by G. Guder In 1902 Peter Hille described Else Lasker

Else L a sk e r-S c h u le r’s
C o n c e p tio n of herself as P oe t
by G. Guder
In 1902 Peter Hille described Else Lasker-Schiiler as “Der schwarze Schwan
Israels, eine Sappho, der die Welt entzwei gegangen ist.”1 Then thirty-three
years old, she had just published Styx, her first collection of poems, in Berlin.
In 1945 after her death at the age of almost seventy-six in Jerusalem, Schalom
Ben-Chorin, recalling the impression Else Lasker-Schiiler made on him on her
arrival there in 1937 wrote: “Etwas Miides, Gehetztes, von namenloser Furcht
Getriebenes beherrschte diese (kein anderes Wort ist hier tauglich) gequalte
Kreatur.”2 These two statements, based upon close personal contact with Else
Lasker-Schiiler, show her as the human being exposed to the onslaughts of
the world. Her sensitivity was the natural outcome of three contradictory fac­
tors in her life. She was born into a Jewish family living among Christian
neighbours, and from early childhood was aware of the animosity felt against
her race; she had the genius and intellect of a man and at the same time a deep
emotional femininity; she was a poet in a world of growing materialism. As
she herself says in a letter to Herwarth Walden,3 her second husband, “Ich
sterbe am Leben und atme im Bilde wieder auf.” From this statement the
deduction may be drawn that her encounter with life was the generator of
her poetic creations and that her suffering, transmuted into images, gave her
in her poetry a new existence. Although the voluntary life of a Bohemian
appealed to the eccentric side of her nature, she nevertheless suffered from
her awareness of being without roots, and from that very suffering derived
her Creative power. In her last volume of poems, Mein Blaues Klavier, pub­
lished in Jerusalem in 1943, the deeper cause of her suffering and of her
need for God can be perceived most clearly.
1. See A ppendix Z eugnis und Erinnerung in Ernst Ginsberg, E lse L asker-Schiiler, D ichtungen und D o k u m en te (M iinchen, 1951) p. 565.
2. Schalom Ben-Chorin, Prinz Jussuf in Jerusalem (1945), Ginsberg, op. cit. p. 583.
3. G insberg, op. cit. p. 520.
Else Lasker-Schuler’s Conception of herself as Poet
In discussing Else Lasker-Schiiler’s relation to the German Expressionists
there is a tendency to overlook an essential difference. Else Lasker-Schuler,
bom in 1869,4 had already published her first volume of poetry eight years
before 1910, the year which it is generally agreed saw the birth of Expressionism in German literature. Her second volume Der Siebente Tag followed
in 1905, and in 1911 Meine Wunder, poems which in language and ecstatic
feeling have much in common with the style that became known as expressionistic. But her Hebraische Balladen, which appeared in 1913, show a
marked difference in that the orthodox spirit, incompatible with the cosmic
faith of Expressionism, has been preserved. Werner Kraft, a close friend of
the poet, states “Dies ist das Erstaunliche, wie sie zur Dichterin der “Hebråischen Balladen” wurde, wie sie aus ihrem mythischen Chaos den Sprung ins
Judentum w agte. . . und in ihm bis an ihr Lebensende mit nie erschiitterter
Sicherheit wohnte.“5 The key to this secret, however, seems supplied by Else
Lasker-Schiiler’s conception of herself as poet. For to her the poet is akin to
the prophets of Israel:
“D er Prophet, des Dichters altester Bruder, erbte die Zucht des G ew issens direkt vom
Schopfer. D ie Zucht des G ew issens aber adelt auch den D ichter, und der geringste Fehltritt racht sich naturgemaS in der G laubwiirdigkeit seines V erses.”«
Whereas the Expressionists viewed the dogmas of the past with disapproval,
Else Lasker-Schuler acknowledged the God of the Old Testament, and combined with this belief the hope of Isaiah’s suffering saviour: “But he was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
(Is. L1II, 5.). It is in this idea of redemption that the social element, gene­
rally overlooked in her poetry, can be found. Martini comes nearest the
essence of Else Lasker-Schiiler’s poetry when he sees a social element behind
her symbolic representation of outcast man and his disintegrating fate, “seinen
metaphysischen Widerspruch, die Not seiner Existenz iiberhaupt.”7 Else La4. T he year o f birth usually given, 1876, appears to be the result o f Else LaskerSchiiler’s own statement. Cf. K. J. H oltgen’s dissertation Untersuchungen zu r L yrik
E lse L asker-Schuler’s (Bonn, 1955) p. 10. Dr. H oltgen inspected the Register o f Births
at the Registrar’s O ffice o f Elberfeld and found E lse Lasker-Schuler’s birth registered
under N o. 405/1869. The year 1869 is also given by Kurt Pinthus in his A nthology
(edition 1959, Hamburg) M enschheitsddm m erung, p. 350.
5. Essays W ort und G edanke (M unchen, 1959) p. 217.
6. Ginsberg, op. cit. p. 304.
7. Fritz M artini, W as w ar Expressionism us? D eutun g und A u sw ah l seiner L yrik (Urach,
1948) p . 45.
G. Guder
185
sker-Schiiler’s poetry sprang from her eonvietion that the poet’s function was
to be mediator between God and man, and she saw her mission in leading man,
estranged from his Maker, back to God. The ever-recurring motif of her
poetry, therefore, is that of an originally pure, divine création more and more
delivered up to the sinfulness of man. Her undoubted affinity with the ancient
world of Palestine and Egypt is emphasised by every critic, and leads to the
suggestion that Else Lasker-Schiiler’s poetry derives its inspiration from the
racial memories postulated by C. G. Jung in his theory of the Collective Unconscious. This world of archetypal images has been accepted, often too
readily, as the only reality in which Else Lasker-Schiiler lived, wherever her
actual domicile might be. Whilst no attempt to reconstruct this world, consisting, as it does, of images, names and Biblical reminiscences, can be successful, because the kaleidoscopic pattem changes as the poet’s needs change and
in accordance with her shifting passions, it can be said that in the symbols
of that world Else Lasker-Schiiler reconciled, if only temporarily, the contradictions of her life. She, who conceived of the poet as the cultural aristocrat for whom it is decreed “Es soli der Dichter mit dem Konig gehen” as
she claims in her Polemic against Publishers,8 was thus able to establish in
the figure of Jussuf, Prinz von Theben, her own aristocratic status in a world
which failed to give the artist due recognition.
In the early poem Weltschmerz, written before 1902, Else Lasker-Schiiler
identifies herself with the scorching wind of the desert which grew cold and
took on physical shape. The poet experiences her Self as existing before the
Création and partaking of the nature of God. Hence the challenge that follows, that neither the sun can dissolve nor the lightening shatter her. Else
Lasker-Schiiler was not a profound thinker. The statements bearing on her
conception of the universe to be found in her prose writings amount to little
more than fragments of a poet’s vision. They provide a key, however, to the
meaning of this poem. The system to which she repeatedly makes reference is
summed up in her deseription of both earth and man as Eternity pent in a
body, “vom Korper umschlossene Ewigkeiten.”9 Her thought suggests the in~
fluence of the Talmud and Midrash, according to which before God began
the création of the world He created from elements in Heaven the souls of
all men who were destined to live on earth. When he had created Adam’s
body out of the dust of the earth he endowed it with a pre-existing soul.
8. G insberg, op. cit. p. 226.
9. G insberg, op. cit. p. 304.
Else Lasker-Schuler’s Conception of herself as Poet
“ D iesem System in der Schopfung des Ewigen verdanken wir, gem ischt mit Traurigkeit
iiber den Verlust unserer erleuchteten paradiesischen W eit, das D asein unserer W eit.”10
As Else Lasker-Schuler projects her inward State into the scene of that ancient
Egyptian civilisation of which she felt herself a part, the anger expressed in
the poem Weltschmerz:
Blick nun, ein steinernes Sphinxhaupt,
Ziirnend zu allen H im m eln auf,
may be understood as the resentment of the soul chafing against the limitations of the body and unwilling to accept the conditions of human existence.
This defiance is nothing less than hubris, a temporary hubris, however. How
necessary her belief, which enjoined obedience to God, is to her poetry, is
evident from the change of this defiance into acceptance of her mission as poet
in an unredeemed world. Forty years later the poem Mein Herz ruht milde
is her final testimony to her calling:
Ich habe m eines Lebens SchluBakkord vollbracht Bin still verschieden - w ie es G ott in mir erdacht;
Ein Psalm erlosender - dam it die W eit ihn iibe.
Since she is one of the chosen, there can be for her no escape from her destiny.
Strong as the attractions are of a paradisiac world in which the artist could
take refuge, the claims of the unredeemed world are stronger. These two
worlds are found in the closest juxtaposition in the opening stanza of Ergraut
kommt seine kleine Weit zuriick:
In m einem H erzen spielen Paradiese . . .
Ich aber kehre aus versunknem G liick
In eine W eit trostlosester Entblatterung zuriick.
Inanimate objects, the clear pool of a spring in the meadow, the brook, the
pebble golden with the ray of the setting sun, - they exist securely in nature
as long as man does not wantonly disturb the harmonious play of natural forces.
The poet’s lament in this poem is the sorrow of God at the State to which man
has reduced the perfect world of His Creation entrusted to him:
G ott w eint . . . ergraut kom m t seine kleine W eit zuriick,
D ie Er in Seiner Schopfung schnitt aus him m lischem Turkise
God’s sorrow produces in the poet a new awareness of man’s unabsolved
guilt in which she herself is Invol ved, and of the poet’s duty to do penance
for Others.
JC^ £yr _ unerfiillte G ottesw eisung - biiBe.
10. G insberg, op. cit. p. 304.
187
G. G uder
188
Else Lasker-Sehuler's eoneeption of herself as poet is thus inseparable from
her concern about her people. Her early poem Mein Volk:
D er F els wird m orsch,
D em ich entspringe,
Und m eine G otteslieder singe . . .
shows the position from which she developed this sense of responsibility. The
poem begins with an image from nature - the decaying, crumbling rock - for
the apostasy of the Jews. Maintaining this imagery from nature the poet
identifies herself with a rushing stream and admits that she has been tempted
to separate herself from her people. Under the image of the fermentation of
new wine she once more reaffirms her attempt to break away from those of
her own blood:
Hab m ich so abgestromt
V on m eines Blutes
M ostvergorenheit.
There are in this metaphor indications of a conflict between herself as poet
and as the individual, the Jewess. This conflict, no doubt, contributes to the
emotional intensity of the poem, but the real cause of the poet’s grief is the
lostness of her people, echoing in the final vision when they cry to God:
U nd immer, im m er noch der Widerhall
In mir,
Wenn schauerlich gen Ost
D as m orsche Felsgebein,
M ein V olk,
Zu G ott schreit.
For Else Lasker-Schiiler the life of a people and its religion are ordained by
God, and the individual is inseparably bound up with them. Through this
bond her poetry assumes a character transcending the expression of individual
experience. She expresses, it is true, her own suffering but her inner experience, objectified in images, assumes through them a symbolic significance
whereby her poems become the expression of general truths.
Else Lasker-Sehuler’s concern was the metaphysical fate of man. When
she thinks she has failed in her calling, the tone of her poem becomes at once
elegiac, as in the line:
Ich hab’ die W elt, die W elt hat mich betrogen;
in the poem Abschied. This line occurs exactly in the middle of the fourteenline poem, and its position adds to its significance as embodying the central
Else Lasker-Schiiler’s C onception of herself as Poet
problem. The mood of disillusionment is foliowed by an atmosphere of inner
disquiet projeeted into the picture of the high waves of the sea. The reason
for the disillusionment is twofold. Because man, created in God’s image, has
become hard and unfeeling, the poet asks the despairing question why God
has turned away his face in wrath from mankind. The second reason is particular to Else Lasker-Schiiler as poet. Aware of the cleavage between man
and his Creator, and incapable of bridging the gulf with her poetry, Else
Lasker-Schiiler reaches the crisis of her poetic mission:
U nd was m ich je m it seiner Schopfung R uhetag verband,
Ist w ie ein spåtes Adlerheer unståt in diese D unkelheit geflogen
The restless flight of the eagles into the darkness suggests the withdrawal
(hence the title Abschied) of God’s blessing from her. The spiritual is powerless, and with it, the poet. Because Else Lasker-Schiiler’s apprehension at
the fate of a God-abandoned world is so acute, her moments of communion
with God are all the more intense. In the poem Gebet, belonging to the middle
period of her life:
T,
„ , ,
. „ ,
Ich suche allerlanden eine Stadt,
D ie einen Engel vor der Pforte hat,
expressing her search for the lost Paradise, she affirms her belief that although
man may destroy this world, the soul will find its ultimate security in God:
U nd wenn der letzte M ensch die W elt vergieBt,
D u m ich nicht wieder aus der A llm acht laBt.
It is significant that in this poem suffering is represented as a burden - as
seen in the image of the broken wing - which must be borne in humility.
Whereas in Abschied dread of existential insecurity pervades the whole poem,
in Gebet sureness of God’s omnipotence takes its place. With this assurance
which Else Lasker-Schiiler finds in nature, she counteracts her fears of man’s
arbitrary, unpredictable actions. Looking at the natural scene, as for instance
in Letzter Abend im Jahr, a poem of the same period as Gebet, she realises
that nature is law:
Es ruhen Rand an Rand eintråchtig Land und Seen,
- D as W eltall spaltet sich doch nicht - ,
i. e. the power - God - controlling nature also Controls man. This renewed
awareness of the cosmic order results in a renewed realisation of man’s dependence upon and need for submission to God in order to preserve his
humanity. The accent which in the poem Mein Volk was on the Jews, is
189
G. G uder
190
shifted in Abschied to mankind. In the poem Jerusalem, published in Mein
Blaues Klavier, her anxiety is again for her own people. The emotional
foundation of the poem is again the poet’s consciousness of an age from
which God appears to be absent. Whilst it is true as Politzer avers,11 that “she
had no present”, and that her suffering was basically the poet’s suffering in
whatever age, from poems such as this it is evident that her fears were
exacerbated by the spirit and the events of the times. To walk through Jerusa­
lem is like walking through a grave-yard:
Ich wandle w ie durch M ausoleen V ersteint ist unsere H eilige Stadt.
Es ruhen Steine in den Betten ihrer toten Seen.
The description of this atmosphere of lifelessness produces the dread expressed
in the second stanza:
Ich habe Angst, die ich nicht iiberwåltigen kann.
The question that disturbed her profoundly in Abschied - why is God absent?
- is implied in Jerusalem by the appeal in the third stanza:
W enn du doch k å m e st. . .
which occurs at the beginning of the second group of seven lines. First she
makes petition for herself; if only God would take away the shadows that
darken the last days of her life. The same cry begins the last group of seven
lines. This time it is extended to include her own people:
In das Land der Ahnen.
She prays God to call dead Jerusalem to resurrection. So strong is the plea and
so sure is she of the answer that in the last three lines she envisages the resur­
rection as accomplished:
Es griiBen uns
D es »Einzigen G ottes« lebendige Fahnen,
G rim ende Hande, die des Lebens O dem såen.
From an expression of the present reality, comprised in the first seven lines,
the poet proceeds to a realisation of her own position in that reality. When in
the last group of seven lines she envisages the future aspect of the same
scene, she turns to her people as the poet-prophet. There is in consequence in
this poem the closest association of her own needs and those of her people. In
11. H einz Politzer, The B lue P iano o f E lse L asker-Schueler, in C om m en tary V ol. 9, N o .
4, published by the A m erican Jewish Com m ittee (April 1950), translated by Ralph
M annheim , p. 336.
Else Lasker-Schiiler’s Conception of herself as Poet
Jerusalem an ideal is embodied.12 Although there are hints of Christian thought
in the image of an icon - “ein hilfreich Heiligenbild” - the God of her prophecy
is the monotheistic God of the Jews. Each of the three sections of which this
poem consists corresponds respectively to a basic experience recurrent in
Else Lasker-Schuler’s poetry, namely the temporal world in decline; the suf­
fering of man, especially of the poet, in that world, and the attainment of a
timeless reality. Her God is a deus abconditus, with whose return love will
return among his people.
Love and Heaven are one in Else Lasker-Schuler’s thought. Explaining the
difference between love that is transient and her own conception of love, she
writes:
»Wir aber, die wir die Liebe als Paradies erkannten, fuhlen, daB selbst noch seine Finsternis, das Erloschen der Liebe, him m lisch verbindet.”13
Love is participation in a perfect life, seen in contrast to the suffering in this
world. As Schlocker points out “Ihre Lyrik ist ausschlieBlich Liebeslyrik,
selbst im Religiosen.”14 More significant still is that love for Else LaskerSchiiler would bring about the betterment of the world. In the poem Herbst,
belonging to the closing period of her life, she warns:
HaB schachtelt ein, w ie hoch die Fackel auch m ag schlagen!
Ich w ill dir viel viel Liebe sagen -
which may be taken as the reaffirmation of her poetic mission expressed ear­
lier in Gebet:
Ich habe Liebe in die W elt gebracht DaB blau zu bluhen jedes H erz vermag.
As Blue signifies for Else Lasker-Schiiler untiring striving towards God, it
becomes for her the symbol of her poetry. Through her poetry, she thought,
she could bring man closer to God, and thus man would ultimately be transformed into a more perfect being. The transfiguration of reality resulting from
this belief remains throughout her life a striking feature of her poetry. In this
transfiguration of reality there is a contradiction between her conception of the
poet and her poetry itself, since she ignores the moral plane which is that
12. See D a s H ebrderland, a travel journal written in 1937: “Jeru salem . . . das heilende
B ad der Seele. Jerusalem ist die Sternw arte des Jenseits, der V orh im m el des H im ­
m els.” G insberg, op. cit. p. 309.
13. G insberg, op. cit. p. 300.
14. G eorges Schlocker, in Expressionism us, G estalten einer lilerarischen Bewegung, ed.
H . Friedmann and O. M ann, (H eidelberg, 1956) p. 149.
G. G uder
192
of conflict, and rises from the aesthetic direct to the religious plane. Else Lasker-Schuler’s assertion that those who recognise love as a paradise remain
united by a heavenly bond even in the darkness that follows the death of love,
in spite of its sublime idealism, is not sufficient to dispel her gloom, nor to
bridge the gap between her Paradise and hard reality. Her realisation of this
produces that emotional tension which culminates in her desire to flee this
world, as in the poem entitled O ich mocht aus der Weit:
O ich m ocht aus der Weit!
Aber auch fern von ihr
Irr ich, ein Flackerlicht,
U m G ottes Grab.
Marianne Kesting’s statement, referring to the early poem Weltflucht, “Die
Begegnung mit der sie umgebenden Weit ist immer von Klage und Schmerz
begleitet”15 is therefore true; but it is misleading to apply her further statement
“So ist ihre Dichtung keine Begegnung mit der Weit, sie ist eine reine Aussage
ihrer selbst und zugleich eine Offenbarung uralter orientalischer Mythen, die
in ihrem Blut lagen”16 to the whole body of Else Lasker-Schiiler’s poetry. The
poem Mein blaues Klavier itself, which has given her last collection its title,
depicts Else Lasker-Schiiler’s situation in the reality of a brutalised world:17
Ich habe zu H ause ein blaues Klavier
Und kenne doch keine N ote.
Es steht im D unkel der Kellertiir,
Seitdem die W eit verrohte.
The second line especially implies that this is the plaint of one whose song is
stilled because her inspiration has failed. Afflicted by the heartlessness of the
world, the poet, with the words
Ich aB vom bitteren Brote
implores the angels to open the gates of heaven to her. Thus whilst Else
Lasker-Schuler subordinates outer reality to her inner reality, it is her reaction
15. M. Kesting, “ Zur D ichtung E lse Lasker-Schiilers”, A k zen te, N o. 4, (1956) p. 377.
16. M. K esting, ibid.
17. M arianne K esting recognises this faet in her later article “Else Lasker Schiiler und
ihr blaues K lavier”, D eutsche Rundschau, 83. Jahrgang, Januar 1957, p. 68: “ Der
Them enkreis des “ Blauen Klaviers” wird bestimmt durch die H eim atlosigkeit und
Einsamkeit dieser letzten Jahre in Jerusalem .” Kurt Schiimann in his appreciation
o f Else Lasker-Schuler in Im B annkreis von G esich t und W irken (M iinchen, 1959)
p. 82, whilst giving no analysis o f her poetry, refers to the dedication o f M ein Blaues
K la vie r as follow s: “ Denken wir daran, daB diese W idmung . . . auch ein Politikum
allerersten Ranges darstellt.”
Else Lasker-Schiiler’s C onception of herself as Poet
to the outer world that gives her inner world greater significance. Her poetry, 193
like a pendulum, swings from the one to the other, and if she is constantly
driven back upon her vision, in other words, upon God, the reason for this
is not only the circumstances of her life, her love for individuals and its
unhappy course, but her position as poet in an alien world. It has its parallel
in the plaint of every poet whose voice it not heard in his own age. But the
cause for Else Lasker-Schuler’s lament lies deeper. With the knowledge that
her voice is not heeded comes the realisation that she no longer knows a
single note, that song itself is now alien; her Creative power itself is dead.
Thus her poem is the dirge in which the poet mourns the death of poetry
itself:
Zerbrochen ist die Klaviatiir . . .
Ich beweine die blaue Tote.
It is implicit in Else Lasker-Schliler’s melancholy retrospection that in her pre­
sent crisis she needs a na'ive childlike faith. Her prayer in the poem Gebet from
the collection Mein Blaues Klavier, that her soul should end a shining light
in God, is the prayer of the poet, who, weary of this world, fears that she has
failed to do God’s will or may yet fail in her mission. The reference to her
soul as “ein Flåmmchen Seele” with the next line “O Gott, und ist sie auch
voll Fehle” supports this interpretation, especially if it is kept in mind that
Else Lasker-Schuler’s word for the poet’s inspiration is “Leuchtkraft” ; it is
the inner power in the poet which transforms man and brings about the metamorphosis of this dark world into a star of light.
Submission to God’s will did not come without a struggle to Else LaskerSchiiler. In her grief there is often an element of secret rebellion. This is
traceable, for instance, in the attitude expressed in the poem Abschied:
Ich wache in der Nacht stiirmisch auf hohen M eereswogen!
where “stiirmisch” reflects both the tumult of the sea and the seething of the
poet’s soul. Decisive for Else Lasker-Schuler’s attitude is that, whilst she realised that the curse on man is not arbitrary, her accusation of man grew
stronger. An early example of her acceptance of the fate of man is the poem
Friihling:
D en F luch, der m ich durens Leben trieb,
Begann ich, da er bei mir blieb,
W ie einen treuen FeindiS zu lieben.
18. A statem ent from a letter (undated, written during the First W orld War) to Eduard
Korrodi, Ziirich, shows how this paradox existed in E lse Lasker-Schuler’s thought:
“Ich glaube, daB sich alle Soldaten der Lander leise beriihren, gehassig sind sich
G. Guder
194
Her accusation is very direet in the poem Ich liege wo am Wegrand:
D ie heilige Liebe, die ihr blind zertratet,
Ist G ottes Ebenbild . . .!
Fahrlåssig umgebracht.
Above all, the poem Die Verscheuchte, with its statement:
W ie lange war kein H erz zu m einem mild . . .
D ie W eit erkaltete, der M ensch verblich,
and the desperate cry:
W o soli ich hin, wenn kalt der Nordsturm briillt?
express the tragedy of the poet as the victim of an inhuman world. The tragic
aspect of Else Lasker-Schiiler’s grief must be understood as the result of her
struggle to find a meaning in human existence in spite of the discrepancy be­
tween her constant vision of Paradise and the realities of this world. The poem
that best illustrates this vision is the early poem Wir beide. The whole poem
breathes the air of the Garden of Eden:
D er liebe G ott tråumt seinen Kindertraum
V om Paradies.
It is the world before the Fall seen in contrast to this world:
D ie diistre Erde hing noch grun am Baum.
No shadow falls across this paradisian existence, the law of earthly gravity
is SUSpended.
u ncj h e j I d i e
K reiselwinde, die uns drehn und heben!
reminiscent of Friedrich Georg Jiinger’s “Leichtigkeit, die die harte Notwendigkeit zerbrechlich uberspielt”.19 Else Lasker-Schuler knew that life could not
be lived for long on an imaginary basis. When the dream has ceased, her
response to the real world is all the more intense. There are very few poems
in her work which have either only a visionary world with love at its centre,
or only longing for God for their subject. Loss of love and remoteness from
God in turn occur in most poems. This dual inspiration of her grief and the
two-fold way in which she tries to overcome it, - creating a transfigured
nur von denen, w elche nie drauBen im Krieg b lu te te n . . . D ie wissen nichts
schw eigenden Treue der Feindschaft, die schlieBlich zusam m enblutet und
schend entwirt.” A ccording to Korrodi the letter was an “open” letter read
Lasker-Schuler at a poetry-reading at which he was present. Ginsberg,
pp. 532-3.
19. O. F. Bollnow , in Unruhe und G eborgenheit, (Stuttgart, 1953) p. 117.
von der
iiberraby Else
op. cit.
E lse Lasker-Schiiler s Conception of herself as Poet
world of fulfilment or expressing a longing for death - result in a contraposition of images which themselves are ambiguous, since the same image is often
used as the expression of two opposing realities.
The ambivalence of Night already exists in the early poems. The Hebraic
ballad Versohnung and the even earlier poem Heimweh are illuminating
examples. In the former, Night has the positive significance which Else LaskerSchuler’s grief denies to it in Heimweh. In Versohnung Night is the time of
the poet’s oneness with her people:
Wir w ollen w achen die N acht,
In den Sprachen beten,
D ie w ie H arfen eingeschnitten sind,
whereas in the second poem Night is a time of yearning for the land of her
ancestors:
T, ,
Ich kann die Sprache
D ieses kiihlen Landes nicht,
Und seinen Schritt nicht gehn.
This is the voice of a poet who had conceived a language for her dream world.
As a young poet giving free rein to her phantasy, she believed she could speak
this “Asiatic” language, and actually wrote poems in it.20 It is pathetic that she
was shocked when at last she reached Palestine and found that the language she
heard there was as far removed from her dream language as German was. In
those poems in which she creates an ideal world with love at its centre,
Night is the time of bliss. The more the tragedy of her own life deepens, the
more is Night connected with death. Typical in these respects are the poems
Fruhling and Winternacht. In the former, the positive attitude towards life is
due to the power of love which emanates, as it were, from the blossoming trees
in the night:
N un bliihn die Båum e seidenfein
U nd Liebe duftet von den Zweigen.
This vitality of burgeoning life is the chief component of the beauty of Else
Lasker-Schiiler’s visionary world. In the second poem everything, atmosphere,
thought and imagery, is the exact opposite, except that in this poem, too,
the time is Night. To emphasise the utter desolation the time is included in
the title »Winternacht«. The lines:
Ich schlafe tief in starrer W internacht
Mir ist, ich lieg in Grabesnacht,
20. See Friedhelm K emp, E lse L asker-Schiiler G edich te 1902-1943, (M unchen, 1959)
pp. 385-6.
195
G. Guder
196
begin and end the poem. Between them lies a graphic expression of barrenness which has no life. Night is death, and death in this poem holds no promise for the soul. The poem is typical of a world in which Else Lasker-Schuler
is no longer able to perceive the presence of God. With the return of her
awareness of God, and her attempt to create a spiritual reality, her images
of night and death gain a new significance. In Abendzeit, a poetic summary
of Else Lasker-Schuler’s view of her own life, already feeling beyond this
world the poet can say:
U n d so erlebe ich die Schopfung dieser W eit,
A u f Erden schon entkom m en ihrer Schale.
Brought into relation to Else Lasker-Schuler’s statement in her essay Das
Gebet21 “Wenn ein Mensch inbriinstig betet, tritt seine Seele an die Pforte
des Korpers”, this poem reveals the specific meaning prayer had for her. Its
frequent recurrence in her poems suggests that to Else Lasker-Schuler poetry,
if not prayer, was at least a substitute for it. With this emphasis on mystical
religious experience death becomes redemption from earthly life in an increasingly unfeeling reality. As Else Lasker-Schuler’s poetry is born of a
struggle with the fundamental antitheses of existence, Night thus offers an
escape and Day, if mentioned at all, is painful.
Absence of love characterises Else Lasker-Schuler’s Day. But whereas
in the earlier poems her grief often results from personal private experience,
in her later poems, especially in those in Mein Blaues Klavier, the suffering
is caused by her encounter with the hostile and spiritually corrupt world. Thus
the poem Die Verscheuchte opens with the lines:
Es ist der T ag im N ebel vollig eingehiillt,
Entseelt begegnen alle W elten sich. -
The significant point is that the pain caused by the deterioration of the world
is so acute that it now determines the reality of the night as well. This expe­
rience finds poignant expression in the poem Ich liege wo am Wegrand which
begins.
ych Hege w o am W egrand iibermattet Und iiber mir die finstere kalte N acht. -
Reality here is overshadowed by horror and compared with life in a mineshaft. But how suddenly the aspects change can be seen in this very poem
which ends with a memory of past love giving a fleeting glimpse of Paradise.
Ambivalence is also apparent in the use Else Lasker-Schuler makes of the Star,
21. Ginsberg, op. cit. p. 302.
Else Lasker-Schiiler s Conception of herself as Poet
a predominating image. The star is elosely eonneeted with her conception of
artists as “die Lieblinge Gottes, die Kinder der Marien aller Lande”,22 it is
the outward sign of those that have been chosen. In a world without love
in which the poet is powerless the colour of the star deepens with the emotion.
The expressive title Schwarze Sterne for instance, introduces the stars as malignant. It is noteworthy that in this poem the clear sky has been replaced by
clouds:
W arum suchst du m ich in unseren N åchten,
In W olken des Hasses auf bosen Sternen!
In the poem Weltende a leaden shadow darkening the earth like a grave hides
the stars, producing an atmosphere of hopelessness and mourning, as if God
Himself were dead:
Es ist ein W einen in der W elt,
als ob der liebe G ott gestorben war.
The ambivalence of the Star and its close relation with the colour blue reveal
most clearly the cause of Else Lasker-Schuler’s melancholy. The early poem
Gott hor indicates the situation in which this mood arises and develops.
Throughout this poem two contrasting emotions succeed one another. The
poet’s adoration of God, expressed in the lines:
G ott hor . . . In deiner blauen Lieblingsfarbe
Sang ich das Lied von deines H im m els D ach,
remains without response both from God and this world. Subjectively, within
her own being, an ecstatic reaction was produced:
M ein Puls verwandelte das Blut in Flam m en,
but there is awareness of failure as poet in the line
U nd doch war alles grau und kalt um mich.
If one of her later poems, Das Lied meines Lebens, is set beside Gott h o r. . .
it can be seen the two poems are complementary. In the latter, following the
question “Wo ende ich? - O Gott!!”, she states that she has looked to the
stars in vain. This finds its echo in the former in the closing lines:
G reise sind die Sterne geworden . ..
Sieh in m ein verwandertes G esicht.
When Else Lasker-Schuler’s conception of the artist is borne in mind, such
poems, which at first sight seem to be of a purel}7 subjective nature, reveal
22. G insberg, op. cit. p. 207.
G. G uder
198
a transcending of personal experience. The poem Gott hor especially in its
conclusion
Und uberall - die Bitternis - in jedem Kerne,
by association with lines such as those in Das Lied meines Lebens:
A lle m eine Blum enwege
Fiihren auf dunkle G ewasser,
Geschwister, die sich todlich stritten,
leads to the very root of Else Lasker-SchUler’s »Weltschmerz«, the predicament of a poet who is, or considers herself to be, chosen to be a reconciliatory
voice23 in a world of increasing strife.24
In his essay Goethe und Heine25 Fritz Strich, pointing out that the aesthetic
realisation of God through the cult of beauty in art is unacceptable to Jewish
religion, explains that, according to Jewish thought, not only does man need
God, but God needs man as a partner in His Creation. Further, from being
the God of the Jews alone, He is to become a world-God, and will be realised
in a community of peoples, a unified mankind, bound together by the one
ruler, God. Else Lasker-SchUler’s quest for God was activated by this ideal;
her grief is caused by man’s failure to co-operate with God in realising His
realm envisaged by the prophets. Critical opinion of her poetry is in many
ways diverse. Her personal eccentricities of dress and behaviour, and the
numerous anecdotes about her, have no doubt sometimes had an undue influence. The most obvious weaknesses in her poems are those resulting from an
uncontrolled flow of subjective feeling. On the other hand, when the flow of
feeling has ceased or when the ecstasy has died, the poem is equally endangered. Striving consciously to re-create the emotion or the ecstatic State the
poet produces artificial images or a forced emotion through which a rhetorical
element intrudes. It is not in yearning for love nor in fulfilment that Else
Lasker-Schuler writes her best poems, but in her committal of herself to God.
Her grief at the deterioration of the world, when she could no longer see
herself or others as figures of fancy, is the strongest emotion in the poems
of the last years of her life. Through her submission to her destiny and through
23. Werner Kraft, E lse L asker-Schiiler, E ine E infiihrung in ihr W erk und eine A u s­
w ahl (W iesbaden, 1951) pp. 7-8.
24. N ow here is this idea o f “ Versohnung” shown m ore clearly than in her drama A rth u r
A ro n ym u s und seine Vater, performed in Ziirich in 1936. T he play ends with the
Bishop o f Paderborn and the Rom an C atholic Priest o f H exengaesecke celebrating
the Passover with the Jewish fam ily.
25. Fritz Strich, D er D ich ter und die Z eit (Bern, 1947) p. 209.
Else Lasker-Schuler’s Conception of herself as Poet
her conviction of her mission as poet she attained in her poetry an objective
identity, not as the mouthpiece of her people but as the medium of God. As
she says of herself “Ich bin nicht Hebråerin der Hebråer willen, aber Gottes
willen.”26 She who wrote her poems (with the exception of the Hebraic ballads)
in the first person singular, at the same time embodies in her work her consciousness that the I of a good poet is a functional I, as distinguished from the
purely biographical. Thus her poetry combines self-expression with communication, a characteristic through which it preserves a link with tradition,
and this is likely to add to its lasting value. At a time when the motif
of her poems was increasingly uprootedness and dread of life, Else Lasker-Schiiler’s main concern remained the efficiency of her voice as poetmediator so that her poems in Mein Blaus Klavier especially, with the same
subjective tone as in her earlier period transcend all that is purely individual,
and are timeless symbols of the fate of man in an age of increasing inhumanity,
and at the same time of his need for redemption.
26. G insberg, op. cit. p. 314.