"Edgar Allan Poe" by Hanns Heinz Ewers

[anarchistbanjo]

2009 is the 200th birthyear of Edgar Allan Poe, master of horror. German master of horror wrote a tribute to him that I have recently translated. If you wish to read the entire thing you will need to click on my name to get to my webpage because I can't post links here yet...

Here is a sample of it:

Now the nightingales flute and out of their small throats sings the voice of the artist I love. The light wind stops beating its frenzied wings on the leaves of the elms. The trickling brook quiets its chatter as the park of Alhambra pauses to listen to the song of the nightingales.

For a hundred years the old towers and mortar have experienced these familiar sweet evening sounds but today is different, so different. The loud beating of a dead poet's heart and the little birds are singing his soul song. The brook and the trees listen, the square red stones listen, the purple glowing snow capped mountains listen. And an infinite sigh sounds through the huge garden as in the west the warm sinking sun mournfully takes its needed parting from the poets raised song.

The twilight breathes through the elms and light misty shadows rise out of the laurel bushes to climb up toward the Moorish Palace. In ancient times long gone they sat round these marble banks. I know well who they are. Gabirol now sits next to me, now Ibn al-Khabib and Ibn Esra, and Jehudah ben Halevy and Mohammed Ibn Khaldoun and Ibn Batouta. A hundred dead poets listen hushed to the song of the nightingales. How clever are the dead.

They hear the heart of the angel Israfel whom the Koran told of, and give thankful praises to God that such music has awakened.

"Ouala ghaliba ill' Allahta 'ala" murmur the misty shadows. And the nightingales sing of dark mysteries, of the immense longing that is the pure source of life.

They sing of the greatest secret of all, that all things created and brought through eternity are filled with the breath of infinite love. They sing of beauty as the truth that comes before truth. They sing of dreams that are the life that comes before life.

Poe's soul sings and a hundred dead poets listen to the clamor and from their lips arise once more the ancient words "Ouala ghaliba ill' Allahta 'ala".

So thankful are the dead.

And the night sinks deeper here. The nightingales hush and the east wind rises and comes from the Sierra. The misty shadows disperse. I am alone again in the enchanted park of Alhambra. Alone with a great poet's soul. And how the wind blows through the ancient elms rustling the leaves and singing of Ulalume, the very same ballad in the poet's dreadful dream.

"The skies they were ashen and sober
The leaves they were crisped and sere
The leaves they were withering and sere
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year.
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber
In the misty region of Weir
It was down by the dark tarn of Auber
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir
Here once through an alley Titantic
Of cypress, I roamed with my soul."


I know well that the verse speaks of me. But I perceive my lips are not saying anything different than that of the rustling elms. I perceive that it is the grief of the October wind howling in distress at the poet's unearthly longing enspelled in human words and being pulled out of me.

It is the spark of his peculiar thought or essence that emanates from his corpse as the divine breath of nature penetrating everything. The original spark of his being is in all things and a small proof of the poet's highest law, that the source of all things is unity.

My mouth speaks the mysterious words that the wind has carried to my ears. I am becoming afraid in the dark loneliness, in this living fairy tale. I want to leave out of the valley of Alhambra. Groping in the darkness I lose my footing and miss the path. Finding a trail in the ancient cypress I come up hard against a low door. Oh, the terror that comes upon me in the darkness. I know, I know well whose grave this is. And against my will my lips speak to my soul.

"What is written, sweet sister
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied, "Ulalume, Ulalume.
Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"


Again and again the fear rises up within me. The dead poet's soul that rustled through the elm trees, that resounded in the nightingales song, that babbled in the spring fed brook, that howled such a dreadful song in the wind, has taken possession of me.

Only a small mote of dust with the divine breath of nature has pierced through me, through me. I know there is no escape and he will destroy me. He does not crush me. And strangely I am quiet, so quiet as if I have been completely filled by him.

The human fear gently fades away.