October 27, 2005

Romantics

When a l expressed an interest in Clara Schumann, whose life story I'm now reading, I recalled a small poem that I taught my students earlier this year. It was the week for poems about love, and I wanted to show them that restraint can sometimes reveal more than overblown emotions stamped in every line of a poem.

This was selected by man-with-excellent-taste-in-poetry, Garrison Keillor, for NPR's The Writer's Almanac. Unfortunately, the poem says nothing about Clara as a person, but about Clara and Brahms, a close friend of the Schumanns who was said to be Clara's love in her later years. It just reminds me how Clara Schumann isn't quite forgotten, even if she isn't famous. People will continue to discuss her marriage to Schumann, who was afflicted with insanity, or her alleged relationship with Brahms.

Here's to Clara Schumann then, for all the things she was. Wife, mother, lover, and musician.

Romantics: Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
by Lisel Mueller

The modern biographers worry
"how far it went," their tender friendship.
They wonder just what it means
when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
his guardian angel, beloved friend.
The modern biographers ask
the rude, irrelevant question
of our age, as if the event
of two bodies meshing together
establishes the degree of love,
forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone's eyes could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shimmer with the heat
of possibility. Each time I hear
the Intermezzi, sad
and lavish in their tenderness,
I imagine the two of them
sitting in a garden
among late-blooming roses
and dark cascades of leaves,
letting the landscape speak for them,
leaving us nothing to overhear.

Posted by Monoceros at October 27, 2005 11:10 AM
Comments

simply beautiful...

i went to a chamber concert yesterday evening and there's a quintet by Brahms which he performed with Clara in it's earlier form --- when it was for two pianos... in her place was Leon Fleisher who did a remarkable job despite his dystonia.

Posted by: tiggie at October 27, 2005 12:04 PM

Momoceros,
What a beautiful post! and I loved the poem. Thank you!
by the way, I want to take lessons in argentine tango and read in your archives that were taking lessons and loved it. Is it hard to learn, I am very clumsy, but it just looks so beautiful....also, don't know if there are any lessons where I am in the southern US. Are you taking lessons in Singapore?
Seine

Posted by: seine at October 28, 2005 11:03 AM

I had the good fortune of hearing Lisel Mueller read this poem in Ann Arbor a few years back. . . this was in 2000 I think. She reads so plainly that the brilliance of her work can almost pass you by. . . confident and unassuming, like a good airplane pilot.

Posted by: andre at October 29, 2005 12:33 AM

Oh, lucky you, tiggie! Do you remember the title of the piece performed?

Seine, I'm glad you enjoyed the poem so. I enjoy putting up such beautiful lines too. I'll send an email your way soon about Argentine tango. I have heaps to say about it! And you should certainly take up lessons. Which state are you in? I'm sure we'll find you classes somewhere. Will write soon.

Andre, you lucky fellow! I had no idea Lisel Mueller visited Ann Arbor. Did you go to her reading having known her work previously? I have a collection of her poems, all brilliant stuff, as you say.

Posted by: monoceros at October 29, 2005 1:50 AM

what a quietly lovely poem, thank you for sharing it.

i'm reading Clara right now. =) i'm struggling a little, but i want to find out more.

Posted by: a l at October 31, 2005 5:44 AM

wow, a l, didn't realize you were that interested in Clara, but I'm glad you're reading the book. It's a little tough carrying on after several chapters of this kind of writing, but do keep at it if you can. I want to learn more about her life too, so I'm taking this slowly. =)

Posted by: monoceros at October 31, 2005 7:59 AM

Hi Monoceros,
I am in South Carolina... There seems to be a lot of tango groups in North Carolina but not in the South!!!:(
But it just looks so fun, the tango! Was it hard to learn the steps?
S.

Posted by: Seine at October 31, 2005 10:07 AM

it was Brahms Quintet in F minor. is there a mention of it in the book? i borrowed the book from the local library! i love the german flavourings... hope i can finish it before it is due back...

Posted by: tiggie at October 31, 2005 10:44 AM

I still haven't finished it yet! How about you?

Posted by: monoceros at November 7, 2005 9:40 AM