Peter Huchel: 120th Birthday on April 3, 2023
News02.04.2023
On April 3, 2023, Peter Huchel would have celebrated his 120th birthday.
Peter Huchel, born on April 3, 1903, in Groß-Lichterfelde near Berlin, died on April 30, 1981 in Staufen, is considered one of the most important German post-war poets. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Sinn und Form for many years but was forced to step back from this position for ideological reasons in 1962. He was subsequently allowed to leave the GDR after ongoing conflicts with the political regime.
»With Brecht, Benn, Bobrowski and Celan, Peter Huchel is one of a handful of essential post-war poets in the German language. A precise observer of natural phenomena, Huchel is above all a realist whose metaphors take us deep into the social and historical landscape, into zones of devastation and despair, the zero-hour of isolation. His world is devoid of illusion or sentimentality; there is no redemption, at most an exactitude that is itself a confirmation of what is human and real. ... Huchel surprises us as a fresh and startling voice for our own numbered days.« Iain Galbraith on These Numbered Days
Answer
Between two nights
comes brief day.
The farmyard remains.
And for us, a trap set
in the brake by the hunter.
Midday’s desolation.
It still warms the stone.
A chirp in the wind,
the burring of a guitar
down the hillside.
Fuse-wires
of withered leaves
glint on the wall.
Salt-white air.
Arrowheads of autumn,
the flight of cranes.
In bright boughs
the hour’s pulse subsides.
Spiders deploy
their rims and spokes,
the veils of dead brides.
—© Shearsman Books, 2019. Translations copyright © Martyn Crucefix, 2019