Else Lasker-Schüler drawing at a table beside a crystal

The veiled stones in the ring

Else Lasker-Schüler (1869–1945) was a German-Jewish poet and artist born in Elberfeld. In one of her published letters to the “Blue Rider” she remembers someone she has loved and lost. What remains of his gaze can be worn close to the body, like a ring.

Wearing another person’s gaze

Two stones might resemble eyes. Lasker-Schüler’s sentence travels in the opposite direction. At first what the speaker wears is his eyes. Only then do they become stones. The word “veiled” leaves open how much of that gaze can still be seen.[1]

I always wore his eyes in my ring, angry, veiled stones; my gestures grew hard.[1]

When a gesture hardens

Midway through the sentence hardness passes from the jewellery to its wearer. It shows itself in the speaker’s gestures. A moment later the speaker describes stepping out of a relief. The artist gives a memory a surface and then, for an instant, a living body.[1]