Posthumous Journal – 1
John Hayes
October 16, 2006
fragments of memory
dreams and the light of fires
golden fabric
the sound of the ocean
Today I died.
It is difficult to describe where I am. In the diffuse fog of space differences are blurred and desires muted. The oddest part is that I am still here.
Not all in one piece – just in fragments of images and voice. One following another. Nothing connected to anything else. There isn’t any cause and effect at all. When I join fragments, it is just another fragment.
I am floating through something. I am not sure what. It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. But that is not too different then what was before, is it?
Before the Law
Yes, I humor the old doorkeeper. He thinks he is guarding the light, but the light is everywhere – he can’t do anything about that… But I humor him by making requests, asking for advice, and entreating him as if he were an important person. For without me, he has no occupation, he must close the door. I know that. But then what will he do? At his age? So I humor him.
When he falls asleep, which is often, then I enter. Once I got as far the as the third court. There is a magnificent library there which rises seven stories into the air and disappears into a stained glass vault that is a heaven unto itself. Along the sides of the vast circular library are ten great marble archways rising high and wide each lined with books.
As I sat staring at this, one of the King’s own family came up and gave me a small text. As she handed it to me she said, “If you read every book here, you would not find what you can find in this one text.”
I took this text with me and came back. It was everything she said it was. It was any book and all books, every book written and every book that would be written, and every book that could not be written. It was all that and more.
I will become rich and famous once these wonders and marvels are revealed I thought. But of course that didn’t happen. I was silenced. Sure I could write whatever I wanted but my gift came with a curse – prophesy all you want – no one will listen or comprehend. It was like writing on water.
It took me a long time to realize that, but now that I do there’s not much reason to stay around. It’s getting late in the day and I have an appointment in paradise. You’ll have to keep the doorkeeper amused in my absence. Get him intoxicated then you can slip past. Then once you’re out– well, it’s another world out there.
White Hotel
Erich Cohn
When I checked in late one autumn evening, I didn’t know I was the first guest the Hotel had seen in over forty years. The blond receptionist did not show any surprise as I stumbled, still a bit dazed, into the ornate baroque lobby.
“Beautiful,” I said staring all around me.
“Yes. My name is Michelle. Welcome to the White Hotel.”
“Can I have a room with a view of the ocean,” I asked
“All of our rooms have a view of the ocean,” she said smiling. “Do you need help with your luggage.”
“No thank you. I didn’t bring any.”
She smiled, “Of course. Here is your key. Room Nine is at the top of the stairs on the right. If you need anything just call.”
I entered the room and collapsed on the large antique white bed near the windows. I fell asleep listening to the sounds of the waves against the shore, and the cry of an owl.
Rooms? What rooms?
There are no rooms at this Hotel
Why did she say that?
You can’t remember can you?
It is not so bad being dead, she said. To think of a place is to be there. To desire an object is to have it instantly appear. Everything appears as you would like. The black rivers at your feet speak like ancient oracles. You will learn to love the corners of mirrors.
The ravens on the telephone line
The coyote that stared from the ravine
The wind blowing in circles
The smell of freshly turned soil
You can do a lot she said, but no one ever does. There is no one to impress. No one who needs anything from you. No one to give to. No one who wonders what you did or didn’t do. When people come here, they mostly just sleep.
You are mistaken
I came only to see the ocean
I want to feel the water against my skin
After a few days I’ll go back
I’ll only be staying a few days I told Michelle as I walked out to the water. She laughed,
“If you leave, take me with you.”
City of the Black Spider
Erich Cohn
You wake up in an empty apartment in an unknown city, wearing a black suit
with nothing in the pockets. It is late afternoon. A weak sun falls across the dusty floors and disappears in a dark corner. You look out the window at an old movie house across the street. The bells of a distant church toll over the faint sounds of traffic. Tough looking men are standing at the street corner smoking cigarettes, letting you know they’re waiting.
You take the back door and walk out into the night. At a seedy café, an old woman hands you a card. You turn it over in the dim street lamp: 87 Strasshofner. When you ring the doorbell some time later a disheveled man in an out-of-date suit opens the door and says sharply, “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” you answer. He opens the door, looks you over and lets you in. The front room is like a doctor’s waiting room only shabbier. The magazines on the end tables are dated 1939, which is two years from now. The room is empty except for the two of you. “I will let them know you have arrived,” he says and leaves.
You sit on a gray sofa that looks like a bad piece of taxidermy and wait. After twenty minutes you grow impatient and open the door across from the one you entered. There is a long hallway with rooms on either side. Each room has a number. There are 12 in all. You walk to the end of the hall and stop. There are no sounds from any of the rooms. A bare light bulb hangs in the hall. After a few minutes you notice a blue fog curling under the door of room number seven. You open the door and slowly walk in.
Two women in cocktail dresses are at a table drinking and talking. To the left is a small bar with a single bartender. You sit down at an empty table and a man brings you a tall glass filled with a dark liquid. You sip it slowly. After some time the women get up. One goes to the back of the room and the other comes to your table.
“I can help you,” she says.
“Can you?” you reply.
You go through another room of tables and out into an alley. A black roadster is waiting with a single driver in a trench coat. You get into the back seat and the car speeds off. You drive for hours. You sit very close to each other but say nothing. Through the window you can see the city flying past, then trees. The car slows down and comes to a stop in front of a large villa. As you and the young woman get out, the car drives off and disappears down the black road. You walk toward the house where a doorman escorts you to a ballroom. Several dozen people in evening clothes are gathered. A distinguished older man walks over and greets you.
“You have found him.”.
“Yes, he was where you said he would be father,” she replies.
“I am sorry to have brought you here under such circumstances,” he says, “But you know why such precautions are necessary.”
You smile. You don’t know why at all.
“For now enjoy yourself. My daughter will see to your needs.”
He hands you a drink and she takes your arm and escorts you to where couples are dancing.
“Do I know your father,” you ask.
“Probably not as he appears,” she answers.
As you dance you look out the bay windows and see that a full moon has risen. The woman whose name you still do not know nestles her head against your shoulder. “Don’t do that,” you say, but it is too late.
The warm notes of the saxophone expand like waves of sunlight and you lose all sense of place. You feel her lips against yours. Then the room is quiet. The city disappears and you are alone. In a different room, in a different dream you open your hands and a small black spider runs out and disappears between a crack in the floor. You walk over and pick up a letter someone has slid under the door.
“I’ll call you,”it says. It is unsigned and undated. You walk over and drop it on the desk next to dozens just like it.
Blue Photographs
Erich Cohn
There are blue photographs in a book you can only purchase at night from an old man who stands outside the closed doors of a battered, white monastery. You take the book home and show it to your wife who is unimpressed.
“It is very strange and full of death,” she says.
You start to explain to her what the pictures mean but lose her in the crowd of people who have slowly been filtering into your living room holding cocktail glasses and laughing to each other. You recognize your high school girlfriend who is sitting quietly by herself in a corner. She is beautiful. You walk over to talk to her and show her the book you have found. She wants you to take her to the monastery where you bought it. You would like to but don’t remember how you got there.
Then you find yourselves in the basement and start walking through a passageway that leads into a bare shrine room. It is very damp and musty like a crypt. You look at your girlfriend and want to tell her how much you love her but she is frozen pointing to an entryway across from you where a headless monk is standing quietly in front of deep maroon curtains.
“We can go back now,” you tell her.
She nods and you are back in the living room where the party continues. A thin Chinese man is tugging at your sleeve wanting to talk to you, but the party is too noisy to hear what he’s saying. Your girlfriend has left and your wife is gone too. A tanned young woman is starring at you from across the room. You walk toward her and slide your hands under her shirt and over her breasts. She jumps back because your fingers are as cold as ice.
“I’ve been downstairs,” you say by way of explanation.
She doesn’t seem to understand. You start to unbutton her skirt but she stops you. “There are too many people here,” she says. You look for somewhere to go and realize that it has gotten light outside and the images in the room are blurring. “I don’t want to leave now,” you tell her. She laughs, “You can’t do anything about that.” It’s true. The light pouring in from all sides is unstoppable.
Magnetic Circles
Erich Cohn
Everywhere there was the rushing sound of temple monkeys darting in and out of blue waterfalls. That was just before the stone walls collapsed, leaving young women defenseless in fields of thick bamboo. The postman was not due before 3 o’clock yet the streetcars were already circling past on their way to the circus. Rope ladders hung down from the attic windows where airline attendants were reading Japanese romances. Thin girls in tie-dyed t-shirts skated down the cobblestone streets handing out cards with holograms of the Buddha. They waved at the postman who has stopped to eat the tender blue artichokes growing in the stream beneath the sunken antique bridge.
She was still quite aloof even though office workers in burgundy suits had spent days trying to climb the translucent walls of glass. Debussy was walking the streets searching for carnival tickets ignoring the words of Indian teachers who rested calmly beneath the gray and blue traffic signs. Now that Jerusalem has once again fallen under the horizon, the flocks of dispersed songbirds will need new gardens. We can no longer depend on the prayers of dolphins to lead us to invisible cities, nor can the white girls chanting vodoun spells be counted on to pause for tea and biscuits when the public television station comes on. Still, if we only knew the size of Japanese pebbles necessary to create ponds for white chrysanthemums, we could send out for new windowpanes and shutters. Politicians are sending invitations to the funeral of the Sun. I am desperately in love, but can never find postage stamps when I need them.
The policemen are asleep now, but the children are careful not to untie their shoes. Dusk sweeps the city like a solemn river, and the rooftops resign themselves to an incomplete astrology. Boats depart for small towns upriver on the Amazon. I stay at the hotel desk registering guests ignoring what appears to be a hurricane coming in from the shore. Mexican soldiers play cards in the bar under the ceiling fan, while blue herons rest quietly in the thick green leaves of the mangrove trees. She steps out of the shower playing the flute. I notice all the windows are open and the monsoon rains are cleaning out the dusty corners of the empty Victorian ballrooms. I am writing postcards constantly, but there are still no stamps.
Sunday Afternoon
Erich Cohn
At the beginning there are trains, trains with boxcars of federal eagles, a barn on a hill with open doors, talk oaks bending into air, black crows that become girls in red dresses who step past you as you stumble up the stairs. You turn on the radio but the words run away. Mercury hovers above the traffic. Samurai bedecked with pearls glide past. You glance past the bank urns to see all points of the horizon converge at an immense dead tree. It follows you in a rusted, faceless car until you lose it in the dust. You arrive home to find everyone missing and begin to fast.
As the full moon rises surrounded by haze and conversations about prophecy and sinks into a dark oak, you begin to make lists of symbols, connecting the dots, until a blue heron flies past and snowflakes fall to the ground. A tunnel emerges. You walk slowly through the trees down to a silent pond where black bats dance in the dusk.
You attempt a clear explication, but so much sleep has fallen, so many years of sleep have fallen. In all this time books have become lines, lines words, and words just fragments of ghosts. On abandoned dirt roads, you build perfect houses. Afternoon becomes evening, shadows deepen, displaced spheres succumb to the weight of circles. The door opens. The first numbers are called.
White dove, silver moon, fever of desire. Trains rumble through the window, setting the clouds on fire. She makes an oblique reply, expressing regrets in quarter notes and long-stemmed scripts. We look across the room at the broken window and mentally try to put the pieces together. Everything passes into profound quintessence, which is taken as a foretaste of the afterlife.
The servant speaks softly, “The window. May I close it now?”
Just the Way You Left It
I thank everyone for the kind comments I have received on my recent ‘Winter’ series and my account of the ‘Lost Poets’. Recently while browsing my library, I came across this collection of seven short pieces by Erich Cohn that were published in the Surrealist journal Sturmvasser in Vienna in 1937. I have tentatively translated them into English and although more time would allow for a more polished presentation, in light of certain considerations, I decided to bring them to print quickly.
–Von Josti
Airplanes descend from the snow mountains of the South. I am walking along the beach looking for a path. There is a loud crash in the distance and the sound of chanting as if remote African tribes were camped just over the next dune. Once I reach the top I see the strewn pieces of glass and metal mixed with pages from unwritten books. There is a white schoolhouse with a young woman inside giving lessons to my grandparents. I would like to bring them the books from the airplane but the pages are all blowing in the wind now, blowing over the cliffs into the lake. Behind me blue ghosts flutter as I walk along the edge between the sand and the water, wind blowing in my face. If I could just reach the schoolhouse which hovers quietly in the distance, fading in and out amid sudden flurries of cold white snow, I would tell her: It’s all there–just the way you left it.
Lost Poets of the 20th Century
Von Josti
Through the auspices of Grunwald’s Antiquarian Books I was able with great difficulty to obtain a copy of Sonnentraumen, the rare German anthology published in 1937 by Rosenkranz which contains the collected works of the ill-fated circle surrounding the young widow Baronness Sophia.
Her spiritual and literary salon was well attended by many of the young academy graduates in Vienna, and some of their teachers as well. She herself was a spiritualist and preferred all things otherworldly to those of the senses. Her striking personality coupled with a certain gentleness and good humor inspired much serious verse. Berchold reports in his memoir Days in the Garden that “all were in love with her, and yet she moved like a spectre among them, thin and pale, absent even when she was present.”
Rosenkranz’s book contains the works of six of the poets in the group, friends and co-conspirators of Rosenkranz. Although they all share a preoccupation with the invisible, the specific standing each enjoyed in the twilight world varied considerably. Perhaps I would do well to introduce them.
Christina Else-Niesse (1904-1981) was born in Neisse, Silesia, the daughter of a Lutheran minister. She studied Art History and Classical Greek in Munich and Bratslavia. She moved to Vienna in 1931 where she made her living as a teacher and translator. Her shifting intimacies with several of the circle’s members and her role as the “White Princess” and leader of the group’s ill-fated festivals are now legendary. Her writing attempts a balance of the Apollonian and Dionysian elements, but despite certain concessions to restraint, the latter appears to predominate. Escaping Austria in 1938, she lived the remainder of her life in relative obscurity in Switzerland.
Friedrich Gustav Gedantz (1895-1936) was a history teacher at the academy . Son of Pietist parents, he was one of the oldest members of the group. His involvement in certain Gnostic circles and his scorn for organized religion was reflected in much of his work. His publication of some of the first German translations of certain heretical Christian writers in 1935 earned him the enmity of certain highly-placed clerics and provoked several threats on his life. Married with two daughters, he died mysteriously in a train accident shortly before the circle disbanded.
Erich Cohn (1897-1963) was born in Trieste of German-speaking parents. Cohn went to sea at 16 and served in the Austrian army in World War I, when he was wounded. After the war, he spent a number of years in France and then in Haiti. The reason for his presence in Vienna in the 1930’s isn’t quite clear, although it appears he may have had ties to various left-wing political groups. After the circle’s demise in the summer of 1937 he returned to Haiti, where he spent the remainder of his life. Famous early as a war poet, his later work reflects a more than casual involvement with the native Haitian religion.
Else Saint-John (1915-1944) was a native of Salzburg and student at the Athenian Academy there, Else was the youngest member of the circle. A surviving photograph of her shows a pale thin girl with a decidedly dreamy look. She was a student of divination and was popular as a spiritualistic medium. Her brooding, oracular poems were published in several small volumes now lost. She was killed in the allied bombing of Dresden.
Franz Bachman (1901-1973) studied Chinese at the University of Vienna and lived in China for a number of years. Returning to Austria in 1932, he lectured on Chinese and Buddhist Studies at various schools around Vienna. He was introduced to the circle by his former schoolmate Rosenkranz and participated in their activities including the notorious festivals until the group dispersed. He returned to China, and after the collapse of the Nationalist government in 1949, he emigrated to America where he continued to write and teach. Bachman was easily the most optimistic member of the group–his faith no doubt fortified by his long study of Eastern contemplative practices.
Albin Landauer (1911-1940) was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna and studied in at the University there. He was part of the Baronness’s circle when it first began to form in the early 1930’s. Although one of the youngest members of the group, he was perhaps the most gifted. A close friend of Else Saint-John, he went into hiding after the group’s demise and was active in the anti-Nazi resistance until his discovery and execution in February of 1940.
Concerning Rosenkranz himself there is decidedly less information. He is almost invisible as the editor of Sonnentraumen and only a little more revealed in the few pieces of his own work that survived, which consist mostly of philosophical aphorisms. Perhaps the most famous of these is his statement, “It is the text that explicates the dream, and the dream that explicates the text.”
Rosenkranz never claimed to have written anything himself but said that he merely transcribed and alphabetically organized aphorisms he had collected from conversations in various cafes and coffeehouses of Vienna. However, according to the historian Reinmetz, it was a common practice of Rosenkranz’s between 1937and 1938 to sit alone each evening in these smoke-filled cafes and write hurriedly in a blue notebook as if in a trance, totally oblivious to everyone around him.
Reinmetz further notes that Rosenkranz was one of those who indiscriminately studied everything: Greek religious cults, Chinese metaphysics, English alchemy, German romanticism, and Russian devotional texts, to name a few of his interests. His major literary achievement was the publication of Sonnentraumen. He also was believed to be responsible for furthering its translation into English and publication by Berkeley‘s Intertext in 1939. On this I must take Reinmetz’s word, for I myself have not been able to find any mention of this edition nor of Berkeley‘s Intertext in other works I have consulted.
The German edition of Sonnentraumen runs almost 200 pages, which is long for a book of poetry. When I first acquired the work, it was my intention to do a fresh English translation, but as I began my labors I ran into numerous obstacles. There were the normal difficulties of the translation itself. Although I am not without merit as a poet (my first book of poems having received kind notice by the Omaha Arts Bulletin and others) it was hard to do justice to the grace many of these poems have in the original German. Certain allusions are almost impossible to render, and the use of obscure and archaic words, unusual syntax, and the generally oracular and ambiguous tone of many of the works make the task even more difficult. Also, in German the poems have a certain incantational quality which is difficult to capture in English. Perhaps as Rosenkranz himself suggested, they should be read very late at night, preferably in an abandoned churchyard.
It was not the literary obstacles that ultimately prevented my efforts from reaching fruition, however. I found that the book had, shall we say, certain desires of its own. It took me some time to fully realize this. There were the dreams of course–not just my own, but those of my family, which began to be very upsetting. Then there was the waking up at night, the lights, the sounds of voices, footsteps and so forth. All of these events I ascribed merely to my somewhat overwrought imagination. More disturbing was the way the book would move from room to room in the house. Wherever I set it down the night before, it would certainly not be there in the morning.
One night I will not soon forget I woke up in a cold sweat about four in the morning. I had terrible dreams but on waking they dispersed so suddenly that I could not recall a single image. Through the bedroom window I could see the full autumn moon and the room itself was lit in a most unusual way. I got out of bed and went downstairs to the library to read. I read for perhaps an hour and then feeling tired went back upstairs. Just as I reached the landing, I heard a voice in German coming from my young son’s room. Startled, I slowly approached the room and looked in. My son was sitting up in bed with his eyes wide open. He was looking right at me, but I could tell he didn’t see me. Rather, he was looking past me at something else. I turned around but saw nothing. Then he started to speak in perfect Austrian-accented German,
“Lassen uns allein bleiben.”
At that I jumped, for I was quite sure that my son, who was only nine, did not know a single word of German.
“Lassen uns allein bleiben!”
He spoke more forcefully and then slumped over, apparently asleep. I rushed to him and woke him immediately.
“There. You were just having a bad dream,” I said to him.
“But I wasn’t dreaming at all,” he replied, confused. There was no point in pushing the matter, so I stayed by his bed until he fell back asleep.
“Leave us alone!” Yes, perhaps I should have taken that as a warning, for it was scarcely a week after this when continuing my translation work late at night I felt someone walk up behind me. Before I could turn around, the pen in my hand rose up into the air and flew across the room. Quickly I jumped up, but again I saw no one. This sort of event began to happen more often, yet stubborn to a fault I continued my work. I had perhaps translated about a quarter of the poems in the collection when I noticed that my translations were reverting back into the originals. That is, the notebook that contained my English versions began to show German mixed with the English. At first I thought I had been careless or distracted, even though my method is to keep the translated work quite separate from the original. As the number of lines in German continued to increase, I realized that other forces were at play.
I was at a total loss as to what to do. Obviously, I could not continue with the project. At the same time, having read and reread the original work I was ever more convinced that a translation of it would secure my literary reputation once and for all. Many writers of this period are widely acclaimed, but in my mind, they pale in comparison to the six writers Rosenkranz chose to include in Sonnentraumen. But what use is it to sing their praises, when I cannot provide a single specimen of proof to back up my claim? Completely frustrated, I decided that my only course of action was to reprint the book in the original German. I could prepare a new edition, and no doubt someone less troubled by spirits than myself would convert it to English.
To this end, I arranged a trip to Vienna to talk with several publishers I know there. Unfortunately, even this small initiative proved ill-fated. The agents at the airport had no record of my electronic ticket, and I could not find my confirmation number. On top of that, I discovered that my passport was missing as well. And to add insult to injury, while I was arguing with the airline agents, someone walked off with my laptop computer containing my working copy of the book. I began running through the terminal after them, only to crash into a woman who spilled coffee all over me. When I helped her up, she said only one word to me: “Allein!” I realized then that it was futile to persist and went home.
The book itself I then kept in a very secure safe. This had proved a successful deterrent to its nocturnal wanderings. On arriving home, I checked to see if it was still there–which it was–and then locked the safe again. I was now prepared to give up my efforts toward either translating or reprinting the book. I would have to be content with being one of the few who owned one of the great lost masterpieces of 20th Century literature, even though I could do absolutely nothing with it.
And so it was. I went on to other projects. I wrote a book about Brazilian spiritualist movements and started another on Shinto shamanism. From time to time I would open the safe and take the book out and read some of the poems in it and then carefully put it back again. Years went by, and I had almost forgotten my ambitions and difficulties concerning the book. Then a few months ago I was looking for a lost file on my son’s computer when I discovered, quite by accident, that he had been writing poetry himself. Curious, I began to read his works. You can imagine my great surprise to discover that he had unconsciously composed flawless English versions of many of the Sonnentraumen poems. That night when he got home from high school, I questioned him excitedly about his writing. Unfortunately, he became incensed at the fact that I had read his private works without his permission. No amount of pleading or bribery on my part has since induced him to part with any of them. Not only that, but he now keeps all of his poems on a disk whose hiding place I have yet to uncover.
“They’re quite good poems,” I tell him, “You really should think about publishing them.”
“Dad,” he invariably replies, “Just leave me alone.”
Stranger Creek 