CCHA, Historical Studies, 54 (1987), 109-123
“Himmelhoch jauchzend / Zum Tode betrübt”:
The Poetry of Eugen Funcken*
by Peter C. ERB
Wilfrid Laurier
University
Waterloo, Ontario
Eugen Funcken was
a nineteenth-century German Resurrectionist pastor, educator, social reformer,
builder of institutions, administrator, poet, playwright, art collector, and
general cultural gadfly, whose centre of activity was the small village of St.
Agatha in Waterloo County, some six kilometers west of the present city of
Kitchener-Waterloo.1
My path to the study of Funcken was
somewhat peculiar. It began in the year 1972, which marked the 150th
anniversary of the arrival of the Amish in Ontario from Alsace and Lorraine.
Like many anniversary celebrations, this one stimulated research into the
history of the people it commemorated. One of the stories which surfaced a
number of times was of an Amish bishop, a Peter Litwiller who lived near St.
Agatha and who, according to the story, held biweekly theological discussions
with the local Catholic priest, a Father Eugen Funcken. Moreover, it was said
that on Litwiller’s death, Funcken had the bells rung in the Catholic Church as
the cortege passed on its way to the Amish cemetery, that Funcken wrote a
glowing commemoration of Litwiller in the local paper, and that he told his
parishioners in a sermon shortly after that this “heretic” was certainly in a
higher level of purgatory than most of them would manage on their deaths. As
the only local Amish man who had anything to do with Catholics (I was, after
all, a graduate of a Pontifical Institute), several historians of my tradition
asked me to trace out the story. I went immediately to the Catholic Church in
St. Agatha and there met the local priest, the late Fr. W. G. Borho, who had
himself devoted a good deal of his life to the care and memory of Funcken’s
work. On that first meeting Fr. Borho introduced me to Funcken’s poetry and I
have never gone much beyond it. How much of the story of the Funcken-Litwiller
relationship is true and how much apocryphal, I have never found out, and can
await the full edition of the letters and the journals to know for certain. For
the present I choose to believe it for an obvious reason: it links my love for
two religious traditions which continue to attract me.2
The Funcken biography can be quickly
outlined. He was born at Wanckum in Rhenish Prussia on November 28, 1831. In
1851 he went to Rome, joined the Resurrectionists and was ordained to the
priesthood on June 6, 1857. Immediately thereafter he left for Canada, arriving
in St. Agatha in the same year. German Catholics had settled in that
predominantly Amish and Mennonite area for some thirty years prior to Funcken’s
arrival and pastoral care had been provided for them some five years after
their initial arrival. From St. Agatha Funcken reorganized Catholic life in the
area, worked to found an educational institution (St. Jerome’s College), a
convent, an orphanage (1858 or 1859), and a Catholic colonization society. A
dedicated local priest, he travelled to and from Europe, as well as throughout
present-day southern Ontario, and into the United States, helping communities
of German- and Slavic-speaking Catholics. He was joined in his work by his
brother, Father Louis Funcken, in 1860 when he took up residence in nearby
Berlin (now Kitchener). Eugen died on July 18, 1888 at the age of fifty-six.3
Funcken’s poetry is extant in two large
collections, the first published under the title Gedichte ten years
after his arrival in Canada and the second which exists only in manuscript,
entitled Immanuel. In addition to the lengthy piece Dein Engel, there
exist a few miscellaneous pieces scattered in his letters, journals, and the
periodical literature of his day. The present report focusses on the two major
collections and concludes with comments on Funcken’s ‘Canadianism’.
I
In 1868 he gathered a number of poems he
had written over a fifteen-year period under the title Gedichte and had
them printed “to support the German Orphanage in Upper-Canada.” A small quarto
volume of 225 pages, its 141 lyrics are printed under six headings: songs,
shorter poems, sonnets, legends and romances (comprising for the most part
saints’ stories and other tales), miscellaneous poems, and epigrams.4
The Gedichte are, for the most part,
competent poetic pieces unrelated
except within the
general categories outlined. The initial group are concerned with poetic
inspiration and develop common themes of the time in typical Romantic manner.
The opening poem “Source of Song” sums up Funcken’s central concern for his
work as a poet not only in the volume it opens, but for the rest of his poetry
as well. It indicates how significantly he viewed his role as a poet. The type
of poetry he is writing is “sacred poetry”, and its source, he tells his
readers, is uncreated just as is the source of eternal truth. Like truth,
sacred poetry flows from this source toward the eternal clarity of the heavens
in an eternally new melody. The source of the poetry is the divine itself, it
appears, and like the divine can never be emptied. The millions who derive
inspiration from it on earth are matched by an equal number of angels and
saints in the heavens singing eternally new material. In a dreadfully mixed
metaphor Funcken then goes on to describe human life as an hour-glass, the
heart of which is a pendulum created from and shaped as song by and toward
this holy font. Human life is the act of singing in this manner and eternal
life continues the pattern:
Nur geschöpft aus diesem
heil’gen Brunnen,
Nur gesungen, was dein Herz vermag,
Bis des Lebens Sanduhr ist verronnen,
Schlägt des Herzens letzter Pendelschlag.
Bis Du singst in jenen sel’gen Hallett,
Ewig folgend deinem ew’gen Ruf,
Mit den Engeln and den Heiligen allen
Ewig dem, der Dich zum Sänger schuf.
Unerschböflich wie die ew’ge
Wahrheit
Ist der Quell der heil’gen Poesie,
Flieszt noch in des Himmels ew’ger
Klarheit
Fort in ewig neuer Melodie.5
Eight of the poems
of Gedichte are dated, allowing one to gain some insight into Funcken’s
poetic development. Five of these were written before his arrival in Canada.
The earliest is a reasonably executed sonnet from 1852 on the “enforced” poet.6 The poem which
proves the title correct, although unintentionally I am certain, does help one
to understand Funcken’s general theme. It begins with a parallel between the
poet (every human being) and the song-bird (common throughout Funcken’s work).
All of us think that we are larks, but we must remember, the sonnet tells us,
that we are not birds of the blue but mere frog croaks in the swamp-mists.
This earliest poem we have of Funcken
provides a useful image to understand his poetic work. There is a sense in
which his work presses the reader in two opposite directions, lifting one up to
the heavens in joy and immediately thereafter dashing one to the earth and
death. “Himmelhoch jauchzend / Zum Tode betrübt” as Klärchen sings in Goethe’s Egmont,7 or in its
nineteenth-century Waterloo County misquotation, “zum Himmelhoch jauchzend,
zum Erde betrübt” (drawn up to the heavens, pressed down to the earth). The
phrase serves well to sum up the central motifs of Funcken’s poetry. On the one
hand Funcken praises human life in terms of singing from the eternal source of
poetry and matches human song with that of the saints and angels, and on the
other he insists that human life is nothing but a few grunting “Unkenruf and
Froschgequak im Teichen.” Without doubt, however, he agrees with the rest of
Klärchen’s song: “Gründlich allein / Ist die Seele, die liebt.”
The three poems from 1853 and the one from
1854 continue the theme to some extent, but place greater emphasis on the
creative aspect of the human singer, voicing praises to God even when the
forest in which the singer sings is darkened by sorrow. Not surprisingly these
more positive pieces appear at the beginning of Gedichte.
The final three dated poems in the
collection all seem to relate to particular situations which concerned him. In
1861 Funcken wrote two quatrains addressed “To the present-day Screamers.”8 Because Peter was
poor, Funcken writes, does not mean that all present-day popes should be poor.
Just because all are born naked does not mean that we must continue without
clothes and simply because the child is weak in its first year is no reason to
suppose that one must remain that way. The beams of the sun are weak in the
morning but shine strongly at noon and if we have patience (!) we will see the
sun lay down its strength at the end of the day just as Peter will lay off his
cloak at the close of this world. A piece from the next year seems to be an
admonition to priests (perhaps a particular priest) on their call.9
The most important dated piece, however, is
the longest poem in the collection, which is inspired by the civil war in the
United States. It is written, Funcken tells us, in the decisive year 1864 and
is titled “America”. The war, as Funcken sees it, is the most horrendous that
has ever occurred. Nothing in Europe matches it, and no excuse, not even the
emancipation of the slaves justifies it, he states, unfortunately in lines
disturbingly akin to the similar nineteenth-century blind spot in Carlyle’s
“The Nigger Question.”10
O, warum all dies Morden, dies Vernichten?
Man schreit, es sei zum Heil der
Menschlichkeit!
Die Sclavenkett’ des schwarzen Mann’s zu
lichten,
Dem Tod man Millionen Weisze weiht?
O glaubt es nicht! ...
Gott selber hat die Hölle losgelassen,
Die wilden Bestien’ all im Höllenschlund,
Dasz dieses Volk es lern’, die Höll’ zu
hassen,
Schliesz’ mit dem Himmel einen ew’gen
Bund.
Funcken then goes on to call out his hopes for America,
paralleling his own work as a poet with that of the prophet Daniel in the
interpretation of the writing on the wall. It is his hope that America will
understand his words, that its citizens will turn from their evil ways, and
that a new age will begin. His hopes express none of the secularized
eschatology of his German forefathers regarding America, however. Unlike the
eighteenth-century immigrants to North America, Funcken does not see it as the
wilderness in which the lily will bloom nor as the “new” world. Unlike Goethe,
he does not see it as the new overwhelming the old.11 Rather, he
reshapes the ideals on which it was formed, a land in which all nations can
become one, and relates it directly to his call for repentance.
O, möcht’ nach diesem wilden
ungeheuern
Blutbad, nach dieser blut’gen Passion
Dein Volk den Auferstehungsmorgen feiern
Als ein verklärter, ew’ger Gottessohn!
O möcht’, Amerika, dein Herz es
fassen
An diesem Tag, was dir zum Heil gereicht,
Dasz nicht mit Augen, ach, mit
thränennassen,
Dein Heiland, wie von Sion, von dir
weicht!
Amerika, du Land der Nationen,
Die sich vereint in dir zu
einem Stamm, Der Kirche Bild, drin aile Völker wohnen, Verein’ sie all im Kreuz
and Gotteslamm!
II
In spite of the interest Gedichte provides
in itself, Funcken’s most significant work is the unpublished collection of
poems, referred to as a whole after the title of the first part of the
collection, Immanuel. Funcken had prepared the manuscript for
publication. The piece existed in a good copy text and contained approximately
240 poems plus a manuscript play (Schutz-Engel Bulgariens). Why it was
never published during Funcken’s lifetime is not known. Why it was not
published after that date is obvious. The year after Funcken’s death, Rudolf of
Hapsburg, to whom it is dedicated and in whom Funcken with most of
Austria-Hungary placed so much hope, fulfilled the suicide pact into which he
entered with Mary Vetsera at Mayerling. Unfortunately, at some point in the
1960s the final copy text of Inmanuel was taken from the Resurrection
College archives and not returned. It was known to Heinz Kloss in 1961.12
In the summer of 1976, a formal cataloguing
of the archives at Resurrection College was begun by the Rev. Ernest Varosi,
C.R., and Brother Michael Checkly under the direction of Father Borho. During
the cataloguing in 1976 two groups of loose sheets containing poetry were
found. At the request of Fr. Borho, I was able to reassemble these pieces with
the help of a rough list into what is an earlier draft of Funcken’s Immanuel. This earlier draft
differs significantly from the copy known to Kloss. It contains only five
‘cycles’ of lyric poems, whereas the other manuscript contained six. Cycles one
and three of the manuscript now at Resurrection College bear the same titles as
one and four of the lost manuscript. A selection of lyrics was appended to the
lost manuscript. The extant manuscript has two appendices.
Immanuel is interesting in a number
of ways. Not only does it contain excellent examples of nineteenth-century
German poetry, but it provides valuable insights into Funcken’s ecclesiology;
the central theme of the opening group of poems, which provides the title for
the collection, is the Church and in the extant manuscript the five cycles are
all concerned with this theme. The first treats the subject of Immanuel (God
with us) and the Church in a more general fashion. In the second that theme is
developed in a series of lyrics which are a poetic investigation of the
relationship between the subject, Immanuel, and Mary. The second cycle is
developed from the first, which is an epithalamium (marriage hymn). In the
third cycle the relationship of the apostles, martyrs, confessors and virgins
(the Church Triumphant) to the title is taken up. The fourth and fifth cycles
move to the Church Militant, treating “Immanuel: friends and enemies” and
“Immanuel and the poets’ songs” respectively. Fifteen pages of annotations are
added, as are two lengthy appendices of poems. A copy of a letter to the
Ambassador of Austria-Hungary introducing the cycles is preserved with the
manuscript. What makes this rough draft particularly interesting is that it
contains a number of revisions, not always clearly marked as revisions, and in
some cases alternate possibilities for a line or group of words.
Gedichte includes, as already noted,
competent pieces, but the volume is only a collection. Immanuel is more.
In it Funcken endeavours to develop a unity, an ellipse as it were, rotating
around the two thematic points which were his primary concerns on his arrival
in Canada: the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the Church and the
importance of the Blessed Virgin in theology and devotion.
In Immanuel Funcken attempts much
more than he did in his earlier work. The dedication poem is to Rudolf of
Hapsburg and his wife Stephanie on the celebration of their marriage in 1881.
The marriage feast is described in the poem and the hopes which were alive in
Austria at the time for a rejuvenated culture are indicated. But the poem is
intended to be much more than a simple epithalamium.13 Very early in the
piece it is clear that Funcken intends to use this marriage ode as a basis for
a continuing allegory of the marriage between Christ and the Church, and, in a
secondary sense, between Christ and the human soul. Into this theme he ties his
treatment of the Blessed Virgin, the conception of the Son of God through the
Holy Spirit in her, and the complex relationship between the Virgin, the Son
and the redemption of humanity. This relationship is worked at (although not
worked out in a complete sense) in the second cycle. After treating “the first
bride of the Lord”14 this cycle moves directly to unite the themes
of Eucharist and Mary in a finely executed poem, “First communion on earth,”
which treats the legend of Mary’s reception of the Sacrament from the hands of
Michael.15 The cycle then continues the theme in greater detail.
The words of Goethe which I chose to
characterize some central structures in Funcken’s work might be applied to the
shape of his endeavour in Immanuel. That poem is intended as a unity
and in a significant way it may have been intended as Funcken’s theological as
well as his poetic magnum opus. In it he shouts to the heavens in what is without
any doubt a major theological and poetic project, but in its execution he is
drawn down to the earth. The unfortunate thing about the distant reach is not
that it exceeds the grasp, but that it marks how clearly the grasp has not been
achieved. Funcken’s shortcomings as a poet are only too obvious as the piece is
developed. The fourth cycle, “Immanuel and friends and enemies,” does not
maintain the level of the third, and, in fact, its polemic at times detracts
from the piece as a whole. (A poem in this section on Luther makes particularly
interesting reading.) The fifth cycle, “Immanuel and the Singers,” in which one
might well expect a return to the poetic reflections of the opening poem of Gedichte,
is in general a collection with little genuine unity. By the third cycle,
the marriage theme which opened the work is already lost.
This is not to suggest that the piece comes
completely apart by its close. Some fine pieces are included and the Magnificat
which closes the work is particularly worthy of note:
Magnificat
Nun auf, mein Lied, im Liebesflug,
Wie’s einst die minn’ge Jungfrau hat,
Da sie die heil’ge Gottessaat
An ihrem keuschen Herzen trug!
Du trägst im Schoss das heil’ge
Wort,
Den Friedens Vogel Immanuel;
Drum eil’ durch Deutschlands Gaue schnell,
Und lasse Grüss and Frieden dort!
Bring’ Segen jeden deutschen Weib,
Das freundlich dir and fromm gesinnt,
Und segne jedes deutsche Kind
Schon in der frommen Mutter Leib!
Und wenn dein Segen sich bewahrt,
Dann singe dein Magnificat;
Denn Wort and Segen, Beides hat
Allein der güt’ge Gott beschert.16
III
The explicit reference to Germany in this
closing poem of Immanuel may be explained on the supposition that
Funcken intended his poem primarily for a European readership, but if that is
the case, what does it tell us about his attitude to the land in which he
dwelt? Did he perhaps think primarily of Canada as the German population among
whom he worked? That is, did he in this case have a sense of a ‘greater
Germany’? What was his attitude to this land, and does it give us any sense of
the attitudes of his parishioners? The question is somewhat taken up in a
series of poems directed to Joseph Mooren, President of the Historical Society
for Rheinland / Westphalia and parish priest of Wachtendonk. Funcken writes as
follows:
Der Missionär
Fern von der Heimath and den Lieben
alien,
Getrennt von ihnen durch das weite Meer
Und ach, vielleicht sieht er sie
nimmermehr
Seht (ich den) Gottes Boten in der
(einsam) Fremde wallen.
Ihm singen Lerchen nicht and Nachtigallen
In Feld and Hain, gar öd’ ist’s rings
umher-
Und, o, er hört- das macht ihm’s Herz erst
schwer-
Kein Freundeswort, kein deutsches Wort
erschallen.
Verlassen fühlt er sich and arm, o arm! --
Doch plötzlich wird das starre Herz ihm
warm,
Und er vergisst auf einmal Schmerz and
Harm.
Der Nahe Gottes jahling sich bewusst,
In ihm er findet Heim and Heimathslust,
Und seine Lieben auch- an Gottes Brust.17
The ‘Heimweh’
typical of so many German poets in Canada at the time is obvious.18 But what we must
take care to consider is that Funcken’s poems are not so much concerned with
separation from homeland as from a particular person. Such separation is
overcome in this poem in the same way Funcken overcame a similar sense of
separation from his brother described earlier in his life in Gedichte.19 One is united with
one’s friend before the altar of God.
On the whole Funcken appears more than at
home in the new surroundings. Whatever the meaning of “Germany” at the close
of Immanuel, his work does include poems which treat Canada. A good poem
in Gedichte considers the founding of Montreal.20 Likewise he
translated works from Longfellow into German (“Excelsior” in the Immanuel manuscript
and “Hiawatha” in Gedichte).21
Of special interest, however, are two
series of poems on Canada and on Niagara and two additional poems on spring
which refer directly to the Canadian experience. These poems have been
published in GermanCanadian Yearbook (1978),22 but they are
deserving of attention again, particularly in light of a recent publication on
Canadian culture by Gaile McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome: Explorations in
the Canadian Langscape.23 Following in the tradition of Northrop Frye’s
garrison and Margaret Atwood’s survival images to describe the Canadian psyche,
McGregor provides us with a readable, exciting and insightful tour of Canadian
culture which directs us to look out from the fort toward the overpowering and
aggressive forests, mountains, and weather which must be avoided,
conventionalized, domesticated, or redefined, and to reflect on the nature of
our psyches as a result.
Whether or not McGregor’s thesis and its
many complex and fascinating suggestions can be maintained for all of English
and French literature and art is not the central question for present
consideration. I have my own reservations with psychohistory of this sort
(although I continue to be attracted to it) and with the search for a Canadian
identity though the literature and art of the two founding nations alone
(particularly if that search is undertaken without a more careful philosophical
investigation or on the basis of the latest popular theory of the relationship
between art and reality without any consideration of the religious framework of
the literature or art). What McGregor’s book does force us to, however, is a
more detailed investigation of the literary ‘experience’ of the emigrant in the
nineteenth century. Funcken’s work, like many of his nineteenth-century fellow
Germans (both Catholic and Protestant) is interesting in this regard.
The three sonnets on Canada take special
interest in the landscape and read as follows:
Canada
1.
Auch du bist schön, mein Canada, ja schdn,
Deckt auch der Schnee sechs Monde deine
Flur,
Und schwindet selbst des Lebens letzte
Spur
In
Feld and Wald, im Strom and auf den See’n!
Auch du bist schön, and hatt’ ich
Nichts zu seh’n,
Als define weissen Schneegefilde nur
Krystallbesä’t, den Himmel von Azur,
Ich würd’ entzückt vor deinen Reizen steh’n!
Doch schön auch bist du in des
Nordlichts Glanz,
Wenn Nachts am Firmament ein Strahlenkranz
Sich flimmernd, schimmemd hebt and senkt
im Tanz!
Und o, wie schdn erst am Niagara,
Wenn tausend demantzapfen glitzern da,
Du, Englands Koh-i-noor, mein Canada!*
* [Funcken adds a note to the
poem indicating that Koh-i-noor means mountain of light, the famed diamond in
the British crown, worth more than a half million dollars.]
2.
Ja, du bist schön, auch kalt and
frosterstarrt,
Ein Marmorbild voll Leben, wenn auch todt,
Ein hehrer Leichnam, der dem Morgenroth
Des bald’gen Aufersteh'ns entgegenharrt!
Doch wenn das Schwalbenvolk die
Gegenwart
Des Sommers kündet, deine Sonne loht,
Dann stehst du da, verklärt nach kurzem
Tod,
Viel schöner, ha, ein Falter selt’ner Art!
Der Landsee’n Pracht, des Montmorency
Fall,
Niagara mit seiner Wogen Schwall,
Die tausend Inseln des Lorenzo-Stroms,
Der Wälder Riesen, Saulen eines
Doms,
Drin Gottes Allmacht aus den Wipheln
rauscht ...
Hab' (Dafür) Rhein and Tiber ich umsonst vertauscht?
3.
O, du bist schön! Doch nicht um
solchen Sold
Geschah’s, dass ich mein zweifach Heim
verliess,
Den Rhein and Rom, mir zweifach Paradies,
Dem selbst der Fremdling laut Bewunderung
zollt.
Nicht lockte mich dein Antlitz schön and
hold!
(Nicht fesselt mich) (lockte mich)
Nur weil der Himmel dich als Braut mir
wies,
Mit dir sich selbst als ew’ges Heim
verhiess,
Eilt’ich zu dir, kurz, weil es Gott
gewollt.
Und wenn du, meine Braut, mir nun
gefällst,
An starter Brust mich noch gefesselt
hältst,
Als käm’ auf Erden Nichts dir gleich an
Werth;
So ist das nur ein Theil vom Hundertfalt,
Das Gott mir gab in mancherlei Gestalt,
Seit ich für ihn verlassen Heim and Herd.24
What we have here
is no view of an overpowering nature seen from a garrison, denied or
domesticated – no frightened attempt at survival. What we have, rather, is the
perception and reflection of a highly sensitive and religious individual who
accepts the Canadian landscape for what it is, and when he ‘conventionalizes’
it, does so, not within the typical romantic categories (cf. the Ontario
Lutheran poet, Heinrich Rembe),25 certainly not within the structure of the
pastoral or the picturesque, but rather within the framework of the sublime, a
theme well-known to a German of Funcken’s training from the extensive treatment
of the topic by Kant and more popularly by the disciple of the great
philosopher, Friedrich Schiller. The pastoral brings nature within the human
domain, as sublime nature stands over against the all-encompassing romantic
subject and directs that subject to the beyond.
What we have in this poem, then, is no mere
Canadian Catholic moralizing, but a catholicizing of the Kantian-Schillerian
motif in the Canadian setting. The same pattern manifests itself in two spring
poems which might provide a useful closing for these remarks, and a fitting
tone with which to leave Funcken for the moment. What they point to, besides
Funcken’s practical realism in the face of disappointing Canadian springs
(which, by the way we do well in our highly urbanized setting to remember
could mean grave hardships through the next year), is a delightful combination
of humour and piety, which we Amish count as the chief of the virtues and which
must have attracted my ancestor Peter Litwiller to Father Funcken over a
century ago.
Frühlingsphantasie bei einem
Phantasiefriihling in Canada
Welch ein lustig Lenzesleben
Lacht auf Feld and Frühlingsflur!
Welch ein Schwirren, Schwarmen, Schweben,
Rings im Reiche der Natur!
Schöner scheint des Strahl der
Sonne,
Lichter lacht des Himmels Blau,
Lust’ger singt der Vöglein Wonne,
Würz’ger duftet Feld and Au.
Bunte Blumenbuhler fliegen
Dicht um duft’ge Dolden hie,
Flücht’ge Bienchen summend schmiegen
Sich an Ros’ and Rosmarie.
Ailes lebt and liebt and lachelt,
Wald and Wiese, Flur and Feld,
Und ein Frühlingslüftchen fahlet,
Weil der Erdball Ostem hält.
O, wer sollt’ nicht selig sinken
Auf den Rasen still and stumm,
Duft der Märzviolen trinken
Träumend vom Elysium?
Horch, was hör ich? – Windsbraut stürmet!
Ha, wie fliegt der Flocken Flaum!
Hauserhoch der Schnee sich thürmet,
Und vorüber ist mein Traum.26
Spring Imaginations and Imagined Spring
in Canada
What a joyous new spring dawning,
Field and flower laugh delight;
What a swirl and swarm and sweeping
Rings the realm of nature bright.
Brightly shine the streams of
sunlight,
Lightly laughs the heavens blue,
Smallest birds sing joyous bounty,
Field and meadow beam new hue.
Flower colours flash and flourish
Far as any eye can see;
Flitting bees with buzz alighten
Here on rose and rosemarie.
All is living, all is laughing,
Field and meadow, forest, stream,
While a springtime breeze wafts softly,
Easter joys the earth redeem.
Oh who would not pause in silence,
Kneeling still upon the lawn,
Drink the fragrance of spring violets,
Dreaming of Elysium?
Desist! What sound?
The wind-howls storming.
Ah! the bite of icy screams.
All about in house-high billows
Snow destroys my freezing dreams.
And here,
finally, is a poem which still bears some of the comedy, but wraps it in
greater piety:
Canadisher Frühlingsopfer
(Der Königin des
Maienmonates gewidmet im kalten Mai des Jahres 1875)
Maria, dich zu grüssen
Bei deines Mond’s Beginn
Leg’ich zu deinen Füssen
Das Frühlingsopfer hin:
‘Es leuchtet keine Sonne,
Es prangt kein Blüthenflor,
Es hallt nicht Lenzeswonne
Aus lust’ger Vogel Chor;
Drum will die Zaubertöne
Der lieben Vögelein,
Der Marienglöcklein Schöne,
Den milden Sonnenschein
Ich dir zu Lieb’ entbehren,
Und dich mein Sturmgebraus’
Und Schneegestöber ehren
Am Herd and in der Klaus’.’
Dies Opfer soll dich grüssen
Bei deines Mond’s Beginn;
Ich leg’s zu deinen Füssen
Statt eines Kranzes hin.27
Canadian Spring Offering
(Dedicated to the Queen of May in the cold
spring of 1875)
Maid Mary, this in greeting
As your May month begins,
I lay before you humbly
My offering in spring:
‘No sun shines in the heavens,
No flowers blooms deploy,
No birds in choir anthem,
New spring, new hope, new joy.
For these bright tones of magic,
These songs of smallest bird,
The first light sprouts of springtime,
The gentl’est sunbeams curled
Are absent and lamented;
But to you in their stead,
I lay my winter tumult
By hearth and hermit-bed.’
This sacrifice my greeting,
As your May month begins,
I lay before you humbly
Your crown in wint’ry spring.
*This
paper was presented as a key-note address at the Canadian Catholic Historical
Association banquet, June 4, 1987.
1Surprisingly
little scholarly attention has been directed to this prolific individual. That
lack is now being remedied by the work of Father James Wahl of St. Jerome’s
College (University of Waterloo) who is editing and translating the Funcken
correspondence and Journals from the time of the Resurrectionist’s arrival in
Canada in 1857 to his death in 1888. See James A. Wahl, C.R. (ed. and trans.), The
Letters of Eugen Funcken (Waterloo, 1981-). In 1985 the third volume of
letters from 1871-1873 was published. It was preceded by volume 1 (1857-1862)
and volume 2, numbers 1-3 (1862-1871).
2On the Amish in
Canada see Orland Gingerich, The Amish of Canada (Waterloo: Conrad
Press, 1972).
3On Funcken and
Catholic settlement in the area see Theobold Spetz, The Catholic Church in
Waterloo County (The Catholic Register and Extension: Toronto, 1916). For
more general studies see K.M. McLaughlin, The Germans in Canada (Ottawa,
1985), Heinz Lehmann, Zur Geschichte des Deutschtums in Kanada (Stuttgart,
1931), Bd. 1, 71-90, Gottlieb Leibbrandt, Little Paradise.
4The full title of
the work is Gedichte von Pater Eugen Funcken Apostol. Missionâr in
Ober-Canada. Zum Besten eines deutschen Waisen-hauses in Ober-Canada.
Einsiedeln, New-York and Cincinnati O. 1868. Druck and Commissions-Verlag von
Gebr. Karl and Nikolaus Benziger.
5Gedichte, p. 6.
6Ibid., p. 47
7See Egmont, Dritter
Aufzug (Goethes Sämmtliche Werke mit Einleitungen von Karl Goedeke [Stuttgart,
1875], 3:150).
8Gedichte, p. 32.
9Ibid., p. 199-204.
10Ibid., p. 199-204.
11See Goethes
Sämnuliche Werke, 1:722.
12Heinz Kloss (hrsg.),
Ahornblätter (Würburg, 1961), p. 15.
13Immanuel, pp. 9-16.
14Ibid., pp. 39-41.
15Ibid., pp. 42-44.
16Ibid., p. 219.
17Ibid., p. 424.
18Ibid., pp. 298ff.
19Gedichte, p. 19.
20Ibid., pp. 100-102.
21Ibid., pp. 141-142.
22Peter C. Erb, “The
Canadian Poems of Eugen Funcken, C.R.,” German-Canadian Yearbook 4
(1978), 225-233
23Gaile McGregor, The
Wacousta Syndrome: Explorations in the Canadian Langscape (Toronto, 1985).
24Immanuel, pp. 265-266.
25See Gerhard Friesen
(hrsg.), Hier lasst uns Hütten burden: Deutsche Gedichte lutherischer Pfarrer in
Ontario, 1869-1930 (Toronto, 1984).
26Immanuel, p. 313.
27Ibid., p. 309.