Poetry
Der ewige Tag
Not translated into English
Georg Heym · 1911
Opening lines
Beteerte Fässer rollten von den Schwellen
Der dunklen Speicher auf die hohen Kähne.
Die Schlepper zogen an. Des Rauches Mähne
Hing rußig nieder auf die öligen Wellen.
Tarred barrels rolled from the thresholds
Of the dark warehouses onto the tall barges.
The tugs pulled away. The mane of smoke
Hung sooty down upon the oily waves.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from de.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Forty-one poems. The first speak of Berlin, its trains, its hunger, its prisoners and its suburbs, and the god of the city seated on a block of houses. Then come a woman dead in the water, a sleeper in the forest, a field after the battle, figures of the French Revolution and the Empire, Louis Capet, Robespierre, Marengo, then the clouds, the seasons, a ghost ship, Ophelia, a hospital of fever patients and black visions.
Context
The collection appeared from Ernst Rowohlt, in Leipzig, in 1911; it was the only book of verse published in its author's lifetime. Publication was delayed, the publisher having had to redo the spelling and grammar of the manuscripts. Heym had made his name the previous year by reading his poems before a Berlin circle founded by Kurt Hiller and Jakob van Hoddis. In it he builds, in iambic stanzas, great images of terror. A posthumous collection, Umbra vitae, followed in 1912, in which the lines become shorter and as if chopped.
Who it is for
A collection of pieces in regular stanzas, which can be read in French in the poetic works translated by Dominique Iehl.
Prizes and reception
The only book of verse that one of the leading poets of early Expressionism lived to see published; translated into Spanish in 2018.
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The pages consulted to check this page.