Quote and image of the month 11.2025

Martin Parr, A couple in a cafe, New Brighton

Erich Kästner, Sachliche Romanze / Factual Love Story

Als sie einander acht Jahre kannten
(und man darf sagen: sie kannten sich gut),
kam ihre Liebe plötzlich abhanden.
Wie andern Leuten ein Stock oder Hut.

After knowing each other for eight years
(and one can say: the knew each other well),
their love was suddenly mislaid,
As others might mislay a walking-stick or a hat.

Sie waren traurig, betrugen sich heiter,
versuchten Küsse, als ob nichts sei,
und sahen sich an und wußten nicht weiter.
Da weinte sie schließlich. Und er stand dabei.

They were sad, pretended happiness,
attempted kisses, as though nothing was wrong,
and looked at each other and didn't know what to do.
In the end she cried. And he stood next to her.

Vom Fenster aus konnte man Schiffen winken.
Er sagte, es wäre schon Viertel nach Vier
und Zeit, irgendwo Kaffee zu trinken.
Nebenan übte ein Mensch Klavier.

From the window one could wave to the ships.
He said: it's already a quarter past four
and time to go for coffee somewhere.
Next door someone was practising the piano.

Sie gingen ins kleinste Cafe am Ort
und rührten in ihren Tassen.
Am Abend saßen sie immer noch dort.
Sie saßen allein, und sie sprachen kein Wort
und konnten es einfach nicht fassen.

They went to the smallest cafe in the place
and stirred around in their coffee cups.
By evening they were still sitting there.
They sat alone and they spoke no word
and simply could not understand it.

Erich Kästner (1899-1974), Sachliche Romanze (1928). The text is taken from Lärm im Spiegel. Leipzig, Wien, C. Weller Co. Verlag, 1929. Translation ©Figures of Speech 2025, reuse in whole or part only with link to this page.

Erich Kästner reading Sachliche Romanze

Erich Kästner reading Sachliche Romanze, date unknown.

Notes

Sachlich

Erich Kästner was one of the proponents of the Neue Sachlichkeit, the 'New Factuality', an artistic movement in Germany during the early twentieth century, closely associated with the period of the Weimarer Republik (1918-1933). There are no simple equivalents in English for the words Sachlichkeit and sachlich. They mean language that is detached, free of emotion, personal interests and opinion, objective and sober. I have used the word 'factual' in the title of the poem: most of the other options in English, such as 'matter-of-fact', 'down-to-earth' or 'sober', bring unwanted associations with them.

Romanze

English speakers are in danger of taking the German word Romanze to mean the same as the English 'romance', in the sense of 'love affair' – 'A fine romance, with no kisses…'. This is a misunderstanding.

The primary meaning of Romanze is some type of popular ballad, a lyrical or epic story in verse, mainly of heroic deeds or love affairs. In English this is now only a literary usage, for example 'the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'.

In German, the word can indeed be used for a love affair itself, as it is in English, but this is unusual. The German native speaker takes the title Sachliche Romanze to mean that the story itself is told in a manner that is 'sachlich', 'factual' – for that reason I have translated the title as 'Factual Love Story'. That the subject matter of the tale is also eine Romanze, a romance, a love story as English speakers understand the word, is Kästner's clever ambiguity. Nevertheless, although the account of the love story may be sachlich, the story itself is anything but – all the painful turmoil of a lost love is present, even if expressed in a matter-of-fact manner.

Kästner is not responding to my ouija-board appeals for comment, so I am left to my own interpretive devices. One thing is certain: Kästner demonstrates that factual, matter-of-fact storytelling can be as powerfully affecting as emotionally loaded tales. Auden would agree ('What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day.'), as would Hemingway, Joyce, Pound and many of the twentieth-century greats in English Literature.