Twenty
years ago, D. O. Spettigue discovered that the Canadian author Frederick
Philip Grove had spent the first thirty years of his life as Felix
Paul Greve in Germany. Greve was a marginal literary figure, and
an immensely productive translator of contemporary English and French
literature and world classics. For both authors, poetry seems to
have played a lesser role than other genres, and yet, their poems
provide the most conclusive connection between their two seemingly
different identities: among six German poems by Grove, one was published
by Greve some twenty years earlier.
Bringing
together Grove's largely unpublished poetry and whatever has been
unearthed so far of Greve's poems in one critical edition has the
purpose of making this important material available to an ever growing
scholarly community in Canada and abroad in a single, convenient
place. Until now, these poems have been accessible in a fashion only
at the University of Manitoba Archives, where they are furthermore
divided between the Grove and Spettigue collections. Some important
sources, such as the three German poems in the Grove Collection,
are either omitted altogether, or misrepresented in the Register which
makes their retrieval virtually impossible.
Very
little of Grove's poetry ever appeared in print during his lifetime,
and critical attention to it is nearly non-existent. All of Grove's poems
in this edition stem from the University of Manitoba archival collections.
In comparison with Grove's, proportionally much of Greve's poetry
was published and reviewed, but it is chronologically so remote,
and exists in such arcane places by today's standards, that access
to it represents practical problems similar to those arising from
the consultation of archival materials. Apart from the known sources
available in the Grove archives, fifteen newly discovered poems by
Greve have been included here, eight of which were never
published.
Within
the first year of his discovery of the Greve/Grove identity in October
1971, Spettigue had secured an impressive host of biographical and
literary documents linking the German and Canadian authors. All of
them point to Greve's and Grove's identity, but since each point
of identification lacks documentary support in itself, their identity
is indicated mostly through the cumulative effect of biographical
correspondences, such as the same birthdate, slight alterations in
names, a German-Russian border town as birthplace, schooling in a Hamburg
Gymnasium, studies in Bonn and Munich, etc.
Surprisingly,
the strongest literary connection between Grove and Greve had escaped
Spettigue's attention until May, 1973: Grove's manuscript poem "Die
Dünen fliegen auf..." (MP 1) is almost identical to "Erster
Sturm" which Greve published in the journal Die Schaubühne in
1907. While Spettigue had obtained
all available poems by Greve, and Grove's son Leonard had already,
in 1968, given him three German poems by Grove, he was unaware of
Grove's German poems in Winnipeg. In May 1973, Spettigue's
book FPG: the European Years was in the advanced production
stages. This explains why this pivotal information, which to date
is still the most conclusive literary evidence that Grove was formerly
Greve, was belatedly inserted in a mere nine-line paragraph on p.
144.
Recently,
the unpublished autobiography of Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven,
who was Greve's companion for a decade, has lent direct biographical
support to the Greve/Grove identity. The best previous biographical
information was provided in an autobiographical account which Greve
submitted to Brümmer, the editor of Lexicon der deutschen
Dichter and Prosaisten, in 1907. It was published
in the 1913 edition, and reads like a blueprint of Grove's self-disclosures
in his autobiographical novels A Search for America (1927)
and In Search of Myself (1946).
This
is not the place to provide a detailed account of either Greve's
or Grove's lives. Suffice it to recall the most significant dates
for both: Greve was born in Radomno which was indeed a "Russian-German
border town" after 1918, but not in 1879. He grew up in Hamburg,
studied classical philology and archaeology in Bonn and Munich, where
he tried to gain acceptance by Stefan George and his circle. He engaged
in translations and poetic endeavours in early 1902, while adopting
a l'art-pour-l'art attitude which was modelled on Oscar Wilde. To
maintain an extravagant lifestyle, he defrauded his study companion
from Bonn, Herman Kilian, of the enormous sum of 10,000 Marks, and
eloped with the wife of his architect friend August Endell to Palermo,
where he continued translating decadent literature for the Insel
and Bruns publishers. From May, 1903 to June, 1904 he was jailed
for fraud in Bonn, during which period he consolidated his career
as a professional translator. For about two years after his prison
term he lived with Else Endell, to whom he referred as his wife and
whom he credited with the translations of some Flaubert correspondence,
first in Switzerland, then in Northern France, and finally in Berlin.
In September 1909 he disappeared from the German scene by means of
a staged suicide. Joined by Else "Greve" in Kentucky on a small
farm, he left her abruptly in 1911 or 1912. She went on to Cincinnati
and New York, where she became as famous for her eccentric conduct
as for her artistic endeavours under the name of Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven.
He made his way to Manitoba where he assumed Grove's well-documented
identity in December 1912.
Grove
first taught in the German-speaking district of Haskett in southern
Manitoba. He married his fellow-teacher Catherine Wiens in August
1914, on which occasion he claimed to be a forty-year old widower
(he was 33). The couple taught in
various Manitoba schools until they moved first to Ottawa in 1929,
where Grove joined Graphic Publishers until the firm went bankrupt
in 1931, then to the Simcoe estate where Grove died in 1948. His
last years were darkened by failing health after he had suffered
a crippling stroke in 1944. He had earned a Bachelor's degree from
the University of Manitoba in 1922, and he started his prolific literary
career the same year with the publication of Over Prairie Trails.
During much of 1928, he went from coast to coast on several extensive
lecture tours, and he received several awards and honorary degrees
during the 1930s and 1940s.
A description of the sources
The
sources of the 122 poems included in the present edition are described
in more detail below. The chronological arrangement adopted as an
organizing principle for the text is reversed for the description
of the source materials: Grove's English poetry, being by far the
most substantial source, is addressed first; Grove's six German poems
are second, and make the pivotal transition to Greve's German poetry
which will be presented last. The following synopsis provides an
orientation to the sources of these three distinct sections:
Grove's
English poetry from the Grove Collection consists of:
- Poems:
In Memoriam (IM: 63 poems (+1); Box 18, Fd. 11-14)
-
IM related: 2 poems (1 concluding IM; SC: Box 11, Fd. 15)
- Notebook (NB:
35 poems; 4 not in IM; Box 18, Fd. 10)
- Notebook (NBLL:
4 poems on sheets, all in IM; Box 18, Fd. 10)
-
IM related: 24 poems in Canadian Forum, 1929-1932 (CF, FD)
-
IM related: 18 poems in Selections (S: Box 18, Fd. 23)
- IM related:
5 poems in Grove's correspondence (Letters, 1976)
- Miscellaneous
Poems (MP: 11 poems; Box 18, Fd.24)
Grove's
German manuscript poems consist of two clusters:
-
3 mss. poems in Miscellaneous Poems (MP: Box 18, Fd. 24)
-
3 mss. poems in Spettigue Collection (SC: Box 14, Fd. 15)
Greve's
poetry consists of the following groups:
-
Wolfskehl correpondence (2 poems, 1902; 1 unique)
- Wanderungen (23
poems published privately in 1902)
-
Stefan George Archiv (7 manuscript poems, 1902)
-
Fanny Essler poems (7 published poems, 1904/1905)
-
Miscellaneous (3 published poems in journals, 1904-1907)
The sources of Grove's English poetry
The
University of Manitoba acquired the major part of Grove's papers
during 1962-1964 from Catherine Grove. The Register of the Frederick
Philip Grove Collection (1979) provides a detailed, if at times
inaccurate account of the contents placed in 23 boxes. Grove's poetry
represented in this edition stems almost exclusively from these archives.
External to it are five poems from the Spettigue Collection, three
of which are related to Grove's German poetry. Two belong to the
single most important group of Grove's English poetry, namely the
typescript collection Poems: In Memoriam Phyllis May Grove (63
poems (+1), referred to as IM 1-[32]). In all, there are seventy-five
English poems (including the sonnet, IM 15/28, st.7-10, published
in Canadian Forum as FD XVI).
The
central In Memoriam collection forms the near-comprehensive
basis for Grove's English poetry. Closely related to it are the following
secondary sources:
-
39 poems in the Notebook (Box 18, Fd. 10), 35 of which are
the manuscript basis for roughly half of the In Memoriam collection,
where they are faithfully reflected in typescript. These thirty-five In Memoriam
poems include four insertions on loose leaves found in the Notebook. This means,
that only four poems within the linear sequence of the Notebook proper
are unique in Grove's poetry.
-
24 poems were published in four monthly issues of Canadian Forum between
March, 1929 and April, 1932. All are present in the In Memoriam collection
. -
18 poems from the In Memoriam collection are also in Selections (Box
18, Fd. 23)
-
only one of 11 poems in Miscellaneous Poems (Box 18, Fd.
24) is included in the In Memoriam collection. Three of
them are untitled manuscripts in German
-
5 poems from the In Memoriam collection are mentioned or
cited in Grove's correspondence (Letters, 1976).
Poems
stemming from any of these related sources have not been repeated
in the body of the edition. Major variations are addressed in the
detailed description below, and are also reported in the footnotes
pertaining to their respective IM counterparts. Since the situation
of parallel sources can be very confusing at times, it is useful
to provide the following tabular overview. It lists Grove's English
poems centrally in IM order, the manuscript sources in the Notebook (NB) to
the left, and related published (Canadian Forum, CF) or unpublished
(Selections, S; Miscellaneous Poems, MP) variations in the right columns. Five references
to IM poems in Grove's correspondence (Letters, 1976) are
also listed, since they allow us to date the composition of some
poems at least.
NB Title IM CF S MP Corr
Thoughts
7 Preface 1 FD
21
The
Gods 2 FD 3 1
Science 3 CF 1 10/28
30 Rebel's
Conf. 4
After
the Blow 5 FD 4 2 10/28
Prescience 6 3
Questions 7 4
9 Expression 8 5
ll.
1 Spectral
Past 9 FD 1 3/29
1 The
Voice 10
2 The
Procession 11
ll.
4 Man/Universe 12
The
Palinode 13 CF 3
21 Sacred
Death 14 6 11/28
The
Dirge
"Beauty
was..." 15/
1
"The
blow fell..." 15/
2 FD 2
"This
home..." 15/
3
"So
this is..." 15/
4 FD 5
"They
tell us..." 15/
5 FD 6
"When
infants..." 15/
6
"How
can they..." 15/ 7 FD
7
"We
go about..." 15/
8
"And
do you..." 15/
9
"How
much..." 15/10 FD
8
"There
is no..." 15/11
"They
come..." 15/12
8 "No!
Never..." 15/13
3 "You
look at ..." 15/14 7
5 "She
lives in..." 15/15
6 "Oh
my dear..." 15/16
11 " Tulips,
scillas..." 15/17 FD
9
"I
sometimes..." 15/18 FD10
15 "I
grow a..." 15/19 FD11 8
4 "Why
should..." 15/20
12 "No
country..." 15/21
"We
cannot..." 15/22
"Yes,
as I..." 15/23 FD12
32 "I
wish I had..." 15/24 FD13
"In
life thou..." 15/25
23 "Faith,
so they..." 15/26 FD14
"My
child, if..." 15/27
34 "What
will..." 15/28 FD15+16 11/28
33 "Who
would..." 15/29
31 "No,
do not..." 15/30 FD17
ll.
2 "I
know a..." 15/31
ll.
3 "She
who has..." 15/32
Night
Thoughts 15/33 MP10
Landscapes
24 At
Sea 16 9
19 Embattled
Skies 17
20 Nights
in... 18
26 Dejection 19 10
17 The
Dunes 20 FD18 11
27 The
Sluice 21 12
Dawn 22
Fall 23 FD19 13
Indian
Summer 24 CD2/FD20
10 First
Frost 25 14
28 First
Snow 26
14 Oppression 27 15
13 The
Pool 28 16
+ SC,"VI."
Legend/Mars...
The
Eagles 29
18 Legend/Mars 30 17
22 Ahasuerus 31 18
- Dream
Vision - SC |
When
all sources are checked against the pivotal In Memoriam collection,
there are ten unique poems, four stemming from the manuscripts in Notebook, and six from the eleven loose-leaf typescripts in the Miscellaneous Poems folder. Note that two
of the latter are translations of Grove's German poems designated as MP 1 and MP 2, and are presented in that context in their versions 8b and 9a; that one of the Notebook manuscripts
exists as typescript MP 11 as well, and that only MP 10, Night Thoughts, corresponds
to any known poem in the In Memoriam collection, namely the last
of the untitled Dirge poems (IM 15/33):
NB Title IM MP
29 Legend/Survival 11
35 Konrad,
the Builder
16 "Discordant
strains...."
25 Dejection
(not IM 19!)
MP
4 You
+ I
5 Retrospection
6 The
Sonnet
7 Night
8a Arctic
Woods
9b The
Dying Year
[Night
Thoughts]
15/33 10 |
More
than half of the IM poems (35 of 63) are present as manuscripts in
the Notebook. A comparison of IM and NB poems reveals that the second part
of the 33 Dirge poems (IM 15/1-33) is well represented, while
the first twelve are lacking. Most of these later Dirge poems
in the Notebook are then certainly not the earliest expressions
in reaction to Phyllis May's death on July 20, 1927 which prompted
the very conception of the In Memoriam cycle. A manuscript
source similar to the Notebook and containing the missing,
earlier poems in the Dirge cycle may either be lost, or still
in private hands. A reference to Leonard Grove's "extensive
collection of original manuscripts, both published and unpublished" in
the programme of the Grove Colloquium in Simcoe, 1977, suggests that a substantial
portion of source material is still inaccessible today. Therefore,
only incomplete observations of the genesis of Grove's poetry can
be made at present.
As
most Notebook manuscripts, the other two major sources revolve
around the In Memoriam cycle: the 18 poems chosen by Grove
for his Selections, and all 24 published poems in Canadian
Forum between 1929 and 1932 correspond without exception to In
Memoriam counterparts.
In
contrast, there are four Notebook entries which are not reflected
in the In Memoriam typescript, and seven of the eight English
poems in Miscellaneous Poems are unique; only MP 10, Night
Thoughts, is identical with the untitled poem concluding The
Dirge cycle (IM 15/33).
Uniqueness
in the present context is usually defined as "not present in
the In Memoriam collection". Thus, A Dream Vision from
the Spettigue Collection does not exist anywhere in the Grove archives,
but is clearly related to the In Memoriam collection; it has
therefore been added to its IM sequence as IM 32. The Legend of
the Great Survival, however, which exists both as (untitled)
manuscript NB 29 and as typescript MP 11 is nevertheless considered "unique",
since it is unrelated to the IM collection. An exception is From
the Dirge no. 16: although it is an integral part of The Dirge (IM
15/28, st. 7-10), it is "unique" because of its special
status as an independently published sonnet in Canadian Forum.
Poems: In Memoriam Phyllis
May Grove (63+1
poems; B18, Fd.1-14)
This
central source of Grove's poetry exists in neatly typed form in the
Grove archives. The collection contains
63 poems on 92 numbered leaves, and it is fairly symmetrically structured
in four parts, not unlike Greve's collection Wanderungen.
The initial section is entitled Thoughts, and includes fourteen
titled, lyrical poems (IM 1-14). The central part, The Dirge,
contains 33 untitled poems which revolve around the theme of his
daughter's death, or death in general (IM 15/1-15/33). Landscapes includes
thirteen impressionistic, titled poems (IM 16-28), and the final
section Legend of the Planet Mars and Other Narratives contains
three more or less narrative, titled poems (IM 29-31). The epic poem Man
Within the Universe (IM 12; 20x4) in the Thoughts section
would have been more aptly placed within this final section, while
the confessional character of The Eagles and Ahasuerus has
a strong affinity with The Rebel's Confession and some other
poems in Thoughts. All poems except the 33 Dirge items
have titles. The very first IM poem is called Preface. There
is no concluding poem in the typescript, but A Dream Vision from
the Spettigue Collection has been placed as a postscript here, and
is referred to as IM 32.
Poems:
In Memoriam Phyllis May Grove can be considered as an edition
ready for publication, and it is therefore much like an Ausgabe
letzter Hand in the sense that Grove himself organized the
material, made very few, last minute manuscript corrections, and
otherwise seems to have approved of the overall arrangement and
presentation. Although none are extant, it is likely that several
drafts preceded the tidy IM typescript. There is no indication
when its preparation was completed, but some circumstantial evidence
supports the assumption that this was accomplished not long before
a selection of twenty-one poems appeared as "From the Dirge" in Canadian
Forum in April, 1932.
The
entire In Memoriam collection has been carefully reproduced
from the typescript in the present edition. As far as possible, the
physical aspects of the lay-out have been respected. Wherever indicated,
notes refer to particularities in other versions or to variant titles
in Grove's manuscript Notebook, the poems published in Canadian
Forum between 1929 and 1932, those chosen for Grove's unpublished
typescript Selections, or to any combination of the possibilities
above.
The
subtitle of the collection as well as the very design to devote a
cycle of old and new poetry to his daughter Phyllis May Grove were
occasioned by her sudden death on July, 1927. Many of the Dirge poems
are a direct expression of Grove's grief over this devastating loss.
In the earliest known correspondence after the blow, Grove states in a seemingly
controlled, brief note to Watson Kirkconnell that he and his wife "have
been homeless" since the terrible shock, that the matters related
to his daughter's death seem "to have a past link", and that her parents'
life seems "extinct". He also cites Horace's Odes I,
18 in Latin to the effect: "What limit could there be to the
grief for one so dear." One of Grove's unpublished
short stories is a barely veiled revenge
fantasy in which he gets even with an incompetent doctor whom he
holds responsible for a senseless death which, in his opinion, could
have easily been avoided.
Since
Grove was always particularly proud of his classical education, the
choice of the Latin subtitle may have been inspired by the classical
tradition of elegies. But then his knowledge
of literature in general was immense, and he could have had more
modern sources in mind as well. For instance, Grove borrowed the
line "Nought we know dies" for the motto of the final poem
in the Dirge cycle (IM 15/33) from Shelley's famous
elegy on the death of Keats (1821), Adonais. Tennyson's In
Memoriam A. H. H. (1850) devoted 131 sonnet-like poems to the
memory of his friend Arthur Hallam and is a possible source of inspiration. In relation to his "Dekadenzbuch", Greve compared Tennyson
with Browning whom he translated along with numerous other Victorian
authors in 1902, and he was probably also aware of Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis.
Grove referred to Tennyson twice, though hardly in appreciative terms,
in letters to Watson Kirkconnell in late 1926 and early 1927 -- a time preceding his
daughter's death by half a year, but also a time of increased preoccupation
with his own poetry. German elegies were written by Klopstock, Goethe,
Hölderlin, Mörike, and Rilke. As mentioned below in the
context of the Palinode (IM 13, CF 3), there is a possible,
veiled link to the German baroque poet Hofmannswaldau whom Greve
endeavoured to revive in 1907 and who had compiled
a collection of Grabschriften, or dirges. Grove named
the central cycle of his collection The Dirge, and a substantial selection
from the In Memoriam collection in Canadian Forum was
entitled "From the Dirge".
The
time of composition of the poems represented in the In Memoriam complex
cannot be determined with certainty, but their inspirational impulses
appear to range from 1909 (and earlier times!) to 1932. Only one
of the fourteen poems in the initial section Thoughts (IM
1-14) specifies a time or place: The Sacred Death (IM 14)
is dated 1924, and has a reference to the death of "P. McI".
While none of the Dirge poems (IM 15/1-33) has dates, several
address the traumatic loss Grove suffered in July, 1927 in often
moving imagery. In the section following The Dirge (Landscapes,
IM 16-28), six of thirteen poems include dates or dedications at
the bottom of the page: At Sea, Nova Scotia, 1909 (IM 16), Embattled
Skies and Night in the Hills, both 1924 (IM 17-18), Dejection,
1914 (IM 19), The Sluice, 1923 (IM 21), and Dawn, 1922
(IM 22). In the fourth and final section of the collection, only
the Legend of the Planet Mars (IM 30) is dated 1915. Note that all of these
explicit dates precede the death of Phyllis May Grove, that a large
number of the poems in the Dirge are not directly related
to this loss, and that these, as most other poems, simply fail to
provide any clue whatsoever about the probable time of either inspiration
or composition.
For
further indications as to when Grove was working on or preoccupied
with his major poetry collection, a description of the other three
closely related sources (NB, CF/FD, and S) is necessary. This scrutiny,
supported by a few revealing reflections of poetry in Grove's correspondence,
will then allow us to make some very tentative remarks about a possible
genesis and filiation.
Poems from the Spettigue Collection
This
small, but important cluster includes three German manuscript poems
which are described below in the context of Grove's German poetry.
There is also a typescript of two English poems related to the In
Memoriam collection. "A Dream Vision", which is lacking
from the IM typescript in the Grove Archives, has this explanatory
manuscript note written alongside:
"One
night, shortly after the little girl's death, when for many nights
the writer had had no sleep because he was so profoundly disquieted
by the mysteries of life and death which surround us on all sides,
he at last sank away into some sort of restless rest, and his eyelids
closed. But they had hardly done so when a vision harried his absent
mind; and shortly he awoke in a sweat. He rose, lighted a lamp, and
went down into his study where he tried briefly to record what he
had seen."
It
appears to have been meant as either introduction or conclusion to
the entire In Memoriam cycle, or to Dirge poems proper
(IM 15/1-33). However, since indications about Grove's intentions
are lacking, and its function and place within the In Memoriam complex
remains uncertain, it has been appended to the collection as
IM [32]. Attached to "A Dream
Vision" is an untitled poem marked with the Roman numeral VI
which indicates that this poem was targeted for a selection or publication.
Through the First-line index provided in the appendices of
this edition, it was identified as The Pool (IM 28) which
is also no. 16 of Selections, and no. 13 in the Notebook.
The Notebook (35 + 4 poems, Box 18, Fd. 10)
Grove's Notebook is
a black ledger with unpaginated lined paper which cover 49 leaves.
A small white label on the front cover states in three lines: Poems
/ F. P. G. / Address "Books". In straightforward fashion,
and for the most part also in amazingly tidy handwriting, the Notebook contains
35 unnumbered poems which are referred to here as NB 1-35 for
convenience. There are also three loose sheets with four additional
poems (NBLL 1-4), and an inserted page with a variant beginning of Konrad
The Builder (NB 35). All 39 NB poems are listed in two tables
in the appendices of this edition, once in NB order, and then again
in IM order. This facilitates a detailed comparison, some aspects
of which are highlighted below.
With
rare exceptions, the Notebook poems are untitled and undated.
Some have metrical notations in the margin. Frequently, a title (or,
for The Dirge poems, a Roman numeral) is pencilled in the
lower corner of the page, indicating the place assigned in the In
Memoriam collection.
On
several occasions, the situation in the Notebook becomes extremely
complicated. This is notably the case towards the end of the ledger
where NB 26 (IM 19) is pasted over a heavily corrected version of
NB 27 (IM 21), or where NB 32 (IM 15/24) is hidden under NB 31 (IM
15/30). Especially confusing is the situation concerning NB 33 (IM
15/29) which covers the first four of the six stanzas forming NB
34 (IM 15/28). All these instances are
described in notes pertaining to the respective IM poems in the corpus
of the edition.
The
inside of the front cover contains the beginning of an essay on realism
which Grove may have presented to the Canadian Authors' Association
in mid-1925. With other fragments
of criticism on books, fiction, and Thomas Hardy, this essay is continued
from the back of the ledger. A good part of the final epic poem Konrad (NB
35) is therefore facing tightly
written, but inverted manuscript prose. Presumably, Grove started
using the notebook from the back after filling the regular
page sequence with poems which must therefore be of earlier composition.
Critical
essays on fiction, realism and Hardy were published between 1929
(It Needs To Be Said) and 1932/33 (in University of Toronto
Quarterly). An article in Grove's Archives on the novel has the
word "printed" written on the typescript, and is likely
to belong to the same period.
Grove's
preoccupation with Hardy at this time is of great relevance to his
poetry. Grove's personal copy
of Hardy's poetry (1926) is heavily annotated, and a direct influence
can safely be assumed. Several poems in the table of contents have
Grove's remark "Heinesque!" written next to them, pointing
to further intertextual discourses in Grove's poetic creativity.
Carleton Stanley had astutely noted that Grove's poems reminded him
of Heine.
The
presence of several grief poems in the beginning of the Notebook suggests that they were
inspired by his daughter's death on July, 1927. While there is no
certainty in these matters, most of the fifteen Dirge poems
in the Notebook were likely created not too long after this
devastating event, whereas the majority of the Thoughts and Landscapes poems
represent earlier, and in part very early creations. All of the epic
poems seem to belong to earlier strata of composition as well.
It
is particularly interesting to note that the fifteen Dirge poems
in the Notebook correspond to the second half of the 33 poems
of this cycle within a cycle: the first twelve are lacking a manuscript
equivalent altogether, the ten and twenty ranges are relatively well
represented, while IM 15/31-32 are
inserted only in loose-leaf form, and the concluding Dirge poem
IM 15/33 (with the motto "Nought we know dies..." taken
from Shelley's Adonais) is identical to Night Thoughts in Miscellaneous
Poems (MP 10), all eleven of which are definitely early compositions.
Given
that the Notebook contains about half of the IM typescript
(35 of 63), one wonders again about a similar manuscript source containing
the remainder, namely the eighteen missing Dirge poems and
ten poems from other sections of the In Memoriam collection.
Four
of the 39 NB poems are not represented in
the Poems: In Memoriam collection. Two of these are the lyrical
poems "Discordant strains..." (NB16) and Dejection (NB
25), both of which Grove had crossed out and marked with the note "rejected".
The other two poems are the narrative poems NB 29 and NB 35. Konrad
the Builder (NB 35) is a unique fragment in the Notebook. The
Legend of the Great Survival (NB 29) also exists in typescript
in Miscellaneous Poems (MP 11). These four poems are included
here in the section of Unique Poems. The epic poems are placed
in continuation of the last section of the In Memoriam cycle,
which contains similar "narratives".
For Konrad,
the transparent intertextual reference to Goethe's Faust -- Konrad is
yet another of Grove's Promethean or "Faustian" self-representations,
and apart from the vague medieval setting, the presence of a blond
and blue-eyed Margaret (Gretchen) makes the parallel more than obvious
-- have been confirmed beyond any doubt: Grove's library contains
two editions of this text. One is published by Kröner in Germany
[ca. 1918], and contains no annotations. The other is an American
edition in which Grove reacted spontaneously to the editor's English
notes about the German text -- often negatively ("what nonsense!",
etc.), but invariably displaying an intimate knowledge of the text.
Overall,
the distribution of the NB poems in relation to the In Memoriam cycle
is as follows: 35 of the 39 NB poems are included in the IM collection;
8 of 14 are present in Thoughts; 15 of 33 in The Dirge;
10 of 13 in Landscapes; and 2 of 3 in the Legends.
Various
corrections in the Notebook reveal furthermore that the In
Memoriam versions reflect the manuscript texts exactly, which
indicates that they were carefully typed directly from the ledger.
Most discrepancies are minor, and affect mainly punctuation. The
single most significant lexical variation occurs in The Preface (NB
7, IM 1) where the typed version
replaces manuscript "Life" with "God" in the
closing line.
Noteworthy
are the two following surprises of a different kind: next to NB 31
(IM 15/30), there are eleven monograms combining Grove's, Catherine's
and Phyllis May's initials. Some look similar to the monogram appearing
in 1946 on the cover of In Search of Myself. Scribbled in
the margin of NB 32 (IM 15/24) which is covered with NB 31 (IM 15/30)
and the monograms, one finds the intriguing note "Jane Atkinson,
by Andrew R. Rutherford". Rutherford is the alleged maiden name
of Grove's mother, and a "great-uncle" of this name also
occurs in In Search of Myself and Grove's conversations. Jane Atkinson is
the fragment of an unpublished novel, which Grove apparently intended
to publish under the Rutherford pseudonym. He had proposed it once
before to McClelland & Stewart in 1919 for his first book publication Over
Prairie Trails (1922). The maternal grandfather
of Greve's close friend Kilian was the famous Scottish lawyer Lord
Andrew Rutherford Clark. Pacey and his assistant Mahanti found Kilian's
daughter in 1973 in Bonn: her first name was Jane, and it is likely
that she was named after Kilian's mother.
As
mentioned before, nearly half (28 of 63) of the IM poems are lacking
in the Notebook, and further manuscript sources must be considered
lost at this time. From the proportions outlined, it follows that
missing manuscripts largely affect the first two sections of the
cycle, namely Thoughts (6 of 14) and The Dirge (18
of 33), and that they are probably of earlier composition than those
in the Notebook which contains most of the poems in the last
two sections Landscapes and Legends.
The
following two sources are closely related to the In Memoriam collection
in the sense that all twenty-four poems published in Canadian
Forum between 1929-1932 and the eighteen poems assembled in Selections at
an unspecified point in time were obviously chosen from this pivotal
source of Grove's poetry. Only nine of the 24 Canadian Forum poems,
but thirteen of the 18 poems in Selections can be correlated
to manuscripts in the Notebook.
Canadian Forum, 1929-1932 (24 poems)
In
March 1929, Grove published his first poem Science (IM 3)
in Canadian Forum. It was followed in November
of the same year by Indian Summer (IM 24), and in September,
1930 by The Palinode (IM 13). None of these poems is
present in the Notebook, whereas nine of the following poems
are: in April 1932, the journal printed twenty-one numbered poems
under the collective title From the Dirge. These 24 poems represent
the entire corpus of Grove's poetry publications known to date, and
they account for about one third of the 75 English poems in this
edition.
Given
the importance Grove attributed to the three poems he chose for individual
publication in Canadian Forum in 1929 and 1930, a closer description
seems indicated.
Science from
the Thoughts section has twelve quatrains in which the theme
of knowledge and ignorance is explored. Man's ignorance is described
through a hyperbolic variation of the Platonic cave allegory: not
only does man fruitlessly grope in the dark, he is represented as
nothing but "a sightless eft". In an ontological perspective,
the conflict between personal ambitions and real life, which is dominant
theme in Grove's German poems, prevails in this poem again. The solution
proposed to alleviate a dismal condition is also the same for the
personal and the universal setting: it is "to dream a world
not lost in utter night". In spite of the Platonic
model, this poem conveys a sense of typical Nietzschean nihilism,
and the concept of dreaming up a world is strongly reminiscent of
Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819; English, The
World as Will and Idea).
Five
months before its publication, Grove had presented Science to
the Victoria Branch of the Canadian Authors' Association in October
1928, and the local Daily Times had reported two days later
about his "inspired verse, unusual examples of which he read
to an appreciative audience."
Indian
Summer (IM 24) is in the Landscapes section which follows
the Dirge poems. It combines the lyrical description of
a fall day with reflections about the narrator's life season. The
day is full of peaceful melancholy, as is Grove's mood. Like Moses,
he reflects on life and death, and he expresses sadness about the
loss of his daughter and the void it has left in his life.
The
role of Nietzschean prophet and seer which Grove often adopted for
himself is tempered here by a
tragic personal experience. One cannot help comparing this poem with
Grove's and Greve's Erster Sturm where the fall theme is cast
in as an allegorical, tempestuous force of nature, and life is represented
as condensed, dynamic action -- what a contrast with the static,
contemplative attitude in the fall poem by the mature author! Grove must have been
particularly fond of this poem, since only a year and a half later,
he published it again as no. XX of From the Dirge. It is,
however, absent from both the Notebook and Selections.
The
Palinode (IM 13) from the Thoughts section demonstrates
Grove's extensive knowledge of poetic forms: in part one, seven
stanzas reflect on life, man, and the impossibility of knowledge;
they are mirrored by the seven stanzas of part two, where life's
purpose and pattern are viewed less negatively since the eternal
realm of the soul can at times be known intuitively. The printing
enhances visually the symmetry by placing both parts next to each
other. This effect is lost in
the linear arrangement of the typescript. There, part two refers
to the Greek poet Stesichoros who is believed to have written the
first palinode on Helena. As mentioned earlier, both Greve and
Grove took great pride in their classical, philological education.
A
palinode is an ode followed by a counter-ode, and it was a model
frequently used in Baroque literature. The common theme was, as in
Grove's poem, praise and contempt of the world. It is not without
relevance to note that in 1907 Greve edited poetry by Hofmannswaldau
(1617-1679) who, incidentally, also published Grabschriften (1663),
or funeral lamentations -- in other words, dirges.
The
situation of From the Dirge (FD) is structurally quite complex.
To say the least, the title is misleading, since one third of the
21 poems do not belong to The Dirge cycle (IM 15/1-33) of
the In Memoriam collection. The IM order listing of the Canadian
Forum poems in the appendices reveals that 4 are from Thoughts,
14 from The Dirge, and 3 from Landscapes. The arrangement
of these poems as shown in the CF order listing suggests, however,
that the Dirge group is particularly well represented: FD
2, 5-17 appear like a tidy selection from the IM 15/1-33 sequence.
Poems
chosen from the sections framing the Dirge cycle are, overall,
not much less regular: FD 1, 3-4 correspond to the Thoughts poems The
Spectral Past (IM 9), The Gods (IM 2), and After the
Blow (IM 5) -- only the first poem is curiously unlike the IM
order. Its manuscript equivalent is one of the loose leaves in the Notebook.
Written on the verso of an advertisement sent out by Graphic Publishers
to potential reviewers of A Search for America, late
1927 or so could be the date of its composition. FD 18-20 follow the IM
order of Landscapes, (IM 20, 23-24) perfectly. However, the
final From the Dirge poem (FD 21) is strikingly out of order; it
actually corresponds to the initial poem of the entire In Memoriam collection, The
Preface (IM 1) from Thoughts.
So,
while 19 of the 21 poems From the Dirge adhere closely to
the sequence of the master collection, two -- both from the initial Thoughts section
-- do not. Since they affect the opening and the closing of the published
selection, this seemingly irregularity appears as a deliberate attempt
at providing an appropriate frame.
The
conclusions drawn earlier from the Notebook evidence, namely
that the first half of the In Memoriam collection is more
fluctuating and less documented with extant manuscript sources than
the second half, seems confirmed by the fact that the nine poems From
the Dirge present in the Notebook cluster around the higher
numbered entries there -- given the linear nature of entries in this
ledger, this indicates later rather than earlier composition. Referring
to the In Memoriam order of the FD poems, one finds first
NB 7, NB loose leaf 1 (both from Thoughts, IM 1 and 9), then
NB 11, 15 (both from The Dirge, IM 15/17 and 15/19) followed
by NB 32, 23, 34, 31 (IM 15/24, 26, 28, 30), and finally NB 17 from Landscapes (IM
20).
Almost
all From the Dirge poems deviate little from the IM typescript
other than in punctuation. In four noteworthy instances, a stanza
present in the IM collection is missing in the corresponding publication:
FD 1 lacks the last stanza of The Spectral Past (IM 9); FD
5 omits stanza 2 of The Dirge IV (IM 15/4), FD 12 lacks the
second stanza of IM 15/23, and FD 17 omits the final stanza of IM
15/30. FD 15 has changed "firm flesh" in IM 15/28, st.1-6
and NB 34 to "soft flesh" in the first quatrain
which is a clear lexical improvement. FD 19 has corrected "October
blasts" (IM 23, st.1) into more appropriate "November blasts".
An
interesting and complex situation arises from FD 15 and 16 (both
IM 15/28): FD 15 repeats the six manuscript stanzas of NB 34 which
is one of the last, heavily corrected entries preceding the lengthy Konrad fragment.
The first four stanzas are covered with "Who would have told
me..." (NB 33, IM 15/29), stanza five peaks out from underneath
this glued-on addition, and stanza six follows on the verso of the
ledger page. FD 16 appears to be a
unique poem at first sight. However, the corresponding Dirge poem
in the In Memoriam typescript (IM 15/28) has 8 stanzas of
4, and 2 stanzas of 3 lines. This means that IM 15/28 was published
as two poems, namely FD 15 and an independent sonnet, FD 16. Given
this special status, FD 16 has been included in this edition as a
unique poem on p. 178.
IM
15/28, st. 1-6 was unfinished in November, 1928 when Grove sent it
to Watson Kirkconnell. Stanzas 1, 4-6 of what he called "an
old poem" were ready then, the second and third he "couldn't
get together" at the time. The corresponding Notebook entry
(NB 34), however, shows these two quatrains in place which indicates
that Grove managed to find a satisfactory form for them after he
wrote that letter; they were later published as FD 15 in April, 1932.
Where the sonnet FD 16 stems from in either its IM 15/28, st. 7-10
or its FD sonnet manifestation remains a complete mystery. In fact,
the theme and atmosphere of the two FD poems are so incompatible
that a mistake in the spacing and numbering on pages 56-57 of the
IM typescript must be considered a likely conjecture.
Selections (18 poems, Box 18, Fd. 23)
Grove
chose eighteen poems from the In Memoriam cycle for another
collection which he probably meant to publish like the twenty-one
poems in From the Dirge. Whether this plan was made before
or after the Canadian Forum publication in 1932 is unclear,
but in either case, the Selections appear to be intended as
a representative sampler of Grove's comprehensive In Memoriam collection,
and they have clearly complementary character: Grove's choice carefully
excludes most of the Dirge poems, whereas the published selection
draws heavily on them. The other In Memoriam sections are
proportionally better represented. However, while the respective
parts chosen for both selections seem carefully balanced and mutually
exclusive, no less than five poems are duplicated. This could indicate that Selections represents
an earlier attempt at publication which was aborted in favour of
the structurally more accomplished From the Dirge complex.
The
arrangement in Selections follows the order of the IM collection
in all respects which strongly suggests that the selected poems were
taken from the In Memoriam typescipt as we know it in a linear
fashion, and without the intent to create a coherent, thematic subgroup
as evident in From the Dirge. There is an overall title, "Selections
from Poems / by Frederick Philip Grove", and partial titles
refer to the four sections known from the In Memoriam collection. From
Book I: Thoughts and Images includes six of the fourteen poems
in the initial IM group. From Book II: The
Dirge represents only two of the thirty-three Dirge poems,
namely IM 15/14 and 15/19. From Book III: Landscapes includes
eight of the thirteen poems in the corresponding IM section, and From Book IV repeats The
Legend of the Planet Mars (IM 30), and Ahasuerus (IM 31),
omitting significantly The Eagles (IM 29) from the final IM
group. This poem which has confessional character and also resembles
Greve's and Grove's German poetry with its Promethean outlook, as
does "the wanderer" in Ahasuerus, exists solely
in the IM typescript.
There
is little variation in these poems in comparison to their respective
counterparts in In Memoriam, but dates locations are expanded
in Selections in the following five cases:
The
Sacred Death (S 6) spells out the initials "P.McI." in
IM 14 as "Death of Peter McIlvride"; the date 1924
is the same.
For Dejection (S
10), the date is 1913, not 1914 as in IM 19, and the location "Pembina
Mountains" is added. This difference of one year has important
implications for the possible biographical inspiration: in 1913,
the depressed feelings reflected in Dejection suggest reminiscences
of Grove's first year in Canada, and are therefore unrelated to his
involvement with Catherine Wiens. The tone of his first letters to
her in June 1914 is still fairly distant, although they were married
on the 2nd of August. In 1913, on the other hand, Grove had ample
reason to feel guilty and depressed about having abandoned about
a year before, and in rather cowardly fashion, his long-term "wife" Else
in Kentucky.
The
Sluice (S 12) is dated 1923 as is IM 21, but adds the geographical
location "At the sluice of the Little Saskatchewan".
In the Notebook version (NB 27), the title is "Past & Future",
but The Sluice is pencilled in the bottom corner.
At
Sea (S 9) repeats the earliest of all acknowledged dates and
the location "Nova Scotia, 1909", just as in IM 16. Since
Greve disappeared from Germany in September of that year, and came
to North America by boat "via Canada", this poem is an extremely
valuable biographical confirmation for the Greve/Grove identity.
Fall (IM
23) is expanded to Fall in Manitoba in S 13. The untitled From
the Dirge version has corrected "October blasts" to "November
blasts" which can be considered a realistic precision over the
versions in In Memoriam and Selections; this change
might therefore be used as an argument for the posteriority of the Canadian
Forum poems in relation to Selections, the IM typescript
being their common root.
Early
poems from IM's initial part Thoughts which are lacking in
the Notebook (namely IM 2, 5-7) are present here as S 1-4. That the remaining fourteen
selections (S 5-18) are all represented in the Notebook points once again to
missing, earlier manuscripts.
An
intriguing detail in the Selections is the typed Roman numeral
VII on Questions Reasked (S 4). The title was added in pencil
beside it. This poem is no. 7 in the In Memoriam cycle, and
it is absent in the Notebook. With near-certainty, Goethe
can be assumed as a direct source of inspiration: an American edition
of Goethe's poetry in Grove's library is heavily annotated, and reveals
that Grove was impressed by part three of Goethe's poem no. 112, "Gott,
Gemüt und Welt" which reads:
"Wie? Wann? und Wo? -- Die Götter bleiben stumm
Du
halte dich ans Weil und frage nicht: Warum?"
While the text is unmarked,
Grove translated the interrogatives in line two of the poem in the
notes section: "weil : whence / warum : whereto (wozu)". The opening and closing
lines of Questions Reasked are: "What are we? Whence?
And whither are we bound?". An untitled poem
carrying the Roman numeral VI is attached to A Dream Vision from
the Spettigue Collection (IM 32). This poem, the The Pool,
is no. 16 of Selections, and no. 28 of In Memoriam,
and also exists in the Notebook (NB13). The version in the
Spettigue Collection differs from IM 28 and NB 13 in several respects.
Most notable is the shift from addressing his daughter directly in
precious "thee" and "thy" forms to a third-person
perspective with simpler "she" and "her" pronouns. Neither one of the two
neatly typed poems, Questions Reasked (S 4) and The Pool (S
16/SC) was included in From the Dirge which collection contained
seven numbered, untitled poems which do have titles in the In
Memoriam collection.
The
enigmatic Roman numerals VII and VI seem to suggest that
Grove considered the publication of poetry in several unknown constellations
possibly even before the Notebook entries were written, and
long before the In Memoriam typescript was finalized. These
two poems are thematically related in their romantic and idealistic
reflections on the world, life and death: Plato is mentioned explicitly
in the first, the image of the pool as a mirror of the soul is the
topic of the second. Both are also strongly reminiscent of Grove's "Shelley
poem", Night Thoughts, where death (and Phyllis May's
death) is the theme, and in which "thee and "thy" pronouns
are employed in both versions, MP 10 and IM 15/28. Most other
poems in Miscellaneous Poems being clearly romantic and neo-romantic as well, and having collective
titles like Poems of the Lake and Woods and Visions,
one suspects that they are relatively old examples of Grove's "Gedankenlyrik",
or philosophical poetry, and that they were prepared for publication
around the same time.
The
Pool and Night Thoughts do incorporate his personal
experience of loss in mid-1927, but sometimes in the final stanza
only, like an after-thought; they therefore may have been older
poems which he reworked after his daughter's death precisely to
adapt them to the nascent In Memoriam collection. The remainder
of the poems in Selections is quite impersonal, and only Questions
Reasked is included in IM Thoughts (S4/IM 7).
Although
it is possible that both From the Dirge (1932) and Selections were
assembled and typed directly from the Notebook and/or other
assumed manuscript sources, this is a highly unlikely conjecture:
they are clearly "selected" from the most comprehensive
typescript corpus, they both repeat about
one third of this authoritative collection, and they carefully emphasize
different sections of it. From the Dirge uses almost half
of the 33 Dirge poems, Selections only two. In contrast, From
the Dirge includes only four of the 14 Thoughts poems,
three of the 13 Landscape poems, and none of the "legends",
while Selections incorporates the relatively high proportion
of six and eight poems respectively, and includes furthermore two
of three poems from Legends. Also, with the exception of the
initial and final poems, the order of the In Memoriam poems
is closely adhered to in From the Dirge in 1932. The three
poems which may seem somewhat erratically placed in this perspective appear to be deliberately
transferred in the interest of structure and thematic unity. The
poems in Selections follow the In Memoriam sequence
without a single exception, like a mirror-reflection.
Reflections of Grove's poetry in his correspondence
Desmond
Pacey's masterly edition of Grove's correspondence allows one some
glimpses into the genesis of five poems.
The
first evidence of Grove's poetry in the correspondence is reflected
in a letter to his wife on October 6, 1928. Grove is on his second
lecture tour to western Canada, and he reports that in
a reading to the local chapter of the Canadian Authors' Association
in Victoria he "recited 'Science' from my poems. They
did not know, of course, what to make of it." To judge from an account
in the Victoria Daily Times two days after this event, Grove
had indeed managed to shock the audience; he also had announced the
impending publication of his poetry: "A collection of his inspired
verse, unusual examples of which he read to an appreciative audience,
will appear in print in 1930." Science (IM 3)
is Grove's first known published poem. Five months after the public
presentation in Victoria, it appeared in Canadian Forum in
March, 1929. It is the third poem of In Memoriam, and it is
absent from the Notebook.
Instead
of an address, Grove quotes the opening line of After the Blow (IM
5) in the next letter to
his wife from Victoria, on October 7, 1928: "And thus the days
go by, a long, long line...". Again, this poem is lacking
in the Notebook, but it is published more than three years
later, in April, 1932, as FD 4; it is also present in Grove's Selections (S2).
Shortly
after his return to Rapid City, on November 19, 1928, Grove includes The
Sacred Death (IM 14) along with some stanzas of The Dirge XXVIII
(IM 15/28) in a letter to Watson Kirkconnell. Grove's words at the
close of this letter refer to both of these poems as if they were
one: "I'll enclose an old poem. Please tell me what you think
of it." The Sacred Death --
this title is used in the letter for Grove's "old poem" --
is also present in the Notebook (NB 21; the title is pencilled
in the bottom corner), and in Selections (S 6) where the date,
1924, is the same as in the In Memoriam collection, but the
dedication "Death of P.McI" is spelled out as "Death
of Peter McIlvride". Pacey specifies that
he was a farmer in Rapid City who died on May 10, 1925 (not in
1924) of pneumonia "after four days of an illness which was
thought to be a heavy cold..., and for which no one thought of seeking
medical help until it was too late. His wife survived him by some
forty years." A month earlier, Grove had written to his wife
from Victoria: "Yesterday, by the way, a brother of the late
Pete McIlvride called on me and told me a great deal of the antecedents
of that death: also of the early married life of the R[apid] C[ity]
McIlvrides. It's just as I had divined it." From these comments,
one might conclude that Grove saw a close parallel between this farmer's
and his daughter's death, the common element being the fatal negligence
of family or hospital caretakers.
IM
15/28, already discussed in detail above in the context of the Canadian
Forum publications, has a special significance in this letter
as well. The "old poem" sent to Kirkconnell has eight quatrains
of which the first four form The Sacred Death (IM 14). The
other four do belong, although no such indication is given, to the Dirge XXVIII.
After it's initial quatrain Grove wrote in parentheses: "Two
stanzas which I cannot get together", and then continued with
stanzas 4-6. IM 15/28 has ten stanzas in the In Memoriam typescript
(8x4, 2x3) of which only the first six are represented in the Notebook (NB
34) and in From the Dirge XV
(FD 15). As mentioned before, the missing four stanzas of IM 15/28
are published as an independent sonnet in From the Dirge (FD
16, April 1932).
For
the genesis of this poem, this proves that in late 1928, Grove was
still battling with stanzas 2-3; in other words, IM 15/28 was unfinished.
Considering that these two troublesome stanzas are present in one
of the latest entries in the Notebook points to their likely
completion sometime in 1929. In April, 1932 they appeared in print
in nearly identical form. This, of course, does not provide a conclusive
answer to the question whether FD 15 was taken directly from the Notebook manuscript
or copied from the In Memoriam typescript. However, the lexical
and structural improvements manifest in the published version
confirm our earlier impressions that the entire From the Dirge complex
was selected from the comprehensive In Memoriam collection.
In
another letter to Watson Kirkconnell on March 24, 1929 Grove cites
the last two lines of the second stanza of The Spectral Past (IM
9, 4x4): "...with power yet to thrill or to unnerve, And to
evoke things felt or heard or seen." This poem was also chosen
as the opening to the selection of the twenty-one poems represented
in From the Dirge where stanza four is omitted. In the Notebook,
IM 9 only exists in loose-leaf form: it is written in three tentative
versions on the back of a blurb designed by Graphic Publishers for
potential reviewers of Grove's first autobiographical novel, A
Search for America (published in October, 1927). This insertion
may therefore be of earlier composition than other Notebook entries.
These
references in Grove's correspondence during late 1928 and early 1929
confirm a heightened preoccupation with poetry around that time.
They also determine the likely dates of composition for some later Notebook poems,
although this has little bearing on the underlying, inspirational
impulses; these are often unrelated to his daughter's tragic death
in mid-1927, and can reflect the entire range of memories accumulated
over two or three decades.
The
presence of fifteen Dirge poems in the Notebook clearly
suggests that the ledger was used to record reflections about this
tragic event, but that earlier reactions related to this complex
can safely be assumed. The Notebook thus appears like a sequel
to another, entirely unknown manuscript source. While the later-ranging
entries in the Notebook were proven to have been composed
around 1928/1929, earlier ones were likely created from late 1927
onwards. Grove's first poem appeared in print in March, 1929, and
one third of the In Memoriam typescript was published two
years later in April, 1932. Sometime within these three years, the
basic content and form of the In Memoriam typescript -- which
reflects individual Notebook poems with great fidelity, but
deviates entirely from its initial, strictly linear structure --
must have been finalized.
This
was probably not done before the Groves settled in Simcoe in October,
1931. Both Selections and From the Dirge were then
selected from the typescript, the former being merely a linear, representative
anthology, the latter organized in a more artful complex centred
around a unifying theme. It is possible that Grove gave up on Selections,
since he placed five of its eighteen poems in From the Dirge.
Some
biographical considerations seem to support the assumption that Grove
was interrupted in his work on the poetry collection for at least
two years. When, in October, 1929, he announced the publication of
such a collection for the next year, he probably intended to devote
time and effort to this project. But poetry being just one of the
many literary expressions he pursued simultaneously and other circumstances
arising as well, he came to neglect this particular task for quite
some time. What was happening in his life during these years?
Grove
had been working at a truly manic pace in the late twenties: A
Search for America was published in 1927, he went on three coast-to-coast
lecture tours in 1928 and early 1929, he published several critical
articles between 1928-1929, Our Daily Bread appeared in October,
1928, and his next novel, The Yoke of Life, in 1930.
Besides
these feverishly intense creative endeavours, several important changes
occurred in Grove's life: the couple moved from Manitoba to Ottawa
in late 1929, and for nearly two years, Grove became deeply involved
with Graphic Publishers and a parallel venture called Ariston, before he settled down
in Simcoe in October 1931. In the midst of this hectic time, on October
14, 1930, Leonard was born. It stands to reason that Grove could
not have devoted special attention to his poetry projects until he
was relatively free from several other, more pressing obligations.
Therefore, late 1931 may have presented the earliest opportunity
for him to return to his task and finalize the poetry cycle which
he had conceived nearly five years earlier. In April, 1932 he was
then able to publish a major part of it at last.
Some
indications of older poetry have been detected and discussed within the context of Selections,
and they have been linked to the poems described in the following
source which is believed to contain some of Grove's earliest poetry.
This opinion is supported by the fact that the Miscellaneous Poems not
only contain three of Grove's manuscript German poems (one of which
dates back to 1907!) and their typed translations, but that the remaining
poems reflect romantic and neo-romantic inspirations, that there
exists no known manuscript source for them, and that all but one
(MP 10/IM 15/33) are excluded from the In Memoriam collection.
Miscellaneous Poems (11 poems, Box 18, Fd.
24)
The
contents of this thin, but eminently important folder in the Grove
Archives consist of three German manuscript poems and eight English
typescripts on loose leaves. It must be noted here again that there
is no reference to these German manuscripts in the Register of
the Frederick Philip Grove Collection, neither in the context
of his poetry (p. 32) nor anywhere else. This deplorable fact may
have prevented a more widespread appreciation of the evidence pointing
to Grove's German background which was available long before Spettigue's
spectacular discovery of Felix Paul Greve's existence in October,
1971.
The
three German manuscripts and Grove's typed translations are, of course,
a central asset to the Grove Collection. But there are also four
other lyrical poems not found anywhere else. The voluminous The
Legend of the Great Survival (MP 11), which is a faithful typescript
of a manuscript version in the Notebook (NB 29) and resembles
the Legend of the Planet Mars (IM 30/NB 18) in the final In
Memoriam section, is the only independent typescript of an epic
narrative. The tone and stance of all these poems suggest that they
represent the earliest layers of Grove's poetry, and it is not impossible
that German originals will be found for them one day.
While
ten of the eleven poems are unique, Night Thoughts (MP 10)
is included in the In Memoriam collection as the final poem
of The Dirge cycle (IM 15/33); but here, it has a title, and
adds an explicit reference to Shelley after the motto-like opening
line.
As
for many of the other English poems, the physical situation is extremely
complex, and is accordingly difficult to describe. In order to convey
an impression of the complicated reality, both the poems and the
leaves have been assigned arbitrary number sequences.
The
German manuscripts (MP 1-3) which provide an opportune juncture leading
into Greve's poetry, will be addressed last in more detail:
MP 1 "Die Dünen fliegen auf..." (1
L.)
MP
2 "Dies ist der Wald..." (1 L.; with MP 3)
MP
3 "Sag, hebt sich dein Herz..." (with MP 2)
The remaining eight typescripts
represent English poems:
MP 4 You
and I (versions a, b, c on two leaves)
MP 5 Retrospection (with
MP 6 on one page)
MP 6 [The
Sonnet] (with MP 5 on one page)
MP 7 Night (versions a and b on
1 leaf; 7b with 8a on one page)
MP 8 Arctic
Woods (versions a and b; 8a with 7b on one page)
MP 9 The
Dying Year (versions a and b; 9a with 8b on one
page)
MP
10 Night Thoughts (1 page)
MP
11 The Legend of the Great Survival (on 11 leaves)
Four
of the eleven MP poems exist in several versions (MP 4, 7, 8, and
9). Their distribution becomes especially clear when MP 4-9 are described
in their physical manifestations, that is in their assigned page
sequence:
L.
1, recto: MP
4 in version a
L.
1, verso: MP
5+6 are both on this page
L.
1a, recto: MP
4 in version b
L.
1a, verso: MP
4 in version c
L.
2, recto: MP
7 a stands alone on this page
L.
2, verso: MP
7 b and 8 a are both on this page
L.
3, recto: MP
9 a and 8 b are both on this page
L.
3, verso: (blank)
L.
4, recto: MP
9 b stands alone on this page
L.
4, verso: (blank)
L.
5, recto: Night
thoughts (MP 10 = IM 15/33)
L.
5, verso: (blank)
L.
6-16, recto: Legend
of the Great Survival (MP 11 = NB 11)
L.
6-16, verso: (blank)
Of
the three versions a, b, and c of You and
I (MP 4), version c has been represented in this edition
as the latest. Version a is untitled and contains three manuscript
corrections which are duly reflected in the subsequent versions b and c.
Both of these later versions have the following two-lined title: From:
Poems of the Lakes and Woods / Subtitle: You and I. This suggests
that Grove wanted to regroup them in some collection, possibly with
the intention of publication.
An
additional manuscript correction to version b is interesting
because it reverses the meaning of stanza 4, l. 2: "My wish, it
did come true" in a and c reads in b "My
wish did not come true". The topic being Grove's relationship
with his wife (who also did most of the typing), the change has been
understandably, but quite uncharacteristically ignored, so that the
far more positive original wording remains unchanged in the last
version c.
Although You
and I has been treated as one poem, it consists actually of
three parts: there are twice two stanzas, and once three; each
cluster has a distinctly different form, and one could have considered
them as three separate entities. As a compromise, each
part has been included individually in the First Line Index.
MP
5 + 6 exist only in this one version which is typed on the verso
of leaf 1. The title of MP 6, "The Sonnet", has
been crossed out, so that the two poems appear like a double sonnet
with a mirror effect: Retrospection has two initial tercets
followed by two drawn-together quatrains, while The Sonnet adheres
to the conventions of the Petrachan sonnet which prescribe two quatrains
and two tercets. The only element preventing a flawless symmetry
after the elimination of the title is the separation of the two quatrains
in the sonnet. Had they been combined, the structure would have resulted
in a perfect 3-3-8//8-3-3 arrangement. Or, conversely, a separation
into two quatrains in Retrospection would have had the same
symmetric effect.
Night (MP
7) which is particularly reminiscent of Stefan George, exists by
itself on the recto of leaf 2 in version a, and then again
on the verso of the same page in a corrected version b with
the title From: Poems of the Lakes and Woods / Subtitle: Visions.
Version b of Night is
succeeded on the same page by version a of MP 8 Arctic
Woods. This poem is a translation of the German manuscript MP
2, "Dies ist der Wald...". The earlier version (MP 8a)
is reproduced with the Unique Poems in the context of Poems
of the Lakes and Woods / Subtitle: Visions, while the later version
MP 8b is presented adjacent to its German source.
The
Dying Year (MP 9) has special importance, since it is Grove's
English rendering of "Die Dünen fliegen auf..." (MP
1), which in turn is a replica of Greve's Erster Sturm of
1907. In its earlier version MP 9a, The Dying Year appears
first on leaf 3, where it is followed on the same page by the corrected
version b of Arctic Woods (MP 8b). A collective title,
as present on the verso of leaf 2 for the combination of MP 7 Night and
MP 8a Arctic Woods, is absent there.
Leaf
3, which combines the translations of Grove's German manuscript poems The
Dying Year (MP 9a) and Arctic Woods (MP 8b), has been
used to provide the English equivalents next to their German originals
(MP 1+2). Version b of The Dying Year (MP 9b) stands
alone on leaf 4, and reflects major manuscript corrections to version a;
it has the additional title Visions, which is why the poem
(along with MP 8a) has been included in this later version with the Unique
Poems.
Because
of their outstanding importance, the two translations of Grove's
German poems (MP 8 and MP 9) are exceptionally included in two versions:
they are first placed next to their German equivalents, and also
appear in facsimile on pp. 59b and 59c. In a different version and
in the context of the collective titles Poems of the Lakes and
Woods and Visions, they are part of the section entitled Unique
Poems.
Grove's German poems in Miscellaneous Poems
Finally,
there are the three untitled manuscript poems in German on two leaves.
Even without the confirmation that MP1 was published by Greve in
1907, all three reflect the aestheticism and neo-romantic style representative
of the members of the influential Stefan George circle.
MP 1 "Die Dünen fliegen auf..." (1
l.)
MP
2 "Dies ist der Wald..." (1 l.)
MP
3 "Sag, hebt sich dein Herz..."(with MP 2)
MP 1, "Die Dünen
fliegen auf...", has five stanzas written sideways on what appears
to be a ledger leaf. The fifth stanza is placed to the right, next
to the third. It is a close replica of Greve's Erster Sturm as
published in Die Schaubühne (1907). A comparison between
the two reveals that Grove's poem differs from its precursor in four
lexical replacements, three of which are synonymous: "falb" was
originally "gelb" (st. 2), and represents a realistic precision
in the colour of a horse. Stanzas 3 and 4 are reversed,
which is the only major formal discrepancy, so that "Fahnen" replaces
the old-fashioned, precious "Banner" now in st. 4 (the
original st. 3). In stanza 1, "wirr" was "grün" -
again, there is a shift from an abstract colour adjective to a more
palpably descriptive one. The final stanza reads "tönen
wild" instead of "heulen schwer".
There
are furthermore two syntactical rearrangements in stanza 3 (orig.
st. 4) and stanza 5, both of which abandon a stilted pre-placed adjective
structure in favour of simpler German syntax: "Seht graugepanzert ihr
die Schiffe nahn" becomes "Seht ihr die Schiffe durch
die Lüfte nahn", and "Zum Flattern bunter Fetzen
all der Fahnen" is changed with similar effect to "Zum
Flattern all der Fetzen bunter Fahnen".
These
variations could be considered negligeable, given that Grove jotted
this poem down ten, twenty, or even thirty years after its conception.
They demonstrate, however, a noteworthy transition from neo-romantic
preciosity to a more sober and powerfully realistic ideal of art.
The same trend is further emphasized in Grove's own translation The
Dying Year (MP 9).
MP
2, "Dies ist der Wald..." has four stanzas which are also
written sideways on a ledger page. In typical, neo-romantic imagery
there is a somber, spooky forest with intimations of decay and death
everywhere. The water in the ditches resembles the iridescent eyes
of ghostlilke entities, and the protagonist is torn between fear
and morbid attraction. The mid-day heat and light are screened from
this forest by a mysterious, grey wing, lending the setting the appearance
of a living grave. A white horse, immobilized in flight, is seen
beyond the treetops. The theme is death which is symbolized by the
supernatural presence of the white horse evoking the apocalyptic
riders.
In
Grove's translation Arctic Woods (MP 8), an especially masterful
shift in emphasis takes place: while Grove adheres closely to the
original overall, a few slight changes achieve the transformation
from a supernatural scene into the realistic Canadian winter landscape
announced in the title: ghostlike, iridescent eyes become simply large eyes.
The association of decaying flesh expressed by the pallid white of
birch trunks is changed to the vulnerable whiteness of bare skin.
The white horse is now suggestively "snow-white", and it
is "frozen" in flight. A general you has become
a personal I, and now depicts one helpless individual faced
with the threat of a harsh, but natural environment.
The
two stanzas of the fragment MP 3, "Sag, hebt sich dein Herz...",
are written at a right angle in the margin of "Dies ist der
Wald...". The fragment consists of four rhetorical questions, expressing
the high-flying fantasies and lies of someone who is trying to escape
a drab, everyday existence. In a way, it is another manifestation
of hyperbolical embellishments well known from Grove's autobiographical
fiction, and particularly prominent in his correspondence with Wolfskehl
in 1902. Never satisfied with what he was in Europe or Canada, Grove
kept obsessively inventing what he might -- and in his opinion, should
-- have been.
In
spite of a noticeable and skilful shift towards realism by way of
subtle, but significant changes in tone and content in Grove's translations
MP 8 and MP 9, all eight English poems assembled in this important
source folder betray their early origins. Like the three German poems
present there, they follow the aesthetic rules of the impressionist
and neo-romantic conventions championed by the Stefan George circle.
Grove's next three German poems obviously have their roots in the
same early phase of Greve/Grove's creativity.
Grove's German poems in the Spettigue Collection
-
SC 1 Apokalypse
-
SC 2 Kopfschmerz
-
SC 3 "Das Fieber, das die Schläfen..."
These three poems were
discovered by Grove's son Leonard who sent them to D. O. Spettigue
in April, 1968. They are very similar
to the three poems in Miscellaneous Poems. All six of Grove's
German poems bear the mark of what was fashionable in Germany around
1900.
SC
1, Apokalypse, appears to be a fragment in four parts. Each
has three quatrains in pentameters, an unusally long and narrative
meter for Grove's lyric poetry. A fifth part is indicated by a Roman
numeral only, suggesting that more was to follow. The theme is the
impact of a personal crisis. In the first part, the narrator reviews
his past which he compares to a dreamy port symbolizing security.
An unspecified intrusion has turned everything upside down, and he
is looking now at the ruins of his existence, wondering if his great
expectations have been permanently shattered. Contrasting sharply
with the grey tones surrounding him, he evokes in the second part
a colourful vision of an exotic beauty with black eyes and orchid-like
lips, representing sunny climes and a splendid past. In the third
part, he returns to the scene of sad isolation which is now illustrated
with pale suns, cold stars and moons, and icy winds. He compares
his former self to Prometheus, an adventurer, a martyr, a rebel despising
security and conventions. In the last part, he considers his bold
ambitions an audacity which had to be punished with his present destitution.
He implores an allegorical Time to free him of this painful existence.
The
inspiration of Apokalypse might be rooted in the reversal
of Greve's fortunes in May 1903. Prior to his arrest, he had spent
several lavish months with Else Endell in Palermo. Shortly after
his downfall, he referred to his imprisonment as a "Katastrophe" in
a letter to the Insel publisher von Poellnitz.
A
similar belief in a causal link between bold personal ambitions and
cruel punishment is expressed in Grove's The Voice (IM 10,
NB 1), The Gods (IM 2), and in Greve's Irrfahrt (WA
14) in Wanderungen. Promethean or Faustian themes are central
in numerous other poems as well, as in The Rebel's Confession (IM
4), The Eagles (IM 29) and Ahasuerus (IM 31).
SC
2, Kopfschmerz, consists of four quatrains in the usual iambic
meter, and describes the sorry state of someone waking up with a
hangover. The narrator sees himself reflected in a mirror, where
his head appears like the unstable vision of a dark-red flower. Its
petals disolve first into kaleidoscopic fragments, then into nothingness.
He sinks back into his cushions only to be subjected to the most
painful noises, while he curses those who are abandoning him in his
misery. If the vision of the exotic flower and its dissolution was
meant to convey some deep, symbolic meaning, it fails in being convincing.
The dominant impression is one of a common hangover. As in Beethoven's
piano piece Die Wut über den verlorenen Groschen, the
occasion and its emotional impact are out of proportion, so that
the result is tragicomic at best.
SC
3, "Das Fieber..." is an untitled sonnet. It describes
an inner fire (a "fever") which has consumed the protagonist
since his birth. It distinguishes him from those who only talk and
don't dare to act or live recklessly. The final tercet represents
the antipode to the high-flying ambitions expressed before, contrasting
them with the grey reality of everyday life.
As
in Apokalypse (SC 1), the Promethean theme is again prominently
exploited. In addition, some positively disturbing aspects of the
Nietzschean "strong", "special" individual are
in evidence: there is talk of "die rote Lust der Kriege",
which rhymes beautifully with "Mutter aller großen Siege".
The use of a brutal topos, unfortunately quite common before 1914,
and the absence of similar martial imagery in Grove's poetry indicates
that the conception of this poem predates the horrors of two World
Wars.
Grove's
six German poems from the Grove and Spettigue Archives have been
placed in the centre of this edition to provide a chronological link
and continuum between Greve's earlier and Grove's later poetic creations.
The six German poems by Frederick Philip Grove bear a striking resemblance
both in form and in content to the poetry of Felix Paul Greve. They
display the kind of esoteric aestheticism popular in Germany in the
first decade of this century. It was particularly favoured by the
poets affiliated with the elitist Stefan George circle which Greve
is known to have courted until his imprisonment in 1903. Even though
he adopted and reflected new models afterwards -- for instance, Flaubert
-- it appears that he never deviated from the poetic conventions
he absorbed in his formative years.
It
is true that the aetheticism in Grove's German poems seems to have
little in common with most of Grove's mature poetry. But even in
his English poetry, some old thematic preoccupations appear repeatedly,
and certain formal characteristics prevail throughout, regardless
of shifted or new contents. These formal invariables reflect the
principles expounded and practiced by the George circle in its influential
journal Blätter für die Kunst (1898-1919). They
will be further described in the context of Greve's poetry.
The sources of Greve's poetry
Felix
Paul Greve's poetry as known to date consists of the following materials
which are presented, as far as possible, in the chronological order
of their composition:
- the collection Wanderungen which
was privately published in February, 1902
- seven tidily
presented manuscript poems sent to Stefan George in August, 1902
for publication in Blätter für die Kunst
- a stanza
Greve inserted in a letter to Wolfskehl in October, 1902; (a version
of Irrender Ritter (WA 23), which was sent to Wolfskehl shortly
before the publication of Wanderungen, is covered in the variant
notes of this poem on p. 30)
- seven poems
by Fanny Essler, printed in Die Freistatt, 1904/1905:
Gedichte (Heft 35, 27. 8. 1904, pp. 700-701)
Drei Sonette: ein Portrait (Heft
42, 10. 10. 1904, pp. 840-841)
Gedichte (Heft
12, 10. 3. 1905, pp. 185-186)
- three poems
published individually in journals:
Die Hexe, Freistatt 6, Heft 26 (25. 6. 1904), p. 519
Erster Sturm, Schaubühne 3,
no. 6 (7. 2. 1907), p. 154.
Die Stadt am Strande, Schaubühne 3,
no. 23 (6. 6.1907), p. 570.
Poems in Greve's correspondence with Wolfskehl
A
substantial number of Greve's letters and postcards to Wolfskehl have recently surfaced
in the Deutsche Literaturarchiv in Marbach where they had slumbered
amongst other unprocessed possessions for some time. These documents
provide invaluable information about Greve's life and aspirations
for the period of December, 1901 to October, 1902, and even include
two photograph postcards depicting Greve in Gardone on the shores
of Lago di Garda in August, 1902. Two letters contain poems,
and the first of these is the earliest of Greve's known poetic expressions:
-
in late January, 1902, Greve asked Wolfskehl for his opinion about
some improvements he had made to Irrender Ritter, a copy of
which he included. This poem concludes the collection Wanderungen which
was published shortly afterwards in February. The few and minor discrepancies
in this manuscript have been noted in relation to the published version
which is presented here on p. 30.
-
in October, 1902, Greve was obviously in a crisis situation which
may not have been unrelated to the troubles reflected a few weeks
later in his correspondence with the director of the Insel-Verlag,
von Poellnitz. To Wolfskehl, Greve speaks
of shattered hopes which may destroy him,
and he hints darkly that he is leaving Germany in the near future. He expresses gratitude
to the Wolfskehls for their hospitality in Munich, and then introduces
a single quatrain with these words: "I must ask you again not
to inquire [about the reasons]. Instead, I will present you here
with a few very poor lines". These four "bad
lines" have been included in this edition on p. 38, following
the seven poems Greve had sent to Stefan George in August, 1902.
Wanderungen
This
collection of Greve's poetry was privately published in February
1902. It was printed by the famous Otto von Holten press, and
distributed through the Munich bookstore Littauer. Greve dedicated
it to "Dem Freunde und Gefährten Herman F. C. Kilian",
and as motto, he chose a line from Goethe's Iphigenie: "Vernimm,
ich bin aus Tantalos' Geschlecht."
The
copy extant in the University of Manitoba Archives was autographed
by Greve for Karl Vollmöller. The structure of the
arrangement resembles Grove's In Memoriam collection: there
is one poem as introduction, and one as conclusion. Under several
collective titles, the poems are often untitled and numbered, suggesting
a preference for thematic cycles.
In
an introductory sonnet called Frage, the poet anxiously wonders
about the nature of his creative abilities. Five sections follow,
which are entitled Cäsarische Zeit, Wanderungen, Tagszeiten, Aus
hohen Bergen, and Lieder des Dankes und Gedenkens. The initial poem and Cäsarische Zeit exude a typical,
George-like atmosphere: there is the master, seen as a high priest;
there are the disciples; there is the object of adoration, Art, and
there is the elite of artists in haughty opposition to the "stupid
masses". The typical settings are temples, precious marble halls,
purple velvet and silken thrones.
The
five poems in the section Wanderungen depict Greve as a restless,
gifted artist in search of his special destiny. The Tagszeiten deal
symbolically with morning, noon and night themes, while Aus hohen
Bergen contains two neo-romantic legends charged with supernatural
elements.
In Lieder
des Dankes und Gedenkens, the author acknowledges more contemporary
influences, in particular the "masters": the poet Stefan
George, the philosopher Nietzsche, the painter Böcklin and
the composer Beethoven. Individual poems are only devoted to Nietzsche
and Böcklin. Antiquity is represented in the two statues of Herakles
Farnese and Athena Lemnia. Finally, women are honoured
in a context of noble renunciation, which is also expressed
in the medieval setting of the concluding poem Irrender Ritter.
Formally
and thematically, this collection reflects the emulation of the George
circle, and fashionable aspects of Nietzsche and Goethe. Otto Bierbaum,
who reviewed it in the Insel, saw it as a fairly tasteless
imitation, and used the occasion to harangue against "das leere
Aesthetentum" in general. Greve published a self-review
in April 1902, in which he modestly judged three of the twenty-three
poems "good", six "good average", and thirteen
not so good. He cites the central
poem (WA 14) of the section Wanderungen in its entirety, presumably
considering it one of his three successful realizations. Two years
later, Greve judged himself more harshly. On the eve of his release
from prison, he announced in a letter to O. A. H. Schmitz that he
had destroyed all remaining copies of his collection, and that he
hoped that it could now be forgotten, if not forgiven: "Meine
Gedichte, deren noch übrige Exemplare ich habe einstampfen lassen,
werden nun hoffentlich, wenn nicht verziehen, so doch vergessen werden."
Else
von Freytag-Loringhoven's opinion of Greve's poems Wanderungen some
twenty years after their publication is as revealing as it is accurate:
she aptly identifies its main characteristic as "utter artificiality",
and links it to the Stefan George circle Greve had tried to impress: "His
poems were as well cut gems of language juggling without blood-call
- but the call of an ambitious, industrious spirit... The most impressive
part about this kind of poetry is paper, print and numbered privacy.
It stood for the top-notch of culture."
Poems in the Stefan George Archiv
There
are seven manuscript poems by Greve in the Stefan George Archiv in
Stuttgart, and Greve's correspondence with Wolfskehl allows to reconstruct
their precise genesis in mid-1902. There are also five letters by
Greve to Stefan George, and three to Friedrich Gundolf extant, but although they throw
a revealing light on Greve's manic activities during the summer and
fall of 1902, they are not pertinent
to his poems.
On
August 18, 1902 Greve voiced keen interest in placing some poems
in in Blätter für die Kunst. Another letter to Wolfskehl
reveals that they were written on August 23, and an empty envelope
in George's papers indicates that they were mailed on August 27,
1902. However, George found
Greve's submission insufficient for an introduction in the Blätter, and consequently, they
were never published. George's verdict must be taken as a qualitative
judgement, since many other "Einführungsbeiträge" were
even shorter than Greve's seven poems. It is also possible that Greve's
unsavory conduct prevented their publication: as early as February,
1902 Wolfskehl had warned Gundolf of Greve's alarming escapades ("Münchhausiaden"),
and wondered if he was quite well.
Greve's
manuscript is written sideways, and has a title page which states
in two lines and in capital letters: GEDICHTE VON / FELIX PAUL GREVE.
Six poems are untitled, and they are, not surprisingly given the
chronological proximity, very similar in tone and atmosphere to poems
in the first three sections of Wanderungen. The second poem
is entitled Mona Lisa, and it is particularly reminiscent
of Athena Lemnia in the Antike section. In obvious
imitation of the "George-Mache", capitals for nouns are
avoided throughout, and curious dots are inserted instead of commas.
These particularities have been maintained in this edition. The title-page
and Mona Lisa can be seen in facsimile on p. 38b.
Fanny Essler poems
Seven
poems were published in 1904 and 1905 under the pseudonym Fanny Essler. In answer to legitimate
questions about how and why those poems would be included here as
Greve's, a somewhat lengthy digression is required. It must address
the choice of the pseudonym, the notable change in gender it implies,
the real-life woman behind it, the likely genesis of these Fanny
Essler poems, and the probability of shared authorship.
In
1905 and 1906, Greve published his two voluminous novels, both of which were based
on the life of Else Endell. She was his companion for about ten years,
and although it is unlikely that they were ever married legally, Greve referred to her
as his wife when she was still married to August Endell. They became attracted
to each other in the Fall of 1902. At Christmas, they were lovers, and in January, 1903
they eloped to Palermo, taking the distraught husband along as far
as Naples. In late May, 1903 Greve
went to Bonn, allegedly on a business matter. There he was arrested
upon his arrival, and jailed for defrauding his friend Kilian, to
whom he had dedicated his Wanderungen in February, 1902. Else
remained in Palermo for some time, travelled elsewhere in Italy,
and rejoined Greve in early June, 1904 in Cologne. She later became known
as the eccentric artist Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven of Greenwich
Village in the late teens and early twenties. Her autobiography, which
she composed after her return to Berlin between 1923 and 1926, provides
a mirror-image account of the events described in Greve's two novels.
This remarkable document also proves that Greve did not commit suicide
in 1909, as the Insel publisher Anton Kippenberg had rightly suspected
even then, that he emigrated instead
to the United States "via Canada", that he had her join
him in Kentucky in 1910, and that he left her there within a year
after their reunion.
Greve's
second novel, Maurermeister Ihles Haus, deals with her childhood
and adolescence, and is of lesser interest here. His first novel, Fanny
Eßler, however, describes her life in Berlin during the
1890s, and can be considered a roman-à-clef of the
George circle, several members of which Else knew intimately. Greve
himself appears as the elegant Friedrich Karl Reelen who is a friend
of Fanny's husband Eduard Barrel (Endell).
Marcus
Behmer remarked to Ernst Hardt in February 1907: "Fanny Essler is just wonderful...The
book is also cheeky as far as the other persons are concerned. And
it has not been read much? Strange, in spite of this beastly impertinence?!" Ernst Hardt had been
Else's lover, and appeared as Ehrhard Stein in the novel. Nearly three decades
later, Wolfskehl says the following about this novel, confirming
its lack of impact: "You know, there is a defamatory book by
this 'master of pseudo-identities', F. L. (sic!) Greve, of the early
times. In it, there are, next to many caricatures of the immediate
environment, mostly M[elchior] L[echter]'s, also relatively few respectless
allusions to the master's [Stefan George's] appearance. This pamphlet,
a voluminous affair, remained totally unknown, I do not have it anymore
myself; even its title, some woman's name, is escaping -- at least
momentarily -- my recollection." Else's opinion of this
novel was unfavourable as well, both at the time and twenty years
later. She judged Greve's style à la Flaubert "abrupt...,
dry and artificial, having no carrying power or convincing quality
of its own." She even started doubting Greve's artistic talent
because of it, but gave him credit for being a potential "business
genius" instead. Her aesthetic judgement,
applied here as to Greve's Wanderungen, earlier, proves to
be amazingly accurate from the vantage-point of a seventy-year distance.
In
an extremely informative letter to Gide in October 17, 1904, Greve indicated that
he was using the name of his fictional heroine as a pseudonym for
some poetry publications: "And now about me. I must work in
rather strange ways. I am not one person any more, I am three:
1. Monsieur Felix Paul Greve. 2. Madame Else Greve. 3. Madame Fanny Essler.
The latter, whose poems I shall send you shortly, and which are --
this is still a secret -- addressed to me, is a poet already well
regarded in some parts of Germany...".
This
amazing revelation is followed by another one, not less surprising:
Greve announces that he also intends to publish an anonymous autobiography
under the title of the pseudonym: "Jusqu'à présent
elle n'a publié que des vers. Mais moi, F. P. Greve, son patron et introducteur, prépare
la publication de deux romans qu'elle a écrit dans
la prison de Bonn sur Rhin...Personne ne se doute de cet état
des choses...l'un des romans de Mme Essler, qui paraîtra
sans nom d'auteur et que M. l'éditeur croit une autobiographie,
aura pour titre: Fanny Essler." Fanny Essler's poems were
actually published, but this second plan never materialized: Fanny
Eßler was kept as the title of Else's biography, Greve
was clearly presented as the author, and the genre was openly identified
as fiction.
Note
that the masculine gender is maintained for Fanny Essler in "un
poète (!) déjà assez consideré (!)",
that for his/her poems Greve is explicitly stated as the subject-matter,
and that further gender-confusion is introduced by "her" writing
two novels about her life in Bonn when it is well known that and
why Greve was there, while Else was in Italy!
With
the possible exception of the final instalment on March, 1905, the
seven Fanny Essler poems were printed before the novel. The first
two poems appeared on August 27, 1904; they were preceded by Greve's "Die
Hexe", and a piece of Browning's Kleon, and followed in the next
issue by his Meredith-article on September 3, 1904. The three Fanny Essler
poems, Ein Portrait: drei Sonette, are published six weeks
later on October 10, and finally, after an
interval of almost six months, the last two Fanny Essler poems are
printed on March 25, 1905. This picture of Greve's
manic productions confirms that he was not altogether lying when
he told Gide about an incredibly long list of achievements accomplished
in a few weeks in the summer of 1904!
By
some curious coincidence, essays by Ernst Hardt, August Endell, O.
A. H. Schmitz, Karl Vollmöller and Franz Blei are represented
in the same two Freistatt volumes as well. As Greve candidly
admits to Gide in his letter of October 17, 1904 (p.40), it is the
only journal available to him at that time. It ceased publication
with Heft 39 in September, 1905.
Die
Freistatt is described as an intellectual review of high standing,
and famous names like Ebner-Eschenbach, Liliencron, and Wedekind
are cited in evidence. It is curious to find that Friedrich Huch,
who was a prominent figure in Wolfskehl's salon, was one of the
editors precisely during the period of Greve's hyper-active manifestations, and one may speculate
that Greve was making good use of an old contact.
Why
the choice of the name Fanny Essler? It is possible that Greve was
deliberately confusing the reading public with the family name (which
also contains the first name Else): the famous Viennese dancer Fanny
Elssler (1810-1874 - note that Else was born in the year this woman
died!) was receiving much attention around that time for the publication
of various memoirs and biographies. It is certainly stunning to see
a lithograph (1840) of Fanny Elssler in action as frontispiece to
volume 4 of Broom, 1922, and further along Else von Freytag-Loringhoven's
only poem in this journal, "Circle", with an oblong, abstract
illustration. If this juxtaposition
is pure coincidence, it is a strange one indeed.
There
are further intertextual links which are pointing to the artistic
scene in Munich. Fanny Elssler's first name was Franziska, as was
Franziska "Fanny" von Reventlow's (1871-1918). Her unconventional
life and her affiliation with Wolfskehl's social centre of gravity
guarantee that both Greve and Else knew of her, and they may well
have known her personally as well. Her autobiographical novel Ellen
Olestjerne was published in 1903 (around this time, she was involved
with Wolfskehl's friend Klages), and her depiction of the Munich
boheme, ca. 1900-1905, appeared in 1913 as Herrn Dame's Aufzeichnungen.
She was, incidentally, born and raised in Husum, a reference to which
town appears in Fanny Essler's last two poems.
This
complex situation surrounding the choice of a title and identical
pseudonym may serve as further indication that Grove did later not
entirely relinquish old-standing habits -- in theory, at least --
such as adopting a variety of identities, masks, and roles. As mentioned
above, he toyed with the idea of of using an Andrew Rutherford pseudonym
around 1922 for his first book publication Over Prairie Trails,
and it also appears in the poetry Notebook in relation to
his unfinished novel Jane Atkinson. Given the biographical
connections with Greve's friend-turned-foe, Herman Kilian, his maternal Scottish
grandfather Rutherford, and his daughter's (and possibly, mother's)
first name Jane, the choice of this particular pseudonym is charged
with almost as many intricate and multilayered references as "Fanny
Essler" was in 1904/1905. It only lacks the dimension of another
person -- like Else -- partaking in these fireworks of brilliant
projections.
Seen
together, the seven Fanny Essler poems are carefully structured as
a triptych, like a medieval altar-piece: first, Fanny/Else bewails
in two untitled poems the absence of her lover (Greve) while alone
in the southern climes of "Tunis" during the Fall of 1903.
The absent lover is the focus of her adoration in the centre piece: Ein
Porträt: drei Sonette gives a timeless, static description
of his hands, eyes and mouth in the conventions of the Petrarchan
tradition. The impression of coldness and rigid control matches the
depiction of Greve as Friedrich Karl Reelen in the Fanny Essler novel,
and Else's factual account of him in her autobiography. The final
two untitled poems evoke a northern setting in much the same way
as the initial ones referred to southern surroundings: the only element
missing in an otherwise perfect winter day is her lover's presence.
The
flawless symmetry of these poems is only disturbed by the reversal
of biographical and chronological givens: the final, northern landscape
("Husum", and "der Friesen flachem Land" are
specific references) corresponds in fact to the Frisian island Föhr
where Else Endell longed for Greve before they became lovers
in Berlin around Christmas, 1902 and "eloped" to Italy
in January, 1903. The initial southern flank describes her loneliness
in Palermo (not Tunis) after he was unexpectedly jailed in
Bonn in May, 1903.
The
question of authorship of the Fanny Essler poems arises above and
beyond the intricate blending of narrative voice, gender, and biographical
facts: Else von Freytag-Loringhoven's papers in Maryland contain
several versions of a poem which is obviously a shortened replica
of the final, rondo-like Fanny Essler poem. Else's five versions
have titles like "Natur", "Naturbild", "Freude",
or simply "Du". All have seven stanzas, while the original
Fanny Essler poem has twelve. Eliminated are stanzas 5-9 which describe
the North Sea location. Next to most titles, one finds in compensation
these explicit references: "An F. P. G.", and: "Wyk
auf Föhr".
This
poem may be one of her earliest attempts at poetic expression, all
of which were inspired by her relationship with Greve. As Else describes
in her autobiography (p. 30), she first felt (apart from some childhood-efforts)
the imperative need to express herself poetically when she became
romantically obsessed with him in November, 1902, while she was at
Gmelin's sanatorium in Boldixum near Wyk auf Föhr: "About
this time...I made after an interval of years my first -- for an
amateur amazing (sic!) good poem for nature's necessity -- to express
love somehow." She next mentions turning
to poetry as an emotional outlet after having suddenly been left
behind by Greve in Palermo, in late May, 1903: "I had no thoughts
about the future other than to see Felix. That was only a year! I
was too gloriously in love! The true trouble was physical abstinence
- it was excruciatingly painful to me. I had to make poems again!" (p.
92). For the third and last time, she mentions using this therapeutic
strategy as an emotional soother when she is staying in Rome on her
way to meet Greve in Köln upon his release (in May, 1904): "I
again began to occupy myself with poetry in the usual half-hearted
fashion of the amateur, the only one then possible to me." (p.
195).
These
references to her poetic expressions and their source of inspiration
confirm that she did in fact create several poems between late 1902
and 1904, and that all of them revolved around her memorable experiences
with Greve in Wyk auf Föhr, Berlin, Palermo, and Rome -- most
of them were created in her lover's absence which tinges her passionate
attachment to him with a certain illusory quality.
This
evidence from Freytag-Loringhoven's autobiographical writings increases
the suspicion that Greve's claim to authorship of the Fanny Essler
poems is only partially valid. She explains with regard to his novels,
that he was mainly assuming polishing and marketing functions: "It
was my life and persons out of my life. He did the executive
part of the business, giving the thing the conventional shape and
dress" (p. 34). Greve had discouraged her from writing "a
story of my childhood -- from sheer ennui-urge of own inner occupation
-- interest that he himself promptly contradicted as a 'swelled head'
in ironical derision on account of my literary attempt that he regarded
shoulder-shruggingly contemptuous -- but with leniency, since he
could not hinder it in a sense of 'Let the child -- or silly female
-- have her play..." (p.105). That story of her childhood was,
of course, published as Greve's second novel Maurermeister Ihles
Haus.
In
analogy to the genesis of this publication and the Fanny Essler novel,
it is not unlikely that Greve appropriated more than Else's biographical
material in the case of the Fanny Essler poems as well. On the other
hand, accusing him of simply stealing from his companion would not
do him justice. The intertextual references to the Petrarchan canon,
for instance, and the formal accomplishment
of the Fanny Essler poetry cycle go far beyond a little polishing
and marketing, and they are the clear mark of Greve's remarkable
craftmanship and his vast cultural horizon (even at age 25!) -- two
elements which were comparatively limited in Else's case at the time.
The Fanny Essler poems must therefore be considered his as much as
hers, and the pseudonym is understood to include both Else and Greve.
Greve's poems in journals
Greve
is known to have published three individual poems between 1904 and
1907. It is likely that more are awaiting discovery, but at present,
these are the only ones in evidence.
Die
Hexe appeared in the same volume of Freistatt 6 (1904)
in which the first two Fanny Essler poems were published -- it
even preceded them by two months. With its supernatural elements,
it is still attuned to Greve's neo-romantic poetry of 1902, and
bears a remarkable resemblance to Grove's "Dies ist der Wald..." (MP
2).
As
discussed in the context of Grove's German poetry, Erster Sturm was
published in Die Schaubühne in 1907. Grove probably wrote
down his manuscript version of "Die Dünen fliegen auf..." (MP
1) in the late twenties, and he translated it as The Dying Year (MP
9). This poem depicts an allegorical Fall whose approach is announced
in a medieval setting by a hurricane-like messenger who urges the
masses to submit themselves to his master's irrevocable passing.
The Fall is a symbolic representation of time. Like Die Hexe of
1904, Erster Sturm (1907) still reflects thematically and
stylistically the poems of Greve's pre-prison period, as do all six
of Grove's German poems.
Else
von Freytag-Loringhoven's poem "Schalk" is a combination
of Greve's "Erster Sturm" and the central Fanny Essler
sonnets. In it, Else squares a bitter account with her lover's cruel
abandonment in Kentucky, ca. 1911/1912.. At the top of most variants
she specifies as location "Sparta, Kentucky, am Eagle Creek",
and at the bottom of the particular version depicted here in facsimile
on p. 49b, she states: "Der Herbst ist -- als Bild --
ein Porträt Felix Paul Greves".
Die
Stadt am Strande was published in 1907 in the same volume of Die
Schaubühne as Erster Sturm. Apart from the beautifully
simple Fanny Essler poems, it represents a departure from Greve's
other poetry. It displays a less precious stance, and contains
fewer supernatural elements. It differs also formally from the
usual iambic metre by the choice of the stately pentameter. Significantly, the title
specifies "Im Ton eines großen Franzosen" -- in
other words, this is yet another imitation, and one pointing to
a symbolist model, presumably Baudelaire.
It
is worthwhile noting that during the time of "Die Hexe" and
the Fanny Essler poems, Greve and Else lived in voluntary exile in
Wollerau, Switzerland, and Paris-Plage, in Northern France. The remarkable
concentration of Greve's publications in Freistatt at this
time is explained by the fact that, as he openly admits to Gide,
it is the only journal available to him then. In 1907, Greve and Else
lived in Berlin, and Die Schaubühne, not only contains
these two poems by Greve, but also, for instance, a fragment of Gide's Saul. It was edited there by
the theatre-critic Siegfried Jacobsohn. Greve invited him to an opulent "wedding"-lunch
in December, 1906, along with O. A. H. Schmitz, so, although details
are escaping present knowledge, personal acquaintance is attested.
Jacobsohn is known to have been a faithful admirer of the progressive
theatre director Max Reinhardt who founded the Kleine Theater in
1902 -- this is where Greve announced to Gundolf that four plays by Oscar
Wilde in his translation would be staged in October, 1902. The journal
was founded in September, 1905, and its publication was handled first
by Oesterheld, then Reiss publishers until 1912; both also were responsible
for several of Greve's translations.
Comparison of Greve's and Grove's poetry
The
thematic and stylistic characteristics of the l'art pour l'art poetry
popular in Germany during the first decade of this century are pervasively
manifest in Greve's poetry, as well as in Grove's six German poems.
However, Greve's last poem of 1907, "Die Stadt am Strande",
already announces a certain new sobriety. This is indicative of a
trend which will become a predominant feature of Grove's poetry.
The differences between Greve's Erster Sturm and Grove's equivalent "Die
Dünen fliegen auf..." (MP 1) reveal a deliberate attempt
at neutralizing overly precious elements, such as an abundance of
colour adjectives, or the twisted syntax of preposited genitives. Grove's English translations
of his German poems further emphasize the shift towards a realistic
ideal of art. This is most noticeable in Arctic Woods, where
a supernatural setting is cleverly transformed into a Canadian winter
landscape with a minimum of formal adjustments.
All
poems in Miscellaneous Poems exude an atmosphere and style
similar to Greve's poetry, and it is probably not by coincidence
that three of Grove's German poems are found among them. Some of
Grove's poems in In Memoriam are also reminiscent of Greve's
former decadent preoccupation: At Sea (IM 16), The Rebel's
Confession (IM 4), and The Eagles (IM 29) may serve as
examples for personal expressions of it; while the legends (IM 12,
30; NB 29/MP 11) and Konrad (NB 35) are evidence for a revealing
genre preference which corresponds with similar epic narratives in
Greve's Wanderungen. But apart from these and some other remnants
of youthful poetic endeavours, Grove's poetry tends to be grave,
stately, and didactic, and revolves around ontological themes. The
tone is often bitter, at times cynical, and betrays rather somber
views of existence and world order.
Greve's
poetry reflects the Dionysian aspects of Nietzsche's dichotomy in Die
Geburt der Tragödie which was well known to him, whereas Grove's poems
represent the Apollonian side which is more attuned to his life-long
admiration for Goethe. The different treatment
of the Fall theme in Greve's Erster Sturm and Grove's Indian
Summer illustrates the Nietzschean polarity in exemplary fashion.
To some extent, it simply corresponds to different stages of individual
maturity.
Wolfskehl,
whom Greve courted during 1901/2, represents the most expansive element
of the Dionysian type in the George circle around that time. In general,
any excess was frowned upon by "the master", Stefan George,
so that Oscar Wilde, for instance, did not measure up to the ideals
of "Zucht" as prescribed and practiced
in the circle, whereas his l'art pour l'art position was accepted
as germane. As the fragments of Greve's biography demonstrate, he
was far from subjecting himself to any self-imposed moderation. In fact, he identified
himself with Oscar Wilde with such a passion that he repeated even
his idol's prison sentence (though for different reasons). As Else
von Freytag-Loringhoven remarks about Greve's next role-model Flaubert
whom he seems to have adopted while in prison, Greve did not only esteem his
idols of art or style, he tried to be like them for better
or worse, in literature and in life.
The
topos of lies, masks, and "as if"-identities plays a central
role in Greve's life and works, but traces of it can be observed
in Grove's biographical and literary projections as well. They are
mostly rooted in Greve's intense preoccupation with Wilde, but they are not less
commonly encountered in Nietzsche. Also, the artful (or repressive)
omissions or transformations in Goethe's memoirs Dichtung und
Wahrheit served as an acknowledged pattern for Grove's autobiographical
novels.
While
overall, both the content and the tone differ considerably, the form
in Greve's and Grove's German and English poetry remains constant,
and reveals the clear imprint of the "George-Mache": besides
the occasional sonnet, quatrains are the reigning form. The verse tends to employ
the iambic metre, and to enclose syntactically relevant units. The
rhyme usually coincides with full words like verbs and nouns. Enjambements
and rhymed particles, as often found in Hofmannsthal and Rilke, were
considered undesirable by the "master", and they were scrupulously
avoided by Greve and Grove as well.
Especially
in comparison with Greve's companion of a decade, Else von Freytag-Loringhoven,
who became involved in avant-garde movements of her time with impressive
flexibility in her middle years, Grove remained permanently grounded
in the aesthetic conditioning he absorbed as a young man around 1900.
There is no reflection of expressionism in any of Grove's works,
whereas Else experimented readily with expressionist and dadaist
techniques, both of which she applied very successfully in the late
1910s and early 1920s. It is also revealing
that only scant traces of humour can be detected anywhere in Grove's
poetry. In contrast, Else created
several hilarious parodies of her personal experiences.
There
is much food for thought in this comparison, since it seems to
suggest that an exaggerated concern for perfect form is detrimental
to the expression of powerful, primary emotion. Observing how Grove
attempted to cope with the loss of his only child through formal
abstraction in some of the Dirge poems confirms his never-wavering
dependency on the "George-Mache" once again: it matches particularly
the concept of "pathetische Distanz", or a deliberate distancing
from pathos, which Adorno coined in relation to the George circle. It refers to an intellectual,
moderating attitude which aims at typical representation through
formal control -- precisely at the expense of realistic detail and
emotion.
The
thematic canon of the Stefan George circle revolves around nature,
culture, man, Eros, and includes to a lesser extent critical views
on civilization. Neo-romantic and symbolist
motifs in the guise of medieval, exotic, or sacral allusions are
favoured, and myths, dreams, and supernatural elements occur frequently
as well, as do dedications to "great men". Greve's poems
adhere to all of these themes, with the possible exception of the
last one, "Die Stadt am Strande", 1907. But precisely the
neglected element of "Zeitkritik" breaks through with a
vengeance in Grove's poetry, and it situates Grove's original background
in a context much larger than that of the George circle.
The
underlying philosophical premises in Grove's poetry are indebted
to Nietzschean and neo-Kantian positions current at the time of Greve's
upbringing. They are marked by a blend of "Lebensphilosophie" (as
already announced in Goethe), nihilism (prepared by Kierkegaard),
a strong sense of relativity (most influentially popularized by the
physicist Ernst Mach), and the concurrent loss
of a well-centred sense of self which had formerly been provided
through religion. Depth psychology, discovered
by Freud and further propagated by Adler and Jung with different
emphasis, also had an enormous impact on Greve's generation. Cultural
pessimism was rampant, and it was expounded in vast panoramas of
decadence, applying an organic "life"-principle -- reminiscent
of Goethe's holistic concerns -- on a large (cultures) as well as
a small scale (individuals). Language skepticism (Fritz Mauthner)
was also a prominent concern for German speaking philosophers and
authors of the time, so that there is much discussion of a "language
crisis" to this day. Now nearly forgotten,
Simmel and Klages were influential thinkers at the time. They had
close connections with the George circle, and Greve was in personal
contact with Klages. The neo-Kantian Simmel
is known for his semiotic analysis of money, and Klages, mainly influenced
by Nietzsche, endeavoured to define character types and to develop
graphology.
Grove's
critical essays reveal the clear imprint of these trends. They bear
titles like "Of the Interpretation of Life" (or History,
Civilization, Science), emulating classical title-conventions
as well as Nietzsche's in Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen,
and a host of imitations thereof. A very striking similarity exists
between Grove's essays and Vaihinger's Die Philosophie des Als
Ob (1911, composed more than two decades earlier): both authors
consider the "laws" distilled for the humanities and even
the "natural laws" of the sciences as useful fictions devoid
of inherent truth, and as temporary, strictly pragmatic means of
orientation for the contemporary, rather confused individual. The
wide-spread dictum "ignoramus, ignorabimus" crystallized these essentially
skeptical opinions of an era, and Grove, who liked to use this catch-phrase
verbatim, also reflects it in his
poetry.
In
his youth, Greve believed that he had could find all essential answers
in Nietzsche and kindred masters. The mature Grove is certain of
one thing only: that the accumulation of man's knowledge and the
fireworks of technological progress do not and cannot explain the
essential secrets of life. They will remain a mystery for ever. There
is only one certainty: we are born, we live, and we die (see Questions
reasked, IM 7). This ultimate message remains constant in Grove's
essays and poems, and contrasts with Greve's expressions of Promethean
or Faustian delusions of grandeur.
Some editorial observations:
Source situation summarized
For
Greve's poetry, the source situation is straightforward. With rare
exceptions, there is only one version to contend with. In contrast,
Grove's poems often exist in as many as four or five parallel versions. To facilitate the location
of various sources, a tabular overview has been given in addition
to the synopsis of Grove's English poetry.
The
typescript Poems: In Memoriam Phyllis May Grove has been used
as the basis for Grove's poetry in this edition. It is by definition
younger than the 39 manuscripts recorded in the Notebook from
where they were transcribed. The main reason for this decision is
that the typed collection provides the most comprehensive and authoritative
text of all available sources, while the various other clusters reflect
only a fraction of these 62 poems. Both Selections and From
the Dirge were presumably derived from the In Memoriam typescript
shortly after its completion around 1931/1932.
Grove
made very few manuscript corrections to this typescript, which confirms
the distinct impression that it was ready for imminent publication.
Grove's alterations have been registered in footnotes which also
cover differences detected in earlier (Notebook) or satellite
selections (Canadian Forum and Selections). The large
majority of comparative differences anywhere concern small discrepancies
in punctuation. Unless they alter the expressive content in a significant
way, they have not been described in too much detail.
Closest
to Greve's poetry up to 1907 are the poems in Miscellaneous Poems which
contain significantly three or half of Grove's German manuscripts.
The remaining English poems betray both thematically and stylistically
very early models, but their obviously unfinished status and the
absence of explicit references to the time, occasion, and purpose
of their existence does not allow any judgement whatsoever. Like
Grove's poems marked "rejected" in the Notebook, and
the narrative fragments extant in that source, they have been regrouped
in the category of "unique poems" towards the end of the
corpus. In a way, this is a violation of the chronological principle
applied in this edition, but it is compensated by the fact that Grove's
translations are exceptionally included twice, once next to their
German originals in the centre, and again with other MP poems of
early creation, but uncertain composition date. Collective titles
like "Visions" indicate the intention of forming cycles
similar to those found in other sources. Notes, furthermore, point
to thematic or stylistic similarities in Greve's poems (for instance,
the allegorical treatment of Night, Dawn and Fall in Wanderungen,
or elsewhere).
Overall,
the In Memoriam poems seem at first impression quite different
from Greve's poetry, as far as thematic considerations and general
atmosphere are concerned. Yet they consistently adhere to the same
formal principles which Greve is known to have practiced around 1900.
A few of Grove's poem even continue Greve's old, individualistic
concerns, although Grove tended to cloak them in less flamboyant
modes of expression.
Underlining of titled
poems
The conventions of current
style manuals prescribe that poems, like articles, be referred to
in quotation marks. These rules have been observed in the bibliography,
but they have deliberately been ignored in the table of contents
and elsewhere for reasons of visual clarity. This is justified on
the grounds that the difference between untitled and titled poems
is virtually impossible without the typographical distinction adopted
here in a context which is largely or entirely restricted to poetry.
Therefore, titles of individual poems have been generally underlined,
while quotation marks have been reserved for the first few words
of untitled poems.
Dedications, mottos, dates
and geographical indications
Many
of the poems in Grove's cycle In Memoriam have dedications,
dates, or geographiclal locations, especially in the section Landscapes.
Often, these are stated more explicitly in Grove's Selections,
while they tend to be absent in the Notebook and are entirely
lacking in Canadian Forum. A separate list of poems with such
references has been compiled for the appendices, and it includes
specifications encountered in Greve's poetry as well..
The table of contents
In
addition to tabular listings of Grove's poetry either above or in
the appendices, most of the information concerning the complex, multi-layered
representations of poems related to the In Memoriam complex
is also reflected in the table of contents. Additional Notebook, Canadian
Forum, and Selections occurrences, singly or combined,
have been noted in abbreviated manner next to each of the poems concerned,
and also, wherever applicable, for sources pertaining to Greve's
situation. A brief indication of the structure of each poem has been
included as well: namely, the extent of stanzas and lines, but not
the metre (which in the majority of cases is the iambic pentameter),
has been listed. These indications allow the reader to judge the
length and form of any given poem at a glance. Since Greve/Grove's
poems are generally only represented once in the text, the notes
related to individual poems provide additional information about
the existence of additional sources and other particularities.
Appendices of secondary
sources
As
complements to the structural and chronological orientation provided
by the table of contents and tabular presentations in the introduction,
separate listings of secondary sources have been compiled in the
appendices. They particularly convey a good impression of a possible
genesis of the poems represented in the authoritative In Memoriam arrangement.
Seen in the light of the In Memoriam sequence, the Notebook poems
are highly erratic, the beginning and the end of From the Dirge selection
is deliberately "out of order" for structural and thematic
reasons, and Selections are a linear reflection to such an
extent that they did not warrant any separate In Memoriam listing
at all. In spite of this, Selections are believed to precede From
the Dirge, and may even have been selectively dismantled for
its formation and publication in April, 1932.
First line index, and
list of titled poems
An
index of first lines, or in reality first words, allows the retrieval
of any poem, whether titled or not, in one alphabetical sequence.
It also integrates collective titles, which means that a sequence
of usually untitled poems is regrouped under a unifying heading (as,
for instance, Greve's Tagszeiten [four poems], or Grove's The
Dirge [thirty-three poems]). The central column refers to the
titles of poems, including those which have a collective title, the
third column indicates the provenance and page reference to a given
poem's occurrence in this edition.
The
alphabetical list of titled poems also incorporates collective titles,
which, for reasons of visual distinction, are the only ones underlined
in this and the previously mentioned list. Note that a collective
title may sometimes regroup a cluster of titled poems (WA, Antike;
IM, Thoughts).
The word-concordance
Nouns
and adjectives occurring in the poems represented in this edition
have been consistently indexed, and interfiled in one alphabetical
sequence regardless of their German or English context. On occasion,
the language indication had to be specified, namely when the form
of a word was identical, but either the meaning or the word category
was different. Adverbs and prepositions have been indexed only in
exceptional cases, or whenever they seemed to have special emphasis
in a particular context. Titles, dedications, mottos and geographical
names, whether present in a poem or in its surroundings, have been
included as well.
