Library and Archive Reading Rooms
View by appointment- Created by
- Else Meidner 1901–1987
- Title
- Poem by Else Meidner titled ‘Deceased Dearly Beloved’
- Date
- c.1970
- Format
- Document - writings
- Collection
- Tate Archive
- Acquisition
- Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate, 2006. Accrual presented by Annabel Hodin, 2020
- Reference
- TGA 20062/7/128/2/28
Description
[Transcription/translation]
Deceased dearly beloved,
How frightfully your gaze fixes me!
Your finger, robbed of flesh,
Points at me threateningly,
Your eye sockets peer in darkly –
What did I do in life
That you should be so dreadful in death?
Was the loving homage of my friendship,
The years of reverent affection,
My bending to your will
So incomprehensible?
You were often stone cold when you came to me,
And from your spell I’m yet to break free.
When I go to your grave now, weeping,
I see you laughing down there in your coffin.
Your heart in life my true love could never move.
But to me you were one of the patriarchs,
And in the end even you
Called yourself an old Jew.
Else Meidner
10 November 1955
Archive context
- Papers of Josef Paul Hodin TGA 20062 (407)
-
- Working papers relating to artistic, cultural and historic figures TGA 20062/7 (106)
-
- Else Meidner TGA 20062/7/128 (29)
-
- Numbered correspondence from Else Meidner to J.P. Hodin TGA 20062/7/128/2 (17)
-
- Poem by Else Meidner titled ‘Deceased Dearly Beloved’ TGA 20062/7/128/2/28