Well, so how does one get the idea of writing in German? Someone like me?
Simply because I'm spending here - in this country, in your language - almost the “half of life”!
Remembering Hölderlin, though not “from the time of madness”… but years before!
Woe is me, where shall I find,
in winter, the flowers, and where
The sunshine,
shades of the earth?
The walls stand
Speechless and cold, in the wind
clattering weathervanes.
A Title: NEUE FARBENLEHRE (New color theory)
This modest literary work doesn't intend by any means to be related to the famous color theory [the dreamed-of “doctrine of life”, which the tall, highly renowned, ambivalent, stubborn, brilliant poet was so proud of, that he supposedly more highly appreciated than anything he “had done as a poet”, according to Eckermann, which however went next to at least partially miserably] – how could it? The color theory, you must 'practice' it, wanted the great Olympian, not just read.
I for myself will be happy guessing some people may take my “New Color Theory” in the hand - or put it on the screen - and read, even if only a few lines.
That the world of color is not a closed circle, as it seemed to him, is now something every child knows. Well, more or less. White or black are not equivalent in the East as in the West, green doesn't make us to feel the same as the children of the Prophet. And the rainbow gives us no physical riddle any more, at best and over again (childish) enchantment and a touch of longing for God knows what!
Fortunately it remains for poetry and our eyes the miracle of colors, hopefully long enough. I feel sorry for the dead people and their eternal darkness … which some day (or night?), damn it!, will also be ours.
Reading sample: Im wunderschönen Monat Mai