Simplicissimus: The Fall Scandinavian Issue by Simplicissimus

Editor’s Note Dear Reader, I have the pleasure to welcome you once again to Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies. Allow me, dear reader, to stress the words “once again.” Nearly a year ago, Simplicissimus did not exist. Simplicissimus owes its existence to a wonderful group of students at Harvard College, and it is only because of these outstanding students our editorial board - that this second issue has reached you. My undying thanks to everyone on our editorial board - it has truly been a wonderful journey, and we have only just begun. What you now have before you is our Scandinavian issue. Our inaugural issue focused on German: its cover art, beautifully done by Benjamin Lopez, was of the Town Musicians of Bremen. Between us all on the editorial board, we cover roughly six Germanic languages, German being merely one of them. Of the northern variety, Swedish and Norwegian are proudly represented. It was thus only fitting that we shifted our focus in this issue away from Germany to Scandinavia. I hope that you enjoy this exposition of Scandinavian and Germanic culture at Harvard. Hunter Jones, whose viking appears boldly on our cover in front of a field of runes, has additionally produced a most stunning piece of Scandinavian art for the journal. Our Head Scandinavian Editor, Michael Thorbjørn Feehly, has translated several poems from Norwegian and Danish; all but “Et Liv” appear for the first time in English. Amy Robinson translates a portion of The Questions of Sigewulf from the Old English. Finally, Sarah Amanullah writes in Swedish of the conflicts between life abroad and her Swedish identity. In addition, I must also thank especially both the Harvard Undergraduate Council and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures for their financial contributions to the journal, without which printing this issue would have been a much more daunting feat for us. I would like to extend my thanks to Martin Reindl for his assistance with German language pieces, as well as Dr. Alwin Reindl, who offered keen insights into Ludwig Thoma’s poem “Friede” that greatly influenced our translation. I would like to thank Ms. Elsje Zwart for assisting me with my own piece written in Dutch. Further, Spencer Jay Horne and Ruan Coetzer provided invaluable assistance with the journal’s first ever piece in Afrikaans. Lastly, I must make special mention that Rick Wolthusen provided Simplicissimus indescribably helpful commentary on our German language pieces. What follows is a celebration of all things Germanic at Harvard College. I hope you enjoy. Until the next issue, Cody Dales, Editor-in-Chief 1

Simplicissimus ........................................ The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies The Fall 2013 Editorial Board Cody Dales Danielle Lussi Michael ThorbjĂ¸rn Feehly Ernest J. Doherty Dilia Zwart Benjamin Lopez Julie MacDonell Sarah Amanullah Lane Erickson Kevin Hong Hunter Jones Frederic Hua Max Zacher

Editor-in-Chief Deputy Editor-in-Chief Scandinavian Editor German Editor & Treasurer Dutch Editor Design Chief German Editor Scandinavian Editor Editor Translator Illustrator Illustrator Webmaster

Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies reviews undergraduate essays, poetry, prose, and art on Germanic topics from Harvard College. Simplicissimus publishes both a print and online edition biannually for review by the greater Germanic community at Harvard and other universities.

Simplicissimus will review all submissions anonymously. All submissions and other inquiries may be sent to simplicissimus.submit@gmail.com. Submissions and inquiries may also be mailed to: Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies, Student Organization Center at Hilles, Box 77, 59 Shepard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Additonal information may be found online at www.hcs.harvard.edu/simplicissimus. The opinions expressed are those of the contributors and are not necessarily shared by the editorial board. No part of this journal may be reproduced without the express consent of Simplicissimus. The Harvard name is a trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College and is used by permission of Harvard University. Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies is a registered and official student group at Harvard College. Printed in the Dutch Mediaeval typeface, licensed through Canada Type. Planewalker typeface by Neale Davidson. Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies Volume 1, Issue 2 | Boston: Boston Business Printing, December 2013 ISSN 2332-4783 (Print) | ISSN 2332-4791 (Online) 2

Contents Netherlands 5

The Bloody Butcher

Haley Bowen

12 Carmine 17

Cody Dales

The Simple Life

Wilson Kuhnel

German

Vine and Horizon

Julian Lucas

Attempt to Escape

Emily Reese

Pina’s Pedigree

Superfluous Thoughts

Germanic Influence on Japanese Pop Culture

Translation of Ludwig Thoma’s “Friede”

Michelle Luo Patrick Lauppe Josh Speagle Kevin Hong & Cody Dales

48 Wallerstein

Danielle Lussi

Scandinavian 53

All the King’s Men

Translation of The Questions of Sigewulf

Josefine and I

New and Forgotten Poems

Samantha Wesner Amy Robinson Sarah Amanullah Michael Thorbjørn Feehly

Cover Art & Viking Spread: Hunter Jones Illustrations: Frederic Hua | Interior Design: Benjamin Lopez 3

Netherlands

Haley Bowen

The Bloody Butcher

The most striking feature of David Teniers the Youngerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s painting The Butcher Shop is the massive carcass of the ox hanging by its hind legs from the rafters of the large, dirt-floored room. Bulbous clumps of fat dangle inside the rib cage, and a small dog laps up the blood dripping into the basin placed beneath the truncated neck. To the left of the carcass, a young woman is slicing the ox meat; she pauses in her labor to stare across the room to the shaved and bloody head of the animal, which is resting on a small wooden table. The room is puzzlingly sparse; it lacks the lavish displays of household items, the overabundance of symbols, and even the anthropomorphized monkeys that characterize many of Teniersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; early peasant interiors, such as his 1642 Kitchen Interior. Even the location itself is am-

biguous; though the scene appears to be a butcher shop, there does not seem to be much commercial activity or many products available for sale, and the hearth in the background might seem to indicate that the area is in fact a kitchen. In such a comparatively plain, open scene, the viewer is left to interpret little more than a few scattered vegetables and pans, the carcass, and the young woman herself. Over the span of his career, David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) created over two thousand paintings and enjoyed immense commercial success as a depicter of peasant life.1 Teniers was heavily influenced by the work of Adriaen Brouwer, who specialized in a tonality that was more subdued and sfumato-like than other contemporary painters like 5

Butcher Shop; David Teniers II, The Younger; 1642. Oil on panel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Brueghel. Teniers continued the new realism traditions of Brouwer in The Butcher Shop, using small groups of figures who inhabit their environment fully and convincingly.2 Like his predecessor, Teniers often used his human characters as amusing “metaphor(s) of human sin and folly,” but in the particular case of The Butcher Shop the final message is a more positive one.3 After an exploration of several standout details of the painting, including the ox carcass, the sieve, and the young woman’s labor, it is possible to ascribe the same moralizing intent to this decidedly more ambiguous creation of Teniers. Through his depiction of the need for industrious labor and awareness of death, Teniers counsels his viewers to exercise prudence, a valued quality in the Dutch Golden Age.

The ox carcass is undoubtedly the most striking aspect of the scene in David Tenier’s Butcher Shop for modern viewers, but for Tenier’s contemporaries the scene would have been more familiar. Dead animals, including hares, birds, fish, pigs, and oxen, were not uncommon objects of moralization within Dutch art of the seventeenth century; typically, carcasses served as references to gluttony, excess, or death itself. Rembrandt himself created two paintings of slaughtered oxen, one in the late 1630s and one in 1655, that both feature prominent ox carcasses strung up on wooden beams in the same style as Teniers’ Butcher Shop.4 Though Rembrandt’s paintings contain female figures, these are obscured in shadow; instead, enormous beams of light fall directly on the carcasses themselves, which occupy al6

most the entire span of the canvas. Rembrandt painted the oxen carrion with extraordinarily thick brushstrokes that emphasize the weight of the animal and recall the messy, violent way in which it was killed and drained. Unsurprisingly, most of the literature surrounding these two paintings characterizes the slaughtered animals as symbolic representations of death.5 The carcasses, which are nailed and tied to the wooden beam, also seem to recall the Christian to acts of martyrdom. Some art historians have even gone so far as to compare the carcasses to the body of Christ: In the disguise of an animal sacrificed for the sustenance of the body, it might seem to hang, like Christ on the cross, as a reminder of His sacrifice which is the sustenance of the soul.6

expressive strokes of red and white indicate the deft work of the knife that sliced the ox. The heavy brushwork of the carcass stands in sharp contrast to the meticulously delineated wrinkles and folds of the white linen cloth that drapes down in the interior of the body. In fact, the ox body and head are the only objects in the painting that are depicted so wildly and are built upon several layers of paint, rather than flush with the surface of the canvas. Teniers’ intense realism is most focused in his depiction of the most gruesome details, such as the trails of blood running from the ox’s cranium down the animal’s snout. Even the texture of the meat is unique; while the pots and glasses in the scene only glow dully, the chunks of meat that the woman cuts are highlighted with white dabs of paint, causing the fresh cuts to glisten wetly in the sunlight.

Under this interpretation, the carcass serves not only as a reference to common subsistence but also to spiritual food, which is only received through the martyrdom of Jesus Christ. Alternatively, the motif of the slaughtered animal is also common in Biblical descriptions of celebrations and feast days; in the Parable of the Prodigal Son in the New Testament, for example, a calf is slaughtered in order to celebrate the return of a son to his father.7 Slaughtering therefore took on connotations of holiness through the sacrifice of either human or animal meat. When performed without the proper piety, however, the act of killing was easily linked to the excesses of gluttony. Depictions of sacrificed animals and elaborate displays of vegetables and meat products were used with such an intended moral effect by Dutch artists of the Golden Age, including Teniers.8

Spanning almost the entire height of the painting, the carcass impedes the viewer’s access to the shop entrance in the background, where two butchers and their wives or assistants are idling by the hearth. Situated just to the left of center, the ox carcass must be visually traversed before the eye can reach the background scene, forcing the viewer to remain aware of the butcher’s trade. Unlike both Rembrandts, however, the ox carcass is not a focal point in itself but instead leads the eye to the true vanishing point of the painting, which is the open door of the butcher shop. The pole within the carcass tilts upward toward this door, falling into parallel with the light that streams in from the entrance towards the dish and the ox hide, which are situated on the same angle. Indeed, the carcass serves as more of a backdrop along this line than anything else. The true source of tension in the painting is instead found in the young woman’s gaze toward the shaved and bloodied head of the ox. Though her body falls along the line of perspective to the shop entrance, her gaze cuts across it to reach the ox head. Although the body of the ox is a main feature of The

There are immediate similarities between Rembrandt’s paintings and Teniers’ depiction in The Butcher Shop. Teniers’ brushstrokes themselves betray the inherent violence and immediacy of animal slaughter; the ribs are outlined in broad, unexacting lines of paint, and near the front quarters equally hasty and 7

is enforced by the presence of a black iron sieve on the left wall, directly to the side of the hanging carcass. The sieve was a common symbol for the classical allegorical figure Sapentia, Wisdom or Prudence, who is traditionally capable of separating good from evil. The fact that the sieve is placed so prominently next to the carcass seems to indicate that the two are symbolically linked to the concept of good household management and preparation. Attention to prudence is certainly present in other aspects of the painting as well; the room and the clothing of the woman are meticulously clean and plain, and there is little to indicate excess.

Butcher Shop, the fact that it does not occupy the central focus of the painting undercuts its religious tones in a way that does not occur in Rembrant’s works. Despite its size, the carcass is not the subject of any human attention in the painting; the blood of the ox is, however, lapped up by a small dog, an action which further moves against a Christ-like interpretation of the dead ox. For an alternative explanation of this dramatic depiction, it is helpful to look at the role of food within Dutch life during this time period. The superabundance of food was an important theme in the art of the Netherlands that hearkened back to the medieval guild feasts of Flanders. The Dutch were often ridiculed by foreigners for being ‘guzzlers and sozzlers;’ in other words, for being a healthy, broad, and hearty people.9 The humanist ideal of the seventeenth century, however, was to navigate successfully between excess and privation, and this philosophy extended to the management of household resources, for which women often took sole responsibility.10 Women were often responsible for securing provisions for the household over the winter, including meat, which was a regular part of the diet of the middle and upper classes in the Netherlands.11

Another painting by Teniers, his Kitchen Interior with Still Life and Slaughtered Ox, provides an appropriate comparison. In this purely domestic image, a women is occupied at the hearth in the background while her husband, a farmer, looks on. A slaughtered ox hangs from the kitchen rafters slightly to their right, but the main focus of the painting is the elaborate still life in the foreground, which contains a jumbled collection of kitchen tools, pots, barrels, and stacks of vegetables. Here, too, a sieve is present on the left wall, a blatant reference to the figure of Prudence. These objects show, through example, the importance of gathering and storing provisions like onions and turnips for the winter months; interestingly enough, the piles of food and the pots are interspersed with symbols of transience, including mussels and a burntout candle. This would seem to indicate the prudence and preparation is related to understanding one’s mortality; indeed, in the artistic symbolism of Bruegel, the figure of Prudence was depicted with a coffin in hand, to serve as a reminder of death. It is only once one has true awareness of death that one is capable of separating wise actions from foolish ones.14 In this particular scene, the ox carcass is clearly just one piece of a larger lesson of household

One aspect of female household duties was to smoke and preserve game after it was hung and aged by the butcher; the use of oxen in particular, during the month of October and November, was regarded as an especially prudent preparation for the winter months.12 Images of housewives engaged in the slaughter of animals were common in the seventeenth century and so the young woman in Tenier’s butcher shop is not an artistic aberration.13 Rather, she is engaged in a rather precautionary and useful action. It is probable that instead of indicating gluttony, the ox carcass serves as a reminder of the virtue of preparation and, above all, prudence. This view 8

management. The two carcasses of Teniers from the Butcher Shop and the Kitchen Interior with Still Life are nearly identical; they are hung at similar angles and even have the same linen cloth draped across the interior of the carcass. Obviously, The Butcher Shop lacks the elaborate still life surroundings that much more clearly indicate the moralizing intent of Teniers in his Kitchen Interior with Still Life and Slaughtered Ox.

young girl in the foreground. Instead, they are engaged in fleeting conversation and interaction with each other. In the foreground a much more dramatic scene is occurring. Positioned in the lower right corner of the canvas, a young woman leans over a table piled high with meat from the slaughtered carcass. She grasps a bone firmly with her fist and holds a knife aloft, apparently preparing to cut into the joint and separate it from the rest of the flesh; unlike the main figures behind her, she is engaged in a task of some utility. However, something else has distracted her from her labor. Paused in her work, the young woman stands twisted to her left, locked into a glance with the skinned and bloodied head of the oxen, whose black eyes face her from a small table. She is clearly the intended focus of the viewer’s attention; she is the only character whose form and face are crisply and cleanly delineated, and she stands, as if on display, in the beam of light emanating from an unseen window in the upper left hand side of the canvas. Yet given that she is so distracted, it is difficult to conceive how she might fit into the ideal of prudence that Teniers has hinted at elsewhere in the painting, and if she is indeed prudent, how that prudence might be conceived of in a commercial as opposed to in a domestic environment.

To determine if the same theme of prudence found in the Interior with Still Life can truly be extended to Teniers’ Butcher Shop, the human figures must also be examined. The ox in the Butcher Shop essentially divides the canvas into two planes, both of which contain entirely human figures of entirely different dispositions. In the back room, the butcher and a woman, possibly his wife, are talking with easy familiarity, the butcher’s ax thrown casually over his shoulder. It is possible, peering between the space between the couple, to distinguish a third figure whose bonnet is only barely visible: a woman who is bent over, clearly engaged in some small task. The faces of the couple are only half-distinguishable and seem to have been crudely painted deliberately, in direct contrast to the delicate features of the young girl in the foreground of the painting. They are both at rest: the wife or servant holds the jug she was carrying down at her side, and the butcher drinks from a glass of beer. His action is mimicked in the drawing of the male figure on the right-hand wall, who is also drinking; such caricatures were a common feature in Teniers’ painting after his 1641 work Artist in His Studio.15 Beside the drawing another male butcher, identifiable by his apron, is stepping out into the street. Everyone present is of lower-middle class, as evidenced by their coarse clothing, causal demeanor, and the tools of manual labor which they carry. They ignore the sight of the carcass and are completely oblivious to the most important figure in the painting, the

It is important to note that the young girl is not particularly wealthy; she is a member of the laboring class, and her task, by all standards, is a humble one. Her position is not characterized, exaggerated, or ridiculed by Teniers, however; instead, he gives the young woman a quiet and solitary sense of industry, which is evident from her calm face and clean, neat appearance. The emphasis on the virtue of industriousness in Dutch culture had its origins in Calvinism; a good servant of God, according to Christian theology, was one who labored at his talent. The Dutch recognized and praised this quality within their 9

own community. The ideal Dutch woman was industrious, house-proud and chaste, and her husband was equally hard-working, frugal and “punctilious in honoring contractual obligations;” in other words, the pair subscribed to the “familiar catalogue of homely virtues.”16 These ideals transferred readily into the artistic world. In satirical works artists like Teniers condemned sloth and drunkenness and praised those who were “never idle, capable of strenuous exertion and ardent seekers of work.”17 Diligence and labor, as opposed to inheriting money or engaging in schemes, were seen as the only acceptable route to prosperity for the middle class.18

a tribute to his wife’s positive qualities as the head of a household.24 The decorated swan with the pearl hanging from its mouth, for example, is one clear symbol the woman’s purity. Although the apples that she peels typically reference temptation and sin, the woman’s attention strays from them and the excesses around her; she gazes off into the distance as she peels them, more concerned with the inner product than the outer appearance of the fruit.25 This action and other objects around her display her positive properties as a wife and bride: purity, faithfulness, and good conduct of the household.26 The young woman in The Butcher Shop is similarly diligent and pure, though since we are unaware of her marriage status her actions cannot immediately be connected to household virtue in the same way that is possible with the Kitchen Interior. She still, however, exemplifies the untarnished virtue of the ideal Dutch woman in her useful activity.27 Here, too, Teniers blatantly discards outer appearances and temptations in favor of the inner; he has depicted the soft, woolly hide of the ox in a discarded pile on the floor of the butcher shop, below the carcass. The ox has been stripped of its skin just like the apple; it has been transformed, through human intervention, into an instrument of pure utility. This theme of discarded exteriors can be extended to human virtue; the excellent human being is one who turns his whole activity to function, rather than to vanity.

The increase in the production of labor imagery coincided with a real-life increase in trade and industry, and by the sixteenth century, the Italian tendency to connect work to the notion of honor had gained popularity in the Dutch Republic.19 It was around this time that images of labor began to appear in a solely secular context.20 Women were an important part of these images: in real life, they sometimes made up to thirty percent of the work force of the Dutch cities.21 The typical Dutch housewife was expected to organize her household, which often included servants and possibly apprentices, and aided in the day-to-day operations of their husband’s business. Mothers, in particular, were seen not only as the true protectors of the household, but also as industrious, laboring additions to it.22 This is particularly evident in another painting of Teniers’, his Kitchen Interior of 1644, in which the central figure exemplifies many of the same qualities as the young woman in The Butcher Shop. In this depiction of what appears to be a wedding preparation, Teniers’ wife and first son are peeling apples, surrounded by rather lavish displays of food.23 At the time of the painting’s creation, David Teniers had been married to his wife, Anna Brueghel, for seven years; the painting is often read as

To become truly virtuous, however, a special kind of understanding was needed. As was evident in the Kitchen Interior with Still Life, where symbolic preparation was interspersed with references to transience, Teniers, like Brueghel, believed that prudence was dependent on an awareness of mortality. When the young woman pauses in her labor to gaze into the eyes of the ox, she cannot be conceived of as neglecting or disregarding her labor. Rath10

er, she is establishing contact with a powerful visual reminder of death.

ularly for the artist’s own career. The scene does not attempt to teach through satire, as many of Teniers’ works do, nor does it seek to impose virtues on the viewer through an overabundance of symbolic foods, utensils, and burning candles. In this aspect The Butcher Shop is both refreshing and challenging. Yet the hints that Teniers places throughout the work, especially when illuminated through comparison to other contemporary paintings, provide suitable evidence of moral intent. The painting’s rendering of labor and mortality is highly reflective of the ideals of the Dutch Golden Age: the importance of industry, appropriate respect for death, and adherence to the demands of prudence. For this singularly dramatic work, Brueghel’s caption for his engraving Prudentia provides an appropriate summary: “Si prudens esse cupis, in futurum prospectum ostende; if you wish to be prudent, think always of the future.”

The ox, deprived of its hide, is revealed to be little more than flesh and bone, and the violence of its death is present everywhere: in the fierce brushstrokes that make up the carcass, in the hacked back side of the skull, and in the drops of blood that are greedily drunk by the little dog. The young woman is necessarily prudent because she, unlike her companions, is the only one who is facing death; she alone has been granted the sight and the knowledge that enables her to decide that her labor is proper, and her idleness is sinful. Caught up in the dramatic movement of her gaze, the viewer might come to similar conclusions about the value of prudence. Tenier’s Butcher Shop shares its moral premise in a way that was rather atypical, partic-

Netherlands

Cody Dales Dutch

Karmijn

Zijn ogen keken naar de horizon. Het vermoeide gezicht naast hem keek op naar de hemel. Voor een moment weerspiegelden de ogen van de man het immense gewicht van de zonsondergang, maar draaiden gauw weer naar de aarde. Pieter stond op, zijn ogen nog op de gloeiende woestijnhemel gericht. Vanuit de kleine stad ver beneden waren de donkere silhouetten van de twee mannen op de heuvel helemaal versmolten met het brandende rood van de avondzon. Aan de overkant van de heuvel waren een paar mannen bezig om dozen in de wagons van een trein te laden.

achter zich. Hij luisterde naar de vallende steen en vroeg, “Wil jij nog gaan?” “Nee.” Jan tilde zijn hoofd op en keek vanaf de heuvel naar de trein. De trein scheen mooi helder rood in de avondzon en er kwam nog rook uit de schoorsteen. “Nou,” zei Jan, “Ik weet niet waar hij heen gaat. Ik denk, dat hij niet veel langer hier zal blijven. Ga jij?”

Pieter draaide zich naar de man naast hem en vroeg, “Weet jij waar de trein heen gaat, Jan?”

Pieter zei niets. Vanuit zijn ooghoeken kon hij een paar gebouwen zien. Hij draaide zich om. De heuvel begon, een lange schaduw over de stad De man keek nog naar de aarde. Hij bleef stil, te werpen en er waren een paar zwakke lichtalsof hij niets hoorde. Hij raapte een steen op, en in de ramen. Er waren alleen nog een paar bekeek hem even in zijn hand en gooide hem bedelaars in de straat. Jan stond op en stofte 12

Cody Dales

Carmine

His eyes were watching the horizon. The tired face beside him looked up toward the sky. For a moment, the man’s eyes bore the immense weight of the sunset in their reflection, but quickly turned again toward the dirt. Peter stood up, his eyes still watching the glowing desert sky. From the small town far below, the dark silhouettes of the two men on the hill were completely consumed by the burning red of the evening sun. On the other side of the hill, a few men were busy loading boxes into the freight cars of a train.

listened to the rock fall and asked, “Do you still want to go?” “No.” John raised up his head and looked down the hill at the train. The train shone a bright, beautiful red in the evening light, and smoke was still coming out of the chimney. “Well,” John said, “I don’t know where it’s going. I can only say that it isn’t going to stay here much longer. Are you going?”

Peter turned to the man beside him and asked, “Where do you think the train is going, John?” The man was still looking at the ground. remained still as if he had heard nothing. picked up a rock, examined it in his hand a moment, and tossed it behind his back.

Peter said nothing. In the corner of his eye he could see a few buildings. He turned. The hill was beginning to cast a long shadow over the town, and there were a few dim lights in the windows. Only a few beggars were left in the street. John stood up and dusted off his worn

He He for He 13

zijn versleten tuinbroek af. De twee waren stil, keken scherp naar de mannen beneden.

Pieter zei niets. Jan draaide zich niet om. Zijn ogen keken naar de horizon. Hij zuchtte en begon de heuvel af te lopen. De heuvel was steil en stof vloog om hem heen terwijl hij liep. De trein bulderde harder en er was niemand te zien. Hij opende de houten deur van de achterste wagon en wierp zijn tas onder de dozen in de duisternis. Hij keek om. De zon scheen nog fel tussen de verspreide wolken.

“Het is niets,” zei Jan. “Kijk eens, die mannen zijn bijna klaar. We springen in de eerste lege wagon, die we vinden, en dat is dat. Het is niets.” “Het is niets,” zei Pieter tegen zichzelf. “En niemand zal ons vinden. We zullen rond zonsopgang honderden mijlen hiervandaan zijn.”

Pieter stond nog bovenaan de heuvel. Door het stof kon Jan de donkere omlijning van de man zien. Boven de zon leek het rood van de heuvel te veranderen, als was hij het laatste deel van een twijg, verzwolgen in een groeiend vuur.

“Wij en al die dozen.” “Dat maakt toch niet uit?” “Jawel. Zij zijn belangrijk voor iemand. De enige reden waarom ze ingepakt en in de trein zijn, is omdat de mensen zelf niet zo ver weg konden gaan.”

De trein zette zich in beweging. Pieters ogen bewogen langs het spoor. Het spoor leidde tussen twee heuvelruggen, die aan de horizon verdwenen. Er waren geen bochten. Er stond niets in de weg. Hij zag maar twee heldere spiegelingen in de vuurzee, twee lijnen van ijzer, die uit het zicht in een eeuwig punt samenkomen.

De trein bulderde en een verse rookpluim begon, in de lucht te zweven. “Waarom zouden we zo ver weg moeten gaan, Jan?” “Ik heb al heel lang niets gegeten. Er is niets meer voor ons hier. Het verandert niet.”

Toen zag hij de trein. Rook gutste de lucht in. Hij zag niets dan het doorborende licht van de woestijnhemel. Hij kon de stad niet langer zien. Strepen licht flitsten langs het zwarte ijzer van de trein. De wielen draaide langzaam - en daar stond Jan uit de goederenwagon te kijken.

“Het verandert, Jan.” Pieter wees naar de stad. “Bovendien,” zei hij, “is iedereen, die we kennen, beneden.” “Zeker. Goede mensen ook, ook al is er geen werk. Met sommige mensen is het best fijn, maar mijn leven is moeilijk.” Jan wierp zijn tas over zijn schouder en keek naar de trein. “Ik weet niet waar de trein heen gaat. Ik ken niemand, die al is vertrokken. Ik weet niet, hoe lang er geen werk zal zijn. Ik weet helemaal niets, behalve dat ik niet hier kan blijven. Ga jij?”

Pieter zuchtte, “Weet je waar de trein heen gaat, Jan?” Hij wierp zijn tas over zijn schouder en begon van de heuvel af te rennen. Het stof was overal en hij kon niets zien. De lucht brandde. De trein brulde. Er was niets behalve de smeulende duisternis van het stof. Hij rende hoestend uit het stof en het spoor 14

overalls. The two were silent, watching keenly the men below.

John did not turn around. His eyes were watching the horizon. He sighed and began to walk down the hill. The hill was steep, and dust flew around him as he went. The train bellowed louder and no one was in sight. He opened the wooden door of the rear car and threw his bag into the darkness among the boxes. He looked back. The sun was still glaring down between the scattered clouds.

“There’s really nothing to it,” John said. “Just look, the men are almost finished. We jump into the first empty car we can find and that’s that. Nothing to it.” “Nothing to it,” Peter said under his breath. “And nobody will find us. We’ll be hundreds of miles away from here at daybreak.”

Peter still stood at the top of the hill. Through the dust John could see the dark outline of the man. Atop the sun-changed reds of the hill it appeared as if he were the last part of a twig being engulfed in a growing fire.

“We and all of those boxes.” “That doesn’t matter. Do you know what’s in them?”

The train began to move.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Peter’s eyes moved down the tracks. The tracks led between two ridges, vanishing at the horizon. There were no turns, nothing in the way. He saw only two bright reflections in the conflagration, two lines of iron converging in some point forever out of sight.

“Sure it does. It’s important to someone. The only reason they’re all packed up and in the train is because people couldn’t go that far away themselves.” The train bellowed, and a fresh plume of smoke began to float up into the air.

Then he saw the train. Smoke gouged the air. He saw nothing but the piercing light of the desert sky. He could no longer see the town. Streaks of light flashed on the black iron of the train. The wheels were turning slowly - and there stood John looking out of the freight car.

“Why should we go that far, John?” “I haven’t eaten in long time. There’s nothing left for us here. It won’t change.” “Things will change, John.” Peter pointed towards the town. “Besides,” he said, “everyone we know is down there.”

Peter sighed, “Where do you think the train is going, John?” He threw his bag behind his back and began to run down the hill. The dust was everywhere, and he could not see. The air was burning. The train roared. There was nothing but the smoldering darkness of the dust.

“Definitely. Good people, too, but there’s no work. Some people have it just fine still, but I, I struggle.” John threw his bag over his shoulder and looked at the train. “I don’t know where the train is going. I don’t know anyone who has left yet. I know absolutely nothing except that I can’t stay here. Are you going?”

He ran coughing out of the dust and onto the tracks. The town was nowhere in sight. The hill was blinding in the light. He ran nearer to the train. The freight car was almost before him.

Peter said nothing. 15

op. De stad was nergens te zien. De heuvel was verblindend in het licht. Hij rende dichter naar de trein. De goederenwagon was bijna v贸贸r hem.

He stretched out his hand for the handle of the door. His fingers could not yet reach. A great thunder came from the train and it moved faster.

Hij strekte zijn hand uit naar het handvat van de deur. Zijn vingers konden er nog niet bij. Een grote donder kwam uit de trein en hij ging sneller.

As he ran, his eyes shifted for a moment to the setting sun before him. The sky was a terrifying explosion of reds, oranges, and violets cut by the growing black line of smoke. The town was somewhere far behind the hill engulfed in burning carmine.

Terwijl hij rende, verschoven zijn ogen voor een moment naar de ondergaande zon v贸贸r hem. De hemel was een verschrikkelijke ontploffing van roden, oranjes en violetten, doorsneden door de groeiende zwarte lijn van rook. De stad was ergens ver achter de heuvel, verzwolgen in brandend karmijn.

The fire-red sky consumed everything.

De vuurrode hemel verteerde alles.

Netherlands

Wilson Kuhnel Afrikaans

The Simple Life

Ek is lief vir die eenvoudige lewe. Dis hoekom ek so van Suid-Afrika gehou het. Weens my oorpsprong in die Suidelike gedeelte van die VSA, is die stadige lewe vir my belangrik vir ‘n gesonde verstand. Daar is ook spanning tussen my lewe in die Suide en my lewe by die universiteit. Hier is ‘n mens haastig. En ek hou ietwat daarvan; “Ek wil nooit middeljarig seniel in my onderbroek sit en koerant lees nie,” soos André du Toit in sy gedig “In en Uit” geskryf het. Daar is ‘n balans natuurlik, en in my lewe hoop ek om die Suid-Afrikaanse manier en Harvard se manier eweredig te aanvaar. Een dag werk ek aan ‘n stel wiskunde vrae en op ‘n ander dag braai ek ‘n bietjie boerwors. Daar is tyd vir beide.

I love the simple life. That’s why I liked South Africa so much. Because I come from the southern United States, the slow life is important for me in order to maintain a healthy state of mind. Therefore there is often tension between my southern life and my life at the university. Here you are always rushed. And yet I still agree somewhat with the thought of “I do not want to be middle-aged and senile, sitting in my underwear reading the paper,” as André du Toit wrote in his poem “In and Out.” Obviously there is a balance, and I hope to find a midway point in my life between the South African style and Harvard’s. One day I can be working on a problem set and the other, grilling up a little boerewors. There is time for both.

German

Julian Lucas

Vine and Horizon

Height in the Essays of Nietzsche and Emerson

Because the concept of height is so central to both thinkers, it is a critical point in the investigation of their differences. There is a clear and general resemblance - for both, “height” of some kind is the fount of spiritual excellence - but this superficial resemblance belies the more profound difference that emerges from each thinker’s articulation of this concept. Emerson’s height is an absolute height, a rising, while Nietzsche’s height is a relative height - a height that must always build upon what is low. This fundamental distinction operates not only explicitly, in the maxims and aphorisms of the two writers, but also implicitly, in the formal and tonal dimensions of their texts.

The rhetoric of height is everywhere in the works of Nietzsche and Emerson. Of their many affinities as thinkers, it is among the strongest. As a conceptual framework and a substratum of images, it saturates their texts; as far as these two most restless and rhizomatic of philosophers can be said to have a crux or center, height is most emphatically it. “We do not yet see that virtue is Height,” writes Emerson in Self Reliance.1 The noble nature “knows itself to be at a height,” writes Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil.2 These are only the most plain and explicit examples - the rhetoric of height extends far up the slopes of Zarathustra’s glacial solitude, and rises far along the diameters of Emerson’s ever-expanding circles.

It is in Self Reliance that Emerson writes that virtue is height. However, in Circles there is a clearer articulation of what this height might be. Height, in Circles, is diameter, breadth, 19

and span. A higher thought, or a higher nature, is one which encompasses everything that came before it - which subsumes and transforms into the first fact of a new series. Height is a wider horizon, and a broader context that brings about a reclassification. The man who views “the same objects from a higher point,” cannot view a debt in the same way as a broker, because his horizon goes far beyond the “debt of the money,” and transcends it so as to rise into the “debt of thought to mankind.”3 Emerson’s account of conversation as a game of circles is much the same: each interlocutor literally raises and broadens the level of discourse by a “swift circumscription,” of his predecessors, a revelatory process that reconfigures the world.4 Attaining a certain height can be achieved by clambering over others - in the sense of circumscribing their classifications within one’s own - but this is not essential to the transcendental climb. Nor is it hierarchical or parasitic. Many spiritual pursuits involving no others can be part of this striving; there is literature, described as a “platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it.”5 This platform of literature is a pertinent image: Emersonian height is important because it allows the nature thus elevated to look out. It is a height that allows for a broader view of the spiritual, intellectual, and material fields. Nietzschean height is much more explicitly premised on the necessary antithesis of lowliness. The most vivid image Nietzsche uses to this end is that of the sipo matador, one of the “sun-seeking vines of Java,” which blossoms only after climbing high over the hapless oak.6 The Emersonian height of rising circumscription is here replaced by the violent and parasitic climb of the vine. Lower beings must be present as scaffolding for the higher natures; they must be incomplete to allow the higher natures to thrive and grow.7 The ultimate ramification of this very different concept of height is of the pathos of distance. Distinct from Emer-

son’s height - which is derived purely from the self-reliant mind - Nietzschean spiritual height is consubstantial with social and material elevation. Aristocractic and material privilege as well as the downward-gazing contempt that this privilege allows for - is necessary for “that other, more mysterious pathos... the craving for an ever widening of distances within the soul itself.”8 This concept of height, represented primarily by the pathos of distance, is not only explicitly asserted, but demonstrated and performed by the tonal and formal structure of the Nietzschean text. The contemptuous oratorical bombast so characteristic of Nietzsche enacts, in writing, the pathos of distance. Across his writing, rebuke and mockery act as a kind of scaffold or a trampoline which proceeds and propels his leaps into the sublime heights of oracular truth. It is impossible to imagine Nietzsche without these springboards of lighthearted derision. Consider, for instance, the transition between Aphorisms 228 and 229 in Beyond Good And Evil. The first aphorism is a “discussion” of the British Utilitarians which is as dripping with contempt as anything in Nietzsche’s work. It begins with a histrionic - even sassy - apology: “May I be forgiven the discovery that all moral philosophy so far has been boring and was a soporific.”9 It goes on from there to compare Jeremy Bentham and his followers to “ponderous herd animals,” afterward becomes a diatribe against the mediocrity of the British soul, and ends in an almost inconceivably foolish rhyme.10 But then comes the leap. The next aphorism, cutting into the empty air made by Nietzsche’s contempt, deals with one of his most surprising and morbid insights: “Almost everything we call “higher culture” is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound.”11 Can a greater distance - a greater height - be imagined than that between Nietzsche’s caricature Benthamites, and his 20

subsequent invocation of the sublime in masochism, self-mutilation and the auto-da-fe?12 Emerson, also, enacts his concept of height height as the obtaining of a broader view - in his prose. Where Nietzsche’s writing enacts height by way of a textual pathos of distance by throwing his foils under him and using them as springs - Emerson’s writing does the same by way of circumscription. Fear not the new generalization - this principle holds in both the rhetorical and syntactical structures of Emersonian prose.13 This element of Emersonian form is most evident in the paragraph structure Circles: there is a certain upswell, a vertiginous rising in marked contrast to the vaulting Nietzschean leap from the depths of spite. To illustrate this movement, it is sufficient to examine a few such transitions, and in particular, even the beginnings and endings of paragraphs, almost any of which can be taken as representative of this upward breadth and generalization. Take, for instance, the meditation on the degrees of permanence. It begins with the earthly “You admire this tower of granite,” then continues to merchants and orchards, yet sweeps up by its conclusion to the cosmic “Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls.”14 Another meditation, this one on the degrees in idealism, begins with toy magnets and “the heydey of youth and poetry” and follows the same dizzying evaporation upward, to condense at last in the triumphant affirmation that the material state of the world itself is engendered by the ideas of men, and

that “A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits.”15 A final example, this one from Self-Reliance: “Every mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! A new system.”16 Here, Emerson rises above and circumscribes social theory, geology, and even chemistry within his higher, broader principle – that all generalizations are susceptible to being generalized, and that “light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin.”17 The example is especially pertinent when juxtaposed with Nietzsche’s incredibly different invocation of Jeremy Bentham for the purposes of attaining rhetorical and spiritual height. These two articulations of height - the Emersonian breadth of view, and the Nietzschean downward look - stand in vivid contrast. What does this difference stem from? One interpretation that offers itself is geographic. Nietzschean height looks down on the crowded mass of Europe which he so disdained; on the rabble which he saw as the ultimate impediment to nobility and greatness of soul. Emersonian height takes in the breadth and expanse of the American horizon - unlike Nietzsche’s noble vine, it can afford to say, “If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.”18

Emily Reese

German

Fluchtversuch

„Hände an die Mauer, Füße auseinander, einen halben Meter Abstand!” gellt eine Stimme durch die Luft. Wir hielten an, schauten neugierig rundherum. “Wer hatte etwas falsch gemacht?” fragte ich mich, aber ich hörte nur mein eigenes Atmen und sah nur den vom Wind aufgewirbelten Staub. Ich bemerkte die zwei unsicheren Augenpaare, die auf mich gerichtet waren. Weil alles ganz normal aussah, zuckte ich mit den Schultern.

gibt es ein Plakat. Vielleicht ist es eine Werbung für eine Kneipe oder so etwas.” Als wir einen halben Schritt vorwärts machten, bellte die raue Stimme wieder: „Hände hoch oder ich schieße!” Genau in diesem Moment lief es mir kalt über den Rücken. Ich konnte nicht einmal das Atmen meines Freundes hören, nein, nur das Klopfen meines Herzens. Wir hielten unsere Hände hoch und bewegten uns zentimeterweise vorwärts.

„Diese Stimme meint uns nicht. Worauf warten wir noch? Gehen wir in die Kneipe. David, weißt du, wohin du gehst? In diesem Niemandsland gibt es bestimmt keine Kneipe.”

„Schneller!” fordert die Stimme, die sich uns näherte. Ich versuchte, noch schneller zu gehen, aber meine bleischweren Beine konnten nicht schneller gehen. Plötzlich fühlte ich etwas an meinem Rücken. Es schob mich nach

„Äh, also… ich dachte… Ach so! Da drüben 22

Emily Reese

Attempt to Escape

“Hands on the wall, feet apart, a half meter between!” yells a voice through the air. We stopped, looking around curiously. “Who did something wrong?” I asked myself, but I heard only my own breathing and saw only the dust being blown by the wind. I noticed the two uncertain pairs of eyes that were set on me. Because everything appeared quite normal, I simply shrugged my shoulders.

thing.” As we went forward a half step, the rough voice snapped again: “Hands up or I’ll shoot!” Exactly in this moment a rush of cold ran across my back. I couldn’t even hear my friend’s breath, no, only the beating of my heart. We held our hands in the air and inched forward. “Faster!” demanded the voice that came closer. I tried to go faster, but my legs, heavy as lead, could not. Suddenly I felt something on my back. It shoved me ahead, so that I finally tripped on the wall. The soldiers frisked us and handcuffed us without asking us any questions. When a hand pushed me into a car, I began to break out in a sweat. They accused us of “at-

“The voice doesn’t mean us. What are we waiting for? Let’s go to a bar. David, do you know where you’re going? In this no man’s land there certainly isn’t a bar.” “Oh, well… I thought… well! Over there is a poster. Maybe it’s an ad for a bar or some23

vorn, sodass ich schließlich an die Mauer stolperte. Die Soldaten tasteten uns ab und legten uns Handschellen an, ohne uns irgendeine Fragen zu stellen. Als eine Hand mich in ein Auto drängte, brach ich in Schweiß aus. Sie unterstellten uns „Versuchte Republikflucht.”

bestes Stück erklären! Später ging er zum Abendessen und das war meine Chance, aus Ostberlin zu entkommen. Mein Herz pochte. Ich fing an, kalte Füße zu bekommen. Ich erinnerte mich aber an meine Verhaftung sowie an die Nachrichten von den Flüchtlingen, die erschossen wurden. Doch ich brachte den Mut auf.

Wegen unserer Unschuld entließen sie mich und als ich meine Freunde später wiedersah, stieß ich einen Seufzer der Erleichterung aus. „Mensch, trotz unserer Unschuld hätte es passieren können, dass wir uns nie wieder gesehen hätten!“ sagte ich.

Ich stieg in den gestohlenen Schützenpanzer. Mit ruhigen Händen ließ ich den Motor an. Er schnurrte als ich roboterhaft vorwärts fuhr. Ich fixierte meinen Blick auf die Mauer. Mir schlug das Herz bis zum Hals, aber ich konnte nicht herumdrehen. Jemand schrie etwas… Aber mein Herzschlag war lauter als das Schreien und so konnte ich die Worte nicht hören. Plötzlich gab es einen Kugelregen… und eine Flut von Gedanken strömte in meinen Kopf: „Was mache ich? Ich habe den Verstand verloren! Ich werde getötet werden! Alles wäre vergebens! Ich muss…” Dann prallte ich gegen die Mauer. Ich brachte sie teilweise zum Einsturz, aber das Loch in dem Stacheldrahtzaun war nicht groß genug, um dadurch zu krabbeln. Ich fing an, heftig zu schwitzen.

„Ja, mein Vater hat mir gesagt, dass solche Sachen ziemlich oft passieren. Normalerweise werden die Leute, die zu nah an die Mauer kommen, erschossen.” In dem Moment entschied ich mich, einen Fluchtversuch zu wagen. Als ich diese Idee den anderen erzählte, starrten sie mich an und fingen an zu lachen. Ich aber lachte nicht. „Sie können mitkommen oder sie können hier bleiben, aber ich muss flüchten!” Ihre ausdruckslosen Blicke sagten mir genug - mir riss der Geduldsfaden und ich ging weg.

„Jetzt werde ich bestimmt sterben - hier, vor der Mauer,” dachte ich mir. Dann fühlte ich eine Hand auf meinen Arm. Die Hand zog mich durch das Loch. Ein West-Berliner Schutzpolizist schoss auf den Ostpolizisten zurück - es gab ein Feuergefecht zwischen den zwei Seiten, Ost und West, um mich zu töten oder zu retten. Ich bekam neue Kraft und gab mir die größte Mühe, mit Hilfe des unermüdlichen Westdeutschen, durch das kleine Loch zu kriechen. Vermutlich wegen des Stacheldrahts blutete mein Arm, aber ich konnte nichts fühlen. Ich war wie betäubt und wollte endlich nur noch auf der anderen Seite sein. Dann plötzlich stoppte der Schusswechsel und mir wurde schwarz vor Augen.

Tag ein und Tag aus arbeitete ich an meinem Plan. Als Techniker der „Nationalen Volksarmee“ wusste ich schon etwas von den Schützenpanzern, aber mit den Einzelheiten war ich nicht vertraut. Es war nicht schwer zu lernen, wie man diese fährt. Eines Tages, meine offizielle DDR-Uniform tragend, fragte ich einen Schützenpanzerfahrer: “Könnten Sie mir erklären, wie diese Maschine funktioniert? Ich interessiere mich sehr für die Technik.” Misstrauisch war er nicht ganz im Gegenteil: seine Augen leuchteten sogar auf. Ganz bestimmt wolle er mir sein 24

tempted flight from the republic.” Because of our innocence they released me, and when I later saw my friends again, I let out a sigh of relief. “Man, despite our innocence, it could have actually happened that we would never have seen each other again!” I said.

wall. I could feel my heart pounding, but I could not turn around. Someone yelled something… but the beating of my heart was louder than this and thus I heard nothing else. Suddenly there was a rain of bullets… and a flood of thoughts rushed into my head: “What am I doing? I’ve lost my mind! I’m going to die. Everything would be for nothing! I have to…” Then I collided with the wall. I broke through, but the hole in the barbed wire was not big enough to crawl through. I began to sweat heavily.

“Yeah, my father told me, such things often happen. Normally people who come too close to the wall are shot dead.” “In that moment I decided to risk fleeing the country. When I told this idea to the others, they stared at me and began to laugh. I however did not.

“Now I’m certainly going to die - here, before the wall,” I thought to myself. Then I felt a hand on my arm. The hand pulled me through the hole. A West Berliner shot back at the East Berlin police - there was a firefight between the two sides, East and West, to kill me or to save me. I found new strength and put forth my greatest effort, aided by the tireless West German, to crawl through the small hole. Likely because of the barbed wire my arm was bleeding, but I felt nothing. I was num and wanted to be on the other side finally. Then, suddenly, the shootout stopped and I fell unconscious.

“You can come with me, or you can stay here, but I must flee!” Their blank faces were enough - I lost my patience and left. Day in and day out I worked on my plan. As a technician of the “National People’s Army” I already knew a bit about the tanks, but I wasn’t familiar with the details. It wasn’t difficult to learn to drive. One day, wearing my official GDR uniform, I asked the tank driver, “Can you explain to me how this works? I’m really interested in engineering.” He wasn’t suspicious - quite the opposite: in fact his eyes lit up. Certainly he’ll want to show me. Later he went to dinner, and that was my chance to escape East Berlin. My heart throbbed. I began to get cold feet. I remembered my arrest just like the news of the those who attempted to flee and were shot. I summoned up all my courage.

Later - I do not know how much time has passed - I awoke in the hospital. My flight was successful. With great difficulty I survived. I lost my arm, and was shot through the lung, but I had my life and my freedom. I did not meet my savior, because I fainted so quickly after being pulled through the hole completely. Thanks to the endeavors of the West German police, I lie now in this bed. I am so grateful that I get goosebumps, and hope that my savior knows of my survival. Finally I closed my eyes and slept in peace.

I climbed into the stolen tank. I carefully started the motor. It hummed as I drove forward like a robot. I fixed my gaze on the

Später - ich weiß nicht, wie viel Zeit vergangen ist - wachte ich im Krankenhaus auf. Meine Flucht war geglückt. Mit Ach und Krach hatte ich überlebt. Ich verletzte mich am Arm und erlitt einen Lungendurchschuss, aber ich hatte mein Leben und meine Freiheit. Ich traf meine Retter nicht, weil ich sofort in Ohnmacht gefallen bin, nachdem sie mich

vollständig durch das Loch gezogen hatten. Dank ihren Bemühungen lag ich aber nun in diesem Bett. Ich war ihnen so dankbar, dass ich eine Gänsehaut bekam, und hoffte, dass sie von meinem Überleben wussten. Endlich schloss ich meine Augen und schlief in Frieden ein.

German

Michelle Luo

Pina’s Pedigree

Imagine a deserted café. The setting is dark and quiet. A woman appears. Dressed in only a camisole, she moves slowly, arms extended, eyes closed, colliding with chairs. A second woman pushes her way through a revolving door, clacking loudly and purposefully through the space. A third woman appears, also stumbling around the café with her eyes shut. She pauses, and raises a hand to her chest as if to assure herself that she is still there. Then, the music begins.

portray her parents’ café from her childhood, re-imagined and reconstructed many years later. One of the few of her pieces in which Bausch actually performed, Café Müller makes use of three dancer characters - Bausch, Malou Airaudo, and Dominique Mercy - who are given abstract technical movements and seem unaware of their physical environment. In addition, another three dancer-actor characters navigate the space with quotidian movements, always aware of the space they occupy.1 Despite the ethereal grace of the movements, the dancers sometimes seem unable to control their actions: “Men and women fall into each other. They hold each other. They drop each other. Over and over and over again.” 2

This is the opening of Cafe Müller, one of German choreographer Philipine “Pina” Bausch’s most celebrated works. Like many of Bausch’s other pieces, Café Müller incorporates stories and scenes of the past; it is meant to 27

Largely thought of as the most influential choreographer of the twentieth century, Bausch was famous for her “angst-ridden, non-linear and expressionistic style of dance theatre,” inciting massive excitement and uproar wherever she toured.3 Her choreography is intensely expressive, often described as violent and visceral. Through reenactment of childhood scenes and poignant sequences of repetition, Bausch explores themes of human relationships and body movement, and the deep, emotional impact of her pieces is widely acknowledged as unparalleled. Nonetheless, Bausch’s work is not without its origins.

body. A new form of modern dance, which came to be known as the Ausdrucktanz, also emerged in Germany at this time, a movement that provided a new form of widely accessible exercise to the German people. The German concerns about the body were a natural context for the Ausdrucktanz - “with its renewed acceptance of spiritual and experiential knowledge and new awareness of the body fostered by the Physical Culture movement, [Germany] was the soil which nourished the Ausdrucktanz.”4 Although the choreographers and dancers of the Ausdrucktanz were many and varied, common themes run throughout their works, such as an emphasis on the individual, the Ich, denotes the concepts of self, ego, individuality, and subjectivity.”5 Ausdrucktanz sought to bring out choreographers’ “inner truth, their interpretation of life experience, and their sense of self, as well as the individuality of each dance.”6 As the Ausdrucktanz progressed, it readily overlapped with themes found in the nudist, expressionist, and feminist movements, particularly because of its interest in individualistic expression through movement. In 1936, the Audrucktanz was pronounced a degenerate art by the Nazi party, after which this German dance form found other outlets on an international level, for example in Bausch’s work. Bausch thus represents the culmination of the initial German Physical Culture revolution; its influence on the founding members of the Ausdrucktanz; interactions between the Ausdrucktanz and feminist, nudist, and expressionist movements; and the subsequent spread of German dance around the world. Let us now explore this remarkable progression through German history.

Germany’s culture during the long twentieth century is fragmented, shattered by the two world wars and domestic political instability. Following the war reparations of the first world war and the German atrocities of the second, Germany is still in a process of Vergangenheitspolitik. However, despite this apparent volatility of German cultural history, Bausch’s work demonstrates that German art progressed and persisted throughout the twentieth century and continues to thrive today. Bausch’s style can be traced back through generations of dancers, choreographers, and teachers, and its roots can be found in the German Physical Culture revolution of the early twentieth century. Bausch’s career is not an isolated movement in modern dance, but rather the capstone on half a century of the transfer and interaction of new ideas and theories in dance and beyond. By closely examining the lineage of Bausch’s dance, we can discover that the body and cultural expression in Germany’s long twentieth century shared a closely intertwined relationship, which often intersected at dance.

In early twentieth-century Germany, members of the “life reform movement,” or Lebensreformbewegung, were concerned that the developing modern and industrialized

The roots of Bausch’s dance can be traced to the year 1900, when we find Germany in the midst of developing changing views on the 28

world was detracting from human “natural” living conditions, which they saw as “a path of progressive degeneration that could only be reversed by living in accordance with man’s and woman’s nature (naturgemäße Lebensweise).”7 Followers of the Lebensreformbewegung rejected modern medicine for failing to consider individualistic spiritual needs, and were interested in “the intellectual traditions of vegetarianism, aspects of nude culture, and natural therapy.”8 Men and women alike became obsessed with physical appearances in their “utopian search for perfect health and beauty,” a theme that transcended socio-economic classes and various professions.9

of irrationality.”12 Unfortunately for Dalcroze, the onset of war and the death of his financial backer in 1914 forced the Hellereau experiment to come to a close. Dalcroze was ultimately more of a teacher than a theorist (he never produced any books), but his ideas were an important starting point for the Ausdrucktanz movement. Rejecting the traditionally rigid motions of ballet, Dalcroze was concerned with finding a bodily rhythm within each individual, and his style “embraced all bodies, regardless of talent, aptitude, or intelligence.”13 As such, his technique was highly accessible in a time when people of all ages, socio-economic classes, shapes, and sizes were becoming more and more fascinated with their body. Dalcroze’s work was clearly intertwined with the new German obsession with body culture, drawing on the developing practice of rhythmic gymnastics and providing a new form of exercise in which anyone could participate. Dalcroze constructed “rhythmic dialogues” for groups of people to exercise together, which included hopping, skipping, and moving in patterns.14 These exercises not only conditioned their bodies, but also allowed them to learn about their own unique movements and rhythms.

From within this frenzy of anxiety about the body emerged the Ausdrucktanz around 1909, with the first stage appearance of Sent M’ahesa and the opening of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze’s first school. Dalcroze and his contemporary Rudolf Laban became the founding theorists of the Ausdrucktanz. Their work links the Ausdrucktanz to the ongoing Physical Culture movement as well as paved the way for future modern choreographers - like Bausch - to experiment with alternative movement styles outside of the realm of ballet. Dalcroze’s interest in dance stemmed from his initial interest in music, when he began to see rhythm as “a suppressed power not only within music but within the body.”10 In 1909, Dalcroze opened his school for rhythmic gymnastics in Hellerau, a Deutcher Werkbund “garden city.”11 Dalcroze’s “impeccable cosmopolitanism and eminently rational vision of bodily movement” helped the school at Hellereau gain widespread attention, especially because it played off of the “emerging cult of the body” and “linked the discovery of bodily rhythms almost entirely with the experience of joy, and dispelled the anxieties, phobias, and psychic shadows that until that time made the body a supreme sign

The other main school of thought in the Ausdrucktanz was that of Rudolf Laban, who was born in 1879 and established his first school in the summer of 1913. While living with his family in Budapest, Laban discovered an early interest in painting, a vocation disfavored by his officer father. He was sent to train at a military academy, but quickly left and settled in Munich in 1898 with his first wife, Martha Fricke. By 1913, Laban had “abandoned his visual art training and identity for that of a dancer/movement artist,” and opened a summer school for the arts in the village of Ascona, where he subsequently 29

trained Mary Wigman.15 Laban led a highly prolific career as a teacher, a choreographer, and a theorist - most notably, he developed a notation system for dance, called Labanotation - and he gained widespread celebrity by the time a back injury forced him to stop performing.16 Eventually, he settled in England, where he opened schools in Manchester and Surrey.17

ments do not closely resemble Dalcroze’s or Laban’s, her philosophy on the body certainly does, as many of her dancers do not represent the conventional, balletic image of the ideal dancer. In addition, by the mere act of breaking the bounds of ballet, Dalcroze and Laban provided a starting point for modern dance as a whole, including Bausch’s work. Dalcroze and Laban’s schools intersect at Mary Wigman, who studied under both teachers and is credited with creating the “New German Dance.” Undoubtedly the most prominent of the Ausdrucktanz choreographers, Wigman established her main school in Dresden in 1920, and branches of this Dresden-based school were opened across Germany and the United States.23 She began her studies at the Dalcroze school in 1910 and ventured to Laban’s summer program in 1913, by which time she had already received an offer to teach at and direct a branch school of rhythmic gymnastics based on Dalcroze’s system.24 However, Laban helped persuade Wigman to decline the offer in pursuit of her own style, and she opened her school in Dresden in the fall of 1920. Wigman’s work departed from Dalcroze’s theory of “simple gestures and combinations” and even more so from traditional forms of ballet. She took her inspiration instead from expressionist themes that involved “purifying her art form and exploring the individual’s relationship to humankind and to the universe.”25

As Laban began developing his theories on dance, he tended to research “in the area of Eukinetiks (indicating a preoccupation with motion or movement) rather than the Eurythmics of Jacques-Dalcroze (the use of movement to understand kinetically the structure and rhythms of music).”18 Even before his brief stint at the Military Academy at Wiener Neustadt, Laban had been “taken with the patterns of military parades, and fencing and social dance patterns also interested him.”19 His subsequent time in Munich allowed Laban to observe and participate in a watershed of new ideas, in the “physical, spiritual and expressive culture-of-the-whole that was prominent in Munich at that time.”20 One of the most distinctive features of Laban’s work was the so-called “Movement Choir,” an improvisational group dance style.21 The movement choirs were meant to be organic and folk-like, and were composed of amateur dancers, “everyday people who came to the training programs to address growing concerns about the human being within the state, the role of spirituality within religion, and the role of the psyche within the forces at play in the 1920s.”22 Despite differences in their movement quality, both Dalcroze and Laban’s choreography supported widely accessible group dance added an additional facet to the German body-oriented ethos. Their commitment to allowing many more people to participate in new forms of movement follows them through their dance genealogy to Bausch. Although Bausch’s move-

In Rudolf Bach’s book, Das Mary Wigman-Werk, Wigman answers the question “What is dance?” with the reply: “Space, Symbol; finitely formed, penetrated and built with infinity…Dance is the expression of the increased feeling of being alive…Dance exists in people as a tendency, as fateful regulation, wherever it breaks through and wherever it leads.”

True to her philosophy, Wigman continually emphasized dancers’ individuality of movement, and, as a result, many of her works were solos for herself.26 In addition, she was concerned with stripping away extraneous elements of performances, focusing on stark staging and utilizing tension in space. Her movement was “personal, individual to her and to the particular dance’s statement, rather than a set of gestures and shapes codified in a different time and no longer reflective of the individual spirit of the New Dance” (i.e. ballet).27 The nature of Wigman’s aesthetic and personal ideals clearly echoed the currents of the ongoing expressionist movement and provided a universally accessible outlet of expression and communication through individualized movement. By aligning her work with expressionist thought, Wigman created a new generation of the Ausdrucktanz, which reflected not only the philosophy of the Germany Physical Culture revolution, but also German expressionist ideals of individuality and selfhood. This theme is repeated throughout the Ausdrucktanz and is clearly resonant with Bausch. As we can see from ballets such as Café Müller, Bausch was fascinated by the way that individual experiences, especially from childhood, shape one’s life perspective and how those experiences might be communicated and dramatized through dance.

“complete overhaul of society, culture, government, and even of the body itself.”28 One item of particular note in Germany is the August 21, 1919 issue of the weekly Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. The issue in question featured a full-page cover photograph of President Friedrich Ebert and Defense Minister Gustav Noske “in bathing trunks during a trip to the beach, their sagging bodies displayed matter-of-factly to a national audience.”29 German citizens reacted with shock and horror at the “droopy, frail appearance of these two men,” which seemed to them almost a metaphor for their “soft” position in the world following the war.30 Not coincidentally, the women’s movement in Germany began to gain major prominence at this time. The men of Germany, both emotionally and physically broken by the horrors of trench warfare, returned to the home front completely emasculated. Once there, they found that women had replaced them in much of the workforce and were rearing to fight for equal rights and suffrage. Postwar Germany was a cataclysmic atmosphere for the feminist cause, and many of the most prominent Ausdrucktanz figures were women, thus further enhancing the women’s movement. The image of a new, independent, working woman emerged, alongside calls for women’s suffrage and equal education. Traditionally, females had dominated the world of dance, not only in sheer numbers, but also “ideologically, institutionally and aesthetically.”31 The context of Ausdrucktanz allowed performing feminists to use “the body as an emancipatory force…which strove to liberate women from the constraints experienced as a result of their subordinate status in society.”32 Modern dance was a forum by which the body could be used to expose and express emotions, and through dance, women sought a distinct identity through a “genuinely female creation of art.”33 Because

Wigman’s work not only functions as a basis for Bausch’s style, but also provides a vivid cross-section of German cultural history at the time. As she was establishing her school in Dresden in 1920, a general fascination with the physical body was escalating severely on an international scale, as a result of the end of World War One. After 1918, this global effort to rehabilitate “war-weary populations” was most apparent in Germany, reflecting its unique position after the war. Postwar Germans saw that they needed a 31

the peculiarities of the female and male body are so distinct, it was perhaps easier for society to acknowledge women in dance. Female performers and choreographers of the Ausdrucktanz thus achieved greater recognition than their political counterparts, who were seeking women’s rights to vote and access higher education.34 Thus, the women of the Ausdrucktanz established themselves as a dominant force in the dance word, and paved the way for future female choreographers and dancers, including Bausch.

outside world, particularly through dance. During the Berlin Olympics of 1936, the Nazi Party decided to utilize figures of the Ausdrucktanz in a tremendous staged celebration. This showcase featured the rhythmic movement of Hinrich Medau and Dorothee Günther and included dancers such as Wigman, Grete Palucca, and Harold Kruetzberg. Although these Ausdrucktanz artists were essential to “helping Hitler present the glory of Germany to the world at the Olympics,” they were shortly thereafter pronounced “Degenerate,” as the Ausdrucktanz emphasis on the individual fundamentally opposed the National Socialist “glorification of the group.”38 This proclamation became severely limiting for the Ausdrucktanz choreographers and dancers. The “swan song” of the Ausdrucktanz at the 1936 Olympics unfortunately ended the generation of Mary Wigman, but it also highlights the philosophy, practices, and power of the Nazi regime. After this highly orchestrated celebration and the Nazi denunciation of modern dance, the Ausdrucktanz readily faded in the context of National Socialism, which did not “support uncontrolled, free personality development, [but] rather functionally oriented self-fulfillment.”39 The only elements of the Austrucktanz that survived the Nazi rise to power were its intense sense of German pride and Laban’s Movement Choir, which became “a part of the Nazi aesthetic of the mass and the new German fold dance.”40

The combination of the Physical Culture revolution, feminist movement, and Ausdrucktanz also drew attention to nudity and the Nackttanz movement in early twentieth century Germany. Because all early nude dancers were female, “the European public seemed to regard nude dancing as a mode of erotic performance capable of sexually exciting its spectators,” and getting men to perform in nude dances was “practically impossible.”35 But for many Germans, especially female dancers, nudity represented modernity, a freedom from everyday life and “external (social) constraints (for which clothing is the most obvious sign).”36 Certain performers, such as Isadora Duncan, appeared totally in the nude, and barefoot dancing began to gain popularity. A distinct break from classic practices and ideas, nudist culture - or Nacktkultur - attracted men and women alike, spawning more than two hundred German nudist clubs.37 The act of appearing nude and this total exposure of the body reflects the Ich of the Ausdrucktanz, especially Wigman’s emphasis on individuality of expression, as well as the interest in personal expression later found in Bausch’s work. The naked body is a person’s most sacred and unique possession, and the influence of Nacktkultur and Ausdrucktanz encourages the German people to explore themselves and methods of expressing themselves to the

Although the Ausdruckstanz died down in Germany after the Nazi rise to power, the movement lived on through international channels alongside additional cultural transfers out of Germany. The Ninety-Second Street Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association - also known as the 92nd Street Y or simply the Y - became a significant dance presence in New York City 32

from the mid-1930s to the 1950s. Its Dance Center provided technique, choreography, and dance appreciation classes, and its performance series included the premieres of works such as Anna Sokolow’s Rooms in 1955 and Alvin Ailey’s Revelations in 1960.41 The Dance Center at the Y began as the brainchild of William Kolodney, the Educational Director of the Y. According to one anecdote, Kolodney was inspired by German dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan, captivated by Duncan’s description of a moonlit trip to a beach in Italy, where she saw a fisherman and said to him, ‘Give me a child.’ This seemed pretty racy stuff to the youthful Kolodney, who decided that the art of dance deserved further investigation. ‘It’s because Isadora Duncan took a fancy to an Italian fisherman that the YM-YWHA has a Dance Center,’ [Walter] Terry concluded.42 Regardless of what actually piqued Kolodney’s interest in dance, there is no doubt that the German dance movement was integral during the initial stages of the Y’s dance program. One of Kolodney’s most significant decisions was to approach Hanya Holm, the German-born director of the Mary Wigman School, who was to be primarily responsible for crafting a dance program of the same magnitude as a college major.43 Via Wigman’s teachings, Holm thus became a bridge between the Ausdrucktanz and dance in America, aiding in the transfer of German New Dance curriculum from Germany to the USA. Holm’s contributions to the founding of the Dance Center demonstrates just one instance where the practices of the Austruckstanz continued outside of Germany, even after it was labeled a degenerate art.

the twentieth century.”44 Born in Solingen in 1940, Bausch started her training under Kurt Jooss, who had been a student of Dalcroze and a contemporary of Wigman, thus further extending the line of German dance ancestry rooted at Dalcroze and Laban. She was later accepted to the dance program at the Julliard School in New York, which was just the beginning of her continuous cycle of cultural transfer.45 With residencies in Rome, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Portugal, Budapest, Brazil, Istanbul, Japan, and India, Bausch provides German dance with a global prominence, and her company has continued to tour following her death in 2009. Bausch’s work has gained even more attention through Wim Wenders’s documentary Pina, which was released in January 2011. Her international critical acclaim has given new life to the Ausdrucktanz and the teachers that came before her and established a major presence for German dance style and technique, not only amongst dancers but also amongst general audiences. Throughout Bausch’s work, her dancers “often re-enact moments from their childhood during performance, showing the audience how they incorporated social patterns,” and they “repeat the instances in which they started repeating other people’s movements and behaviors.”46 Like her Ausdrucktanz predecessors, Bausch was clearly interested in the individuality of expression as well as a universal accessibility. In an interview in 1994, Bausch stated, “I think each person has to discover dance on his or her own… It seems important to me that people change the moments of their lives.”47 Her evident philosophy of allowing each dancer to discover the movement unique to his or her own body and experiences clearly echoes the teachings of Mary Wigman - “[Bausch’s] work approaches that of Wigman in its use of the dancers’ personal experiences, and surpasses

The Ausdrucktanz’s next and final generation is wholly encapsulated by the work of Pina Bausch, appointed director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater in 1973 and now recognized as “the most important choreographer of 33

Wigman by critically using ballet technique and not denying it.”48 Bausch’s style is often cited as unique and revolutionary, but as we have seen, the roots of her style have traveled a long and progressive road through twentieth century German culture. Her innovative and influential works still contain traces of the wide accessibility of dance preached by Dalcroze and Laban and the individualism pioneered by Wigman, as well as the expressionist and feminist movements that stimulated Wigman’s ideas.

self-expression. Dalcroze and Laban were directly influenced by and contributed to the German fascination with exercise and body image, and Wigman’s philosophy reflected that of the expressionists. In addition, Wigman and her contemporaries - particularly Isadora Duncan - participated in and enhanced developing nudist culture as well as the feminist movement, establishing a role for women in dance that contested their subordinate status in society. Bausch’s work builds on the artistry and theory of the dancers that came before her, whose ideas will continue to live on through Bausch and through the dancers she has taught and mentored. The journey through Bausch’s dance genealogy demonstrates that although German culture has been fragmented, reworked, and recreated throughout the twentieth century, we can piece it together through the progressive development of modern dance, particularly the Ausdrucktanz movement. Bausch is the grand finale of the Ausdrucktanz, the final destination of German dance in the twentieth century, providing a directionality and culmination point for the movement. She is an unforgettably moving choreographer and performer in her own right, but also a monument to the innovation and cultural contributions of the line of teachers and dancers that nurtured her.

Bausch’s death on June 30, 2009 was tragic and sudden. She had been diagnosed just five days earlier with lung cancer, and was only two weeks away from the scheduled start date to film Pina. The film subsequently became a beautiful eulogy to the late dancer and choreographer, earning a nomination for Best Documentary at the 2012 Academy Awards. In Pina, one might also see a tribute to the teachers - both direct and indirect - of Bausch, extending back to the turn of the twentieth century. We can trace Bausch’s artistic ancestry through Kurt Jooss to Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, and she was highly influenced by Mary Wigman, who in turn studied under both Dalcroze and Rudolf Laban. Through this dance genealogy, we can also glean information about German culture and various manifestations of the practice of

German

Patrick Lauppe

Superfluous Thoughts

Kraus and Schnitzler on Ornament in Literature

Karl Kraus, who was known in fin-de-siècle Vienna for his harsh and incessant critiques of Viennese society. I then compare Kraus’s critique with Arthur Schnitzler’s Leutnant Gustl, which I interpret as a performance of excessively ornamental language in the interest of a broad critique of Viennese society in the early twentieth century.

“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects.”1 Adolf Loos’s formulation for the place of ornament in the history of civilization was hugely influential on modern architecture and design. Due to the qualification in the last three words - “from utilitarian objects” - it is hard to imagine that this claim could have had any influence outside of these two fields. Regardless, many of Loos’s Viennese contemporaries attempted to apply his principle to literature. In this essay, I assess the polemic against ornament in literature by critic

Loos and Kraus had both a personal and an intellectual affinity for one another.2 Kraus found their projects analogous: “The debasement of practical life by ornament, demonstrated by Adolf Loos, finds its counterpart in the permeation of journalism by elements of higher culture [Geistelementen], which has led to a catastrophic confusion. Phrase35

ology is the ornament of the mind.”3 Kraus opposes any stylistic flourish that muddies or prevents a reader’s understanding of a subject. The written ornament is that which obstructs the communication of an idea between author and reader. Like Loos, Kraus asserts that ornament must be scoured from his corner of Viennese culture. How he extends this notion from journalism (functional discourse) to literature (nonpragmatic discourse) takes some further analysis.

thinks without the pleasure of thought.”8 It consists of words selected superficially, from a collection of platitudes. Here, Kraus defines a further class of ornament in literature: the commonplace. Figures of speech, hackneyed metaphors, and clichés are all consequences of the linguistic tragedy of the commons. This set of well-worn tools is a linguistic fallback: it can be mobilized spontaneously and without thought. As a result, such language loses its signifying function, to exist solely as physical sounds or scribbles of ink. Just as architectural ornament is design for its own sake, ornamental prose is writing for its own sake.

In his 1923 book of aphorisms, Dicta and Contradicta, Kraus distinguishes literature from journalism and reveals his indignation for the latter: “The journalists of painting are called - house painters. And I believe that a writer is the man who speaks an artwork to the public.”4 For Kraus, journalism is thoughtless, mechanical work, a superficial use of language for the purpose of expressing common opinions - “A journalist is someone who takes what the reader has already thought anyway and expresses it in a form not just any military man could manage.”5 In contrast, literature must be the object of intense consideration. For instance, here is what Kraus prescribes for one of his preferred forms - the aphorism: “It is often difficult to write an aphorism when you can. It is much easier to write an aphorism when you can’t.”6 Only when writing is difficult can it aspire to be a work of art.

Therefore, Kraus’s critique of ornament in literature consists of two interrelated categories. First, any excessive language is ornament. This includes any device that does not clarify what is being expressed and simply stands in the way of the reader’s understanding. Secondly, any linguistic commonplace is ornament. This includes language that does not require thought to produce and that consequently relies on the clichés of everyday discourse. Kraus claims that any linguistic device that fulfills either of these criteria should be removed from a text. One form of writing that contained both of these violations in Kraus’s time was the feuilleton. This was the type of short personal essay that made up the Sunday supplement of popular Viennese newspapers like the Neue Freie Presse, which Kraus criticized to no end. Kraus is vitriolic in his criticisms of Sunday supplements; pejorative references to the “Sunday magazine” permeate Dicta and Contradicta. For example, aphorism 498 reads, “One Sunday magazine buries a dozen works of art.”9 In this aphorism, Kraus identifies both the commonness and the destructive excess of the feuilleton. It diverts attention from what really matters (the work of art) to what does not (the trivial opinions and observations of essayists). Generally, the feuilleton was a sub-

Kraus’s equation between the quality and difficulty of writing follows from his pained awareness of language’s common origins. “Language is the raw material of the literary artist,” he writes, “but it does not belong to him alone.”7 Language belongs to everyone, including those who cannot wield it well. Since language is common property, the writer of literature must consider her language carefully for her work to qualify as art. Otherwise, the writer is reduced to the journalist, who writes in everyday language for the sake of the average reader. In Kraus’s words, “journalism 36

jective account of the world through purple descriptions. “Adjectives engulfed the nouns, the personal tint virtually obliterated the contours of the object of discourse,” writes Carl Shorske in his study.10 This is just the sort of writing that Kraus refers to as “the permeation of journalism by elements of higher culture,” quoted above. The feuilleton is journalistic, in that it is riddled with colloquialisms, and excessive, in that it hides the real world behind a subjective voice. Accordingly, Kraus’s contemporary, Theodor Herzl, warned the feuilleton writer against “falling in love with his own spirit, and thus of losing any standard of judging himself or others.”11 Kraus and his Viennese contemporaries saw the feuilleton as a sign that their society was on a perilous verge. The feuilleton was considered to be the first step in subjectivity’s march on writing. What Kraus and his fellows feared was that this march would not step until the real world had been entirely driven out. The resulting text would have no representative function; it would be pure ornament. In Schnitzler’s Leutnant Gustl, language that fulfills one of Kraus’s two criteria of the ornamental in writing is ubiquitous. Leutnant Gustl consists of the real-time thoughts of the title character, who sees a concert at the Vienna Opera House, is personally affronted in the foyer by a local baker, walks into the Prater in northern Vienna while swearing to commit suicide in reaction to the insult, and falls asleep there. Ultimately, he does not commit suicide, since he finds out the next morning that the baker has coincidentally died. Leutnant Gustl is a story in which little truly happens, and this plot-level hole is filled with the racing, circular thoughts of its protagonist. For example, during the entirety of the concert scene that begins the story, in which details about the music are nearly absent, Gustl’s thoughts wander out of boredom. He recognizes that his inability to focus on the concert could be incriminating amongst the judgmental con-

certgoers, so he wants his bored thoughts to remain hidden. “Why’s that fellow staring at me all the time?” Gustl wonders. “I suppose he notices how bored I am…”12 Gustl’s thoughts represent an overwhelming distraction, a layer of white noise over the world from which neither he nor the reader can escape. The excessive character of Schnitzler’s prose parallels Kraus’s critique of ornament in literature. By Kraus’s estimation, Leutnant Gustl is the worst kind of writing conceivable. Rather than a blameworthy flaw, this is an intentional effect that Schnitzler cultivates in his prose in order to bring about a certain attitude in the reader. Schnitzler criticizes the titular protagonist by expressing Gustl’s thoughts in heavily ornamental and superficial language, which is an extrapolation of the feuilleton style. This interpretation of Leutnant Gustl is reinforced by the fact that it originally appeared in the Christmas supplement to Die Neue Freie Presse, alongside numerous feuilletons.13 Therefore, Schnitzler’s novella is a fictional feuilleton that exaggerates the subjectivity of the form to an unprecedented14 and critical extreme. The characteristics of Gustl’s interior monologue can be split along Krausian lines. First of all, the prose of Leutnant Gustl is excessive. At one point in the story, Gustl tries to remember an unremarkable event. He hesitates in trying to remember the name of someone: “Funny, I can’t remember a single name! Oh, yes: Etelka!...Couldn’t understand a word of German…nor was it necessary… There was nothing to say!”15 This anecdote deals with a lack of meaningful content on multiple levels. First, Gustl cannot remember the name of the girl. The act of recounting this name takes him several sentences, so the lack of one word transforms into a surplus of others. Secondly, the character Etelka cannot understand German. As a result, anything that Gustl says in this circumstance is meaningless in the mind of his interlocutor. Thirdly, there 37

is no need for speech, since Gustl admits that even if his words had meaning in the mind of his interlocutor, he had nothing to say in the first place. This incident, an unremarkable event that lacks content triply, is delivered to the reader in a profusion of words. This moment serves as a model for Leutnant Gustl as a whole. It is, as Kraus laments about journalism, “think[ing] without the pleasure of thought.”16 It is language as mere ornament. While Gustl unfurls this unending spool of words, he has trouble focusing on the world around him. His interiority directly hinders his ability to remain focused on the events at hand, and the reader’s understanding suffers as a result. This happens multiple times during the pivotal scene in which the baker insults Gustl, which sends him into a whirl of reflection. Events occur in the world around him, but Gustl’s awareness of the events is delayed: “Where’s my coat?...Why I’m already wearing it….I didn’t even notice it….Who helped me on with it?” and “What? I’m already on the street? How did I get here?” (my translation). 17 Gustl has become so engrossed in his thoughts that he can no longer follow the real-time progression of events. He is repeatedly surprised by the real world, since he has lost track of it. Because the narration of the novella never escapes Gustl’s interior monologue, the reader has as limited of a perspective on Gustl’s world as he does. His interiority is represented in ornamental language that has come to envelop what is actually happening in the world of the text: the exterior world is often obscured entirely. While “adjectives engulfed the nouns” in the feuilleton, reflections engulf the real world in Leutnant Gustl. One could argue that this reading of Schnitzler’s novella is missing the point. In reality, nothing in the story truly exists outside what we have before us. The dualism between the interior and the exterior world in a work of fiction is a textual illusion. Gustl’s progression from

haughty self-confidence to suicidal despair to ultimate redemption is the primary subject of the novella. From this perspective, it seems wrong to suggest that Gustl’s thoughts are all ornament and that the progression of events in the outside world is the true content of the text. This criticism of my reading of Gustl neglects to consider Schnitzler’s frequent use of irony throughout the novella. Through irony, Schnitzler can communicate that many of Gustl’s assessments and self-assessments are patently untrue, despite the fact that he has no recourse to a perspective that is separate from Gustl’s mind. As a result, the reader can maintain a transcendent frame of reference through which to judge and laugh at Gustl. In this respect, though Gustl himself has lost the ability to attend to the world around him, Schnitzler roots the reader in the external world by distancing him from Gustl’s frequently ridiculous interior voice. Consequently, the reader experiences any missing information about the external world as a lack. In recognizing that Gustl is a ridiculous, unreliable narrator, the reader acknowledges the need to transcend this narrator’s consciousness. The story bristles at its position within Gustl’s skull, directing our attention to the outside world, despite the fact that we see mere glimpses. As such, reading Leutnant Gustl is acknowledging that the words themselves are superfluous. The irony in the story originates from Gustl’s clearly unrealistic self-image as a proud and assertive man who violently avenges any form of disrespect from other people. For example, when he is still sitting in the opera house, he notices a man staring at him. “Look away already!” he thinks. “That they all would fear my gaze!”18 Gustl’s belief that the world should fear the way he looks at them is childishly self-centered. It is a cue to the reader that he is a buffoon. While the outside world may seem absent, it is in fact being described in negative relief, as the opposite of Gustl’s false beliefs. It is clear that no one is actually 38

afraid of Gustl’s gaze, but we must infer this by realizing that his self-image is inconsistent with his true image. Gustl’s “tough guy” attitude is made more ridiculous by the number of times and the diversity of ways in which he repeats to himself that he should kill or should have killed the disrespectful baker: “Ich müßt’ ja den Säbel ziehen und ihn zusammenhauen”; “Ich muß ihn umbringen!”; “Und ich hab’ ihn nicht auf der Stelle zusammengehauen”; “Ich muß ihn totschlagen, wo ich ihn treff’!”; “Wenn ich ihn seh’, so hau’ ich ihn zusammen.”19 Gustl never acts on his word: a freak accident later kills the baker. The ironic distance between Gustl’s excessive repetition of his desire for revenge and his inability to enact this revenge in the real world reinforces the fact that his character is an overblown fool. The more Gustl reasserts his self-image, the more it becomes clear that it does not correspond to reality. Rather, it is only a layer of ornament that Gustl has built atop his powerless life. Irony also plays a role in depicting Gustl as a stereotypical product of his society. As indicated above, Kraus despised the commonplace in writing, both the common opinion and the common turn of phrase. Accordingly, Leutnant Gustl is riddled with both kinds of commonplaces, and Schnitzler only accentuates their vacuity. For example, when Gustl turns his attention to his beloved’s other courtier (or husband), he thinks the following: He must be a Jew, anyway. Sure enough, he’s in a bank, and that black beard…He’s probably a reserve lieutenant! In my regiment he wouldn’t even get to drills! Generally, they still make so many Jews officers - I don’t give a damn about the whole Anti-Semitism!20

directly observed the man’s military capabilities, he makes the racist assumption that a Jew does not fight well. After reasserting this idea with the broader claim that there are simply too many Jewish officers, Gustl’s mind makes a strange leap. In the form of a colloquial expression, he says that he does not care about anti-Semitism. Thus, he recognizes that the observations he has been making would be deemed anti-Semitic by some people, but then he proceeds to cast these aside. The particular way in which he dismisses these accusations brings about an ambiguity. On the one hand, he could be saying that he recognizes that he is anti-Semitic and does not care. He is a bigot and he knows it. On the other hand, there is a darker possibility: it could be that he recognizes that his thoughts could be described as anti-Semitic, but in fact that description would itself be a misconception. In his mind, the racist generalizations he has made describe the real world, and the people who would describe these as anti-Semitic are the deluded ones. Therefore, he feels that he transcends his contemporaries in his discernment of the real world, even though his ideas are nothing but everyday wisdom at its most damaging, i.e. racism. Appropriately, Gustl expresses his pride in his transcendent understanding with a colloquialism: “Da pfeif’ ich auf’n ganzen Antisemitismus!” which means something like, “I don’t give a damn about anti-Semitism!” The contrast between this light colloquialism and its dark undertones - the Anti-Semitism that hides beneath it - makes the colloquialism seem dissonant and perhaps even repressive. This idea, that textual ornament is a harmless cover laid upon deep-seated and commonplace prejudice, reveals a productive line of inquiry into understanding the extent of Schnitzler’s critique. Perhaps the excess of ornament that marks many of the products of Viennese culture of this time - the purple language of the feuilleton, for instance - is a

Here, Gustl begins by identifying his subject with anti-Semitic stereotypes (black-bearded banker must be a Jew), and proceeds to generalize from this that the man in question would not make a good soldier. Though he has not 39

repressive mechanism against deep-seated hatred and discontent. The need to permeate art and architecture with ornament is perhaps a withdrawal and a cover-up, and it is the task of the intellectual to strip this layer away. Just as Gustl hides his hatred behind textual ornament, for Schnitzler, the excess of ornament in fin-de-siècle Vienna hides something portentous in the society’s subconscious.

blacklisted by several Viennese newspapers as a result of his text.22 Though we cannot necessarily conclude from this that Schnitzler had revealed to the Austrian military man and the larger Austrian culture something about itself that it did not want to see, it certainly suggests that his critique strongly resonated in the Viennese political and cultural body. It also confirms that Schnitzler’s text was above all received as a satirical one, that readers understood that this transcription of Gustl’s consciousness was critical, not sympathetic.

Similarly, Kraus frequently attributed macabre or even apocalyptic consequences to seemingly trivial textual details, like grammar mistakes. In one essay, he makes a prophetic claim: “The world originates out of title and tone, and perishes, for letters become lead.”21 If the writer does not pay his or her writing the closest attention possible, he or she can ruin the world. Bad, excessive writing is not only an aesthetic issue: it is a moral one. Though the two respective formulations of Schnitzler and Kraus - text as repression, and text as motivator of world tendencies - are not precisely the same, both writers suggest that ornament in literature has real-world consequences. These authors find something profoundly ominous in the need to ornament a text. Leutnant Gustl was heavily condemned by the Austrian military as an insult to the honor of the Austrian officer. Schnitzler was challenged to a duel, which he declined, and he was punished as a result. Ultimately, he lost his rank in the Austrian army and found himself

By adopting the stylistic failings that Kraus identified as textual ornament, Schnitzler communicated to his audience the fact that his novella was polemical. Whether this adoption was intentional is doubtful, considering that Kraus did not become established as a critic in Vienna until well after Leutnant Gustl was published in 1901. What is clear, however, is that both Kraus and Schnitzler were attacking something similar in the prose of their time, and for similar reasons. Schnitzler’s critique merely extends in two directions: by giving the voice of the feuilleton to a self-centered buffoon, Schnitzler condemns the writer of ornamental prose. At the same time, by writing ornamental prose into Gustl’s mind, Schnitzler characterizes him as an ornamental character. Just like his thoughts, Gustl is a superfluous person, and for the twentieth-century Viennese intellectual, superfluity has gained new and ominous dimensions.

German

Josh Speagle

Germanic Influence on Japanese Pop Culture

Cultural flows between nations are interesting phenomena, not only because they represent the inter-connectedness of our world and the people in it, but also because they provide alternate channels for nations to exert their “influence” outside of typical economic, political, or military spheres. This type of cultural clout, often termed “soft power”1 to distinguish it from the “hard power” that the aforementioned channels provide, is a completely novel way to look at international relations. More importantly, however, this “soft power” is in fact in fact the largest type of exposure that a great majority of Americans actually receive from other nations. Many more of us, for instance, watch shows like Doctor Who or the BBC’s Sherlock than keep up to date

with British politics and international relations - and the relatively recent buzz over the royal wedding, which completely dominated American airwaves for a solid day or so, shows that this type of influence should at the very least not be ignored. In general, people tend to not be the completely rational agents that we think we are. Instead, humans instead function for the most part based on certain heuristics, frequently going off of personal experiences, emotions, and general sentiments rather than cold-hard facts and logical reasoning. While itself a possibly unsettling phenomenon, this style of non-rational thinking especially comes to the fore when it comes to often-polarizing top41

ics such as politics. Soft power, then, can be an incredibly powerful tool because its main sphere of influence is precisely in this area the conceptions and feelings around certain phenomena that people then may associate with certain nations. When it comes to soft power, no other nation seems to get as much attention as Japan. With its inability to hold a standing army thanks to the infamous “Article 9” in its Constitution, and its falling political and economic clout, Japan’s ability to exert itself in the world has been the subject of intense debate from both inside and out. It is in this climate of declining hard power, and the desire to remain a “key player” in the modern global economy, that the ideas of soft power seem to hold the most sway. From the widespread popularity of the Pokémon franchise to the influence of kawaii culture2 (e.g. Hello Kitty, Tamagatchi) and the prevalence of anime3 in world cartoon markets, Japanese influences in popular culture seem to be as wide-ranging as they are sustaining. Pokémon, for instance, can be said to be one of the main things that binds our generation together, and anime’s presence in American media goes as far back as Astro Boy (1963-65) and Speed Racer (1967-8), continuing today by influencing popular shows such as Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-8). However, Japanese pop culture is no more a representation of Japan than many other nations, and is made up of a variety of influences from different places and times. One notable example of this is the extent of Germanic influence in Japanese pop culture, most notably anime. By looking into the ways that Germany has influenced certain aspects of anime, and how they in turn influence Germany (e.g., Germany hosts several anime conventions each year that regularly draw tens of thousands of visitors), we can get a glimpse of the complex ways that culture flows between nations. Furthermore, in the context of

soft power, anime also serves as a great way to examine how Germany indirectly exerts its own type of soft power through other media, indirectly creating (hopefully) positive associations for itself in a context that seems quite far-removed. Germany’s influence in anime can be broadly divided into two categories: direct and indirect. The former are cases where Germanic traits are explicitly referenced (e.g., speaking German in shows, having German-named characters), and thus are relatively easy to pick out. The latter are cases where elements not strictly Germanic in origin have been heavily influenced by Germanic sources (e.g., Germany’s influence over modern Japanese history), and sometimes require a little bit more digging to pick out. While the former clearly can contribute to some ideal of indirect German soft power, the latter, while more interesting in a historical sense, usually are less so. To see an example of Germany’s influence on anime, one need look no further than the most recent hit show, 4 Attack on Titan, an enormous commercial success both within Japan and abroad. Besides having a host of characters with names like “Hannes” and “Reiner Braun,” the main character’s last name - Yeager - derives directly from the German word for hunter, Jäger. Additionally, the character designs in the show are overwhelmingly Germanic and predominantly blond - and, were that not enough, the opening song for the show even features several segments sung completely in German.5 Alternately, we can look at one of the most influential anime ever made - Neon Genesis Evangelion. One of the main characters of the show, and in fact the only foreign member of the cast, Asuka Langley Soryu, is German.6 Her name displays prominent influences from World War II, her Japanese surname coming from the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu and 42

her German one from the American carrier Langley. The show (and subsequent Rebuild movies) frequently emphasizes her German heritage, throwing in multiple scenes where Asuka speaks/curses in German. Her foreign presence in the show is also often commented on at school, where students seem to notice fiery bright red hair color (whilst completely ignoring co-protagonist Rei Ayanami’s blue hair color). Indeed, strong Germanic influence is at least a thing in individual shows, and some of the most popular ones.

the title as well as extensively throughout the show. Shows like Rozen Maiden, Weiss Kreuz, and Elfen Lied show that this trend in German naming is not an isolated anomaly. Bleach, one of the most popular manga10 (and anime) today, shows clear Germanic influences in the portrayal of its current antagonists, the Quincys, many of whom have abilities with German names, such as “Blut Vene [blood vein],” and are members of the “Wandenreich.”11 In fact, this type of thing is so popular that it is listed as a meme under TV Tropes by the name of “Gratuitous German.”

On this note, a good number of shows actually do include a foreign character in some way, shape, or form. In a majority of cases, this character is European rather than North American, with traits such as blond hair and fair skin. This is often linked to perceptions of greater beauty and higher social standing, frequently similar to that of European aristocrats. While this is more an example of European cultural influence, in a fair number of these cases, these characters are actually German.7

Direct historical influences can also easily be identified. The “Principality of Zeon” and “Galactic Empire,” the antagonistic organization of the popular Gundam franchise and the anime space opera classic Legend of Galactic Heroes, respectively, show strong influences from mid-19th century Prussia. Of course, there are also references to the Third Reich. Hellsing, the popular manga and recently completed anime, follows the vampire Alucard as he defends London from Vampire Nazis and the Catholic Church’s 9th Crusade (yes, I am not kidding). Black Lagoon, an action-packed gun-slinger, spends an entire story arc battling crazy Nazis. The long-running12 manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure even features Nazis as both antagonists and supporting characters in its Battle Tendency arc.

More Germanic influence can be seen in the settings, character designs, and plot elements that are chosen in anime. A number of high-profile works have picked settings that resemble that of Germany at different points in time. Fullmetal Alchemist, another popular anime, contains characters designs and an overall setting that resemble Pre-WWI Germany. A host of the main characters are blond, and frequently dressed in outfits reminiscent of wartime Germany.8 Girls Und Panzer, another recently commercially successful anime, focuses heavily on tanks, many taken from WWII-era Germany, and commonly features quotes from Rommel and Guderian. Besides recent commercially popular works, Germanic influence can be seen more directly through the actual use of German in the show. The light novel9 series turned anime Kämpfer, for instance, features German both directly in

The clearest version of direct German influence, however comes in terms of the concepts and portrayals of magic that often appear in anime. In almost any show that features more traditional magic (casting spells, rituals, etc.) the main conduit language is German. This pops up all the time in Type/Moon13 franchise in shows such as the globally popular Fate/ Stay Night and Fate/Zero, but also appear in more recent shows like Strike the Blood, which features weapons such as the Schneewalzer. Mephisto Pheles, one of the eight Demon Kings from Blue Exorcist, besides taking 43

his name from a demon in German folklore, commonly chants in German before casting his spells.

ceived to many Western nations. The image is a historical one, the ones you see in folklore, mythology, and fairy tales, rather than the actual country, far-removed from the present day state of affairs. But, this image holds some power, much as the past “Oriental” image of Japan and China still do for many Americans today. Regardless of their presence today, it is the ninja and samurai that seem to hold our interest the most - maybe it is the same with German magicians.

With all these examples, one can clearly see that Germanic influence in anime is not only present and wide-ranging but in fact quite common - so much so that it could be said to be a part of the genre. This leads then to two interesting trains of thought. First, how does all this “project” Germany’s soft power through the world at large? And second, can this wide array of Germanic influence be used to show the extent of Germany’s soft power in the past?

But the interesting thing about this German portrayal is that it is unified - there in fact exists two Germanys - the one detailed above, of fantasy and magic and exoticism, and the one primarily rooted in WWII, of Nazism and war and destruction. The remarkable thing about this second picture, however, is just this - it seems completely divorced from the present. This is huge, because the events that took place in WWII are not even a century old. By being recast so many times, in so many ridiculous circumstances, anime seems to make this era of history almost a meme or trope, a fact or artifact of history rather than real events that are directly passed down from the Germany then to the Germany today. It treats them as source material, in a way seeming to absolve Germany17 of its past sins by treating them as if they were another time and place. This indirectly helps to increase the sense abroad that a divide exists between the Nazi state and the current one - a clean break, in a sense. And for a country like Japan, for which issues from the war such as “comfort women” and war guilt still play a prominent role between relations in Southeast Asian, this strikes me as particularly ironic.

First, it’s useful to define the idea of a “fantasyscape.” As an extension of the idea of landscapes, a setting created by land or scenery, and “soundscapes,” the spaces or backgrounds created by sound, “fantasyscapes” are areas that we have crafted with our imagination. As Professor Susan J. Napier of Tufts explains it,14 “Fantasyscapes…are the ways at which fantasy can craft spaces and backgrounds to build from…inherently liminal15 worlds, temporary alternate lifestyles that exist parallel to the mundane, which people enter and exit when they please.” Fantasyscapes, then, are places that exist parallel to reality - and derive their power from being so - but that also are ambiguous places themselves where interaction (active) and setting (passive) also become blurry. Germany’s indirect soft power here then can be seen as a question surrounding the fantasyscape that anime has constructed - the image of Germany that is projected, and the ways that fans interact with them. So what does this fantasyscape then look like? Much of it, ironically enough, actually looks like fantasy. Many of the common expressions of Germanic influence is associated with phenomena related to the supernatural, the “foreign,” and the fantastic16 - much, perhaps, like the way that the Orient is often per-

Most importantly though, I feel the most important element of this fantasyscape is neither of these traits, but a much more “down to Earth” one - namely, that Germany is “cool.” By being featured so prominently, German language, culture, and history are showcased 44

as being “cool” to many of the viewers.18 This very low-level association probably holds much more sway over the average viewer. While many of the traits above function as backdrops to the fantasyscapes of Germany that have been created and drawn from, this functions as a fundamental unit that comprises the very fabric of the fantasyscape, encapsulating the motivation behind and the continual renewal/reuse of ideas and concepts. Germany’s indirect soft power then seems to be quite positive and quite powerful.

franchise, they really are endemic within the genre as a whole, most recently being showcased in the currently airing KILL la KILL. To illustrate more directly how strong this soft power may be let’s look back to the history of anime itself. Anime, contrary to what some may claim, was inspired by American cartoons in the post-war era. Many of the current styles of animation, now iconic to the genre, were often implemented simply to cut costs as a war-torn country emerging from the wake of total defeat tried to emulate the media of its occupier. Given this then, we could ask the obvious question: how prevalent is American influence in anime itself? The answer, surprisingly, is almost none, outside maybe negative tropes such as the “dumb American.”20

To get to the heart of the second question concerning what anime can tell us about past German soft power, we look towards sources of Germany’s indirect influence, which is just as prevalent - if not more so - than their direct influence. For instance, German influence during the Meiji era is responsible for one of the main trends seen in anime today: the schoolgirl uniform. During Japan’s modernizing era, the state attempted to model many of its policies around those of Prussia. This led many state officials to adopt German-style military uniforms in their duty, which are commonly portrayed in anime that are set in the Meiji Period such as Rurouni Kenshin. This also led the state to adopt uniforms in many schools around the country patterned on Prussia’s military uniforms. This worked fine for boys, but girls, who at the time also began to be educated, had no pre-existing model uniform. They eventually hit upon using sailor uniforms (seifuku) to complement the boys’, and a powerful cultural force the likes which could not have been predicted had been born.19 Seifuku today are ubiquitous in anime, appearing in almost every shape and size across every single genre. While the most well-known example in the West probably comes from the Sailor Moon

But then where would the majority of outside influence come from? Using what I’ve argued, I would say the Meiji period, and Western powers that interacted with Japan during this time.21 In fact, the influence Germany (then Prussia) had over Meiji era Japan cannot be understated, as much of the government at the time was in fact modeled on the Prussian state. Most importantly, the reason much of these changes were actually implemented was not by economic or political or military coercion/pressure on Prussia’s part (although those likely were contributing factors), but because Japan was so impressed by the image of Prussia as a nation. For a nation forcibly opened by the US and under constant threat of imperialism by Western powers, it is particularly telling that, after visiting scores of Western nations, it was in fact Prussia that Japan decided to base its new government on, not the US. In the end, it was soft, not hard, power that eventually carried the day.

Ludwig Thoma

German

Friede

Über die Heide geht der Wind; Es flüstert im Gras, es rauscht in den Bäumen. Die dort unten erschlagen sind, Die vielen Toten, sie schweigen und träumen. Hören sie nicht den Glockenklang? Dringt nicht zu ihnen aus heiligen Räumen Halleluja und Friedenssang? Die vielen Toten, sie schweigen und träumen. Voll des Dankes ist alle Welt, Sie darf mit dem Lobe des Herrn nicht säumen; Wer im Kampfe fiel, heißt ein Held. Die vielen Toten, sie schweigen und träumen. Wenn die Herrscher versammelt sind, Bei festlichem Mahl lasst die Becher schäumen! Über die Heide geht der Wind; Die vielen Toten, sie schweigen und träumen.

Ludwig Thoma Transl. Kevin Hong & Cody Dales

Peace

Over the heath goes the wind, It whispers in the grass, murmurs in the trees. Down below lie the fallen, The many dead, they keep quiet and dream. Do they not hear the bellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s peal? Does it not burst forth from holy realms, Hallelujah and songs of peace? The many dead, they keep quiet and dream. Full of thanks is all the world, They praise the Lord, and never will forget. He who was slain is minted a hero, The many dead, they keep quiet and dream. When the sovereigns convene, Their festive cups froth over the brim! Over the heath goes the wind; The many dead, they keep quiet and dream.

Danielle Lussi

German

Wallerstein

Irgendwo im Walde, Dort sollten wir Abendessen. Die Jagdhütte Wurde es genannt. Später, gegen acht, Sollte das Grillen anfangen. Lagerfeuer und Bier, So habe ich gedacht. Mit Pulli angekommen, Die Haare schnell hochgeknotet, War ich plötzlich umringt Von Sakkos und Fliegen. Weiße Tischtücher, Begleitet von Kerzen. Die passten perfekt Zur schmutzigen Jeans. Bemerkt hat es keiner, Weil Perlen und Seide, Die kritischen Augen Mit Erfolg ablenken.

Danielle Lussi

Wallerstein

Somewhere in the forest, There were we to eat dinner. The Hunting Cabin, It was called. Later, around eight, The barbecue was to begin. Bonfire and beer, Or so I thought. Arriving in a sweatshirt, Hair quickly knotted high, I was suddenly surrounded, By blazers and bow-ties. White tablecloths, Accompanied by candles, Matched perfectly, To grungy jeans. Luckily, no one noticed, Since pearls and silk, Successfully distract Judging eyes.

Scandinavian

Samantha Wesner

All the King’s Men

Icelandic Skalds at Scandinavian Court

equal in physical attributes and social standing, and has tellingly-named children. Jarl and his wife Erna end up producing a youngest son Kon, whose name is etymologically related to ‘king’: konungr in Old Norse. This anonymous lay is unique in the Poetic Edda for its explicit treatment of social classes, and for its explanatory style describing the origin of classes, something akin to a Kipling JustSo story. It may have reflected existing conditions in the Old Norse world, or may have conceptualized an ideal class order. Whether or not the three-tiered society outlined in the poem was so clear-cut in actuality, Rígsþula is evidence that the concept of social hierarchy clearly had deep roots in Scandinavian society. As one translator of Rígsþula points out,

In the Eddic poem Rígsþula, the god Heimdall - disguised as a traveler called Rig - visits households of three very clearly defined social strata and sires offspring with the matriarch of each household. A son called “Thrall,” with dark hair and dull eyes, is born to the lowest order; “Karl,” meaning free, common man, is born to a working household; and “Jarl,” with fair skin and bright eyes, is born into the highest level of society - the nobility. A clear emphasis in the lay is unsurprisingly on family, in the context of inherited social status. Each of Heimdall’s children marries his 53

however, scholars seem to agree that its societal concepts reflect mainland Scandinavia - Denmark or Norway, possibly even Old Ireland - rather than Iceland, which, with its quasi-parliamentary Althing, was something of a different case.1 Spanning the gap between Iceland and mainland Scandinavia and sitting somewhere between freemen and nobility on the social scale were Icelandic court skalds, who frequented courts on the mainland throughout the Viking Age. Following the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century, skaldic poetry seems to have flourished in Iceland, and Icelandic skalds outstripped their Norwegian counterparts over the next century. By the 11th century, skalds at courts on the Scandinavian mainland were overwhelmingly from Iceland or the Orkney Islands.2 These poets occupied a special place in societies overseas, as foreigners infiltrating a stratified society, and as craftsmen skilled in a specialized, highly valued, and powerful craft. Through a closer look at Icelandic poets moving through foreign courts, we can begin to construct a picture of a society in which social status (as function of family and inheritance) was of utmost importance, but which also valued a quick wit and poetic skill, such that humble origins of Icelanders could be overlooked if their tongues were quick enough. This essay will consider several cases found in the Íslendingasögur and especially in the þættir to assess the power and social position of Icelandic skalds in foreign courts. Depending on the category to which a given saga belongs, bits of skaldic poetry embedded in the prose typically serve one of two main functions: as an authenticating device or as a reflection on the saga character composing them. Skaldic poetry affirms historicity and accuracy in many of the koningsogur, for example. As Snorri Sturluson tells us in

the introduction to Heimskringla, his massive history of the Norwegian kings, skaldic poetry is his most trusted source on events past: “At the court of King Harald [Fairhair] there were poets, and people still remember their poems and the poems about all the kings who have since been in Norway; and we have taken the greatest amount of information from what is said in poems that were recited before the great men themselves or their sons. We consider everything as true that is found in those poems about their exploits and battles.”3 The truth value of skaldic accounts is guaranteed, Snorri continues, due to their nature - they were composed by court skalds and recited to the very kings they were about, or their sons. While this makes for a panegyric tone and a highly biased cast on events, it also means that the historical facts were probably close to truth, as presumably no one would make up complete falsehoods about the king’s deeds and then recite them to his face. Not all skaldic excerpts, however, were included in the sagas as authenticating devices. Many of the sagas, especially within the Íslendingasögur category, feature main characters who are poets in addition to their being warriors or kings - thus, they include many verses attributed to the main character. In the Saga of Hallfred the Troublesome Poet, who is ‘troublesome’ for clinging to the old gods in the midst of conversion to Christianity, 31 out of 34 poetic verses found in the saga are attributed to its eponymous main character.4 King Harald’s Saga, a chapter in the afore-mentioned Heimskringla, is one of the koningsogur, but also involves a poet-king as its main character. The sagas describe the life of the Norwegian King Harald Sigurdsson, often given the epithet ‘Hardrada,’ from his early exploits as a member of the Byzantine emperor’s Varangian guard, to his death at Stamford Bridge in 1066.5 King 54

Harald’s saga is a particularly interesting case regarding the function of skaldic verse within it; segments taken from the poetry of Harald’s court skalds function as eye-witness testimony, employed by Snorri to guarantee historicity, while much of the rest of the poetry found in the saga is composed and spoken by the king himself within the narrative. Indeed, King Harald’s love of poetry proves to be a major feature of his character and thus a major feature of his court. An excerpt from the saga conveys the double function of poetry in King Harald’s saga: “A great deal of information about King Harald is contained in the poems which Icelandic poets presented to him and his sons; and because of his interest in poetry, he was a great friend of theirs.”6 Taste for poetry and poet-status defines the king as a saga character and ruler, while the poetry of the court skalds of his retinue provides Snorri with reliable source material to bolster and authenticate his narrative.

your arrival there tonight, and he will pay you this debt fully.” He judges the character of his interlocutor well, and works a kind of sarcastic praise into his comeback based on Harald’s nobility. His impudence is remembered by the king on their second encounter and richly repaid. Halli has no impressive family ties, nor is his physique particularly praise-worthy - in fact his physical description more closely fits that of the thrall class in Rígsþula than the physical profile of the upper two strata. The saga describes him as “long-necked, with narrow shoulders and long arms and was rather ill-proportioned.”7 Yet Halli is quick-witted and possesses poetic skill as well as comic timing; King Harald takes a liking to him, and he finds himself in the King’s court, even given a place on the bench among the Norwegian nobility. The Tale of Sarcastic Halli is a patchwork of related comedic episodes, but the most climactic one might be his exchange with Thjodolf, the reigning chief poet of the king, whose poetical prowess is demonstrated when King Harald witnesses a quarrel between a tanner and a blacksmith and asks Thjodolf to compose two verses on the spot. Thjodolf is given very specific parameters: he manages to compose one poem which casts the blacksmith as Sigurd, and the tanner as Fafnir of the famous Sigurd legend, and another one with the blacksmith as Thor and the tanner as the giant Geirrod. With this feat, Thjodolf affirms his place as Harald’s favorite: “’You’re not over-praised,’ said the king, ‘when you’re called a master-poet.’”8 This particular scene belongs to a genre in which the king sets up complicated compositional hoops for his court poet to jump through, with the suspense often heightened with an associated wager or with some dire time constraints. Interestingly enough, however, when first given the task of composing the two verses, Thjodolf thinks it beneath

King Harald’s poetry-rich court provides the setting for a curious and comical tale (þattr) included in the Íslendingasögur called the Tale of Sarcastic Halli. Halli is a completely unknown entity at the beginning of the tale - the typical genealogical scene-setting is noticeably missing from his introduction. All the saga tells us about his family is that they are from Fljot. Instead, Halli is simply an Icelander who has the hutzpah to make a daring and risqué come-back to none other than King Harald, as they briefly encounter one another sailing in a fjord. During this encounter, Halli’s first display of wit plays on the social differences between himself and his companions and the king: when Harald asks, about Halli and his men staying the past night at Agdenes (Agdi’s Ness) in Norway, “Didn’t Agdi screw you?” Halli replies: “...in this matter Agdi was waiting for nobler men than ourselves, and he expected 55

him: “that’s hardly suitable considering that I am called your chief poet.” Perhaps such short, amusing poems were left to the king’s lesser poets, while Thjodolf felt his talent should be saved for more important subjects. We get a glimpse of his more serious work from the segments of his poems found throughout King Harald’s Saga, used in this case as historical confirmation. Despite his pride, Thjodolf, like Halli, also has no great origins to speak of, and no illustrious family genealogy - a fact which seems to have been something of a chip in the shoulder: he is described as being: “of humble origins, well brought up, and envious of newcomers.” Thjodolf’s pride and insecurity lead to a conflict with Halli, erupting in a battle of wits between the two Icelanders. That they fling crafty insults at one another is no surprise; battles with words or with poetry, often known as ‘flyting’, had a long tradition, both in other sagas and in Nordic mythology. But the ways in which Halli and Thjodolf insult one another is telling: each focuses on the humble Icelandic origins of the other, citing hilariously-named works on rustic subjects, while also making jabs at each other’s intelligence and poetic skill. The rivalry starts when Halli wishes to recite a drapa for the king, thus encroaching on Thjodolf’s territory as chief poet. Thjodolf accuses Halli of having lied to the king in claiming that he had never composed a long poem - to prove it, Thjodolf uncovers an embarrassing work of Halli’s from their common Icelandic past: “’We call it Polled-Cow Verses which he composed about cows he tended out in Iceland.’”9 Halli in turn dredges up Thjodolf’s “Food Trough Verses,” composed in his youth; “’It’s about carrying out ashes with his siblings, and he was thought to be capable of nothing more…moreover it was necessary to make sure there were no live coals in the ashes because he had no more brains

than he needed at that time.’”10 Too unintelligent even to be a workman, Thjodolf, the proud king’s favorite, had carried out this contemptible task in his youth, and Halli will not let him escape it. The two poets, who have climbed the social ladder to end up in the hall of Norway’s powerful king on the basis of their wit and poetic skill, insult each other by pointing back to their rustic roots. The insults pierce even further, however, when the subject of family is brought up. Both Icelanders suffer from the problem of a small community in which everyone’s business is known - a phenomenon facilitated by the Althing assemblies held each summer at Þingvellir, during which the entire Icelandic population would gather and hear legal cases.11 Thus the two Icelanders know each other’s family histories even when the tale author makes no mention of them, and the subject of the verbal duel turns to avenging of fathers. Thjodolf, seething from Halli’s last insult about his “Food Trough Verses” challenges Halli’s very presence at Norwegian court when his father remains unavenged back in Iceland: “It seems to me he’s more obliged to avenge his father than engage in verbal duels with me here in Norway.” It seems for a moment that Halli is caught in a bind, his honor called into question since his duty by his family unfulfilled, but Halli dodges the blow and explains that his relatives had established a truce, “and in our country it’s thought bad to be called a truce-breaker.”12 Once again, Halli comes back at Thjodolf with the story of his father’s death and the subsequent revenge visited upon his killer. Thjodolf’s father turns out to have been strangled in an accident involving a calf and a lead-lead rope. Thjodolf and his siblings had eaten the calf after the fact - thus eating their father’s killer. The main humiliation 56

in the story, however, is the attention Halli draws to the family’s poverty. Halli opens his story as follows: “…Thorljot was Thjodolf’s father. He lived in Svarfadardal in Iceland and he was very poor and had many children. It’s the custom in Iceland that in the autumn the farmers assemble to discuss the poor people and at that time no one was named sooner than Thorljot, Thjodolf’s father.”13 Though the writer of the tale is more silent than is usual in the saga genre on the subject of family, we learn the family histories and social origins of Thjodolf and Halli through the harshest insults the two poets fling at one another. Thjodolf’s story is evidence that it was possible to progress from carrying ashes as a member of the poorest family in Iceland to composing important drapas for the most powerful king in Scandinavia at the time, which betrays a remarkable social mobility available to the skilled poet. Thjodolf could infiltrate a stratified society as an impoverished foreigner and climb to the top based on his merit as a skald alone. Yet this does not mean that family and history ceased to be important. During their verbal duel, spurred on by Harald, Halli’s perceptiveness allows him to see through Thjodolf’s cultured veneer and strike where it is most humiliating.

The king, boarding for the night at a Norwegian farmer’s dwelling, encounters Stuf, a blind and large man from Iceland, who introduces himself when prompted as “Cat’s son.” When Harald asks, “but who is this Cat?” Stuf cannot stop himself from grinning, and the King guesses correctly what clever retort Stuf has in mind: “I imagine that you’d like to ask me which swine my father was, but that you laugh instead, since you don’t dare to ask.”14 Snuf’s unsaid but perfectly communicated come-back is a play on the epithet often given to King Harald’s father Sigurd, “the Sow.” Like Halli’s, Snuf’s introductory witty remark plays off of the king’s status relative to his own. While Halli draws attention to the king’s nobility and his own lack thereof, Stuf makes reference to the king’s family through the name of his father, and draws a parallel between the two of them - separated as they are in social standing, there is a comedic leveling of the playing field in that both of their fathers have animal epithets. It is exactly this type of comedy that King Harald seems to find appealing, or at least provides an entertaining opening for the audience of the tale. Nowhere in the Tale of Sarcastic Halli is poetic skill explicitly linked to poetic family lineage. In Snuf’s Tale, however, when Snuf tells King Harald he would like to compose a poem about him, the following exchange takes place: “The king asked, ‘Are you descended from any poets?’ Stuf answered, ‘There have been poets in my family. Glum Geirason was my great-grandfather.’ The king said, ‘You are a good poet if you compose no worse than Glum did.’”15 Here is revealed another side to the status of poets, tied to the belief that skaldic skill was something that could be inherited. Unquestionably, the most famous of poet-families is the Myrar clan, the family descended from Egil Skallagrimsson of Egil’s Saga. In the

The court of the poet-king Harald Sigurdsson gave rise to a collection of several þættir in addition to the Tale of Sarcastic Halli, all of them revolving around King Harald and his dealings with Icelanders of humble origin but full of wit and poetic prowess, whom he befriends and rewards. Stuf’s Tale and the Tale of Arnor, the Poet of Earls are examples of these. In Stuf’s tale, Stuf’s first encounter with the King Harald follows the pattern similar to Halli’s first encounter with the king in the Tale of Sarcastic Halli; Stuf shows himself to be witty and intelligent and displays a forwardness and sense of humor that happens to be to King Harald’s liking. 57

introduction to the Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, the story of the contest between two poet-warriors over Helga the Fair, the genealogical scene-setting focuses on the character traits passed down through Egil’s line down to Helga, his granddaughter: “Scholars say that the Myrar folk…were rather a mixed lot: some of them were exceptionally good-looking men, whereas others are said to have been very ugly….Some of them were also great poets, like Bjorn, the Champion of the Hitardal people, the priest Einar Skulason, Snorri Sturluson and many others.”16

having to do with family and origin. As the Havamal proclaims: “Cattle die and kinsmen die, / thyself eke soon wilt die; / but fair fame will fade never / I ween, for him who wins it.”18 Simply put, fame outlives mortal man. This is the concept that lay behind the high value placed on poetry in medieval Scandinavia, and the considerable power held by those who could compose it. Poets who were brave enough could threaten anyone of any standing with a dangerous weapon that would outlive them both. Thus, King Harald warns Einar Fly in his entanglement with Halli: “Halli…shrinks from nothing. We can both see how a slanderous poem has damaged more powerful men than you, Einar.”19 This follows Halli’s indirect threat, hidden under the double layers of dream and substitution: he tells Einar and the king of a dream in which he was the poet Thorleif, and Einar Fly was Earl Hakon Sigurdarson. The reference is clear to both men, as they know the story of the slanderous poem composed by Thorleif about the Earl, which, as King Harald comments, “will be remembered as long as the northern countries are inhabited.”20 In the end, Halli’s threat, potently couched in dreams and contemporary examples, is heeded and he emerges with compensation for a brother he never had, from a warrior whose claim to fame is that he never pays compensation.

Later in the same saga, Gunnlaug visits the court of the Swedish king and there meets Hrafn, who will later become his competitor for the hand of Helga the Fair. At this point in the tale, however, the two are friendly and are brought together by the fact that both are Icelanders at a foreign court. When Gunnlaug first arrives, Hrafn must vouch for him and his family background before the king: “My lord, [Gunnlaug] comes from the finest of families and is the noblest of men in his own right.” Antagonism erupts, however, when both visiting poets want to recite a drapa for the king, and each wants to be the first to recite. Again family comes into play: when Hrafn argues that he had come to court first, Gunnlaug retorts, “Where did our ancestors ever go with mine trailing in the wake of yours? Nowhere, that’s where!”17 In this childish struggle over who will recite his poem first, serious forces are at play, and the weight given to ancestral precedent is evident. In a way, this scene parallels the verbal duel between Halli and Thjodolf - in both cases, two Icelandic poets fight over the honor of reciting a drapa for the king. Halli and Thjodolf have little illustrious family background to speak of, while the same is not true for Gunnlaug and Hrafn, but in both cases, the most piercing insults are those

Fear of the power of negative poetry is so great that it enters the supernatural realm in some þættir, including the Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet, which relays the story alluded to by Halli in his threat to Einar Fly. The story begins with a clearly Christian prologue warning against sorcery and witchcraft, but the tale itself tells of the promising Icelandic youth Thorleif, a good poet, versed in the magic arts, who sails off and lands in Norway. When he makes an arrogant reply to 58

the reigning Earl Hakon, the earl kills all his men and steals his cargo. The tale becomes one of revenge. Thorleif travels to Denmark, befriends King Svein with a well-composed drapa of forty stanzas, and then sets off with the king’s blessing to confront the Earl once more, disguised as a beggar. The earl agrees to let the mysterious old beggar recite a poem for him, as he claims to have recited for other chieftains, but as he recites, the poem turns slowly from praise to abuse. Simultaneously, the poem begins to alter the physical world: the earl “was very startled to feel a great itching uneasiness creep all the way around his body and especially around his thighs so he could hardly sit still.”21 The mysterious beggar (Thorleif) continues, reciting poems entitled “Fog Verses” and “Earl Abuse,” níð verses which seem to take on the power of magical incantation. The power of the poetry is such that darkness falls, weapons move of their own accord, slaying many men in the hall, and the earl is permanently disfigured - his beard and half the hair on his head fall out, and he spends half a year in bed recovering from his injuries. “The abuse had come very close to him,” the saga relates, and the ‘abuse’ here seems to be conceptualized as a physical presence, clearly capable of physical harm. Not only did the words of the wronged poet Thorlief live on, but the tables of social hierarchy were turned. The Odinic poet-beggar got the best of a powerful Earl, and the power of a good níð verse almost cost a wrong-doer his life. With the story of Thorleif in mind, it is no wonder that Halli’s opponent was willing to pay a small bribe to keep a skilled poet quiet.

the Icelandic poet arrives at a foreign court, recites his poem for the ruler there, and receives for it a cloak, sword, gold-inlaid axe, arm bands, or even a knorr in exchange, if the poem was particularly good. A rather humorous passage in the Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue describes the king’s treasurer instructing a new king in Dublin on how to reward Gunnlaug after he has delivered a drapa: “’What kind of reward would it be if I gave him a pair of knorrs?’ the king asked. ‘That is too much, my lord,’ [the treasurer] replied. ‘Other kings give fine treasures - good swords or splendid gold bracelets - as rewards for poems.’”22 Gunnlaug eventually receives exquisite new clothes and a gold bracelet and heads off to collect more fine rewards for his poetry at the next court. Of course, the crucial element from the perspective of the subject of the drapa was that the composed poem be remembered. This is demonstrated in the episode in the Tale of Sarcastic Halli in which Halli improvises a drapa for the Harold Godwinson, and then must make a hasty retreat since he has not actually composed it and would not be able to teach it to the court. In rewarding Halli’s efforts, Harold draws a very literal parallel between the drapa and the silver the poet should receive for it. Silver is to be poured over Halli’s head, and whatever sticks is his to keep – mirroring the way an orally recited poem is poured over its listeners, and all that is preserved for them are the bits that stick in their memories.23 Poetry as a commodity is particular in its frequent association with life or death exchanges. In the Egil’s saga, Egil’s skill with words saves him on several occasions, the most explicit being at the court of Eirik Blood-Axe, now vying with his siblings to rule Norway. Egil composes a drapa for the king in order to be allowed to live.24 In this instance, ties of kinship and friendship do not carry

A positive poem was seen as similarly powerful, such that drapas and flokks became something of a commodity, which could be traded for goods and money. The most common poet story to be found in the Íslendingasögur follows a simple formula: 59

enough weight, but the immortal words of a well-composed drapa can be traded like a commodity in exchange for a life. Poems composed in order to save the poet’s neck are also common in the þættir. The Tale of Ottar the Black tells of a poet sentenced to death for composing a love poem about Astrid, Queen and wife of King Olaf the Saint. Ottar spends his time in the dungeon composing a drapa for the king; on the day of the execution he recites it and the king spares his life in exchange. The tale concludes: “The drapa which Ottar made about King Olaf is called Head-Ransom because Ottar kept his head as a reward for the poem.”25

in the tales, this seems to have been an entertaining pastime: pitting the poet against time, with high stakes involving physical injury or death to add to the suspense. It seems reasonable to gather from these examples that there is a kernel of truth at the core of these tales. Court-jester-style, the court poets in the tales could be made to perform various compositional feats at the king’s whim and for his entertainment. Occasionally the tables were turned: in one instance in Einar Skulason’s Tale, the king asks Einar to compose a poem before a magnificently prepared ship has passed Holm. Einar demands a reward for this and bases his reward on a contest the king must go through: “You and seven of your followers must remember one line of the verse each, and if you fail, you shall give me as many pots of honey as the lines which you do not remember.”28 The king and his followers fail to remember anything but the first and last lines of the poem, and the poet is rewarded richly, having put the king through the hoops rather than the other way around. Many of the tales of Icelanders featuring poet-heroes are at heart tales of the social underdog. They are tales of the skilled and quick-witted Icelander besting his titled and wealthy Norwegian contemporaries with poetry alone, or using his wit to befriend the likes of the powerful King Harald Sigurdsson and join his court. No king wanted to be immortalized by a slanderous poem, especially when such poems could be capable of wielding supernatural power, as seen in the case of Earl Hakon and the poet Thorleif. Positive poems could be equally powerful in securing a king’s good name. The skaldic poems preserved and used as historical authentication in King Harald’s Saga are proof that this could work quite well - the image that comes down to us of King Harald Hardrada is the image preserved in the words of the Icelan-

In the Tale of Sarcastic Halli, for another example, when King Harald is still unhappy with Halli over his verse daring to complain of being starved at the king’s table, Harald sets up a cruel contest for his poet, requiring him to complete a verse under strict time constraints or be killed. As told in the tale, “the king took a dish containing a roasted piglet from his table and ordered the dwarf Tuta to take it to Halli - ‘and tell him that if he wants to preserve his life to compose a verse and deliver it before you reach him, and do not tell him this until you get to the middle of the floor.’”26 Of course, Halli manages to pull it off, filling his verse with lines like “The poet received a dead piglet” and “I recite a poem rapidly made.” It makes for a great scene, both vivid and comedic, and for this reason maybe it is better seen as skillful story-telling on the part of the tale author rather than a reflection of what might really have happened at King Harald’s court. But if it is mere literary motif, it is a remarkably common one. A related episode appears in Einar Skulason’s Tale, in which Einar, a court poet to a Norwegian king, must compose a poem while a man who stole a kid goat is beaten - the beating will stop when the verse is complete.27 For Norwegian kings 60

dic poets of his court, which later informed the writing of the Heimskringla. But even for poets whose career was based on their poetic skill and not their wealth or origin, family was still of utmost importance. Not even Haraldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favorite court skald, Thjodolf was immune to insults referring back to his rus-

tic, impoverished roots in Iceland. Despite a highly stratified society, and tempered by intense cultural focus on family ties, Icelandic poets had considerable social mobility and agency as they moved within the courts of medieval Scandinavia.

Scandinavian

Amy Robinson Old English

Þa Frægn of Sigewulf

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Scyppend æfre þone mannan to his agenum cyræ lætan? For þan þe se Scippend nolde þæt se man þeow wære, se þe to his anlicnysse gesceapen wæs, ac wære þurh godne willan herigendlic, oððe of yflum willan nyðergendlic. Hwi axode God Adam æfter his gylte hwær he wære swilce he nyste? þæt he dyde for þreaginga, na swilce he nyste, ond þæt Adam understode hwær he þa wæs, ond hwa non he afeolle. Humeta wende Adam þæt he mihte hine behydan fram Godes gesihðe? Seo stuntnys him gelamp of his synne, wite þæt he wolde hine be diglian þam þe nan þincg nis digle. Hwi axode God þa næddran hwi heo þa men forlærde, swa swa he axode Euan hwi heo Adame þone æppel sealde? For ðan þe seo næddre be agenum willan þæt ne dyde, ac se deofol þurh him, ond forþi cwæð God hire to, “Þu bist awyrged, ond þu scealt gan on þinum breoste, ond þu ytst þa eorþan eallum dagum þines lifes.” Se deofol, þe spræc þurh ða nædran, wæs on þære næddran awyrged; he gæð on his breoste, þæt is þæt he færð on modignysse ond mid þære men beswicð; ond he yt þa eorðan for þan þe þa belimpað to þam deofle, þa þe þa eorðlican grædignysse, ond gælsan ungefohlice gefremmað. God cwæð to Euan þæt heo sceolde þære næddran heafod tobrytan, ond seo næddra wolde syrwan ongean hire ho. Hwæt is þære næddran heafod, ond hwæt þes wifes ho? þære næddran heafod getacnað þæs deofles tihtinge, þa 62

Amy Robinson

The Questions of Sigewulf [Why 1 5 10 15 20 25

did the noble] Creator [desire] to leave man always to his own choice? Because the Creator did not wish that man, who was created in his image, would be a slave, but would be praiseworthy through good will, or worthy of condemnation through evil will. Why did God ask Adam where he was after his sin as if he did not know? He did that as a punishment, not as one who does not know, and so that Adam would understand where he was then and from where he had fallen. In what manner did Adam turn so that he could hide himself from God’s sight? The foolishness that befell him as punishment for his sin [made him] want to hide himself from Him whom nothing is hidden. Why did God ask the snake why it deceived the people, just as he asked Eve why she gave the apple to Adam? Because the snake did not act by its own will, but the devil [acted] through it, and for that reason God said to it, “You will be cursed, and you must go on your breast, and you will eat the earth all the days of your life.” The devil, who spoke through the snake, was cursed in the snake; he went on his breast, that is that he travels in pride and deceives men with it; and he eats the earth because those who promote earthly greed and enormous lasciviousness belong to the devil. God said to Eve that she must crush the snake’s head, and the snake would plot against her heel. What is the snake’s head, and what is this woman’s heel? The snake’s head signifies the devil’s persuasion, which 63

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we sceolan mid ealre geornfulnysse sona tobryton, forþam gif heo þæt heafod innan þone man bestingð, þonne slingð heo mid ealle inn. Swa þeah ne bescyt se deofol næfre swa yfel geþoht into bam men, þæt hit him to forwyrde becume, gif hit him ne licað, ond gif he winð mid gebedum ongean. He sæwð foroft manfullice geþohtas into þæs mannes heortan þæt he hine on orwennysse gebringe; ac hit ne bið þam men derigendlic, gif he to his Drihtne clypað. Swa se man swiþor bið afandod, swa he selra bið. Þæs wifes ho getacnode þæt se deofol wile on fyrste, gif he æt fruman ne mag, þone man beswican; ond swa near his lifes geendunge, swa bið ðam deofle leofre þæt he þone man for pære; ac us is to hopigenne to þæs Hælendes gescyldnysse, þe þe us tihte þus: Confidite, ego vici mundum. Truwiað ond beoð gebylde, ic oferswiðde þisne middaneard. Eft he cwæð, “þyses middaneard Ealdor com to me, ond he on me nahte his ne funde.” Se deofol is þæra manna ealdor, þe þisne middaneard ungemetlice lufiað, ond he com to Criste, cunnode hwæðer he ænig þing his, on him gecneowe. þa ne funde he on him nane synne, ac unscæððignysse, þæt þæt we ne magon þurh us, þæt we magon þurh Crist, se þe cwæð: Omnia possibilia credenti. Ealle þing synd þam geleaffullum acumendlice. We sceolon winnan wið þone deofol, mid fæstum geleafan, gif we willað beon gehealdene, ond se þe him onbihð bið soðlice beswicen. Hwi worhte God pylcan Adame ond Efan æfter þam gylte? Þæt he geswutelode mid þam deadum fellum þæt hi wæron þa deadlice for þære forgægednysse. Hwæt is þæt God gelogode cherubin ond fyran swurd ond awendendlic to gehealdene þone wæg þe lið to lifes treowe? Þæt is þæt neorxnewonges get is gehealden þurh engla þenunge ond fyrena hyrdrædene, ond þæt is awendendlic forþan þe hit bið aweg gedon, ond se weg bið us gerymed. Cherubin is gereht gefyllednyss ingehydes, þæt is seo soðe lufu, ond þæt fyreme swurd getacnode þa hwilwendlican earfoðnyssa þe we her on life for.

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we must immediately crush with all desire, because if the snake strikes its head into a person, then it winds itself completely inside. However, the devil never injected such evil thought into the man so that destruction would not come to him if it does not please him, and if he fights against it with prayers. The devil all too often implants wicked thoughts into the heart of man so that he brings him to despair; but it will not be harmful to the man, if he calls to his Lord. As a person is tested more, so will he be better. The woman’s heel signified that the devil wishes to deceive the man in time, if he can not at the beginning; and the nearer his life’s end, then the more dear the man will be to the devil; but we have confidence in the Savior’s protection, he who urged us thus: Confidite, ego vici mundum. Trust and be courageous, I conquered this world. Thereupon he said, “The leader of this world came to me, and he did not find anything of his in me.” The devil is the leader of those men who love this earth excessively, and he came to Christ to know whether he recognized anything of his in him. He did not find any sin in him, but innocence, that which we cannot [have] through us, but we can [have] through Christ, he who said: Omnia possiblia credenti. All things for the faithful are possible. We must fight against the devil with firm belief if we wish to be preserved, and he who serves [the devil] will be truly overcome. Why did God make Adam and Eve fur robes after the offence? So that he could reveal with the dead skins that they were then mortal because of their transgression. Why is it that God placed the cherub and the fiery and turning sword to maintain the way that lies to the tree of life? That is that the gate of Paradise is held by the ministry of angels and a fiery guardianship, and it is turning because it will be done away, and the way will be opened for us. The cherub is interpreted as the fullness of the mind, that is the true love, and that fiery sword signifies transitory difficulties that we [endure] here in this life for.

Scandinavian

Sarah Amanullah Swedish

Jag och Jossan

Vem är din bästa vän? Hela mitt liv, var svaret alltid så lätt. Klart att det är Jossan. Våra föräldrar var kompisar sedan de var tonåringar; det är lika med att säga att vi kände varandra innan vi var född (det är så jag alltid tänkt i alla fall). Men vad händer när man bor över Atlanten från sin bästa vän i hela världen tre-fjärde delar av varje år? För oss betydde det hundratals timmar på telefonen, och hundratals dagar på en nedräknings kalender under skolåret mellan varje sommar. Kalendern började om igen så fort jag klev av flygplanet i Filadelfia vid slutet av augusti. När vår familj flyttade från Sverige till USA, lovade pappa till mamma att vi skulle hälsa på varje sommar, för minst 3 månader. I de arton somrar jag bodde i Sverige så har jag många otroliga minnen och erfarenheter… Jag kommer ihåg mormors pankakor, blåbärsplockning i skogen, vinbär i gården, klippdykning i sjön, vår röda sommarstuga med vita knutar, träkojan i skogen med alldeles för många våningar byggd av tolv åringar för att vara säker, hav med sötvatten, långritt och bad med hästarna, camping i tysta sko66

gen, och så klart en varm brassa i stugan när det började bli höst (för hösten kommer alltid så tidigt i Sverige). Det låter verkligen som ett paradis när jag skriver mina minnen så, men de bästa, starkaste, och mest meningsfulla minnen jag har är var och en med Josefine. Vi hittade på sånger när tåget till Mellerud var flera timmar försenat (den sången får jag fortfarande på hjärnan ibland), vi hade en gemensam anteckningsbok med många hemligheter, vi var lika bekväm i varandras familj som i våra egna. Alla våra sötaste bebisbilder och fulaste preteen foton är tillsammans. Det var en gång i tiden då jag kunde ärligt säga att ingen i hela världen kände mig bättre. Men åren försvann, jag hälsade på Sverige mindre och mindre och helt plötsligt började veckor, månader, och till slut år passera utan kontakt mellan jag och Jossan. Det är svårt att växa upp, men det är omöjligt att dela sitt liv mellan länder. Är hon än min bästa vän, men är det bara för de förflutna minnena jag har? Även om det bara är nostalgi, tycker jag om att tänka att vi fortfarande är det.

Sarah Amanullah

Josefine and I

Who is your best friend? For my whole life, the answer was always so easy. Of course it’s Josefine. Our parents were friends since their teenage years; essentially we knew each other before we were even born (at least that is how I always used to think of it).

a warm fire in the fireplace as soon as fall came (fall always came so early in Sweden). When I actively write down my memories, it sounds like heaven on earth, but the strongest memories I have are all with Josefine, the ones that are hardest to define.

But what happens to friendship that gets stretched over the Atlantic Ocean?

When the train to Mellerud was delayed by hours, we wrote songs about it (one still gets stuck in my head), we had a shared journal filled with our secrets, we were as comfortable in each other’s families as our own. All of our cutest baby pictures and our most ugly preteen photos are all together. At a point in my life, I could honestly say no one in the world knew me better.

For us, it meant hundreds of hours on the phone, and hundreds of days on a countdown calendar, spanning the school years between every summer we spent together. This calendar would start over again as soon as I stepped foot off the airplane in Philadelphia at the end of every August. When our family moved from Sweden to the United States, my dad promised my mom that we would go back every summer, for at least three months. In those eighteen summers I lived in Sweden, I made the most amazing memories… I remember grandma’s pancakes, picking blueberries in the forest surrounding her house, cliff jumping into dark lakes, our small red cottage with white trim, the tree house my brother built in the woods (with too many swaying floors built by a twelve-year old to be even remotely safe), cross-country horseback rides over field and forest, camping in the quiet woods, and of course

The years passed, I visited less and less, and suddenly weeks, months, and finally years had passed without any contact between us. Growing up is hard for everyone, but splitting a childhood between two countries is impossible. Would she still be my best friend, or is it just for the memories I still have? Even if it’s only nostalgia that I have left, I will always think that we still are.

Scandinavian

Henrik Nordbrandt Danish

Nye og Glemte Sanger

Et Liv Du strøg en tændstik, og dens flamme blændede dig så du ikke kunne finde, hvad du søgte i mørket før den brændte ud mellem fingrene på dig og smerten fik dig til at glemme, hvad det var.

Den Danske Folkekirke Den danske Folkekirke er så tolerant. Den respekterer alle mulige andre kristne kirker. Det er lige før den respekterer alle mulige andre religioner mere end den kristne som den i beskeden bevidsthed om sin egen tolerance tilhører fordi den er så tolerant også over for den kristne religions intolerante sider.

Henrik Nordbrandt Transl. Michael Thorbjørn Feehly

New and Forgotten Poems

A Life You lit a matchstick and the flame blinded you and you couldn’t find what you sought— not before the burnt-out match burned your fingers and that pain made you forget your sought-after, whatever it was.

The Church of Denmark The Church of Denmark is so tolerant. The Church respects all other possible Christian denominations. And only just before it gave respect to all other possible religions more respect than it gives the Christian religion, to which the Church of Denmark belongs as testimony of its self-conscious tolerance because the Church of Denmark is so tolerant, it even tolerates Christianity’s intolerant side.

Den danske Folkekirke er mere tolerant end Gud hvis tolerance ifølge de hellige skrifter er temmelig begrænset. Den er også mere tolerant end Jesus. Jesus tolererede under ingen omstændighed krig. Den gør Folkekirken. Den sender præster i krig: Feltpræster hedder det med et ord Jesus næppe ville have taget i sin mund. Folkekirken velsigner hærens folk. Mange præster bærer de samme ordener som generalerne. Rent personlig tror jeg: Hvis Jesus ikke havde været så tolerant ville han stige ned fra sin himmel og spytte præsterne i ansigtet. Alligevel tolererer Folkekirken Jesus. Så det er hermed påvist at Folkekirken er mere tolerant end Jesus. Den danske Folkekirke er så tolerant at den burde belønne mig for at have skrevet dette.

The Church of Denmark is more tolerant than God —if tolerance according to holy scripture is quite limited. The Church is also more tolerant than Jesus. Jesus tolerated war under no circumstances. The Church of Denmark tolerates war. The Church sends priests to war: chaplains—that’s saying it with a word Jesus hardly would have put in his mouth. The People’s Church blesses the army guys. Many of the priests and the generals carry out the same orders. I personally believe that: if Jesus hadn’t been so tolerant he would come down from his heaven and spit in the priests’ faces. Anyways, the Church of Denmark tolerates Jesus. So it thereby demonstrated that: the Church of Denmark is more tolerant than Jesus. The Church of Denmark is so tolerant; it ought to forgive me for having written this.

Kjell Sandvik Norwegian

Nu er alt utløst og i fullkommen ro ser jeg mine dager og år uten frykt Alt er godt også at Døden stryker sine hvite fingre gjennom mitt hår og blodets elv rinner langsommere Jeg kjenner meg som stående i stor høyde herfra betrakter jeg mine landskap som om blomstene aldri skal visne Skygger av angst kaster jeg for dine føtter i ditt skjød sover jeg elskede som et tillitsfullt barn

Å våkne hos deg er å erkjenne din virkelighet plutselig som svaler i bølger av lys omkring meg er å stryke din varme hud til sårene livet har revet i meg blir roser ved dine lepper å du min lengsels fugl! jeg våkner og drømmer

Kjell Sandvik Transl. Michael Thorbjørn Feehly

It’s all resolved and now fully calm I look over my days and years unafraid All’s good even as Death combs white fingers through my hair, and my blood slows to a trickle like a dwindling river Feels like I’m standing on a high hill scrutinizing the countryside as if the flowers’ll never wither I’m casting anxious shadows by your feet and sleep in your lap, loved like a trusting child.

To wake up with you is to grasp hold of you—real of a sudden like swallows cool around me in waves of light is to stroke your warm skin until my sores become roses on your lips Oh you, wistful sparrow! I come to, dreaming

Endnotes The Bloody Butcher 1. Natalia Babina, Masters of World Painting: David Tenier the Younger (Leningrad: Auro-ra, 1989), 3. 2. Hans Vlieghe, “Going Their Separate Ways: the Artistic Inclinations and Paths of David Teniers I, II, and III,” in Family Ties: Art Production and Kinship Patterns in the Early Modern Low Countries, Koenraad Brosens, Leen Kelchtermans & Katlijne Van der Stig-helen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 10. 3. Ibid., 163. 4. Kenneth M. Craig, “Rembrandt and The

Slaughtered Ox,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): 235. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 237. 7. Ibid., 236. 8. Ibid., 238. 9. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 1987), 152. 10. Ibid., 159. 11. Ibid., 170. 12. Margret Klinge, David Teniers the Younger: Paintings and Drawings,

trans. David R. McLintock (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 1991), 84. 13. Donna R. Barnes, The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker: Jan Luyken’s Mir-ror of 17th-Century Dutch Daily Life (Hempstead, NY: Hofstra UP, 1995), 110. 14. Klinge, David Teniers the Younger, 84-85. 15. Babina, Masters of World Painting, 3. 16. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, 53. 17. Ibid., 123. 18. Ibid., 124. 19. Ibid., 124, 136.

20. Ibid., 137. 21. Ibid., 168. 22. Ibid., 393. 23. Margret Klinge and Dietmar Lüdke, David Teniers der Jüngere (16101690): Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2006), 158. 24. Ibid. 25. Klinge, David Teniers the Younger, 120. 26. Klinge and Lüdke, David Teniers der Jüngere, 158. 27. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, 403.

Pina’s Pedigree 1. Ciane Fernandes, Pina Bausch and the Wuppertal Dance Theater: The Aesthetics of Repetition and Transformation, (New York: P. Lang, 2001), 100. 2. Katharine Monk, “‘By the End of Café Mueller, I Was on the Edge of My Seat, Weeping’; Wim Wenders.” National Post, (2011). 3. Michael Crabbe, “German Dance Queen Raises the Wunderbar: Rare Pina Bausch Appearance Means a Field Day for Ottawa Scalpers,” The Financial Post, (2004). 4. Dianne Shelden Howe, Individuality and Expression: The Aesthetics of the New German Dance, (New York: P. Lang, 1996), 20. 5. Ibid., 43. 6. Ibid., 43. 7. Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in

Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003), 1. 8. Ibid., 2. 9. Ibid., 1, 4. 10. Karl Eric Toepfer, Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935, (Berkeley: University of California, 1997), 15. 11. Ibid., 15-16. 12. Ibid., 16. 13. Ibid., 18. 14. Ibid., 18. 15. Karen K. Bradley, Rudolf Laban, (London: Routledge, 2009), 9. 16. Ibid., 23. 17. Ibid., 35. 18. Howe, Individuality and Expression, 99. 19. Bradley, Rudolf Laban, 5. 20. Ibid., 9. 21. Ibid., 11. 22. Ibid., 18.

23. Howe, Individuality and Expression, 95. 24. Ibid., 95-96. 25. Ibid., 113. 26. Ibid., 126. 27. Ibid., 134. 28. Erik Norman Jensen, Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 4. 29. Ibid., 3. 30. Ibid., 3. 31. Alexandra Kolb, Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 98. 32. Ibid., 98. 33. Ibid., 104. 34. Ibid., 101. 35. Toepfer, Empire of Ecstasy, 29. 36. Ibid., 28. 37. Ibid., 30. 38. Howe, Individuality and Expression, 37-38. 39. Ibid., 40, 38.

40. Ibid., 39. 41. Naomi M. Jackson, Converging Movements: Modern Dance and Jewish Culture at the 92nd Street Y (Hanover: University of New England, 2000), 1. 42. Ibid., 56. 43. Ibid., 63. 44. Ciane Fernandes, Pina Bausch and the Wuppertal Dance Theater: The Aesthetics of Repetition and Transformation (New York: P. Lang, 2001), 1. 45. Ibid., 3. 46. Fernandes, 9. 47. Ibid., 1. 48. Ibid., 6.

Superfluous Thought 1. Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” Course Website for HAA 170v, 20. 2. Edward Timms, Karl Kraus Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (New Haven: Yale, 1986), 118. 3. Ibid., 119. 4. Karl Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta, trans. Jonathan McVity {Chicago: University of Illinois, 2001), 79. 5. Ibid., 82. 6. Ibid., 94. 7. Ibid., 79. 8. Ibid., 89. 9. Ibid., 64. 10. Carl E. Schorske, “Politics and the Psych in Fin de Siécle Vienna,” in The University of Chicago Press 66.4 (1961): 935. 11. Ibid. 12. Arthur Schnitzler,

Lieutenant Gustl (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1981) 7. “Was guckt mich denn der Kerl dort immer an? Mir scheint, der merkt, dass ich mich langweil und nicht herg’hör…” 13. Arthur Schnitzler, Viennese Novelettes (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958), xxxiii. 14. Lieutenant Gustl is often considered to be the first stream-of-consciousness text ever written. 15. Schnitzler, Lieutenant Gustl, 9. “Es ist merkwürdig, ich kann mir keinen Namen merken!...Ah, ja: Etelka!...Kein Wort Deutsch hat sie verstanden, aber das war auch nicht notwendig…hab’ gar nichts zu reden brauchen!” 16. Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta, 89.

17. Schniztler, Lieutenant Gustl, 18. ““Wo ist denn mein Mantel?...Ich hab’ ihn ja schon angezogen… Ich hab’s gar nicht gemerkt…Wer hat mir denn geholfen” “Was, ich bin schon auf der Straße? Wie bin ich denn da herausgekommen?” 18. Ibid., 9. “Schaut schon weg!” he thinks, “Dass sie alle vor meinem Blick so eine Angst hab’n.” 19. Ibid., 18-20. I have quoted these solely in German because the diversity of these phrases is difficult to convey in English. If translated, most would be slight variants of “I’ll kill him!” 20. Ibid., 9. “Muß übrigens ein Jud’ sein! Freilich, in einer Bank ist er, und der schwarze Schnurrbart…

Reserveleutnant soll er auch sein! Na, in mein Regiment sollt’ er nicht zur Waffenübung kommen! Überhaupt, dass sie noch immer so viel Juden zu Offizieren machen—da pfeif’ ich auf’n ganzen Antisemitismus!” 21. Hans Wollschläger, ed. Das Karl Kraus Lesebuch (Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1980) 339. “Aus Titel und Tonfall ersteht die Welt, und geht zugrunde, denn Lettern werden zu Blei.” 22. Helgs S. Madland, “Baroja’s ‘Camino de perfectión’ and Schnitzler’s ‘Leutnant Gustl’: Fin de Siècle Madrid and Vienna,” in Comparative Literature Studies 21.3 (1984): 307.

Germanic Influence on Japanese Pop Culture 1. First coined by our very own Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Joseph Nye. 2. Way back in the day, Gwen Stefani even used “kawaii” to open up the music video to her hit single “Hollaback Girl.” 3. “Anime” is short for “Japanese animation,” and originally referred to cartoons originating from Japan. Nowadays, it is used more broadly to refer to the genre that these cartoons seem to encompass and the stylistic features that accompany them. 4. Whenever I refer to an anime being “popular” or a “classic,” I’m most directly basing my assertions on the popularity and general ranking of shows from MyAnimeList, a popular

site fans use to rank shows. However, I’m also drawing from my own personal experiences with friends, the blogosphere, forums, and anime conventions. 5. In fact, the band that sings this, Linked Horizon, has a ton of Germanic influences (and are actually quite popular!). In fact, the opening concert for one of their albums, based on German fairy tales, even involved fans sing happy birthday in German! 6. Technically, she’s American and is 1/4 Japanese and 3/4 German, even though she was raised in Germany. But you wouldn’t know this unless you really paid attention because the show emphasizes her German side so much. 7. Examples include the

Einzbern family from the Type/Moon franchise and Laura Bodewig from Infinite Stratos, just to name a few. 8. In fact, the main plot manifests several parallels to WWI, as does the geography of the regions featured in the show. 10. Light novels are similar to young adult novels in the US in terms of writing style/level, but generally tend to have close ties to the anime industry and occupy a similar genre. 11. Manga are essentially Japanese comics, albeit with a much wider readership and incredibly more diverse subject matter than the American comic industry. 12. A rather large list of the German used can be found

on the Bleach wiki. 13. Currently the industry’s second-longest, having been published continuously since December 1986. 14. The Japanese game company best known for their visual novels (which are pretty much what they sound like). 15. Susan J. Napier, From Impressionism to Anime (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 11. 16. “Liminal” is a term used in anthropology to describe the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the midst of rituals when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status and haven’t started the transition to the status they will hold when upon the ritual’s completion. 17. Both in terms of being

fantasy-esque and also in terms of appearance. 18. Or at least, reinforcing Germany’s seemingly detachment from the events surrounding WWII. 19. Not to mention some of the shows like Hetalia or Strike Witches, where characters are literally

stand-ins for countries. 20. For more information to the ridiculous extent that schoolgirl uniforms influence the genre and more generally Japa-nese media, check out Brian Ashcroft’s Schoolgirl Confidential. 21. One could argue that the appearance of anime

characters is probably a carryover from American cartoons, but, in an argument about soft power and country associations, this point holds no real power. 22. This hypothesis actually makes a prediction - that the majority of influence in anime should not only

be European, but center on the main powers of the time, which would be Germany, Britain, and France - which can not only be verified, but, from just thinking about many of the shows I’ve seen, actually seems to be true!

Vine and Horizon 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays, ed. Larzer Ziff (New York: Penguin, 2003), 191. 2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. Walter Arnold Kaufmann (New York:

Modern Library, 2000), 405. 3. Emerson, 234. 4. Ibid., 232. 5. Ibid. 6. Nietzsche, 392. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 391.

9. Ibid., 346. 10. Ibid., 347. “Hail, dear drudge and patient fretter!..” 11. Ibid., 348. 12. Ibid., 349. 13. Emerson, 228. 14. Ibid., 227.

15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 196. 17. Ibid., 197. 18. Ibid., 196.

All the King’s Men 1. Hollander, Lee M., trans., The Poetic Edda, (University of Texas Press, 1962) 120. This is not to say that there was no social hierarchy in Iceland, but that the method of government was substantially different and not monarchical. 2. Diana Whaley, “Skaldic Poetry”, in A Companion to Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk et al. (Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 479. 3. Robert Kellogg, introduction to The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), xxxvii. As Kellogg notes, there is actually no medieval source which confirms that Heimskringla is Snorri’s work, but modern scholars tend to follow the standard convention of attributing it to him. 4. Alan Boucher, introduction to The Saga of Hallfred the Troublesome Scald, (Iceland Review: Reykjavik, Iceland: 1981) 13. 5. Magnus Magnusson

and Herman Palsson, trans. King Harald’s Saga, (London and New York: Penguin Books). 6. Ibid., 86. 7. George Clark, trans. “The Tale of Sarcastic Halli,” in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), 342. 8. Ibid., 344. 9. Ibid., 348. 10. Ibid. 11. Martina Stien-Wilkeshuis, “Laws in medieval Iceland,” Journal of Medieval History 12 (1986): 41. 12. Clark, trans. “The Tale of Sarcastic Halli”, 349. 13. Ibid. 14. Anthony Maxwell, trans. “Stuf’s Tale” in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), 358. 15. Ibid., 359. 16. Katrina C. Attwood, trans. “The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue” in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar

Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), 306. 17. Ibid., 319. 18. Hollander, The Poetic Edda, 25. 19. Clark, “The Tale of Sarcastic Halli,” 253. 20. Ibid., 352. 21. Judith Jesch, trans. “The Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet”, in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), 365-6. 22. Attwood, “The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue”, 318. 23. Clark, trans. “The Tale of Sarcastic Halli”, 353. 24. Bernard Scudder, trans., “Egil’s Saga” in in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), 25. Judith Jesch, trans. “The Tale of Ottar the Black,” in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan

Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), 341. 26. Clark, trans. “The Tale of Sarcastic Halli,” 347. 27. Scilla Brumfit, trans. “Einar Skulason’s Tale,” in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Viðar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), 337. 28. Ibid., 338.