ABSTRACT
The poem's main enigma, toward which the rest converges, is this: what did Stefan George intend in so emphasizing the specific month of "Hornung" in the last line? In Germany's old pre-Christian calendar, the Hornung- month overlapped with modern February and so may be associated with sinister rites in the translation. Meanwhile the translator has recalled that "Hornung" means not only February in old Germanic but also sometimes "bastard." The latter meaning fits the interpretation of the stranger-woman as the demon-lovered outlaw-artist, as sorcerous gypsy creativity, as the author himself. On the other hand, George's official explicators, notably Friedrich Gundolf who analyzed every poem and Ernst Morwitz who translated them, all refrain from using the "bastard" meaning. Although George, too, sympathized with pre-Christian paganism, in his case it was almost always a Greek, not a Nordic paganism. In making the outsider the redeeming insider, "The Stranger" and "Templars" both descend from the early Algabal, published in Paris.
