchanted, she stands tall

Shaking off the flora.

Around each column she curls,

Reclaiming her sacred site,

Winking at the world,

In this season of sweet delights.

Seeking out the hallowed nooks

In the ruins of her old shrine,

She beams with a beneficent look

And greets spring’s every sign.

But all is barren now,

The place itself is hushed.

Grass grows where once the ardent bowed,

And where the winds now rush.

Where once they raved,

Diana sleeps in the woods.

Neptune’s napping beneath the waves.

And Cupid isn’t in the mood.

From time to time a siren rises

From the foamy deep,

And with each note reprises

A wistfulness that makes hearts leap.

And Venus herself must ponder,

The world she knew is gone.

In vain do her eyes now wander,

For her lovely body is turned to stone.

For o’er the land and billowing waves,

In silent majesty,

Another woman now holds sway

Until eternity.

In her arms a blessed child

This wondrous woman holds,

And from her eyes a heavenly smile

Spreads mercy throughout the world.

There in the lustrous light

The blessed son awakes,

Shaking off the pall of night,

To seize the day, for heaven’s sake.

And like the lark, atwitter in the trees

Man’s immortal soul takes flight,

Born by the sultry magic of the breeze,

To wrestle wrong from right.

Everyone fell silent upon hearing the song. ‘That ruin,’ Pietro finally spoke up, ‘would then once have been a Temple of Venus, if I understood you correctly?’

‘Indeed,’ replied Fortunato, ‘in so far as can be surmised from the disposition of the entire structure and the surviving ornaments. It is also said that the radiant goddess found no peace. Every spring, from the terrible silence of the grave she reawakens in the green solitude of her fallen temple to celebrate earthly pleasure, and through devilish delusion manages to lead carefree young spirits astray. Excluded from the realm of eternal rest, lost in body and soul, the deluded shun life, condemned as they are restlessly to roam hither and thither, torn
between wild indulgence and terrible remorse, and ultimately destroy themselves, succumbing to madness. Time and again in the selfsame place, people claim to have witnessed the jousting of ghosts, now spotting a wondrously lovely lady, now a host of handsome cavaliers, beckoning passers-by to enter an imaginary garden and palace.’

‘Have you ever been up there?’ asked Florio, roused from his reverie.

‘Just the evening before last,’ replied Fortunato.

‘And did you not see anything that made you wince?’

‘Nothing,’ said the singer, ‘except for the silent pond and the mysterious stones shimmering in the moonlight, and the endless starry firmament above. I sang a pious old song, one of those timeless tunes that waft like memories and the whisper of night, born in some far, familiar haunt, gentle airs that pass through the idyllic garden of our childhood and serve evermore as a safe haven, the sound of which helps all those with the hearts of poets find their bearings later in life. Believe me, my friend, a poet worth his salt can hazard much, for, free of pride and profanation, art has the power to name and tame the wild spirits that rear up out of the earth and reach for us.’

No one said a word. The sun had just risen before their eyes and flung its sparkling luminescence over the earth. Whereupon Florio shivered all over, dashed a short stretch on ahead of the others and sang with a clear voice:

Here am I, Lord! Blessed be the light

That through the torrid heat in my breast bursts

With all its healing might,

Coolly quenching my thirst.

Free at last! Released from the spell,

Too giddy to stand tall,

My heavenly Father knows me well,

And will not let me fall!

After all the mighty mood swings that grip and rend our entire being, a crystal-clear serenity takes hold of the soul, like farm
fields after a thunderstorm that grow greener, bursting with life. Feeling profoundly refreshed, Florio took a vigorous look around and quietly awaited his companions, who came riding up slowly through the sea of green.

The good-looking lad who accompanied Pietro had, in the meantime, lifted his comely head like a sunflower greeting the first burst of daybreak. In stunned amazement, Florio recognized Signorina Bianca. He was shocked to see her looking so pale; gone was the ravishing blossom in her cheeks of that evening when he first set eyes on her frolicking among the tents. Roused out of the carefree games of childhood, the poor girl had suddenly been struck with the wallop of first love. And when, thereafter, in the grip of dark forces, her dearly beloved Florio became so distant and pulled further and further away from her, until finally she gave him up for lost, she sank into a deep melancholy, the secret source of which she dared reveal to no one. But wise Pietro knew all too well what ailed her, and resolved to take his niece on a trip to foreign climes, where, under distant skies, he hoped, not to wean her off the pain, but to soothe and comfort her with distraction. To travel untroubled and, as it were, to shake off the painful past, she felt compelled to dress as a boy.

Florio looked with gladness at the comely figure. A strange blindness had until now shrouded his gaze as if with an insidious fog. He was stunned to see how lovely she was! He spoke to her, greatly stirred, with fervent words. She rode along beside him in silence and with downcast gaze and a modest smile, surprised by this unexpected attention, as though she did not deserve such kindness. Only every now and then did she look up at him through her long black lashes, her soul laid bare in that look, as though thereby tendering an ardent plea: ‘Deceive me not again!’

In the meantime they’d reached a windswept hill, and behind them the city of Lucca with its dark towers sank in the morning mist. Whereupon Florio turned to Bianca and said: ‘It’s as if I were born again, as if everything is going to be all right now that I’ve found you again. With your leave, I never again want to part.’

In lieu of a spoken reply, Bianca returned his gaze with an uncertain, questioning look, still half withholding her burgeoning burst of joy, the picture of an angel framed by the blue morning sky. The rising sun greeted them full in the face with its long golden rays. The trees stood bathed in the glow, countless larks sang out, swishing through the clear air. And so the joyous couple and their companions rode merrily through the sparkling meadows towards the blossoming embrace of Milan.

1826

Heinrich Heine

I found the descent into the two best Klausthal mines, the Dorothea and the Karolina, very interesting, and I would like to describe the experience in some detail.

A half-hour’s walk outside the city, you happen upon two big blackish buildings. There you are immediately received by miners. They are dressed in dark, generally steel-blue-coloured, wide jackets hanging down over the belly, pants of more or less the same colour, a wrap-around leather smock tied in the back and a small green felt cap, completely rimless, like a lopped-off bowling pin. The visitor likewise dons the same attire, except for the leather smock, after which he is taken in hand by a miner, a foreman, who lights his pit lamp and leads him towards a dark opening resembling a chimney sweep’s hole, climbs down to chest level, instructs the visitor to keep a tight grip on the ladder and bids him follow fearlessly.

The descent is, in fact, a risky business; but being as yet ignorant of the workings of the mine, you are initially oblivious to the real danger. The fact that you are obliged to pull off your clothes and slip on this dark prison-like apparel already gives you a curious feeling. And now you are supposed to sink to your hands and knees and climb down, and the dark hole is so dark, and God knows how long the ladder is going to be. Yet soon you realize that the rungs leading down into the black abyss do not belong to a single ladder but rather comprise a
series of fifteen to twenty ladder joints, each of which leads to a tiny platform on which you can stand and in the midst of which a new hole leads down to a new length of ladder.

I first climbed down into the Karolina (the filthiest and most cheerless Miss Karolina that I have ever met). The ladder joints are muddy and wet. And down you go, from one length of ladder to the next, the foreman in the lead, and the fellow keeps telling you: it isn’t really dangerous, you just have to make sure to grasp the rungs firmly, and don’t look down at your feet, and don’t get dizzy, and for God’s sake don’t step on the side board, where the whirring cable is just now hoisting up the vats of ore, and where just two weeks ago a careless fool fell down and unfortunately broke his neck.

There is a bewildering hubbub and hum of activity down below; you are forever bumping against beams and cables hoisting up vats of hammered ore and buckets of water that has seeped out of the rock. Sometimes you also happen upon hollowed-out corridors, called
Stollen
, in which you can glimpse the growing piles of ore, and where the lonely miner sits all day, laboriously hammering the lumps of ore out of the wall.

I never did get down to the very bottom, where, as some say, you can already hear the Americans crying, ‘Hurrah, Lafayette!’ on the other side; but between you and me, as far down as I got seemed deep enough for me – what with the unceasing rumble and whirl, the ghastly grind of the machinery, the subterranean drip drip drip, water trickling everywhere, terrestrial vapours rising from the depths and the pit light flickering ever more faintly in the lonely night eternal. It truly was stupefying, harder and harder to breathe, and only with great effort did I hold fast to the slippery rungs of the ladder.

I did not suffer any so-called panic attack, but, strangely enough, down in those subterranean depths, I suddenly remembered my experience last year, at about this time, of a storm on the North Sea, and right then and there it felt cosy and pleasant to recall the ship tossing to and fro, the trumpeting winds blasting away, and in the midst of it all the sailors kicking up a merry row, and everything bathed in God’s fresh, open air. Yes, air!

Gasping for air, I climbed the several dozen ladder lengths back up to the surface, and my guide led me through a narrow, very long passageway blasted through the mountain to the Dorothea mine.

It is airier and fresher here, and the ladders are cleaner but also longer and steeper than those in the Karolina. My spirit grew more buoyant here too, especially as I once again noticed scattered traces of life. For faint glows shifted about in the distance; miners with their pit lights soon emerged to the surface with the greeting, ‘How’re you doin’?’, and, with the same reply from us, they climbed on by; and like a friendly, quiet and at the same time torturously enigmatic memory, they flitted by with their profoundly lucid expressions, the sombrely pious, somewhat pallid faces of these young and old men eerily lit in the shimmer of the pit light, the faces of men who have worked a shift in dark, lonesome mine shafts and now longed for the dear light of day and the eyes of wife and child.

My cicerone himself was a sterling fellow of pure and simple German nature. With a deep sense of satisfaction, he showed me the very spot where the Duke of Cambridge dined with his entire entourage during his visit to the mine, and where the long wooden dinner table still stands today along with the big silver ore stool on which the Duke sat. This table will stay standing here as an eternal souvenir of the occasion, said the good miner, and with fire in his voice he recalled the many festivities they celebrated back then; how the whole mine shaft was decked out with lanterns, flowers and wreaths; how a mine musician played the zither and sang; and how the dear, delighted, portly Duke drank round after round. And he swore that many miners, he himself in particular, would gladly lay down their lives for the dear portly Duke and the entire House of Hanover.

I am always greatly stirred to see how this feeling of fidelity expresses itself in such simple syllables. It is such a lovely sentiment! And it is such a truly German sentiment! Other nations may be more nimble and witty and pleasure-loving, but none is so faithful as the faithful German nation. Did I not know that fidelity was as old as the world, I’d say a German heart had invented it. Good old German fidelity – that’s no newfangled
flourish. At your courts, oh you German lords, they ought to sing again and again the song of Faithful Eckart and the evil Burgundian, who had his henchmen kill the children of Eckart, whose fidelity to his liege lord did not lag thereafter one iota. You have the most faithful subjects among all nations, and you err if you believe that the sensible old reliable dog might suddenly have gone mad and snapped at your sacred heels.

Like good old German fidelity, the little pit light led us safely and soundly, with hardly a flicker, through the labyrinth of shafts and pits; we climbed up out of the steamy night eternal, and the sunlight was beaming – ‘How’re you doin’?’