ABSTRACT
The translator's title is in brackets because Stefan George finally published the poem untitled in his book of 1895. The poem lacks the rhythm-control of the great love poem to Robert Böringer, the peak of George's middle period, midway between Latinate and English influences. The poem is best read side by side with the author's hate-letter to the same woman, which appeared in private printing in 1903 in Tage und Thaten. The poem was set to music for voice and piano by Schoenberg, 1907-08. Theodor Adorno's book Prismen praises its "unveiled nakedness." Its anguish expressed young George's only known heterosexual romance, one that ended in his permanent bitterness toward women when she married his most despised rival poet, Richard Dehmel. George never admitted that this letter was more than an objective work of art, –that it was a subjective cri de coeur to Ida Coblenz.
