To Schelling -- I
by August Graf von Platen
translated by Reginald Bancroft Cooke
Doth not he ever king in Truth's domain
Reign too o'er Beauty's realm by kingly right?
Thou dost behold them perfectly unite
And closely fuse in one harmonious strain.
This little present thou wilt not disdain;
These oriental throngs with true delight
Thou wilt survey, so picturesque, so bright,
And grow accustomed to their strange refrain.
On blooms of a far land admittedly
I poise but lightly like the butterfly,
Joying perchance in some mere vanity.
But from the brims of flowers 'neath every sky
Thou dipp'st the wing of the inviolate bee
Into the mysteries of How and Why.
August Graf von Platen's full name was Graf Karl August Georg Maximilian von Platen-Hallermunde (the 'Graf', which after the abolition of titles in 1919 is treated as the first part of the surname, was in Graf Platen's own day still usually treated as a prenominal title), but outside of titlepages he is usually referred to by some shorter form. Platen, often considered one of the greatest writers of sonnets in German history, did not get along with the literary establishment of his day, and famously got into a rather vicious public spat with Heine, which began with heated remarks about the interest in Oriental poetry and ended with Platen attacking Heine for being a Jew and Heine attacking Platen for being a homosexual. Heine got the worse of the dispute, since the comments about homosexuality (saying, for instance, that Graf Platen was more a man of rump than a man of brain) were widely regarded as a low blow (and homosexuality was, frankly, less stigmatized in some circles in Germany than being Jewish), and the spat made life difficult for both men. (Heine would later call it a 'war of annihilation'.) Graf Platen died in 1835 in Syracuse in the Two Sicilies, a lonely and isolated 'wandering rhapsodist' to the very end.
