Chérie, schon als Mädchen in meinen Träumen

sah der, der mich besucht, so aus wie du.

Formt der Mund ein Lächeln?

Schaut er ernst?

Chérie, wir hätte uns so gut verstanden,

ich wär mit dir zu den Franzosen gegangen,

meine Finger hätte ich

in deinem blassblonden Haar verfangen.

Wie fein und spitz deine Zunge Worte formt,

ich wär nicht nur an deinen Lippen gehangen,

Chérie.

Harry Heine

Du liebstest so viele,

ich steh dir in nichts nach.

Ich dichte Gedichte, ich lichte das Adressbuch,

ziehe das Schnupftuch, vergiess eine Träne, ehrlich,

und ziehe pfeifend weiter.

“Mit Blonden hats ein Ende dieses Jahr!”,

das schwor ich mir schon oft.

Und wenn das Schicksal, die Fügung, an mein Fenster klopft,

ist sie dennoch hell auf dem Kopf.

Ich lache kaum mehr über andre als deine

Worte.

Hab vermessen die Orte,

die Ecken des Gemüts,

aus denen du sprachst.

Du bist tot. Nicht mehr da.

Oh, hätt ich dich gekannt, mit solcher Kunst,

hätt ich dich verführt, dass du nicht mehr wüßtest,

was du schriebst, und wems gebührt,

so hätt ich dich verführt.

Jede Fingerspitze geleckt,

jede kleine Stelle,

die das Beinkleid verdeckt.

So heiß brennen deine Worte,

seit ich lesen kann,

auf meinem Herzen.

„Brüder, wenn ich sterbe,

versenkt mich ins Meer“

hast du gesagt.

Wenn meins einst den Dienst versagt,

dann werft mich hinterher,

eine Kühlung tut gut.

Giess Wasser

auf die Glut.

Ich kann deinen Körper nicht lieben,

ich seh dich wohl manchmal in Gesichtern.

Doch die werden selten,

seltener.

Soviel Trost wie bei dir

hab ich in der Bibel kaum gefunden,

auch nicht bei der Mutter,

und bei Martin Walser nie.

Heute gibt es Stuckrad-Barres

und Coldplay- Frontsänger.

Doch keiner kann mich länger fesseln,

ohne Gesicht,

nicht mal,

die Jungs vom KitKat Club

und die meinens nur gut.

Du weisst, die Frauen sind wankelmütig,

hasts selbst geschrieben

und trotzdem geliebt!

In mir hättest du deinen Meister gefunden!

Ich kann lieben! Warm, lang und gut.

Zitat.

„Beglücken mit Gefühl und Küssen,

und dann verraten, wie gebräuchlich“.

Und wenn ich ehrlich bin, verliebe

ich mich mit Vorliebe mich

in Kerle, die dir gleichen.

Unbewußt

zieht es mich

an die ewig unbehaarte Männerbrust.

Deine Worte, Stirn und Augen,

Gedanken und Geschichte,

was kann man sonst noch lieben?

Reicht das nicht?

Doch dein Gesicht werd ich nie streichen,

nie deine langen Männerwimpern erreichen mit meiner Wange.

Du bist schon tot.

Ich bange.

Noch.

La Rochefoucauld writes, “Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixément”: “Neither the sun nor death can be stared at (looked at fixedly)” (Maxim 19, edition of 1678.)  In each case seeing would undo sight.  But impossibility is apt to be disregarded.  We may think of the peril of raising one’s eyes to the Sun King; or of a philosopher who, following Socrates, practices dying and being dead (Phaedo 64a), until he becomes unable to see life as others do.

The blindness or darkness that ensues in such cases has been represented as the condition of a castaway, one shipwrecked.  Thus the men of Odysseus appropriate the cattle of Helios Hyperion, the Sun that is Over, and having so raised their eyes to the god, they slay his beasts ὑπέρβιον, hyperbion, over-boldly (Odyssey 1.8, 12.379).  Demanding atonement, Helios threatens to go down to Hades and shine among the dead; to satisfy him Zeus blasts the men out of Odysseus’s ship with a thunderbolt and destroys it.  Their leader, who had condemned the sacrilege, is saved alone, to be carried all but helpless to Calypso’s island.  —What the god Odysseus offended (by proxy) would have done is to blind the living world and reveal the thinness of the one below.  By this the hero’s affinity with him is evident, for Odysseus too is a blinder—not only of the Cyclops, but of many men by his disguises, including the Trojan horse, and the cloak of his speech—and himself visits the dead, illuminating them but experiencing their emptiness.

Again, Milton’s Satan, “fraught / With envy against the Son of God,” (Paradise Lost 5.661) is cast “Thunder-struck” (6.858) with his followers into “a fiery Gulf” in “darkness visible,” (1.52, 63) from which he makes his way to land.  He resembles a sun darkened:

His form had not yet lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than Arch-Angel ruin’d, and th’ excess
Of Glory obscur’d: As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs.  Dark’n’d so, yet shone
Above them all th’ Arch-Angel: but his face
Deep scars of Thunder had intrencht…
(1.591)

At the gate of his new world Satan encounters Sin and “her black attendant Death” (7.547),

The other shape,
If shape it might be call’d that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d,
For each seem’d either—black it stood as Night…
(2.666)

Death is unseeable, or unknowable, because it has no form; in Greek, no eidos.  —This is the very idea that frightens people about Hades, Socrates thinks: the name of the place (that is, of the god whose place it is), Ἅιδης, Haidēs, resembles ἀειδής, aeidēs, which is ἀ-εἶδος, a-eidos, ‘without form,’ ‘invisible,’ ‘unknowable’ (Cratylus 403a).  In truth, their anxiety is unwarranted: it is the world that is ever-changing, while the ideal realm of the invisible is the proper place of the soul that is like it (Phaedo 79a–81d).

The blind poets’ notions of Heaven’s light gone down to shine in the underworld, and of the darkness below risen up to infect the world above—both suggest the curious image of a black sun.  Where was it first formulated in this phrase?  The first occurrence I am aware of is in Heine’s Der Schiffbrüchige, The Shipwrecked One, whose eponymous figure describes by it the eye of his lost beloved:

…Und aus dem süßen, blassen Antlitz,
Groß und gewaltig, strahlt ein Auge,
Wie eine schwarze Sonne.

O, du schwarze Sonne, wie oft,
Entzückend oft, trank ich aus dir
die wilden Begeistrungsflammen…

…And out of her sweet, pale face,
large and powerful, beams an eye,
like a black sun.

O thou black sun, how often,
enchantingly often, I drank from thee
wild flames of inspiration…

Now he lies on a barren shore.  A quarter-century later Nerval uses the expression in his famous El Desdichado, which begins:

Je suis le ténébreux, — le veuf, — l’inconsolé,
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie :
Ma seule étoile est morte, — et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

I am the dark one,—the widower,—the unconsoled,
the prince of Aquitaine with the ruined tower:
my only star is dead,—and my star-spangled lute
bears the black Sun of Melancholy.

Elsewhere (as the Pléiade edition points out) he alludes to “the black sun of melancholy, which sheds dark rays upon the face of the dreaming angel of Albert [sic] Dürer”; thus the allusion is to the well-known engraving “Melencolia I.”  Without going further into this poem, I note that in its own way it seems to continue the theme of the castaway.  Following Walter Scott’s error in Ivanhoe, Nerval presumably thinks the Spanish title means “The Disinherited One,” separated from his patrimony; and in his lostness the speaker resembles Keats’s knight, “alone and palely loitering.”  He says, “J’ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la syrène…,” “I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren swims…”; but unlike Odysseus, he has acquired the knowledge she imparts.

After all I suppose the theme of shipwreck is nothing more than a particular case of the favorite condition of the poets, that of exile.

Ich sitze gerade im Zug in Richtung Heimat!

Und da habe ich mir gedachte, dass ich was zu dem heute gesehenem schreiben könnte.

Aus dem ganz einfach Grund, dass ich relativ gebannt auf eine Frau geguckt habe und den Blick einfach nicht mehr abwenden konnte.

Da wurde mir von neuem bewusst, dass ja bald Weihnachten ist.

In Jena steht auch vor der Goehte Galerie bereits ein riesen, bisher jedoch noch ungeschmückter Baum und selbst ich (ein Vorweihnachtsgebäck Verweigerer) habe bereits die ersten Spekulatius gegessen.

Um wieder zur Frau zu kommen…

Diese doch schon ältere Dame hätte perfekt als Weihnachtsschmuck an den riesen Baum vor der Goethe Galerie gepasst.

Ich hatte leider nicht so schnell meine Kamera aus der Tasche gekramt und so bog der Bus um die Ecke und ich hatte lediglich den bleibenden Eindruck im Kopf.

Nun ja… um nun endlich zu ihrem Mantel zu kommen…

Gold. Gold. Gold. Ach und Gold!

Ein einziges goldenes Stück Stoff, dass durch ihre doch eher füllige Figur pompös wirkte und einem keine Chance lies sie zu übersehen. Nicht nur ich habe sie mit meinen Augen verfolgt.

Äußerlich erinnerte sie mich an eine der Beschreibungen J. K. Rowlings von Mrs. Weasley!

“Links und rechts die Hühner aufscheuchend, kam Mrs Weasley über den Hof marschiert. Und für eine kleine, kugelrunde Frau mit freundlichem Gesicht sah sie einem Säbelzahntiger erstaunlich ähnlich.” (HP2, 3)

Ihre Haare waren ebenso wie bei Mrs Weasley feuerrot und sie war alles in allem eine recht kleine Person.

Doch wie es dann oft so ist… Gold alleine ist nicht genug und so kam zu all dem Gold dann noch eine große Menge Glitzer was die Christbaumkugel perfekt machte.

Ich hoffe wirklich, dass ich sie nochmal zu Gesicht bekomme… und dann bin ich auf alles vorbereitet. Meine Kamera wächst derweil in meine Handfläche ein.

So kann ich sie wenigstens nicht verlieren oder zu lange fürs ‚aus-der-Tasche-holen‘ brauchen.

Blöd wird es nur, wenn sie kaputt geht oder ich mir eine neue kaufe…..

Ich habe mal im Internet etwas gestöbert und bin noch auf zwei weiter goldene Mäntel gestoßen.

In diesem Fall von Apart, gesehen bei Heine.

Aber schöner finde ich sie auch in diesem Fall nicht, wobei… ich muss gestehen der Erste würde mir in einer anderen Farbe oder an einer jungen Dame mit Cocktailkleid gefallen!

Hier:

Fotos: heine

Freud and Spinoza on Kant’s Freedom

A few days ago I listened to the paper by Michael Mack (Nottingham), “Spinoza and Freud, or how to be mindful of the mind”  from the Spinoza and Bodies conference (audio here), and one quote really stood out, taken from Heine on Spinoza. Mack’s paper argues that Freud subverts the primary aim of Kantian philosophy: the autonomy of the human under and definition of Freedom. That is, the Copernican turn accomplishes a radical autonomy of man which is strictly modern, that the recursively defined categories of thought provide humanity with a kind of fresh space, a topos, upon which to do and be and make whatever they well, a cocoon of freedom. He doesn’t express it in this way, but I do. Freud takes this from Kant and the modern heritage in that he takes from the inside the autonomy that Kant attempted to carve out,  the “self”. I had never really thought if it in these terms, but one can see that it is precisely at the level of freedom that Spinoza’s Freedom and Kant’s Freedom collide, and one can see Mack’s point that Freud and Spinoza are on the same side on this, that the “self” is ever only partially free, and the sense that we are all exposed to causal forces far beyond our control, the ignorance of which deceives us into thinking we are freer than we are.

The paper is a wild ride at times, and Mack has the haltering verbal excitement of someone overly familiar with a history of ideas and some much neglected material that makes his reading engaging, at least to my ear. He exposes some, one wants to say sublimated, or at least seldom acknowledged even by Freud himself, influence of Spinoza on the father of psychoanalysis. Mack’s point falls off in the area of the Death Drive where he doesn’t do a sharp enough job of contrasting the admitted radical difference of Spinoza and Freud on this point, a chasm gap, surely on account of time .  For me, any comparison between Spinoza and Freud must at least start or end there. Where Mack is really strong is how he positions Freud and Spinoza towards Kant’s autonomy, and the subject of the Self.

In making his point about Freud, Spinoza and Jewishness, Mack brings the wonderful quote by Heine on the subject of Spinoza’s charged atheism. In an almost over-statement in response to the Pantheism Controversy, Heine declares, it is not God that is denied by Spinoza, but rather Man:

“Nothing but fear, unreason and malice could bestow on such a doctrine the qualification of atheism. No one has spoken so sublimely of Deity than Spinoza. Instead of saying that he denied God, one might say that he denied Man. All finite things are to him but modes of the Infinite Substance, all finite substances are contained in God, the human mind but the luminous ray of infinite thought, the human body but an atom of infinite extension. God is the infinite cause both of mind and of body, natura naturans.”

But it can buy delightful Goyard clutches. Drool.

And I suppose this makes me an incredible dork for LOLing at this fantastic poster…

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Living On The Edge

I guess we all have, now and again, the feeling that it’s strange that we go about our business as usual, being content or even happy, when at exactly the same time in countless other places in the world, someone is suffering, being tortured, killed, raped or whatever. Normally, we don’t think about these facts, because that would make our lives impossible. Thinking about it causes feelings of guilt and unease. Even though we’re often not directly responsible for what happens to these people, there’s always the lingering thought that there may be something we can do to help. And probably there is something we can do, especially if we invested some more effort in associating with others. (Individually we may indeed be powerless).

And there’s an even more unsettling thought lurking deeper in the backs of our minds, namely that we are responsible to some extent, even for the suffering of people thousands of miles away, people we don’t know and will never know. Thomas Pogge for instance has claimed – correctly in my view – that in our globalized world we all contribute, to some extent,  to institutions, rules and processes that violate human rights. For example, we buy clothes from companies that use child labor or ban trade unions; we still profit from colonial exploitation that happened more than a century ago; we acquiesce in democratically enacted laws that exclude poor producers from our markets etc.

The existing global trading regime contributes to the perpetuation of poverty through the asymmetrical market opening that took place in the 1990s. Poor countries still do not enjoy unfettered access to our markets and are still hampered by anti-dumping duties, quotas and very high subsidies, for instance on agricultural products and textiles. Not only do these subsidies make poor countries’ products uncompetitive on rich countries’ markets. They also hamper poor countries’ products in other markets because they allow the rich countries to undersell these products everywhere. By upholding a global economic order that grandfathers the rich countries’ right to impose such protectionist measures into the global trading system, the rich countries greatly contribute to the persistence of the world poverty problem. Thomas Pogge (source)

Thomas Pogge

(source)

By the way, Pogge’s argument can be used to counter the claim that “poverty human rights” are substantially different from “normal human rights” such as the right to free speech etc. (are perhaps not even “real human rights” at all), because they impose positive duties instead of merely negative duties, duties to help instead of merely duties not to interfere. For Pogge, poverty is a negative duty: people aren’t poor because we fail to help them but because we actively – albeit often unconsciously – contribute to their poverty. Rather than focusing our efforts on how we can help the poor, we should focus on how we hurt them. This is reminiscent of recent debates on the continued usefulness of development aid.

OK, back to the main point. It’s all very well to encourage “caring”, and possibly also “helping”, but thinking about what we could call the “synchronicity of heaven and hell” makes it very difficult to get on with our lives. Hence we tend to suppress such thoughts. It’s a survival strategy, and quite understandable as such, but the consequence of not thinking is not helping. We know in the back of our minds that while we’re doing fine, elsewhere it’s hell, but we just don’t think about it too much. Only when we watch the news, donate something, or sit in the park and have nothing else to do. And then we’re amazed at how cold-hearted we can be. But at the same time and unconsciously, we continue to function in structures, institutions and sets of rules that underpin the problems that occasionally make us angry. And then we return to our normal mode of moral indifference. Much like the people in the “Fall of Icarus” by Breughel, a painting commented upon in a poem by WH Auden:

… In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. (full text here)

Also like the father figure in the “Elf King” poem by Goethe, ignoring the suffering and anxiety of his own sun until it’s too late. (See here). I tried to capture this in the drawing below:

moral indifference

(more of my drawings here and here)

We can try to rationalize our moral indifference in several ways. First, we may reject the claim that we have any part in the problems that occur far away. We may believe that poverty and dictatorship are home-grown, and not supported by globalization or our own countries’ involvement. Perhaps we believe that individuals failures are the only cause of their problems. Instead of being a bleeding heart Atlas supporting the misery of the world (as in the poem by Heinrich Heine below), we should simply ”shrug“.

We also rationalize our inaction and moral indifference by pointing to the distance between us and those who suffer. This distance makes action on our part difficult, we believe, and makes it more likely that actions by others who are closer and more familiar with what’s happening will be more successful. While it’s generally correct to state that closeness is a factor in the ability to help, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, the causes of problems are very distant indeed, and hence the solutions have to be distant as well.

A “lowbrow” take on caring is here.

Heine from DOGS.
This is a WIP (in a sense) as I am working on the illustration of this on SAI.

Love Heine and DOGS in general (it’s my favorite manga besides Kuroshitsuji) so it’s nice to finally do some fanart I’m proud of. C:

I will sit in the morning sunshine
And drink hot black tea.
I will sit and read translations
Of German poetry;
All the great prophets of Romance
Goethe, Schiller, Heine.
I have heard them set to music,
Listened now for years and have seen
“The moon lying on the clouds
Stretched on the harsh gray sea.”

“Shall we go out and pray?”
A gentle question is put softly to me
Gentle as a mist rising from the warming sea.

We sit in choir on a little height.
We sit on mere planks, more descending
To the pebbled sand, quiet water,
Spread below receiving day’s first light,
Open books and begin.

A Mantle of Brilliance on the Surface of the Sea

“O, Lord, open my lips,”
From the line between earth and heaven
“And my mouth will declare your praise.”
To the salt sprayed sand below
“As it was before,”
Light has thrown a mantle of brilliance
“So now,”
On the surface of the sea
“And evermore.”
Flashing like snow on Mount Zalmon.
“Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
This living light washes over me.

We obey the cadence of the day
Continue with each strophe, each song,
Followed by a breath, break, sigh,
Selah at once assent and good bye.
Just so long we linger, living in between
The beautiful music continuing
While the mantle off the mountain lifts,
And snow melts on the surface of the sea,
And the moon when it appears
Is a thing of glory, not of tears.

Heine
Ölüm soğuk bir geceden başka bir şey değildir ; yaşam ise sıcak ve bunaltıcı bir gün.

I never really fully grasped the source of Negri’s political enthusiasm for Spinoza until I started looking at Heine, Heine who was inspired by the revolutionary potential Spinoza unleashed in terms of the Pantheism Controversy. Heine saw in Spinoza’s reclamation of matter as divine just what was lacking in Hegel’s turn to Idea and Spirit. And in this as well, an invocation of the proto, pantheistic, pre-Christian Teutonic religions of the earth.

This quote captures some of that pristine and material beauty, the way-point between both Plato and Aristotle. For those who find Spinoza utterly dry, they perhaps suggest an eruptive potential not always easily glimpsed. And one can see as well the “top” and “bottom” tension that Negri argues for as well.

“[With Spinoza] we become conscious of a feeling such as pervades us at the sight of great Nature in her most life‐like state of repose; we behold a forest of heaven-reaching thoughts whose blossoming topmost boughs are tossing like waves of the sea, whilst their immovable stems are rooted in the eternal earth. There is a peculiar, indescribable fragrance about the writings of Spinoza. We seem to breathe in them the air of the future.”

“Religion and Philosophy in Germany: A Fragment”

He says important, interesting things about the ownership of ideas as well and the possibilities of transforming Spinoza’s thinking beyond its argumentative form. Not to mention, here is the earliest comparison of his philosophy to a lens, and his lens-grinding that I have run across.

“Nothing is more absurd than ownership claimed for ideas. Hegel did, to be sure, use many of Schelling’s ideas for his philosophy, but Mr. Schelling would never have known what to do with these ideas anyway. He always just philosophized, but was never able to produce a philosophy. And besides, one could certainly maintain that Mr. Schelling borrowed more from Spinoza than Hegel borrowed from Schelling. If Spinoza is some day liberated from his rigid, antiquated Cartesian, mathematical form and made accessible to a large public, we shall perhaps see that he, more than any other, might complain about the theft of ideas. All our present‑day philosophers, possibly without knowing it, look through glasses that Baruch Spinoza ground.”

He called his old self “topaz”, a clandestine name. Each time he was alone now, he thought of a line from Heine with bittersweet ideation: sleep is so good, death is better, yet/ surely never to have been born is best. He thought of Lorca’s “Llagas de Amor” but in a completely different context, as though his separation from himself was like an ulcer. And he knew not why he woke up that morning and suddenly everything was different, and every step he took was not free because the thought of the burden cycled through his conscious mind every few seconds. But there was nothing the matter but the sensation of the burden. If only he did not have to live the paradox– for no external cause compelled the sensation.

At the outset, he attempted suffering, on the analogy that a headache vanishes with sufficient endurance. This lasted only a short while. Then he attempted distraction; he gyrated and sang repetitive songs in his mind to pass the time. He had a special thought reserved for particularly trying moments; “if it gets too bad, I will run away”; he thought often of running away but each time he would start he would remember that his body ran with him.

Not long after, of course, he decided to see a doctor. What amazed him was the stratification of labor and displacement to authority; the nurse was there solely to poke him with a needle for the purposes of drawing blood. It was not possible to ask her for any assistance or advice. The specialists he was referred to only commented on the specific body part under consideration. It was a category error to ask them other questions, he learned. After learning that nothing is wrong, he stopped going to doctors. Medicine has not yet reached the Cartesian realm, he decided.

After a while, he became audacious. If never having been born is best, then what of all the things I might as well do?, he thought. And he remembered all of the things he had wanted to do before the onset of the burden and now, like a laundry list, he would complete them on principle despite the lack of corresponding dopamine surge that accompanied each action. He bought a violin, and also a dog. He learned how to program. He went to beaches, rode on trains, particularly enjoying dismounting at arbitrary locations. He became impulsive too. He slept with countless women and men.

Months passed and he broke down. He was especially influenced by normative ideas now since before the burden he suffered from seclusion. It is accepted, thought he, that when we suffer we seek wisdom from external sources. So he went to his grandfather. After all, he had been through famine and war. And he implored him: why do things not feel the same? why do I feel this way? He described in nearly poetic detail the sensations and limitations of the burden, and he remembered the precise moment of its onset. He recounted each stage of the struggle, and each realization. His grandfather was unfazed: “What you describe is the way everyone feels. Everyone feels this way!”

When the romantic term Weltschmerz (worldpain) was ‘invented’ by Jean Paul, born as Johann Paul Friedrich Richter ( 21-03-1763 – 14-11-1825) a German writer,
the World as he knew it was quite smaller than we do nowadays and he meant quite something else than we do nowadays, so there are different Weltschmerzes I suppose :
1 the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind. This kind of pessimistic world view was widespread among several romantic authors such as Lord Byron, Giacomo Leopardi, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alfred de Musset,

Nikolaus Lenau, and Heinrich Heine.)
2 It is also used to denote the feeling of sadness when thinking about the evils of the world—compare empathy, theodicy.)
3 The modern meaning of Weltschmerz in the German language is the psychological pain caused by sadness that can occur when realizing that someone’s own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world and (physical and social) circumstances. Weltschmerz in this meaning can cause depression, resignation and escapism, and can become a mental problem (compare to Hikikomori). The modern meaning should also be compared with the concept of anomie, or a kind of alienation, that Émile Durkheim wrote about in his sociological treatise Suicide. (source :wikipedia)

Goethe wrote Die Leiden des jungen Werthers in 1774 about a young man, who got suicidal when he foundout he was in the way of his love Lotte and her Albert and a lot of young romantic readers followed this Werther in dead. He did not use the word Weltschmerz I think, but his novel was a good example of the romantic depressed feelings that were new in that form at the time. (My english sucks too much to say it better)

Now what I personally mean by Weltschmerz here is a mix of numbers 2 and 3 and I would like to add a number 4 the pain felt for the World, caused by us.
The cause for everyone’s personal period of Weltschmerz is not important here in this particular blog, but as I can imagine many people nowadays feel sad and depressed, with global crises after crises. Sometimes everything just gets to you. This wonderfull world suddenly looks a fading candle. And Weltschmerz does not come in snowflake-fragments but as an avalange, I suppose. The evil world around you, and this time it is the entire globe, gives you sadness. And you think you only add sadness and evil to this world.

For example: We can not keep thinking our children are lost without our parental guidence, eventhough in our heart we feel they are not ready to live away from home. Reality says they will live their own lives anyway, allthough you, in the middle of your Weltschmerz period, think they will end up more or less dead in the gutter soon and the fact they won’t keep in touch in spite of internet and mobile phones, and that you haven’t been able to reach them for more than a week, drives you crazy. And it’s all your fault.
You cannot keep thinking like that. They chose to do so. Independent as they think they are. Their generation is different, but they will make something of the future.
Other example in the avalange of course is money. A lot of`people will have to economize everywhere in the world, some people and countries more than others. But when I read somewhere that someone has lost all his retirements and will have to work till he drops dead, that is his reality and that is awfull. Many people are in such shit! How can you not worry?
Will the generation growing up now, have a future? A shortage of water? Too much water? Food? Energy?

The fact is that they will have to make a future for themselves, cause we failed them. Reality is hard. When we are long dead, it will be their turn and they will have to make the world a good place for everyone to live in.
We cannot shut our eyes for all the trouble in the world, and we know that they will have to deal with the mess our generation was incapable to solve. (Or will we ourselves have time to solve it ? Some of it? Will our political leaders? ) On television we can see children die in Congo, in the same newsbulletin Sinterklaas is happily welcomed ashore by happy well fed kids. Sinterklaas almost being the main subject in the news, more important than what happens in Mumbay or Congo. No, the world hasnot turned mad, it has always been this way. But then you did not have Weltschmerz. Or modern media.
Of course there are many more things to add to the above examples in the avalange: sickness, parents health, death, and other personal problems. Live events every person has to deal with sooner or later. But at some point in your live it seems to come all at once. It can make you really sad and depressed, no surprise. That is were doctors are for. The sooner you seek help the better.

And perhaps we must not indulge ourselves with this Weltschmerz thing for too long, especially when reality needs us to act. To see it as a luxury we cannot afford.
It is better to do something usefull than to worry. Electing leaders who want the changes you think are necessary. I am obviously no expert on this matter, just putting my personal thoughts here. This Weltschmerz is a world wide phenomenom, that is all I can say. Things will look better some day. Why? Because your Weltschmerz is a state of mind and you can change that. Why not! If you have it, at least you know you are not allone in this

link to an article about Die Leiden des Jungen Werther (in German)

Diesen Sommer up-to-date sind ja bekanntlich Blütenträume. Zugebenermaßen bin ich kein großer Fan dieser “Mustermode”, da Blümchen einfach an mir total doof aussehen. Sooo niedlich will ich gar nicht sein. Zudem sind die meisten Kleidungsstücke mit Blumenmustern echt hässlich:

Strechkleid, Heine	Tunika, Vera Alba

O.k. diese beiden Kleidungsstücke sind nicht ganz für die Zielgruppe <28 Jahren geeignet. Umso schlimmer, dass sie wohl irgendwann für uns als fashionable vorgesehen werden .-)

Oder aber Accessoires… uahaa…

Tischdecke für 29,90 €; Heine	Tasche von Accessorize für 56 €

Die Tischdecke würde ich gerade noch so akzeptieren, aber diese Tasche von Accessorize?!? Hier sind nicht nur die Blüten schrecklich sondern ebenso die Farbkombination…urgh!

Vielleicht bin ich ja auch einfach nur zu jung für diese Art und Mode oder noch einfacher: es ist schlichtweg nicht mein Geschmack. Ausnahme sind hier die Regenmäntel von Gudrun Sjödén. Damit freut man sich sogar auf einen Schauer!

Regenmantel “Sofia”/petrol, ca. 113 €	Regenmantel “Sofia”/ pink

Das einzigst sichere an dieser Art von Mode ist wohl, dass dieser Blütenzauber nicht welkt und ihren Besitzern lange Freude bereitet

Stay Stylish – Love Life!

(vd)

Mit deinen blauen Augen
Siehst du mich lieblich an,
Da wird mir so träumend zu Sinne,
Daß ich nicht sprechen kann.

An deine blauen Augen
Gedenk ich allerwärts; -
Ein Meer von blauen Gedanken
Ergießt sich über mein Herz.

Heinrich Heine

Claude Lanzmann, whose Shoah I watched again recently, disappoints: Israeli lives, he suggests, are worth more than Palestinian lives, this because of the Holocaust. One hopes for a time when a history of suffering is not used perpetually to justify inflicting suffering, when the reactive becomes active. For a director so aware of memory, he naively forgets how the present injustice will colour his own film.

David Harvey’s cheap shot – “Under socialism, I’d hate to see an anarchist commune in charge of a nuclear power station” – deserves an equally brief riposte – I’d rather not have a Trotskyist apparatchik running a nuclear power station. Hierarchies may on occasion be the lesser evil, but if they are understood as necessitated by technology, technological reason has subordinated democratic practice and recapitulated capitalist logic.

Infinite Thought quotes Hegel to Heine: “The stars, harrumph, the stars are only a gleaming leprosy on the sky.” A marvellous line. Perhaps meant as a riposte to Kant’s conclusion to the second Critique? There a view of the stars “annihilates”  man’s importance “as an animal creature” in contrast to a view of the moral law within which elevates him again, allows man to remember his “independence of all animality”. Perhaps the stars mean nothing of the sort, Hegel seems to say, only such meaning as we posit of them. Kant’s and the Romantic’s meaning no more faithfully critical than its abstract antithesis.

I’ve typed the words “naked under clothes” and Google gave me hundreds of entries. Blogs, personal sites and even novels. In one novel (p. 5) I read

Actually, for all I knew, all beautiful young women these days might be completely nude beneath their clothes. But her look told me quickly that hers was a calculated nudeness, a premeditated nudeness, nudeness in the first degree.

I decided I must know unambiguously who was the first to tell the world the truth that we are all naked under our clothes. It was not difficult to find out that a similar saying was ascribed to German romantic poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). Since I had gaps in my knowledge of German literature, I turned to ‘The works of Heinrich Heine‘. The search was crowned with success when I got Heinrich Heine’s ‘Pictures of Travel’. Here is short extract from the book.

But will not the ladies be offended at my saying breeches instead of trousers? – Oh, the refined feelings of ladies! In the end only eunuchs will dare to write for them, and their spiritual servants in the West must be as harmless as their body servants in the East.

Here a fragment from Berthold’s diary comes into my head.

“If we only reflect on it, we are all naked under our clothes,” said Doctor M—– to a lady who was offended by a rather cynical remark to which he had given utterance.

It looks like the significant discovery about our naked nature was made by unknown Doctor M—–, while Heine got to know it at second-hand, from Berthold’s diary! Of course, it remains uncertain whether Doctor M—– was the only one who discovered this naked truth. This problem needs further investigation. Maybe the researchers of Heine’s works can determine the full name of the mysterious Doctor M—– and grateful mankind will always remember this man.

Since I don’t have any portrait of Doctor M—–, I’ve decided to illustrate this post with my self-portrait .

Det är något år sedan vi var på Pharaohs i Sandton utanför en av de mysigaste städer jag varit i och det är till min stora belåtenhet jag kan läsa i Laras gästbok att fler svenskar varit där. Jag tror nog att vi är en mycket liten skara svenskar som satt våra avtryck på en av världens mysigaste ställe, det vi fått tillbaka är underbar njutning och ett otroligt varmt välkomnande. Jag vill härmed starta en ny förening “Svenska Swingers som varit på Pharaohs”  kommentera här så lägger jag upp en egen sida för oss

Kram

/Johan Swingsson

德國詩人 海 涅 (13/12/1797 －17/02/1856)

海涅全名是 Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (克里斯蒂安•约翰•海因里希•海涅), 出生時用名哈利•海涅（Harry Heine），19世纪最重要的德國詩人和新聞工作者之一。海涅既是浪漫主義詩人，也是浪漫主義的超越者。他使日常語言詩意化，將報刊上的文藝專欄和遊記提升為一種藝術形式，赋予了德语一種罕為人知的風格上的輕鬆與優雅。作為批評家、熱心於政治的新闻工作者、随笔作家、諷刺性雜文作家、論戰者，他既受喜愛，又遭惧怕。他是作品被翻譯得最多的德國詩人中的一員。海涅最廣為人知的一首詩可能是由孟德爾頌為之作曲的通過音樂傳播的《乘着歌聲的翅膀》。

海涅1821年就已经在柏林出版了第一批诗歌。接着，在1823年出版了一些悲剧，包括一部抒情插曲。1824年出版了39首诗歌的合集，其中有海涅在德国最脍炙人口的作品《罗蕾莱》。同年，在哈爾茨山旅行期間，他到魏瑪拜訪了他極為敬仰的约翰•沃爾尔夫冈•馮•歌德。两年前，他就把第一部诗集题詞寄给過這位枢密顾問。但這次訪問令海涅相當失望，因為他自己——與他的禀性相反——表現得既拘謹又笨拙，而歌德只是禮貌、带有距離地接待了他。

1826年海涅出版了他的哈茨山旅行見聞。同年他開始了和漢堡的霍夫曼和坎普出版社的生意關係。尤利乌斯•坎普應该一直是海涅的出版商，直到海涅去世。1827年10月，他出版了詩集《歌集》，這部作品奠定了海涅的聲誉，它直到現在仍受到喜愛。這些和以後的一些詩歌——它們被多次配上曲调，如在舒曼的歌曲集《詩人之愛》中——的浪漫的、常带有民歌風情的風格，不僅僅打動了當時讀者的心。那些詩歌，如《美麗的五月》，《一个少年愛一個少女》，拨动着海涅同時代人和二十一世纪讀者的心弦。

但是海涅很快超越了浪漫主義風格。他用諷刺性的手段破壞它，也将浪漫主義詩歌的藝術特徵運用於有政治内容的诗歌。他把自己稱為一個 “逃跑的浪漫主義者”。

1827年，1828年，海涅到英國和意大利旅行时才第一次見到大海。他在後来的發表於1826到1831年間的遊記中描述了他的印象。這一時期的作品有：《北海集》、《盧卡浴場》和《思想•勒格朗集》，後一本書表達了對拿破侖和法國大革命的成就的擁護。在此期間，人門逐漸認識到海涅是一個偉大的文學天才。从19世纪30年代起，海涅的名聲開始在德国和歐洲傳開。

根據研究確定﹐海涅出生時取名為“哈利”。哈利.海涅是布商薩姆遜·海涅和他的妻子貝蒂（本名佩拉）的四個孩子中最大的一個。他成長於一個逐漸與社会融合的、受啟蒙思想影响的猶太家庭，在受到晚期启蒙運動思想影响的杜塞尔多夫中學接受教育。上中學時，海涅就寫下了他的第一批詩歌。1814年，他未获畢業證書就離開了中學。根據家族的傳统，他要到一所商業學校，為從事商人一職做准備。

1815年到1816年，海涅首先在法蘭克福的銀行家林兹考普夫那裡實習，後来又到他富有的叔叔所羅門·海涅的位於漢堡的銀行工作。所羅門跟兄弟薩姆遜相反，在生意方面非常成功，他收留了侄子。海涅一直受到叔叔的經濟資助，直到叔叔1845年去世，盡管後者不怎么理解他對文學的興趣。他叔叔的 “名言” 流傳了下来：“假如他能學點正經東西，他就不用寫書了。”

因為海涅對財務往来既没有興趣又没有天赋，最後，他的叔叔為他開了一家布店。但是 “哈利公司” 很快就不得不登记破產。這位店主在那時就已經偏爱詩藝了。哈利對堂妹阿梅莉的徒劳的爱情也没能使家庭更和睦。后来他在《歌集》中將這段未获回报的衷情加工成了浪漫主义的情詩。他在詩歌《Affrontenburg》中描述了叔叔家中压抑的气氛，置身其中，他感到自己越来越不受歡迎。也許正是家庭不和使得所羅門·海涅决定迁就侄子的愿望，讓他遠離漢堡，去上大學。

1819年，海涅開始了法學的學習。起先，他在波恩注册，在那裡，奥古斯特·威廉·施莱格爾是他的老師之一。1820年的冬季學期，他来到哥廷根大學，在那裡，他参加了一个學生組織。然而，僅僅在1821年1月，他就被迫離開了學校和這個組織。起因是一場决鬥。那時極力想隱瞒自己出身的海涅，因為身為猶太人而被一个同學侮辱，他向此人要求决鬥。學校為此開除他一學期的學籍，也正為此，學生組織因為他的 “不良行為” 而開除了他。其實海涅確實去過妓院，但是這在當時的學生中間是相當普遍的。因此，一些傳記作家認為這樣的理由不過是借口，用来掩盖真實的反猶主義的動機。

這次事件後，海涅去了柏林。1821年至1823年，他在柏林學習，聽過黑格爾講課。不久，他接觸到了城裡的文人圈子，成了列文和馮·恩瑟沙龍的常客。1822年，他從柏林出發，到波蘭中西部城市波兹南旅游。在那裡，他第一次遇見了進行愛與慈善運動的猶太人。一方面，他受到了他們的吸引，一方面，他又無法同他們一樣。在他皈依基督教的两年前，他寫道：“我也没有勇氣留一部胡子，讓人用猶太德語在後面叫我。”

在哥廷根，海涅1825年獲得法学博士學位。此前不久，他接受了新教的洗禮，有了克里斯蒂安·约翰·海因里希這個名字。從此以後，他就叫自己海因里希·海涅。在他的家人面前，他竭力将受洗的事保密。他對宗教相當無所谓，只将受洗證明當成 歐洲文化的入場券”。然而他必须確定，許多歐洲文化的承载者仍不把一个像他這樣受過洗的猶太人看成他們的同類。

當詩诗人奥古斯特·格拉夫·冯·普拉腾因為海涅是猶太人而公開攻擊他時，海涅没有被嚇退，他把普拉腾是同性戀一事公之於眾，令其不能在社會上立足。後来，海涅多次明確抱怨皈依基督教，原因之一就是他預期的结果没有發生。其後的幾年裡，海涅多次努力——如在慕尼黑——谋求國家公職。因為這些嘗試都失败了，他做出了一個在當時的條件下相當不尋常的决定，通過當自由職業作家赚取生活費。

海涅因為他的政治觀點而越来越多地受到攻击，尤其是在普鲁士，而他對德意志的書報檢查制度也感到厭恶，所以，海因利希·海涅1831年在法國七月革命爆發之後去了巴黎。他在這裡開始了生活與創作的第二个階段。终其一生，海涅都思念着德意志。但他只能再見祖國两次了。最後，巴黎成了海涅的流亡地，因為他的作品——還有他以後所有的作品——1833年在普鲁士被禁；1835年，根据法兰克福联邦议會的决議，在所有德意志聯邦的成員國被禁。那些 “青年德意志” 組織的詩人的命运也是如此。聯邦議會的决議中寫道，這個組織的成員的目的在於 “用各個階層都能接受的文学形式肆无忌惮地攻擊基督教，貶低目前的社會状况，破壞所有的纪律与道德。”

但是，1832年，海涅就通過為歌德和席勒的出版商约翰·腓特烈·科塔的奥斯堡匯報寫巴黎通讯找到了新的收入来源。海涅這段時間的報刊專欄文章於1833年以《法國的状况》的書名出版。

這一年，疾病的初步症状——麻痹、頭疼、視力减退——顯現了出来，這種病讓他在生命的最後八年被禁锢在了床榻上。

但他首先享受着巴黎的生活。他遇見了空想社会主義者聖西門和法國、德意志文化生活中的大人物，如：赫克托·柏辽兹，路德维希·波纳，弗雷德里克·肖邦，乔治·桑，大仲馬和亚歷山大·馮·洪堡。

這個世界性的大都市在随後的幾年裡给了海涅以靈感。他寫出了大量的雜文、政論文章、論戰文章、專題文章、詩歌和散文。在《法國的状况》一類的作品中，他努力把法國的情况介绍给德國人，把德國的情况介绍给法國人。

海涅比多數人更早地意識到了德意志民族主義的破壞性特徵，它與法國的民族主義不同，没有跟民主和人民主權意識结合在一起。

他在那些年里的重要作品有《论浪漫派》（1836），《论路德维希·多纳》（1840）以及小说片断《巴哈拉赫的拉比》(1840)。1841年，他和他1834年认识的鞋类售货员欧仁妮·克莱仙蒂亚·米拉结了婚。他爱玛蒂尔德——他对她的昵称——的原因之一很特殊：她不懂德语，甚至在婚后的很长一段时间内都不清楚她的丈夫是一个多么伟大的诗人。

1843年，海涅寫下了《夜思》一詩，它開頭的句子經常被人引用：

當我在夜裡想到德國，
我便不能安睡。

在詩中，讓海涅不能安睡的，是德國的政治状况，更是他對他獨居德國的老母的擔憂。為了再次見到母親并把妻子介绍给她，海涅于1843年和1844年最后两次来到德国。那時他结識了卡爾·馬克思和斐迪南·拉薩勒。後来海涅参与了馬克思的《前進報》和《德法年鉴》的工作。

40年代中期，海涅寫下了偉大的叙事詩《阿塔·特羅爾》和由他的第二次德國之行激發產生的《德國，一個冬天的童话》。

19世纪40年代中期，海涅的思想明顯變得激進了。他屬於第一批認識到正在開始的工業革命的结果和在作品中思考剛诞生的工人階级的困苦的作家。他1844年6月的詩《西里西亞織工》就是這樣一部作品。它脱胎於那個月在西里西亞的彼德斯瓦爾道和朗恩比劳两镇發生的織工起義。

這首也以《織工之歌》的名字而闻名的诗7月在由卡尔·马克思出版的《前进报》上發表，又被印刷5萬份在起議地區作為傳單分發。普鲁士内政部长阿寧姆在给國王腓特烈·威廉四世國王的報告中將這首作品描述成：“針對臣民中窮人的，充斥着煽動性語言和罪恶的表達的講話”。普鲁士王國的最高法院颁布了對這首詩的禁令。1846年，在普鲁士，一個胆敢在公共場合朗诵它的人會被判入獄。 弗里德里希·恩格斯——他是在1844年八月在巴黎認識海涅的——把 “織工之歌” 翻譯成了英语，并於同年12月在《新道德世界報》上發表。

盡管海涅與馬克思、恩格斯的關係友好，但他却始終不是馬克思主義者。他認識到，正在形成的工人階级的要求是完全合理的，也支持這些要求；但他同時意識到，共產主義思想中的唯物主义和激进将会摧毁他所热爱和赞赏的欧洲文化中的很多東西。

作為堅定的民主主義者，海涅歡迎1848發生在整個歐洲的革命，尤其是德國的四月革命。但很快，随着革命的發展，他就失望地不再關心它。因為支持共和制—民主制國家形式的人一開始就是少數。在法蘭克福國家議會對建立一个王權世襲的民族君主國家的嘗試中，他只看到企圖复興1806年崩潰的神聖羅馬帝國的無用的、浪漫的政治幻夢。

在革命的第二股浪潮，即1849年春夏的有力的民主革命被鎮壓之後，海涅心灰意冷地寫下了《在1849年十月》一詩。

1848年2月，巴黎爆發革命的同一個月，海涅的身體垮了。他的從1845年明顯加劇的神經痛將他永遠地固定在了病床上。海涅本人相信，他得的是梅毒，但他被详细記錄下的病程說明他得的是多發性硬化症。在几乎瘫痪的情况下，他在自己命名的 “床褥坟墓” 中度過了八年，直到去世。

在此之前，海涅對宗教已經有了一種更温和的評價，在1815年的遺囑中讚成對人格化神的信仰，但他却没有再接近一個教堂或猶太教。

海涅精神上的創造力在他痛苦的卧床歲月中并没有减弱。由於他已經無法自己書寫，他就向秘書口授詩歌和文章。這樣，在1851年10月，他出版了詩集《羅曼采羅》，1854年出版了他的政治遗言《盧苔齊齐婭》。

盡管病痛缠身，海涅却没有失去幽默与激情。在他生命的最後幾個月，来自布拉格的女崇拜者艾尔瑟·克里尼兹 —— 他温柔地將她稱為 “美容斑”——的多次拜訪减輕了他的痛苦。他叫她 “被愛慕的荷花”，但這種愛慕由於他的衰弱的身體只發生在精神層面。

1856年2月17日，海涅離開了世界。三天後，他被葬在法國蒙馬特的墓地。27年后，根据诗人的愿望，玛蒂尔德也在这里找到了永久的居所。在1901年樹立的海涅的墓碑上装饰着丹麦雕塑家路易斯·哈瑟里斯制作的大理石海涅半身像和這位詩人的诗《哪里？》

來源﹕網絡綜合資料
相關鏈接﹕孟德爾頌﹐On Wings of Song﹐乘著歌聲的翅膀