How Pale The Winter Has Made Us – Adam Scovell

I stood on the Pont d’Auvergne, admiring it for as long as my nose could take the cold. After a brief look at the freezing, high-level water flowing underneath the bridge, I wandered to my main destination. The road was wide, and it took some time to find Goethe’s statue. It was only when realising that the statue and its small spit of land now acted as a roundabout for the traffic that I discovered where it was.

I could see three figures through the whiteout of the snow, the oxidised metal darkening their silhouettes. I hadn’t considered the possibility of three statues, expecting there to be only one, and I wondered whether I was at the right place. It was at Place de l’Université and the statue, as I got closer, did seem to resemble portraits I had seen of Goethe, the grainy scans of paintings and drawings online, often covered with trademarks from photographic licensing websites.

I was in the right place, the writer looking out over the vista of roads and trees rendered deathly by the weather. The statue itself, compared to the architecture which surrounds it, is not especially old. It was made by the Berlin sculptor Ernst Waegener in 1901 to commemorate Goethe’s time at the university. Though there had been, so a promotional website stated, several Nobel Prize-winners produced by the university, Goethe is undoubtedly its most famous graduate.

On Goethe’s right sat Melmonene, the muse of tragedy, once the muse of chorus and melody. On his left sat Polymnie or Polymnia, the muse of lyric poetry. I wasn’t sure what the combination of these figures said about Goethe. Perhaps the tragedy of Faust himself rather than the poet was being suggested. Ironically, Polymnia is the muse carrying the harp rather Melmonene, now reduced to a tragic figure rather than the giver of chorus.

© Adam Scovell, 2020 Copyright of the text rests with the author. The right of Adam Scovell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Influx Press. First edition 2020. Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc.

Paperback ISBN: 9781910312452 Ebook ISBN: 9781910312469 Editor: Gary Budden Copyeditor: Momus Editorial Cover design: Vince Haig Interior design: Vince Haig This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re- sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

OceanofPDF.com For Caroline ‘… I am a voluntary exile, a wanderer by design, unwise with a purpose, everywhere a stranger and everywhere at home, letting my life run its course where it will, rather than trying to guide it, since, in any case, I don’t know where it will lead me.’ — Goethe, Italian Journey OceanofPDF.com 1 It was on an autumn day in Strasbourg that I first saw the Erl-King. I had not somehow crossed into another world in a moment of lax attention or dreamed the veiled figure into shadowy existence from my window.

Instead, I was witnessing a genuine apparition on account of the news I had just received concerning my father’s suicide back in Crystal Palace. The trees, still memory-blind, had once more thrown off their leaves and the ground was amber with their dead. I can recall how I first found out about his – that is, my father’s – death, even if the words ‘Your father has taken his own life’ seemed impossible to imagine in any written form, never mind on the small, digital screen of my phone.

But, suffice to say, the feeling it left me with was that I was now dead too, sharing in his action so to speak, as the Erl-King came for both our souls. I was near Place Gutenberg at the time, sitting in a cafe reading and writing as I had done regularly throughout the summer, enjoyably in the epicentre of the city watching its streets breathe with people.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 28f95cadc83322d8
• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781910312452, 9781910312469
• Pages: 181
• Language: English (en)

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