Introduction to German Poetry
Page 5
Es schauen vom Wappenschilde
Die Löwen so traulich mich an;
Ich grüsse die alten Bekannten
Und eile den Burghof hinan.
Dort liegt die Sphinx am Brunnen,
Dort grünt der Feigenbaum,
Dort, hinter diesen Fenstern,
Verträumt’ ich den ersten Traum.
Ich tret’ in die Burgkapelle
Und suche des Ahnherrn Grab;
Dort ist’s, dort hängt vom Pfeiler
Das alte Gewaffen herab.
Noch lesen umflort die Augen
Die Züge der Inschrift nicht,
Wie hell durch die bunten Scheiben
Das Licht darüber auch bricht.
So stehst du, o Schloss meiner Väter,
Mir treu und fest in dem Sinn,
Und bist von der Erde verschwunden,
Der Pflug geht über dich hin.
THE CASTLE BONCOURT
I dream of myself in my childhood
And I shake my greying head,
How you do haunt me, you visions,
Which I believed forgotten for long.
There towers above shady woodlands
A glimmering castle so high;
I know the towers, the battlements,
The bridge of stone, the gate.
From the escutcheon there gaze
The lions so familiarly at me;
I greet the old acquaintances
And rush upward over the courtyard.
There the sphinx lies at the fountain,
There the fig-tree is getting green,
There behind these windows,
I dreamt away my first dream.
I step into the castle’s chapel
And search for my ancestor’s grave;
There it is, there hangs down from the pillar
The olden collection of arms.
My eyes, dimmed with tears, do not read yet
The lines of the inscription,
No matter how brightly, through the colored panes,
The light shines on them.
Thus you stand, castle of my fathers,
Faithful and firm in my mind,
And you have disappeared from the earth,
The plow passes over you.
Sei fruchtbar, o teurer Boden!
Ich segne dich mild und gerührt
Und segn’ ihn zwiefach, wer immer
Den Pflug nun über dich führt.
Ich aber will auf mich raffen,
Mein Saitenspiel in der Hand,
Die Weiten der Erde durchschweifen
Und singen von Land zu Land.
Be fertile, oh beloved soil!
I bless you, gently and moved,
And twice I bless whoever
Now leads the plow over you.
But I will arouse myself,
With my lyre held in my hand
And roam the breadth of the earth
And sing from land to land.
Nikolaus Lenau
(1802-1850)
Lenau (a pseudonym for Nikolaus Niembsch von Strehlenau) was born in Hungary of German parents. Lenau is the very personification of Romantic longing. Like Hölderlin, he sought idyllic inner harmony in a world which seemed out of joint, and his lonely and tragic life also ended in insanity, which beclouded his mind during the last seven years. A born wanderer, he moved ceaselessly about Hungary and South Germany and in the year 1833 his quest for peace and happiness took him as far as the middle-west of the United States, a journey that ended in bitter disillusionment. A hopeless passion in his youth convinced him that above “every joy there hovers a threatening vulture.”
Lenau’s poems reflect his melancholy attitude to life and his restless strivings. Like no other poet he gives a most poignant expression to the Weltschmerz that obsessed him, that melancholy yet not totally unpleasurable despair of the world made fashionable by Byron. For comfort he flies to nature: but it mirrors only his own grief and woes. His compelling imagery, which evokes forsaken landscapes and an atmosphere of unrelieved misery compounded by the elegiac music of his lyrics, imparts to his Weltschmerz the ring of a deeply felt truth. His poems testify that pessimism and despair were inherent in his nature, that life is but an unending confirmation of his sincere conviction that joys lead but to suffering and that all hope is futile.
Lenau’s dramatic treatment of Faust and Don Juan — the two archetypes of mankind’s restless striving and longing for the ultimate — served as inspiration for Liszt’s and Richard Strauss’ symphonic works.
KOMMEN UND SCHEIDEN
So oft sie kam, erschien mir die Gestalt
So lieblich, wie das erste Grün im Wald.
Und was sie sprach, drang mir zum Herzen ein
Suss, wie des Frühlings erstes Lied im Hain.
Und als Lebwohl sie winkte mit der Hand,
War’s, ob der letzte Jugendtraum mir schwand.
From the SCHILFLIEDER
Auf geheimem Waldespfade
Schleich’ ich gern im Abendschein
An das öde Schilfgestade,
Mädchen, und gedenke dein!
Wenn sich dann der Busch verdüstert,
Rauscht das Rohr geheimnisvoll,
Und es klaget und es flüstert,
Dass ich weinen, weinen soll.
Und ich mein’, ich höre wehen
Leise deiner Stimme Klang,
Und im Weiher untergehen
Deinen lieblichen Gesang.
ARRIVAL AND SEPARATION
Whenever she approached, her form to me appeared
As lovely as the first green in the woods.
And what she said, pierced my heart
Sweet as the spring’s first song in the glade.
And when with her hand she waved farewell,
It was as if youth’s final dream went from me.
From the SONGS OF THE REED
On secret woodland paths
I like to steal in evening’s glow
To the desolate bulrush shore,
Maiden, and think of you.
When the bushes then grow darker,
Mysteriously rustles then the reed,
And it wails and whispers
That I should weep out, weep out.
And I seem to hear the sound
Of your voice gently floating
And your lovely song
Sinking in the pond.
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
(1797—1848)
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Germany’s greatest woman poet, strikes a persistently elegiac note reminiscent of Lenau. But unlike the latter’s stark pessimism, hers is softened by a gentle note of pious resignation kindled and sustained by her Catholicism. Her life was one of renunciation, forced upon her partly by an unattractive appearance, by the life-long frailty of her body, and by a deep, hopeless love for a man much younger in years, the author Levin Schück-ing. From this unrequited love, sublimated into maternal affection, sprang most of her lyrics: her lyric powers were quickened by an uncanny and undoubtedly often painful awareness of her senses, an awareness which transformed the minutest realistic details of nature into the beauty of her verbal imagery. Her poems make us hear the caterpillar gnawing on a leaf, see a fish’s shadow cast on the bottom of a lake, and feel her own heart pulsating as she lies daydreaming on the heath, gauging nature’s sensitivity by her own. Because the backdrop of her lyrics are the moorlands of her Westphalian home in North Germany her poems are often called Heimatdichtung (regional poetry). Yet Droste-Hülshoff’s deep psychological insight and unfeigned spiritual and emotional power give the local atmosphere she evokes a universality which transcends the surroundings she describes.
DER WEIHER
Er liegt so still im Morgenlicht,
So friedlich, wie ein fromm Gewissen;
Wenn Weste seinen Spiegel küssen,
Des Ufers Blume fühlt es nicht;
Libellen zittern über ihn,
Blaugoldne Stäbche
n und Karmin,
Und auf des Sonnenbildes Glanz
Die Wasserspinne führt den Tanz;
Schwertlilienkranz am Ufer steht
Und horcht des Schilfes Schlummerliede;
Ein lindes Säuseln kommt und geht,
Als flüstre’s: Friede! Friede! Friedel —
THE POND
It lies so quietly in the light of dawn,
As peaceful as a pious conscience;
When western winds its surface kiss
The lakeshore’s flower does not feel it;
Dragonflies quiver above it,
Little rods of blue-gold and carmine,
And on the sun-reflection’s gleam
The water spider does his dance;
At the shore wreaths of iris stand
And harken to the bulrush’s lullaby;
A gentle rustling comes and goes
As though it whispered: Peace! Peace! Peace! —
Eduard Mörike
(1804-1875)
After a stormy youth which included a strange romance with a girl at once mystic and sensual, the Peregrina of his early poems, Mörike led a comparatively placid life as pastor of Swabian country parishes. His late marriage, however, was not tranquil and ended in separation. Mörike’s latent talent as a painter is revealed in his poetry by an “innate urge to express graphically even the most abstract thoughts,” to quote his contemporary, Theodor Storm. Thus in the first two stanzas of Das verlassene Mägdlein, he creates a vivid and well-observed picture. Beyond this, Mörike’s poems (again the present one is a good example) are distinguished by the rare combination of realistic pictures, flowing rhythm, and musical sonority. The last two qualities have been appreciated by countless composers. Less than fifteen years after the poet’s death, some fifty-odd song treatments of Das verlassene Magdlein were produced. The best of these is Hugo Wolf’s composition, which beautifully captures the melancholy, even tragic mood of the poem; a mood which pervades so many of Mörike’s other poems.
DAS VERLASSENE MÄGDLEIN
Früh, wann3 die Hähne krähn,
Eh’ die Sternlein verschwinden,
Muss ich am Herde stehn,
Muss Feuer zünden.
Schön ist der Flammen Schein,
Es springen die Funken;
Ich schaue so drein,
In Leid versunken.
Plötzlich, da kommt es mir,
Treuloser Knabe,
Dass ich die Nacht von dir
Geträumet habe.
Träne auf Träne dann
Stürzet hernieder;
So kommt der Tag heran —
O ging’ er wieder!
THE JILTED GIRL
Early, when the roosters crow,
Before the little stars disappear,
I must stand by the hearth,
Must kindle the fire.
Beautiful is the flames’ glow;
The sparks dance;
I gaze upon it,
Engulfed in sorrow.
Suddenly it occurs to me,
Faithless boy,
That I, last night,
Have dreamt of you.
Then tear upon tear
Rushes downward;
Thus day begins —
Oh, would it leave again.
Ludwig Uhland
(1787-1862)
A Swabian by birth like Hölderlin, Uhland was a poet, a scholar, and a liberal politician. After serving three years as professor of German literature at the University of Tübingen he was forced to resign because he was refused a leave of absence upon his election to the Diet of Swabia. After the revolution of 1848 he became a delegate to the Frankfurt Parliament. In a speech against the hereditary empire he demanded that Germany’s rulers must be “anointed with the oil of democracy.”
Many consider Uhland to be Germany’s best writer of ballads next to Schiller. Like the latter, he often used the ballad form to champion an ethical ideal or to register a social protest. For the most part, however, Uhland tells the ballads for their own sake, imparting to them the simplicity of a folk song. Undoubtedly this simple folk-like quality accounts for the fact that many of his ballads, such as Der Wirtin Töchterlein and Der gute Kamerad, have been accepted as folk songs by the German people.
Apart from writing ballads with a folk-like quality, Uhland also collected and edited German folk songs; he was in fact the editor of the first scholarly edition of German folk songs to be published. Thus, he continued the tradition begun at the turn of the century by the Brothers Grimm, by Arnim and Brentano, collectors of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Cornucopia [of folk songs]), and other authors of the Romantic movement who sought to revive interest in Germany’s cultural folk-heritage.
DER WIRTIN TÖCHTERLEIN
Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein,
Bei einer Frau Wirtin, da kehrten sie ein:
“Frau Wirtin, hat Sie gut Bier und Wein?
Wo hat Sie Ihr schönes Töchterlein?”
Und als sie traten zur Kammer hinein,
Da lag sie in einem schwarzen Schrein.
Der erste, der schlug den Schleier zurück
Und schaute sie an mit traurigem Blick:
“Ach! lebtest du noch, du schöne Maid!
Ich würde dich lieben von dieser Zeit.”
Der zweite deckte den Schleier zu
Und kehrte sich ab und weinte dazu:
“Ach! dass du liegst auf der Totenbahr’!
Ich hab’ dich geliebet so manches Jahr.”
Der dritte hub ihn wieder sogleich
Und küsste sie an den Mund so bleich:
“Dich liebt’ ich immer, dich lieb’ ich noch heut’
Und werde dich lieben in Ewigkeit.”
THE INNKEEPER’S YOUNG DAUGHTER
Three fellows once crossed the Rhine;
They stopped at a lady-innkeeper’s inn.
“Mrs. Innkeeper, do you have good beer and wine?
Where are you keeping your beautiful young daughter?”
And when they stepped into the room,
She was lying in a black coffin.
The first fellow drew back the veil
And looked at her with saddened glance.
“Oh, if you still lived, you beautiful girl,
I would love you henceforth.”
The second lowered the veil again
And turned away and weepingly said:
“Oh, that you are lying upon the bier!
I have loved you for many a year.”
The third at once lifted it up again
And kissed her upon her mouth so pale:
“I loved you always, I still love you today
And I shall love you through eternity.”
Heinrich Heine
(1797-1856)
Next to Goethe, Heine has become Germany’s best known poet abroad. Carried on the wings of Schumann’s songs, poems like Du bist wie eine Blume and Die zwei Grenadiere have found homes in all parts of the world. Heine has rightfully been called the last poet of the Romantic Age, for in poems like Im wunderschönen Monat Mai the sentiments of that epoch once more find masterful expression: man and nature awaken in Maytime. This sentiment is expressed in the tones of the folk song which Heine and the Romantics tried to strike in their own works.
But Heine transcended the Romantic Age. In the words of his contemporary Eichendorff, “the times had become bored with the hollow games of the Romantics ... and Heine broke the magic spell.” All the poems which break the spell of the sentimental poetry employ an identical technique. In the first part of these poems he seemingly continues in the Romantic tradition; then he destroys this effect by “the cold shower” of the last part. Thus Ich wollte,meine Lieder seems to be a conventional love poem until Heine’s irony disenchants the reader. He often does so by contrasting the lofty poetic words in the first part with the very prosaic terms in the second (for example, “peas,” “peasoup,” “cook”). Finally, some of his poems are completely dominat
ed by political or social satire, or they become the receptacle for his devastating wit, which is often tinged with erotic allusions. Both wit and sensuality are present in his humorous poem Mit dummen Mädchen.
“MIT DUMMEN MÄDCHEN”
Mit dummen Mädchen, hab’ ich gedacht,
Nichts ist mit dummen anzufangen;
Doch als ich mich an die klugen gemacht,
Da ist es mir noch schlimmer ergangen.
Die klugen waren mir viel zu klug,
Ihr Fragen machte mich ungeduldig,
Und wenn ich selber das Wichtigste frug,