Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

Fünfzig Gedichte aus den Jahren 1934 bis 1940 (Fifty Poems from the Years 1934 to 1940) [SIGNED]

Strauss, Ludwig; Peter Freund (ed.)

Jerusalem: Peter Freund, 1941. First limited edition. Softcover. Signed Ludwig Strauß and numbered 160/200 on title page. 20 leaves. Original red half cloth library tape over textured burgundy stiff wraps with framed black lettering on cream label of cover.

"This edition, as long as a publication of an extensive collection of my poetry is impossible, is meant to preserve and distribute my poems of the last seven years. For that reason everything already published was disregarded, particularly those poems which were published in my books 'Land Israel' and 'Kleine Nachtwachen,' the private Hamburg edition 'Neue Verse' and those published in the Schocken Verlag Almanachs. Ben Schemen, January 1941." (Ludwig Strauss, title page). Text in German. Wraps with light wear along edges and a half an inch sunned stripe along red library tape of spine on front cover. Block lightly age-toned. Overall in good+ to very good condition. g+ to vg. Item #48407

The poems were written after Strauss' departure from Germany, settling in Israel in 1934. Strauss embraces his fate and immerses himself into Jewish culture describing the nature of his new home with affection and respect, alluding to his cultural upbringing metaphorically while coalescing present and past, melancholically and grieving, despair at times, not without discrete cautioning of the danger at hand yet leading the way into the future. The poems are rendered in variant forms. Recommended: the essay by Na'ama Rokem from the Dibur issue 2, Spring 2016, Stanford University, "Form" - The Rhythms of Language Mixing: Ludwig Strauss's Notes for an Impossible German-Hebrew Hymn.

Sonnet From our issue:

"Schein weckt mich (The glow awakens me)
Um Mitternacht. (At midnight.)
Aus aufgerissenen Lidern (Wide-eyed)
Starr ich ins Funkeln des Messers, (I stare into the glare of the knife,)
Mit dem Wahrheit (While cutting)
Schneiden wird (The truth)
Aus meinem Fleisch (My flesh)
Mein Gott. (Turns into God.).

Price: $375.00