Poetry review – MORGENSTERN’S MAGIC: Rosie Johnston examines the poems of Christian Morgenstern in a new translation by Timothy Adès
Morgenstern's Magic
translated by Timothy Adès
The High Window (2024)
ISBN 9798876476968
154pp £10.00
In Morgenstern’s Magic, translator and poet Timothy Adès takes us into the mind of Christian Morgenstern, a German poet and writer (1871 – 1914) whose comic poems are still treasured across Europe. This book, published by The High Window, offers us the first translation of these ninety-nine poems together in English. At just £10 for 145 pages of poetry, with another eight pages of links to related videos on YouTube, this beautifully produced book is a remarkable bargain.
The German version is on the left page, English on the right, allowing those of us with even a smattering of German to compare the rhymes and rhythms with the original. This is Timothy Adès’s first venture into German translation though he has long expertise in translating Spanish, French and Greek. His virtuosity lies particularly in handling rhyme and metre, with past awards including the John Dryden Prize and the TLS Premio Valle-Inclan. (He has also rewritten all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets without the letter E.) In these days when AI threatens to flatten the quality of translation, individual flair in a translator is as immeasurably important as accuracy and Adès has bagfuls of both.
Morgenstern travelled widely in his short life and the spark for his fondness for literary nonsense is said to have come from England, home of Lewis Carroll and Ogden Nash, Hilaire Belloc and Edward Lear. The UK’s traditional love of comic verse still thrives in the popularity of poets like Wendy Cope, Roger McGough, Pam Ayres and Brian Bilston. So, would Morgenstern appeal to fans of the British Hall of Fame of ridiculous wit?
Morgenstern creates endearing characters called Korf and Palmström. Here in “Comparison”, a thought strikes one of them:
Like a branch in the wind Palmström sways…
Korf asks him why… Palmström says:
‘A beautiful thought, as sweet and swift
as a bird, landed lightly,
loaded me slightly.’
So, like a branch in the wind he sways,
swinging still from the welcome gift.
There’s a delicacy here that takes me simultaneously to Godot and AA Milne, with a smile.
Morgenstern’s response when dead of winter begins to leave us is not to describe green shoots and melting snow but a marvellous, chest-tapping shout of “Look, I’m alive too!” Here are the last few lines:
Look at me! Here, you flower, there, you bird!
You are resurgent: I’m resurgent, too!
All jubilant, I’m piling word on word:
Not dead at all! No, I’m alive, like you!”
There is a sense that Morgenstern and his translator are revelling in this together.
Many of Morgenstern’s poems are playful in the style of his “No peace in Punctuation Land!” The first four couplets give you the flavour, with full rhymes in each couplet, as in the original:
No peace in Punctuation Land!
That golden splendour’s not to hand.
Full Stop and Comma make it known:
‘The Semicolon is a drone.’ (sic)
What’s formed, so fast as to intrigue?
The Anti-Semicolon League.
One group stays mum and won’t embark:
As always, it’s the Question-Mark!
This shares territory with, and pre-empts, both Brian Bilston’s “Comma” – ‘How, great, / to, be, a, comma, / and, Separate, / one, word, fromma, / nother’ – and McGough’s “Apostrophe”: ‘How nice to be /an apostrophe / floating/ above an s // hovering/ like a paper kite / in between the it’s.’
Philosophy is neatly filleted in “The Cabbie’s Nag”. A working horse is ‘busy with a puzzle’, how to get to the oats at the very bottom of his dinner-bag. In the last of three neat stanzas, Morgenstern’s horse sums us all up:
I may be just a cabbie’s nag,
and yet I seek for solace.
I tell myself: here is the snag
about all earthly knowledge.
In wisdom’s nosebag, eager lips
go seeking wholesome fare,
but never, as the muzzle dips,
get to the lowest layer.
Love and lyricism are rare in English comic verse, exceptions being (for my money) “The Owl and the Pussy Cat” (Lear) and “Celia, Celia” (Adrian Mitchell). The relentless metronome can seem to bar the door and occasionally feel jaded, depending on the reader’s mood. But with Morgenstern, we find “To Margareta”:
I didn’t know that so much love
can be in one heart – and for me.
But I’m unfair. And yet … I was
never so overwhelmed, before.
So I’ll say this: I knew of love,
I always did, and was its guest,
knew as a guest knows hearth and home.
You’ve caused me to believe in love
So much poignancy lies in gaps between the short fragments of that first stanza, in the poet’s hesitancy to believe his luck. With Margareta, he is at home with love: ‘I’m at the hearth, I breathe repose, / believe in all love – thanks to you.’
There’s an infectious innocence in Morgenstern’s sincerity. To read this historic collection is a treat wrapped in linguistic puzzles tied up with sheer enjoyment.
Rosie Johnston’s fifth poetry book is Safe Ground, published by Mica Press in 2025. Four have been published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast, most recently Six-Count Jive in 2019. Her poems have appeared in The Phare, Snakeskin, London Grip, Culture NI, The Honest Ulsterman, Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poems and Pictures blog and Fevers of the Mind. Her poetry is anthologised by Live Canon, Arlen House, OneWorld’s Places of Poetry anthology, Fevers of the Mind and American Writers Review. She reads her poetry widely, most recently at In-Words in Greenwich and the Faversham Literary Festival. www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com
Apr 16 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Timothy Adès
Poetry review – MORGENSTERN’S MAGIC: Rosie Johnston examines the poems of Christian Morgenstern in a new translation by Timothy Adès
In Morgenstern’s Magic, translator and poet Timothy Adès takes us into the mind of Christian Morgenstern, a German poet and writer (1871 – 1914) whose comic poems are still treasured across Europe. This book, published by The High Window, offers us the first translation of these ninety-nine poems together in English. At just £10 for 145 pages of poetry, with another eight pages of links to related videos on YouTube, this beautifully produced book is a remarkable bargain.
The German version is on the left page, English on the right, allowing those of us with even a smattering of German to compare the rhymes and rhythms with the original. This is Timothy Adès’s first venture into German translation though he has long expertise in translating Spanish, French and Greek. His virtuosity lies particularly in handling rhyme and metre, with past awards including the John Dryden Prize and the TLS Premio Valle-Inclan. (He has also rewritten all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets without the letter E.) In these days when AI threatens to flatten the quality of translation, individual flair in a translator is as immeasurably important as accuracy and Adès has bagfuls of both.
Morgenstern travelled widely in his short life and the spark for his fondness for literary nonsense is said to have come from England, home of Lewis Carroll and Ogden Nash, Hilaire Belloc and Edward Lear. The UK’s traditional love of comic verse still thrives in the popularity of poets like Wendy Cope, Roger McGough, Pam Ayres and Brian Bilston. So, would Morgenstern appeal to fans of the British Hall of Fame of ridiculous wit?
Morgenstern creates endearing characters called Korf and Palmström. Here in “Comparison”, a thought strikes one of them:
There’s a delicacy here that takes me simultaneously to Godot and AA Milne, with a smile.
Morgenstern’s response when dead of winter begins to leave us is not to describe green shoots and melting snow but a marvellous, chest-tapping shout of “Look, I’m alive too!” Here are the last few lines:
There is a sense that Morgenstern and his translator are revelling in this together.
Many of Morgenstern’s poems are playful in the style of his “No peace in Punctuation Land!” The first four couplets give you the flavour, with full rhymes in each couplet, as in the original:
This shares territory with, and pre-empts, both Brian Bilston’s “Comma” – ‘How, great, / to, be, a, comma, / and, Separate, / one, word, fromma, / nother’ – and McGough’s “Apostrophe”: ‘How nice to be /an apostrophe / floating/ above an s // hovering/ like a paper kite / in between the it’s.’
Philosophy is neatly filleted in “The Cabbie’s Nag”. A working horse is ‘busy with a puzzle’, how to get to the oats at the very bottom of his dinner-bag. In the last of three neat stanzas, Morgenstern’s horse sums us all up:
Love and lyricism are rare in English comic verse, exceptions being (for my money) “The Owl and the Pussy Cat” (Lear) and “Celia, Celia” (Adrian Mitchell). The relentless metronome can seem to bar the door and occasionally feel jaded, depending on the reader’s mood. But with Morgenstern, we find “To Margareta”:
So much poignancy lies in gaps between the short fragments of that first stanza, in the poet’s hesitancy to believe his luck. With Margareta, he is at home with love: ‘I’m at the hearth, I breathe repose, / believe in all love – thanks to you.’
There’s an infectious innocence in Morgenstern’s sincerity. To read this historic collection is a treat wrapped in linguistic puzzles tied up with sheer enjoyment.
Rosie Johnston’s fifth poetry book is Safe Ground, published by Mica Press in 2025. Four have been published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast, most recently Six-Count Jive in 2019. Her poems have appeared in The Phare, Snakeskin, London Grip, Culture NI, The Honest Ulsterman, Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poems and Pictures blog and Fevers of the Mind. Her poetry is anthologised by Live Canon, Arlen House, OneWorld’s Places of Poetry anthology, Fevers of the Mind and American Writers Review. She reads her poetry widely, most recently at In-Words in Greenwich and the Faversham Literary Festival. www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com