James Merrill
Der amerikanischer Lyriker und Schriftsteller James Ingram Merrill wurde am 3. März 1926 in New York City geboren. In seiner Kindheit genoss Merrill ein privilegiertes Leben und eine gute Erziehung. Er erhielt Privatunterricht und lernte Französisch und Deutsch. In seinem Gedicht Lost in Translation schreibt Merrill über seine Kindheitserfahrungen. Seine Eltern trennten sich, als Merrill 11 Jahre alt war und ließen sich scheiden, als er 13 Jahre alt war. Merrill besuchte als Teenager die Lawrenceville School. Als Merrill 16 Jahre alt wurde, begann sein Vater seine Kurzgeschichten und Gedichte zu sammeln und veröffentlichte diese als Überraschung unter dem Titel Jim's Book. 1944 unterbrach Merrill sein Studium für einen achtmonatigen Einsatz in der United States Army. 1945 kehrte er an das Amherst College zurück und graduierte dort 1947. Eine Sammlung seiner Gedichte unter dem Titel The Black Swan veröffentlichte sein Mentor Professor Kimon Friar am Amherst College und 1946 privat in Athen, Griechenland. 1951 veröffentlichte Merrill seine erste verlegerisch besorgte Ausgabe First Poems durch Alfred A. Knopf.
Merrill verliebte sich in den Autor David Jackson, mit dem er vier Jahrzehnte zusammenlebte. Merrill und Jackson trafen sich 1953 in New York City nach einer Performance von Merrills The Bait. Gemeinsam zogen sie 1955 nach Stonington, Connecticut. In den folgenden beiden Jahrzehnten verbrachten sie jeweils einen Teil des jeweiligen Jahres in Athen, Griechenland.
In den Memoiren von 1993 zeichnet Merrill ein Porträt des schwulen Lebens in den frühen 1950ern, in denen er Beziehungen mit verschiedenen Männern wie den Autor Claude Fredericks, den Kunsthändlern Robert Isaacson, David Jackson und den Schauspieler Peter Hooten schildert.
Bereits zu Beginn seiner schriftstellerischen Karriere gewann Merrill für The Black Swan den Glascock Prize. Im Laufe seines weiteren schriftstellerischen Schaffens erhielt er zahlreiche bedeutende Poesieauszeichnungen in den Vereinigten Staaten, inklusive 1977 den Pulitzer Preis für Divine Comedies.
Voices from the Other World
Presently at our touch the teacup stirred,
Then circled lazily about
From A to Z. The first voice heard
(If they are voices, these mute spellers-out)
Was that of an engineer
Originally from Cologne.
Dead in his 22nd year
Of cholera in Cairo, he had KNOWN
NO HAPPINESS. He once met Goethe, though.
Goethe had told him: PERSEVERE.
Our blind hound whined. With that, a horde
Of voices gathered above the Ouija board,
Some childish and, you might say, blurred
By sleep; one little boy
Named Will, reluctant possibly in a ruff
Like a large-lidded page out of El Greco, pulled
Back the arras for that next voice,
Cold and portentous: ALL IS LOST.
FLEE THIS HOUSE. OTTO VON THURN UND TAXIS.
OBEY. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.
Frightened, we stopped; but tossed
Till sunrise striped the rumpled sheets with gold.
Each night since then, the moon waxes,
Small insects flit round a cold torch
We light, that sends them pattering to the porch . . .
But no real Sign. New voices come,
Dictate addresses, begging us to write;
Some warn of lives misspent, and all of doom
In way’s that so exhilarate
We are sleeping sound of late.
Last night the teacup shattered in a rage.
Indeed, we have grown nonchalant
Towards the other world. In the gloom here,
our elbows on the cleared
Table, we talk and smoke, pleased to be stirred
Rather by buzzings in the jasmine, by the drone
Of our own voices and poor blind Rover’s wheeze,
Than by those clamoring overhead,
Obsessed or piteous, for a commitment
We still have wit to postpone
Because, once looked at lit
By the cold reflections of the dead
Risen extinct but irresistible,
Our lives have never seemed more full, more real,
Nor the full moon more quick to chill.
The Victor Dog
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.
From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man's--no--he's the Leiermann's best friend,
Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear?I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel's
"Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment."
He ponders the Schumann Concerto's tall willow hit
By lightning, and stays put.When he surmises
Through one of Bach's eternal boxwood mazes
The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,
Or when the calypso decants its raw bay rum
Or the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder,
He doesn't sneeze or howl; just listens harder.
Adamant needles bear down on him from
Whirling of outer space, too black, too near--
But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch,
Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche
Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.
Still others fought in the road's filth over Jezebel,
Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons.
His forebears lacked, to say the least, forebearance.
Can nature change in him?Nothing's impossible.
The last chord fades.The night is cold and fine.
His master's voice rasps through the grooves' bare groves.
Obediently, in silence like the grave's
He sleeps there on the still-warm gramophone
Only to dream he is at the première of a Handel
Opera long thought lost--Il Cane Minore.
Its allegorical subject is his story!
A little dog revolving round a spindle
Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief,
A cast of stars . . . . Is there in Victor's heart
No honey for the vanquished?Art is art.
The life it asks of us is a dog's life.
James Merrill (3. März 1926 – 6. Februar 1995)
Merrill verliebte sich in den Autor David Jackson, mit dem er vier Jahrzehnte zusammenlebte. Merrill und Jackson trafen sich 1953 in New York City nach einer Performance von Merrills The Bait. Gemeinsam zogen sie 1955 nach Stonington, Connecticut. In den folgenden beiden Jahrzehnten verbrachten sie jeweils einen Teil des jeweiligen Jahres in Athen, Griechenland.
In den Memoiren von 1993 zeichnet Merrill ein Porträt des schwulen Lebens in den frühen 1950ern, in denen er Beziehungen mit verschiedenen Männern wie den Autor Claude Fredericks, den Kunsthändlern Robert Isaacson, David Jackson und den Schauspieler Peter Hooten schildert.
Bereits zu Beginn seiner schriftstellerischen Karriere gewann Merrill für The Black Swan den Glascock Prize. Im Laufe seines weiteren schriftstellerischen Schaffens erhielt er zahlreiche bedeutende Poesieauszeichnungen in den Vereinigten Staaten, inklusive 1977 den Pulitzer Preis für Divine Comedies.
Voices from the Other World
Presently at our touch the teacup stirred,
Then circled lazily about
From A to Z. The first voice heard
(If they are voices, these mute spellers-out)
Was that of an engineer
Originally from Cologne.
Dead in his 22nd year
Of cholera in Cairo, he had KNOWN
NO HAPPINESS. He once met Goethe, though.
Goethe had told him: PERSEVERE.
Our blind hound whined. With that, a horde
Of voices gathered above the Ouija board,
Some childish and, you might say, blurred
By sleep; one little boy
Named Will, reluctant possibly in a ruff
Like a large-lidded page out of El Greco, pulled
Back the arras for that next voice,
Cold and portentous: ALL IS LOST.
FLEE THIS HOUSE. OTTO VON THURN UND TAXIS.
OBEY. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.
Frightened, we stopped; but tossed
Till sunrise striped the rumpled sheets with gold.
Each night since then, the moon waxes,
Small insects flit round a cold torch
We light, that sends them pattering to the porch . . .
But no real Sign. New voices come,
Dictate addresses, begging us to write;
Some warn of lives misspent, and all of doom
In way’s that so exhilarate
We are sleeping sound of late.
Last night the teacup shattered in a rage.
Indeed, we have grown nonchalant
Towards the other world. In the gloom here,
our elbows on the cleared
Table, we talk and smoke, pleased to be stirred
Rather by buzzings in the jasmine, by the drone
Of our own voices and poor blind Rover’s wheeze,
Than by those clamoring overhead,
Obsessed or piteous, for a commitment
We still have wit to postpone
Because, once looked at lit
By the cold reflections of the dead
Risen extinct but irresistible,
Our lives have never seemed more full, more real,
Nor the full moon more quick to chill.
The Victor Dog
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.
From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man's--no--he's the Leiermann's best friend,
Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear?I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel's
"Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment."
He ponders the Schumann Concerto's tall willow hit
By lightning, and stays put.When he surmises
Through one of Bach's eternal boxwood mazes
The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,
Or when the calypso decants its raw bay rum
Or the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder,
He doesn't sneeze or howl; just listens harder.
Adamant needles bear down on him from
Whirling of outer space, too black, too near--
But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch,
Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche
Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.
Still others fought in the road's filth over Jezebel,
Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons.
His forebears lacked, to say the least, forebearance.
Can nature change in him?Nothing's impossible.
The last chord fades.The night is cold and fine.
His master's voice rasps through the grooves' bare groves.
Obediently, in silence like the grave's
He sleeps there on the still-warm gramophone
Only to dream he is at the première of a Handel
Opera long thought lost--Il Cane Minore.
Its allegorical subject is his story!
A little dog revolving round a spindle
Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief,
A cast of stars . . . . Is there in Victor's heart
No honey for the vanquished?Art is art.
The life it asks of us is a dog's life.
James Merrill (3. März 1926 – 6. Februar 1995)
froumen - 3. Mär, 19:03
