SOURCE: An introduction to Hebrew Ballads and Other Poems by Else Lasker-Schüler, edited and translated by Audri Durchslag and Jeanette Litman-Demeestere, The Jewish Publication Society, 1980, pp. xi-xxii.

In the following excerpt, Durchslag and Litman-Demeestere survey Lasker-Schuiler's career and discuss major images and themes in her poetry.

[In 1902, Lasker-Schüler's first book of poetry], Styx, appeared. Certain general themes and characteristics which appear in this early volume were to recur—though in different guises and styles—throughout Lasker-Schüler's poetic career. Like a mystical Ovid, Lasker-Schüler saw the world as a tribute to and an embodiment of passion and unfolding life. With her, however, the runic replaces the metamorphic. Nature, like almost everything else in Lasker-Schuler's world, reveals a dynamism beyond itself, possessing special power as a hieroglyph (a word which recurs in both her poetry and prose) of yet another, magical realm. Although images of real...