HERMANN HESSE IN THE GUTTER - NOW IN DANISH!

HERMANN HESSE I RENDESTENEN

‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’ (Oscar Wilde).

Hovedkulds, halsstarrig
Hermann Hesse
faldt pladask på fjæset i Tübingenmudderet.
‘Sådan! Lær lortet at kende!’
skrålede en aldrende schwaber.
Og kirkeklokkerne dunkede langs Lange Gasse,
og støvet faldt på Heckenhauers Boghandel.
Og, mens Herman måsede sig op på sine fumlende fødder
og rensede sine beskidte briller,
skinnede sine første digte
in den månebelyste rendesten.

(translated by John Irons)


HERMANN HESSE IN THE GUTTER

‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’ (Ocar Wilde).

Headlong, headstrong

Hermann Hesse

fell, flat on his face, in the Tuebingen mud.

“That’s it! Get stuck into the shit!”,

an ageing Swabian yelled.

And the church bells throbbed along Lange Gasse,

and the dust fell on Heckenhauer’s Bookshop.

And, as young Hermann slithered to his fumbling feet

and cleaned his shitty glasses,

his first poems

shone in the moonlit gutter.

Keith Armstrong,

Tuebingen.

(as performed by Dr Keith Armstrong in the Williams Library, St Chad's College, University of Durham on Thursday 27th April with guest writers Manuela Schmidit and Florian Neuner (from Durham's twin city of Tuebingen) and fellow poet Katrina Porteous).

The cycle of discontent and early rebelliousness seemed to temporarily subside when Hesse began an apprenticeship in the Heckenhauer bookshop in in the university town of Tübingen on October 17, 1895. Hesse's literary career was about to begin.
While learning the publishing business, Hesse engaged himself with self-education, and to a degree, the many evening hours devoted to quiet thought and contemplation accorded deeper insight and clarity. Although Hesse on occasion attended social gatherings and went out with friends, overall the years in Tübingen were devoted to solitary activities. Hesse wrote at the time, "It's the work I do on my own that makes life worthwhile." Hesse spent much time reading alone, absorbing and forgetting himself in German Romantic literature, primarily Goethe who utterly captivated him.

During the Tübingen years, Hesse increasingly became enveloped in an atmosphere of aestheticism, finding faith and comfort in the world of beauty, and specifically the world of poetry. Hesse strived to familiarize himself with the history of literature, and the world of romanticism, and aestheticism was of key importance.

Heckenhauer's bookshop had a collection specializing in theology, philology, and law. Hesse's assignment there consisted of organizing, packing, and archiving the books. After the end of each twelve hour workday, Hesse pursued his own work further, and he used his long, free Sundays with books rather than social contacts. Hesse studied theological writings, and later Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, and several texts on Greek mythology. In 1896, his poem 'Madonna' appeared in a Viennese periodical.
In 1898, Hesse had a respectable income that enabled his financial independence from his parents. During this time, he concentrated on the works of the German Romantics, including much of the work from Clemens Brentano, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Friedrich Holderlin and Novalis. In letters to his parents, he expressed a belief that "the morality of artists is replaced by aesthetics." This newfound faith in aestheticism formed the background of Hesse's first poems. It dominates in An Hour behind Midnight, as also in parts of Hermann Lauscher, and was finally beginning to fade away in Peter Camenzind.

In autumn 1898, Hesse released his first small volume of poetry, Romantic Songs and, in the summer of 1899, a collection of prose entitled One Hour After Midnight. Both works were a business failure. In two years, only 54 of the 600 printed copies of Romantic Songs were sold, and One Hour After Midnight received only one printing and sold sluggishly. Nevertheless, the Leipzig publisher Eugen Diederichs was convinced of the literary quality of the work.
As Hesse later suggested, the title, as well as the collection itself, "was the kingdom in which I lived, the dreamland of my
working hours and days that lay mysteriously anywhere between time and space."


I Know, You Walk by Hermann Hesse

I walk so often, late, along the streets,
Lower my gaze, and hurry, full of dread,
Suddenly, silently, you still might rise
And I would have to gaze on all your grief
With my own eyes,
While you demand your happiness, that's dead.
I know, you walk beyond me, every night,
With a coy footfall, in a wretched dress
And walk for money, looking miserable!
Your shoes gather God knows what ugly mess,
The wind plays in your hair with lewd delight-
You walk, and walk, and find no home at all.



Hesse:

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

Happiness is how, not what: a talent, not an object.

If you hate a person, you hate something within him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honour him for what he is.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

The middle class prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly consuming inner fire.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.



The partnership with County Durham and the City of Tuebingen in South Germany was established in 1969. 
Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong, who gained his doctorate at the University on Durham in 2007, following on from Bachelor's and Master's degrees there, first visited Tuebingen in November 1987, with the support of the County Council and the Kulturamt in Tuebingen, to give readings and talks for a period of a month. Since then he has travelled to the city over 30 times and helped arrange for Durham poets, musicians and artists and their counterparts in Tuebingen to visit their respective cultural twins.

THOMAS BEWICK: FIVE POEMS BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG

AMEN CORNER

(in memory of Thomas Bewick, wood engraver)

The starlings en masse

roost here now.

They blend with the dark trees

in the twilight

by Bewick's shadowy workshop.

Under the Cathedral spire,

they shriek and gossip

in the chill;

chit-chat of more weather.

I think that Thomas

you could speak to birds,

knew them as you drew their words

in woodblocks.

You coaxed them from their very eggs,

uncaged them -

let them sing on the page.

THE BROTHERLY SOCIETY

London

Depressed you

with its ‘blackguard places’,

its streetwalking ways.

They called you ‘Scotchman’

and you itched for home,

reading the Geordie papers

at the Hole-in-the-Wall. 

And your heart trilled like a blackbird’s

when you rejoined your Whig mates,

putting a world to rights

in the Lion Lounge.

You were back

herding sheep in your roots,

smiling down to your boots

in that Brotherly Society

of Northumbrian cronies:

the wild fields

of Tyne.

RETURN TO CHERRYBURN

Drawing

clear of the city,

you carved your name  

in dogs barks

and birds cries.  

Your infant eyes

kept seeing

the devils in bushes

and the gods

in thrushes.

You loved

to scratch a living.

Avoiding the faces

of strange places,

You dreamed of always

Being a boy,

A bird or a fish,

Awash in the light

Of a dark wood:

A cherry burn.

Footprints home

To remember.  

‘TALE PIECES’

You spent your life

perfecting it,

crafty as a fox

forging a frantic path

across the fields.

To the sound of the Pipes,

you worked your way

to a quiet glade,

died contentedly

devising

‘tale-pieces’:

a tuneful ending

to a drawn-in-day.

       

WALK ON, TOM BEWICK     

Stride Circus Lane

and chip your signature

on the pavement of scrapes and kisses.

pass the Forth

and skirt

its pleasure gardens;

throw your darts in the archery field.

skim the bowling green

and walk on water,

doff your hat to Mrs Waldie;

cut along

old scars of lanes

to the bloody gush of Westgate street;

whistle with birds

in a vicar’s garden,

let warm thoughts fly in Tyneside sun

to bless this Geordie day.

And greet

the morning hours,

Aunt Blackett and Gilbert Gray,

sing to free the world,

the Black Boy;

harmonise your mind

in a churchyard of melancholy.

Dance over the Lort Burn,

in the sun in your eyes,

flooding your workshop

with a light fantastic.

Your shoulders so proud

rub with the building girls

and lady barbers

along Sandhill;

the boats of your dreams

bridge the aching Tyne,

ships groaning

in the tender daylight,

longing for the healing moon;

a keelman’s fantasies

of quayside flesh

and the seething sea.

You trip along

searching for electricity and magnetism

in the inns,

winging it

with the bird catchers and canary breeders,

the dirty colliers and the harping whalers.

Walk on Tom,

execute

a portrait

of a hanging man;

let your strong heart

swell with the complex passion

of common folk.

THE LINCOLN IMP

 

 

 

 

 

THE LINCOLN IMP

I fear the devilry in my poetry,

that impish urge

to home in on your fat cathedral

across all those bleak and wasted fields.

Tonight, I want

to ransack your city’s brains,

throw out pathetic gargoyles

from The Jolly Brewer,

beat up the landlord

of the Dog & Bone

with a good dose

of love poems.

I must admit

I am prone to heckle.

Bouts of doubt

infect my lines

and I am frequently inclined

to disrupt

your tedious tales;

for, unlike your buxom church,

they do not ring

with any bleeding sense of history,

just the shallow trivia

of an alien High Street,

the cloistered emptiness

of a bad poet’s soul.

Out here,

in the light of your cock spire,

I leap to twin with the Lincoln Imp

so that no choirboy

need be safe

from our wicked songs

and dodgy rhymes.

Twilight it is, and we zoom

from church to prison,

spreading our evil,

high as lords.

We set up our cheek

at terrible literary gatherings,

bloodstain the floors

of icy classrooms.

This is what imps do -

close down arts centres,

ignite recitals,

slink around alleyways

for bad girls to spank,

hurl abuse at the vicar’s cloth ears.

We imps do believe that

in Lincoln,

or any other northern dreamworld,

you might as well be totally unfeeling

as stay stone sober

in all the daytime’s lovelight.

KEITH ARMSTRONG