Angerburg

''Lachin y Gair''

2010-10-21T23:24:00.005-04:00

LACHIN Y GAIR

Lord Byron
"Lachin y Gair, or, as it is pronounced in the Erse, Loch na Garr, towers proudly pre-eminent in the northern highlands, near Invercauld. One of our modern tourists mentions it as the highest mountain, perhaps, in Great Britain. Be this as it may, it is certainly one of the most sublime and picturesque amongst our ‘Caledonian Alps.’ Its appearance is of a dusky hue, but the summit is the seat of eternal snows. Near Lachin y Gair I spent some of the early part of my life, the recollection of which has given birth to these stanzas." [Byron's note]

- - - -
Away, ye gay landscapes, ye garden of roses!
In you let the minions of luxury rove;
Restore me the rocks, where the snow-flake reposes,
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love:
Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,
Round their white summits though elements war;
Though cataracts foam ’stead of smooth-flowing fountains,
I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr.

Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander’d;
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;
On chieftains long perish’d my memory pondered,
As daily I strode through the pine-cover’d glade;
I sought not my home till the day’s dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star;
For fancy was cheered by traditional story,
Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr.

“Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices
Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?”
Surely the soul of the hero rejoices,
And rides on the wind, o’er his own Highland vale.
Round Loch na Garr while the stormy mist gathers,
Winter presides in his cold icy car:
Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers;
They dwell in the tempests of dark Loch na Garr.

“Ill-starred, though brave, did no visions foreboding
Tell you that fate had forsaken your cause?”
Ah! were you destined to die at Culloden,
Victory crown’d not your fall with applause:
Still were you happy in death’s earthy slumber,
You rest with your clan in the caves of Braemar;
The pibroch resounds, to the piper’s loud number,
Your deeds on the echoes of dark Loch na Garr.

Years have roll’d on, Loch na Garr, since I left you,
Years must elapse ere I tread you again:
Nature of verdure and flow’rs has bereft you,
Yet still are you dearer than Albion’s plain.
England! thy beauties are tame and domestic
To one who has roved o’er the mountains afar:
Oh for the crags that are wild and majestic!
The steep frowning glories of dark Loch na Garr!

1807

(Illustration is Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 1868.)

''Elver's Hoh''

2010-10-17T05:35:00.005-04:00

ELVER'S HOH

DANISH—M.G. Lewis
"The original is to be found in the Kiampe-Viiser, Copenhagen, 1739. My version of this ballad (as also of most of the Danish ballads in this collection) was made from a German translation to be found in Herder’s Volkslieder." [Lewis's note]

- - - -
The knight laid his head upon Elver’s Hoh,
Soft slumbers his senses beguiling;
Fatigue press’d its seal on his eyelids, when lo!
Two maidens drew near to him, smiling;
The one she kiss’d softly Sir Algamore’s eyes;
The other she whisper’d him sweetly,
“Arise! thou gallant young warrior, arise,
For the dance it goes gaily and featly!

“Arise, thou gallant young warrior, arise,
And dance with us now and for ever!
My damsels with music thine ear shall surprise,
And sweeter a mortal heard never—”
Then straight of young maidens appear’d a fair throng,
Who their voices in harmony raising,
The winds they were still as the sounds flew along,
By silence their melody praising.

The winds they were still as the sounds flew along,
The wolf howl’d no more from the mountains;
The rivers were mute upon hearing the song,
And calm’d the loud rush of their fountains:
The fish, as they swam in the waters so clear,
To the soft sounds delighted attended,
And nightingales, charm’d the sweet accents to hear,
Their notes with the melody blended.

“Now hear me, thou gallant young warrior, now hear!
If thou wilt partake of our pleasure,
We’ll teach thee to draw the pale moon from her sphere,
We’ll show thee the sorcerer’s treasure!
We’ll teach thee the Runic rhyme, teach thee to hold
The wild bear in magical fetters,
To charm the red dragon, who broods over gold,
And tame him by mystical letters.”

Now hither, now thither, then danced the gay band,
By witchcraft the hero surprising,
Who ever sat silent, his sword in his hand,
Their sports and their pleasures despising.
“Now hear me, thou gallant young warrior, now hear!
If still thou disdain’st what we proffer,
With dagger and knife from thy breast will we tear
Thine heart, which refuses our offer!”

Oh! glad was the knight when he heard the cock crow!
His enemies trembled, and left him:
Else must he have stayed upon Elver’s Hoh,
And the witches of life had bereft him.
Beware then, ye warriors, returning by night
From court, dress’d in gold and in silver;
Beware how you slumber on Elver’s rough height,
Beware of the witches of Elver!

1801

-from M.G. Lewis, Tales of Wonder (1801).
-originally published as Elvers Hoh in J.G. Herder, Volkslieder (1778).

(Illustration is Lawrence Koe, Venus and Tannhäuser, 1896)

''Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came''

2010-10-16T11:37:00.004-04:00

CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME

Robert Browning

I.

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

II.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

III.

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

IV.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

V.

As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, ("since all is o'er," he saith,
"And the blow falIen no grieving can amend;")

VI.

While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

VII.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among "The Band"—to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

VIII.

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.

X.

So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.

XI.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
"Or shut your eyes," said nature peevishly,
"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
"'Tis the Last judgment's fire must cure this place,
"Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."

XII.

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness?'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

XIII.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

XIV.

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

XV.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

XVI.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

XVII.

Giles then, the soul of honour—there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

XVIII.

Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

XIX.

A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof—to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

XX.

So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of route despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

XXI.

Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
—It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

XXII.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

XXIII.

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV.

And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

XXVI.

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII.

And just as far as ever from the end!
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains—with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,—solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts—you're inside the den!

XXX.

Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

XXXI.

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
"Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!"

XXXIII.

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet, each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

1855

(Illustration is Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, The Knight at the Crossroads, 1882.)

Visions of Germany: Along the Rhine

2010-10-13T11:12:00.005-04:00

Following Visions of Germany: Bavaria, the PBS network produced a second German-oriented episode in its Vision series, this one titled Visions of Germany: Along the Rhine. Among the fantastic sights that the show highlighted was Burg Hohenzollern, the ancestral castle of the dynasty that ruled Prussia throughout its history:

It also featured the Niederwalddenkmal, topped by the statue of Germania, as well as Burg Eltz, Germany's most magnificent authentic medieval castle.

Visions of Germany: Along the Rhine

Manfred and the Witch of the Alps

2010-10-09T07:03:00.004-04:00

MANFRED

Lord Byron
Act II Scene II

A lower Valley in the Alps.— A Cataract.
MANFRED takes some of the water into the palm of his hand, and flings it in the air, muttering the adjuration. After a pause, the WITCH OF THE ALPS rises beneath the arch of the sunbow of the torrent.

MANFRED: From my youth upwards
My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine;
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh,
Nor midst the creatures of clay that girded me
Was there but one who— but of her anon.
I said with men, and with the thoughts of men,
I held but slight communion; but instead,
My joy was in the Wilderness, to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mountain's top,
Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing
Flit o'er the herbless granite; or to plunge
Into the torrent, and to roll along
On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave
Of river-stream, or ocean, in their flow.
In these my early strength exulted; or
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars and their development, or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;
Or to look, list'ning, on the scatter'd leaves,
While Autumn winds were at their evening song.
These were my pastimes, and to be alone;
For if the beings, of whom I was one,—
Hating to be so,— cross'd me in my path,
I felt myself degraded back to them,
And was all clay again. And then I dived,
In my lone wanderings, to the caves of death,
Searching its cause in its effect, and drew
From wither'd bones, and skulls, and heap'd up dust,
Conclusions most forbidden. Then I pass'd
The nights of years in sciences, untaught
Save in the old-time; and with time and toil,
And terrible ordeal, and such penance
As in itself hath power upon the air
And spirits that do compass air and earth,
Space, and the peopled infinite, I made
Mine eyes familiar with Eternity,

1816

(Illustration is John Martin, Manfred and the Witch of the Alps, 1837.)

''Entreaty''

2010-10-08T08:34:00.005-04:00

ENTREATY

Nikolaus Lenau

Gaze on me, thou eye of darkness,
Fill me, boundlessness of might—
Solemn, tender, dream-pervaded,
Sweet, unfathomable night!

With dark magic all else banish;
Take the world away from me
So that over life thou only
Henceforth brood unendingly.

1832

-German title: Bitte.

(Illustration is Willy Kriegel, Die Nacht, 1943.)

''The age of chivalry is gone''

2010-10-07T07:07:00.018-04:00

From Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France:

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning-star, full of life and splendor and joy.

Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom! little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness!

1790

In this passage, Burke recalls his meeting with the beautiful Marie Antoinette, who was so tragically murdered by the criminal rabble who incited the French Revolution.

(Illustration is Edmund Blair Leighton, The Accolade, 1901. Please see the learned comment below for a possible identification of the knight's coat of arms, originally thought to be the insignia of Silesia.)

''Lohengrin in Brabant''

2010-10-06T00:25:00.012-04:00

LOHENGRIN IN BRABANT

Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm
The Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, without leaving other heirs than a young daughter, Els, or Elsa by name; her he recommended on his deathbed to one of his retainers, Friedrich von Telramund. Friedrich, the intrepid warrior, became emboldened to demand the youthful duchess’ hand and lands, under the false claim that she had promised to marry him. She steadfastly refused to do so. Friedrich complained to Emperor Henry I ("the Fowler"), and the verdict was that she must defend herself against him, through some hero, in a so-called divine judgment, in which God would accord the victory to the innocent, and defeat the guilty. As none were ready to take her part, the young duchess prayed ardently to God to save her; and far away in distant Montsalvatsch, in the Council of the Grail, the sound of the bell was heard, showing that there was someone in urgent need of help. The Grail therefore resolved to despatch as a rescuer, Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal. Just as he was about to place his foot in the stirrup a swan came floating down the water drawing a skiff behind him. As soon as Lohengrin set eyes upon the swan, he exclaimed: "Take the steed back to the manger; I shall follow this bird wherever he may lead me."

Meanwhile Elsa had summoned her chieftains and retainers to a meeting in Antwerp. Precisely on the day of the assembly, a swan was sighted swimming upstream (river Scheldt) and drawing behind him a skiff, in which Lohengrin lay asleep on his shield. The swan promptly came to land at the shore, and the prince was joyfully welcomed. Hardly had his helmet, shield, and sword been taken from the skiff, when the swan at once swam away again. Lohengrin heard of the wrong which had been done to the duchess and willingly consented to become her champion. Elsa then summoned all her relatives and subjects. A place was prepared in Mainz for Lohengrin and Friedrich to fight in the emperor's presence. The hero of the Grail defeated Friedrich, who confessed having lied to the duchess, and was executed with the axe. Elsa was awarded to Lohengrin, they having long been lovers; but he secretly insisted upon her avoiding all questions as to his ancestry, or whence he had come, saying that otherwise he would have to leave her instantaneously and she would never see him again.

For some time, the couple lived in peace and happiness. Lohengrin was a wise and mighty ruler over his land, and also served his emperor well in his expeditions against the Huns and the heathen. But it came to pass that one day in throwing the javelin he unhorsed the Duke of Cleve, so that the latter broke an arm. The Duchess of Cleve was angry, and spoke out amongst the women, saying, "Lohengrin may be brave enough, and he seems to be a good Christian; what a pity that his nobility is not of much account for no one knows whence he has come floating to this land." These words pierced the heart of the Duchess of Brabant, and she changed color with emotion. At night, when her spouse was holding her in his arms, she wept, and he said, "What is the matter, Elsa, my own?" She made answer, "The Duchess of Cleve has caused me sore pain." Lohengrin was silent and asked no more. The second night, the same came to pass. But in the third night, Elsa could no longer retain herself, and she spoke: "Lord, do not chide me! I wish to know, for our children's sake, whence you were born; for my heart tells me that you are of high rank." When the day broke, Lohengrin declared in public whence he had come, that Parsifal was his father, and God had sent him from the Grail. He then asked for his two children, which the duchess had borne him, kissed them, told them to take good care of his horn and sword, which he would leave behind, and said: "Now, I must be gone." To the duchess he left a little ring which his mother had given him. Then the swan, his friend, carne swimming swiftly, with the skiff behind him; the prince stepped in and crossed the water, back to the service of the Grail. Elsa sank down in a faint. The empress resolved to keep the younger boy Lohengrin, for his father's sake, and to bring him up as her own child. But the widow wept and mourned the rest of her life for her beloved spouse, who never came back to her.

1816

-from the Bros. Grimm collection Deutsche Sagen (German Legends).
-original title: Lohengrin zu Brabant.
-trans. from Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1914).

Illustration is Norman Price (1877-1951), Lohengrin.

''The Minstrel''

2010-10-05T07:34:00.007-04:00

THE MINSTREL

[Two excerpts]

James Beattie

XI.
There lived, in Gothic days, as legends tell,
A shepherd-swain, a man of low degree;
Whose sires, perchance, in Fairyland might dwell,
Sicilian groves, or vales of Arcady;
But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie:
A nation famed for song, and beauty’s charms;
Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.

XXI.
And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,
When all in mist the world below was lost.
What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,
Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast,
And view the enormous waste of vapour, tost
In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,
Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed!
And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound,
Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound!

1771-74

Complete text of The Minstrel.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Morning in the Riesengebirge, 1810-11.)

Visions of Germany: Neuschwanstein

2010-10-03T05:57:00.005-04:00

The Public Broadcasting Service in the U.S. runs a series titled Visions, which shows aerial views of various destinations around the world. This excerpt, from the installment titled Visions of Germany: Bavaria, shows the magnificent arch-Romantic castle Schloß Neuschwanstein, built by King Ludwig II, as well as Schloß Hohenschwangau, in which the king spent his boyhood years.

Visions of Germany: Bavaria

''Death's Delight''

2010-10-02T01:17:00.007-04:00

DEATH'S DELIGHT

Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

Before the swan in waters blue has sunken
He dreams and sings to death, with longing drunken.
The summer-wearied earth, her blossoms going,
Fills full the grapes with her last fiery glowing.
The sun still scatters sparks the while he's sinking,
And gives once more to earth his fire for drinking,
Till, to bring passion's prey her calm wing under,
Star upon star, comes night in all her wonder.

1840

-German title: Todeslust.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Swans in the Rushes, 1820.)

Lohengrin

2010-09-30T07:48:00.007-04:00

The following video shows two exciting midpoints and the conclusion of Act I of Wagner's grand opera Lohengrin (1850). Elsa von Brabant has been falsely accused of a grave sin by Friedrich von Telramund. She denies the perfidious charge, and the call goes out for a knight to champion Elsa in combat. The first call goes unheeded. Elsa implores the king for a second call, which goes out, and this too appears to be ignored.

At the very moment when all hope appears to be lost for Elsa, she falls to her knees in prayer, and a commotion begins among the crowd. A knight in a boat drawn by a swan approaches along the river. He disembarks and vows to defend Elsa's honour. The duel begins, and while Friedrich von Telramund is aided by the black arts of the pagan sorceress Ortrund, the knight Lohengrin has God on his side.

These excerpts are from the best currently available video rendition of the opera, with Peter Hofmann as an uncommonly credible Lohengrin (a rare example of a singer who actually looks the part of a Teutonic knight) and Eve Marton as a somewhat too old but nevertheless convincing Elsa.

The definitive complete audio recording of this opera is the 1982 EMI 3CD set featuring the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

Manfred on the Jungfrau

2010-09-27T18:17:00.006-04:00

MANFRED

Lord Byron
Act I Scene II

The Mountain of the Jungfrau. — Time, Morning.—
MANFRED alone upon the Cliffs.
MANFRED: The spirits I have raised abandon me,
The spells which I have studied baffled me,
The remedy I reck'd of tortured me;
I lean no more on super-human aid,
It hath no power upon the past, and for
The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness,
It is not of my search. — My mother Earth!
And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.
And thou, the bright eye of the universe
That openest over all, and unto all
Art a delight — thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest forever — wherefore do I pause?
I feel the impulse—yet I do not plunge;
I see the peril — yet do not recede;
And my brain reels — and yet my foot is firm.
There is a power upon me which withholds,
And makes it my fatality to live;
If it be life to wear within myself
This barrenness of spirit, and to be
My own soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased
To justify my deeds unto myself—
The last infirmity of evil.

[An eagle passes.]
Ay,
Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,
Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me — I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
Yet pierces downward, onward, or above,
With a pervading vision. — Beautiful!
How beautiful is all this visible world!
How glorious in its action and itself!
But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our mortality predominates,
And men are what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other.

1816

(Illustration is John Martin, Manfred on the Jungfrau, 1837.)

''Moonlit Night''

2010-09-26T19:24:00.002-04:00

MOONLIT NIGHT

Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

The sky had kissed the earth to sleep
So silently, 'twould seem,
That in her flowering glory she
Of him alone would dream.

Across the fields the playful breeze
The corn ears softly swayed,
A gentle whisper stirred the trees,
The night for stars was made.

My soul stretched out its yearning wings,
As far and wide to roam,
Flew through the quiet countryside,
As though 'twere flying home.

1837

-German title: Mondnacht.

(Illustration is Thomas Cole, Landscape (Moonlight), c.1833-34.)

The Isle of the Dead

2010-09-25T20:41:00.013-04:00

DONICA

Robert Southey
In Finland there is a castle which is called the New Rock, moated about with a river of unfounded depth, the water black, and the fish therein very distasteful to the palate. In this are spectres often seen, which foreshew either the death of the Governor, or some prime officer belonging to the place; and most commonly it appeareth in the shape of an harper, sweetly singing and dallying and playing under the water.

It is reported of one Donica, that after she was dead, the Devil walked in her body for the space of two years, so that none suspected but that she was still alive; for she did both speak and eat, though very sparingly; only she had a deep paleness on her countenance, which was the only sign of death. At length a Magician coming by where she was then in the company of many other virgins, as soon as he beheld her he said, "fair Maids, why keep you company with the dead Virgin whom you suppose to be alive?" when taking away the magic charm which was tied under her arm, the body fell down lifeless and without motion.

The following Ballad is founded on these stories. They are to be found in the notes to "The Hierarchies of the blessed Angels," a poem by Thomas Heywood, printed in folio by Adam Islip, 1635. [Southey's note]

- - - -
High on a rock, whose castled shade
Darken'd the lake below,
In ancient strength majestic stood
The towers of Arlinkow.

The fisher in the lake below
Durst never cast his net,
Nor ever swallow in its waves
Her passing wings would wet.

The cattle from its ominous banks
In wild alarm would run,
Tho' parched with thirst and faint beneath
The summer's scorching sun.

For sometimes when no passing breeze
The long lank sedges waved,
All white with foam and heaving high
Its deafening billows raved;

And when the tempest from its base
The rooted pine would shake,
The powerless storm unruffling swept
Across the calm dead lake.

And ever then when death drew near
The house of Arlinkow,
Its dark unfathom'd depths did send
Strange music from below.

The Lord of Arlinkow was old,
One only child had he,
Donica was the Maiden's name
As fair as fair might be.

A bloom as bright as opening morn
Flush'd o'er her clear white cheek,
The music of her voice was mild,
Her full dark eyes were meek.

Far was her beauty known, for none
So fair could Finland boast,
Her parents loved the Maiden much,
Young EBERHARD loved her most.

Together did they hope to tread
The pleasant path of life,
For now the day drew near to make
Donica Eberhard's wife.

The eve was fair, and mild the air,
Along the lake they stray;
The eastern hill reflected bright
The fading tints of day.

And brightly o'er the water stream'd
The liquid radiance wide;
Donica's little dog ran on
And gambol'd at her side.

Youth, health, and love bloom'd on her cheek,
Her full dark eyes express
In many a glance to Eberhard
Her soul's meek tenderness.

Nor sound was heard, nor passing gale
Sigh'd thro' the long lank sedge,
The air was hushed; no little wave
Dimpled the water's edge.

Sudden the unfathom'd lake sent forth
Strange music from beneath,
And slowly o'er the waters sail'd
The solemn sounds of death.

As the deep sounds of death arose,
Donica's cheek grew pale,
And in the arms of Eberhard
The senseless maiden fell.

Loudly the youth in terror shriek'd,
And loud he call'd for aid,
And with a wild and eager look
Gazed on the death-pale maid.

But soon again did better thoughts
In Eberhard arise,
And he with trembling hope beheld
The maiden raise her eyes.

And on his arm reclin'd she moved
With feeble pace and slow,
And soon with strength recover'd, reach'd
The towers of Arlinkow.

Yet never to Donica's cheek
Return'd the lively hue,
Her cheeks were deathy white, and wan,
Her lips a livid blue.

Her eyes so bright and black of yore
Were now more black and bright,
And beam'd strange lustre in her face
So deadly wan and white.

The dog that gambol'd by her side,
And lov'd with her to stray,
Now at his alter'd mistress howl'd
And fled in fear away.

Yet did the faithful Eberhard
Not love the maid the less;
He gazed with sorrow, but he gazed
With deeper tenderness.

And when he found her health unharm'd
He would not brook delay,
But press'd the not unwilling maid
To fix the bridal day.

And when at length it came, with joy
They hail'd the bridal day,
And onward to the house of God
They went their willing way.

And as they at the altar stood
And heard the sacred rite,
The hallowed tapers dimly stream'd
A pale sulphureous light.

And as the youth with holy warmth
Her hand in his did hold,
Sudden he felt Donica's hand
Grow deadly damp and cold.

And loudly did he shriek, for lo!
A Spirit met his view,
And Eberhard in the angel form
His own Donica knew.

That instant from her earthly frame
Howling the dæmon fled,
And at the side of Eberhard
The livid form fell dead.

1797

(Illustration is Arnold Böcklin, The Isle of the Dead, 1883.)

''The Patron Saint of the Romantic School''

2010-09-23T15:08:00.011-04:00

Suppressed scene from Schiller's Die Räuber (1781):

FRANZ: I do not know, Maurice, if you have read Milton. He who could not endure that another should be above him, and who dared to challenge the Almighty to a duel, was he not an extraordinary genius? He had encountered the Invincible One, and although in defeat he exhausted all his forces, he was not humiliated; eternally, even to the present day, he makes new efforts.

From James Beattie, Dissertations Moral and Critical (1783):

Satan, as Milton has represented him in Paradise Lost, though there are no qualities that can be called good in a moral view…yet there is a grandeur of a ruined archangel; there is force able to contend with the most boisterous elements; and there is boldness which no power but what is Almighty can intimidate. These qualities are astonishing; and…we are often compelled to admire that very greatness by which we are confounded and terrified.

From William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790):

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

From Maximilian Rudwin, The Devil in Legend and Literature (1931):

Satanism is not a part of Romanticism. It is Romanticism. It may well be said without any levity that Satan was the patron saint of the Romantic School.

(Illustration is John Martin, The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium, 1841.)

''The Three''

2010-09-22T14:27:00.005-04:00

THE THREE

Nikolaus Lenau

Three riders after harsh defeat,
How slowly, slowly they retreat!

From deep-cut gashes gushes blood,
The horses feel the unstanched flood.

From saddle drips the blood, from rein,
And washes foam off flank and mane.

The steeds' advance is gently slow,
For else too swift the blood's rich flow.

The dying horsemen, side by side,
Clasp one another as they ride.

In accents faint, disconsolate,
Each mourns that this should be his fate:

"A maid has promised me her hand--
Why must I die in foreign land?"

"Have home and farm and forest green,
And meet a death so unforeseen!"

"God gave me life, his only boon,
And yet I dread to die so soon."

And where they on their death-ride fare,
Three vultures follow through the air.

They share the men with piercing cry:
"Him you devour, him you, him I!"

1842

-trans. Gerd Gillhoff
-German title: Die Drei.

(Illustration is Karl Friedrich Lessing, The Return of the Crusader, 1835.)

Manfred

2010-09-20T13:11:00.005-04:00

MANFRED

Lord Byron
The scene of the Drama is amongst the Higher Alps — partly in the Castle of Manfred, and partly in the Mountains.

Act I Scene I

Manfred alone. — Scene, a Gothic Gallery. — Time, Midnight.
MANFRED: The lamp must be replenish'd, but even then
It will not burn so long as I must watch.
My slumbers — if I slumber — are not sleep,
But a continuance of enduring thought,
Which then I can resist not: in my heart
There is a vigil, and these eyes but close
To look within; and yet I live, and bear
The aspect and the form of breathing men.
But grief should be the instructor of the wise;
Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
Philosophy and science, and the springs
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world,
I have essay'd, and in my mind there is
A power to make these subject to itself—
But they avail not: I have done men good,
And I have met with good even among men—
But this avail'd not: I have had my foes,
And none have baffled, many fallen before me—
But this avail'd not: Good, or evil, life,
Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,
Have been to me as rain unto the sands,
Since that all-nameless hour. I have no dread,
And feel the curse to have no natural fear
Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes
Or lurking love of something on the earth.

1816

Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Faust im Studierzimmer (Faust in His Study), c.1851.

''The Old Woman of Berkeley''

2010-09-19T10:41:00.007-04:00

THE OLD WOMAN OF BERKELEY

Robert Southey
"This story is also related by Olaus Magnus; and in the Nuremberg Chronicle." [Southey's note]

- - - -
The Raven croak'd as she sate at her meal,
And the Old Woman knew what he said,
And she grew pale at the Raven's tale,
And sicken'd and went to her bed.

"Now fetch me my children, and fetch them with speed,"
The Old Woman of Berkeley said,
"The Monk my son, and my daughter the Nun,
Bid them hasten or I shall be dead."

The Monk her son, and her daughter the Nun,
Their way to Berkeley went,
And they have brought with pious thought
The holy sacrament.

The Old Woman shriek'd as they enter'd her door,
And she cried with a voice of despair,
"Now take away the sacrament,
For its presence I cannot bear!"

Her lip it trembled with agony,
The sweat ran down her brow,
"I have tortures in store for evermore,
But spare me, my children, now!"

Away they sent the sacrament,
The fit it left her weak,
She look's at her children with ghastly eyes,
And faintly struggled to speak.

"All kind of sin have I rioted in,
And the judgment now must be,
But I secured my children's souls,
Oh! pray, my children, for me!

"I have 'nointed myself with infant's fat,
The fiends have been my slaves,
From sleeping babes I have suck'd the breath,
And breaking by charms the sleep of death,
I have call'd the dead from their graves.

"And the Devil will fetch me now in fire,
My witchcrafts to atone;
And I who have troubled the dead man's grave
Shall never have rest in my own.

"Bless, I entreat, my winding sheet,
My children, I beg of you;
And with holy water sprinkle my shroud,
And sprinkle my coffin, too.

"And let me be chain'd in my coffin of stone,
And fasten it strong, I implore,
With iron bars, and with three chains,
Chain it to the church floor.

"And bless the chains and sprinkle them,
And let fifty Priests stand round,
Who night and day the mass may say
Where I lie on the ground.

"And see that fifty Choristers
Beside the bier attend me,
And day and night by the tapers' light,
With holy hymns defend me.

"Let the church bells all, both great and small,
Be toll'd by night and day,
To drive from thence the fiends who come
To bear my body away.

"And ever have the church door barr'd
After the even-song;
And I beseech you, children dear,
Let the bars and bolts be strong.

"And let this be three days and nights
My wretched corpse to save;
Till the fourth morning keep me safe,
And then I may rest in my grave."

The Old Woman of Berkeley laid her down,
And her eyes grew deadly dim,
Short came her breath, and the struggle of death
Did loosen every limb.

They blest the old woman's winding sheet
With rites and prayers due,
With holy water they sprinkled her shroud,
And they sprinkled her coffin too.

And they chain'd her in her coffin of stone,
And with iron barr'd it down,
And in the church with three strong chains
The chain'd it to the ground.

And they blest the chains and sprinkled them,
And fifty Priests stood round,
By night and day the mass to say
Where she lay on the ground.

And fifty sacred Choristers
Beside the bier attend her,
Who day and night by the taper's light
Should with holy hymns defend her.

To see the Priests and Choristers
It was a goodly sight,
Each holding, as it were a staff,
A taper burning bright.

And the church bells all, both great and small,
Did toll so loud and long;
And they have barr'd the church door hard,
After the even-song.

And the first night the tapers' light
Burnt steadily and clear,
But they without a hideous rout
Of angry fiends could hear;

A hideous roar at the church door
Like a long thunder peal;
And the Priests they pray'd, and the Choristers sung
Louder in fearful zeal.

Loud toll'd the bell, the Priests pray'd well,
The tapers they burnt bright,
The Monk her son, and her daughter the Nun,
They told their beads all night.

The cock he crew, the Fiends they flew
From the voice of the morning away;
Then undisturb'd the Choristers sing,
And the fifty Priests they pray;
As they had sung and pray'd all night,
They pray'd and sung all day.

The second night the tapers' light
Burnt dismally and blue,
And every one saw his neighbour's face
Like a dead man's face to view.

And yells and cries without arise
That the stoutest heart might shock,
And a deafening roar like a cataract pouring
Over a mountain rock.

The Monk and Nun they told their beads
As fast as they could tell,
And aye as louder grew the noise
The faster went the bell.

Louder and louder the Choristers sung
As they trembled more and more,
And the Priests as they pray'd to heaven for aid,
They smote their breasts full sore.

The cock he crew, the Fiends they flew
From the voice of the morning away;
Then undisturb'd the Choristers sing,
And the fifty Priests they pray;
As they had sung and pray'd all night,
The pray'd and sung all day.

The third night came, and the tapers' flame
A frightful stench did make;
And they burnt as though they had been dipt
In the burning brimstone lake.

And the loud commotion, like the rushing of ocean,
Grew momently more and more;
And strokes as of a battering ram
Did shake the strong church door.

The bellmen, they for very fear
Could toll the bell no longer;
And still as louder grew the strokes
Their fear it grew the stronger.

The Monk and Nun forgot their beads,
They fell on the ground in dismay;
There was not a single Saint in heaven
To whom they did not pray.

And the Choristers' song, which late was so strong,
Falter'd with consternation,
For the church did rock as an earthquake shock
Uplifed its foundation.

And a sound was heard like the trumpet's blast,
That shall one day wake the dead;
The strong church door could bear no more,
And the bolts and the bars they fled;

And the tapers' light was extinguish'd quite,
And the Choristers faintly sung,
And the Priests dismay'd, panted and pray'd,
And on all the Saints in heaven for aid
They call'd with trembling tongue.

And in He came with eyes of flame,
The Devil to fetch the dead,
And all the church with his presence glow'd
Like a fiery furnace red.

He laid his hand on the iron chains,
And like flax they moulder'd asunder,
And the coffin lid, which was barr'd so firm,
He burst with his voice of thunder.

And he bade the Old Woman of Berkeley rise,
And come with her Master away;
A cold sweat started on that cold corpse,
At the voice she was forced to obey.

She rose on her feet in her winding sheet,
Her dead flesh quiver'd with fear,
And a groan like that which the Old Woman gave
Never did mortal hear.

She follow'd her Master to the church door,
There stood a black horse there;
His breath was red like furnace smoke,
His eyes like a meteor's glare.

The Devil he flung her on the horse,
And he leapt up before,
And away like the lightning's speed they went,
And she was seen no more.

They saw her no more, but her cries
For four miles round they could hear,
And children at rest at their mothers' breast
Started, and scream'd with fear.

1799

(Illustration is John Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781.)

Germania

2010-09-18T14:28:00.007-04:00

HURRAH, GERMANIA!

Ferdinand Freiligrath

Hurrah! thou lady proud and fair,
Hurrah! Germania mine!
What fire is in thine eye, as there
Thou bendest o'er the Rhine!
How in July's full blaze dost thou
Flash forth thy sword, and go,
With heart elate and knitted brow,
To strike the invader low!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! Germania!

No thought hadst thou, so calm and light,
Of war or battle plain,
But on thy broad fields, waving bright,
Didst mow the golden grain,
With clashing sickles, wreaths of corn,
Thy sheaves didst garner in,
When, hark! across the Rhine War's horn
Breaks through the merry din!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! Germania!

Down sickle then and wreath of wheat
Amidst the corn were cast,
And, starting fiercely to thy feet,
Thy heart beat loud and fast;
Then with a shout I heard thee call:
"Well, since you will, you may!
Up, up, my children, one and all,
On to the Rhine! Away!"
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! Germania!

From port to port the summons flew,
Rang o'er our German wave;
The Oder on her harness drew,
The Elbe girt on her glaive;
Neckar and Weser swell the tide,
Main flashes to the sun,
Old feuds, old hates are dashed aside,
All German men are one!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! Germania!

Suabian and Prussian, hand in hand,
North, South, one host, one vow!
"What is the German's Fatherland?"
Who asks that question now?
One soul, one arm, one close-knit frame,
One will are we today;
Hurrah, Germania! thou proud dame,
Oh, glorious time, hurrah!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! Germania!

Germania now, let come what may,
Wll stand unshook through all;
This is our country's festal day;
Now woe betide thee, Gaul!
Woe worth the hour a robber thrust
Thy sword into thy hand!
A curse upon him that we must
Unsheathe our German brand!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! Germania!

For home and hearth, for wife and child,
For all loved things that we
Are bound to keep all undefiled
From foreign ruffianry!
For German right, for German speech,
For German household ways,
For German homesteads, all and each,
Strike home through battle's blaze!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! Germania!

Up, Germans, up, with God! The die
Clicks loud — we wait the throw!
Oh, who may think without a sigh
What blood is doom'd to flow?
Yet, look thou up, with fearless heart!
Thou must, thou shalt prevail!
Great, glorious, free as ne'er thou wert,
All hail, Germania, hail!
Hurrah! Victoria!
Hurrah! Germania!

1870

-trans. Pall Mall Gazette
-German title: Hurra, Germania

Illustrations show the magnificent Niederwalddenkmal (literally, "Lower Forest Monument") along the Rhine (1883), topped with the statue of personified Germania by Johannes Schilling.

The Destruction

2010-09-17T17:43:00.003-04:00

From Friedrich von Schiller's Die Räuber (1781):

FRANZ: Suddenly a fearful thunderclap struck my slumbering ear, shuddering I leapt up, and behold, I thought I saw the whole horizon stand ablaze with fiery flames, and mountains and cities and forests melted like wax in a furnace, and a howling whirlwind swept away the sea and the earth and the sky — and a voice rang out as of a brazen trumpet: Earth, give up thy dead, give up thy dead, O sea! and the bare ground was in labour, and began to cast up skulls and ribs and jaws and all manner of bones that joined together and made bodies of men, and they gathered in a great stream, more than the eye could see, a living torrent!

Illustration is John Martin (1789-1854), The Destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

''The Dream''

2010-09-14T00:03:00.007-04:00

THE DREAM

[An excerpt]

Lord Byron

VIII

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compassed round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains; with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues: and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed
A marvel and a secret. — Be it so.

1816

(Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Faust's Dream, c.1851.)

The Dream (complete text)

''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner''

2010-09-11T15:24:00.012-04:00

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
NOTE: This poem exists in two forms. The first, published in 1798, contains a number of horrific elements that the second version, published in 1817 and now considered definitive, omits. This text restores the omitted stanzas from the 1798 version, which are italicized for the purpose of identification.

PART THE FIRST.

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

"The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din."

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years child:
The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot chuse but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.

The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon--
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot chuse but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners' hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.

"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!--
Why look'st thou so?"--With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.

PART THE SECOND.

The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.

And the good south wind still blew behind
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners' hollo!

And I had done an hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay
That made the breeze to blow!

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free:
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so:
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

PART THE THIRD.

There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.

At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist:
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could not laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.

See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!

The western wave was all a-flame
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.

And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven's Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered,
With broad and burning face.

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres!

Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman's mate?

His bones were black with many a crack,
All black and bare, I ween;
Jet-black and bare, save where with rust
Of mouldy damps and charnel crust
They're patch'd with purple and green.

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
"The game is done! I've won! I've won!"
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

A gust of wind sterte up behind
And whistled thro' his bones;
Thro' the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth
Half-whistles and half-groans.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea.
Off shot the spectre-bark.

We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!

The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dew did drip--
Till clombe above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

The souls did from their bodies fly,--
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!

PART THE FOURTH.

"I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.

"I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown."--
Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropt not down.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray:
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.

I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.

The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.

An orphan's curse would drag to Hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is a curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

The moving Moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The self same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

PART THE FIFTH.

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.

The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.

My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light--almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.

And soon I heard a roaring wind:
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.

The upper air burst into life!
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.

And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;
And the rain poured down from one black cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.

The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side:
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.

The strong wind reach'd the ship: it roar'd
And dropp'd down, like a stone!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up blew;
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do:
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools--
We were a ghastly crew.

The body of my brother's son,
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me.
And I quak'd to think of my own voice
How frightful it would be!

The day-light dawn'd--they dropp'd their arms,
And clustered round the mast;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
And from their bodies passed.

Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!

And now 'twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the Heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.

The Marineres all 'gan pull the ropes,
But look at me they n'old:
Thought I, I am as thin as air--
They cannot me behold.

Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.

Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The spirit slid: and it was he
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.

The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fixed her to the ocean:
But in a minute she 'gan stir,
With a short uneasy motion--
Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short uneasy motion.

Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.

How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare;
But ere my living life returned,
I heard and in my soul discerned
Two VOICES in the air.

"Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the man?
By him who died on cross,
With his cruel bow he laid full low,
The harmless Albatross.

"The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow."

The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, "The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do."

PART THE SIXTH.

FIRST VOICE.

But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing--
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the OCEAN doing?

SECOND VOICE.

Still as a slave before his lord,
The OCEAN hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast--

If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.

FIRST VOICE.

But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?

SECOND VOICE.

The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.

Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner's trance is abated.

I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together.

All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.

The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.

And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green.
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen--

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.

It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring--
It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.

Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--
On me alone it blew.

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree!

We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray--
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.

The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!
And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the moon.

The moonlight bay was white all o'er,
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
Like as of torches came.

I turn'd my head in fear and dread,
And by the holy rood,
The bodies had advanc'd, and now
Before the mast they stood.

They lifted up their stiff right arms,
They held them strait and tight;
And each right-arm burnt like a torch,
A torch that's borne upright.
Their stony eye-balls glitter'd on
In the red and smoky light.

I pray'd and turn'd my head away
Forth looking as before.
There was no breeze upon the bay,
No wave against the shore.

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.

And the bay was white with silent light,
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.

A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I turned my eyes upon the deck--
Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.

This seraph band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light:

This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart--
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.

But soon I heard the dash of oars;
I heard the Pilot's cheer;
My head was turned perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.

Then vanish'd all the lovely lights;
The bodies rose anew:
With silent pace, each to his place,
Came back the ghastly crew.
The wind, that shade nor motion made,
On me alone it blew.

The Pilot, and the Pilot's boy,
I heard them coming fast:
Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.

I saw a third--I heard his voice:
It is the Hermit good!
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away
The Albatross's blood.

PART THE SEVENTH.

This Hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree.

He kneels at morn and noon and eve--
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.

The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,
"Why this is strange, I trow!
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?"

"Strange, by my faith!" the Hermit said--
"And they answered not our cheer!
The planks looked warped! and see those sails,
How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were

"Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along;
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf's young."

"Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look--
(The Pilot made reply)
I am a-feared"--"Push on, push on!"
Said the Hermit cheerily.

The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.

Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread:
It reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.

Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days drowned
My body lay afloat;
But swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot's boat.

Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.

I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.

I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
"Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row."

And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.

"O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!"
The Hermit crossed his brow.
"Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say--
What manner of man art thou?"

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!--

To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

1798/1817

Illustrations are from Gustav Doré, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1870, as well as Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (1712-74) Sea Storm and Shipwreck, and Francis Danby, Shipwreck, c.1850.

''Proudly eminent''

2010-09-10T20:00:00.005-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):

He, above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower. His form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and th' excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all th' Archangel: but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge. (I.589-604)

(Illustration is John Martin, Satan, Sin, and Death, 1824.)

Ossian

2010-09-09T03:01:00.009-04:00

FRAGMENTS OF ANCIENT POETRY

James Macpherson

VIII

By the side of a rock on the hill, beneath the aged trees, old Oscian sat on the moss; the last of the race of Fingal. Sightless are his aged eyes; his beard is waving in the wind. Dull through the leafless trees he heard the voice of the north. Sorrow revived in his soul: he began and lamented the dead.

How hast thou fallen like an oak, with all thy branches round thee! Where is Fingal the King? where is Oscur my son? where are all my race? Alas! in the earth they lie. I feel their tombs with my hands. I hear the river below murmuring hoarsely over the stones. What dost thou, O river, to me? Thou bringest back the memory of the past.

The race of Fingal stood on thy banks, like a wood in a fertile soil. Keen were their spears of steel. Hardy was he who dared to encounter their rage. Fillan the great was there. Thou Oscur wert there, my son! Fingal himself was there, strong in the grey locks of years. Full rose his sinewy limbs; and wide his shoulders spread. The unhappy met with his arm, when the pride of his wrath arose.

The son of Morny came; Gaul, the tallest of men. He stood on the hill like an oak; his voice was like the streams of the hill. Why reigneth alone, he cries, the son of the mighty Corval? Fingal is not strong to save: he is no support for the people. I am strong as a storm in the ocean; as a whirlwind on the hill. Yield, son of Corval; Fingal, yield to me.

Oscur stood forth to meet him; my son would meet the foe. But Fingal came in his strength, and smiled at the vaunter's boast. They threw their arms round each other; they struggled on the plain. The earth is ploughed with their heels. Their bones crack as the boat on the ocean, when it leaps from wave to wave. Long did they toil; with night, they fell on the sounding plain; as two oaks, with their branches mingled, fall crashing from the hill. The tall son of Morny is bound; the aged overcame.

Fair with her locks of gold, her smooth neck, and her breasts of snow; fair, as the spirits of the hill when at silent noon they glide along the heath; fair, as the rainbow of heaven; came Minvane the maid. Fingal! She softly saith, loose me my brother Gaul. Loose me the hope of my race, the terror of all but Fingal. Can I, replies the King, can I deny the lovely daughter of the hill? take thy brother, O Minvane, thou fairer than the snow of the north!

Such, Fingal! were thy words; but thy words I hear no more. Sightless I sit by thy tomb. I hear the wind in the wood; but no more I hear my friends. The cry of the hunter is over. The voice of war is ceased.

1760

"The decay and old age of poetry" is how the Romantic critic William Hazlitt favourably referred to the gloomy yet stirring works that came to be known as the poems of Ossian. As much the creation of their translator, James Macpherson, as of the Welsh bard of the Dark Ages to whom Macpherson attributed authorship, these visionary and atmospheric prose poems exerted a profound influence on the Romantic movement.

(Illustration is Baron François Gérard, Ossian Awakening the Spirits on the Banks of the Lora with the Sound of his Harp, c.1801.)

The Poems of Ossian

''To Melancholy''

2010-09-08T01:07:00.004-04:00

TO MELANCHOLY

Nikolaus Lenau

Through my life you are attendant
Melancholy, everywhere;
Be my star bright and ascendant,
Be it sinking, you are there.

Oft you lead to precipices
Where the eagle nests alone,
Where the stream down sheer abysses
Through the stunted pines is thrown.

Mem'ries of my dead awaking
Wake my tears to wildly flow;
Refuge on your bosom taking
Rests my face dark with its woe.

1832

-German title: An die Melancholie.

Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Nebelwolken in der Sächsischen Schweiz (Clouds of Fog in Saxon Switzerland), c.1828.

''Dauntless 'midst the wreck of earth''

2010-09-07T01:17:00.004-04:00

TRANSLATION FROM HORACE

Lord Byron

The man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control;
No threat'ning tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent:
Gales the warring waves which plough,
By Auster on the billows spent,
To curb the Adriatic main,
Would awe his fix'd determined mind in vain.

Aye, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurtling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors there unfurl'd,
He would, unmoved, unawed, behold;
The flames of an expiring world,
Again in crashing chaos roll'd,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurl'd,
Might light his glorious funeral pile:
Still dauntless 'midst the wreck of earth he'd smile.

1804

(Illustration is Mårten Eskil Winge, Thor's Fight with the Giants, 1872.)

''Oppressive Dream''

2010-09-06T08:33:00.011-04:00

OPPRESSIVE DREAM

Justinus Kerner (1786-1862)

I dreamt I flew all fearful
Into the world afar,
To Strassburg through the side-streets,
Before my sweetheart's door.

Sweetheart is so saddened,
My flying makes her cry:
"It was the Evil Spirit
Who taught you how to fly!"

Now Sweetheart, what use lying,
Since you know all full well.
The one who taught me flying,
It was the Fiend from Hell!

And Sweetheart weeps, a-crying
And wakes me with her cry,
And here, alas! in Augsburg
A prisoner I lie.

Tomorrow I'll be hanging,
No Sweetheart calls to me,
Tomorrow I'll be soaring,
A bird in the air and free.

-trans. John Fitzell
-German title: Der schwere Traum (Ikaros).

(Illustration is Herbert James Draper, The Lament for Icarus, 1898.)

The Teutonic Knights

2010-09-05T08:50:00.004-04:00

From Heinrich von Treitschke, Origins of Prussianism (1862):

Who can understand the innermost nature of the Prussian people and the Prussians State unless he has familiarized his mind wtih those pitiless racial conflicts whose vestiges, be we aware of them or not, live on mysteriously in the habits of our people. A spell rises from the ground which was drenched with the noblest German blood in the fight on behalf of the name of Germany and the most sublime gifts of mankind.

As soon as the power of the Ascaniers in Brandenburg collapsed, the Teutonic Knights valiantly took up their position to defend the breach in German civilization, and once more after the victory of the Poles in Prussia the House of Hohenzollern took measures to restore order in distracted Brandenburg.

Of all the German lands, Prussia alone could at this time rank with the west in respect of the triumphant position of chivalry. For it was no mere pugnacity or love of adventure which impelled the Teutonic Knights into the Lithuanian war. The essential qualities of a militarist State were at work. The more capable among the Grand Masters knew very well how to maintain religious discipline in the Order, how to discourage participation in the tournament craze of the new times, and yet how to turn to chivalry’s own advantage its finer imaginative trends. “It was in Prussia that he became a knight” — such was for generations the highest praise that could be given to a Christian nobleman; and the knight errant who had been in Prussia would proudly wear the black cross of the Teutonic Knights to the end of his days. Even kings regarded it as an honour when the Order enroled them among its associate brethren, and no higher praise could Chaucer find for the knight among the Canterbury pilgrims than to say: “In Lettow had he reysed and in Ruce.”

Wherever they went, the Knights were wont to dispaly an almost ostentatious valiancy and ingenuity.

-trans. Eden & Cedar Paul
-German title: Das deutsche Ordensland Preußen.

''Loneliness''

2010-09-04T06:39:00.003-04:00

LONELINESS

Nikolaus Lenau

I

If ever you have found yourself alone,
Loveless, bereft of God, upon the plain,
And bound your wounds, silent, too proud to groan,
Defying fate to strike you once again;

If ever every happy hope has flown,
As listens to his lost pack's cry in vain
The mountain hunter, and hears how far their tone,
As flees the bird from winter's snow and rain;

Were you thus on a lone heath all alone,
You know then too how some force made you kneel
And fling your arms around a silent stone;

And how, frightened by loneliness, you rise
In horror from the rock that cannot feel
And stretch your arms out to the windy skies.

II

The wind is alien; your arms naught enfold;
The stone is dead; from it you seek in vain
A word of comfort that might still your pain;
The gentle roses are no whit less cold;

You see them, unaware of you, unfold--
Busied with their own dying; and again
Where'er you turn decay and death obtain
And all life's highways in their thralldom hold.

And if you see from out their huts men start
They slam the windows shut before your stare;
The huts collapse; stark horror grips your heart.

Loveless, bereft of God, your path is dread;
The wind of life grows cold; your own despair
Fills the whole world and finds it cold and dead.

1838

-German title: Einsamkeit.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, A Walk at Dusk, c.1830-35.)

''The Pilgrim of St. Just''

2010-09-03T04:10:00.009-04:00

THE PILGRIM OF ST. JUST

August, Graf von Platen

Pitch-black the night, and loud the tempests roar.
O, Spanish monks, come open me the door.

Here let me rest and let me stay
Till morning bell awakens you to pray.

Prepare for me the raiment that is meet,
A cowl, a mantle and a winding sheet.

Within a narrow cell let me recline.
Once, more than half the world was mine.

The head that many a jewelled crown has worn
Awaits the shears, so let it now be shorn.

To don the cowl this shoulder bends low down
That once has worn a royal ermine gown.

Now before death like a dead man I stand
And fall in ruins like my ancient land.

1819

-German title: Der Pilgrim vor St. Just.

The poem concerns Charles V, who had the misfortune of being the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire at the time of the Protestant Reformation. The emperor proved powerless to halt the schism, and Christendom was sundered in twain. Charles ultimately abdicated the throne and retreated to life inside a convent, this fate being the proximate inspiration for Platen's poem. In German, the final line reads, "Und fall in Trümmer, wie das alte Reich," which literally means, "And fall in ruins like the ancient Empire," meaning the Holy Roman Empire.

(Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Heimkehr der Mönche ins Kloster (The Homecoming of the Monks to the Cloister), c.1816-18.)

''The Bard''

2010-09-02T04:32:00.009-04:00

THE BARD. A PINDARIC ODE

[excerpted]

Thomas Gray
"The following Ode is founded on a Tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of his country, ordered all the Bards, that fell into his hands, to be put to death." [Gray's note]

- - - -
"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait,
Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor Hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor even thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance:
"To arms!" cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quiv'ring lance.

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air)
And with a Master's hand, and Prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
"Hark, how each giant-oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent's aweful voice beneath!
O'er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breath;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,
To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.

"Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,
That hush'd the stormy main:
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-top'd head.
On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,
Smear'd with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail;
The famish'd Eagle screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear, as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your country's cries--
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a griesly band,
I see them sit, they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land:
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with bloody hands, the tissue of thy line.

"Fond impious Man, think'st thou, yon sanguine cloud,
Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the Orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,
And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me: With joy I see
The different doom our Fates assign.
Be thine Despair, and scept'red Care,
To triumph, and to die, are mine."
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plung'd to endless night.

(1755-57)

This text presents the first three stanzas of Thomas Gray's poem "The Bard," as well as the conclusion. In the first two stanzas, the speaker, the last surviving bard of Wales (Cambria), launches his curse against Edward I. In the third stanza, he names the other bards whom the king has killed. The following stanzas (which are omitted here) have the Bard prophesying the misery and ruin that will befall Edward's line. In the final stanza, included in this excerpt, the Bard commits heroic suicide by leaping off of the cliff of Snowdon into the Conway river below.

A complete text of the poem, including Gray's original explanatory notes, appears here.

(Illustration is John Martin, The Bard, c.1817.)

''Chidher''

2010-08-31T22:16:00.008-04:00

CHIDHER

Friedrich Rückert

Chidher, the ever youthful, told:
I passed a city, bright to see;
A man was culling fruits of gold,
I asked him how old this town might be.
He answered, culling as before:
"This town stood ever in days of yore,
And will stand on forevermore!"
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way,

And of the town I found no trace;
A shepherd blew on a reed instead;
His herd was grazing on the place.
"How long," I asked, "is the city dead?"
He answered, blowing as before:
"The new crop grows the old one o'er,
This was my pasture evermore!"
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way.

A sea I found, the tide was full,
A sailor emptied nets with cheer;
And when he rested from his pull,
I asked how long that sea was here.
Then laughed he with a hearty roar:
"As long as waves have washed this shore
They fished here ever in days of yore."
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way.

I found a forest settlement,
And o'er his axe, a tree to fell,
I saw a man in labor bent.
How old this wood I bade him tell.
"'Tis everlasting, long before
I lived it stood in days of yore,"
He quoth; "and shall grow evermore."
Five hundred years from yonder day
I passed again the selfsame way.

I saw a town; the market-square
Was swarming with a noisy throng.
"How long," I asked, "has this town been there?
Where are wood and sea and shepherd's song?"
They cried, nor heard among the roar:
"This town was ever so before,
And so will live forevermore!"
Five hundred years from yonder day
I want to pass the selfsame way.

1824

-trans. Margarete Münsterberg

(Illustration is Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Desolation, 1833-36.)

''The Charge of the Light Brigade''

2010-08-30T18:27:00.004-04:00

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

1854

(Illustration is Friedrich Kaiser (1815-90), The Charge of the Light Brigade.)

The Robbers (Die Räuber)

2010-08-27T20:20:00.014-04:00

Excerpts from Friedrich von Schiller's Die Räuber (1781):

FRANZ: Might is right, and the limits of our strength our only law.

FRANZ: I will crush everything that stands in the way of my becoming master.

MOOR: The bright spark of Promethean fire is burnt out.

MOOR: The law has cramped the flight of eagles to a snail's pace. The law never yet made a great man, but freedom will breed a giant, a colossus.

MOOR: Oh, if only Arminius's spirit still glowed in the ashes! — Give me an army of fellows like me to command, and I'll turn Germany into a republic that will make Rome and Sparta look like nunneries.

SPIEBELBERG: Necessity brings out the best in us! That's why I shan't be afraid of it comes to the worst. Danger fortifies our courage; our strength grows in adversity.

SPIEGELBERG: Your name shall be written in the stars! What does it matter where your soul goes?

ROLLER: Without Moor we're a body without a soul.

MOOR: See, the scales have fallen from my eyes! What a fool I was, to seek to return to the cage! My spirit thirsts for deeds, my lungs for freedom — murderers, robbers! at that word I trampled the law beneath my feet — men showed me no humanity when to humanity I appealed; so let me forget sympathy and human feeling! I have no father now, I have no love now, and blood and death shall teach me to forget that ever I held anything dear! Oh, my amusement shall be the terror of the dearth — it is agreed, I shall be your captain! and good fortune to the champion among you who lights the fiercest fires, who does the foulest murders, for I say to you he shall have a kingly reward! Gather round me every one, and swear loyalty and obedience till death! Swear by this man's right hand of mine!
ALL: We swear loyalty and obedience to you till death!

AMALIA: Now I am with Karl again — a beggar, did he say? Why then, the world is turned upside-down, beggars are kings and kings are beggars!

FRANZ: But must my plans submit to the iron yoke of mechanical laws? Is my high-flying spirit to be bound to the snail's pace of material necessity?

FRANZ: What can you do to him? How can a rat hurt a lion?

HERRMANN: Sooner may the bullet turn in its flight and tear the marksman's own bowels.

AMALIA: In Heaven's name, that is not Karl. Here, here — The whole, so different. These dull colours cannot reflect the divine spirit that shone in his fiery eye. Away with it! this is a mere man.

FRANZ: I am not one for stroking and fondling. I will set my pointed spurs into your flesh, and see what a keen whip will do.

SPIEGELBERG: Climate makes very little difference, genius will thrive in any soil.

RATZMANN: If he had given the devil his word that he would go to hell, he would never say a prayer, even though he could save himself with half an Our Father.

SCHWEITZER: We'll save him, or if we can't save him, then at least we'll light him a funeral pyre such as no king ever had, one that will burn them black and blue.

SCHWEITZER: By God, before a quarter of an hour was up, the north-east wind came and served us a treat — he must have had his grudge against the town too! — and helped the fire on its way to the topmost gables. And us meanwhile up and down the streets like furies — fire, fire! All through the town — shrieks and howls and rampage — the firebells start to ring, then up goes the powder-magazine in the air, as if the earth was split in two, and heaven burst, and hell sunk ten thousand fathoms deeper.

ROLLER: The hungry ravens croaking, thirty of them perched there on my half-rotten predecessor.

SCHUFTERLE: A baby, lying there as right as rain under the table, and the table just about to catch fire. — Poor little brute! I said, you're freeing! And threw it into the flames.

MOOR: I shall come amongst you, and terrible shall be my judgment upon you.

SCHWEITZER: We shall be upon them like the Flood and rain down on their heads like thunder-bolts.

MOOR: Now, lads! Now is the time! We are lost, or we must fight like wild boars at bay.
SCHWEITZER: Ha! I'll rip their bellies with my tusks till their tripes come bursting out by the yard! Lead on, captain! We will follow you into the jaws of death!
MOOR: Load all weapons. There is no shortage of powder?
SCHWEITZER: No, powder enough to blow the earth sky-high!

PRIEST: Image of that first loathsome rabble-rouser, who stirred up a thousand legions of innocent angels to fiery rebellion, and dragged them down with him to the pit of damnation.

MOOR: Thus says Moor, captain of murderers and incendiaries. It is true. I killed the Count, I plundered the Dominican church and set it alight, I cast firebrands into your city of bigots, I blew up the powder-magazine over the heads of pious Christians — but that is not all.

MOOR: Tell them my trade is retribution — vengeance is my calling.

MOOR: Who will be the first to abandon his captain in his hour of need?'
ROLLER: Not if nine circles of hell surrounded us! Every man who is not a dog, save your captain!
SCHWEITZER: Pardon in our bullets! Away, vermin! tell the magistrates who sent you that in Moor's band you could not find a single traitor. — Save, save the captain!
ALL: Save, save, save the captain!
MOOR: Now we are free — Comrades! I feel an army in my fist — death or liberty! — at least they shall take none of us alive!

AMALIA: Look, villain, what I can do to you now! I am a woman, but a woman in desperation — once dare to lay your lustful hands on my body — this steel shall pierce your loathsome breast, and my uncle's spirit will guide my hand!

AMALIA: I felt I was as strong as a fiery steed, fierce as the tigress pursuing the triumphant robber of her cubs.

MOOR: Why should man succeed where he imitates the ant, when he is thwarted where he is like the gods?

MOOR: And I so hideous in this fair world — and I, a monster on the glorious earth. . . . I alone cast out, I alone set apart from the ranks fo the blessed — not for me the sweet name of child — not for me the lover's melting glance — never, never more the bosom friend's embrace. Set about with murderers, in the midst of hissing vipers — fettered to vice with bands of iron — rocked giddily over the abyss of destruction on the frail reed of vice — I, I alone cast out, a howling Abaddon amidst the fair world's happy blossoms!

KOSINSKY: Men I am seeking, who can look death in the face and let danger play about them like a charmed snake, who value freedom more than life and honour, whose very name, sweet sound to the poor and the oppressed, strokes terror in the valiant and turns the tyrant pale.

KOSINSKY: I have always wished that I could see the man with destruction in his eye, there as he sat upon the ruins of Carthage — now I need wish it no longer.

KOSINSKY: What should I fear, if I do not fear death?

MOOR: Here you step beyond the bounds of humanity — you must either be more than a man, or you are a devil.

SCHWEITZER: Lead us to hell and I will follow you!

MOOR: Soil of my fatherland, I salute you! Sky of my fatherland! Sun of my fatherland! meadows and hills and forests! I salute you, from my heart I salute you all! — how sweet the breezes blow from the mountains of my home! with what joyous balm you greet the poor outcast!

AMALIA: This is the first Count, the founder of the line, who was ennobled by Barbarossa when he served under him against the corsairs.

AMALIA: Flee from my soul, treacherous, godless desires! in the heart where Karl reigns there is no place for mortal man.

MOOR: She knows that I roam an outcast, a wanderer in the desert, and her love flies through exile and desert to be with me.

MOOR: Unhappy because she loves me! Why, what if I were a murderer? What, my lady? What if you lover could count a man killed for each one of your kisses? Alas for my Amalia! she is an unhappy lady.
AMALIA: Ah! and I, I am happy! My only one is like the light of heaven itself, and heaven is grace and mercy! He could not bear to hurt the merest insect — his soul is as far from thoughts of blood as the pole fo day from midnight.

MOOR: Externals are but the varnish upon a man — I am my heaven and my hell.

MOOR: Did you ever dream that you were the arm of a greater majesty? the tangled knot of our destinies is unravelled! Today, today and invisible power has conferred nobility upon our handiwork! Bow down in adoration before him who decreed you this sublime fate, who led you to this place, who deemed you worthy to be the terrible angels of his dark judgment! Uncover your heads! Kneels in the dust, that you may stand up sanctified!

FRANZ: If I smash this Venus to pieces, then symmetry and beauty have ceased to exist.

MOSER: If you still stand firm in death, if your principles do not desert you even then, then the victory is yours.

MOSER: It will be an awakening as of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard.

FRANZ: Lord God, I have been no common murderer — Lord God, I have never stooped to trifles —
DANIEL: God have mercy on us, his prayer itself's a sin.

SCHWEITZER: Dead,? What? dead? Without me, dead? It's a lie, I tell you — see how quickly he will jump up! — Hey, you there! There's a father to be murdered.

MOOR: Swoon then, Amalia! — Die, father! Die through me a third time! — These your rescuers are robbers and murderers! Your Karl is their captain!

MOOR: Have I not heard death whistling towards me from more than a thousand musket-barrels, and without yielding a foot, and am I now to learn to quake like a woman? to quake before a woman? — No, no woman shall shake my manhood — Blood! blood! It is only something caught from a woman — give me blood to swill, and it will pass.

AMALIA: Murderer! Devil! Angel — I cannot leave you.

MOOR: Ah, what is this? She does not spit as me, she does not thrust me from her — Amalia! Have you forgotten? do you know who it is you are embracing, Amalia?
AMALIA: My only one, I shall never leave you!
MOOR: She forgives me, she loves me! I am pure as the heavenly aether, she loves me! Tears of gratitude to you, merciful God in Heaven! Peace has returned to my soul, the raging torment is past, hell is no more — See, O see, the children of light weep upon the neck fo the weeping devil.

ROBBER: Shame on your perjury! the spirit of Roller that died for you, Roller whom you summoned from the dead to be your witness, will blush for your cowardice, and rise armoured from his grave to punish you.

(Photograph shows a scene from a performance of Die Räuber at the open-air theatre in Hohenstein in 1931.)

''The land of honourable death''

2010-08-26T17:45:00.009-04:00

ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR

Lord Byron

’TIS time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze—
A funeral pile.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share,
But wear the chain.

But ’tis not thus—and ’tis not here—
Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now,
Where glory decks the hero’s bier,
Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece, around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece—she is awake!)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood!—unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.

If thou regret’st thy youth, why live?
The land of honourable death
Is here:—up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!

Seek out—less often sought than found—
A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.

1824

Lord Byron's death was as noble as that of any of his heroes. He fell in the fight for Greek independence, having personally funded the war effort and participated in the actions. Written in the field of combat, this was his last poem.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, The Temple of Juno in Agrigento, c.1828-30.)

''Ode on Melancholy''

2010-08-25T17:34:00.008-04:00

ODE ON MELANCHOLY

[An excerpt]

John Keats

Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,
And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
Stitch creeds together for a sail, with groans
To fill it out, bloodstained and aghast;
Although your rudder be a Dragon's tail,
Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony,
Your cordage large uprootings from the skull
Of bald Medusa; certes you would fail
To find the Melancholy, whether she
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull.

1819

This is the original first stanza, withheld from publication, of Keats's "Ode on Melancholy" — although in fact it is the most interesting section of the poem. The rest of the ode, as published, can be found here. The poet's theme, that the most acute melancholy is experienced not through horror but thwarted happiness, is irrefutable.

(Illustration is John Martin (1789-1854), Cadmus and the Dragon.)

The Tomb of Arminius

2010-08-24T16:46:00.010-04:00

SIR HENGIST

M.G. Lewis
"Herman, or Arminius, is the favourite hero of Germany, whose liberty he defended against the oppression of Rome: Flavus, his brother, sided with the Romans, and in consequence his memory is as much detested by his countrymen, as that of Arminius is beloved. — I forget where I met with the original of this ballad." [Lewis's note]

- - - -
Where rolls the Weser’s golden sand,
Did erst Sir Hengist’s castle stand,
A warrior brave and good;
His lands extended far and wide,
Where stream’d full many a plenteous tide,
Where frown’d full many a wood.

It chanced, that homewards from the chace
Sir Hengist urged his courser’s pace,
The shadowy dales among,
While all was still, and late the hour,
And far off, in the castle tower,
The bell of midnight rung.

Sudden, a piercing shriek resounds
Throughout the forest’s ample bounds;
A wildly dreadful yell;
The dogs, by trembling, own their fear,
As if they scent some bad thing near,
Some soul enlarged from hell!

"See, father!" cried young Egbert; "see
Beneath the shade of yonder tree
What fearful form is spread!
How fire around his temples glows!
How from his lance and fingers flows
The stream of bloody red!"

"Stay here!" said Hengist, then with speed
Towards the stranger spurr’d his steed;
"What brings thee here, Sir Knight,
Who dar’st in my domains to bear
A lance, and by thy haughty air
Seem’st to demand the fight?"

"Long has my arm forgot to wield
The sword, and raise the massy shield,"
Replied the stranger drear:
"Peace to this brown oak’s hallow’d shade!
Peace to the bones which here are laid,
And which we both revere!

"Know’st thou not Siegmar, Herman’s sire,
That arm of steel, that soul of fire?
Here is his grave. — My name
Is Flavus — at that sound the woods
With curses ring, and Weser’s floods
My infamy proclaim!

"For such is vengeful Odin’s will
And doom, that traitor-curses still
Thick on my head shall be,
Till from the blood of brethren slain,
My gory hands and lance again
I pure and spotless see.

"Still then, when midnight hours permit
Pale spectres Hela’s realm to quit,
I seek this hallow’d place;
With tears bedew these crimson blots,
And strive to wash away the spots
No pains can now efface!"

He ceased; when Odin’s eagle came,
By Odin arm’d with blasting flame,
And seized the phantom knight:
Loud shrieks the spectre’s pangs reveal’d,
And soon a cloud his form conceal’d
From awe-struck Hengist’s sight.

"Son!" said the chief, with horror chill’d,
While down his brows cold dews distill’d,
"Now take your sword in hand,
And swear with me, each drop of gore,
That swells your veins, well pleased to pour
To guard your native land!"

1801

Lewis's "original" for this ballad from his Tales of Wonder has never been discovered, although the enmity between Arminius and Flavus to which the poem refers is noted by Tacitus.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Tomb of Arminius, 1813, which Hugh Honour in Romanticism describes as one of Friedrich's "most moving images, that of a lonely sarcophagus set in a cleft of the living rock of ages at the heart of the German fatherland.")

''The Wanderings of Cain''

2010-08-23T17:12:00.009-04:00

THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN

[An excerpt]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Cain stopped, and stifling his groans he sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the darkness beside him.

And Cain lifted up his voice and cried bitterly, and said, "The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; he is around me even as the air! O that I might be utterly no more! I desire to die—yea, the things that never had life, neither move they upon the earth—behold! they seem precious to mine eyes. O that a man might live without the breath of his nostrils. So I might abide in darkness, and blackness, and an empty space! Yea, I would lie down, I would not rise, neither would I stir my limbs till I became as the rock in the den of the lion, on which the young lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For the torrent that roareth far off hath a voice: and the clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the cedar grove; and in silence am I dried up."

The mighty limbs of Cain were wasted as by fire; his hair was as the matted curls on the bison's forehead, and so glared his fierce and sullen eye beneath: and the black abundant locks on either side, a rank and tangled mass, were stained and scorched, as though the grasp of a burning iron hand had striven to rend them; and his countenance told in a strange and terrible language of agonies that had been, and were, and were still to continue to be.

The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye could reach it was desolate: the bare rocks faced each other, and left a long and wide interval of thin white sand. You might wander on and look round and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks and discover nothing that acknowledged the influence of the seasons. There was no spring, no summer, no autumn: and the winter's snow, that would have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised himself over this desert; but the huge serpent often hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within the coils of the serpent. The pointed and shattered summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude mimicry of human concerns, and seemed to prophesy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, and battlements, and ships with naked masts. As far from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the brook, there was one rock by itself at a small distance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated there perhaps by the groan which the Earth uttered when our first father fell.

Ere they had reached the rock they beheld a human shape: his back was towards them, and they were advancing unperceived, when they heard him smite his breast and cry aloud, "Woe is me! woe is me! I must never die again, and yet I am perishing with thirst and hunger."

Enos glided forward, and creeping softly round the base of the rock, stood before the stranger, and looked up into his face. And the Shape shrieked, and turned round, and Cain beheld him, that his limbs and his face were those of his brother Abel whom he had killed! And Cain stood like one who struggles in his sleep because of the exceeding terribleness of a dream.

Thus as he stood in silence and darkness of soul, the Shape fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, and cried out with a bitter outcry, "Thou eldest born of Adam, whom Eve, my mother, brought forth, cease to torment me! I was feeding my flocks in green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou killedst me; and now I am in misery."

Cain raised up the Shape that was like Abel, and said: — "The Creator of our father, who had respect unto thee, and unto thy offering, wherefore hath he forsaken thee? Didst thou not find favour in the sight of the Lord thy God?"

The Shape answered, "The Lord is God of the living only, the dead have another God."

Then the child Enos lifted up his eyes and prayed; but Cain rejoiced secretly in his heart.

"Wretched shall they be all the days of their mortal life," exclaimed the Shape, "who sacrifice worthy and acceptable sacrifices to the God of the dead; but after death their toil ceaseth. Woe is me, for I was well beloved by the God of the living, and cruel wert thou, O my brother, who didst snatch me away from his power and his dominion."

Having uttered these words, he rose suddenly, and fled over the sands: and Cain said in his heart, "The curse of the Lord is on me; but who is the God of the dead?" and he ran after the Shape, and the Shape fled shrieking over the sands, and the sands rose like white mists behind the steps of Cain, but the feet of him that was like Abel disturbed not the sands. He greatly outrun Cain, and turning short, he wheeled round, and came again to the rock where they had been sitting, and where Enos still stood; and the child caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and he fell upon the ground.

Cain once more sate beside him, and said, "Abel, my brother, I would lament for thee, but that the spirit within me is withered, and burnt up with extreme agony. Now, I pray thee, by thy flocks, and by thy pastures, and by the quiet rivers which thou lovedst, that thou tell me all that thou knowest. Who is the God of the dead? where doth he make his dwelling? what sacrifices are acceptable unto him? for I have offered, but have not been received; I have prayed, and have not been heard; and how can I be afflicted more than I already am?" The Shape arose and answered, "O that thou hadst had pity on me as I will have pity on thee. Follow me, Son of Adam! and bring thy child with thee!"

And they three passed over the white sands between the rocks, silent as the shadows.

1828

This text offers a truncation of Coleridge's haunting prose fragment. The complete, unfinished work can be accessed here.

(Illustration is Thomas Cole, Expulsion, Moon, and Firelight, c.1828, which shows the gateway to the Garden of Eden through which Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise and the wild wastes into which they were banished — a sublime landscape such as that in which Cain and his heirs were condemned to wander, following his great sin.)

''The Tyger''

2010-08-22T18:16:00.008-04:00

THE TYGER (1794)

William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

(Photographs are of Antoine-Louis Barye, Tiger Devouring a Crocodile, 1831.)

''The Castle of Boncourt''

2010-08-21T11:48:00.005-04:00

THE CASTLE OF BONCOURT (1827)

Adalbert von Chamisso

I dream of the days of my childhood,
And shake my silvery head.
How haunt ye my brain, O visions,
Methought ye forgotten and dead!

From the shades of the forest uprises
A castle so lofty and great;
Well know I the battlements, towers,
The arching stone-bridge, and the gate.

The lions look down from the scutcheon
On me with familiar face;
I greet the old friends of my boyhood,
And speed through the courtyard space.

There lies the Sphinx by the fountain;
The fig-tree's foliage gleams;
'Twas there, behind yon windows,
I dreamt the first of my dreams.

I tread the aisle of the chapel,
And search for my fathers' graves--
Behold them! And there from the pillars
Hang down the old armor and glaives.

Not yet can I read the inscription;
A veil hath enveloped my sight,
What though through the painted windows
Glows brightly the sunbeam's light.

Thus gleams, O hall of my fathers,
Thy image so bright in my mind,
From the earth now vanished, the ploughshare
Leaves of thee no vestige behind.

Be fruitful, lov'd soil, I will bless thee,
While anguish o'er-cloudeth my brow;
Threefold will I bless him, whoever
May guide o'er thy bosom the plough.

But I will up, up, and be doing;
My lyre I'll take in my hand;
O'er the wide, wide earth will I wander,
And sing from land to land.

-trans. Alfred Baskerville
-German title: Das Schloß Boncourt.

The scion of a noble French line, Adalbert von Chamisso was forced to flee France during the calamity of the French Revolution. He settled in Prussia, entered the military, and composed his most famous works in German. In this poem he laments the loss of his former ancestral castle, which was levelled by the resentment-driven revolutionaries.

(Illustration is Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, Burg Scharfenberg by Night, 1827.)

''Song of the Fatherland''

2010-08-20T12:25:00.006-04:00

SONG OF THE FATHERLAND

Ernst Moritz Arndt

God, who gave iron, purposed ne'er
That man should be a slave;
Therefore the sabre, sword, and spear
In his right hand He gave.
Therefore He gave him fiery mood,
Fierce speech, and free-born breath,
That he might fearlessly the feud
Maintain through blood and death.

Therefore will we what God did say,
With honest truth, maintain--
And ne'er a fellow-creature slay,
A tyrant's pay to gain!
But he shall perish by stroke of brand
Who fighteth for sin and shame,
And not inherit the German land
With men of the German name.

O Germany! bright Fatherland!
O German love so true!
Thou sacred land--thou beauteous land--
We swear to thee anew!
Outlawed, each knave and coward shall
The crow and raven feed;
But we will to the battle all--
Revenge shall be our meed.

Flash forth, flash forth, whatever can,
To bright and flaming life!
Now, all ye Germans, man for man,
Forth to the holy strife!
Your hands lift upward to the sky--
Your hearts shall upward soar--
And man for man let each one cry,
Our slavery is o'er!

Let sound, let sound, whatever can--
Trumpet and fife and drum!
This day our sabres, man for man,
To stain with blood, we come;
With hangman's and with coward's blood,
O glorious day of ire
That to all Germans soundeth good!--
Day of our great desire!

Let wave, let wave, whatever can--
Standard and banner wave!
Here will we purpose, man for man,
To grace a hero's grave.
Advance, ye brave ranks, hardily--
Your banners wave on high;
We'll gain us freedom's victory,
Or freedom's death we'll die!

1813

-trans. H.W. Dulcken
-German title: Vaterlandslied.

(Image shows the Arminius sculpture atop the Hermannsdenkmal near Detmold; photographed by the author during his latest pilgrimage to Germany, in August, 2009.)

''The Hostess' Daughter''

2010-08-19T12:19:00.007-04:00

THE HOSTESS' DAUGHTER

Ludwig Uhland

Three students had cross'd o'er the Rhine's dark tide;
At the door of a hostel they turned aside.

"Hast thou, Dame hostess, good ale and wine?
And where is thy daughter, so sweet and fine?"

"My ale and wine are cool and clear;
On her death-bed lieth my daughter dear."

And when to the chamber they made their way,
In a sable coffin the damsel lay.

The first — the veil from her face he took,
And gazed upon her with mournful look:

"Alas! fair maiden — didst thou still live,
To thee my love would I henceforth give!"

To second — he lightly replaced the shroud,
Then round he turned him, and wept aloud:

"Thou liest, alas! on thy death-bed here;
I loved thee fondly for many a year!"

The third — he lifted again the veil,
And gently he kissed those lips so pale:

"I love thee now, as I loved of yore,
And thus will I love thee forevermore!"

1809

-trans. W.W. Skeat
-German title: Der Wirtin Töchterlein.

(Illustration is Carl Philipp Fohr, Knights before a Charcoal Burner's Hut, 1816.)

''The Chorus of the Dead''

2010-08-18T17:20:00.005-04:00

THE CHORUS OF THE DEAD (1883)

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

We dead men, we dead men can muster more legions
Than all of you mortals in all the world's regions!
Where we plowed the fields for the deeds we were sowing
There now sinks the harvest your sickles are mowing.
And what we completed or merely decided
Up there keeps your fountains with water provided.
And all our loving and hating and yearning,
Up there warms your blood, and you still feel it burning.
By laws and by measures which we once erected
Still all that you do in your world in directed.
And what we in stone, sound, or word once created
Is crowned in the light by the world it elated.
We still are pursuing the goals of the living.
Revere our numbers. We still are the giving.

-German title: Chor der Toten.

(Illustration is Arnold Böcklin, Self-Portrait with Death as a Fiddler, 1871-74.)

''The most heroic subject ever chosen''

2010-08-16T21:03:00.012-04:00

From William Hazlitt, "On Shakespeare and Milton," from Lectures on the English Poets (1818):

Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem; and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty.

He was the first of created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the highest, and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the universe; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part of the heavens, whom he lured after him with his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His ambition was the greatest, and his punishment was the greatest; but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body; the vastness of his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal.

He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a tower; or
“As when Heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines!”
He is still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, who own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sympathises as he views them round, far as the eye can reach; though he keeps aloof from them in his own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own breast.

An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and mankind are his easy prey.
“All is not lost; th' unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what else is not to be overcome,”
are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude of it; the fierceness of tormenting flames, is qualified and made innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride; the loss of infinite happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of inflicting infinite misery on others.

Yet Satan is not the principle of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil — but of the abstract love of power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which last principle all other good and evil, and even his own, are subordinate. From this principle he never once flinches. His love of power and contempt for suffering are never once relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity. His thoughts burn like a hell within him; but the power of thought holds dominion in his mind over every other consideration. The consciousness of a determined purpose, of “that intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity,” though accompanied with endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to “being swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night.” He expresses the sum and substance of all ambition in one line: “Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering!”

After such a conflict as his, and such a defeat, to retreat in order, to rally, to make terms, to exist at all, is something; but he does more than this — he founds a new empire in hell, and from it conquers this new world, whither he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way through nether and surrounding fires.

The poet has not in all this given us a mere shadowy outline; the strength is equal to the magnitude of the conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more distinct; the Titans were not more vast; Prometheus chained to his rock was not a more terrific example of suffering and of crime.

Wherever the figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, “rising aloft incumbent on the dusky air,” it is illustrated with the most striking and appropriate images: so that we see it always before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed — but dazzling in its faded splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argument by the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot; to bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have availed themselves, and which the mystic German critics would restore. He relied on the justice of his cause, and did not scruple to give the devil his due.

(Illustration is John Martin, The Bridge over Chaos, 1827.)

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

2010-08-15T10:46:00.024-04:00

The Ring excepted, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is the greatest opera ever written. This video shows its stirring finale, in which Hans Sachs persuades Walter von Stolzing, who has just won the contest of song (and with it Eva's heart) not to scorn Nürnberg's Mastersingers, but to honour their art.

Regrettably, Herbert von Karajan's definitive staging was never filmed, so no ideal video of the opera is available. This Met production is the best that currently exists, despite imperfect leads and a politically correct chorus who more closely evoke downtown Harlem than medieval Germany. A Sydney Opera video boasts a superior cast, but is blighted by a ridiculous ending that undermines the entire performance.

The Metropolitan Opera clip shown here is distinguished by fine costumes and props and a magnificent set design. This is truly the Mastersingers of Nürnberg, with the Sinnwell Tower of the Imperial Castle visible in the distance. Also, the staging of the finale conforms more closely to Wagner's instructions than does any other performance currently on video, offering a moment that is deeply touching for those who know the complete opera and recall the hints of an attraction between Sachs and Eva.

One cannot help but be moved by Sachs's final admonition to the audience: "Honour your German Masters." His words are as timely today as they were when Wagner penned them in 1868. The following translation, by yours truly, attempts to include as much rhyme as is possible while preserving the meaning of the original text.

SACHS: Beware! Evil plots threaten us all.
Should the German empire and people one day fall
Under a false, foreign rule,
No prince his people would understand.
And foreign intrigue and vanity
They would plant in German land.
What is German and true would soon be forgot
If it did not live on in the German Masters' art.
So honour your German Masters, I say to you!
Then you will summon spirits good and true.
If you give their works your favour
Then even if the Holy Roman Empire
Should one day depart,
For us there would yet remain
Our holy German Art!

DVD of this performance
Complete opera on CD (definitive Karajan version)

''Adieu, Heart's Love, Adieu!''

2010-08-14T23:12:00.009-04:00

ADIEU, HEART'S LOVE, ADIEU! (1802)

Clemens Brentano

He built upon the mountain
That rises in the North;
The tempest roars around him,
And will not let him forth.
The clouds are full of blackness,
The path is steep and bare,
O heart's love on the mountain,
O would with thee I were!

O fair upon the mountain,
Above the cloud and blast,
Where sky is warm and sunlit,
And eagles hurry past!
My wings, alas! are broken,
And lift me not, before
I go unto my heart's love,
And enter at his door.

That I have built my dwelling
High on the mountain's crown,
Alas! 'tis all my sorrow,
No more may I come down.
The bolts and bars are rusted,
And crumbled is the stair.
O heart's love in the valley,
O would with thee I were!

O fair within the garden!
O fair within the grove!
Where birds upon the branches
Are singing of their love!
No flower have I to garland,
No song to sing, before
I go unto my heart's love,
And enter at her door.

And up the steep she presses,
Nor heeds the bolts and bars,
And now her soul is wingèd,
And borne up to the stars;
And higher yet, and higher
To Him up in the blue,
Her faithful heart she carries,--
Adieu, heart's love, adieu!

And down the steep he presses,
And through the wood he goes,
And hears the shepherds' music,
And sees the blowing rose.
And deeper yet, and deeper
Beneath the grass and dew
His haughty heart reposes,--
Adieu, heart's love, adieu!

-trans. Richard Garnett
-German title: Am Berge hoch in Lüften.

The poem is told in three voices. The first two stanzas are related in "her" voice, the voice of the beloved; the second two are told in "his" voice, that of the Romantic hero; and the last two in the voice of the omniscient narrator.

(Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Memorial Monument to Goethe, 1832.)

''The Faustian cathedral''

2010-08-12T16:12:00.008-04:00

From Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. I, 1922:

The character of the Faustian cathedral is that of the forest. The mighty elevation of the nave above the flanking aisles, in contrast to the flat roof of the basilica; the transformation of the columns, which with base and capital had been set as self-contained individuals in space, into pillars and clustered-pillars that grow up out of the earth and spread on high into an infinite subdivision and interlacing of lines and branches; the giant windows by which the wall is dissolved and the interior filled with mysterious light — these are the architectural actualizing of a world-feeling that had found the first of all its symbols in the high forest of the Northern plains, the deciduous forest with its mysterious tracery, its whispering of ever-mobile foliage over men’s heads, its branches straining through the trunks to be free of earth. Think of Romanesque ornamentation and its deep affinity to the sense of the woods. The endless, lonely, twilight wood became and remained the secret wistfulness in all Western building-forms, so that when the form-energy of the style died down — in late Gothic as in closing Baroque — the controlled abstract line-language resolved itself immediately into naturalistic branches, shoots, twigs and leaves.

(Illustration is Carl Blechen, Ruins of a Gothic Church, 1826.)

''The character of Satan''

2010-08-12T07:27:00.007-04:00

From Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821):

Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in “Paradise Lost.” It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. . . . Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius.

(Illustration is from Gustave Doré, Paradise Lost, 1866.)

''The loneliest heroes in all the cultures''

2010-08-11T19:04:00.007-04:00

From Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. I, 1922:

Infinite solitude is felt as the home of the Faustian soul. . . . Valhalla is something beyond all sensible actualities floating in remote, dim Faustian regions. Olympus rests on the homely Greek soil, the Paradise of the Fathers is a magic garden somewhere in the Universe, but Valhalla is nowhere. Lost in the limitless, it appears with its inharmonious gods and heroes the supreme symbol of solitude. Siegfried, Parzeval, Tristan, Hamlet, Faust are the loneliest heroes in all the Cultures. Read the wondrous awakening of the inner life in Wolfram’s Parzeval. The longing for the woods, the mysterious compassion, the ineffable sense of forsakenness—it is all Faustian and only Faustian.

-trans. Charles Francis Atkinson

(Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Faust in the Mountains, 1821.)

''What is this Death?''

2010-08-11T17:48:00.006-04:00

A FRAGMENT (1816)

Lord Byron

Could I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of withered flowers,
But bid it flow as now—until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this Death?—a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision—what I see
Of all which lives alone is Life to me,
And being so—the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.
The absent are the dead—for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,—or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided—equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both—but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.
The under-earth inhabitants—are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?
Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being?—darkened and intense
As Midnight in her solitude?—Oh Earth!
Where are the past?—and wherefore had they birth?
The dead are thy inheritors—and we
But bubbles on thy surface; and the key
Of thy profundity is in the Grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oakwood, 1810.)

''The Last Man''

2010-08-10T15:22:00.007-04:00

THE LAST MAN (1823)

Thomas Campbell

ALL worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The Sun himself must die,
Before this mortal shall assume
Its Immortality!
I saw a vision in my sleep
That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of Time!
I saw the last of human mould,
That shall Creation's death behold,
As Adam saw her prime!

The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,
The Earth with age was wan,
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man!
Some had expired in fight,--the brands
Still rested in their bony hands;
In plague and famine some!
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!

Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood
As if a storm passed by,
Saying, "We are twins in death, proud Sun,
Thy face is cold, thy race is run,
'Tis Mercy bids thee go.
For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,
That shall no longer flow.

"What though beneath thee man put forth
His pomp, his pride, his skill;
And arts that made fire, floods, and earth,
The vassals of his will;--
Yet mourn not I thy parted sway,
Thou dim discrowned king of day:
For all those trophied arts
And triumphs that beneath thee sprang,
Healed not a passion or a pang
Entailed on human hearts.

"Go, let oblivion's curtain fall
Upon the stage of men,
Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life's tragedy again.
Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh, upon the rack
Of pain anew to writhe;
Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred,
Or mown in battle by the sword,
Like grass beneath the scythe.

"Ee'n I am weary in yon skies
To watch thy fading fire;
Test of all sumless agonies
Behold not me expire.
My lips that speak thy dirge of death--
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath
To see thou shalt not boast.
The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall,--
The majesty of Darkness shall
Receive my parting ghost!

"This spirit shall return to Him
That gave its heavenly spark;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself art dark!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recalled to breath,
Who captive led captivity.
Who robbed the grave of Victory,--
And took the sting from Death!

"Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste
To drink this last and bitter cup
Of grief that man shall taste--
Go, tell the night that hides thy face,
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race,
On Earth's sepulchral clod,
The darkening universe defy
To quench his Immortality,
Or shake his trust in God!"

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, 1810.)

The Gothic Castle

2010-08-09T07:36:00.005-04:00

From Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794):

Towards the close of day, the road wound into a deep valley. Mountains, whose shaggy steeps appeared to be inaccessible, almost surrounded it. To the east, a vista opened, that exhibited the Apennines in their darkest horrors; and the long perspective of retiring summits, rising over each other, their ridges clothed with pines, exhibited a stronger image of grandeur, than any that Emily had yet seen. The sun had just sunk below the top of the mountains she was descending, whose long shadow stretched athwart the valley, but his sloping rays, shooting through an opening of the cliffs, touched with a yellow gleam the summits of the forest, that hung upon the opposite steeps, and streamed in full splendour upon the towers and battlements of a castle, that spread its extensive ramparts along the brow of a precipice above. The splendour of these illumined objects was heightened by the contrasted shade, which involved the valley below.

"There," said Montoni, speaking for the first time in several hours, "is Udolpho."

Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she understood to be Montoni's; for, though it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the gothic greatness of its features, and its mouldering walls of dark grey stone, rendered it a gloomy and sublime object. As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and deeper, as the thin vapour crept up the mountain, while the battlements above were still tipped with splendour. From those, too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all, who dared to invade its solitary reign. As the twilight deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity, and Emily continued to gaze, till its clustering towers were alone seen, rising over the tops of the woods, beneath whose thick shade the carriages soon after began to ascend.

(Illustration is Karl Friedrich Hampe, Ritterburg im Mondschein, 1817.)

''Successful beyond hope''

2010-08-08T08:20:00.009-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers;
For in possession such, not only of right,
I call ye, and declare ye now; return'd
Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth
Triumphant out of this infernal Pit
Abominable, accurst, the house of woe,
And Dungeon of our Tyrant: Now possess,
As Lords, a spacious World, to our native Heaven
Little inferior, by my adventure hard
With peril great achiev'd. (X.460-69)

(Illustration is John Martin, Satan on His Throne, 1824.)

''Conversation in the Forest''

2010-08-08T02:13:00.005-04:00

CONVERSATION IN THE FOREST (1815)

Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

"It is so late, it grows so cold,
Why ridest thou lonely cross the wold?
The forest is long, thou art alone,
O lovely maid! I'll take thee home!"

"Boundless is men's deceitful lore.
With grief my heart is pierced to the core.
The hunting horn wanders to and fro.
O flee! who I am thou dost not know."

"So richly decked palfrey and maiden slim,
So fair of face, so fair of limb.
I know thee now — may God stand by!
Thou art the witch called Lorelei."

"Thou know'st me well. My castle fine
From highest cliff looks deep in the Rhine.
It is so late, it is so cold,
No more wilt thou escape this wold."

-German title: Waldesgespräch.

(Illustration is Sir Frank Dicksee, La Belle Dame sans Merci, c.1902.)

''The Destruction of Sennacherib''

2010-08-07T10:06:00.006-04:00

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB

Lord Byron

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

1815

(Illustration is John Martin, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 1852.)

''A stranger to his own century''

2010-08-06T07:41:00.005-04:00

From Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter IX (1794):

The artist is indeed the child of his age; but woe to him if he is at the same time its ward or, worse still, its minion! Let some beneficent deity snatch the suckling betimes from his mother’s breast, nourish him with the milk of a better age, and suffer him to come to maturity under a distant Grecian sky. Then, when he has become a man, let him return, a stranger, to his own century; not, however, to gladden it by his appearance, but rather, terrible like Agamemnon’s son, to cleanse and to purify it. His theme he will, indeed, take from the present; but his form he will borrow from a nobler time, nay, from beyond time altogether, from the absolute, unchanging unity of his being. Here, from the pure ether of his genius, the living source of beauty flows down, untainted by the corruption of the generations and ages wallowing in the dark eddies below.

The theme of his work may be degraded by vagaries of the public mood, even as this has been known to ennoble it; but its form, inviolate, will remain immune from such vicissitudes. The Roman of the first century had long been bowing the knee before his emperors when statues still portrayed him erect; temples continued to be sacred to the eye long after the gods had become objects of derision; and the infamous crimes of a Nero or a Commodus were put to shame by the noble style of the building whose frame lent them cover.

Humanity has lost its dignity; but art has rescued it and preserved it in significant stone. Truth lives on in the illusion of art, and it is from this copy, or afterimage, that the original image will once again be restored. Just as the nobility of art survived the nobility of nature, so now art goes before her, a voice rousing from slumber and preparing the shape of things to come. Even before truth’s triumphant light can penetrate the recesses of the human heart, the poet’s imagination will intercept its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be radiant while the dews of night still linger in the valley.

But how is the artist to protect himself against the corruption of the age that besets him on all sides? By disdaining its opinion. Let him direct his gaze upwards, to the dignity of his calling and the universal law, not downwards toward fortune and the needs of daily life.

Work for your contemporaries; but create what they need, not what they praise. . . . Banish from their pleasures caprice, frivolity, and coarseness, and imperceptibly you will banish these from their actions and, eventually, from their inclinations too. Surround them, wherever you meet them, with the great and noble forms of genius, and encompass them about with the symbols of perfection, until semblance conquer reality, and art triumph over nature.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818.)

Satan and Eve (Eve's Dream)

2010-08-05T09:08:00.007-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674). Satan addresses Eve:

"Here, happy creature, fair angelick Eve!
Partake thou also; happy though thou art,
Happier thou mayest be, worthier canst not be:
Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods
Thyself a Goddess, not to earth confined,
But sometimes in the air, as we, sometimes
Ascend to Heaven, by merit thine, and see
What life the Gods live there, and such live thou!"
So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held,
Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part
Which he had plucked; the pleasant savoury smell
So quickened appetite, that I, methought,
Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the clouds
With him I flew, and underneath beheld
The earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide
And various: Wondering at my flight and change
To this high exaltation; suddenly
My guide was gone, and I, methought, sunk down... (V.74-91)

(Illustration is from Gustave Doré, Paradise Lost, 1866.)

''Prometheus''

2010-08-04T23:38:00.005-04:00

PROMETHEUS (1816)

Lord Byron

Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

(Illustration is Arnold Böcklin, Promethus, 1883. Note the presence of the Titan bound atop the mountain.)

''Columbus''

2010-08-04T00:41:00.004-04:00

COLUMBUS

Friedrich von Schiller

Sail on, oh captain! Though the mockers grin
And though the helm slip from a heedless hand,
Forever westward! There is a land
Which shall receive you. You have seen
Its shore before your eyes. Trust your skills.
Though oceans may be empty on their verge--
You willed a land. It shall rise from the surge.
For nature always yields what human spirit wills.

1796

(Image is Dioscoro Teofila de la Puebla Tolin, The First Landing of Christopher Columbus in America, 1862.)

''Alonzo the Brave, and Fair Imogine''

2010-08-03T06:15:00.012-04:00

ALONZO THE BRAVE, AND FAIR IMOGINE

M.G. Lewis

A Warrior so bold, and a Virgin so bright
Conversed, as They sat on the green:
They gazed on each other with tender delight;
Alonzo the Brave was the name of the Knight,
The Maid's was the Fair Imogine.

"And Oh!" said the Youth, "since to-morrow I go
To fight in a far distant land,
Your tears for my absence soon leaving to flow,
Some Other will court you, and you will bestow
On a wealthier Suitor your hand."

"Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogine said,
"Offensive to Love and to me!
For if ye be living, or if ye be dead,
I swear by the Virgin, that none in your stead
Shall Husband of Imogine be.

"If e'er I by lust or by wealth led aside
Forget my Alonzo the Brave,
God grant, that to punish my falsehood and pride
Your Ghost at the Marriage may sit by my side,
May tax me with perjury, claim me as Bride,
And bear me away to the Grave!"

To Palestine hastened the Hero so bold;
His Love, She lamented him sore:
But scarce had a twelve-month elapsed, when behold,
A Baron all covered with jewels and gold
Arrived at Fair Imogine's door.

His treasure, his presents, his spacious domain
Soon made her untrue to her vows:
He dazzled her eyes; He bewildered her brain;
He caught her affections so light and so vain,
And carried her home as his Spouse.

And now had the Marriage been blest by the Priest;
The revelry now was begun:
The Tables, they groaned with the weight of the Feast;
Nor yet had the laughter and merriment ceased,
When the Bell of the Castle told,—"One!"

Then first with amazement Fair Imogine found
That a Stranger was placed by her side: His air was terrific;
He uttered no sound; He spoke not, He moved not,
He looked not around,
But earnestly gazed on the Bride.

His vizor was closed, and gigantic his height;
His armour was sable to view:
All pleasure and laughter were hushed at his sight;
The Dogs as They eyed him drew back in affright,
The Lights in the chamber burned blue!

His presence all bosoms appeared to dismay;
The Guests sat in silence and fear.
At length spoke the Bride, while She trembled, "I pray,
Sir Knight, that your Helmet aside you would lay,
And deign to partake of our chear."

The Lady is silent: The Stranger complies.
His vizor He slowly unclosed:
Oh! God! what a sight met Fair Imogine's eyes!
What words can express her dismay and surprize,
When a Skeleton's head was exposed.

All present then uttered a terrified shout;
All turned with disgust from the scene.
The worms, They crept in, and the worms, They crept out,
And sported his eyes and his temples about,
While the Spectre addressed Imogine.

"Behold me, Thou false one! Behold me!" He cried;
"Remember Alonzo the Brave!
God grants, that to punish thy falsehood and pride
My Ghost at thy marriage should sit by thy side,
Should tax thee with perjury, claim thee as Bride
And bear thee away to the Grave!"

Thus saying, his arms round the Lady He wound,
While loudly She shrieked in dismay;
Then sank with his prey through the wide-yawning ground:
Nor ever again was Fair Imogine found,
Or the Spectre who bore her away.

Not long lived the Baron; and none since that time
To inhabit the Castle presume:
For Chronicles tell, that by order sublime
There Imogine suffers the pain of her crime,
And mourns her deplorable doom.

At midnight four times in each year does her Spright
When Mortals in slumber are bound,
Arrayed in her bridal apparel of white,
Appear in the Hall with the Skeleton-Knight,
And shriek, as He whirls her around.

While They drink out of skulls newly torn from the grave,
Dancing round them the Spectres are seen:
Their liquor is blood, and this horrible Stave
They howl.—"To the health of Alonzo the Brave,
And his Consort, the False Imogine!"

1796

Originally published in Lewis's masterpiece The Monk (arguably the finest novel in the Gothic horror genre), this ballad on the theme of the spectre bridegroom clearly shows the influence of Gottfried August Bürger's "Leonore."

The Sublime and the Beautiful

2010-08-03T00:37:00.015-04:00

THE SUBLIME

THE BEAUTIFUL

From Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764):

Finer feeling, which we now wish to consider, is chiefly of two kinds: the feeling of the sublime and that of the beautiful. The stirring of each is pleasant, but in different ways.

The sight of a mountain whose snow-covered peak rises above the clouds, the description of a raging storm, or Milton's portrayal of the infernal kingdom, arouse enjoyment but with horror; on the other hand, the sight of flower-strewn meadows, valleys with winding brooks and covered with grazing flocks, the description of Elysium, or Homer’s portrayal of the girdle of Venus, also occasion a pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling. In order that the former impression could occur to us in due strength, we must have a feeling of the sublime, and, in order to enjoy the latter well, a feeling of the beautiful.

Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime; flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed in hedges are beautiful. Night is sublime, day is beautiful.

The sublime moves, the beautiful charms.

The mien of a man who is undergoing the full feeling of the sublime is earnest, sometimes rigid and astonished. On the other hand the lively sensation of the beautiful proclaims itself through shining cheerfulness in the eyes, through smiling features, and often through audible mirth.

Deep loneliness is sublime, but in a way that stirs terror. Hence great far-reaching solitudes, like the colossal Komul Desert in Tartary, have always given us occasion for peopling them with fearsome spirits, goblins, and ghouls.

The sublime must always be great; the beautiful can also be small.

Open bold revenge, following a great offense, bears something of the great about it; and as unlawful as it may be, nevertheless its telling moves one with both horror and gratification....

Resolute audacity in a rogue is of the greatest danger, but it moves in the telling, and even if he is dragged to a disgraceful death he nevertheless ennobles it to some extent by going to it defiantly and with disdain.

-German title: Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen.

(Illustrations are John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath, 1851-53; and The Celestial City and the River of Bliss, 1841.)

''Evil be thou my good''

2010-08-02T12:38:00.010-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with heaven's king I hold
By thee, and more then half perhaps will reign;
As man ere long, and this new world shall know. (V.108-113)

(Illustration is from Gustave Doré, Paradise Lost, 1866.)

Burg Eltz

2010-08-02T06:53:00.007-04:00

This brief video features several lovely sights along the Mosel River in Germany, including the Reichsburg Cochem (which was highlighted in a previous post), but particularly focusses on mighty Burg Eltz, one of the greatest of all German castles, and certainly the greatest that is an authentic medieval Gothic structure rather than a Neo-Gothic rebuild.

Still in the possession of the von Eltz family, the castle lies deep within the German Urwald, just like in a fairy-tale, yet its fortress-like towers and turrets, built for practical defensive purposes, give it a distinctively masculine character.

Burg Eltz: Official Site

''Song of the Mountain Boy''

2010-08-02T03:01:00.008-04:00

SONG OF THE MOUNTAIN BOY (1806)

Ludwig Uhland

The mountain shepherd-boy am I;
The castles all below me spy.
The sun sends me his earliest beam,
Leaves me his latest, lingering gleam.
I am the boy of the mountain!

The mountain torrent's home is here,
Fresh from the rock I drink it clear;
As out it leaps with furious force,
I stretch my arms and stop its course.
I am the boy of the mountain!

I claim the mountain for my own;
In vain the winds around me moan;
From north to south let tempests brawl--
My song shall swell above them all.
I am the boy of the mountain!

Thunder and lightning below me lie,
Yet here I stand in upper sky;
I know them well, and cry, "Harm not
My father's lowly, peaceful cot."
I am the boy of the mountain!

But when I hear the alarm-bell sound,
When watch-fires gleam from the mountains round,
The down I go and march along,
And swing my sword, and sing my song.
I am the boy of the mountain!

-trans. C.T. Brooks
-German title: Des knaben Berglied.

(Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Montblanc, 1824.)

Götz von Berlichingen

2010-07-31T05:32:00.014-04:00

Excerpts from Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1773):

KARL: Jaxthausen is a village and castle on the Jaxt. It has belonged for two hundred years to the lords of Berlichingen by hereditary right and by the right of possession.

GÖTZ: Are you not as free, as nobly born as any man in Germany, independent, subject only to the Emperor, and you cringe before vassals?...Do you underestimate the value of being a free knight who is subject only to God, his Emperor, and himself!

GÖTZ: Order and peace! I believe it! That's what every bird of prey wants: to devour its quarry in comfort.

GÖTZ: If your conscience is clear, you are free.

GÖTZ: I am a thorn in your flesh, small as I am, and Sickingen and Selbitz no less so, because we are determined to die before we owe anyone but God for the air we breathe and before we pay loyalty and service to anyone but the Emperor.

GÖTZ: Last night I thought I gave you my right iron hand, and you held me so tight that it came out of the brassarts as if it had been broken off.

FRANZ: When she looks at anyone it's as though one were standing in spring sunlight.

GEORG: Don't worry! It won't put me off if ever so many are crawling around me: to me they're like rats and mice.

GEORG: A horseman that thinks ahead of time won't take any very broad jumps.

GEORG: He was startled; I saw the confession of his crime on his face. He scarcely had the heart to look at me -- me, a mere squire.
SELBITZ: That was because his conscience was lower than your rank.

THE EMPEROR: God in Heaven! God in Heaven! What is this? One of them has only one hand, the other only one leg. If they ever had two hands and two legs what would you do then?

SICKINGEN: It is an honor for both of you to be betrayed by him.

GÖTZ: Sickingen, you will fall into the pit with me. I was hoping you would get me out of it.

GÖTZ: One wolf is too many for a whole flock of sheep.

GÖTZ: Elizabeth, you will stay with me!
ELIZABETH: Till death!
(exit)
GÖTZ: Whom God loves, to him may He give a wife like that!

THE COUNCILOR: We are under no obligation of good faith with a brigand.
GÖTZ: If you were not wearing the Emperor's likeness, which I venerate in its meanest counterfeit, you would eat that word "brigand" and choke on it! I am engaged in an honorable feud. You could thank God and parade yourself large before the world if you had ever in your life done a deed as noble as that for which I now sit here captive.

GÖTZ: I still have, thank God, one hand left and I did well to use it.

THE COUNCILOR: Seize him!
GÖTZ: Is that your intention? Whoever isn't a Hungarian ox better not come too close to me! He'll get such a box on the ears from this right iron hand of mine as will cure him once and for all of headache, toothache, and all the other aches of this world.

WEISLINGEN: Last night I met Götz in the forest. He drew his sword and challenged me. I reached for mine and my hand failed me. Then he thrust it into his sheath, looked and me contemptuously, and followed me. He is a prisoner, and I tremble before him

GÖTZ: Heavenly air...Freedom! Freedom!

MARIA: Noble man! Noble man! Woe to the age that rejected you!
LERSE: Woe to the posterity that fails to appreciate you!

(Images are of Götz von Berlichingen's actual iron hand, along with a prototype to the left, which are housed in the castle museum of the Götzenburg in Jagsthausen; photographed by the author during his latest pilgrimage to Germany, in August, 2009.)

''Myself am Hell''

2010-07-31T04:20:00.011-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):

Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n. (IV.73-78)

(Illustration is John Martin, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, 1812.)

''Darkness''

2010-07-30T06:09:00.009-04:00

DARKNESS

Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crownéd kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the World contained;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenchéd hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past World; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was Death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

1816

"Barbarossa"

2010-07-29T04:57:00.009-04:00

BARBAROSSA

Friedrich Rückert

Old Friedrich Barbarossa,
The emperor renowned,
Inhabits now, enchanted,
A castle underground.

Not dead is he, but resting,
He still lives there today,
And in this hidden castle
He sits and sleeps away.

He took the empire’s glory
Down with him in its prime,
And will return in splendor
With it, in his own time.

The chair on which he slumbers
Of ivory is made,
The table is of marble
On which his head is laid.

His flowing beard, not flaxen,
But red with fiery glow,
Has grown right through the table
And to the stone below.

He nods and stirs in dreaming
And winks a sleepy eye,
And now and then he beckons
A servant, standing by.

He speaks to him in slumber:
"Find out, O dwarf, if still
You see the ravens flying
Above the castle hill.

And if the ancient ravens
Above the castle soar,
I still must sleep, enchanted,
A hundred years or more."

1817

(Illustration is Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872), The Sleep of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa.)

Romanticism vs. Modernism in opera

2010-07-29T01:32:00.004-04:00

This clip from a mid-1990s British documentary about the Royal Opera House exemplifies the conflict between traditional, reverential opera productions and the modernist approach.

It begins with a group of opera traditionalists protesting the house's staging of a horrid modern opera, Gawain, that is marked by its dissonant style. Next we get a glimpse of a postmodern production of Mozart's The Magic Flute (which proves to be an artistic and commercial failure).

Then, in the highlight of the clip, we see a glorious, traditional production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, conducted by Bernard Haitink, which is a bona fide triumph, and wildly popular.

The video concludes with a look at the opera house's plans to stage a ridiculous, revisionist version, bordering on self-parody, of Wagner's Ring.

Note in particular the music director's concluding comment that opera is a "battlefield between the musical and dramatic elements." But must it be so? Or rather, isn't the concept of harmony between the musical and dramatic elements (such as we see in the Die Meistersinger clip) aesthetically preferable, and more artistically fulfilling?

''Awake, arise, or be forever fall'n"

2010-07-29T00:43:00.007-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):

Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can sieze
Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav'n?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rowling in the flood
With scatter'd arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern
Th' advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. (I.315-330)

(Illustration is John Martin, Satan Arousing the Fallen Angels, 1824.)

"I belong to a different age"

2010-07-29T00:21:00.010-04:00

From Franz Endler, Karajan: An Autobiography (1989):

"Many of my critics write, and will go on writing, that I conduct too lavishly. That may be so. During my day people have been somewhat extravagant in terms of art and music. I believed this was the right attitude to adopt, and so I've supported it. It has something to do with respect towards art, and if this respect is old-fashioned, so be it, I've no intention of dissociating myself from it. When I was young, we approached music with a sense of awe and celebrated each such approach as a special event. I can see, of course, that times have changed, that people don't want to know about respect any longer, and that it is not in keeping with the times to celebrate a concert. People are going to great lengths to make themselves ugly, to wear ugly clothes, and to feel precious little enthusiasm for beauty. I've been observing this for years . . . I know there's nothing that can be done at present to change all this. But no one can expect me to seek a polite or understanding explanation for this, still less that I should agree with it and conform. I belong to a different age. And what I want to preserve for myself and posterity also belongs to a different age."

Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) was the greatest conductor the world has ever known. His recordings comprise the definitive account of the classical repertoire. In his opera stagings he rejected modern left-wing political fashions, instead realizing the works in tune with the composers' own wishes. Nothing less than a musical Übermensch, he was a true Romantic in an anti-Romantic age, and the last great interpreter of the German tradition.

Karajan Tribute Site

"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n"

2010-07-28T20:35:00.007-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):

Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n. (I.258-263)

(Illustration is John Martin, Pandemonium, 1824-27.)

''The Wandering Jew''

2010-07-28T20:11:00.019-04:00

THE WANDERING JEW

Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart
Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel. Near two thousand years have elapsed since he was first goaded by never-ending restlessness to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our Lord was wearied with the burthen of His ponderous cross, and wanted to rest before the door of Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove Him away with brutality. The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the heavy load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of death appeared before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, "Barbarian! thou has denied rest to the Son of man: be it denied thee also, until He comes to judge the world."

A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, goads him now from country to country; he is denied the consolation which death affords, and precluded from the rest of the peaceful grave.

Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel — he shook the dust from his beard — and taking up one of the skulls heaped there, hurled it down the eminence: it rebounded from the earth in shivered atoms. "This was my father!" roared Ahasuerus. Seven more skulls rolled down from rock to rock; while the infuriate Jew, following them with ghastly looks, exclaimed — "And these were my wives!" He still continued to hurl down skull after skull, roaring in dreadful accents — "And these, and these, and these were my children! They could die; but I! reprobate wretch! alas! I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is the judgment that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell — I crushed the sucking babe, and precipitated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the Romans — but, alas! alas! the restless curse held me by the hair, — and I could not die!

"Rome the giantess fell — I placed myself before the falling statue — she fell and did not crush me. Nations sprang up and disappeared before me; — but I remained and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I precipitate myself into the ocean; but the foaming billows cast me upon the shore, and the burning arrow of existence pierced my cold heart again. I leaped into Etna's flaming abyss, and roared with the giants for ten long months, polluting with my groans the Mount's sulphureous mouth — ah! ten long months. The volcano fermented, and in a fiery stream of lava cast me up. I lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell amid the glowing cinders, and yet continued to exist. — A forest was on fire: I darted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood. Fire dropped upon me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs; alas! it could not consume them. — I now mixed with the butchers of mankind, and plunged in the tempest of the raging battle. I roared defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance to the victorious German; but arrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen's flaming sword broke upon my skull: balls in vain hissed upon me: the lightnings of battle glared harmless around my loins: in vain did the elephant trample upon me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed! The mine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and hurled me high in the air — I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed. The giant's steel club rebounded from my body; the executioner's hand could not strangle me, the tiger's tooth could not pierce me, nor would the hungry lion in the circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous snakes, and pinched the red crest of the dragon. — The serpent stung, but could not destroy me. The dragon tormented, but dared not devour me. — I now provoked the fury of tyrants: I said to Nero, 'Thou art a bloodhound!' I said to Christiern, 'Thou art a bloodhound!' I said to Muley Ismail, 'Thou art a bloodhound!' — The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did not kill me — Ha! not to be able to die — not to be able to die — not to be permitted to rest after the toils of life — to be doomed to be imprisoned for ever in the clay-formed dungeon — to be for ever clogged with this worthless body, its load of diseases and infirmities — to be condemned to [be]hold for milleniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, that hungry hyaena, ever bearing children, and ever devouring again her offspring! — Ha! not to be permitted to die! Awful Avenger in Heaven, hast Thou in Thine armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? then let it thunder upon me, command a hurricane to sweep me down to the foot of Carmel, that I there may lie extended; may pant, and writhe, and die!"

1783

-trans. Peter Will
-German title, Der ewige Jude.

(Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Pilgrim in a Rocky Valley, 1820.)

''The mind is its own place''

2010-07-28T18:34:00.009-04:00

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):

Farewell happy fields
Where joy forever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same...? (I.249-256)

(Illustration is John Martin, Pandemonium, 1841.)

On Romantic Music

2010-07-28T01:30:00.007-04:00

From Walzel, German Romanticism (1932):

Romantic music -- again one takes one's lead from Beethoven -- concerns itself with the heroic, the larger-than-life, the uncontrolled, the unrestricted -- even the potentially destructive. These values are then presented to the world as self-justifying entities, expressions of uncompromising personal vision. Once the composer's "message" has been made public, it is for the world at large to rise to it: the artist is not the servant of society but its leader.

-trans. A.E. Lussky.

(Illustration is Thomas Cole's The Destruction of Empire, 1836.)

''The Wild Huntsman''

2010-07-27T07:38:00.011-04:00

THE WILD HUNTSMAN (1778)

Gottfried August Bürger

Loud, loud the baron winds his horn;
And, see, a lordly train
On horse, on foot, with defening din,
Comes scouring o'er the plain.

O'er heath, o'er field, the yelping pack
Dash swift, from couples freed;
O'er heath, o'er field, close on their track,
Loud neighs the fiery steed.

And now the Sabbath's holy dawn
Beam'd high with purple ray,
And bright each hallowed temple's dome
Reflected back the day.

Now deep and clear the pealing bells
Struck on the list'ning ear,
And heaven-ward rose from many a voice
The hymn of praise and prayer.

Swift, swift along the crossway, still
They speed with eager cry:
See! right and left, two horsemen strange
Their rapid coursers ply.

Who were the horsemen right and left?
That may I guess full well:
Who were the horsemen right and left?
That may I never tell.

The right, of fair and beauteous mien,
A milk-white steed bestrode;
Mild as the vernal skies, his face
With heavenly radiance glow'd.

The left spurr'd fast his fiery barb,
Red as the furnace flame;
Sullen he loured, and from his eyes
The death-like lightning came.

"Right welcome to our noble sport;"
The baron greets them fair;
"For well I wot ye hold it good
To banish moping care.

"No pleasure equal to the chase,
Or earth, or heaven can yield;"
He spoke,--he waved his cap in air,
And foremost rushed afield.

"Turn thee!" the milder horseman cries;
"Turn thee from horns and hounds!
Hear'st not the bells, hear'st not the quire,
Mingle their sacred sounds?

"They drown the clamor of the chase;
Oh! hunt not then to-day,
Nor let a fiend's advice destroy
Thy better angel's sway."

"Hunt on, hunt on," his comrade cries,
"Nor heed yon dotard's spell;
What is the bawling quire to us?
Or what the jangling bell?

"Well may the chase delight thee more;
And well may'st learn from me,
How brave, how princely is our sport,
From bigot terrors free."

"Well said! well said! in thee I own
A hero's kindled fire;
These pious foolries move not us,
We reck nor priest, nor quire.

"And thou, believe me, saintlike dolt,
Thy bigot rage is vain;
From prayers and beadrolls, what delight
Can sportsmen hope to gain?"

Still hurry, hurry, on they speed
O'er valley, hill and plain;
And ever at the baron's side
Attend the horsemen twain.

See, panting, see, a milk-white hart
Up-springs from yonder thorn:
"Now swiftly ply both horse and foot;
Now louder wind the horn!"

See, falls a huntsman! see, his limbs
The pangs of death distort!
"Lay there and rot: no caitiff's death
Shall mar our princely sport."

Light bounds with deftest speed the hart,
Wide o'er the country borne;
Now closer prest a refuge seeks
Where waves the ripening corn.

See, the poor owner of the field
Approach with tearful eyes;
"O pity, pity, good my lords!"
Alas! in vain he cries.

"O spare what little store the poor
By bitter sweat can earn!"
Now soft the milder horseman warns
The baron to return.

Not so persuades his stern compeer,
Best pleas'd with darkest deeds;
Tis his to sway the baron's heart,
Reckless what mercy pleads.

"Away!" the imperious noble cries;
"Away, and leave us free!
Off! or by all the powers of hell,
Thou too shalt hunted be!

"Here, fellows! let this villain prove
My threats were not in vain:
Loud lash around his piteous face
The whips of all my train."

Tis said, tis done: swift o'er the fence
The baron foremost springs;
Swift follow hound, and horse, and man,
And loud the welkin rings.

Loud rings the welkin with their shouts,
While man, and horse, and hound,
Ruthless tread down each ripening ear,
Wide o'er the smoking ground.

O'er heath and field, o'er hill and dale,
Scared by the approaching cries,
Still close pursued, yet still unreach'd,
Their destin'd victim flies.

Now mid the lowing herds that graze
Along yon verdant plain,
He hopes, concealed from every eye,
A safe retreat to gain.

In vain, for now the savage train
Press ravening on his heels:
See, prostrate at the baron's feet
The affrighted herdsman kneels.

Fear for the safety of his charge
Inspires his faltering tongue;
"O spare," he cries, "these harmless beasts,
Nor work an orphan's wrong.

"Think, here thy fury would destroy
A friendless widow's all!"
He spoke:--the gentle stranger strove
To enforce soft pity's call.

Not so persuades his sullen frere,
But pleas'd with darkest deeds;
Tis his to sway the baron's heart,
Reckless what mercy pleads.

"Away, audacious hound!" he cries;
"Twould do my heart's-blood good,
Might I but see thee transform'd to beasts
Thee and thy beggar brood.

"Then, to the very gates of heaven,
Who dare to say me nay!
With joy I'd hunt the losel fry;
Come fellows, no delay!"

See, far and wide the murderous throng
Deal many a deadly wound;
Mid slaughter'd numbers, see, the hart
Sinks bleeding on the ground.

Yet still he summons all his strength
For one poor effort more,
Staggering he flies; his silver sides
Drop mingled sweat and gore.

And now he seeks a last retreat
Deep in the darkling dell,
Where stands, amidst embowering oaks,
A hermit's holy cell.

E'en here the madly eager train
Rush swift with impious rage,
When, lo! persuasion on his tongue,
Steps forth the reverend sage.

"O cease thy chase! nor thus invade
Religion's free abode;
For know, the tortur'd creature's groans
E'en now have reach'd his god.

"They cry at heaven's high mercy seat,
For vengeance on thy head;
O turn, repentant turn, ere yet
The avenging bolt is sped."

Once more religion's cause in vain
The gentle stranger pleads;
Once more, alas! his sullen frere
A willing victim leads.

"Dash on!" the harden'd sinner cries;
"Shalt thou distrub our sport?
No! boldly would I urge the chase
In heaven's own inmost court.

"What reck I then thy pious rage?
No mortal man I fear:
Not god in all his terrors arm'd
Should stay my fix'd career."

He cracks his whip, he winds his horn,
He calls his vassal-crew;
Lo! horse and hound, and sage and cell,
All vanish from his view.

All, all, are gone!--no single rack
His eager eye can trace;
And silence, still as death, has hush'd
The clamors of the chase.

In vain he spurs his courser's sides,
Nor back nor forward borne;
He winds his horn, he calls aloud,
But hears no sound return.

And now inclos'd in deepest night,
Dark as the silent grave,
He hears the sullen tempest roar,
As roars the distant wave.

Loud and louder still the storm
Howls through the troubled air;
Ten thousand thunders from on high
The voice of judgment bear.

"Accursed before god and man,
Unmoved by threat or prayer;
Creator, nor created, aught
Thy frantic rage would spare.

"Think not in vain creation's lord
Has heard his creature's groan;
E'en now the torch of vengeance flames
High by his awful throne.

"Now, hear thy doom! to aftertimes
A dread example given,
For ever urge thy wild career,
By fiendish hell-hounds driven."

The voice had ceased; the sulphurous flash
Shot swift from either pole;
Sore shook the grove; cold horror seized
The trembling miscreant's soul.

Again the rising tempest roars,
Again the lightnings play;
And every limb, and every nerve
Is frozen with dismay.

He sees a giant's swarthy arm
Start from the yawning ground;
He feels a demon grasp his head,
And rudely wrench it round.

In torrents now from every side,
Pours fast a fiery flood;
On each o'erwhelming wave upborne,
Loud howls the hellish brood.

Sullen and grisly gleams the light,
Now red, now green, now blue;
Whilst o'er the gulf the fiendish train
Their destined prey pursue.

In vain he shrieks with wild despair,
In vain he strives to fly;
Still at this back the hell-born crew
Their cursed business ply.

By day, full many a fathom deep
Below earth's smiling face;
By night, high through the troubled air,
They speed their endless chase.

In vain to turn his eyes aside
He strives with wild affright;
So never may those maddening scenes
Escape his tortured sight.

Still must he see those dogs of hell
Close hovering on his track;
Still must he see the avenging scourge
Uplighted at his back.

Now this is the wild baron's hunt;
And many a village youth,
And many a sportsman (dare they speak)
Could vouch the awful truth.

For oft benighted midst the wilds
The fiendish troop they hear,
Now shrieking shrill, now cursing loud,
Come thundering through the air.

No hand shall stay those dogs of hell
Or quench that sea of fire,
Till god's own dreadful day of doom
Shall bid the world expire!

-trans. as "The Wild Hunter" by Rambler's Magazine (1809).
-German title: Der wilde Jäger.

(Illustration is Arbo, The Wild Hunt, 1872.)

''Art is a conservative power''

2010-07-27T05:38:00.004-04:00

From Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918):

Art will never be moral in the political sense, never virtuous; progress will never be able to depend upon it. It has a basically undependable, treacherous tendency; its joy in scandalous antireason, its tendency to beauty-creating "barbarism," cannot be rooted out, yes, even if one calls this tendency hysterical, anti-intellectual, and immoral to the point of being a danger to the world: it is an immortal fact, and if one wanted to, or could, extirpate it from the world, one would certainly have freed the world from a grave danger, but at the same time one would almost certainly have freed it of art as well -- and only a few want that. An irrational power, but a great power; and the attachment of people to it proves that people neither can nor want to make do with rationality, that is; with the famous three-part equation of democratic wisdom, "reason = virtue = happiness."

Let one read, in this connection, the sinfully enthusiastic description that Baudelaire gives of the Tannhäuser march! "Who could," he cries, "in listening to these chords, which are so rich and proud, to this elegantly cadenced, magnificent rhythm, these royal fanfares, imagine anything else than a magical pomp, a parade of heroic men in shining costumes, all of great stature, all of strong will and naive belief, just as magnificent in their joys as terrible in their battles?"

And who, let us add, could fail to recognize that it is, in the sense of political virtue, the most questionable ideas that art awakens here?

Yesterday I heard Tschaikowsky's Symphonie Pathétique, this thoroughly dangerous work in its sweetness and savagery, which one neither hears nor understands without experiencing the irreconcilable antithesis of art and the spirit of literary virtue. I am thinking of the third movement with its malicious march music, which, if we had a censor in the service of democratic enlightenment, would absolutely have to be forbidden. So long as such things may not only be composed, but also performed; so long as this trumpet blare and cymbal clash is allowed among cultured people; so long, allow me to say, will there be wars on earth.

Art is a conservative power, the strongest of all; it preserves spiritual possibilities that without it -- perhaps -- would die out. So long as poets are possible -- and they will always be so -- whose wish and lament is to lie down in the deepest woods to forget "these stupid times,"
Of princely deeds and works
Of ancient honour and pomp,
And what may strengthen the soul,
Dreaming away the long night--
so long as their forward-directed longing will call forth the time when the Lord will put an end to things and tear from the deceitful one their unjust power:
Then Aurora will dawn
High up over the forest,
Then there will be something to sing and defeat
Then, loyal ones, awake--
--so long, I say, will the rule of that three-part equation, will democracy on earth, not be secure. Let every utopia of progress, let the sanctification of the earth by reason -- every dream of social eudæmonism be fulfilled, the pacified, esperanto world become reality: air buses breeze over a "human race" that is clothed in white, pious with reason, statelessly-unified, monolingual, in the ultimate mastery of technology, with electric television: art will still live, and it will form an element of uncertainty and preserve the possibility, the conceivability, of relapse. It will speak of passion and unreason; it will present, cultivate and celebrate passion and unreason, hold primordial thoughts and instincts in honour, keep them awake or reawaken them with great force, the thought and instinct of war, for example. One will not be able to forbid it, because that would go against freedom. Or will "the human race" live under absolutism, under the tyranny of reason, of virtue and of happiness?" Then it is all the more probable that art will go completely into the opposition -- and that everything that finds itself opposed to this ultimate tyranny will hold passionately to it. Art will seize the leadership of that party that seeks to overthrow the rule of virtue -- and it is a ravishing leader. In short, then: war, heroism of a reactionary type, all the mischief of unreason, will be thinkable and therefore possible so long as art exists, and its life will last and end only with that of the "human race."

-trans. W.D. Morris

''The Lion's Ride''

2010-07-27T03:53:00.007-04:00

THE LION'S RIDE

Ferdinand Freiligrath

King of deserts reigns the lion; will he through his realm go riding,
Down to the lagoon he paces, in the tall sedge there lies hiding.
Where gazelles and camelopards drink, he crouches by the shore;
Ominous, above the monster, moans the quivering sycamore.

When, at dusk, the ruddy hearth-fires in the Hottentot kraals are glowing,
And the motley, changeful signals on the Table Mountain growing
Dim and distant -- when the Caffre sweeps along the lone karroo--
When in the bush the antelope slumbers, and beside the stream the gnu--

Lo! majestically stalking, yonder comes the tall giraffe,
Hot with thirst, the gloomy waters of the dull lagoon to quaff;
O'er the naked waste behold her, with parched tongue, all panting hasten--
Now she sucks the cool draught, kneeling, from the stagnant, slimy basin.

Hark, a rustling in the sedges! with a roar, the lion springs
On her back now. What a race-horse! Say, in proudest stalls of kings,
Saw one ever richer housings than the courser’s motley hide,
On whose back the tawny monarch of the beasts tonight will ride?

Fixed his teeth are in the muscles of the nape, with greedy strain;
Round the giant courser's withers waves the rider's yellow mane.
With a hollow cry of anguish, leaps and flies the tortured steed;
See her, how with skin of leopard she combines the camel's speed!

See, with lightly beating footsteps, how she scours the moonlit plains!
From their sockets start the eyeballs; from the torn and bleeding veins,
Fast the thick, black drops come trickling, o’er the brown and dappled neck,
And the flying beast's heart-beatings audible the stillness make.

Like the cloud, that, guiding Israel through the land of Yemen, shone,
Like a spirit of the desert, like a phantom, pale and wan,
O'er the desert's sandy ocean, like a waterspout at sea,
Whirls a yellow, cloudy column, tracking them where'er they flee.

On their track the vulture follows, flapping, croaking, through the air,
And the terrible hyena, plunderer of tombs, is there;
Follows them the stealthy panther -- Cape-town's folds have known him well;
Them their monarch's dreadful pathway, blood and sweat full plainly tell.

On his living throne, they, quaking, see their ruler sitting there,
With sharp claw the painted cushion of his seat they see him tear.
Restless the giraffe must bear him on, till strength and life-blood fail her;
Mastered by such daring rider, rearing, plunging, naught avail her.

To the desert's verge she staggers -- sinks -- one groan -- and all is o'er.
Now the steed shall feast the rider, dead, and smeared with dust and gore.
Far across, o'er Madagascar, faintly now the morning breaks;
Thus the king of beasts his journey nightly through his empire makes.

1834

-trans. C.T. Brooks
-German title: Löwenritt.

Hermann (Arminius)

2010-07-27T00:32:00.009-04:00

This half-hour episode of the TLC series Archaeology, titled "Caesar's Nightmare: Battle in the Forest," describes recent archaeological finds at the site of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 A.D.), in which heroic Germanic tribesmen led by their chief, Hermann (Arminius), annihilated three legions of the Roman Army.

It also features glimpses of the magnificent Hermannsdenkmal (1875) by Ernst von Bandel, near Detmold, which, along with the Völkerschlachtdenkmal and the Kyffhäuserdenkmal, is one of the greatest remaining German Romantic national monuments.

2009 marked the 2,000th anniversary of this battle.

The video is split into three parts. Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

''Men and Knaves''

2010-07-27T00:23:00.012-04:00

MEN AND KNAVES

Theodor Körner

The storm is out; the land is roused;
Where is the coward who sits well-housed?
Fie, on thee, boy, disguised in curls,
Behind the stove, 'mong gluttons and girls!
A graceless, worthless wight thou must be;
No German maid desires thee,
No German song inspires thee,
No German Rhine-wine fires thee.
Forth in the van,
Man by man,
Swing the battle-sword who can!

When we stand watching, the livelong night,
Through piping storms, till morning light,
Thou to thy downy bed canst creep,
And there in dreams of rapture sleep.

Chorus.

When, hoarse and shrill, the trumpet's blast,
Like the thunder of God, makes our hearts beat fast,
Thou in the theatre lov'st to appear,
Where trills and quavers tickle the ear.

Chorus.

When the glare of noonday scorches the brain,
When our parched lips seek water in vain,
Thou canst make the champagne corks fly,
At the groaning tables of luxury.

Chorus.

When we, as we rush to the strangling fight,
Send home to our true loves a long "Good night,"
Thou canst hie thee where love is sold,
And buy thy pleasure with paltry gold.

Chorus.

When lance and bullet come whistling by,
And death in a thousand shapes draws nigh,
Thou canst sit at thy cards, and kill
King, queen, and knave, with thy spadille.

Chorus.

If on the red field our bell should toll,
Then welcome be death to the patriot's soul.
Thy pampered flesh shall quake at its doom,
And crawl in silk to a hopeless tomb.
A pitiful exit thine shall be;
No German maid shall weep for thee,
No German song shall they sing for thee,
No German goblets shall ring for thee.
Forth in the van,
Man for man,
Swing the battle-sword who can!

1813

-trans. C.T. Brooks
-German title: Männer und Buben.

(Image is Caspar David Friedrich, Graves of Ancient Heroes, 1812, inscribed "To the Youth Fallen for the Fatherland.")

Dragon-Slaying Festival in Furth im Wald

2010-07-27T00:06:00.003-04:00

This German-language video provides a brief introduction to the plot of the annual Drachenstich Festspiel (Dragon-Slaying Festival) in the Bavarian town of Furth im Wald -- the oldest folk festival in Germany, and likely the oldest in all of Europe, dating back to before 1590.

Drachenstich: Official Site

Beethoven in His Own Words

2010-07-26T23:42:00.005-04:00

Ludwig van Beethoven in his own words:

"Thus Fate knocks at the door."
[on the opening bars of the Fifth Symphony]

"He is a base man who does not know how to die; I knew it as a boy of fifteen."

"Emotion suits women only; music ought to strike fire from the soul of a man."

"There have been thousands of princes and will be thousands more; there is only one Beethoven."

"Force, which is a unit, will always prevail against the majority which is divided."

"Pity that I do not understand the art of war as well as I do the art of music; I should yet conquer Napoleon!"

"I care nothing about your whole system of ethics. Power is the morality of men who stand out from the mass, and it is also mine."

"How humiliated I have felt if somebody standing beside me heard the sound of a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or if somebody heard a shepherd sing and again I heard nothing -- Such experiences almost made me despair, and I was on the point of putting an end to my life -- The only thing that held me back was my art. For indeed it seemed to me impossible to leave this world before I had produced all the works that I felt the urge to compose; and thus I have dragged on this miserable existence . . . "

"You should be stamped out! Belaboured with fists! Harpooned! Shot with a pistol!"

"So be it, then. For you, poor Beethoven, there is no outward happiness. You must create everything within yourself -- only in the world of the imagination will you find friends."

"Did not Dædalus, shut up in the labyrinth, invent the wings which carried him out into the open air? Oh, I shall find them, too, these wings!"

"I am resolved to rise superior to every obstacle. With whom need I be afraid of measuring my strength? . . . I will take Fate by the throat. It shall not overcome me. Oh, how beautiful it is to be alive -- would that I could live a thousand times!"

"I am the Bacchus who presses out the glorious wine for mankind. Whoever truly understands my music is freed thereby from the miseries that others carry about in them."

In the words of others:

"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, and torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"How does the matter stand if it is your feeble observation alone that the deep inner continuity of Beethoven's every composition eludes? If it is your fault alone that you do not understand the master's language as the initiated understand it, that the portals of the innermost sanctuary remain closed to you?" (E.T.A. Hoffmann)

"Whoever does not feel the unity of the impulse here, whoever considers it a riddle that . . . Bismarck, the statesman of blood and iron, caused Beethoven's sonatas to be played to him in the decisive moments of his life, understands nothing at all of the nature of the Teuton." (Houston Stewart Chamberlain)

"I believe in God and Beethoven." (Richard Wagner)

(Image shows the Beethoven Monument in Vienna, photographed by the author during his first trip to Europe, in 1993.)

Wagner's Leitmotifs

2010-07-26T22:12:00.004-04:00

This video, from a PBS Great Performances broadcast in 1995, provides an accessible and entertaining explanation of Wagnerian leitmotifs, with a specific discussion of "Siegfried's Funeral March" and "Brunnhilde's Immolation" from Götterdämmerung, the final opera in Wagner's four-part "Ring Cycle," Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Nietzsche: ''My conception of freedom''

2010-07-26T21:37:00.017-04:00

From Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889):

My conception of freedom. -- The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it -- what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic -- every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.

These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free -- and how much more the spirit who has become free -- spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.

How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. [...] This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong -- otherwise one will never become strong.

-trans. Kaufmann/Hollingdale

(Illustration is John Henry Fuseli, Odysseus before Scylla and Charybdis, 1794-96.)

Kyffhäuser Monument (Kyffhäuser-Denkmal)

2010-07-26T20:15:00.009-04:00

This 15-minute German-language documentary was filmed on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Kyffhäuserdenkmal, or Kyffhäuser Monument (1896), designed by the great architect Bruno Schmitz. The monument commemorates Kaiser Wilhelm I and the founding of the Second German Reich (or empire).

The video is in two parts. Part one describes the building of the monument and gives some background on its location, which was the site of one of the castles of Kaiser Friedrich I ("Barbarossa") of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Part two gives an in-depth look at the sections of the monument, and the history of the Kyffhäuserdenkmal after its construction.

Unfortunately, the narration is rather disparaging, as is typical of post-WWII guilt-ridden German attitudes towards their noble past. However, the video is still worthwhile for the wonderful footage that it shows of this glorious monument.

Part one:

Part two:

Kyffhäuserdenkmal: Official Site

''The German's Fatherland''

2010-07-26T18:55:00.013-04:00

THE GERMAN'S FATHERLAND

Erntz Moritz Arndt

Where is the German Fatherland?
Is't Swabia? is't Prussia's strand?
Is't where the Rhine's green vineyards bloom?
Or where the Baltic sea-gulls roam?
More grand and free,
The German Fatherland must be,
The German Fatherland must be.

Where is the German Fatherland?
Bavaria, or Styrian land?
'Tis surely Austria's fertile shores,
Rich in the pride of many wars.
Oh no, more grand,
The limits of the Fatherland,
The limits of the Fatherland.

Where is the German Fatherland?
Pom'rania, Westphalian land?
Is't where the dreary coast-sands lie?
Or where the Danube dashes by?
Yet still more grand,
The limits of the Fatherland,
The limits of the Fatherland.

Then name to me the mighty land,
Which is the German's Fatherland;
Yet Tyrol may the answer tell,
Its land and people pleased me well.
Thou hast not spanned
The limits of the Fatherland,
The limits of the Fatherland.

Where is the German Fatherland?
Oh, name to me the mighty land.
Where'er is known the German word,
Where German hymns to God are heard.
This it shall be,
This it shall be.
Oh! German, it belongs to thee,
To none but thee!

All Germany shall be the land;
Watch o'er it, Heav'n, with saving hand,
And give us strength and courage too,
That we may love it well and true.
This it shall be,
This it shall be.
Oh! German, it belongs to thee!
This it shall be,
All Germany the land shall be.

1813

-trans. C.T. Brooks
-German title: Des deutschen Vaterland.

(Photograph shows the Völkerschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig, by Bruno Schmitz; erected in 1913 to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon, and the liberation of Germany, by the forces of Prussia and her allies at the Battle of the Nations in 1813.)

Reichsburg Cochem

2010-07-26T18:39:00.005-04:00

This short 1999 promotional film showcases the Reichsburg -- the Imperial Castle of the town of Cochem.

Situated along the Mosel River, this Neo-Gothic masterpiece is a 19th-century rebuild of a sublime medieval structure, and is one of the most beautiful castles in Germany.

The video is divided into two parts. Part one:

Part two:

Reichsburg Cochem: Official Site