I

“Der Rosenbusch”

Es haben meine wilden Rosen
—erschauernd vor dem Hauch der Nacht—
die windeleichten, lichten, losen
Blüten behutsam zugemacht.

Doch sind sie so voll Licht gesogen,
daß es wie Schleier sie umweht,
und daß die Nacht in scheuem Bogen
am Rosenbusch vorübergeht.

—By Hermann Claudius

II

A.
I took this particular short verse, as I did yesterday's by Rilke, from German Verse: A Selection, translated and edited by Herman Salinger (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1952), a slender black-bound volume. Inside the back cover one finds Due Date slips, so rarely seen these days in large libraries, almost all of which have gone digital. I cannot tell you with certainty how often this book was checked out, so let me just tell you what I know:

• 6Mr'59
• 13 Jl'60
• 1De'60
• 2De'60
• 12Jl'61
• 11Ap'62
• 12No'62
• AG28'67
• OC28'69
• DE17'71
• MR16'75
• JA9 '79
• NO15'81
• MR23'83

From what I can tell those are the only two checkout strips ever pasted to the book, the break occurring between 12No'62 and AG28'67. There are serial numbers of sorts printed on each strip; the bottom of the first reads Demco 292-5, the more recent one on top Demco 38-297. There is another difference between the two, for the top, newer one reads Date Due, the older one underneath, however, Date Leased. A pocket for the book's card is also still affixed, but the adhesive is old, and at the slightest tug it tears away a bit more, but I will not remove it.

A black stamp at the beginning of the book reads JUN29 1953; above it in red and in smaller type one finds Reserve SS 1957—120. Most other marks within the book are in pencil, such as the one on the second title page, “24 June 53 Mc Clug 225 German.”

B.
Let us forget Claudius for a moment and return to the translator, editor, and scholar, Herman Salinger, about whom I know rather little. 1905–1982 were his dates, at least according to “Herman Salinger: 1905–1983: In Memoriam,” by Arthur Tilo Alt in The German Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 3 (May, 1983), pp. 536–537. The article itself, available in university libraries everywhere, can also be found online via JSTOR, but it's not available for free.

He published enough, did ol' Salinger, and one can find his entry in the BPJ, or Beloit Poetry Journal, a translation of “Landschaft aus Schreien” (Landscape of Screams) in Volume, No 2 (Winter 1956-1957), 26–29. Most of us who know of Beloit know of it because of Beloit College, a small school in southern Wisconsin.

Salinger was respected enough among his peers that he warranted at least one Festschift, basically a book or volume in honor of somebody, and often written and/or edited by a former student of the person in question. The book in question here is 1978's Creative Encounter: Festschrift for Herman Salinger (Chapel Hill: U of NC P), edited by Leland R. Phelps with the assistance of Aurthur Tilo Alt, whom we met two paragraphs back. And my knowledge of this book comes from a chapter, “Medievalism in Renaissance Germany” by Frank L. Borchardt (pp. 73–85).

Jennifer W. Salinger Marries William W. Duffy 2d
Published: May 22, 1983

Jennifer Wilson Salinger, daughter of Mrs. Herman Salinger of Durham, N.C., and the late Dr. Salinger, was married in Alexandria, Va., yesterday to William Walton Duffy 2d, son of Mary O. Duffy of Providence, R.I., and the late Robert C. Duffy. The Rev. Mark S. Anschutz performed the ceremony at Christ Episcopal Church.

The bride, who attended East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., is a legal secretary with the Washington office of the New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. She was personal secretary to Juanita M. Kreps when she was Secretary of Commerce and appointments secretary to Shirley M. Hufstedler when she was Secretary of Education. Her mother, Marion C. Salinger, is coordinator at the Center for International Studies at Duke University, where her father was chairman of the department of Germanic languages and literature.

Mr. Duffy, a graduate of Providence College, received a master's degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a senior management analyst with the Department of Education in Washington.

There is little enough pre-Intarweb knowledge about people out there, when you think about it, it shouldn't be too surprising that one of the few non-academic references to Herman is the announcement of his daughter's wedding, an announcement, we note, that came shortly after his death. Was she already engaged when he died? Did he know the groom?

Salinger's book of translations was itself dedicated to his teacher, George Madison Priest, “Teacher, Scholar, Translator, Friend” (25 January 1873 [Henderson, KY] to 18 February 1947 [Princeton, N.J.]). What one also takes from the book of poetry is that Salinger managed to move up a bit in the world, for he signs his 1952 volume from Grinnell College (Grinnell, Iowa), but by the time of his death he'd moved on to Duke, though when it comes to Duke's reputation as a “Big School” it is, to an extent, comparable to Grinnell's as a “Small School.”

C.
I am a fan of the obvious, trivial, and intuitive, more so the first and last than the second, but in many ways I am dedicating this Tuesday diary to the second, to the trivial and to trivia.

As for the obvious, it is perhaps worth noting that the obvious, trivial, and intuitive are hardly the same, but in set theoretic terms (with very little theory or set theory involved here) I suspect the intersection of the three is not only non-empty but significant.

I was going to write about intuition today, about its history, and I considered the matter of to-be vs. ought-to-be questions, which interest me a great deal (after all, to a great extent they provide a framework for much of Western philosophy). But after I ran into R's husband J a block past the bus shelter after missing my bus to town and instead waved through their front window at R I just continued toward campus on foot, and when I came to the Capitol Square my march through the capitol was hindered by a fire alarm—so it's fitting that a revolving door marks the entrance—and so I walked around the square, noted Governor Doyle on crutches and standing near his black sedan, and walked past a few museums to the coffee shop, and so all this, including this long, run-on-ish sentence, has led me away from my original intention(s).

To Herman Salinger.

III

“Rosebush”

Each flower of my wild wood-roses,
atremble at the touch of night,
its wind-light, luminous petals closes,
unstirred, fastidious and tight.

And yet they are so drenched in light,
around them veils of whiteness fly;
in tender negligence the night
passes the bush of wild rose by

—Translated by Herman Salinger