Alfred Lichtenstein
Alfred Lichtenstein Poems
Before I die, I must just find this rhyme.
Be quiet, my friends, and do not waste any time.
...
A fog has destroyed the world so gently.
Bloodless trees dissolve in smoke.
And shadows hover where shrieks are heard.
...
A fat young man plays with a pond.
The wind has caught itself in a tree.
The pale sky seems to be rumpled,
As though it had run out of makeup.
...
It sure was fine to be a soldier for a year.
But it is finer to feel free again.
There was enough of depravity and pain
...
I am the Division Commander,
His Excellency.
I have attained what is humanly possible.
...
A frozen moon stands waxen,
White shadows,
Dead face,
Above me and the dull
...
Many sick people are walking in the garden
Back and forth and lying in the porches.
Those who are the sickest burn with fever
...
The earth grows moldy in fog.
The evening is as oppressive as lead.
Electric sparks crackle and whimper all around,
Breaking everything in two.
...
No, I have no capacity for life.
I could be considered foolish--
Today I am not going to the restaurant.
...
It's enough to make me throw the chair through the panes of the
mirror Into the street--
There I sit with raised eyebrows:
...
In the sky the howitzers no longer explode,
The cannoneers rest next to their guns.
The infantry pitch tents now,
And the pale moon slowly rises.
...
The sky is swollen with tears and melancholy.
Only far off, where its foul vapors burst,
Green glow pours down. The houses,
...
Here is the way I shall die:
It's dark. And it has rained.
But you can no longer detect the imprint of the clouds
...
Decline already--
But that was quick...
Hardly a trace of rising--
I have grown above the whole world.
...
for Peter Scher
Before dying I am making my poem.
Quiet, comrades, don't disturb me.
...
Night creeps into the cellars, musty and dull.
Tuxedos totter through the rubble of the street.
Faces are moldy and worn out.
...
I can no longer find a place for my eyes.
I cannot hold my legs together.
My heart is hollow. My head is going to burst.
...
It's certainly late. I must earn something.
But they're all going right by today with smug expressions on their
faces.
...
Yesterday I still went powdered and addicted
Into the many-colored sounding world.
Today everything has long since drowned.
Here is a thing.
...
(Dedicated to Kurt Lubasch, July 15, 1912)
You, I can endure these stolid
Rooms and barren streets
...
Alfred Lichtenstein Biography
Alfred Lichtenstein (* 23 August 1889 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf; † 25 September 1914 near Vermandovillers, Somme, France) was a german expressionist writer. Lichtenstein grew up in Berlin as the son of a manufacturer. He finished a study of law in Erlangen. His was first recognized after publishing poems and short stories in a grotesque style, which recalls a friend of his, Jakob van Hoddis. "Der einzige Trost ist: traurig sein. Wenn die Traurigkeit in Verzweiflung ausartet, soll man grotesk werden. Man soll spaßeshalber weiter leben. Soll versuchen, in der Erkenntnis, dass das Dasein aus lauter brutalen, hundsgemeinen Scherzen besteht, Erhebung zu finden." The only solace: be sad! If sadness becomes despair: be grotesque! Be a clown, trying to find one's amusement by recognizing that existence consists of sheer brutal and shabby strokes. ( A. Lichtenstein ) Indeed, there were voices, claiming an imitation: while Hoddis created this style, Lichtenstein has enlarged it, was said. Lichtenstein played a little around with that reputation by writing a short story, called "The winner", which describes in a scurill way the by chance made friendship of two young man, wherein one falls victim to the other. By using false names he often joshes real persons of the Berlin 1920´th, including himself as Kuno Kohn, a silent shy boy; in "The winner" it is a caricatured - virile van Hoddis, who kills Kuno Kohn at the end of the story. Lichtenstein liked the manner of the French writer Alfred Jarry not only in his ironic writings, like him he rode his bicycle through the town. He did not get old: in 1914 he fell at the front in World War I.)
The Best Poem Of Alfred Lichtenstein
Leaving For The Front
Before I die, I must just find this rhyme.
Be quiet, my friends, and do not waste any time.
We’re marching off in company with death.
I only wish my girl would hold her breath.
There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m glad to leave,
Now mother’s crying too, there’s no reprieve.
And now look how the sun’s begun to set.
A nice mass-grave is all that I shall get.
Once more the good old sunset‘s glowing red.
In thirteen days I’ll probably be dead.
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