Dear CR:
 
In the article Rick linked to, Hesse cites the lines as coming from a Bavarian folk song about the death of Konig Ludwig.
 
Diana
 
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 02:09:39 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: In the mountains (was: Gerontion)
To: [log in to unmask]

Dear Listers,
 
There is an ironic, mystical dimension to the line "In the mountains, there you feel free" -- quite at variance with what it would mean to Marie -- which could not have been lost upon the poet.  In the past, saints and sages often retired to the mountains/forests in search of spiritual salvation.
 
In 'Ash-Wednesday', the poet speaks of a different life "between the rocks":
 
Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.
 
and again,
 
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
 
Regards,
 
CR


--- On Mon, 3/30/09, Rickard A. Parker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Diana Manister wrote:
>
> Dear Rick,
>
> How lovely, delicious and stealable those lines are! ...

You found me out Diana.  I'm a thief.  I found out about the song in an
essay about Eva Hesse's 1973 translation of "The Waste Land" into
German.  I didn't want to cite the article without having the time to
write about it a bit first.

See:
    Elizabeth Däumer: (Re)modernizing Eliot: Eva Hesse and Das Wüste Land
    In: The International Reception of T.S. Eliot, Hsg. Elizabeth Däumer
    and Shyamal Bagchee, London Continuum Press 2007

Däumer's essay is also online at Eva Hesses's website at URL
    http://home.arcor.de/eva.hesse/essay.htm

Two end notes in the essay of interest:

    15) In her chapter on the striking parallels between Countess Larisch’s
    My Past and The Waste Land, Hesse points to Marie Larisch as a ‘double’
    of the poem’s narrator who shared his homoerotic leanings (apparent in
    Marie’s erotic fixation on Kaiserin Sissy) and profound sense of guilt
    (Das Wüste Land: Eine Analyse 111-112). .  Hesse’s findings on the
    centrality of Marie Larisch to The Waste Land were also published in
    the Times Literary Supplement (21 June 1974, 671).

    21) Hesse foregrounded the presence of Marie Larisch by translating
    ‘In the mountains, there you feel free’ (‘Burial of the Dead’ CPP 37)
    as ‘Auf den Bergen wohnt die Freiheit’, the opening line from a Bavarian
    folk song prompted by the sudden death of König Ludwig in 1886, whose
    homosexuality and death by drowning make him a ghostly double of Jean
    Verdenal (Das Wüste Land: Eine Analyse, 109).  //Hesse speculates that
    Eliot knew about the song from his conversation with Marie Larisch--who
    was intimately connected with Ludwig’s cousin, Kaiserin Sissy--and
    integrated it into the opening lines of The Waste Land.//  ...

Däumer cites:

    Eva Hesse: T.S. Eliot und 'Das wüste Land'. Eine Analyse
    Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1973

Däumer's essay will be of interest to many on the TSE list because:

    It deals with poetry translation. Example: Hesse translated "April is
    the cruelest month" as "April benimmt das Herz" and Däumer explains why
    she retranslates this as "April stuns the heart."

    The translation is an attempt to get Hesse's own personal take on the
    poem across.

    Hesse deal with Larisch and Verdenal as central characters in TWL.

    An academic war is described.

    There is a bit on feminism too.

The essay is well worth a skim at least.

Regards,
    Rick Parker


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