About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well
      they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a
      window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently,
      passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want
      it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom
      must run its course
Anyhow in a corner,
      some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life
      and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance:
      how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster;
      the plowman may
Have heard the splash,
      the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;
      the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs
      disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship
      that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and
      sailed calmly on.

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      Talk about human. Talk about bizarre.

      Here is a story that defies credibility. And propability. In fact, it is so bizarre that it needs to be told. Here.

      Less than half an hour's drive from Vienna, Austria, there lies a little hamlet called Kirchstetten. It boasts, on latest count, 1617 inhabitants. This is Kirchstetten:

      It looks like most other such villages in Austria. One church (always Catholic), two, three inns (good wine), rural residents (conservative). Old and charming, but quite unremarkable. Except for one thing. Two, in fact.

      In that community lived two major poets of the 20th century, and did so for many years. Indeed, both have now small museums established in their former abodes. But they lived there at different times. Not only had they never met, but they did not know of one another's existence, never mind poetry (see below).

      One poet you will easily recognize by name: Wystan Hugh (W. H.) Auden, 1906-1973, professor of poetry at Oxford. The other you won't (at least not unless you have read his two poems on this site): Josef Weinheber, 1892-1945, postal employee.

      But that's because you speak English. If you spoke German or, better yet, Viennese, it would be the other way around.

      Weinheber died, of his own hand, when the Red Army closed in on the eastern parts of Austria. He was quickly buried in his own garden "like a beloved old family dog", to paraphrase Auden (who had not known of Weinheber, when he first came through the village on a holiday drive with his graduate student, but happened to like the place, and settled. Eventually, of course, and after many years, he was told by the now less suspicious burghers of Kirchstetten about "the other poet").

      Auden died in Vienna, in his sleep, after a poetry reading in the Palais Palffy the evening before. Although he had a resting place reserved at the august and coveted Poet's Corner in Westminster Cathedral - where now a plaque honors him - he chose to be buried in the small cemetery of Kirchstetten, by the people he had come to know over some fifteen years and who had come to truly love him. I understand that most people in Kirchstetten have books of Auden's poetry - even though very few are familiar with his language. But that doesn't matter. The heart understands better than the tongue... But for the tongue there is, of course, the International W. H. Auden Society, based at Kirchstetten and Vienna, a biannual Auden translation prize (no, I never tried), and so on.

      But never mind the wake. What is the probability of such events occurring, of two stellar poets choosing and living in the same, for all purposes unkown location, without any knowledge of one another or even of each other's work?

      Personal sideline: I happen to know the area a bit, because my family vacationed, a long time ago, in Böheimkirchen (a similar village nearby). I also seem to remember vaguely that, almost half a century ago in Vienna, I heard an interview with Auden, in which he was asked, "Why Kirchstetten?" I believe he answered that, well, he liked the place, the people were friendly but totally non-intrusive, the wine was good, and the Vienna State Opera was just a short train ride away. He might have added that, being fascinated by ritual and other things religious, he liked attending Sunday mass with the locals (in his slippers), and that he was voted a seat of honor for that very purpose in the litte village church (the name Kirchstetten means, or could mean, the "untidy spot" where the church is).

      So today, if you visit Kirchstetten on a poetic pilgrimage - some famous people have done so, you know! - and want to see the little

museum with Auden's restored working room, be prepared (in German or, preferably, in Austrian dialect) to tell the locals which poet you have in mind. But don't worry: the Audenhaus and the Weinheberhaus are just a stonethrow away from one another!

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      What else is important? Something I almost forgot. But it's much more important than my comments. You can actually hear Auden himself reading this poem (scroll down the list of recordings). And more of his poems, too. Not to mention the other poets in this most interesting audio collection, such as Robert Frost...

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      By the way (and as mentioned on many of the sites, where you can find this famous poem): Auden refers here to Landscape with the Fall of Icarus , painted about 1558 by the Dutch painter Pieter Brueghel, the Elder (1525?-1569). It hangs in the Brueghel section in the Fine-Arts Museum (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts) in Brussels. Here is a low-resolution file of the whole picture. For better resolution and more information on the painter (whose name is variably spelled Bruegel, Brueghel, Breughel, etc., so watch it!), his times, and other painters in his family, consult the Web Gallery of Art or Mark Harden's ArtChive, both of whom I owe a big debt of gratitude for many happy hours of CRT enlightenment.

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      Sie sprechen doch Englisch, oder? Nicht gut genug für Auden, meinen Sie? Das geht mir auch so. Aber ich habe nicht das Gedicht gemeint. Ich meinte nur mein Geschwätz auf der linken Seite.

      Weil die Geschichte vom Kirchstetten Audens und Weinhebers ja wirklich ein literarisches Schmankerl ist. Und mehr. Davon ganz abgesehen, daß Auden nach etlichen englischen Quellen in der Westminster Abbey begraben liegt. Leichenfledderei regt mich immer an.

      Aber ich wollte nur sagen: Lesen sie diesmal auf Englisch nicht nur Audens Gedicht, sondern auch meinen Anhang. Weil sie ja wahrscheinlich schon nahe an der Wirklichkeit vorbeigekommen sind (z.B: die grosze Strasze auf dem Luftbild von Kirchstetten ist die Westautobahn!) und ich wieder einmal zu faul zum Übersetzen bin (der Ikarus war genug Arbeit).

      Und sie sind ja auch nahe an zwei Weinheber Gedichten vorbeigekommen. Und die W. H. Auden Society können Sie sich ja auch leicht auf den Bildschirm zaubern...

      Keine Zeit, in der Welt herumzufahren? Nix da mit dem Ikarus? Na schön, hier ist zumindestens ein Ausschnitt aus dem Bild Landschaft mit dem Fall des Ikarus von Peter Brueghel, dem Älteren, aus dem Museum der Schönen Künste in Brüssel:

     Denn das Gesamtbild kennen Sie ja sowieso...

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      Und hier schnell noch ein Kommentar des Übersetzers, unglaubwürdig aber wahr: Als ich dieses Gedicht zum ersten Male (und auch beim zweiten und dritten Male) las, schienen mir seine freien Verse ohne Reim zu sein. Erst beim Übersetzen dann... Naja, wieviele Reime können Sie denn finden?

      Wie Auden das zusammengebracht hat, weiß ich wirklich nicht: so viele Reime so in der Gedichtstruktur verschwinden zu lassen, wie unter der Merkschwelle liegende und daher unbewußte KAUF!KAUF!KAUF! Botschaften in der Werbung. Auden, wie die Anglophonen sagen, had his cake and ate it, too. Scheinbar ungereimt im freien Vers, aber schon mit der eingeschmuggelten Wirkung des Reimes zu lesen; scheinbar frei an der Oberfläche, aber schon eingebunden in die Tiefen zu schwimmen. Wie Ikarus, für einen sonnenbeschienenen Moment zwischen Zeit und Ewigkeit...

      Nur: Wie soll ein armer Übersetzer so etwas nachmachen?

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      Was noch wichtiger sei? Wichtiger als Ihr Zählen seiner subliminalen Reime und der Vergleich mit der Zahl meiner? Und jedenfalls wichtiger als alle meine anderen Kommentare? Dieses: Sie können zuhören, wie Auden selbst sein Gedicht vorträgt. Und nicht nur dieses. Von anderen Autoren wie Robert Frost in dieser höchst interessanten Sammlung einmal ganz abgesehen...

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      So. Und nun können wir Auden schön pomali (hier bereits mit Wiener Januskopf, nach einer Photographie des Jahres 1967 von Cecil Beaton)

auch schon zum katholischen, weinliebenden Österreicher (natürlich honoris causa und vollkommen unverbindlich, hier oder in der Ewigkeit) machen:

      Möge er in dem ihm eigenen Frieden von Christus und Marx ruhen. Mögen ihm die geharften Rituale da drüben ebenso zu Herzen gehn wie die georgelten in Kirchstetten. Und möge er endlich die Wahrheit sagen dürfen, die ganze Wahrheit und nichts als die Wahrheit, jetzt und in alle Ewigkeit, Amen.