The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

I remained mute with amazement. It seemed to me as if I
were standing in front of an open gate, which I had carelessly
passed, without knowing that behind it was hidden the solution
to all questions.
“Understand me, brother. I’ll show you the way.”
“The wish at the moment of death –“, I said to myself.
“To take the consciousness beyond death — to save the memory
–“
“You have understood. Farewell!”
Slowly glittering in the twilight, his figure became
indistinct, only his face still shone.
“Stay, stay with me -” I wanted to call, but no sound
came out of my mouth.
Then he said slowly and clearly words, whose meaning I
no longer understood:
“Hamd olsun -tekrar görüschdüjümüze!”
I was awake, didn’t see him anymore.
“Isa bektschi!” I shouted. “Stay with me!”
But only my own hoarse voice echoed in the wide space.
Why had I understood him before and now I didn’t? And
it had been the same language – I remembered it as one
remembers a blown note whose tone, the sequence of which is
fading more and more from memory.
Hastily I spoke the unknown words to myself twice, three
times, until they were indelibly burned into my memory like
the words of a prayer recited a thousand times.
Why did my heart ache so much?
How many questions I still had to ask! How I would have
liked to ask him about Aglaja, about Zephyrine, about the
haunting of the night of hell.
Didn’t he say we were one?
“I am you?”
He was in me, and only from me could the answer come.
From the depths of consciousness, when the hidden would
awake. When the state occurred, in which all riddles spread out
legibly, like clear writing.
So calmly my heart beat, free from all fear, free from
expectation, and so safe and happy was I as a child in a
mother’s arms.
“Death, where is thy sting?”
Like distant, comforting ringing these words from the
holy book came to me. There was no death for the one who
wanted to live. Life for all eternity, life until complete
purification, until the purification, until the glorious emergence,
until the conscious being in God. Tears of joy ran down my
cheeks.
Everything was only a wandering in the darkness, and to
me shone a faint glimmer of the inextinguishable light that
shines at the end of the path through the eternities. As far as it
might be, as much fear and hardship still lurked at the sides of
the path – which led to the goal. Isa, the guardian, had shown it
to me. What could happen to me, and who could harm the
immortal part of me?
The door opened. The Magister Hemmetschnur came to
my bed, holding in his hand a silver cup with a cool potion of
mint and sugar water.
“You must have met a strange monk on the stairs,” I said
quickly. “A man in a brown robe with a black turban, and
yellow beads around his neck.”
“The fever is rising -” he grumbled peevishly to himself.
“No, no,” I implored him. “The stranger was with me just
now, standing there before my bed. He could not have gone
unnoticed.”
And I described Ewli to him once again and urged him to
call him back in a hurry.
“Baron,” said the magister. “You have had a dream. For
half an hour I’ve been sitting on a chair by the corridor window
reading in front of your door. No one has entered your room, so
no one could have come out of your room. That’s what
common logic says.”
Exhausted, I sank back into my pillows.
“Dreamed -?”
Like a bitter taste it came to my tongue. But then I started
up again up.
“Hemmetschnur, you have been in Stambul for a long
time, and many languages are known to you. What does the
sentence I am about to recite to you mean?”
And slowly, emphasizing word by word exactly, I recited
to him the last sentence which had reached me:
“Hamd olsun tekrar görüschdüjümüzel”.
The magister’s eyes snapped open. His mouth remained
open. Then he wiped his face with his hand, looked at me again
and shook his head:
“By the diamond of the Great Mogul! Baron -it is the
purest Turkish!”
“What does it mean? I want to know what it means!”
I demanded in my impatience.
He drew a deep breath, looked at me with a shy look and
spoke:
“It means, thank God, we will meet again!”
“Thank God!”
I repeated with a sigh. I laughed with joy and patted his
haggard hand that held the cup.
“Strange things are happening in this witch’s room this
day,” he nodded at me. “The man, that you have seen, Baron
Dronte–that’s what the Islamic dervishes look like and no
others. This is stranger than strange!”
“I also want to give you the means so that you can escape
from this house, Herr Magister”, I said quickly. “You have had
to stay until now, I can see that. But since it is for my sake that
you martyred yourself here, it is also my duty to help you!”
Then he fell to his knees before my bed, so that the cup
fell to the ground and spilled its contents.
“God bless you deeply, you great and kind man!” he
sobbed and kissed my hand. “A little longer and I would have
escaped in another way, hanging from the window cross, and
rather in the deepest underworld than in the mill of the
miserable days here.”
He picked up the cup.
“I hasten to bring another drink, gracious lord!” he cried,
laughing and crying and ran out.
My eyes fell closed.
Delicious languor held me embraced.
“Thank God – we shall meet again!”
Thank God! Thank God!
Now, whatever would come, would come. And nothing
of what had been in my life, neither good nor bad, had
happened without a reason.
Thank God!
It was mostly quiet around me, and only the thanks came
and went. I preferred that to when the old man stomped in, sat
down on my bed, sprinkled everything with snorting tobacco
and started to tell dirty stories, or told adventures from his and
my father’s old days.
The one I got along best with was the magister, who was
busy and ready to serve me. I felt his grateful look. Most of all
I was pleased that he did not want to leave, although he had
been given good travel money, but thought to wait until I was
undoubtedly well and in good health.
He provided me with all the necessities, and when it
became too bad with the beard, he barbered me with great skill.
When I was alone again, I took the hand mirror that he had left
on the bedside and looked into it. Yellow and haggard my face
looked out of it and silver frost lay on my hair. Yes, I had
grown old, old and tired. With melancholy I looked at the
leafless crowns of the poplars in front of my windows, which,
like me, seemed doomed to die soon, but this melancholy was
mixed with a joyful confidence. With strong hope I thought of
the stone that I had seen in the graveyard of my homeland, the
stone that bore the saying of Herr Thomas More: Non omnis
moriar, I will not die completely.
Again I held with an uncertain hand the round mirror in
front of my face, and as I held the glass a little obliquely, a
sweet woman’s face with red hair appeared, which was only a
little darker than the gold hood that adorned it. It was the
portrait hanging on the wall of Lady Heva Weinschrötter,
which had been reflected back. The gray eyes looked at me half
questioningly, half knowingly, around the mouth seemed to
play a secret smile but it changed under my gaze into a heart-
broken expression. I could no longer turn my eyes away from
her; I could not resist the compulsion that was pressing in on
me.
The roundness of the mirror widened, shrouded
everything like a fine moon mist, and drew me under its spell.
Gradually, I felt as if I were among people of another time and
was one of them.
Wasn’t it this room-? A table stretched out on the wall,
and I was sitting there myself in a black coat trimmed with
narrow strips of fur. Two equally dressed people were to my
right and left, and at the narrow end of the table the deeply
stooped and blinking Magister Hemmetschnur wrote. It was
him, even though he was wearing a white monastic habit and
over it a black throw-over. And in front of the table, with
loosened, copper-gold hair, stood Lady Heva Weinschrötter –
no, for God’s sake, it was Zephyrine in the dark gray, blood-
encrusted torture shirt, from which her snow-white skin shone.
She looked at me with crazy eyes; her ankles were blue, her
hands were tied to a black leather rope, which ran through the
top of the bare iron ring in the vaulted ceiling, and its other end
was held by a human being in his coarse hand, who gazed with
small, treacherously puffy eyes out from the holes of a dull red
girdle that covered his face and broad shoulders.

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

“Never again -,” he groaned, leaning on his brother.
“Terrible — I had – already crossed the – threshold.”
“What’s the matter with you, Eusebius?”
“The hunchback -” he cried out. “Two heads – two
children’s heads -.”
And without consciousness he collapsed, saved from a
heavy fall by his brother’s arm. He looked at me helplessly,
spat bloody sputum and stammered:
“Enough, Lord – enough! Have mercy!”
I pressed a large gift into his hand. His poor, gaunt face
beamed with joy for a moment, and then he held out the gold to
the fainting man and shouted:
“Look here, Eusebius – look here!”
He let go of the body of the brother, who twitched softly,
gently let it slide to the ground and pointed to the gap in the
wall of the tent.
“It took a lot out of him this time,” he whispered. “The
day is already coming up. – Was the Lord pleased?”
Full of compassion for these poor people, inwardly
stirred in my innermost being, and yet with a bright glow of
supersensible hope in my chest, I walked through the gray,
rain-soaked morning towards the awakening city.
For a long time I lived quietly and absorbed only in the
memory of happy days in a small, secluded place and thought
to end my life there.
One morning, however, in front of the baker’s shop, a
casserole appeared which became of great importance for me.
A foreign artisan, who had wanted to buy bread, was accused
by the baker of trying to cheat him with fake money, amidst a
large crowd of curious people. The poor fellow, well
acquainted with the cruel punishments that were set for such
misdemeanors, fought back with all his might, when he saw me
coming, cried out with a loud voice:
“Lord, help me! Protect me!”
The people, all of whom knew me and had come to me
for the insignificant good deeds I had done to one person and
another, but especially to the children, held affection for me,
made room for me, and some of them said:
“That’s right! The Lord Baron shall decide whether it is a
gold piece or merely a bad penny, which the lad has put on the
baker’s table.”
I looked at the gold piece. It was a Turkish Zechine like
the five I had kept from the treasure in the ruin. The curly
writing on the coin appeared not only to the baker, but also to
the other people as so nonsensical that they ignored the weight
of the gold, but took it as a false ducat and the fellow for a bag
cutter.
When the people were enlightened and we weighed the
piece on the baker’s gold scales, and for greater certainty tested
it against a stone the poor wandering cloth shearer still had a
number of silver and copper coins change in addition for his
bread. I asked him how he had come into possession of the
coins, which were certainly an extremely rare type of coin. And
then I received an answer, which completely and forever
destroyed my hitherto quiet life like a fiery bolt of lightning.
A nearby stranger had given him the money, said the lad,
and told him to go to this place, where he would learn more.
Half-starved, he was trudging along the street, when a
handsome man with a black cloth around his forehead, had
come towards him. He denied trying to cheat anyone and had
gotten the money from him. Breathlessly I asked whether he
had been dressed like some kind of monk. But the lad
remembered only a black headscarf and the beautiful, dark eyes
of the mild benevolent man. He had turned around and looked
after the stranger, but he had completely disappeared from the
long, straight road.
This information, together with the certainty that the
mysterious man from the Orient was not even three days
journey from here and had shown himself in the flesh, excited
me to such an extent that I ordered a special mail coach for the
next day, to possibly follow his trail, until I would be face to
face with him and find answers to all the questions that had
occupied me for many years, indeed all my life. When I
gathered together money for the journey, I also got hold of the
Turkish zechins. I was amazed and frightened. There were only
four left. A strange feeling came over me, a search for a
memory. But it sank again, and a new mystery remained.
The next day I was already riding merrily along in the
coach and with changed horses had reached the large forest,
late in the afternoon, through which the road led to the village,
not far from the place where the honest cloth shearer had come
to his golden zechine. But just as we passed the village and the
coach driver was merrily singing the “Jäger aus Kurpfalz” on
his horn, the wheel broke and the poor musician was torn off
the seat by the reins wrapped around his left hand by the falling
horse to such an extent that he could only rise with a groan and
with a pained face explained that he needed to put cold
compresses on his sore shoulder before he could hold the reins
again. Also the fallen bay, who had skinned his knee, needed
rest and treatment. If the coach didn’t want to become a wreck
between the village and the town both people and animals
needed to be treated.
Indecisively, I stood in the midst of the astounded village
youth by the badly battered coach, when an old woman came
up to me and said:
“Your quarters are ready, as we were told, and also the
postman can get a bed and a bite to eat. There is room for the
nags in the reverend gentleman’s stable!”
I was very surprised at this reception and asked who had
announced me and whether the whole thing wasn’t a
misunderstanding? There was certainly an inn in the village
where one could stay if necessary.
“No, Herr,” the woman continued and went ahead of me
as a guide without further ado. “We have no inn here, and
strangers of repute whom chance brings here, are accustomed
to stay in the parsonage, which is in the vicarage, which is built
on a large scale and contains enough furnished rooms. The
preparations for the lord, however, have been ordered by the
Reverend. Nothing else is known to me, other than that the
parish priest, who is currently with a dying man, instructed me
to keep a watchful eye on the road and not to miss the
announced guest.”
In the meantime we had arrived at the stately house next
to the church, and I stepped through the door, above which
hung, on iron chains, the bones of extinct animals on iron
chains, into a hallway paved with gray bricks, and from there
into a vaulted, white-painted room, in the middle of which
stood a large table with leather chairs. On the wall was a rack
with many books, among which I noticed the works of
Paracelsus. On top of them were stuffed birds of a rare kind, as
the storm sometimes brings them here from foreign zones, and
all kinds of minerals and fossilized ammonium horns. On the
simple desk by the window was enthroned the figure of a
woman holding a child in her arms, and in my opinion was as
much the mother of our Lord and Savior as a pagan goddess.
Above a black painted prayer stool hung with arms
outstretched, the face of a silent suffering person, the Savior on
the cross.
After a while the old woman put a brass lamp on the
table and the room was filled with a friendly yellow light, the
priest entered almost at the same time.
He was a tall man with gray hair and a face, from which
smart and thoughtful eyes peered out. Friendly, he offered me
his hand, looked at me attentively and asked me to be his guest
at the table. After the meal he wanted to solve for me the riddle
that the knowledge of my arrival had thrown me into. Also the
mail coach driver had already been accommodated and the
carriage was at the blacksmith’s, and the horses, were safe in
the stable.
Immediately, the table was set and the food was served,
which consisted of a larded pike in cream. We drank a light
currant wine with it. When we were finished with the meal the
priest asked if he might be allowed to smoke tobacco, and lit a
pipe.
I must confess that, in spite of the inner calm I had
learned to regard everything that happened as an unchangeable
providence, and a great curiosity seized me, in which way the
clergyman could have been informed of my imminent arrival,
and I requested him to enlighten me about this strange matter,
after my name and state had been pronounced.
“It is indeed, as you say, strange- worthy enough,” he
replied and blew blue smoke in great clouds away from himself.
“Three days ago I went down the village street according to my
habit to pray my breviary.
A couple of people who came toward me astonished me
so much at the sight of them, that I stopped and let them
approach. I knew the woman. It was eighty year old Nenin,
who, in spite of her old age and her weakness at this time of the
day, gathered together a large bundle of brushwood. It had
always been a sight, to see the weak old woman, who was still
active in such a way, swaying under her load. And not
infrequently, I had unceremoniously asked some loitering,
partying lad to take the burden from the poor woman and carry
it home. This time, however, she came without the usual
piggyback and seemed to me upright, almost as if rejuvenated
next to her companion, who, as she said, had voluntarily taken
the burden from her and loaded it effortlessly on his shoulders.
The man, however, with whom she went, had in any case an
appearance that would astonish anyone in this country. Namely
he wore-“
“A brown robe and a black headscarf or a turban of such
color and amber beads around his neck –“, I finished,
quivering with expectation.
The priest looked at me without astonishment and said:
“So then the following miracle partially dissolves into
nothing. I say partially, for it remains wonderful that neither the
old woman nor the tailor who happened to come from the field,
who loaded the bundle of brushwood onto his handcart and
drove Nenin home with it, seemed to see anything special or
conspicuous in the man dressed so strangely. Through later
questions I became convinced that the two people had not even
been aware of the unusual costume. But the other thing, namely
that this man informed me of your arrival and predicted it for
today is now explained by the fact that you obviously know
him and have certainly spoken to him of your journey.”

Read Full Post »

Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel

Finale
It is late in the summer, the hollyhocks now raise their heads
away from the stalks. The mallows scatter their dull tones in tired
colors, pale yellow, lilac and soft pink. When you knocked my love,
the spring was young. When you entered through the narrow gate into
my dream garden the swift little swallows were singing their welcome
to the daffodils and the yellow primrose.
Your eyes were blue and kind and your days were like heavy
clusters of light blue wisteria dropping down to form a soft carpet. My
feet walked lightly there through the sun glistening pathways of your
arbor–Then the shadows fell and in the night eternal sin climbed out
of the ocean, coming here from the south, created out of the glowing
fires of the desert sands.
She spewed forth her pestilent breath in my garden strewing her
rutting passion beneath her veil of beauty. Wild sister, that’s when
your hot soul awoke, shameless, full of every poison. You drank my
blood, exulted and screamed out from painful tortures and from
passionate kisses.
Your marvelous sweet nails that your little maid, Fanny,
manicured grew into wild claws. Your smooth teeth, glowing like
milky opals, grew into mighty fangs. Your sweet childish breasts, little
snow-white kittens, turned into the rigid tits of a murderous whore.
Your golden curls hissed like impassioned vipers and the lightning
that unleashed all madness reposed in your soft jeweled eyes which
caught the light like the glowing sapphire in the forehead of my
golden Buddha.
But gold lotus grew in the pool of my soul, extended themselves
with broad leaves upon the vast shallows and covered the deep
horrors of the whirling maelstrom. The silver tears that the clouds
wept lay like large pearls upon their green leaves, shining through the
afternoons like polished moonstones.
Where the acacia’s pale snow once lay the laburnum now throws
its poisonous yellows–There, little sister, I found the great beauty of
your chaste sins and I understood the pleasures of the saints.
I sat in front of the mirror, my love, drank out of it the over
abundance of your sins while you slept on summer afternoons, in your
thin silk shift on white linen. You were a different person, my dear,
when the sun laughed in the splendor of my garden–sweet little sister
of my dream filled days. You were an entirely different person, my
dear, when it sank into the sea, when the horrors of darkness softly
crept out of the bushes–wild, sinful sister of my passionate nights–But
I could see by the light of day all the sins of the night in your naked
beauty.
Understanding came to me from out of the mirror, the ancient
gold framed mirror, which saw so many games of love in that wide
turret room in the castle of San Costanzo. The truth, which I had only
glimpsed in the pages of the leather bound volume, came to me from
out of that mirror. Sweetest of all are the chaste sins of the innocent.
That there are creatures–not animal–strange creatures, that
originate out of villainous desires and absurd thoughts–that you will
not deny, my love, not you.
Good is the law; good are all the strict rules. Good is the God
that created them and good is the man that carefully observes them.
But there is the child of Satan who with arrogant hands brazenly
rips the eternal laws from their appointed place. The Evil One, who is
a mighty Lord, helps him–that he might create out of his own proud
will–against all nature.
His work towers into the heavens– and yet falls apart and in its
collapse buries the arrogant fool that conceived it–
Now I write this for you, sister, this book–I ripped open old, long
forgotten scars, mixed their dark blood with the bright and fresh
blood of my latest torments. Beautiful flowers grow out of such soil,
fertilized by blood.
All that I have told you, my love, is very true–yet I take it from
the mirror, drink out of its glass the realizations of my latest
experiences and apply them to earlier memories and original events.
Take this book sister. Take it from a wild adventurer who was an
arrogant fool–and a quiet dreamer as well–Take if from one, little
sister, that has run closely alongside such a life–

Miramar–Lesina–Brion
April–October 1911

Read Full Post »

Homo Sapiens by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel

“Strange, strange… the doctor said you should lie at least three days, and I have seen this expression of strength and energy in your face for a long time. You are different from all people.” 

“Yes, yes, that is the new strength. Drink, drink with me… I was so little with you… Drink the whole glass out.” 

They drank out and Falk filled the glasses anew. 

He sat down beside her, took her both hands and kissed them. “We have not spoken together for a long time,” he said. 

“Now everything is good, isn’t it?” she asked tenderly. 

“It will become good. We will travel away from here… What do you think of Iceland?” 

“Are you serious?” “You make so many new plans…” 

“This time I am serious, because it is namely no plan. It occurred to me today, yesterday, I actually don’t know when, but I must away from here.” 

Isa beamed. She did not want to tell him, but she found it unbearable in this boring city. 

“Think, such a small fisherman’s house by the sea. Isn’t it? Wonderful! And the autumn nights when the waves play this terrible eternal music on the beach. But you will not be bored?” 

“Did I ever get bored with you? I need no person, nothing, I need absolutely nothing if I only have you.” 

“But I will often be away from you, very often. I will go out with the fishermen for entire nights, I will go into the mountains. And when we are together, we will lie in the grass and stare at the sky… But drink, drink then… Oh, you can no longer drink as before.” 

“See then!” She drank the glass empty. 

“And in this twosomeness: you and I, and you a piece of me, and we both a revelation of the immanent substance in us…” He stood up. “Isa! we will seek the God we lost.” 

She was as if hypnotized. 

“The God we lost,” she repeated half unconsciously. “You don’t believe in God?” he asked suddenly. 

“No,” she said thoughtfully. 

“You don’t believe one can find him?” “No, if one does not have him in oneself.” 

“But that is what I mean: to find God, that means to feel God, to feel him in every pore of one’s soul, to have the immediate certainty that he is there, to possess the wild supernatural power that the God-feeling gives.” 

“Do you want to seek another God, a God outside? What do you want this God for? I don’t want him. I don’t need him. I have the immediate certainty of the God-feeling, I feel him as long as you are there. I need nothing higher… And I will not tolerate such a feeling in you either. Then I will not go with.” 

He looked at her long. 

“How beautiful you have become now. As if a light had suddenly bloomed in you…” 

Suddenly he lost balance and came into a strange rapture. 

“Yes, yes, I mean the God who is you and I. I mean the holy, great My-You! Do you know what my you, my dark you is? That is Jahveh, that is Oum, that is Tabu. My you, that is the soul that never prostituted itself in the brain. My you, that is the holy soul that rarely comes over me, perhaps once, as the Holy Spirit came only once over the apostles. My you, that is my love and my doom and my criminal will! And to find my God, that means: to explore this you, to know its ways, to understand its intentions, so as not to do the small, the low, the disgusting anymore.” 

Isa was carried away. They grasped each other violently by the hands. 

“And you want to teach me to find and explore it in me?” “Yes, yes…” He looked at her as if he had never seen her before. 

“And you will be in me?” 

“Yes, yes…” 

“I am yours, your thing and your you… Am I it?” “Yes, yes…” He began to become distracted. 

“We are poor, Isa,” he said after a while, “I lost the whole fortune.” 

“Throw the rest away too,” she cried laughing to him and threw herself on his breast. 

Fear suddenly rose in him. 

“You, you—if it is over tomorrow? I have such mistrust of myself.” 

“Then I will pull you with.” 

“But is it perhaps not only an over-fatigue, an over-excited mood that whips us into this ecstasy?” 

He started. 

“I lie, I lie,” he said suddenly hoarsely, “I have lied too much… Now…” 

He broke off. The thought to tell her now everything, to tell everything in detail, shot through his head and grew into a great, maniacal idea. 

“Isa!” He looked at her as if he wanted to bore into the ground of her soul… “Isa!” he repeated, “I have something to tell you.” 

She started frightened. 

“Can you forgive me everything, everything I did evil?” 

The confession forced itself with irresistible power over his lips. Now he could no longer hold it back. He grasped her hands. 

“Everything? Everything?!” “Yes, everything, everything!” 

“And if I had really done the one thing?” “What?” She recoiled horrified. 

“This… with a strange woman.” 

She stared at him, then cried out with an unnatural voice: “Don’t torment me!” 

Falk came to his senses instantly. He felt sweat run over his whole body. 

She jumped toward him and stammered trembling: “What? What?” 

He smiled peculiarly with a superior calm. 

In the same moment Isa noticed that he became deathly pale, and that his face twitched. 

“You are sick!” 

“Yes, I am sick, I overestimated my strength.” 

He sank together on the sofa and in a wild maelstrom the experiences of the last days shot through his head. He saw Grodzki: 

“One must be able to do it with will!”

Read Full Post »