Ingeborg Bachmann Anrufung des großen Bären Lieder auf der Flucht
Ingeborg Bachmann The Collected Poems Invocation of the Great Bear Songs in Flight Dura legge d’Amor, ma ben ché obliqua Servar conviensi, però ch’ella aggiunge, Di cielo in terra universale, antique.
Petrarch, I Trionfi*
I The palm branch breaks in snow that collapses the stairway's flight, the city lies stiff and gleaming in a strange winter light.
The children wail and climb their mountain of hunger, praying to the sky while they eat white flour.
Winter's wealth of tinsel in a mandarin's gold, the wind gusts wildly on, and the blood orange rolls.
II But I lie alone, wounds fill an abbatis of ice.
The snow upon me has not yet sealed my eyes..
The dead pressed against me are silent, no matter the tongue.
No one loves me, no lamp for me is hung.
III читать дальшеThe Sporades, the islands, patchwork in a sea so clear, cold, the streams that surround them, yet they bear the fruit that's here.
White rescuers, the ships, — O lonesome sailor's hand! — they point, before they sink, back towards the land.
IV Cold, as never before, has penetrated. Over the sea, commandos racing. Down to its last lights, the bay has surrendered. The city has fallen.
I am innocent and captive in conquered Naples, where winter silhouettes Posilipo and Vomero, where its white lightening cleans up among songs and sets its hoarse thunder in command.
I am innocent, and until Camaldoli stone pines nudge the clouds; without comfort, because the rain does not cleanse the palms;
without hope, because I shall not escape, even though the fish bristles its fins and the beach's winter mist blown warm from the waves protects and walls me in, even though the tide in fleeing draws away the next goal of those who flee.
V Away with snow from the city fragrant with spice! The scent of fruits must drift through the streets. Scatter the currents, bring the figs and the capers! Renew the summer, renew the cycle, birth, blood, filth and scum, death — sink into the welts, deepen the lines on faces mistrustful, lazy and old, covered with chalk and drenched in oil, sly from clever deals, immerse them in danger, the anger of the lava god, grant smoke to angels and the fire's cursed aura!
VI Educated in love by ten thousand books, made wise through the sharing of barely changed gestures and foolish oaths —
initiated into love but first knowing it here — when the lava spilled over and its breath reached us at the foot of the mountain, when finally the spent crater surrendered the key to these locked bodies —
We entered enchanted rooms and illuminated the dark with our fingertips.
VII Within, your eyes are windows to a land where in clarity I stand.
Within, your breast is a sea that draws me to its bed. Within, your hips are a quay that greets my ships returning from journeys too far from home.
Happiness weaves a silver chain to which I lie attached.
Within, your mouth is a downy nest for my fledgling, nascent tongue. Within, your veins contain a tranquillity and are filled with the gold that U wash with my tears, and that one day will outweigh me.
Receiving your title, your arms embrace goods that you are the first to be granted.
Within, your feet never wander, but are already in my velvet land. Within, your bones are bright flutes on which I can conjure the tunes that would even charm death...
VIII ... the earth, sea and sky. Dug into with kisses, the earth, the sea and the sky. Gripped by my words, the earth, still clung to by my last word, the sea and the sky!
Afflicted with my sounds, this earth that, sobbing in my teeth, put down anchor with all its furnaces, towers and proud peaks,
this battered earth, which before me uncovered its ravines, its steppes, deserts and tundras,
this restless earth, with its quivering magnetic fields, which chained it here with its unknown chains of power,
this stunned and stunning earth grown thick with belladonna, leaden poisons and streams of fragrance —
sunk in the sea and risen in the sky the earth!
IX The black cat, oil on the floor, the evil glance:
Bad luck!
Pull out the coral horn,
hang the horns before the house! Darkness! No light!
[ O love, which broke open and flung away our shells, our shield, our shelters and the brown rust of years.
O sorrows, which stamped out our love, its damp fire felt in tender places! Filled with smoke, dying in smoke, the flame consumes itself.
XI Wanting summer lightning, you throw the knife, slicing through the air to the warmth of its veins;
blinding, as they spring up from open wounds, are the soundless last fireworks you see displayed:
madness, contempt, and then revenge, as remorse follows soon, then sharp disdain.
You realize that your sword is blunted, and finally you feel just how love ends:
with raging storms, with purest breath. It locks you up inside the dream dungeon.
Where love's golden hair id hanging down, the ladder to emptiness is what you'll be grasping.
A thousand and one nights high are the rungs. The very last step is the step into nothing.
And there where you crash exist the old places, and to each place you give three drops of blood.
Deranged, you cling to rootless curls. The bell rings out, and you've had enough.
XII Mouth, which slept in my mouth, Eye that guarded my own, Hand —
and those eyes that drilled through me! Mouth, which spoke the sentence, Hand, which executed me!
XIII The sun gives no warmth, voiceless is the sea. No one opens the graves packed in snow. Is it because no brazier is filled with glowing coals? Yet the glow does nothing.
Release me! I can no longer die.
The saint is busy elsewhere, he is concerned with the city and bread. The washline is heavy with cloth; soon it will fall. But it won't cover me.
I am guilty. Raise me up. I am guilty. Raise me up.
Loosen the silver of ice from the frozen eye, break through with glance, see the blue depths, swim, look and dive:
I am not the one. I am.
XIV Wait for my death, then hear me again. The snow basket tips and the water sings, all sounds flow into the Toledo, its surfae thaws, a melody melts the ice. O great thaw!
So much awaits you.
Syllables in oleander, words in acacian green, cascades from the wall.
The basins fill, turbulent and clear, with music.
XV** Love has its triumph and death has one, in time and the time beyond us. We have none.
Only the sinking of stars. Silence and reflection. Yet the song beyond the dust will overcome our own.
transl. by Peter Filkins
*The epigraph is from Petrarch's "Triumph of Love". Ernest Hatch Wilkins translates the passage as "Hard is the law of Love! But though unjust / One must obey it, for that law prevails / Thtoughout the universe, and lasts for aye" Luca Marenzio - Dura legge d'Amor читать дальше
** Holthusen observes the strong links between this section and Rilke's "Sonette an Orpheus", 1.19 (1, 2. Kurt Bartsch also observes a link between "Sinken um uns von Gestirnen" and Robert Musil's play "Die Schwaermer", which Bachmann helped adapt for the radio.