ModernGermanLiterature18801950

250 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

Gothic palace, shadowy as a spy intent on vengeance, growing as
it gropes, and with a woman pale and rigid at the window-pane
while the moon peeps round a high corner. In the prose visions
of Mit silberner Sichel(1917) Daubler unfolds his moon-magic, In
one section of this book - like Rilke in his 23rd Sonnet to Orpheus
(Part I) - Daubler uses flying as the complicated symbol of his
new mysticism: the goal of all dream and yearning is a star; this
shimmers in the empyrean of our deepest being; and the bark of
yearning, spun of moonbeams and with a magic haze for sail,
wings aloft to it; and thus beauty itself can be quite simply defined
as Enterdung (flight from the earth or reality), as Sternung (that
reaching for a star with no return which in Rilke's poem makes the
aviator the pattern of man self-perfected by selfless striving to
enskied angel). Daubler's other works have the same concatenation
of visions sprung from nai've equations dependent partly on the
meaning of words: Hywne an Italien (1916), Hesperian (1918), Treppe
%um Nordlicht (1920), Paan und Dithyramb us (1924). In Der sternhelk
Weg (1915) and Das Sternenkind (1916) the best of his lyric work
is gathered. His novel UAfricana (1928) is more attempt than
achievement.