2.19.2024

Verse fragment from THE NOUVEAU RICHE HOURS OF BARON EGON VON HÜHNERBEIN, translated from the original German by Dr. Otto Hühnerleber

Baron Egon von Hühnerbein, c. 1867.

I weary – I tire –
Of my daily routine –
Of breakfast – of dinner –
Of lunch in between –
And the irksome exertion
Of drawing a breath—
How dreary—I stumble –
From ennui to death—

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Baron Egon von Hühnerbein (1835–1892) was the scion of rentiers whose wealth derived from tenants’ poultry farms in and around the former Duchy of Anhalt-Köthen. Only a few instances of verse appear in the Baron’s justly celebrated Nouveau Riche Hours (Neureiche Stunden), but he wrote nearly two thousand additional poems, none of them shared with anyone during his lifetime. After the Baron’s death at the age of fifty-two, his younger cousin and heir, Duke Günter von und zu Hähnchenschenkel, discovered the manuscript and arranged to have the poems translated into English.¹ They first saw publication in the United States, under the pseudonym “Emily Dickinson.”

1. The Duke is sometimes said to have been the Baron’s lover. Allegations of a carnal relationship between the cousins appear to be founded on rumors of a drunken admission overheard in a Hofbräu and anonymously reported to the local constabulary in 1896, although no documentary evidence of the report has been found. In any event, the claim is that the Duke, questioned about his relationship with the late Baron, replied: “Ja … er war mein … Freund“ (“Yes … he vahss my … boyfriend”). The Editorial Board of Diary Poems neither endorses nor disputes this claim.