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114 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE Aber die ILiebe \ ist das Trube? What is best in the book reflects DehmePs passionate wooing of Hedwig Lachmann. 'Wie aus dem Schilf die Wasserfee\ he hails her, 'taucbest du winkend aus der Schar | der andern um uns %u mir her | mit deinem langen schwar^en Haar | und deinem fernen Augenpaar? She was another Jewess. In Eetrachtungen (Kultur und Rasse) he says of himself: 'Ich stamme aus durchweg blau- dugigen und uberwiegend blonden Familien und Hebe die dunkeln judischen Prawn. Ich finde bei keiner andern Art Weib so viel hellen Geist mit seelischer Glut verbunden.' HEDWIG LACHMAN (1870-1918) was a poet- ess of distinction; her original verse (Im Ttilde, 1902) does not rise beyond formal perfection, but this very quality makes her trans- lations of Rossetti, Swinburne, Poe, and Verlaine notable. Her poems Begegmng and Spa^iergang reflect her feelings for Dehmel: he and she are like two birches at the rim of the forest; gossamer threads bind one to the other. She remained good, and in 1900 married Gustav Landauer, who wrote Socialist books, and was murdered in the street in Munich in 1919 at the time of the Com- munist troubles. Hedwig Lachmann's resistance stirred the poet to his very depths. It was the period when, according to his diary, he stood on a bridge and was near committing suicide. He was tortured by dreams and hallucinations; organ notes surged within him, and oracular words; or on the roof of his room he would see Christ's face with the crown of thorns burning with electricity. He could only rid himself of his hallucinations by projecting them into verse, and to this morbid state we owe the loveliest poems of Aber die Uebe. How individual his technique became under the stress may be seen from one of these Hedwig lyrics, Ohnmacht: Doch als du dann gegangen^ da bat sich mein Verlangen gan^ aufgetan nach dir. Als sollt ich dicb verlienn^ schuttdte icb mit irren Fingern deine verschlossene Tur. Und durcb die Nacht der Scheiben, ob du nicbt witrdest bleiben, bettelten meine Augen; und du gingst binauf die Stufen und hast micb nicht gerufen, mich nicht yuruck an deimn