The Scream

(The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1863-1944,
Norwegian artist)

Edvard Munch made three versions of this “infinite scream passing through nature,” as he described it in his diary; that’s how the image has been understood since its creation about a hundred years ago.

But the interpretation of any symbol can be completely transformed in unexpected ways. To a generation of young filmgoers, this painting has been tamed and now leaves a much more benign and comedic impression, of the young Macaulay Culkin accidentally left Home Alone.

Gűnter Kunert suffered through both totalitarianisms that ravaged his native eastern Germany in the twentieth century. In his poem, he hews to the original meaning of the image.

THE SCREAM

The scream renowned and polyglot
up close to the viewer, not a man,
not a woman, just
pure human essence, an expression
of archaic horror.
Meanwhile we are walking
in the background side by side
undeterred, as far as we could tell,
by the painter’s
view of our own character.

~ Gűnter Kunert, born 1929, German poet, essayist, and artist, from a collection of poems commissioned by Jan Greenberg, Side by Side: New Poems Inspired by Art from around the World

Dusk

(Moonlight by Edvard Munch 1863-1944, Norwegian painter)

On a peaceful night, still and quiet, the sky and water are one.

DUSK

Dusk over the lake,
clouds floating
heat lightning
a nightmare behind branches,
from the swamp
the odor of cedar and fern,
the long circular
wail of the loon —
the plump bird aches for fish
for night to come down.

Then it becomes so dark
and still
that I shatter the moon with an oar.

~ Jim Harrison, born 1937, American poet

Memory

(Girls on a Bridge by Edvard Munch, 1863-1944,
Norwegian painter)

RECUERDO

We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable –
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet, translator and writer of verse dramas