Frederick Schiller and Arthur Rimbaud. Poems for their birthdays

El November 10th 1759 was born in Marbach (Germany) Frederick schiller. And the same day but in Charleville (France) and almost a century later, in 1854, it did Arthur Rimbaud. The two became poets of universal fame, although their trajectories and lives were very different, more intense and too short that of the French. Today I remember their figures on their respective birthdays with a couple of his chosen poems. 

Frederick schiller

Schiller was playwright and philosopher as well as poet. Born in Marbach in 1759, he studied medicine in Stuttgart but his true vocation was always towards literature. Its beginning was in the ,, since after serving in the military, he wrote his first work for the tables influenced by having read Shakespeare and Rousseau. From there he devoted himself to poetic composition.

He was living in several German cities and made friendship with names like Goethe. He also exercised the Chair of History at the University of Jena until 1799. His work includes titles such as The theater as a moral institutionEssay on the relationship between the animal and spiritual nature of man, Of grace and dignity o Tragic artHe died in Weimar in 1805.

These are two of his chosen poems:

Ecstasy by Laura

Laura, if your look is tender
sink the blazing ray into mine
my happy spirit, with new life,
burst on
slippery in the light of the May sun.
And if in your placid eyes I look at myself
without shadows and without veils,
ecstatic respite
the auras of the heavens.

If the sound accent
your lip in the air gives with a sigh
and the sweet harmony
of the golden stars;
I hear the choir from the angels,
and absorbed my soul
in transparent amorous ecstasy.

If in the harmonious dance
your foot, like a timid wave, slips,
to the mysterious love troop
I watch the wing flap;
the tree moves its branches behind you
as if the lyre were heard from Orpheus,
and my plants the land we step on
dizzying turns.

If the pure sparkle of your eyes
loving fire ignites,
beat to hard marble
it gives and to the arid vital trunk it calls.
How much enjoyment the fantasy dreamed
already present contemplate it and sure,
when I read in your eyes, my Laura!

Immortal reminiscence

Tell me friend, the cause of this burning,
pure, immortal longing that is in me:
suspend me to your lip eternally,
and immerse myself in your being, and the pleasant atmosphere
receive from your immaculate soul.

In a time that passed, a different time,
Was not our existence of a single being?
Does the focus of an extinct planet
gave nest to our love in its enclosure
in days that we saw forever flee?

… You also like me? Yes you have felt
in the chest the sweet heartbeat
with which passion announces its fire:
let's love each other, and soon the flight
we will happily raise that sky
that we will be like God again.

Arthur Rimbaud

Born in Charleville en 1854 and since he was little he showed a great talent for literature. He went to Paris when he was very young and there made friends with important poets of the time, especially with Paul Verlaine. With him he kept a scandalous and stormy love affair which ended two years later due to serious disputes between the two. It was at this time that their first publications appear as The drunk ship  o A season in hell.

His work is marked by the symbolism and it also has a profound influence of Charles Baudelaire. His interest in the occultism or religion. But his hectic life forced him to leave poetry for a time that he used to travel in Europe. He was also engaged in trade in North Africa. When he returned to the French capital, his work had already been published Illuminations. He also died in November 1891.

Can't you imagine ...

Can't you imagine why I'm dying of love?
The flower says to me: Hello! Good morning, the bird.
Spring has arrived, the sweetness of the angel.
Can't you guess why I boil with drunkenness!
Sweet angel of my crib, angel of my grandmother,
Can't you guess that I turn into a bird
that my lyre beats and that my wings beat
like a swallow?

Ofelia

  I
In the deep waters that cradle the stars,
White and candid, Ophelia floats like a great lily,
floats so slowly, leaning on her veils ...
when they play to death in the distant forest.

It has been thousands of years since the pale Ophelia
pass, white ghost through the great black river;
more than a thousand years since its soft madness
it murmurs its tune in the night air.

The wind, like a corolla, caresses her breasts
and unfolds, cradled, its blue sail;
the trembling willows cry against his shoulders
and by his forehead in dreams, the belfry folds.

The curly water lilies sigh beside him,
while she awakens, in the sleeping alder,
a nest from which a minimum tremor arises ...
and a song, in gold, falls from the mysterious sky.

 II

Oh sad Ophelia, beautiful as snow,
dead when you were a child, carried by the river!
And it is that the cold winds that fall from Norway
the grim freedom had been whispered to you.

And it is that an arcane breath, when brandishing your mane,
in your transposed mind he put strange voices;
and it is that your heart listened to the lament
of Nature - they are of trees and nights.

And it is that the voice of the sea, like immense gasp
broke your gentle and tender heart as a child;
and it is that one day in April, a beautiful pale infant,
a miserious madman, at your feet he sat.

Heaven, Love, Freedom: what a dream, oh poor Loca!
You melted into him like snow on fire;
your visions, enormous, drowned out your word.
-And the terrible Infinity scared away your blue eye.

   III

And the poet tells us that in the starry night
you come to collect the flowers that you cut,
and that she has seen in the water, leaning on her veils,
to the candid Ophelia float, like a great lily.


Be the first to comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: Miguel Ángel Gatón
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.