Project Gutenberg's The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein, by Alfred Lichtenstein

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Title: The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein

Author: Alfred Lichtenstein

Posting Date: July 26, 2009 [EBook #4369]
Release Date: August, 2003
First Posted: January 18, 2002
Last Updated: February 6, 2008

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VERSE OF ALFRED LICHTENSTEIN ***

Produced by Michael Pullen

The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein

(a critique by Lichtenstein himself)

I

Because I believe that many do not understand the verse of
Lichtenstein, do not correctly understand, do not clearly understand--

II

The first eighty poems are lyric. In the usual sense. They are not
much different from poetry that praises gardens. The content is the
distress of love, death, universal longing. The impulse to formulate
them in the "cynical" vein (like cabaret songs) may, for example,
might have arisen from the wish to feel superior. Most of the eighty
poems are insignificant. They were not presented to the public. All
except one (one of the last) That is:

I want to bury myself in the night,
Naked and shy.
And to wrap darknesses around my limbs
And warm luster.
I want to wander far behind the hills of the earth.
Deep beyond the gliding oceans.
Past the singing winds.
There I'll meet the silent stars.
They carry space through time.
And live at the death of being.
And among them are gray,
Isolated things.
Faded movement
Of worlds long decayed.
Lost sound.
Who can know that.
My blind dream watches far from earthly wishes.

III

The following poems can be divided into three groups. One combines
fantastic, half-playful images: The Sad Man, Rubbers, Capriccio, The
Patent-Leather Shoe, A Barkeeper's Coarse Complaint. (First appeared
in Aktion, in Simplicissimus, in March, Pan and elsewhere). Pleasure
in what is purely artistic is unmistakable.

Examples: The Athlete: in the background is a demonstration of a
view of the world. The Athlete... means that it is terrible that a
man must also intellectually move his bowels.--Rubbers: a man wea