Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
In September 1780 Goethe wrote these lines on the wall of a mountain hut in Ilmenau. 'The Wanderer's Night Song I' is now one of the best known German poems and has been set to music many times, by composers such as Schubert, Liszt, Schumann and Ives. Here is a recent version by Peter Viereck which can be found at the Poetry Library site. Viereck says that 'along with Pushkin’s ‘On the Hills of Georgia’, this is the simplest great poem in history.'
To every hill crest
Comes rest.
In every tree crest
the forest
Comes rest.
In every tree crest
the forest
scarcely draws breath.
Each bird-nest is hushed on the heath.
Wait a bit; soon you
will find rest too.
Each bird-nest is hushed on the heath.
Wait a bit; soon you
will find rest too.
Goethe revisits the mountain hut
Source: Goethezeitportal.
The restored hut today
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Source: Wikimedia Commons
You can see a recent interior image of the hut in a post on Goethe's poem at the Poemas del rio Wang blog. As mentioned there, Goethe drew inspiration for 'The Wanderer's Night Song' from a fragment by the Spartan poet Alcman, which had been published in 1773. Alcman does not address the listener, unlike Goethe's Wanderer; he simply describes all of nature asleep - the mountains, the ocean, the birds and beasts. Nor, in what we have of Alcman's verse, does he contrast the hushed landscape with the busy activities of people, a poetic theme which (as C. M. Bowra points out) begins with Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis:
Agamemnon: The birds are still at any rate and the sea is calm; hushed are the winds, and silence broods o’er this narrow firth.
Attendant: Then why art thou outside thy tent, why so restless, my lord Agamemnon?
The restlessness of men like Agamemnon was gladly left behind, far below, by Goethe and the other poets seeking rest and tranquility in a simple hut high up in the mountains.
Lovely post, thank you. There are some wonderful photos at the Goethezeitportal; fascinating to examine the subtle differences in such similar images.
ReplyDeleteAlthough my German is now far from fluent (or even conversational), I'm not enamoured of Viereck's translation.
I confess I only chose the Viereck because of that quote about Pushkin, which caught my fancy.
ReplyDeleteAnother connection I might have made here: in the 'Urfaust' (c 1774) Goethe has Faust say 'Oh, take me to the hilltops, there / To wander in the sweet moonlit air...', so as to be 'cleansed of book-learning's fog'. Very reminiscent of Gary Snyder's 'Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout'.
Snyder's poem is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for you writing. Good to remember that awareness of nature/existence sometimes needs to be slow/still. Faisal.
ReplyDelete