Stephen Spender, John Montague
Der englische Lyriker und Schrifsteller Stephen Spender wurde am 28. Februar 1909 in London geboren. Spender besuchte u.a. die Gresham's School in Holt (Norfolk) und die Universität Oxford. An der Gresham's School begegnete er W. H. Auden. Spender beendete sein Studium nicht, sondern ging nach Deutschland (gleichwohl wurde er 1973 zum honorary fellow of the college erhoben). Zu dieser Zeit in Deutschland wurde er ein Freund von Christopher Isherwood (der auch in Weimar lebte), Louis MacNeice und C. Day Lewis. In späterer Zeit lernte er William Butler Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Joseph Brodsky, Isaiah Berlin, Mary McCarthy, Roy Campbell, Raymond Chandler, Dylan Thomas, Jean-Paul Sartre und T. S. Eliot, sowie als Mitglied der Bloomsbury Group insbesondere Virginia Woolf kennen. Seine ersten Gedichte, bekannt unter Poems (1933), waren oftmals von sozialem Protest inspiriert. Spender begann 1929 seine Arbeit mit dem Roman The Temple, der aber erst 1988 publizierte wurde. Der Roman handelt von einem jungen Mann, der nach Deutschland reist und dort mehr Kultur als in England findet und insbesondere einiges über Beziehungen zu Männern hinzulernt.Spender wurde Professor für Englisch am University College in London und lehrte von 1970 bis 1977. Danach wurde er Professor Emeritus. Spender erhielt 1962 den Titel Commander (CBE) des Order of the British Empire und wurde 1983 zum Ritter geschlagen.
Listen
Deep in the winter plain, two armies
Dig their machinery, to destroy each other.
Men freeze and hunger. No one is given leave
On either side, except the dead, and wounded.
These have their leave; while new battalions wait
On time at last to bring them violent peace.
All have become so nervous and so cold
That each man hates the cause and distant words
Which brought him here, more terribly than bullets.
Once a boy hummed a popular marching song,
Once a novice hand flapped the salute;
The voice was choked the lifted hand fell,
Shot through the wrist by those of his own side.
From their numb harvest all would flee, except
For discipline drilled once in an iron school
Which holds them at the point of a revolver.
Yet when they sleep, the images of home
Ride wishing horses of escape
Which herd the plain in a mass unspoken poem.
Finally, they cease to hate: for although hate
Bursts from the air and whips the earth like hail
Or pours it up in fountains to marvel at,
And although hundreds fell, who can connect
The inexhaustible anger of the guns
With the dumb patience of these tormented animals?
Clean silence drops at night when a little walk
Divides the sleeping armies, each
Huddled in linen woven by remote hands.
When the machines are stilled, a common suffering
Whitens the air with breath and makes both one
As though these enemies slept in each other’s arms.
Only the lucid friend to aerial raiders,
The brilliant pilot moon, stares down
Upon the plain she makes a shining bone
Cut by the shadow of many thousand bones.
Where amber clouds scatter on no-man’s-land
She regards death and time throw up
The furious words and minerals which kill life.
In memoriam M.A.S
There are some days the happy ocean lies
Like an unfingered harp, below the land.
Afternoon guilds all the silent wires
Into a burning music for the eyes
On mirrors flashing between fine-strung fires
The shore, heaped up with roses, horses, spires
Wanders on water tall above ribbed sand.
The motionlessness of the hot sky tires
And a sigh, like a woman's from inland,
Brushes the instrument with shadowy hand
Drawing across those wires some gull's sharp cry
Or bell, or shout, from distant, hedged-in, shires;
These, deep as anchors, the hushing wave buries.
Then from the shore, two zig-zag butterflies
Like errant dog-roses cross the bright strand
Spiralling over waves in dizzy gyres
Until the fall in wet reflected skies.
They drown. Fishermen understand
Such wings sunk in such ritual sacrifice.
Remembering legends of undersea, drowned cities.
What voyagers, oh what heroes, flamed like pyres
With helmets plumed have set forth from some island
And them the seas engulfed. Their eyes
Distorted to the cruel waves desires,
Glitter with coins through the tide scarcely scanned,
While, far above, that harp assumes their sighs.
Stephen Spender (28. Februar 1909 – 16. Juli 1995)
Der irische Lyriker John Montague wurde am 28. Februar 1929 als Sohn irischer Auswanderer in Brooklyn, New York, geboren. Er wuchs in der nordirischen Grafschaft Tyrone auf. Später studierte er in Irland und den USA und lehrte in Irland, Kanada und den USA. Er ist unter anderem Autor von Gedichtbänden und gilt als einer der führenden irischen Lyriker der Gegenwart. Er lebt heute in der irischen Grafschaft Cork und in Nizza.
Blessing
A feel of warmth in this place.
In winter air, a scent of harvest.
No form of prayer is needed,
When by sudden grace attended.
Naturally, we fall from grace.
Mere humans, we forget what light
Led us, lonely, to this place.
No Music
I'll tell you a sore truth, little understood
It's harder to leave, than to be left:
To stay, to leave, both sting wrong.
You will always have me to blame,
Can dream we might have sailed on;
From absence's rib, a warm fiction.
To tear up old love by the roots,
To trample on past affections:
There is no music for so harsh a song.
John Montague (New York, 28. Februar 1929)
Bronze von John Coll
Listen
Deep in the winter plain, two armies
Dig their machinery, to destroy each other.
Men freeze and hunger. No one is given leave
On either side, except the dead, and wounded.
These have their leave; while new battalions wait
On time at last to bring them violent peace.
All have become so nervous and so cold
That each man hates the cause and distant words
Which brought him here, more terribly than bullets.
Once a boy hummed a popular marching song,
Once a novice hand flapped the salute;
The voice was choked the lifted hand fell,
Shot through the wrist by those of his own side.
From their numb harvest all would flee, except
For discipline drilled once in an iron school
Which holds them at the point of a revolver.
Yet when they sleep, the images of home
Ride wishing horses of escape
Which herd the plain in a mass unspoken poem.
Finally, they cease to hate: for although hate
Bursts from the air and whips the earth like hail
Or pours it up in fountains to marvel at,
And although hundreds fell, who can connect
The inexhaustible anger of the guns
With the dumb patience of these tormented animals?
Clean silence drops at night when a little walk
Divides the sleeping armies, each
Huddled in linen woven by remote hands.
When the machines are stilled, a common suffering
Whitens the air with breath and makes both one
As though these enemies slept in each other’s arms.
Only the lucid friend to aerial raiders,
The brilliant pilot moon, stares down
Upon the plain she makes a shining bone
Cut by the shadow of many thousand bones.
Where amber clouds scatter on no-man’s-land
She regards death and time throw up
The furious words and minerals which kill life.
In memoriam M.A.S
There are some days the happy ocean lies
Like an unfingered harp, below the land.
Afternoon guilds all the silent wires
Into a burning music for the eyes
On mirrors flashing between fine-strung fires
The shore, heaped up with roses, horses, spires
Wanders on water tall above ribbed sand.
The motionlessness of the hot sky tires
And a sigh, like a woman's from inland,
Brushes the instrument with shadowy hand
Drawing across those wires some gull's sharp cry
Or bell, or shout, from distant, hedged-in, shires;
These, deep as anchors, the hushing wave buries.
Then from the shore, two zig-zag butterflies
Like errant dog-roses cross the bright strand
Spiralling over waves in dizzy gyres
Until the fall in wet reflected skies.
They drown. Fishermen understand
Such wings sunk in such ritual sacrifice.
Remembering legends of undersea, drowned cities.
What voyagers, oh what heroes, flamed like pyres
With helmets plumed have set forth from some island
And them the seas engulfed. Their eyes
Distorted to the cruel waves desires,
Glitter with coins through the tide scarcely scanned,
While, far above, that harp assumes their sighs.
Stephen Spender (28. Februar 1909 – 16. Juli 1995)
Der irische Lyriker John Montague wurde am 28. Februar 1929 als Sohn irischer Auswanderer in Brooklyn, New York, geboren. Er wuchs in der nordirischen Grafschaft Tyrone auf. Später studierte er in Irland und den USA und lehrte in Irland, Kanada und den USA. Er ist unter anderem Autor von Gedichtbänden und gilt als einer der führenden irischen Lyriker der Gegenwart. Er lebt heute in der irischen Grafschaft Cork und in Nizza.
Blessing
A feel of warmth in this place.
In winter air, a scent of harvest.
No form of prayer is needed,
When by sudden grace attended.
Naturally, we fall from grace.
Mere humans, we forget what light
Led us, lonely, to this place.
No Music
I'll tell you a sore truth, little understood
It's harder to leave, than to be left:
To stay, to leave, both sting wrong.
You will always have me to blame,
Can dream we might have sailed on;
From absence's rib, a warm fiction.
To tear up old love by the roots,
To trample on past affections:
There is no music for so harsh a song.
John Montague (New York, 28. Februar 1929)
Bronze von John Coll
froumen - 28. Feb, 18:35
