m. swiezynski..........grey clouds marched across the sky, but everything so close, and then the mist came swirling up and drifted dank and heavy through the bushes, so leaden, so sluggish..........
..........and the mist devoured the shape of things then half revealed their giant limbs; the surge swept through him, he sought for something, as though for lost dreams, but he found nothing..........
..........when the storm cast the clouds into the valleys and they swirled up through the trees, and the voices awoke amongst the rocks, at first like distant rumbling thunder, then arriving with a roar in mighty chords as though they wished in their wild exulting to sing the praises of the earth..........
..........and then the wind fell silent and far below a sound like lullabies and church bells rose from ravines and treetops, and a delicate red spread upwards in the dark blue sky, and tiny clouds went past on silver wing..........
..........darkness had fallen, heaven and earth had melted into one..........
(and later)
..........towards evening they reached the rhine valley. they drew further and further away from the mountains that now rose onto the red of evening like a deep-blue crystal wave upon whose floods of warmth the russet glow of evening played; across the plain at the foot of the mountains lay a shimmering blue. it grew dark as they came closer to strasbourg; a full moon high in the sky, distant objects all dark and vague, only the hill close by in sharp relief; the earth was like a goblet of gold over which the golden waves of moonlight foamed and tumbled. lenz stared out, impassive, without a flicker of recognition or response, except for a turbid fear that grew as more and more things disappeared in the darkness..........
from john reddick's translation (1993 penguin) of georg büchner's lenz, not published during his lifetime (he died at age 23 in 1897).
also of interest in reddick's notes:
12. represented by a colour: "red signifies faith; yellow, love; blue, knowledge... each of the twelve apostles of our lord and saviour jesus christ has his own particular colour" from d.e. stober's vie de j.f. oberlin (1831).
