ABSTRACT
Stefan George, a Nietzschean despiser of mass-men, mechanization and modernity, was a Rhineland-rooted admirer of French and Hellenic culture. George invented his own typography for his printed works. When the translation title is in brackets, it means the original German poem was untitled. Through George's devoted Berlin publisher, several influential Munich salons, and the respected periodical Pages for, the George circle hoped to create an entire new German culture. The universality of George's "Norbert" elegy makes it the fit epitaph for all these battlefield deaths of poets, whether German or English. George's two leading Jewish disciples, Friedrich Gundolf and Karl Wolfskehl, were far more fanatic in their Germanism than George himself. George's prophet-robes, in that book of 1907, were then still flawlessly "mended," like the "net" of the later poem. George was then still being wooed by many a "golden child." In contrast, "alien" in "Seaside" no longer means redeemer.
