Book Description

"Else Lasker-Schuler's poems are small red fires of passion in a time of total darkness. At great cost, she rescued her innocence from the brutality of the Nazi age and tested the resilience of her Jewish soul. In these translations, Janine Canan renders into English both the lyrical intensity of that endeavor, and the palpable danger and mystery that made it possible. This is travel at root-level."-Andrei Codrescu

Night Secret

I have chosen you
among all these stars.

Am awake, a listening flower
in the buzzing bush.

Our lips long to make honey,
our shimmering nights are in full bloom.

From your body's holy spark
my heart lights its heaven.

All my dreams hang from your gold.
I have chosen you among all these stars.

Book Description
Else Lasker-Schüler, a pivotal figure in German Expressionism, presided over avant-garde café life in pre-World War I Berlin in much the same way Gertrude Stein did in Paris around the same time. While her work is not yet very well known in the English-speaking world, it has been enjoying a critical and popular revival in Germany.

This full-length biography of Lasker-Schüler—the first in English—explores her poems, plays, prose and graphic works in light of her life. It begins with her fleeing to Switzerland after Hitler's accession to power in 1933, looks back at her childhood in Wuppertal, then follows her life through to its end in Jerusalem in January 1945. As a Jew, a woman and a bohemian, Lasker-Schüler defied every category. Her two marriages—first to Dr. Berthold Lasker, then to Herwarth Walden, founder of the leading avant-garde periodical, gallery and publishing house, Der Sturm (The Storm)—as well as her interactions with Karl Kraus, Franz Marc, Gottfried Benn, Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem, are documented in letters and poems, many included here both in the original and in translation. ... Read more

Book Description
Else Lasker-Schuler was a leading Expressionist poet and one of the most prominent women writers of the early 20th century. She has been described by Karl Kraus as "the greatest lyric poet of modern Germany." Lasker-Schuler lived the life of a bohemian, sharing the artistic milieu of post World War I Berlin with friends such as Franz Marc and Gottfried Benn. When the Nazi government took power, Lasker-Schuler, witnessing soldiers attacking a Jewish apartment, immediately boarded a train to leave Germany. After short stays in other parts of Europe, her last years were spent in Israel, where she aligned herself with experimental writers celebrating their Jewish heritage.

Else Lasker-Schuler's (1869-1945) most noted collections are Hebrew Ballads (1913) and My Blue Piano (1943). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A favorite of mine
Beautiful, disarming poems from the viewpoint of a vulnerable child-adult. Poems to friends, to her dead mother, poems of biblical figures wrapped in her private mythology. This is a bilingual edition . The format is comfortably small and handsome, but it is a reissue of a book with different cover and format - so beware if you already own a book of hers. ... Read more