I

XXXV “Ich rief den Teufel”

Ich rief den Teufel, und er kam,
Und ich sah ihn mit Verwund'rung an.
Er ist nicht häßlich und ist nicht lahm,
Er ist ein lieber, scharmanter Mann,
Ein Mann in seinen besten Jahren,
Verbindlich und höflich und welterfahren.
Er ist ein gescheuter Diplomat,
Und spricht recht schön über Kirch' und Staat
Blaß ist er etwas, doch ist es kein Wunder,
Sanskrit und Hegel studiert er jetzunder.
Sein Lieblingspoet ist noch immer Fouqué.
Doch will er nicht mehr mit Kritik sich befassen,
Die hat er jetzt gänzlich überlassen
Der teuren Großmutter Hekate.
Er lobte mein juristisches Streben,
Hat früher sich auch damit abgegeben.
Er sagte, meine Freundschaft sei
Ihm nicht zu teuer, und nickte dabei,
Und frug: ob wir uns früher nicht
Schon einmal gesehn beim span'schen Gesandten?
Und als ich recht besah sein Gesicht,
Fand ich in ihm einen alten Bekannten.

—By Heinrich Heine

II

A.
Heine is, along with Goethe and Rilke, the type of very prolific poet who was also a high-quality poet. Hofmannsthal produced some of the best German verse, but he stopped writing lyric poetry (except in the context of larger works) shortly after 1900. Hesse was prolific but sentimental and formulaic often to the point of kitsch. But when it comes to Goethe, Rilke, and Heine, most everything they wrote is worth reading, and quite of bit of it belongs to the greatest verse in the language. I would like to throw Gottfried Benn into this category, too, but I know primarily his early expressionist verse and his later Statische Gedichte (Static Poems); there's much of his work with which I am not familiar and so I don't want to jump to conclusions. Of course a lot of this poetry is merely functional or meant as passing entertainment. Perhaps part of a larger project in which an individual short poem has little meaning in and of itself.

What we have quite of a bit of with both Goethe and Heine are poem cycles and books of verse, and whereas this is on the one hand a continuation of an old if not ancient model (the cycle), in Heine it also finds modern expression as something published to be sold to a broad public. Not just a handful of readers. And of his large collections of poems, the Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs) is both among the largest and the least thematic. Contrast it with his two verse epics, Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum and Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (both Shakespeare references of sorts and the latter also a political allegory). The Buch der Lieder consists of 5 “books,” the first of which has four major subdivisions. The poem I chose today comes from the third book, “Die Heimkehr” (from 1823–1824, The Return, called “Homeward Bound” by Emma Lazarus) and is poem 35 in that collection.

Heinrich-Heine-Net contains his complete works online, in German, along with plenty of English and French translations.

B.
So I was getting ready to post Bonhoeffer's poem yesterday and I wanted also to post things it reminded me of ... but I forgot.

The reason I forgot is understandable: in the middle of proofreading my post I was interrupted at the coffee shop by Ju, a colleague with whose project I and my students are helping, and my help yesterday included taking part in a short interview. Her sudden arrival took me away from my boiary typing and editing, and when I returned to it I had forgotten—temporarily—what it is/was I planned to add.

That's a long story shorter if not short.

Too late!

Primus sings “My Name is Mud,” AC/DC has “Who Made Who” and it was Eminem who sang “The Way I Am.” I doubt Marshall Mathers (III) had Bonhoeffer in mind whenever he spat “I am.” I find it amusing, if a bit disconcerting, to think of Bonhoeffer's poem turned into a spoken-word or rap text. But it amuses me even more to read Bonhoeffer's poem as a question and the Stones's “Sympathy for the Devil” as the answer—“Who am I?” “Im a man of wealth and taste [...] Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name.”

Oh yeah.

C.

I wish I could say my time in Madison is nearly at an end, but I don't have the clean-break ready, the diss-in-hand so that I can say, “Self, let's just pack up an leave.” Without the diss-in-hand I can argue, “Self, library and friends are here, stay and get work done.” I can also say, “Self, go home, live with the 'rents, hate it, and finish quickly due to that hatred.” I also have a voice saying, "“N wants you in Seattle, your brother will probably end up in Portland, and A says join him and L in SF.” Job or not, go there, find a place to stay, and get a temporary job, make ends meet. Having no marketable skills at this age is a problem. And the final small voice says “You know you want to be back in Europe, you know you want to be back in Berlin or even Budapest or a similar city.” But a lack of income opportunities makes that final option improbable. And if I stay here in Mad Town I still need to find a new place to live; this lease (which I'm not renewing) is up at the end of July (and then there is a 2-week gap before most of the downtown leases begin). I tell myself I'll think more about this when the semester is over.

D.
Speaking of super-heroes ... okay, I wasn't, so it's a shit transition. Sue me ... speaking of super-heroes, Heroes returned last night (NBC, 9e/8c blah blah blah) and we got more scenes involving Julia Roberts's evil brother Eric—evil because he plays a not-so-nice-guy in a great shirt with a 70s-pimp-collar and because his daughter, Emma, is the new Nancy Drew and does TV stuff on Nickelodeon. We got two Hiros for the price of one soul patch last night, a not-so-biblical sacrifice involving an Isaac, and Ted controlling his powers in a not-going-to-blow-things-up sort of way. Peter and Nathan's mother is the (older) Barbara Bush of the Heroes world, and I just wish somebody had the guts to gut Sylar when they have/had the chance.

But no ....

Plus more creepy Malcolm McDowell goodness/evilness. Oh. My.

And speaking of super-heroes (oh, already doing that), I heartily recommend X-Men No. 198, on stands now. There's some rather good dialog in it for a mainstream art-sells, writers-are-superfluous comic (hey, it's got Mike Carey scripting ... and he's good). As Paul O'Brien has noted before, Chris Bachalo's art/story-telling is best when he's on a deadline, under stress, can't think too much about making cool images. Then he just tells the damned story and tells it well. His figures are highly stylized, perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but it's good art, the story-telling is clear enough most of the time, and there are some great details (see: soccer-ball bikini top at the soccer match).

Carey set up the potential for a new status quo with the X-Men that was wish-fulfillment along a mid-80s X-Factor model, a status quo that never stayed that way. Back then X-Factor encountered Apocalypse and promptly acquired his kick-ass Celestial-tech spaceship (a.k.a. “Ship”) ... how cool is that, right? Yeah, that lasted a dozen or two issues. Then off in New Mutants Cable shows up and has his own kick-ass, time-traveling spaceship. He lost that, too. In any case, a few issues back, after defeating another “we are to mutants as mutants are to humans” enemy (third, fourth, fifth? in the last decade) the X-Men acquired their flying oil-tanker (it's like S.H.I.E.L.D. gear but more steam-punkish and as of yet unexplored), and they were off to Cable's floating island nation (his time-traveling spaceship replacement). You just know that these ship-upgrades can't last.

But another status quo altering moment is coming up. Several years back in publication land (a few months ago or a year perhaps in comic book time) Cable lost his powers—most powerful mutant in the world telepathy and telekinesis—and got around to replacing or simulating them with 1) the world's best pipe to the IntarWeb and 2) a force field generator. Now an alien parasite shows up and says, “Hey, Cable, carry me around in your head, and I'll give you your real powers back.”

It's just one of those things. When they next bring Jean Grey back, she has to get her old Marvel Girl powers back, not her switched-with-Psyclocke powers. Magneto will return as the Master of Magnetism and eventually Quicksilver will just be that humbled but still arrogant speedster, Quicksilver. Not a/the mutant messiah with an evil grin and rocks embedded in his chest. That's so Dragonlance. And at some point during or after his stint in Shi'ar space, Charles Xavier will get his mental powers back, though probably lose his ability to walk (again!) in the process. Stretch these characters all you want, but they'll eventually return to their origins.

III

XXXV “I called the devil”

I called the devil and he came,
His face with wonder I must scan;
He is not ugly, he is not lame,
He is a delightful, charming man.
A man in the prime of life, in fact,
Courteous, engaging and full of tact.
A diplomat, too, of wide research
Who cleverly talks about state and church.
A little pale, but that is en règle,
For now he is studying Sanscrit and Hegel.
His favorite poet is still Fouqué
With the brawls of the critics he me idles no more
For all such things he has given o'er,
Unto his grandmother Hecaté
He praised my forensic works that he saw,
He had dabbled a little himself in law.
He said he was proud my acquaintance to make,
And should prize my friendship, and bowed as he spake.
And asked if we had not met before
At the house of the Spanish Ambassador?
Then I noted his features line by line,
And found him an old acquaintance of mine.

—Translated by Emma Lazarus