-A Day in the Park

von am 28. Februar 2021 um 13:25
Veröffentlicht in: Text

A Day in the Park

There had been nothing, eventful in my life. Just school and then college. I had been an average student. Not bad to look at. Not that my looks were extraordinary. Of course there had been dreams. Romantic dreams. The kind that girls have. Then the day came when nightmare became reality.

I walked home from classes through the park as I always did. It was autumn and a bit chilly. Grey weather. The trees had been stripped of most of their leaves. They lay in piles on the ground like broken crust. A dismal day.

Suddenly I found myself in a grip. I couldn’t scream. My mouth was covered by a hand. I struggled but couldn’t free myself. I was in terror. I was dragged until there was nothing around me but bushes. If only I could scream, someone would come. Someone had to help me. It couldn’t happen. But 1 knew that no one and nothing could help. It would happen.

I was thrust down. I tried to defend myself with teeth, nails and knees. I was struck several times open-handed across the face. I gasped my breath in and tried to scream but something was roughly stuffed into my mouth. I felt my clothes being ripped.

I was burned open.

I saw red, then black.

When I came to, someone was leaning over me. I saw a handsome bearded face. Someone had come to help, but it was too late. I was ashamed. My clothes were torn. I tried to put them in order as best I could. My hands trembled so. He told me to lie there, that he would get help. I noticed that his clothes were disheveled. He must have fought with my assailant. But why hadn’t he come sooner? Why hadn’t he come soon enough to prevent it?

I told him not to go, not to leave me alone. He stayed and helped me up. My feet were unsteady, and it was hard for me to stand, but instead of holding me, he knelt down in front of me.

He asked me to forgive him. He started to sob. He was lower than an animal. Nothing could rectify what he had done. He said that I should spit on him. I could kick him if I wanted to.

I had been shattered inside, broken into small pieces. I was no longer afraid. What else could happen to me? I was too weak to do anything but lean on him. The creature that had raped me, I despised him. But what could I do? I didn’t have the strength to break away and run. We just remained in that ridiculous position: I with my torn dress and he groveling at my feet.

It was he who suggested that I report him to the police. But I was too weak to do so. He finally got up and put his arm around me to support me. Like, that we walked away. We left the lonely spot where it had happened. And we were among people again. The people who had mindlessly gone about doing what they were doing while it had happened. They were just as I had been
before I had been attacked.

When we saw a policeman, I expected the rapist to let go of me and run. But he remained at my side. We approached-the policeman. I didn’t know how to tell him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. The rapist came to my aid. He told the officer what had happened. The policeman looked at us in disbelief. He removed his cap and scratched his head. We must have been a sight, the two of us, rapist and raped, standing side by side. Rapist supporting raped. I, bruised with my dress ripped, he, his shirt ripped and red streaks where I had scratched him.
The rest was agony. The police station with the staring policemen. I was a corpse they were viewing. The unmentionable had happened to me, I had been successfully attacked in broad daylight. But the corpse was alive and I had to live with my shame.

There were the questions. The rapist was charged and placed in a cell.

The ambulance came and I was taken to the hospital, Then more of the same, except my inquisitors wore white instead of police uniforms. There were intimate questions and intimate examinations. The coal clean sheets. The top sheet lifted aside. The wound displayed for all to see. The wound handled and swabbed. Why hadn’t he killed me?

It went on, The discreet lawyer. The embarrassed visits of my family. My discharge from the hospital. The trial. My appearance on the witness stand and the horrible questions. Although my assailant pleaded guilty, they had to determine whether I had enticed my assailant and whether I enjoyed it or not. And more staring. The satisfaction. It had been me and not them. Then finally he was found guilty. The sentence was passed and it was over.

But now it had only started.

I was pregnant. Naturally I wanted to have an abortion. To have the trace of the shame removed. I begged and pleaded for it. But it was denied to me. They gave me consolation, but no abortion. I was told that it wasn’t allowed. They sent a priest and he confirmed it. I was to be brave. It was my sacred duty to bring the child into the world. I was to do God’s bidding.

I cried, lashed out threw myself onto the floor. They gathered me up and again placed me in a cool clean bed. I was forced to remain in it. I hoped that my pregnancy would be interrupted or that I would bear a stillborn child. But in spite of my wishes, after causing me great pain, the child was born.

What was I to do? They told me that I could have the child adopted. But it was mine and I decided to keep it. After all, it hadn’t had anything to do with the cause of its birth. It was only a child.

That’s when I began to get the letters. The return address was the penitentiary. They came from him. He begged for forgiveness. He inquired about the child. Continued to ask about it, His letters were not what one would have expected. Not uncultivated. At first I left them unanswered. Then coldly wrote of the horror I had experienced. Finally I gave him the information he requested.

My family and friends had changed toward me. They were kind all right – too kind. I was treated
solemnly. They never joked or laughed in my presence. In truth they wanted to avoid me as if I were a cripple. But his letters kept coming.

He asked me to visit him in prison. It took much persuasion before I went. But I did go on visitor’s day. He behaved differently than one would imagine. He was a rapist, a convict in prison. Yet seeing him there, it was hard to believe, but I know that it was true. When he asked me to come with the child, his child, I refused. But at my next visit, he asked me again. I hesitated, but did as he asked. I fulfilled his wish.

He was a model prisoner and it did not take long before he was paroled. I met him after he was released from prison. Always in the afternoon. And in a public place. My fears were unfounded. He never as much reached for my hand.

I wasn’t surprised when he asked me to marry him. He wanted to atone for what he had done. He promised to be a good husband and father. He said that he was happy to be the first man in my life.

 

– Herbert Kuhner

 

–Harry`s Film Impressions (35)

von am 16. Februar 2021 um 13:21
Veröffentlicht in: Film, Polemics

Christian Hoffmann Concerning Patricia Highsmith

Jenseits der Moral von Christian Hoffmann, Wiener Zeitung extra, Page 35
16/17 January, 2021

Christian Hoffmann, in his brilliant review, has brought my attention to an essential aspect of Patricia Highsmith’s novels. Her characters move in a bourgeois society, in which crime is an anomaly. They are ordinary people who decide to engage in the criminal act of murder.

In Strangers on a Train, a film version of a Highsmith novel, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951, two men meet on a train and converse. Both want their spouses to be done in and decide to murder each other’s wives. Thus each “murder participant” would deflect suspicion from himself.

Raymond Chandler was hired to do the script but withdrew. He was replaced by Czenzi Ormonde.

Apparently, Chandler could not fathom such a “murder situation. Here’s the rub! His characters move in run-down neighborhoods and are either black or white. Philip Marlowe, the private eye, may, indeed be a bit grey (due to being on the seedy side), but he is the “good guy” who tracks down the “bad guys,” who are pitch-black out-and-out gangsters.

Chandler’s literary world consists of the dingy offices of his private eyes and the hangouts and cheap eateries of his gangsters. His heroes are incorporated by such “tough guys” as Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd. Chandler’s film noir works live from the black and white atmosphere of his mostly Los Angles slum locations.

Add the fact that Chandler was a constant complainer. (When he had the ideal film duo of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia, he referred to Veronica as “Moronica.”)

The bourgeois world of Guy Haines and Bruno Anthony, the exchange-murderers, is one unfamiliar and incomprehensible to Chandler. Apparently he did not have a key to murder in suburbia.

In Purple Moon (Plein Soleil) directed by René Clement based The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom Ripley gets his comeuppance. However, Highsmith was “practical,” as far as this character was concerned. Perhaps she lets him get with murder in order to continue using him in future books.

Afterthought: Both Highsmith and Chandler were, in my view, skilled novelists, who like many of their American contemporaries, are located No-Man’s Land between literature and pulp fiction.

*Films featuring the Ladd-Lake duo: This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, Saigon, The Blue Dahlia

Patricia Highsmith

 

A Personal Encounter with Hitch

 

Carol and I were in both Quebec in 1952 while Alfred Hitchcock was shooting I Confess with Montgomery Clift and Ann Baxter. Although Carol and I were there at the same time, we had not yet met. Later she would tell me about her encounter with Hitchcock.

Hitchcock

Quebec is the most European city on the American continent and perhaps even in Europe.

As I film buff, I saw all of Hitchcock’s films, although I must say I was never really a fan.
I found the plots a bit on the banal side, although I had to admit certain sequences were well-filmed.

Hitchcock had trouble with Clift since he often insisted on having certain scenes explained instead of just doing what the director directed.

This irritated Hitchcock and inspired him to declare: “All actors are cattle!”

One night when we were together, Carole said that she had dinner Le Panache, she saw Hitchcock sitting at another table with what was obviously a film team. She could not help staring. Suddenly he placed his napkin on the table, got up and approached her and said: “Young lady, if you were as ugly as I am, people would stare at you.”

Guess the great director was not the nicest of men.

Quebec

 

Tom Ripley Dies and Lives

In Purple Noon magnificently directed by René Clément, Tom Ripley, magnifiucently played by Alan Delon, doesn’t get away with murder.

Patricia Highsmith was full of praise, save for the dénouement.

Clément didn’t have plans for sequels. Highsmith let Ripley live so that she could use him again and again.

René Clément

 

Forbidden Games

Refugees are fleeing on a country road in France. Luftwaffee fighter planes fly above. They strafe the refugees. Little Paulette’s parents are killed, and her little dog is hit. It trembles beside her. The dog is dying. It dies and a woman refugee throws it in a creek.

I hope that René Clément didn’t have this dog killed for this scene. Was cruelty engaged in to show the cruelty of the Nazis?

I had a dog as a boy. He died tragically.

As an octogenarian, I still mourn him.

I am secular, but I say:
“When things go red and then turn black,
and I hear barking, I’ll know there’s an Afterlife.”

– Herbert Kuhner

 

-THE ART OF BEING TOO JEWISH

von am 3. Februar 2021 um 11:04
Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Poetry

David B. Axelrod sent this text for Zwischenwelt way the hell back. It has recently been rejected by the same publication, and here are unpublished translations of poems by Axelrod in the original and in German translation. Axelrod proof read the English texts of Willy Verkauf-Verlon: Seiltänzer/Tightrope Walker. (Now available in Edition Tarantel, Vienna)

 

THE ART OF BEING TOO JEWISH

by David B. Axelrod

 

It was a very good summer for me in 1982. My career was taking off as a poet with a big New and Selected Poems just published and lots of performances. One prominent venue on Long Island, Guild Hall in fashionable East Hampton, scheduled me to perform and it was particularly gratifying as I would have so many friends and even some senior poets and mentors in the audience.

I had already lived on Long Island for a dozen years and the renowned poet, David Ignatow, had taken me under his wing. By then, he was in all the anthologies, as often for the poem about chasing a bagel! He’d won awards and grants, but to me he complained, “Never the Pulitzer.” Other senior poets presided in the Hamptons—like Michael Braude, Simon Perchik, Kenneth Koch, Phil Appleman, H. R.Hayes, Amrand Schwerner, Richard Elman, Stanley Moss, Frank O’Hara, Harvey Shapiro. Even John Hall Wheelock elderly as he was, was still actively writing.

Guild Hall was well-attended the night of my solo performance. I don’t call myself a performance poet, but I am known for my repartee between poems—even some jokes and “shtick” that liven up my presentations. I was particularly on the mark—or so I thought—that evening. Certainly, the audience laughed, and as is always the measure, the laughs were “on cue”—with me, not at me!

It ended with some gratifying applause but even before I could make my way off stage I saw a flange of three poets aiming at me at. It was Dave Ignatow, Michael Braude and Si Perchik rushing me from the back of the hall. They were visibly agitated. Reaching me, surrounding me, they said, all but in unison, “How could you do that?”#

“What did I do?” I asked, concerned I had crossed some unseen line of political correctness or propriety.

“You said all those Jewish things. You should never do that.” They were clearly horrified.

It had never occurred to me that would be an issue. The book had a little section of poems “For my Family” which even included a series of three poems for Jewish holidays. In the course of the reading I told a story about my Lithuanian Orthodox Jewish grandfather, Louis Axelrod, and even used a Yiddish accent. I read a poem about Hanukkah and my Russian grandfather Philip Kransberg and did a little shuckle that he used to do when he lit the menorah.

“It’s the kiss of death,” the threesome told me. Oh, how upset they were. How concerned I’d sunk myself. “Don’t you understand?” they berated me. You can’t ever get ahead if you are known as a Jewish poet.

Later, Dave Ignatow told me he really believed that folks like Untermeyer, a king maker in his days of his Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry, and Robert Lowell with his “Brahmins,” were the ones. “I’d have had the Pulitzer if not for being Jewish,” Ignatow said. (Louis Simpson, got one, but he converted!)

Not long after, I picked up Howard Nemerov at the Port Jefferson, Long Island train station and hosted him for a reading at an event I sponsored. At a private dinner with me after, at which he drank more than his share, he was talking freely so I asked him, was it so? Was it so dangerous to be publicly Jewish as a poet. “Oh yes, absolutely,” he said. “Look at me,” he said. “What do they call me? An ‘epigramist’?”
Well, what can I do? I have a cousin who is very assertive about his Jewishness. I’ve told him about anti-Semites I met over the years; folks who wouldn’t rent an apartment to me if they knew I was a Jew, or even let me stay in their motel.

“I’d have taken them by the collar and punched them in the face,” my cousin hollered.

“I told them I was Welsh and got the place I needed to stay,” I confessed. But I’m no self-hating Jew. I may not be at all religious but I grew up glad for my cultural roots and there is one thing I also know. Try as a Jew may, pretend, put on airs, deny… One day just one little “Oy” will creep out and it will all be over!
That’s why I figure I might as well shout it out, even at a fancy East Hampton performance.

 

         

Video by Fritz Kleibel Vienna 2008

 

 

David B. Axelrod

 

Lyrik/Poems
Deutsche Übersetzung von Herbert & Irmgard Kuhner

 

Sophistry

The only god I’ve ever worshipped
is the bell-shaped curve.

1.

Life is a series
of random events.

Random events
produce a probability curve.

Probability patterns
guide our lives.

2.

What guides our
lives is god.

Probability guides
our lives.

The bell-shaped
curve is god.

3.

A lack of god means
life is random.

Random events
produce a pattern.

A lack of god
creates a god.

 

Sophistik

Der einzige Gott, den ich je verehrte,
ist die Glockenkurve.

1.

Das Leben ist eine Reihe
von zufälligen Ereignissen.

Zufällige Ereignisse
produzieren eine Wahrscheinlichkeitskurve.

Zufällige Muster
dienen als Leitfaden des Lebens.

2.

Was unser Leben steuert,
ist Gott.

Zufälligkeit lenkt
unser Leben.

Die glockenförmige
Kurve ist Gott.

3.

Ein Mangel an Gott bedeutet,
daß das Leben zufällig ist.

Zufällige Ereignisse
produzieren ein Muster.

Ein Mangel an Gott
schafft einen Gott.

 

In Munich

(from a New York Times report)

Gunther von Hagens’ „Körperwelten“ vastly successful anatomical exhibition of preserved bodies, first opened in Munich in 2003

* * *

Plasticized corpses are on display in a museum.
“I must be doing something right,” their creator says,
injecting the bodies of volunteers with a solution
that hardens into statues. “200,000 people
have viewed my work in just one week.”
Art critics say it’s art.  Theologians argue
if it’s disrespectful.  No one mentions
how the murder of 6,000,000 souls
also became an art.

 

In München

(aus einem New York Times Bericht)

Plastifizierte Leichen werden in einem Museum ausgestellt.
„Ich habe sicher das Richtige getan“, sagt ihr Schöpfer.
Er injizierte den Körpern von Freiwilligen eine Lösung,
die so hart wird, daß Statuen entstehen. „200.000 Besucher
haben meine Arbeit in knapp einer Woche besichtigt.“
Kunstkritiker sagen, sie sei Kunst. Theologen sagen,
sie sei respektlos. Niemand erwähnt,
wie der Mord an 6.000.000 Seelen
auch Kunst wurde.

 

 

The Man Who Said “Maybe”

He said a European flight
from Macedonia took more time
going than returning
because the earth turned favorably.
Try to explain the world a single entity – earth
sky and sea – he’d
listen patiently.
Next time he’d mention
travel, his theory
of anti‑gravity
was there again
more steadfast than
Galileo’s pendulum.
If a helicopter
hovered over a city,
would the next city
come along eventually?“
“Maybe.”

 

Der Mann, der „Maybe“ sagte

Er sagte
ein Flug von Mazedonien nach Westen
dauert länger als umgekehrt,
weil sich die Erde
nur in einer Richtung dreht.
Versuche ich,
ihm die Welt als Einheit zu erklären ­–
Erde Himmel und Meer –
würde er mir geduldig zuhören.
Wenn er das nächste Mal
vom Reisen sprach,
war seine Theorie wieder da –
unerschütterlicher als
Galileis Pendel.
Wenn ein Hubschrauber
über einer Stadt schwebte,
würde dann irgendwann
die nächste Stadt schließlich
unter ihm erscheinen?
„Maybe“

 

 

 

 

David B. Axelrod was born in 1943 in Beverly, Massachusetts. He is a Volusia County Poet Laureate, appointed to serve for a total of 8 years (2015 to 2023). He lives in Daytona Beach, where he is also founder and director of the Creative Happiness Institute, Inc. (CHI), a not-for-profit, educational organization that offers literary and cultural programs to the public.

 

 

 

Edition Tarantel


Der Fließbandprinz
H. Kuhner

Willy Verkauf-Verlon: Seiltänzer /Tightrope Walker

 Bilingual poetry
Tarantel Verlag, Wien

Willy Verkauf-Verlon artist and poet had a peripatetic life
which took him from Austria to Britain, Israel
and back to Austria again.
The poems reflect his Jewish odyssey with incision and humor.
They accurately depict post-war Austria and the world in general
as viewed by a Jewish individualist and non-conformist.

 

Willy Verlauf, Künstler und Lyriker, hatte ein paripathetisches Leben,
das ihn von Österreich nach Großbritannien, von dort nach Israel
und wieder zurück nach Österreich brachte. Die Gedichte spiegeln
seine jüdische Odyssee mit schneidender Schärfe und Humor wider.
Sie zeigen das Österreich vor dem „Anschluss“,
in der Kriegszeit und in den Nachkriegsjahren aus der Sicht
eines jüdischen Individualisten und Nonkonformisten.

 

 

 

Herbert Kuhner

Der Fließbandprinz

Roman Edition Tarantel 2017
Prolog

Zwei Musiker

Wir sind beide Konzertgeiger. Aber unsere Methode ist verschieden. Er ist der Ernste. Ich bin der Lässige. Er übt Tag und Nacht. Ich führe den Bogen über die Saiten, wenn ich dazu Lust habe. Kein Schweiß ist mein Wahlspruch. Ich schöpfe den Rahm von oben ab.

 

Er tritt immer in einem paradiesisch geschneiderten Frack auf. Manchmal trage ich einen Frack, manchmal tut es auch ein Smoking. Ich benütze immer eine Variation, wie etwa einen Rollpulli oder eine Schuhbandschleife. Ich trete sogar in einem T-Shirt bei Konzerten auf. Das Publikum liebt das. Von ihm kann ich nicht das Gleiche sagen. Nicht, daß er kein Künstler wäre. Niemand kann auf die Art und Weise spielen wie er. Ich weiß, daß ich nicht halb so meisterlich bin wie er. Ich sage das nicht aus Bescheidenheit. Bescheidenheit ist nicht eine meiner Charaktereigenschaften. Aber eine Tatsache ist eine Tatsache. Ich brauche nicht stolz auf mein Spielen zu sein. Warum sollte ich? Es ist nicht notwendig.

 

Er spielt herrliche Konzerte. Aber sie enden immer in derselben Art und Weise: mit einem Knall und einem Durchfall. Das Publikum läßt ihn selten zu Ende spielen. Er wird gewöhnlich im Mittelteil unterbrochen. Er wird ausgepfiffen, niedergebrüllt und ausgelacht. Und man wirft Obst und Gemüse nach ihm. Die Belohnung für sein schönes Spiel ist ein Fußtritt. Und wenn ihm zufällig die Beendigung des Konzertes gewährt wird, jagt man ihn aus der Stadt, sobald es aus ist.

 

Und da er altert, wird es immer schwieriger für ihn, Engagements zu bekommen. Aber trotz allem liebt er sein Publikum und erklärt ihm seine Liebe. Ich verachte mein Publikum. Wenn ich auf der Bühne zu erscheinen geruhe und mir die Mühe mache, mein Instrument anzusetzen, hält es den Atem an vor Erwartung. Arme Narren! Ein bloßer Zupfer an den Saiten, und ich habe sie in meiner Hand. Ein Pizzicato genügt, um sie in Ekstase zu versetzen. Ich ziehe den Bogen über die Saiten, und sie werden in den Wahnsinn getrieben.

 

-Dancing2

von am 1. Februar 2021 um 14:17
Veröffentlicht in: Poetry, Translation

Dancing

 

You can’t dance on graves.
There are no graves,
no gravestones for flowers
or stones. No graves to kneel
in front of or stand next to.

That cemetery is boundless.
The dead are all interred on high.

No, there’s no dancing on graves.
There’s only dancing under graves.
And there’s no lack of dancers.
There are dancers galore!

 

Tanzen

 

Man kann auf diesen Gräbern nicht tanzen.
Es gibt keine Gräber, keine Grabsteine ​​
für Blumen oder Steine.
Man kann auch nicht davor
oder daneben knien oder stehen.

Dieser Friedhof ist grenzenlos.
Die Toten sind alle in den Lüften
beigesetzt.

Auf diesen Gräbern kann man nicht
tanzen. Man kann nur darunter tanzen.
Und es gibt jede Menge Tänzer.

Musical Accompaniment
The Second Time Around

 

Chor

 

Die Exilbibliothek
Reporter ohne Grenzen
Die Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft

 

Text

 

After all the suffering caused by robbery,
the murder of family members
and flight to foreign shores,
there was more in store.

 

– Herbert Kuhner

 

 

-“Fine People”

von am 20. Januar 2021 um 5:49
Veröffentlicht in: Polemics, Politics

 

During a Klu-Klux-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, August 11 to 12, 2017,
civil rights activist Heather Heyer was killed
when a Klu-Kluxer rammed his car into anti-fascist demonstrators.

Donald Trump comments:
“You had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

Why be “soft” on the “very fine” people on the far right?
You don’t want to chase sure-fire voters away, do you, Don?

On January 6th of this year some “very fine people” stormed
and took over the nation’s Capitol.
At who’s behest?

 

Ku Klux Klan Robe and Hood

 

 

Trump Defender Alan Dershowitz and the Unforgivable Sin

 

A.Dershowitz 2009

“Alan Dershowitz “(Joe) Paterno and I come from roughly the same generation.
We grew up during the period of McCarthyism, and my parents taught me,
as his parents may well have taught him, that the most unforgivable sin
is to „snitch“ on one’s friends and colleagues.”

Yeah, Alan, Keep it all under your hat!

 

 

 

– Herbert Kuhner