Thoughts on war: Werner Bergengruen – Secret of the Abyss (Published on 11/10/2024)
Secret of the Abyss
When your fists reach him
and you break his last iron,
do him no harm. He bears the mark,
and Cain will be avenged sevenfold.
He was the flame of the demons,
the cry of the unredeemed world.
Not before the thrones of the earth
is the dock appointed for him.
From which the voice of the abyss roared,
how can a man be his judge?
Do him no harm. God himself has wrapped
him completely in his secret.
His judgment falls in those realms,
where a veil never weakens the gaze.
Do him no harm. He bears the mark,
and Cain will be avenged sevenfold.
(from: Werner Bergengruen, Dies Irae – Eine Dichtung (1946), p. 15,
translated from German language without implementing the rhyme scheme)
Werner Bergengruen (born on 16/09/1892 in Riga/Latvia, died on 04/09/1964 in Baden-Baden) was a German-Baltic writer and one of the best-known and most popular authors both during the Nazi era and in the early Federal Republic of Germany.
Although he was a national conservative, he was distanced from National Socialism due to his Christian-humanist worldview, without openly rejecting it. Expelled from the “Reichsschriftumskammer” in 1937 – membership was a prerequisite for any professional activity in the field of writing – for allegedly lacking the aptitude to contribute to the “development of German culture” through literary publications, he was nevertheless allowed to publish based on a “permanent special permit”. Although his poetry collection “Der ewige Kaiser” [“The Eternal Emperor”] (1937) and the novel “Am Himmel wie auf Erden” [“In heaven as on earth”] were banned in 1940 and a broadcasting and lecturing ban was imposed on him, several of his other works were allowed to appear, not least due to his popularity as an author.
After his house in Munich-Solln was destroyed in 1942, he moved to Achenkirch in Austria and, after living in Switzerland and Italy, returned to Germany in 1958, where he lived until his death.
The poem quoted here is taken from his work “Dies Irae – Eine Dichtung”, which – written in the summer of 1944 – only appeared after the end of the war and deals poetically with the social conditions in Germany during the Nazi era through poetry. “Dies Irae” means “Day of Wrath”, presumably chosen in reference to a medieval hymn about the Day of Judgement, which was sung in the church liturgy at the time as part of the requiem mass and is probably symbolic of a reckoning with National Socialism.
(Head picture: Gravestone with the inscription “Unbekannter” [“Unknown”]
at the German military cemetery in Kastel near Saarburg, September 2024)
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