ROSA LUXEMBURG
11
Wronke, July 20, 1917
... As
I was walking today, looking around and meditating, a
line of Goethe kept forcing itself into my mind:
aM
erlin the old, in his lumionus tomb,
Where I, a young man, spoke to him .
.. "
You know the lines that follow. The poem, naturally, has nothing
to do with what I was feeling or what was preoccupying me at the
time: it was the music of the words and the mysterious charm of the
poem that lulled me, bringing me calm. I don't know why it is that
every time I feel upset or shaken, a beautiful poem, and especially
Goethe, should act on me so profoundly. What I feel then is some–
thing almost physiological, as if with parched lips I were absorbing a
delicious drink that refreshed me inwardly, bringing my soul and body
back to health. I don't know the poem from the "East-West Divan"
that you quote in your last letter. I'd be glad if you would copy
it
for
me. And there is another small poem that is not in the little volume
of Goethe that I have here, and that I've been wanting for some time,
called "Blumengriiss." It is a little poem four or six lines long; I know
it through a melody of Wolf's that is wonderfully beautiful, especially
the end, which is something like this:
I gathered flowers, for you.
In a start of love
I pressed them a thousand times
To my heart.
Set to music, that has something so holy, so delicate, so chaste, it
is as if someone were kneeling in silent adoration. But I no longer
remember the words exactly and I would like to have them. . . .
Yours,
ROSA
Mid-November, 1917
My dearest Sonitschka,
I hope soon to have a way of getting this letter to you. It has
grieved me not to be able to write to you sooner, and I have missed
the beloved habit of talking with you, at least by letter, more than I
can say. But the few letters I had permission to write lowed to Hans
D.* who was waiting for them. And now, it is all over. The last two
letters I wrote to him were addressed to a dead man, and one has
already been sent back to me. I can still not believe that this has hap–
pened. But it is
bet~er
not to speak of it. I prefer to settle such things
within myself, and when people beat all around the bush to break the
• Doctor Hans Dieffenbach, one of Rosa Luxemburg's best friends, who fell
in the war.
Trans.
