A weather vane sings in the Berlin sky, an enchanted pump laughs beneath country ice, and a little book of poems won’t burn. It refuses to suffer the fate of so many other works for which Hitler’s dictatorship has arranged an auto-da-fé, in vain hopes of containing the revolutionary thought that is ever on the march. We are here at the extreme point of German poetry; van Hoddis’s voice reaches us from the highest and thinnest branch of the lightning-struck tree. The man, who leans a moment on Arp’s arm, stands out by his discordant behaviour: invited to dinner, he vigorously strikes his plate with his spoon in order to make a noise, and could easily be imagined, like Harpo Marx, offering his leg to the ladies. At the historical turning-point of the war’s end, as it is most cruelly experienced in Germany, he disappears into an insane asylum. Beautiful songs of the asylum, which celebrate the feeling of total freedom – military and other assemblies shatter against the walls. We are with them in the very country of black humour, recognizable by its symbolic, mysterious, invariable aspect: swarms of white flies, carpets of flowers, green-tinted cats.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Weltende.
Blue-green night, the mute colours are sucked in.
Is he threatened by the red rays of lances
and crude armour? Are those Satan’s troops parading here?
The yellow stains floating in the dark are the disembodied eyes of large horses.
His body is naked and pale and defenceless.
A faded rose oozes from the earth.
* * *
In the air three little men
sing their terrible song:
Do you have bedbugs, lice, and fleas?
For you time won’t seem long.
Chew and chew you must.
Here and there it runs.
You can seize and pinch,
good god, halleluja.
Why find that time goes slowly
as you wane so nobly.
Your minutes become leagues,
seeing naught but time, you groan.
On your skull, you hear your hair,
grass grows behind your ears.
Your jaw becomes a rattle,
moaning heavily through the years,
open shut open shut.
In the air three little men
sing their terrible song:
Do you have bedbugs, lice, and fleas?
For you time won’t seem long.
They rose into the dawn
and sang both day and night,
disturbing lunch and dinner,
earth and air burst apart.
* * *
Lamp, do not bleat.
From the wall juts a woman’s thin arm.
It was pale and blue-veined.
Its fingers were covered with precious rings.
As I was kissing its hand, I felt afraid:
It was warm and alive.
My face came away scratched;
I took a kitchen knife and cut several veins.
A large cat gracefully lapped the blood from the floor.
Meanwhile a man with bristly hair
crawled after a broom handle propped against the wall.
– based on French versions by Hans Arp and Georges Hugnet