Heidelberg - ein Wiedersehen by Natasha Walker and Darrell Barnes

Heidelberg - ein Wiedersehen

Natasha Walker proposed to Darrell Barnes (and it wasn’t a leap year!) that they might collaborate, both of them holding each other’s poetic skills in high esteem. It was apparent from the start that, apart from Oxford and the Cotswolds, there were not many places that both of them knew in common - apart from Heidelberg, where Natasha currently lives and where Darrell had spent part of two long vacations in an attempt to understand the German language better.

Darrell’s experience was not altogether a happy one: he had a boring - and poorly paid - job guiding visitors around the manufacturing plant of Original Heidelberger Druckmaschinen at Wiesloch, some distance outside Heidelberg itself, whither he and other tour guide staff were driven at a furious rate down the autobahn each morning and whence all returned in the evening as if the hounds of hell were snapping at their heels. One abiding memory is of a tablet affixed to a wall in the Schloss commanding a magnificent view of the river Neckar, which bore a poem written by Marianne von Willemer in 1815 commemorating her last meeting with Goethe in the autumn of that year.

Natasha set out to reframe Darrell’s views of the city from perspectives which may have eluded his younger self: from the famous Philosophenweg, from the viewpoint of Liselotte von der Pfalz, born in Heidelberg’s castle and who became the unfortunate Madame and sister in law to Louis XIV, at whose orders Heidelberg and the surrounding area was destroyed.

Dear Darrell, you knew Heidelberg a while ago. Now drenched in snow, I’d like to know what thrilled you. What concurred to make you smile? Up on the hill, the Neckar’s mists below?

Ros’ und Lilie morgenthaulich Blüht im Garten meiner Nähe;1

Natasha Walker

1 Dew-drenched rose and lily / bloom in the garden near to me 160

Natasha, friend: a stirring of the senses knowing that you live where once I went summons half a century of pensėes. The public garden’s roses had no scent where, on a bench with Rousseau in my hand, Le Contrat Social I got to know; on the sandstone terrace I would stand and look upon the Neckar far below.

Auf der Terrasse hoch gewölbtem Bogen war eine Zeit mein Kommen und mein Geh’n.2

Darrell Barnes

At Philosophenweg our ramble starts; we glimpse the castle - “Liselotte’s home!” we cry. Begot of German-English hearts, she lived to see her town become a tomb.

Aber schwer in das Tal hing die gigantische, Schicksalskundige Burg nieder bis auf den Grund, Von den Wettern zerrissen;3

Natasha Walker

2 On the terrace and its deeply vaulted arch / once upon a time I’d come and go. 3 But the gigantic fated castle hung / heavily down towards the ground, / wrestled apart by the elements 161

Two long vacations spent with Druckmaschinen4 , a dead-end job which barely kept me fed; Wie viele DM mußte ich verdienen?5 Not a happy time, it must be said. But looking back - and prompted by your pleasure of wondrous wines, the Philosophenweg my young self could not gauge the measure of Heidelberg. So what kept me in check?

Darrell Barnes

Youth checks our outward view, thus, self-absorbed, you might have felt quite lonely, poor, ignored? I’d like to meet you there, back then, to strew some kinder memories then those you knew.

Natasha Walker

Then I owned a timid disposition which, as a man, I long ago outgrew; would your town now act as a magician and cast the spell so many others knew? A Spritze on the terrace in the evening to reminisce would be a time well spent, a lifting of the soul, a kind of leavening. In time I’d come to know the roses’ scent.

Darrell Barnes

4 I worked as a tour guide in the factory of Original Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, manufacturers of printing presses. 5 How many Deutschmarks would I have to earn?

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Stadt fröhlicher Gesellen, An Weisheit schwer und Wein,6

Although my mind strays, yearning, to the seas, these fruitful valleys serve to drown my grief in wondrous wines. And gentle friends can tease me back to treasured forests, trees in leaf.

Natasha Walker

A meeting, not in body but in mind, Has brought us both together - what delight! Marianne’s verse serves to remind Zur Gegenwart wird die Vergangenheit.7

Darrell Barnes

6 City of happy fellows / heavy with wisdom and wine 7 The past shall become the present.

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