Hermann Hesse wrote a novel, and included this poem by der Steppenwolf…
The Immortals
by Harry Haller, 1927
Ever reeking from the vales of earth
Ascends to us life’s fevered surge
Wealth’s excess, the rage of dearth
Smoke of death — meals on the gallow’s verge
Greed without end, imprisoned air
Murderers’ hands, usurers’ hands, hands of prayer
Exhales in foetid breath the human swarm
Whipped on by fear and lust, blood raw, blood warm
Breathing blessedness and savage heats
Eating itself and spewing what it eats
Hatching war and lovely art
Decking out with idiot craze
Bawdy houses while they blaze
Through the childish fair-time mart
Weltering to its own decay
In the glare of pleasure’s way
Rising for each newborn and then
Sinking for each to dust again.
But we above you evermore residing
In the ether’s star-translumined ice
Know not day nor night nor time’s dividing,
Wear nor age nor sex for our device.
All your sins and anguish self-affrighting
Your murders and lascivious delighting
Are to us but as a show
Like the suns that circling go
Changing not our day for night
As on your frenzied life we spy,
And refresh ourselves thereafter
With the stars in order fleeing.
Our breath is winter, in our sight
Fawns the dragon of the sky.
Cool and unchanging is our eternal being.
Cool and star-bright is our eternal laughter.
Basil Creighton’s 1929 English translation.
Basil Creighton dead, Translaor of German Authors
May 8, 1989
LONDON (AP) Basil Creighton, a novelist who was an outstanding translator of German authors, has died at the age of 103.
Creighton, who died on May 3, completed 34 translations between the two world wars, including ″Grand Hotel″ by Vicki Baum, ″Der Steppenwolf″ by Hermann Hesse, ″The Treasure of the Sierra Madre″ by B. Traven and ″Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters″ by Alma Mahler.
The Times of London said Creighton translated by reading directly from the German text to his wife, Frances, who ″struggled to keep up in copying the words down.″
Among his novels were ″Medner Hill Farm″ and ″The Leaden Cupid.″
Creighton worked for military intelligence during World War I, taking aerial photographs of German trenches.
My paean to Hesse, and Basil Creighton. We may imagine the music Mozart breathed; now but bits of ink on faded paper, defying silence forever.