Languageland
By Leo Cappel
()
About this ebook
Elisabeth Augustin, 1903-2001, poet in exile, and Holocaust survivor.
One of Elisabeth's poems begins with "why the, nightingale, were you give a voice, if you don't sing?"
She never stopped singing. Sometimes gentle, sometimes impassionately attacking any form of discrimination.
In her workroom, facing the garden, Elisabeth Augustin slowly fades away, a real life re-enactment of the prophetic last pages of her novel Labyrint. Only a few years earlier she still wrote poems, now she passes on in her sleep.
Daughter of a Jewish mother, she nevertheless was baptized a Catholic and grew up in a 'respectable' German environment, first near Berlin, later near Leipzig. So respectable in fact, that her father put a stop to her budding acting and movie career. The experience however, proved invaluable when writing for the stage, radio and films.
Elisabeth wrote her first play while still at primary school - her audience: her mother and the housekeeper. Poems and short stories followed, and her first novel was about to be published in 1933. It was not to be: Hitler came onto the scene and having Jewish ancestors became a crime. Her near idyllic life changed drastically. Elisabeth emigrated with her Swiss-born husband and two children to Amsterdam, Holland. Once she had translated her novel into Dutch, she quickly found a publisher again. Three more novels followed in rapid succession, all stark but passionate pleas against social injustice.
Her parents escaped from Germany in 1938, came to live in Amsterdam too, but in vain: her mother was killed in the gas chambers of the extermination camp Sobibor. These events have colored Elisabeth’s writing ever since and in particular her almost surreal fifth novel Labyrint.
The bibliography in one of her books - a collection of short stories, poems and a play - is no less than seven closely printed pages long! Impressive too is the list of awards and honors, culminating in the prestigious ‘Goethe Prize’ from Germany.
The two visits, each eight months long, to her daughter and son-in-law in Auckland gave further inspiration and insight that no matter where she lived, the essential thing was living ‘within her language’ - her true homeland
emigrated
from my land
from my language-land
thought land everywhere
language everywhere
mistake
but one land
my languageland
Read more from Leo Cappel
Papagenina's Flute Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLike a Guardian Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bloody Rosie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDine and Die Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Languageland
Related ebooks
The Exiles Return: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreaming Vienna Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEleanor Marx: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gentleman Jack: A biography of Anne Lister, Regency Landowner, Seducer and Secret Diarist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House: Plot Analysis and Characters: A Guide to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhile I Am Drawing Breath Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBaltic Belles: The Dedalus Book of Estonian Women's Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems by Isaac Rosenberg Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove and Marriage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNelka Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZina: A Selection from Her Poems and Photographs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poems of Anne Brontë Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blue Flower Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mill on the Floss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Suite Francaise - Behind the Story (A Book Companion) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Poems of James Elroy Flecker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Doll's House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ready Reference Treatise: A Doll’s House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlight and Metamorphosis: Poems: A Bilingual Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected New Poems Rainer Maria Rilke Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Simple Story: 'Never perplex her mind with an idea that may disturb but cannot reform'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Murray's Run: Songs & Lyrics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSnow Drifts I Sing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Outcast and The Rite: Stories of Landscape and Fear, 1925-38 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove in the Blitz: The Long-Lost Letters of a Brilliant Young Woman to Her Beloved on the Front Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sutzkever Essential Prose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Weary Blues Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Languageland
0 ratings0 reviews