“What If This Storm Was A Metaphor For My Emotions?” Says 19th-Century German Poet

While gazing at a babbling brook from a rustic mill near a Linden tree, the innovative young poet Klaussy Klausenberger Klaussermann had a brilliant idea which would transform the art of poetry as he knew it.

“How can I express my turbulent emotions?” he asked. “Then I looked outside and saw that it was very windy. Do you see where I am going with this? It’s as if the wind is a reflection of my emotional state. As if the wind is no longer wind, but more than wind, like it is representing something other than wind that isn’t wind. Let me explain…”

Other poets expressed astonishment at this poetic conceit. “You know, he might be on to something here,” they said. “We could probably get a century or two of mileage out of this.”

Klaussy was keen to stress that he was not trying to claim that he, a mere mortal man, was in any way comparable to the large scale mixing of high and low pressure systems in the atmosphere which typically generates strong winds and rain. “That would be preposterous,” he said. “I’m not even made of air! However, I do think that even though I am not literally a storm, I can, so to speak, understand what a storm would feel if it weren’t a storm but rather a 19th-century German poet trying to express himself using the inner world of a storm.”

“I can’t believe how original this idea is,” said Johannes Mann. “I was strolling along the beach one day and I saw some waves crashing endlessly onto rocks. But then I had an idea. A poetic idea! What if my tears were so voluminous that they too could crash onto rocks? What an emotionally charged profusion of spume that would be.”

“Sometimes life takes you on a meandering path full of twists and turns, ups and downs, and small fish,” Klaussy explained. “As I gazed at that babbling brook, I knew I had found the perfect way to express this universal drama. Especially the fish, darting about tunefully.”

Soon, Klaussy had given rise to a new poetic movement which would be discussed endlessly in the books written about such movements. “Stand aside, Aufklärung rationalism,” he declared. “It’s time for the weather! And quaint rural scenes! And me!”