WEBVTT

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I'll close by reading you
three little translations

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from the great German comic
poet Christian Morgenstern.

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I don't read German and
that makes it a lot easier

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to translate.

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[LAUGHTER] I do these with an
Austrian lady Lore Segall, now,

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Laurie Groszmann when I first
met her and started working

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on this, I was
staying at Yaddo and I

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had translated a few of
these to amuse my daughter.

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And when I noticed that the
lady had a very heavy accent,

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I asked her, "do you
know Morgenstern?"

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And something
happened that I find

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happens with all people who have
German as their basic language,

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especially if they're of a
slightly older generation,

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you said and say, "do
you know Morgenstern?"

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The lights come on,
they tell you two,

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and they will have
them by heart.

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Everybody waited for these
poems to appear in the magazines

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and then they told them
at parties, to each other,

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they memorized them
and recited them.

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Everybody loved
Morgenstern, he would--

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the thing that we've had
that's closest to him

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is Lewis Carroll, but he
meant much more to them.

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I mean, he has the same sort
of insane perfection of form.

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You'll hear the lines
locking into place

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like a beautiful
piece of machinery.

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Only that nobody ever thought
of rhyming those words before.

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Sort of a Rube Goldberg
machine of poetry

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that it works with marvelous
perfection toward some utterly

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insane end.

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But he's also much spookier say
than Lewis Carroll, much more

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modern, he's like Lewis
Carroll married to T.S. Eliot,

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a strange marriage but
what other kind is there?

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In many ways, his greatest
creation is a character named

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Palmstrom, who is the
kindest, and most courteous,

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and sweetest, and most decent,
and humane, and sleepless,

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and neurotic of mortals.

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He-- at heart,
he's a petty clerk

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and you'll hear it coming out
in his language here and there,

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but he has the highest
aesthetic pretensions.

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As a matter of
fact, he's the man

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who built an olfactory organ
upon which his friend, Korf

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gives concerts.

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Unfortunately, it's not-- he
plays upon it the sneezewort

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sonata which blows poor
Palmstrom off the bench

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in the scherzo.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Palmstrom as I say,
though has you know,

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he's really in love
with everything artistic

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and idealized.

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And well, this is a little poem
meant to introduce you to him.

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It's just called "Palmstrom."

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"Palmstrom-- standing beside the
brook unfolds a handkerchief,

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white and red, on which
a mighty oak is shown,

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and someone with an open book.

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Blow his nose?

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He would not dare for he
belongs to that sort of man who

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are so often nakedly
stricken by beauty, unaware.

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What is only just out spread,
tenderly now, he has to close.

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No sensitive spirit will
condemn him marching on

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with unblown nose."

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[LAUGHTER]

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You know him?

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I told you that Palmstrom can't
sleep nights and he has many

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poems about the ingenious ways
that he has of entertaining

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himself and sort of passing
the terrible spooky nights.

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But there's also wonderful
poems about the ways

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in which he has to
bug himself so that he

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will wake up and be terrified.

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