Song for October 2018: Keep going! (Halte durch!) by Gerhard Gundermann (English translation)

Keep going! if it´s in your power,

a clever woman such as you,

a seasoned planet, after all,

and we have fucked you up.

Adam glanced at the apple,

you kindly ceded it to him.

We settled on you wide and far,

you were still laughing, when it began.

We shot from our horses on high,

the wilderness into a highway.

Flora ´s been nearly knocked out cold,

Fauna´s dying somewhere in a zoo.

Keep going …

Much of the rainforest we have cut up,

you switched off the water in Africa.

Oh, mum, you barked up the wrong tree,

it´s the occident´s face you should smash in.

You should beat us again and again,

till we learn to say ‘please, please!’,

till we ´re proud and happy campers

with an apple and an egg and a gentle breeze.

Keep going! ...

What can I do for you? I have no clue,

though I am a green, but a little light,

and also an enemy soldier,

gorging on your skin.

At the front line I´m opposite you,

haven´t been able to change sides.

Yet, I am your faithful son,

Sometime I´ll be joining you.

Keep going! if it´s in your power,

a clever woman such as you,

a seasoned planet, after all,

and we have fucked you up.

By Gerhard Gundermann from the album Männer, Frauen und Maschinen

(Men, women and machines), 1988

Translation by Gudrun Rogge-Wiest, Oktober 2018

 

The photos were taken on a bike tour along the River Neisse 

from  Görlitz to Cottbus in summer 2013

Poem for September 2018: 'Half of Life' by Friedrich Hölderlin, English translation, update 2.8.2020

Half of life

 

The land with yellow pears

And full of wild roses

Hangs into the lake.

Oh, gracious swans,

And drunk with kisses,

You plunge your heads

Into the wholly pure water.

Alas, for where in winter

Can I get the flowers and where

the sunlight

and shadows of the earth?

The walls stand

speechless and cold, the wind

jangles the weathervanes.

Friedrich Hölderlin (1804)[1]

The speaker is surrounded by the richness and fertility of a beautiful late summer´s day. It finds powerful expression in the interplay of land, water and living beings.

The thought of winter, however, brings about a sudden change of mood. The image of a dystopian landscape rises to the surface of his consciousness, bleak, without life and beauty and dominated by cold, speechless walls. Dread and horror make him utter a cry of woe.

The title ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ (‘Half of Life’) indicates that the two landscapes evoked in the poem are representative of human experience.[2] To the present-day reader they seem to point to the ages of man. The fear of old age makes itself felt even in one´s prime. An unknown and ineluctable destiny lies ahead, and only death is certain.

Alternatively the two landscapes might stand for contrasting states of mind, a time of joy that alternates with a depressive mood. The transition can occur with or without a specific stimulus. Even during a good time the artist – the swan is a symbol of the poet – might be overcome by fear of his creativity running dry.[3]

The sequence of the seasons from late summer to winter suggests that winter will in its turn be followed by spring. However, there is not a glimpse of this. [4] Instead, the poem ends on a jarring note which resonates beyond the last line. It seems that once you have had such an apocalyptic vision, it is hardly possible to return to light-heartedness.

The contrast between abundance and bleakness, well-being and horror seems to have been a hallmark of human life throughout its history until today. Western liberal societies today seem to offer a foretaste of paradise for the middle class. They live in freedom and relative prosperity, their rights are protected and there is some social welfare, but this state of affairs is kept up by exploitation of workers in our own countries and above all in the low-wage countries of Asia and Africa. Besides, it can be observed in the living conditions of animals in factory farming and in the treatment of nature everywhere on earth. Though we consumers receive images of the resulting misery, we are able to ignore them while living our crowded everyday lives. We deal in a similar way with the consequences of climate change largely brought about by greenhouse gas emissions of the industrial nations. Shortages of water and food, drought and floods threaten the existence of people above all in the poorer nations. We live in a paradise of illusions.

It was in the autumn of 2018 that Hölderlin´s poem was constantly with me. On my walks through orchards with their trees full of fruit and each day as warm and sunny as the next one, it seemed like being in paradise. And yet, behind the heart-warming beauty dangers were lying in wait. Agreeable as the warm October sun was, it triggered memories of the heat wave and the lack of rain in the previous summer, the brown fields in the Rhine valley and in north eastern Germany, the poor corn and vegetable harvests.

The season also reminded me of the previous year when the trees hardly bore any fruit, because of a late period of frost in the spring of 2017 destroying the blossoms on the fruit trees. It was a scary sight. These images, whose cause is not a caprice of the weather but progressing climate change, are a foreshadowing of a bleaker reality which that won´t spare Western Europe.

While temperatures on Earth are rising, recent tendencies in western liberal societies seem to foreshadow a social winter. Hatred and agitation have made room for themselves in the public debate, and they are fuelled by precarious jobs, poverty, hopelessness and a growing gap between rich and poor. This has led to alienation with as yet unforeseeable consequences.

In the wealthier milieus of western societies like in Hölderlin´s poem the fullness of life is still the reality, but the horror scenario looms on the horizon.

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[1] The translation is by David Constantine, with slight adaptations informed by Ulrich Knoop´s interpretation of the poem in ‚Hälfte des Lebens‘, Wortgeschichtliche Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Gedicht‘ [‘Half of Life’, On the Etymology of Words in Hölderlin´s poem] on www.ulrich-knoop.com/hölderlin/hälfte-des-lebens/, 1999-2007

[2] I would like to remind my readers that I do not aspire to the high standards of scholarship in this essay. Readers of German can find an excellent interpretation by Ulrich Knoop, which is based on the contemporary use of words and Hölderlin´s thinking (Ulrich Knoop, 1999-2007). My translation of ‘heilig‘ into ‘Into the wholly pure water’ in verse 7, for example, is based on Knoop´s findings.

[3] Ulrich Knoop, 1999-2007.

[4] It should be noted that in Hölderlin´s system of thought winter is the time dedicated to creativity (Knoop, 1999- 2007).