The Caspar David Friedrich Hennets
1. Two Men Contemplating the Moon
He exhorts him to look, to look, with his arm
round as support. They belong together, you
see, in uniform almost. No phantom harm,
goes his consoling assurance, can disturb
now his elder, his father, who himself knew
once what such sights had meant for him — this superb,
crisp embrace of the old moon’s jewel, moments
crafted precisely by time, powdered with brown,
gloomy, luminous mist, — these boughs like serpents,
these roots vainly flailing, wrenched from rock. Not down,
though, the trunk, for it’s propped on a firm boulder,
as the old moon is on the new moon’s shoulder.
[Zwei Männer in Betrachtung des Mondes, 1819. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden]
2. The Cross in the Mountains
See the boulders some cataclysm has thrown
down into chaos from chaos: they lie jammed,
interlocked as two Svankmeyer heads of stone
stupidly glaring. Autumn bushes between
have black branches of paroxysmal nerves, damned,
crookt, to rigidity. Through the ravine
the stream jostles its life from one pool of sleep
down to another, its choices eroding
the harsh chances. The blind firs, furthermore, keep
strict to their symmetry, though still foreboding
what the crucifix signifies. There above,
from the gloom fade the towers ordered in love.
[Das Kreuz im Gebirge, 1811. Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf im Ehrenhof]
3. Abbey in an oak wood
It’s a window without ‘without’, ‘within’.
Lead and iron lace imperceptibly unpicked.
Where the rest of the abbey was, no ruin,
only a woodhenge of oaks. Stark black lightning
as each trunk, branch and twig. The gravestones, gothicked,
timeworn, askew, voice nothing in this evening
fog, this dark, sodden solitude, where the dead
lie more deep-rooted than roots, than fallen boughs
from those armless trees, all withdrawn in a bed
seamed in the past to stillness. What disavows
sadness, grief, apprehension? Though the sun’s gone,
one can see a new moon that shows where it shone.
[Abtei in Eichwald, 1809/10. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
4. Eldena Ruin
To the trees the old abbey’s ruins are no
more than the rock from which they came, but even
on the trees are dead branches. Ivy can grow
free on what would have been an interior
wall. Time’s chance has truncated weather-beaten
columns to no level with superior,
stubborn, wayward precision, utterly thus,
always as presently seen. The cottage, built
as defying what time can do, with beam, truss,
upright, all jointed just so, and roofed, must tilt,
slip, collapse. But the old man with the white beard
had looked up as if there was nothing he feared.
[Ruine Eldena, 1825. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]
5. Landscape with Oaks and Hunter
It took half an hour finding him. Not figures,
then, on the grass, deep in talk, centred in light
where the even green tempts the chance worshippers
drawn to the sunlit space and wide walks open
as inviting away. Over to the right
was it a lonely black horseman half-woven
in the foliage, or, if one looked closer,
leaves on that bush in the foreground? Where was he
off to? Whence? Was he hidden as a joker
up in that tree to fool the birds? Does that tree
on the left have no trunk? Looking thus about,
you can’t help being here tempted into doubt.
[Landschaft mit Eichen und Jäger, 1811. Stiftung Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur]
6. Oak in Snow
Unmistakable oak: branches arthritic,
rigid, recording past hard decisions made,
now beyond alteration, in politic
compromise, anguished negation, or escape
through a zig-zag experiment, unafraid,
having accepted winter’s wait, let snow shape
itself frozen to each bend and twist, and each
blank amputation, to the dead lost limbs prone
and abandoned. Without sign of life, still reach
those boughs for spring’s arrival. It grows alone,
this old oaktree, still gripping last year’s leaves, dry
and resistant, in hope of another sky.
[Eiche im Schnee, 1827/28. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Köln]
7. Oaktree in snow
It’s a totem-pole. Chopped arms and hands are carved
tight to the trunk. One deformed hand is outstretched
as if asking for something. One bough is halved;
others are twisted by what they sought. The dead
lie in battlefield disorder. Above, etched
sharp on the sky, twigs dwindle out like outspread,
thin, anatomized nerves. The figure so locked
below by frozen earth and ice is headless.
It is far from the forest. The snow has blocked
life, letting only the dead grass through. Deadness,
but not dead. One can wonder why the tree strives
after struggle like this, ask why it survives.
[Eichbaum im Schnee, 1829. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]
8. The oaktree in Dolmen by the Sea, Dolmen in the Snow, Winter, Cloister Cemetery in the Snow, and Oak in Snow
Can’t you see it’s the tree! Friedrich decides, on
reaching the year 1829, to make
this, his favourite gothic tree, his icon.
Yes, he allows it some gains by then, showing
there were better times once, but tempests do shake
down rotten boughs (as in Winter, a painting
destroyed — bombs in the war). The long phallic branch
keeps all its twigs, pointing away from cloister
and the mourning procession; snow cannot blanch,
even though that painting, too, some destroyer
crushed or burned. When one’s no longer assisted
by hope, it’s then that despair can be resisted.
[Hünengrab bei Meer, 1806/7, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Weimar; Hünengrab im Schnee, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Winter, 1897/8, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Klosterfriedhof im Schnee, 1817/19, (vernichtet) früher im Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin; Eichbaum im Schnee, 1829, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
9. Morning
See this morning from here? How else? All the firs
stand in their own places though, in their being
as they are. For us, distance shrinks, mist blurs
them, but they are from no perspective, are not
an assembly of sombre ghosts awaiting
either for sunrise or for some secret plot
to unfold, or, as judges, now passing dire
sentence on what has transpired in the night.
Nor do mists in their sarabande swirls aspire
up to the tree-tops or clouds. Prophetic light
is not wakening the sky. The man is engrossed
in the labour that humbly concerns him most.
[Morgen, 1821. Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum]
10. Midday
Did the man on the lane see the other just
now? Did he know him? Their lines through life have crossed
as their footprints will, unnoticed. The trees must,
too, all be growing in this stillness of noon.
Not a one of us sees it. Ask with what cost,
early in the past, the fields were levelled. How soon
did the track take its course? Where no wheel has rolled,
no one has walked. The grass and the wild flowers grow
at no rate that an eye could perceive. The wold
wears through an aeon. But what the paint can show
is a ‘heavenly place’, as we say, a ‘calm’
and a ‘beauty’, an ‘unhope’ beyond all harm.
[Der Mittag, um 1820. Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum]
11. Midday — Reversed!
In the picture in this volume[1] the farm track
bends to the left, the man in the field walks in
from the right. Now in this one[2], all is turned back:
lane bends to right, man’s on the left. In Johnson’s
book A Treatise on Language[3] two photos spin
him in looking-glass-wise, and it sharpens
the strange paradox since such illogic
held fascination for Johnson. What world is this
then? — a fiction of fiction, metamorphic
block to an art-lover’s eye, one who like Alice
must pursue a nonsensical quest — Sublime! —
just as if he didn’t do it all the time![4]
[1] Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books, 1990), p. 203.
[2] Norbert Wolf, Caspar David Friedrich, 1774-1840: The Painter of Stillness (Köln and London: Taschen, 2003), p.66.
[3] Alexander Bryan Johnson, A Treatise on Language, ed. David Rynin (New York: Dover Publications, 1968), cover and frontispiece.
[4] See also the reversal of The Garden Terrace: Wolf, p. 40 and Koerner, p. 115.
12. The Afternoon
He is driving his horse and cart forever.
Afternoon hours here become eternity,
and the afternoon landscape will never
reach to infinity in those folding hills
that are clouds or hills, visibility
being a matter in which our human wills
choose the object that’s seen. The soil can be blank,
black and unsown, or can produce this harvest.
On the left, can you see the lane on that bank,
marked with a milestone (why not?), where the forest
has been cut for his way? But if he ever
drives his cart there, he’s still held here forever.
(Der Nachtmittag, um 1820. Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum]
13. The Evening
This composed, yet retreating time turns the trunks
into the pillars of a multi-columned
temple, mosque, or a cloister. There are two monks
praying in silent attunement and wonder
at the light that is hiding itself, fathomed
deep in the sky’s fading ocean. There, under
this dark canopy, stone carved to foliage,
domes that are lifted in hope, are no shadows,
only rust-tinted shade, its light a seepage
down into night. So slow it never will close,
or say no. We might ask what it is we miss.
Can we share this ecstatic, or tragic, bliss?
[Der Abend, um 1820. Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum]
14. Neubrandenburg
It is dark where they are, and we are. Rain soon.
Clouds, making visible convolving currents,
are in silence gigantic, but no misfortune
ever will fall upon those two. They are right
to stand watching the sunset, as supplicants
picturing hope: first, in the lingering light
where its gildings still shape the hill and must fall
even more brightly upon fields out of sight;
in those clouds where the sun’s gone, drawing a shawl
over its glory; and in the birds’ sure flight
into primrose and gold. Though the town’s in shade,
we’ll return to its roofs feeling less afraid.
[Neubrandenburg, 1817. Stiftung Pommern, Kiel]
15. Stroll in Evening Twilight
With hands clasped and head bowed, he could be in church
save that he wears his hat. The moment is prime,
for the sun has now set. Has he come in search,
hoping to light upon hope, to meet it here
in a megalith? Massive fixture in time,
left as a foe of time, a witness each year
to an honour ancestral, a committed
promise pursuing the impossible
balance propped as secure faith, inherited
only as hope. He prays for the incredible
creed that never was real. How then could it last?
Make the new moon the present, the old the past.
[Spaziergang in der Abendämmerung, 1830. Privatbesitz]
16. Inside a Wood in Moonlight
There is none of this planned — save poking the fire,
boiling the kettle, gathering wood good
for naught else, and the reason they’re there. Inquire,
though, what the moon might be doing! Take its light,
pallid, purely intense, turning to falsehood
gray-blue as bloom on grapes the darkness of night
and the colours of day. No Diana’s made
plans so to metamorphose with such tingling
silver ‘blackness’ or ‘greenness’, to lighten shade
while, at the same time, blackest shadows casting
in long motionless bars. Contradictory
to see treetops aspiring to mystery.
[Waldinneres bei Mondschein, um 1823-30. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]
17. Easter Morning
She is coming to join them, a little late —
see, for the sun is now up, her footsteps and
all the birds near and far in shrill debate
sole to be heard. The road, its own history,
was made smooth just as much for those who now stand
piously waiting. There is a mystery
in this morning made Easter by their choice to
be just there ready again after a year,
after years, young and old, the rite to renew
spring as renewing. Who can still reappear
on this road twelve months hence, thus contemplating,
as if tree, too, and hill were watching, waiting?
[Ostermorgen, Cooper-Bridgeman Library, London]
18. Woman before the Setting Sun
No! No beams in the sky were so ribanded!
Faced with such pietistic rays, convergence
fetishistic, a golden source so honeyed,
centred, possessed, it pins idolatry
to her sex. She becomes for you a monstrance
fusing at once two avatars of lucky,
ideal devotion, fanatically sure,
sure as this censure. But the golden light
has so soaked itself into every impure
colour, they glow as if, sudden, they ignite
with the painful remembrance of a yearning
long rejected where embers are still burning.
[Frau vor dem Sonnenuntergang, 1818. Museum Folkwang, Essen]
19. Woman at the Window
Here we are in a ‘house’ (or ‘Haus’). The floor wide-
planked, well-supported no doubt, and well-planed (‘true’,
as we say). Perpendicular ‘walls’, inside
smooth, geometrical, with the ‘window-bay’
and the ‘window’ by neat carpentry virtue
set in rectangular state, suiting each way
human beings might fittingly, freely move.
Windows can open or close. Here she looks out:
not a sign of bad weather (the ‘catches’ prove
sometimes it’s there). Is it a time to go out
in the ‘open’? The sky is quite blue at last.
Take no heed that the masts show a wave has past.
[Frau am Fenster, 1822. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
20. Garden Terrace
A parterre can provide free, unimpeded
way for the feet, though the notices (they are
here invisible) guard the grass. She’s heeded
them and now sits where you can, though her sewing
lies unheeded, her head bowed. What, then, could bar
one from the splendid view, the lions showing
in such safety a gate — pretty symmetry
there! — where a walk for an idler must invite?
And the leaves live a pattern. Most poetry
rhymes or has rhythm. See the seductive light
on contented, green meadows, how earth’s vesture
can but echo the goddess’s mild gesture.
[Gartenterrasse, 1811. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin]
21. Meadow near Greifswald
The young horses frisk in wild abandon:
fences or hedges are nowhere to be seen.
There the seagulls are resting on the common:
no one disturbs them. But at the slightest start
they will all be in flight, free over the green
field in the unresisting air. Here’s a part
that is marked with a ridge of sorts — some ancient
village, perhaps, shows a trace, but the grasses
and the bushes can grow without measurement.
Windmills must spin as the breeze or gale passes,
or lie still as now. See, though, what must dominate
the whole prospect: the order of church and state.
[Wiese bei Greifswald, 1820/22. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
22. Landscape with Crumbling Wall
We know walls must have gates. We have carefully
settled the heavy stones one on another
with an eye on the fit, whether custody,
property, nation, protection be our aim,
to enclose all our love, exclude the other,
mark out existence with map, with line, with name
to confirm our agreements, our human trust.
Gates let us break those walls — ask at whose wish, though.
And cement itself cracks, and stone turns to dust,
hinges will rust, wood split and rot. Tomorrow
we may find we are free of our walls, may range
over landscapes in haze, for trust, too, may change.
[Landschaft mit verfallener Mauer, 1837/40. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
23. Chasseur in the Forest
One asks: Why does he stand still, this rifleman?
Since he is armed, one assumes there is no fear.
Is he listening? No sound save the alien
whisper and sough of wind that all the trees must
in their deafness contribute. No wolf, no deer,
only a lone raven, prying, free of mistrust
of the motionless man. Does he remember
something or someone, his eyes open but blind?
Is it awe of the solitude, December
darkness, or unforgiving cold? His mind
could be checked by a choice: the trees all await
his decision, an assembly judging his fate.
[Der Chasseur im Walde, 1814. Privatbesitz, Bielefeld]
24. The Great Enclosure near Dresden
Were those mountains that blue, far-off horizon,
wonder would dwell on their hugeness and smoothness
as the eye does now. So to lengthen, widen,
deepen the sunset landscape all that is seen
combines in peace. The boat so slow in soundless
drift it seems not to advance. There supervene
long perspectives in miniatured trees, in bland,
tender erasure of detail in distance,
in the clouds’ calm withdrawals, in waters spanned,
dappling the darkened mud, in a co-existence,
a retouching of colours, with the sky. To some
hopeful eye it might seem night will never come.
[Das große Gehege bei Dresden, um 1832. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden]
25. Evening Star
All of Dresden is out of sight save the three
spires and the dome — what of the inhabitants
do they tell us? They point as a guarantee,
also a pledge, up to where the Evening Star
can contribute its purity, brilliance,
distant inducement. Why does his son hoorah?
Why do his mother and sister watch him wave,
flapping his hat in play, in joy? Our children
do not skip for no reason, though their so-grave
parents may view it thus. He waves unbidden
in a greeting of wonder. Does his painter-
father see it grow brighter thus, not fainter?
[Der Abendstern, 1830/35. Freies Deutsches Hochstift, Goethemuseum, Frankfurt]
26. Rural Landscape
How un-Friedrich! The darkening sky perhaps —
but the sunlight still brightens one side of tree,
cottage, windmill, and woman. Is it a lapse,
some unendurable longing that guided
every movement of brush on the canvas? He
painted the trees in an embrace, decided
father, mother and child was the best happy
image for house. The fields show nature controlled,
and, then, what serves a windmill but to marry
labour to gale? Trees grow in lines; hedges fold
in the home; while the gate allows one to move
in and out. What do louring clouds have to prove?
[Ländliche Gegend, 1823. Schinkel Pavilion, Schloß Charlottenburg]
27. Morning in the Mountains
Every track is both triumph and loss, winning easy
slope and convenient gap, but is witness
to the awkward, the stubborn, when it meekly
leaves the big stone, the tuft — like a stream. They sit
where the view is the best and let limitless
distance fill in the pauses of talk, a fit,
sharp reminder of what talk presumes, a last
perfect agreement, vague, blurred, overlapping
pale horizons beyond present and past,
over the chasms between that no mapping
can remove. We can’t please our hopes to the full.
Watch the sheep as they make our mutton and wool.
[Der Morgen im Gebirge, 1822/23. Ermitage, St. Petersburg]
28. Mountainous River Landscape [Two matching paintings on the same piece of transparent paper, back to back, one revealed by illumination from behind]
The opaque comes first: morning mist effaces
all that’s beyond, valley and town, both the pass
and the summit. In beige and buff all traces
vanish of space as it is, leaving boundless,
open nowhere and nothing, where the lake’s glass
loses reflection and edge, hills the soundness
of their visible being. Only a white
sun is left, blank focus of blankness. But when
in the dark they put candles behind, the sight
changes to sunset, life’s end, and reds cayenne,
terra cotta, rust, flame, in all inhering,
render all as distinct but disappearing.
[Gebirgig Flußlandschaft, 1830/35. Staatliche Museen, Kassel]
29. Mountain Pasture with the Source of the River Elbe
Oh, what thoughts are we sharing with the young
man, and what not? He has climbed up here to see
a beginning in time and space. It has sprung
there since some decision was fixed on that this
was the source, though the ones over there could be,
given some mapmaker’s whim. The randomness
of the choice seems irrelevant, for someone
brought up those well-cut stones to clinch the matter,
like some Roman a holy well. Those bygone
choices remain subject to what can scatter
stones back into the ground. What looks a mere pond,
though, is changed to the grandeur of miles beyond.
[Elbquelle, 1828/30. Sammlung Winterstein, München]
30. Mountain Landscape
Neither ploughman nor horse are looking above.
Work’s to be done, as here, close to us, furrows
texture earth in neat corrugations. Plain love
makes a prosaic demand. Perhaps the spire
makes the point that the peak does. There the meadows
capture and hold the late light where one’s desire
must be waiting — a liar light. The first hill
bears a lone monastery where ascetics
stretch for a surrogate goal for errant will,
though they find height frustrates. But no ecstatics
are at work higher up at the mine. No brisk
air disturbs its straight smoke. Miners cope with risk.
[Berglandschaft, Puschkin Museum, Moskau]
31. Mountain Landscape with Rainbow
Since we each see our own rainbows, there is none
common to all. And, too, it retreats as we
try to reach it. The sombre peak, which the sun
cannot illumine now, seems the nearest to
such an innocent joy. Trees and slopes may be
balanced on canvas, boulders may glow, the hue
of your clothes is your choice, but just look down there:
out of your sight such depth to be measured
before anyone climbs. And unreal, unfair,
since you can see the sun! It can’t be forward
of a rainbow! So paradoxical, you’d
almost now prefer all of us to collude.
[Gebirgslandschaft mit Regenbogen, um 1810. Museum Folkwang, Essen]
32. Morning in the Riesengebirge
Far above all the mist the rocks are barren,
craggéd, exposed, though they catch the sunset light
when the beings below do not, their passion
blind, directed askew in confusion.
Where the moon is the queen, declared in her height,
mountains her courtiers subdued, all illusion
washed away in exalted space, with a sure
line that divides heaven and earth, we have raised
a lone cross that ignores her, so we can abjure
purities, heavenly perfections we’ve praised
in our times of illusion, all thought ideal
in the real, when illusion has been the real.
[Morgen im Riesengebirge, 1810/11. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
33. Clouds over the Riesengebirge
Oh yes — stand back, because the cracks in the paint
definitely distract. After all, look there
in the foreground — can’t those cracks be seen as faint
veins in the rock? And higher up (or further
off!) you see ‘horizontal’ lines that could bear
seeing as crests of hills. Then if you search a
cloud, it’s darker because of them. Time has drawn
crazy reticulations, though, that ignore
what the eye would prefer to see, the clouds borne
leaning across, and, what we would feel, awe
at impossible distance. But our feeling
awe in part came from the clouds’ careful concealing.
[Wolken über dem Riesengebirge, 1820/21. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
34. Riesengebirge
As we breathe the breeze scented with heather, and,
pausing a while, look behind, it seems twilight
is most dark where we are. We can see the land
ceding distinctions to night, but, far away,
where the air is still golden, it defeats sight
just as much, merging, blurring. Quick to betray
ourselves, seeing what’s distant as a promise
when it was only a half-heard whisper sighed
by the wind in these bushes. Let us, restless,
stride hand in hand, so that each becomes a guide
to the other as night falls, the hidden sun
warming hope somewhere else that has just begun.
[Riesengebirge, um 1830/35. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
35. Landscape of the Riesengebirge
Why delight at the light? One moment in time,
light that is one, yet is many, from the sun
on the fresh grass this morning to the sublime
cloud-shaded summit. Even the dark foreground
where the shadow is deepest, the light is spun
out of the same radiance. The clouds are bound
as they fly, each one darkening, lightening,
drenched in its being by rays whose speed turns theirs
into stillness, a stain that is brightening,
dimming in one skywide scatter that shares
out its whiteness in colour that is dyeing
only once, in that act identifying.
[Landschaft von der Riesengebirge, 1823. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
36. Ruins in the Riesengebirge
It’s another impossible view. Nearest,
down on the left, is a broken branch he drew
twenty years before this, now the clearest
thing to be seen, zig-zag, cracked, snagging the air
with its brittle and tough twigs — to continue
busy, decaying. And he painted elsewhere
five years later the abbey ruins, buttress,
corner, the windowless arch, forgotten till
now. The mountains the strangest, for no likeness
surely survives mirror-reversal. Tranquil
in empurpled sublimity, under sky
that is equally blissful, they lure the eye.
[Ruine in der Riesengebirge, 1830-4. Pommersches Landesmuseum, Greifswald]
37. Moon over the Riesengebirge
See the arms of the cloud dancers, feathery
curlicues, chorusing freedom, precision,
spontaneity, rhythm, transitory
permanence, ceaseless swift immediacy,
in escape in chaotic fixed decision,
reaching for space in unconscious ecstasy
of remaining within their present being,
lit with a borrowed light. See the peaks below,
where a binding by time raises the seeing
up to the summit of peace, subdued in shadow
all the suffering past, resigns in will-less,
keen, reposeful resolve, accepts the stillness.
[Mond oben der Riesengebirge, 1810. Staaliche Kunstsammlungen, Weimar]
38. The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
It’s uncanny. ‘Tis I, standing there fifty
years ago, red hair ruffled by the mountain
wind. I’m quite unaware of what the milky
fog and the cylindrical rocks are images
of, or height as a symbol, or light — therein
moved but without knowing why. So I shared his
contemplation, his awe, his mirroring
mood of sublimity, his yearning to tread
the far peak, being lost in the sky. A king
bound in his solitude, accepting all dread
as a tonic. Now wonder like this must teach
him, and me, of what all of us cannot reach.
[Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, um 1818. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
39. Riesengebirge Landscape
Early morning. The sun subdued by stable
clouds, only tinting the highest. The autumn
trees now stand as spectators, as all able,
made by their past, to gaze at this arena
here where they themselves act, pausing in solemn,
silent acceptance, each a ballerina
who awaits the next note in utter stillness,
requisite quiet as part of the music,
where their hues are the harmony, a richness
russet and rust, sorrel and bronze, a choric,
perfect blending in sombre, confident peace
in a moment of time that never will cease.
[Riesengebirge Landschaft, 1835. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo]
40. Landscape with Rising Mist in the Riesengebirge
Has the lumbering drift of a herd gathered
close by some dumb inner drive; they share without
knowing how they have come to this. The sluggard
mists vaguely gesture among them, vaporous,
rising glacier-smoke of snow-dust about
their brown and bovine flanks. In the ponderous
dark nearby stand those black and crippled trees, stark
evidence why choosing to grow at such height
was unwise, wind-deformed, stripped of leaves, bark
split like a wound. Too far away, passive light
smoothes the summit to faintness pale as the sky,
so one has no desire to climb up so high.
[Riesengebirgslandschaft mit aufsteigendem Nebel. Um 1819/20. Bayerische Staatgemäldesammlungen, München]
41. Memories of the Riesengebirge
Like the coals of a fire long settled, still hot.
This fire is cold, though, ashen blue, a ghostly,
weirdly chemical glow, left over from what
mind has forgotten, a former mystical
incandescence. For memories are mostly
filtered by present desire, are most fickle
when our great expectations are dominant
or are frustrated. It’s question of how
to interpret a summit: as prominent?
mastering space? as icy? as reward now
and relief? disillusion? Only as wraith
can it serve as the aim of a people’s faith.
[Erinnerungen an das Riesengebirge, 1835. Ermitage, St Petersburg]
42. The Solitary Tree
One could say that the sunrise has brought stillness
everywhere, one breathless pause uniting peak,
village, shepherd, sheep, pool and tree. No anxious
thought survives miles of patience, of mellow peace.
Though the oak tree has suffered tempest, the bleak
seasons of strife, with broken boughs, its release
has a proof in its leaves. They lean together,
shepherd and tree. At ease, in meditation,
both, in solitude, don’t need to ask whether
storms will come back, or if annunciation
is revealed now in the sun’s first gleams. Thus learn
to accept this as eternity’s return.
[Dorflandschaft bei Morgenbeleuchtung (Der einsame Baum), um 1822. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]
43. Bohemian Landscape
Two by two. He loved pairs. Here, not people, but
trees — say, a woman, a man, both in silent
contemplation of one high summit, one shut
out from all reach, but which a late afternoon
sun makes part of the sky. A far enchantment
sings in the distance, for far and near attune
all their difference: branch against mountain ridge,
where, in between, trees shrink with each step, from trim
leafage here to dark flocks, last, from this vantage
point, to a moulding of moss among mist. Dim
where they stand, the two living ones, and bright where
all their hopes intertwine in tenantless air.
[Böhmische Landschaft, 1810/11. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden]
44. The Watzman
As a child I would love to have scrambled right
up to the top of that rock in the foreground,
just because it was dangerous. And its bright
profile the child turns into a Red Indian’s
face, its hat the Red Queen’s. I would have found
places to hide, my friends and I chthonians
huddling down with the earth, smelling the heather,
mosses and ferns. As a youth, though, the black cliff
was the challenge; the peak had to prove whether
empire explorers had worth. However, if
I look now, his attempt to make all converge
only fails to bring mind and the wild to merge.
[Der Watzman, um 1824/25. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]
45. Rocky Gorge
With a phallus as plain as this, one hardly
knows where to look! Yet one has to be as plain
in turn: that one’s castrated — others darkly
falling away — the tree has done, and it’s dead,
even bleeding! One laughs, yes — but there’s still pain.
Nightmarish fantasy doesn’t lose its dread:
you remember the dream uncomfortably,
having your breakfast, and this weird, crammed ravine
has a nasty, occult and vulgar, ghastly
intimacy — what ‘haunting’ means. A scene
from a dream had by Friedrich himself, no less
in its power from his having to confess.
[Felsschlucht, 1823. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien]
46. Morning Fog in the Mountains
Yet another! A phallus — or sphinx, or both,
neither. Enough that a man stands in the blue
on the topmost of pinnacles — one is loth,
given priapic reminders, to say ‘cross’,
yet the sacrifice, struggle, endurance due
if that high vision within this wild mythos
was accepted, are worthy the climb in blind
mist through the mazes of forest and rock. We
wouldn’t seek wisdom thus with what our old mind
warns. But we’d drive up there, park under a tree,
walk the last few yards, watch the mists work their art,
and be bothered to feel the catch at the heart.
[Morgennebel im Gebirge, 1808. Staatliche Museen, Schloss Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt]
47. Mist
This is not a breast, only a boulder.
Nor is this one either. Crutches, yes — no,
only paint. Yet another breast! They smoulder,
dark with desire, here in what is the clearest, is
unaware, unimpassioned. They do not know,
yet are so knowing. That object challenges
curiosity too — some sort of fishing
tackle? huge umbrella? the phallus? They hide
in their blankness. The sand is rust, vanishing
into sienna. Held on a moveless tide,
the two boats are now vanishing into mist,
losing limits to merge, and yet, still exist.
[Der leichte Nebel, 1807. Österreichische Galerie in Belvedere, Vienna]
48. Chalk Cliffs at Rügen
Down this sculpted precipitous chalk the eye
falls without injury, while the mind sublime
toys with fear. The high line there where sea and sky
make the horizon marks the top of the sea
as a cliff with down-flowing waves none could climb,
over which boats are sailing absurdly free.
It’s an innocent sunlight, joyful on leaves,
joyful on dizzying, plunging depths, the snapped
trunk and branches, the edge, so nothing deceives,
all of us drawn in fascinated need, trapped
our attention to abyssal fantasy
in mad obstinacy, in willed lunacy.
[Kriedefelsen auf Rügen, 1825/26. Museum der bildenden Kunst, Leipzig]
49. Chalk Cliffs at Rügen
She must try for that flower out of her reach:
too many things are out of her reach. He must
peer at that fossil or flint, eager to teach,
speak as a teacher, no matter his top hat
may go tumbling before him. It is not trust,
only a stubborn, blinded nonchalance that
superficially motivates that young man,
back to the rotten bole, feet propped on a bush,
as he stares in proprietary, deadpan,
solo supremacy at the scene. A push
is a wicked thought. Ask any what they saw.
Should they feel what some feel, vertiginous awe?
[Kriedefelsen auf Rügen, um 1818., Stiftung Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur]
50. Evening on the Baltic Sea
There are two lights from two fires. To lean on one’s stick,
musingly eye a fire, watch the transformings
of the wood in the lyric, ecstatic
dance of the flames, see some familiar faces,
perhaps, grow in the glowing charcoal, swarmings,
curved in the gusts, of instant sparks in chases
that are pinpoints of nothing, to share a node
warming and reddening on this cold shingle —
is enough without talk to lighten life’s load.
Burning inside and outside they can mingle
without harm. And above them, leagues of rose pink,
dying blue, of a fire that also must sink.
[Abend an der Ostee, 1831. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden]
51. Monk by the Sea
Yet another lone wanderer who faces
out to the universe, a monk, we are told,
one devoted to meditation. Spaces
hugely involved with vapour, churning blue air
with these olive-black mists in mountainous, cold,
troubled indifference, that race anywhere
over thousands of feet at the strict behest
chaos must utter each moment, the sea
below white with a slave’s weals. This a strange quest,
prayerfully chosen, intently performed. He
braves the gale, stands in body unmoved, ocean
tumbling over itself with his emotion.
[Mönch am Meer, 1809/10. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
52. Flatlands on the Bay of Greifswald
Nickel, lead, silver, steel, zinc — these moon-metals
glint instantaneously here, gleam as melting
there. With one cast of mind you can see sparkles
come into being out of nowhere, but look
again: each one is reappearing, flashing
sidelong, a peek-a-boo; in what you mistook
lies a tithe of the night’s beauty. For these five
men it has riveted them as spectators,
turning blank light-waves into a broad prospect
where the concealed moon plays with waves as mummers
of itself, into promise of loveliness
now elsewhere and elsewhen from this gloominess.
[Flachländer an der Bucht von Greifswald, 1830. Sammlung Georg Schäfer, Obbach]
53. Seashore in Moonlight
How far away do others have to be for one
person to feel themselves lonely? Not as far
as the moon — the horizon of sea has run
out to its emptiness everywhere. The shore
is deserted, except for the single star
there by the water. Boulders cannot ignore:
they are blind to themselves, and even the fire
never can see how the light of its flames can
turn a ripple to brass, or flash to desire
eyes that are weary. The turbulent clouds that span
all of space could disturb us. Let us walk to
the kind firelight to find someone to talk to.
[Meeresufer in der Mondschein, 1830. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
54. Seashore in Moonlight
These are haematite clouds, monstrous kidneys, but
bluish-translucent, slowly boiling over
an infixed moon, so faint, yet, far off, not shut
out from the sea. Is it the cloud or the moon
that is moving? The low tide’s last exposure
leaves a few pools steel-blue, as if a cocoon
of silk light from above was wound on a spool
from the horizon. The wet sand dimly gleams
but the shore’s in a moonless night. Here the rule
tides are subdued to govern the fishermen’s schemes.
Now, perhaps, they’re forgetting their opponent
as they sail on a sea calm for a moment.
[Meersufer im Mondschein, 1836. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
55. The Sea of Ice
Ask what savage upheaval, what violent,
slow, irresistible pressure snapped flatness
into chaos, unbuilt this ice continent,
thrusting its shards to further self-destruction.
You catch sight of the wreck — the ice is bogus
ruin beside this relic of construction,
of long patience, design and trust, here tumbled
over as lumber. But it gives nightmare size:
what were floes become cliffs. The ship is humbled
under an iceberg of splinters that slantwise
could not lean thus for real. What, then, more shocking
human tragedy can this ‘ice’ be mocking?
[Das Eismeer, 1823/25. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
56. Rocky Reef on the Seashore
It was ice under pressure before. Strata
laid down in time when there were no memories,
settled slowly in order, were no armour,
given a vaster drifting of rock, against
immense buckling, upending. No mockeries,
ironies, tragedies belong in this tensed
and compressed mass remaining after aeons
no rock could count. Do our eyes see broken bone,
shattered timbers of buildings, war-hacked weapons,
chevaux-de-frise, ruined towers? Yet disown
what despair and revenge would read. Instead, write
of the silvering peace of sea in moonlight.
[Felsig Riff am Meeresufer, 1824. Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe]
57. Evening Landscape with Two Men
There’s a little path leads up here, another
down — and how long had they been here? Militant
students wearing soft caps, as one brother
close by his brother, looked into the future
at the setting of suns where exorbitant
hopes burned in gilding of clouds, in the rumour
of inviting seashores, in panoramas
vast of dark headlands and islands, in roseate
glows that spanned the horizon, where dramas
time held in store would draw one to create
revolutionary truth. Sadly imperfect.
We can still with a will call it a prospect.
[Abendlandschaft mit zwei Männer, 1830/35. Staatliche Ermitage, St. Petersburg]
58. Two Men by the Sea in Moonlight
This is moon-viewing, Friedrich-style. Was no need,
given the fact that horizons are slow to change
as one moves, to leap out to those rocks. Indeed,
nothing perceptible could be distinguished.
It is what you’d expect children to do. Strange
only to prosaic minds, not astonished
by each moment of nature, the permanent
offer of unforeseen wonder, that a leap
to a miniature island makes radiant.
Hint of a danger from the uneasy deep
is enough to make two share in this nocturne
as the moon rises calming the sky’s concern.
[Zwei Männer bei das Meer im Mondschein, 1817. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
59. Ships in Harbour at Evening
Look how sea would be sky, and earth too if it
could. Far above, converging to eternal
and invisible havens, sky-roads are lit
marigold, old gold, unlit as cinder-blue —
empyrean expanse, a universal
vision now centred on a brilliant new
crescent — Christ, if you take it as Friedrich did;
also the boats are enharboured in death, each
with the calm of a tomb, now black amid
mirroring glows of that heaven. On the beach
dry the nets and the tackle. To mean
Eden, though, is strange: there’s no one to be seen.
[Schiffe im Hafen am Abend, 1828. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden]
60. The Harbour at Griefswald
At the highest the cirrus clouds are still in
day, but the crescent moon, stained apricot by
the vast prism of vapour and air, margin
glimpsed of a distant day elsewhere, states in plain
warning night is at hand, though both it and sky
stand in a motionless repose. The seine
nets are hung out to dry; the sailing ship lies
anchored, abandoned; ripples following where
ripples went gleaming, languidly die. The size
tower and spire seem to have does not compare
with their vaunted supremacy. See, the mast
can point equally well where light meets its last.
[Griefswalder Hafen, um 1818/20. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]
61. View of a Harbour
The indifferent beauty of high clouds that
stretch in a ranking that’s random is a sign
of the winds’ blind caprice, but down here the flat
sea and the languid flag, and the confidence
of those caulkers at work with no lifeline,
standing intent on a plank are evidence
that the sea that concerns them can be ignored.
This man can stand in a boat; that other, who
is part way up the rigging, is still on board
just to inspect at leisure, last of the crew.
Problematic, then, if we’re supposed to trace
in this harbouring peace the ‘last dwelling-place’.
[Ansicht eines Hafens, 1815/16. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo]
62. Greifswald in Moonlight
In the foreground is work. The boat left drying,
glistening with tar, its keel now turned to the sky
to keep water out. No longer defying
shiftings of sand, the rotted wood of the groynes
has the look of stiff grass; nets propped up to dry,
soldiers in cloaks. Present activity joins
this mute evidence: rowers returning home,
helped by the moon; the schooner playing the wind
in a serious task. On this monochrome
seashore all labour is pausing. A sequined
glitter follows the ripples. Far off, the spires
point to overcast gleams that bear our desires.
[Greifswald im Mondschein, 1816/17. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo]
63. Fog
In the foreground the boulders are tangible,
tumbled where time has them just now, their sandstone
topped with green tinged intense, discernible,
random, earth’s rubble. So, too, the crutches dropped
to be dead sticks again, and that thing unknown —
fisherman’s tool? a besom snapped? — that is propped
over there — Is it useless now? They’re rowing
out on the fog — or the sea has become sky;
for us, only the boat’s reflection showing
water beneath. The larger boat would belie
what the weather has promised in this prologue.
It’s prepared —we should be — to sail in thick fog.
[Nebel, 1807. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Neue Galerie, Vienna]
64. On a Sailing Boat
In the morning light they savour the prospect,
almost invisible, of the city so far
away it could be ships, or a dream effect
shaped by a mirage, of rocky pinnacles
where there’s only a reef. Perhaps a thick haar
hides from their eyes boats like their own: miracles,
after all, are but wishful consolation —
which, they don’t want to admit, would mean others
setting out long ago before them sought salvation
thus in celestial cities. It smothers
hope, that fear. But their voyage implies a port,
this mere picture, offered free to our thought.
[Auf den Segler, 1819. Staatliche Ermitage, St. Petersburg]
65. Ship on the High Seas in Full Sail
One could ask ‘What is not the Cross?’ The Danish
flags bear it boldly with no trope that’s other
than historical choice, but there’s a slavish,
stark repetition in the masts and sailyards,
and the bowsprit and boom; he’s hung the anchor
making sure this is what leads the way and guards
every soul on the ship, every soul choosing
this to confront as a work of art. What art
put the sun in the sails? Can be no losing
track in this fog, for he’s provided a chart
for all Christian hearts, who cannot be slaves
when they sail in this ship in challenging waves.
[Schiff auf hoher See mit vollen Segeln, 1815. Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Chemnitz]
66. Moonrise at Sea
It is not just what people see or hear,
even the cool breath of the breeze, the salt scent
of the beach and the boulders, it’s what they fear,
desire, are anxious about, are amused by,
are now wondering at. Is the orient
moon a hypnotic eye for him, to descry
a decision unmade? And does she allow
driftings of ships to soothe some apprehension?
And does she let the sea’s horizon endow
hope with vast glimmerings, boundless dimension
outside time they all share? Or is it release
for them all, like the moon’s reflection in peace?
[Mondaufgang am Meer, 1821. Ermitage, St. Petersburg]
67. Sea Piece by Moonlight
See those lower clouds first as strange Antarctic
mountains: the ship becomes more solitary
still. It may dwell in a space of lethargic
light, in a sliver of silver, but ocean’s
lonely level is empty. A monitory
whisper of waves is teasing dulled emotions
in this fragile shell. Wind, though, is encaptured
firm in the sails, though the horizon remains
as it is. Nothing present seems haphazard
now, as the changeful moon, quarter-glimpsed, sustains
a sufficient distinctness. They’ve put being
in the trust of a ship of man’s foreseeing.
[Seestück bei Mondschein, 1830/35. Museum der bildenden Kunst, Leipzig]
68. Wreck in the Moonlight
How many times has the moon visited this wreck?
Wrong to have asked, since the moon takes no account
of its times of return, nor do mast, keel, deck,
rigging, as weather and wave fumble, worry
with an absolute care-less-ness, sometimes mount
high and hysterically jumble and hurry
inextricable fragments into frantic,
helpless collision, purposeful division
of these ‘fixtures’ not even ‘ignored’ — antic
riot without madness. And no decision
marks the sway of that rope, or strain of anchor,
and no name marks the ‘wind’ or ‘sea’ that sank her.
[Wrack im Mondschein, 1835. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin]
69. Cape Arkana
Take the sun as the present, dazzle subdued,
marking the past as it sets with graded shade,
as it offers impossible plenitude
over a path no one can walk, vanishing
in unending reflections. The clouds have stayed
still as eternity, here extinguishing
of the lingering light what is left of hue,
texture, or trace that was an index of self.
The two boats are abandoned; the summit’s view
opens for no one. See that projecting shelf
on the cliff — it’s not facing a future far
out of sight as we must imagine we are.
[Kap Arkana, 1805. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna]
70. Early Snow
One is not looking back, for one can see no
footprints. It offers a way, quite out of sight,
into darkness, however, The fir trees know —
one can detect their expectancy. Recalls
Tapiola, a hundred years to the night,
forcing the fact that unheralded snowfalls
can be blown in a blizzard, a screaming gale,
not as presented here, the lightest, moveless
garment, sprinkle of salt or sugar, a veil
simply revealing more, imparting smoothness
to the path and distinctness to the branches.
Take as of no account the fear it stanches.
[Frühschnee, 1828. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
71. Hut covered in snow
Would you like to take shelter from the winter’s
cold? It’s so lucky you aren’t in that absurd
last predicament — you stand where nothing hinders
wishes and fears, or so you think. That broken door —
it keeps no one out, and no one’s interred
there in what isn’t a grave. On such a raw
day to linger seems pointless, but you cannot
help overhearing that angry contention
from those threatening trees beyond, though somewhat
crippled, castrated in gesticulation.
And the way to the door — what obstacles for
legs and feet! — you might fall to rise nevermore.
[Verschneite Hütte, 1827. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]
72. Winter Landscape
Are the trees him? Or he, the trees? There’s the scar
not to be wholly healed, but that tree is dead,
on the point of collapse. His gaze turns afar
off to that hut without light, but no road goes there.
It seems this is just where he turns round to tread
back on his tracks in the snow: he does not dare
to go limping across, for is not that ice
down there below? To half an eye, he’s a trunk
himself, bent, grey and broken. Can ask what price
timber had fetched long ago. His leaves have shrunk
to dry paper. He knows what must come soon.
Still that may be a glimmer of an old moon.
[Winter Landschaft, 1811. Staatliches Museum, Schwerin]
73. Winter Landscape with Church
He is praying to Christ on the cross. The snow
lies over all, everywhen. No miracle
here will banish his crutches though he may throw
one, then the other, aside. Firs remain green
in the winter, asserting a vertical
growth, but the criminal’s trunk and boughs can mean
that his height is not might safely to restore
limbs to a former strength. Not a sacrifice
that will cancel all sacrifice: to implore
thus just ignores the snow. In this world of ice
those three crosses quite out of reach — why, they might
be a guide, though unreal, in that feeble light.
[Winter Landschaft mit Kirche, 1811. Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Stadt Dortmund]
74. The Stages of Life
It’s the thinnest of moons, frailest, easily
crossed by a cloud, yet so precise in promise.
Father’s beckoning grandfather, deedily
conscious he mustn’t be left out — you can see
that the children enjoy the flag’s effortless
rippling along with the wind. So too, as free
are the ships: they are made to exploit the sheer
randomness thrusting through space — sails must sail,
old and young, some now setting out without fear,
others now pausing at anchor. At what scale
of perspective maturity shows! Serene
the last ship drifts afar, no more to be seen.
[Die Lebensstufen, 1835. Museum der bildenden Kunst, Leipzig]
75. Ploughed Field
See the stick and the bowed shoulders, and the distance
turns into memory, the farthest the faintest —
or the brightest, where the sunset radiance,
red that reluctantly fades, is the witness
of the burning of noon out of sight. Closest
turns the ploughed furrows, the grass, the motionless,
silent foliage, hummock, hill, to gradual
darkening glooms that are losing distinction
from each other, are blurring into mutual
night, like the clouds, boundaryless. Thus heaven,
vast, empurpled, the origin of all worth,
is at last without law, united with earth.
[Der gepflügen Feld, 1830. Hamburg Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
76. The Cemetery Gate
It’s a gate very easy to get through, propped
open like that. You, or a child, could squeeze through
where that piece has gone missing. Then one can opt,
given a taste for the odd, to see it more
as a sign even death has lost its taboo;
rickety, crippled, he has reached his threescore-
and-ten. Sprouting with flowers up there, see,
even the stones are eroding (all sandstone
wears away to soft ribbings like that). You’re free —
no one need wait for the archway to atone
for its much vaunted threat. So what you have read
was not ‘Death, thou shalt die’, but ‘Death, thou art dead.’
[Der Kirchohf, 1825/30. Bremen Kunsthalle, Bremen]
77. The Cemetery
It’s a magical place! What will happen when
you dare to pass through the gate? Is it a ghost
standing there on the left? The crosses are men,
arms open wide as they welcome whoever
has to come, which is all of us. And that post —
hooded and facing away — not forever
does it wait! And the two pillars are sentries,
cloaked, and with hats Spanish-ecclesiastic,
looking down, in or out. These mild obsequies,
drenched in their silence twilit and monastic,
are afloat in the trees too, can still say, ‘No harm
in our voices. Our wish: your joy through our calm.’
[Der Friedhof, 1825. Staatsliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden]
78. Churchyard in the Snow
As the spades by the new-dug grave were left at
chance angles, tired human hands releasing
grip just when and just where (no give or take) that
effort and earth had decreed, so the crosses
have been fixed at a tilt, though never ceasing,
since mutability rules, to heed time’s tosses
and unnoticed soft underminings. Each had
(not to be thought of as doubting the All-wise
for a moment) a little roof against bad
weather, as now, to wait for the time to uprise
on that Day of the Days. But the cross, though, taught
that a sacrifice might be more than one thought.
[Friedhof im Schnee, 1828. Museum der bildenden Kunst, Leipzig]
79. Hutten’s Grave*
One can just see by bending to look Hutten’s
name there engraved, under the stains and the moss.
There are ferns by one’s feet. On the wall burgeons
a fir stretching a root like a tentacle.
By the tomb grows a young tree, leaning across.
This one is dead. See, the stones, too, chronicle
what the years can inflict, carving what was carved.
Where now the roof, and the stained glass? And the saint
has no head. The tomb’s dying at time’s touch, starved
both of the light and men’s eyes. So, what constraint
brings him here, his own frame steadied with a stick?
Does nature distinguish the dead from the quick?
[Huttens Grab, 1823/24. Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, Schlossmuseum, Gemäldegalerie]
*In 1968 the bones of the renowned poet and knight of the Reformation, Ulrich von Hutten, were reinterred with honour in the church of St. Peter and Paul on the island of Ufenau in Züricher See.
80. Graves of Ancient Heroes
How the obelisk glows with a citron light
strongly distilled from the hollow around it! —
the rocks bistre and ochre; the grasses bright
grass green and jade, olive, dull apple; the earth
brown the three tombs share; deeper, where a hermit
could be dwelling in shade, avowing the worth
of the heroes entombed, an intense umber
darkening to black. Two pilgrims, who face the dark,
do not deem the real deaths a divine slumber,
only interpret them thus, figure a mark
for posterity that makes the light that shone
on the monument honour ancestors gone.
[Gräber ehemaliger Helden, 1812. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
81. The Tomb of Arminius
Was no predestination, according to
him. Although God had foreseen, He had not set
what the soul chose to do. He knows what is true
timelessly. Our truths grow and decay like trees,
fall to fragments like rock. In no oubliette
lies this Arminius: a temple of ease
has been rough-hewn by nature. Two votaries
pay a last homage, in darkness that befits
God’s decision, as random as boundaries
traced by a split in a cliff, worn by droplets
in a cave, left by fire on a picture, for
the top third here was burned off in the last war.
[Das Grab von Arminius, 1813/14. Bremen Kunsthalle, Bremen]
82. The Hun’s Grave in Autumn
A stampede of a single beast that’s going
nowhere. The gale races too, grass, branches, leaves,
would be flailed flat if anger could go blowing
just as it wished. In the sky the clouds writhe in
aimless panic: below, the ground itself heaves
combers that ache to break. One can imagine
there’s a mountain within the clouds, collapsing
down in apocalyptic chaos. Even
that dead, lightning-struck trunk leans over, battling
still to remain upright. And the roar, beaten
out of anything loose! Every growl and moan,
are they heard by the old dead beneath the stone?
[Hünengrab im Herbst, um 1820. Staatliche Kunstsammlugen, Dresden]
83. Skeletons in Cave
That organic but random ropiness, that
fungoid, clogged, parasitic thickness of grey
frozen limestone, those egglike boulders of fat
weight, and the stalactites like dugs, stalagmites
phallic stupas, and icicles that display
knifelike transparent tusks! The opening bites
at the moon and the clouds. What uncontrolled life
writhes in the ceiling and floor! Nothing will stop
its relentless progression. The man and wife
lie as a pair, though not in embrace. Each drop
is a proof that such bones decay in this murk —
but their hosts’ contribution is still at work.
[Skelette in der Tropfsteinhöhle, c. 1834. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
84. Angels in Adoration [5]
This is one way to show their ‘contribution’.
‘Not very satisfactory’, at least to
disaffected disciples. One solution,
if you’re prepared to ignore your own bias,
is to see these two ‘angels’ here as a new,
old-fashioned image of what truly pious
‘old believers’ were trying to grasp. To rise
up towards light, to fly free of the turmoil
of the law and the crime, be sure of the prize
sexual love has promised, forget gargoyle
death looks comical now, so impossible,
but true love must pretend to be gullible.
[Engels in Anbetung, um 1834. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
[5] This picture in pencil and sepia follows ‘Skeletons in Cave’ in a series entitled The Cycle of Life.
85. Epitaph for Johann Emanuel Bremer
Though the gate has its bars, the moonlight shines through
showing the bars and the path. Poplars can be
seen as cemetery cypresses, without view,
painted elsewhere, of old gravestones and crosses.
Bremer’s name on that gate, because it was he
who, with the smallpox vaccine, slowed the losses
to the space through the gate. Beyond the dark, spires
mark the celestial city, with the moon
as the god placed above. Such icons liars
then? Just the mist keeping illusion in tune
with impossible hope? Take it as leaven
that impossible hope is what is heaven.
[Gedächtnisbild für Johann Emanuel Bremer, 1817. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin]
86. Landscape with Grave, Coffin and Owl
It’s a frightening owl. Not difficult to
see what the cause is — at least at first. No use
putting wreaths on the sides. You can strew
flowers or earth if you wish to say something
to yourselves, but the grave and those spades produce
proof metonymic that a day is coming
when inside will be us. And the owl’s so huge,
five times the size a non-fantasy owl would
be, so ‘wisdom’ won’t work. There is no refuge
specially when it stares with such hardihood,
perched there, stupidly sure. We have need of creeds
seeing nature like this, as wild as the weeds.
[Landschaft mit Grab, Sarg und Eule, 1836/37. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
87. Juno’s Temple at Agrigentum
Friedrich never set foot in Agrigentum.
Here, then, a sun that never was, its dim light
never caught by that mica, nor sea become
ribbed with its gold, nor each leaf of the shrubs change
to a counterfeit sun. The columns upright,
fallen, in fragments, the last coping-stones strange
in their uselessness, never grew in this gloom
darker, more sombre, more lonely. This grandeur
of destruction forgotten, this proof of doom
never descended to this aimless languor
of advancing dark. Look, then — what is the worth
of a fancy-bred temple not of this earth?
[Junotempel von Agrigent, 1828/30. Schloss Cappenberg, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Stadt Dortmund]
88. Self-Portrait with Cap and Visor
Go to Hermann von Helmholtz, for he will tell
you the effect of having one eye covered.
Was a painter’s device, for it served you well
judging the relative size of an object;
but, for Helmholtz, it was a simple method,
faced with a picture, of getting the prospect
to look solid and real in spite of the flat
canvas by stopping the two eyes seeing it
flat, for then all the other evidence that
helps us to judge distance can work, freeing it
from a prejudiced view. What being can show
will depend on what we in freedom forgo.
[Selbstbildnis mit Mutze und Visierklappe, 1802. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg]