Stefan George
80 years ago, 4th of December 1933 at the age of 65, Stefan Anton George had died in Minusio near Locarno (Switzerland), a poet, thinker and a translator, the most prominent (alongside R.M.Rilke and H.von.Hofmannsthal) representative of German post romantic symbolism (earlier, also of Parnassianism), 1892-1919 a publisher and an editor of the “„Blätter für die Kunst” magazine, around which the so called George-Kreis (L. Klages, F. Gundolf, K. Hildebrandt, F. Wolters, E. Kantorowicz amongst others), a close friend to Wacława Rolicz-Lieder who was his first polish translator, laureate of Goethe Prize (1927); an aesthete cultivating “clean poetry” and “art for art”, a Nietzschean elitist, a forerunner of the Conservative Revolution, a spiritual heir to the tradition of the Sacrum Imperium Romanum of the German kings (“Crypts of Speyer”) ,a visionary of a New Reich and “Arcane Germany” (dedicated to count von Stauffenberg); he managed to cut himself off from the nationally socialist Third Reich by rejecting J.Goebbels’ proposition to take up the presidency of the Academy of Arts and demonstratively immigrating to Switzerland.
prof. Jacek Bartyzel
translated by Arek Jakubczyk
Kategoria: Reactionary Diary
