{"id":2275,"date":"2018-12-02T09:15:53","date_gmt":"2018-12-02T14:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/?p=2275"},"modified":"2018-11-29T14:51:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T19:51:22","slug":"for-advent-i-from-david-bannon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/for-advent-i-from-david-bannon\/","title":{"rendered":"For Advent I from David Bannon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blessed Advent! We invite all of our readers to enter this holy season with these words from David Bannon, author of\u00a0Wounded in Spirit: Advent Art and Meditations.\u00a0<\/i>As David notes:\u00a0<\/i>Some text portions of this article were excerpted and edited from\u00a0Wounded in Spirit: Advent Art and Meditations<\/span><\/em>, which features ten R\u00fcckert poems not printed here.\u00a0<\/span>As with those in the book, the R\u00fcckert poems in this article are original translations that have never before been published in English.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\u201cYour hurts, small as a child\u201d
\nCommunion in Friedrich R\u00fcckert\u2019s Songs on the Death of Children<\/em>
\nText and translations by David Bannon<\/p>\n

Friedrich R\u00fcckert was a compassionate man. Visitors often commented on his enthusiasm, whimsy and humor.1<\/sup> Hailed by The Atlantic Monthly<\/em> as \u201cthe last of the grand old generation of German poets,\u201d2<\/sup> many of his lieder,<\/em> or songs, were set to music by the great composers of the day. But for three decades Friedrich hid from view his most personal work.<\/p>\n

The day after Christmas 1833, Friedrich\u2019s youngest child, three-year-old Luise, showed symptoms of scarlet fever. She died on New Year\u2019s Eve. His son Ernst died on January 16, twelve days after the boy turned five. Friedrich\u2019s four remaining children survived. He was kind and attentive to them, grateful for each moment, yet his grief for Luise and Ernst was unassuaged. \u201cThat I should drink and eat, eat and drink,\u201d he wrote, \u201cforgetting all the while that you are lost to me!\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n

Over the first six months of 1834 Friedrich composed hundreds of poems on loss and mourning. \u201cSpare me these delights!\u201d he cried. \u201cThey cannot fool my heart, adding grief to grief.\u201d4<\/sup> He averaged 2\u20133 poems each day. Some are his finest, others less so; none was intended for publication.5<\/sup> He kept Luise and Ernst\u2019s pastel portraits with him for the rest of his life.6<\/sup> Six years after Friedrich\u2019s death, in 1872, his son Heinrich compiled 425 of the poems in Kindertodtenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children).<\/em>7<\/sup><\/p>\n

Your hurts, small as a child,
\nyou brought to me, mother-like,
\nfor consolation and care.<\/p>\n

Now my hurt, not so small,
\nI bring to you:
\nOh my child, console me!<\/p>\n

So we exchange love for loss:
\na heart full of care;
\na hurt inconsolable.8<\/sup><\/p>\n

Friedrich\u2019s life resonates with me. He was a scholar, translator and professor. We both taught college for years; both published on Asia extensively; both translated from Asian and other languages. We both lost children on the same day: his son died on January 16, 1534; my daughter died on January 16, 2015.<\/p>\n

R\u00fcckert had a gift for understatement and a penchant for allusion. Before my daughter\u2019s death, the depth and breadth of his sorrow would have been beyond my grasp. Now I find communion and solace in his poems. Occasionally I\u2019ll come across a piece that defies literary analysis; that dares me to capture in translation a moment many bereaved parents know well:<\/p>\n

Here rests in this chest
\nmuch that was yours;
\nsacred and silent:
\nlike you, undisturbed.<\/p>\n

Your dress in this chest,
\ncamisole in your coffin.
\nYour little shoes
\nnever to remove.<\/p>\n

Each day from this chest
\nI lift dress after dress;
\nseeking sorrow, perhaps:
\nor solace or mercy.9<\/sup><\/p>\n

Friedrich chose a double entendre for this poem. Truhe<\/em>, meaning chest<\/em> or trunk,<\/em> is also a word for coffin<\/em>. It took me a year to finally go through all of my daughter\u2019s things. Her chest is here with me as I type, carefully preserved in my office closet.<\/p>\n

Research shows that fathers who have lost adult children are at the highest level of grief for men in every bereavement category except guilt.10<\/sup> Such comparisons are useful to counselors and medical professionals\u2014may in fact be necessary and helpful\u2014but to the bereaved, they seem obscene. Friedrich\u2019s children were young, my daughter was an adult; he lost two of eight, I lost my only child. A moment\u2019s thought reveals how such measurements lose all meaning. In R\u00fcckert\u2019s songs, I stumble through the same dark valley he walked 180 years ago. Friedrich and I share something else: an affinity for the waldesgrund<\/em>. Literally translated as forest ground or floor, the term is seldom used for a glade or park; only the deep wood<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Deep in the wood
\nand the rocky valley
\nmy heart and voice cry
\na thousand times:
\nChildren, are you there?
\n\u2018Here!\u201d
\nWhere is here? \u2018Here! Here!\u2019<\/p>\n

Dark wooded brush
\nstands between us,
\nI do not see you;
\ntell me, are you
\nfar? near?
\n\u2018Near!\u2019
\nHow near? \u2018Near, near!\u2019<\/p>\n

Do you want to draw near
\nfrom where you are?
\nAlways mine, the one
\njoy in this pain?
\nMine? No? Yes?
\n\u2018Yes!\u2019
\nAlways yes? \u2018Yes, yes!\u201911<\/sup><\/p>\n

Gustav Mahler later set five of R\u00fcckert\u2019s poems to music; his Kindertotenlieder<\/em> premiered in 1905. Gustav\u2019s interpretations are moving but his most profound work was still to come. In 1907 his four- year-old daughter, Putzi, died of diphtheria and scarlet fever. As a musician, Mahler may have appreciated R\u00fcckert\u2019s subtle tonality, cadence and repetition. Now in his grief, Gustav knew the harm and hope Friedrich put in each song:<\/p>\n

You were the slightest:
\nare you, then, unharmed?
\nYour country, that fineness,
\nare you, so, unspoiled?<\/p>\n

Your country, your slightness:
\npreserved, then, in
\nsuch purity, so
\npreserved and saved?<\/p>\n

The slightest, dearly loved;
\nbrightest now, and gone,
\nradiant once, always:
\nWill I see you there?12<\/sup><\/p>\n

Mahler\u2019s next composition, Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth)<\/em>, speaks of life, death, parting, and redemption. 13 It was Gustav\u2019s masterpiece.<\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

Some text portions of this article were excerpted and edited from Wounded in Spirit: Advent Art and Meditations<\/em>, which features ten R\u00fcckert poems not printed here. As with those in the book, the R\u00fcckert poems in this article are original translations that have never before been published in English.<\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

1 fancy and humor:<\/strong><\/em> Bayard Taylor, Critical Essays and Literary Notes<\/em> (Putnam\u2019s Sons, 1880): 97<\/p>\n

2 The last of the grand:<\/strong><\/em> Bayard Taylor, \u201cFriedrich R\u00fcckert,\u201d Atlantic Monthly<\/em>, 18(105) (July 1866): 33; collected in The Atlantic Monthly<\/em>, v18 (Ticknor &amp; Fields, 1866).<\/p>\n

3 That I should drink:<\/strong><\/em> from \u201cDa\u00df ich trinken soll und essen,\u201d Kindertodtenlieder [Songs on the Death of Children], ed. Heinrich R\u00fcckert, trans. D. Bannon (Sauerl\u00e4nder, 1872): 69.<\/p>\n

4 Spare me these delights:<\/strong><\/em> from \u201cRathet mir nicht zum Vergn\u00fcgen,\u201d R\u00fcckert, 142.<\/p>\n

5 Some are his finest:<\/strong><\/em> see Peter Revers, \u201cKindertotenlieder<\/em>\u201d in Karen Painter, ed., Mahler and His World<\/em>, Revers section trans. Irene Zedlacher (Princeton University Press, 2002): 174.<\/p>\n

6 pastel portraits:<\/strong><\/em> Friedrich had the portraits made in autumn 1833.<\/p>\n

7 Six years after:<\/strong> <\/em>In 1881, after Heinrich\u2019s death, Marie R\u00fcckert rearranged 241 of the poems according to Friedrich\u2019s diary in a new edition, Lied und Leid [Song and Sorrow]. See Friedrich R\u00fcckert, Gesammelte Poetische Werke<\/em>, v12, ed. Conrad Beyer (Sauerl\u00e4nder, 1882): 477.<\/p>\n

8 Your hurts:<\/strong><\/em> \u201cWie du sonst dein kleines Leid,\u201d R\u00fcckert, 173.<\/p>\n

9 Here rests:<\/strong><\/em> \u201cHier lieg\u2019 in der Truhe,\u201d R\u00fcckert, 279.<\/p>\n

10 highest level of grief:<\/strong><\/em> William Fish, \u201cDifferences of Grief Intensity in Bereaved Parents,\u201d in Therese Rando, ed., Parental Loss of a Child<\/em> (Research Press, 1986): 223, 417, 426.<\/p>\n

11 Deep in the wood:<\/strong><\/em> \u201cTief im Waldesgrund,\u201d R\u00fcckert, 206-207.<\/p>\n

12 You were the slightest:<\/strong><\/em> \u201cWeil ihr wart die Kleinsten,\u201d R\u00fcckert, 279-280.<\/p>\n

13 Mahler\u2019s four-year-old daughter:<\/strong><\/em> Maria Anna, called Putzi, 3 November 1902 \u2013 5 July 1907.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blessed Advent! We invite all of our readers to enter this holy season with these words from David Bannon, author of\u00a0Wounded in Spirit: Advent Art and Meditations.\u00a0As David notes:\u00a0Some text portions of this article were excerpted and edited from\u00a0Wounded in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}