CAPUT V
109
Weissenfels, gleaming ivory-white bust,
brought back from the realms of sleep or of dreams
as proof against oblivion itself.
Spirit is exactly the same as love
although they’re not wholly identical,
as the one seeks for the abode of light
while the other finds darkness and the night.
But that paradox we will never solve,
we who have entrenched ourselves behind walls
(What defence exists against oneself there?)
in the grey saros period of the mind,
where the dwarf roses darken in colour
and the pupil blackens like an eclipse
against the mammilations of the iris.
110
Weissenfels, gleaming ivory-white bust
of Novalis on his gravestone staring
into the utter secretiveness that
will always be inaccessible to
the living, who believe that death is ex
planation enough, that dates and laurel
wreaths with fluttering silk ribbons and stone
are everything that we need in this world.
Some sculpture or other that I once saw
wrapped in black hessian and held togeth
er with string, ‘Hymnen an die Nacht’ as
the German sculptress referred to it.
A distant and transcendental portrait
brought back from the realms of sleep or of dreams.
111
Brought back from the realms of sleep or of dreams
these mathematical sonnets. But when
everything has been weighed and measured, what
still remains is that which is essential,
which is always stillness and always too
light to weigh down anything except the i
maginary weight of the conscience, too
transparent for the latticework of vi
sion, which allows the most self-evident
to slip through the coarseness of the mesh; for
example we are unable to see
the dark but rather tend to embrace it,
as we do with death, whose angel shines out
as proof against oblivion itself.
112
As proof against oblivion itself
his love was, which precisely did not seek
to vanquish death, but precisely sought to
unite both of them in eternity.
For oblivion already begins
at the first kiss, and to live is almost
like forgetting. For that reason, we who
live must take root in this ‘almost’, the nar
row plot of recollection, not in ord
er to either defy death or assert
life, but in order to connect the in
ner universe with the outer in its
room lit up by the lightning of winter.
Spirit is exactly the same as love.
113
Spirit is exactly the same as love
(even though they are more separate than
the most distant lovers) because they both
unite in spite of the impossibil
ity of uniting in the world of
reason with its dried-up rose bushes, and
neither is emotion capable of
stretching out over the abyss of trans
formation, as only the leap across
the invisible diamond of the ob
vious can. As if love was nothing but
an emotion. Like the spirit it is
a relationship that dissolves matter,
although they’re not wholly identical.
114
Although they’re not wholly identical,
they are each other’s equal, all lovers
that are gathered in the shadow of death
purer than salt and calcium, but not
yet dedicated to oblivion,
for as they love, they abandon themselves
and are remembered in the word’s most
literal as well as its most orig
inal sense. For that reason love makes a
connection between life and death as a
golden middle proportional, an ob
scure evening path, which like the hand’s fate line
also winds its way through the suffering,
as the one seeks for the abode of light.
115
As the one seeks for the abode of light
the other must of necessity crash
so as to form an anchor with its heart,
an earth connection with the body, since
the spirit needs its ballast, and love needs
its skeleton in the cupboard (or at
Grüningen cemetery) when it gets
so far that the mind loses its reason
for becoming pure fantasy among
the cool winter gardens of the stars. And
many poets are aware of the price
(or their women, who are the ones who pay)
for rising up towards the sun’s emblem:
while the other finds darkness and the night.
116
While the other finds darkness and the night.
But what of that? The night too has to be
vanquished. And not only by light. And per
haps not at all by sunshine or by fire.
Who for example would attempt to take
possession of the day using darkness,
or death while retaining life in one piece.
And how should this cornelian other
wise have been able to gleam with its dark
light out of the secret crown of the night.
How should ‘Hymnen an die Nacht’ ever
otherwise have risen up in his mind
or blood as bubbles of pure poetry.
But that paradox we will never solve.
117
But that paradox we will never solve
partly because a paradox that is
genuine cannot be solved, partly be
cause we have not been hit mortally e
nough there where the pain draws its fault lines of
beauty, we who do not possess a heart
that is as hard and pure as quartz, in which
light can refract and lose its way and die,
so that nothing but the darkness remains
as well as the powerful trance of love.
We who always worshipped day and the mar
ble stairs of logic, what do we know at
all about this particular séance,
we who have entrenched ourselves behind walls.
118
We who have entrenched ourselves behind walls
(mostly out of fear of ourselves) or who
fled into the grey kingdom of matter,
we did not understand the great necro
mancers clad in their morocco leather
gloves and in their white shirt frills and we ac
cused them instead of fleeing into
dream monarchies and into empires with
out water, into imaginary
republics beyond all understanding.
Therefore they often happened to go a
stray overturn their goblets of di
vine wine into the dominion of hell.
What defence exists against oneself there?
119
What defence exists against oneself there
in the mind’s enclosure, its secret pen
tagram? – But possibly the meaning is
precisely to be overcome by one
self, by one’s own loneliness, to become
one’s own accuser, judge and execu
tioner, one’s own puppet theatre on
the mysterious stage of which the sword
descends day after day without mercy.
In order to get rid of oneself or
in the last resort one’s own god. For how
else can we otherwise manage to en
dure our own self-sufficiency in there
in the grey saros period of the mind?
120
In the grey saros period of the mind
where everything is repeated seven
ty times, is there any room for love there?
– Are we to live out our lives in those eight
een years only to start from scratch again
in the very same routine. And would habit
be able to contain our entire pas
sion? – or will there later perhaps come an
evening when the soul will rise up in us
and flow like some mighty high tide, bursting
its banks so as to unite itself with
other deep waters that are searching far
ther out than the very last of the moss,
where the dwarf roses darken in colour.
121
Where the dwarf roses darken in colour,
and the inner image grows yet lighter
where the elder blossoms like a sudden
madness, there they move along an invis
ible dike, the other side of which does
not exist. And in this way the poets
became messengers between us and the
dead, mediators between us and God.
Consecrated to the thankless task to
commit eternity to paper here
in the world of realities, but not
conversely to lift this world up to that
of the idea. Therefore they grow pale
and the pupil blackens like an eclipse.
122
And the pupil blackens like an eclipse
when encountering another gaze or
when we look death straight in the eye. He was
born during an eclipse of the sun so
as not to be blinded by the divine
light or so as not to herald it. And
it was therefore that he wrote ‘Hymnen an
die Nacht’ so as to prepare the way for
the birth of the radiant daybreak, for
after the darkness can only light come.
And when life is finite, why should death not
also be exactly the same, even
though it seems to be infinitely large
against the mammilations of the iris.
123
Against the mammilations of the iris
the look seems cold and calm now that it is
thrown up against the winter sky’s chromi
um-plated surface not as a debtor
(as if God was sitting there upon a
throne of rubies) but so as to apport
ion the possibility of snow (as
if meteorology would somehow
reveal its secrets to me). Down at Ost
bahnhof station the first light flakes of snow
are beginning to fall like confetti.
I think once again of the large, empty
and transcendent globes of Novalis’ eyes.
Weissenfels, gleaming ivory-white bust.
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