The Wanderer's Song

My friends are bendy as cane,
Their hearts lie on their lips,
To them chastity is unknown;
I want to dance on their heads.

Girl that I love,
You soul of souls,
Chosen one, light-begotten,
You never regarded me,
Your cunt was not willing,
My heart burned to ashes.

I know the teeth of dogs,
I live in Wind-In-Face Alley,
A sieve-roof over my head,
Mould enjoys itself on the walls,
Good cracks are there for the rain.

"Kill yourself!" my knife tells me.
I am lying in shit;
High up above me my foes in coaches
Travel over the moon rainbow.

1910, Die Fackel

This was the poem that gave Ehrenstein a certain notoriety when Karl Kraus printed it in his journal, in the collaborative era before WW1 when he wasn't as yet composing all the contents himself. Ehrenstein is without doubt the bitterest and most excessive expressionist poet. He lacks the deliquescent verbal music of Trakl, the socially committed realism of Stadler or the doominess of Heym, nor is he as cynical as the early Benn or as sheerly proto-surrealistically demented as van Hoddis. But he often catches the authentic local off-colour of the city of three-four rhythm while shoving his desperate longing in your face. "The Wanderer's Song" is quite typical of the coolly hysterical poetry he was writing up to the war – then he became in turn angrily anti-war, pro-communist, poetic exponent of die Neue Sachlichkeit and finally resigned: "You dance in the blood-swarm/At balls, rabbits;/Your gods are the shabbiest masks,/It's a sex-trade, what you call love./The straying of man on this star – /O if I could only find the way out and proclaim it!/O if you were as beautiful as the flowers,/O if you were as pure as the dew." (etc..."Humanity" – for Franz Pfemfert). The prose poem below comes from the "New Objectivity" phase, a remarkably modern monologue which borrows a greedily frivolous mask to express a contempt that cuts several ways – one thinks of Grosz and Dix. As Viennese Jewish street-talk is not directly translatable, I have taken the liberty of giving the speech a touch of the American hard-boiled tone toward which the speaker aspires (shades of Mahagonny!), without being any more consistent in the masquerade than the poet himself – who escaped to New York in 1941 and died there sclerotically in 1950.


                 Monologue

  The Shriek of Oliva van Zaehlendorff, the Diva of the Talkies

Dear God, that art all-mighty in Hollywood and in the top-gun USA for sure, don't let me go to seed in Dresden as a so-what star, promote my fantastic talkie talent! Take pity on me! Look: I always play the dames passing by, abandoned governesses, nurses and the dumb simpering girlfriend. Stop it now, so give me the main roll for a change, it's my birthday soon, otherwise I'll turn into another zombie celeb. I just loved innerlexual high-class, I was dynamite and I blew myself up, so now I'm in pieces, I can't get over it. When I was young I was, like, a real decent girl.
But there ain't no profit in soul when you're what you might call a private person: that just gives you kids, wrinkles and grey hair. I only want to fatten the body-animal with soul-food in public, poor old twice-divorced widowed-for-ages me – I don't want no wedding ring but diamond tiaras. No, not like what you're thinking! The sugardaddies disgust me, they fulfill all my wishes, sure. There was a time, I knew that agents are lazy pigs and big-deal directors are selfish dummies, now I know that girlie traffickers are dickheads too. What do I care about men and women? They're all pimps, blackmailers, insatiable greedy beggars, they just want to boss me around, money or get whipped. Mephikles Bschury, my director, is trash. Everyone thinks this Levantine Eintänzer is a piece of drek. But I need the gigolo – for now! The parvenu costs too much, where can I get the dough PDQ? My lovers are holding back with the publicity, the wimps: they're just not killing themselves quickly enough. And they call it adoration and love! It's no good me refusing to speak to my oldest pals, the creeps maliciously and hard-heartedly simply refuse to croak! My dopiest friend is surviving me, what a cheek, his name is Baron Cheviot because he's so shabby sheepish. It can't go on like this! No palazzo! Dear God, please don't believe I'm too well off already! Schmecks calls me the honey witch with the money itch, but I got nothing. Sure: every dope from the papers, all the theater hangers-on brownnose me with rapturous reviews, they bring me the bullshit of the nations and my fireplace stinks of burnt loveletters in kilo-sized packets! They love all the wigs of my soul and never let up. O, the phone murders my sleep every day, my secret number is Poseidon double-zero, the theater murders my sleep every night and the neverending stage fright and being afraid of diarrhoea and growing old for chrissakes. Parufamet, I summon thee! Smash my lousy Ford, to keep up appearances I oughtta have four Rolls-Royces, but who's gonna pay for it? So how about it God, have a heart and be reasonable for once! What can I do with a lousy thousand Reichsmarks per month? I need millions of dollars, and yachts. The snake's armpits is a diva nowadays, every one of them deserves the dummy drama queen medal. A little official harlot is called Pia von Houccair, marries Abyssinian princes, she's a chameleon at best and thinks she's the female Napoleon of the silver screen. Look, God, I wish my colleagues well, I feel sorry for their scaredy-puss lack of talent – they can have Europe, they don't deserve any more. Dear God, that art all-mighty in Hollywood and in the whole damn numero uno USA, who didst create Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn and Reinhardt, wherefore hast Thou invented Columbus, wherefore were the Indians wiped out? There shall come one who will replace all that when she finally lands in Hollywood!

circa 1923

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

October, 2009

Poems

Martin J. Walker translates Albert Ehrenstein

M.J.Walker was born in England in 1943. He studied in Southampton, Hamburg and Frankfurt without very much to show for it, and taught English in the latter city for nearly 30 years. Little of his meagre poetic production has been published.