In the poem The toad, the German Jewish poet Gertrud Kolmar (1894-1943) typically takes on the role of an undesirable creature, asserting her right to existence.
Gertrud Kolmar spent her creative life mostly in communion with nature, with plants and animals as her friends and spiritual allies. Many of her poems speak of, as well as speak up for outsiders, the suppressed and the dumb with whom Gertrud Kolmar identified. In her poems she merges with her subjects in a state of compassion and courage and elevates them symbolically to their natural status which is denied them in society, whether they be humans or other animals.
Gertrud Kolmar was a singular figure, as a poet and a woman, living more or less in seclusion with her family and staying behind with her father in Nazi Germany, resulting in both their murders in concentration camps in 1943.
I am the toad, she declares three times in the poem, as if to make double sure that the verity of her vitality is unmistakably understood, whether it refers to herself, personifying the toad or speaking collectively for the animal. I breathe, I swim/In a deep, calm glory, she writes, subverting the widely accepted denigration of her being, and prophetically of her hateful and violent murder by a superseding eternal spirit.
(Please note that in the German original, which I’ve included, the poem rhymes. I’ve provided a literal English translation.)
The toad
A blue dawning sinks with a dripping damp;
It drags a broad rose golden hem.
Black rises a poplar tree into the soft shining,
and mild birches shiver as a pallid foam.
Like a skull an apple rolls dully into a furrow,
and rustling, the autumnal brown leaf dies with a last flare.
Afar tiny lights haunt the gloomy city like ghosts.
White fog from fields concocts amphibians.
I am the toad
and I love the heavenly body of the night.
In the evenings an elevated redness
smoulders in crimson ponds, barely kindled.
Under rotten boards of the rain barrel
I squat, cowered and fat;
yearning for the perishing of the sun
I lurk, with an agonized gaze at the moon.
I am the toad
and I love the whisperings of the night.
A fine flute
has woken in the floating reed, in the sedges,
a delicate violin
thrills and fiddles on the balk of the field.
I listen and am silent,
straining a fingerlike leg
under a rotting plank
in the mire, limb for limb
like a sunken thought
pulling itself out of a tangled mass, out of the mire.
Through weed, around pebble stones
I leap as a dark, modest consciousness;
dewy, trickling foliage,
black green ivy wash me away.
I breathe, I swim
in a deep, calm glory,
with a meek voice
under the plumage of the night.
Come then and kill!
May I be only loathsome vermin to you:
I am the toad
and wear the precious stone…
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Die Kröte
Ein blaues Dämmer sinkt mit triefender Feuchte;
Es schleppt einen breiten rosiggoldenen Saum.
Schwarz steilt eine Pappel auf in das weiche Geleuchte,
Und milde Birken verzittern zu fahlerem Schaum.
Wie Totenhaupt kollert so dumpf ein Apfel zur Furche,
Und knisternd verflackert mählich das herbstbraune Blatt.
Mit Lichtchen gespenstert ferne die düsternde Stadt.
Weißer Wiesennebel braut Lurche.
Ich bin die Kröte.
Und ich liebe die Gestirne der Nacht.
Abends hohe Röte
Schwelt in purpurne Teiche, kaum entfacht.
Unter der Regentonne
Morschen Brettern hock ich duckig und dick;
Auf das Verenden der Sonne
Lauert mein schmerzlicher Mondenblick.
Ich bin die Kröte.
Und ich liebe das Gewisper der Nacht.
Eine feine Flöte
Ist im schwebenden Schilf, in den Seggen erwacht,
Eine zarte Geige
Flirrt und fiedelt am Felderrain.
Ich horch und schweige,
Zerr mich an fingrigem Bein
Unter fauler Planke
Aus Morastigem Glied um Glied,
Wie versunkner Gedanke
Aus dem Wust, aus dem Schlamm sich zieht.
Durch Gekräut, um Kiesel
Hüpf ich als dunkler, bescheidener Sinn;
Tauiges Laubgeriesel,
Schwarzgrüner Efeu spült mich dahin.
Ich atme, schwimme
In einer tiefen, beruhigten Pracht,
Demütige Stimme
Unter dem Vogelgefieder der Nacht.
Komm denn und töte!
Mag ich nur ekles Geziefer dir sein:
Ich bin die Kröte
Und trage den Edelstein…
Gertrud Kolmar, Das Lyrische Werk, Wallstein Verlag, 2010