Twilight

Ernst Toller 1893 (Samotschin, Posen) – 1939 (New York City)



In early evening the cell flares up.
Thin shadows slide down the gray walls.
He who cries out in mutiny exhausts into a dream.
The brown stillness sweeps over like a gentle wave.

And often a frosted light fills the choked room.
Figures beckon you to the spiritless circle
where the dance of the heavy coats dissolves into silence,
where dawn breaks into a ringing of bells.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

20 sec read
369

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXXX XXXX
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 374
Words 69
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 4, 4

Ernst Toller

Ernst Toller was a German left-wing playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, after which he became the head of its army. He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin. While in prison Toller wrote several plays which gained him international renown. They were performed in London and New York as well as Berlin. In the year 2000, several of his plays were published in an English translation. In 1933 Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power. He did a lecture tour in 1936–1937 in the United States and Canada, settling in California for a while before going to New York. He joined other exiles there. Struggling financially and depressed at learning his brother and sister had been sent to a concentration camp in Germany, he committed suicide in May 1939. more…

All Ernst Toller poems | Ernst Toller Books

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