Dithyrambe, D 47, D 801

Dithyramb / The visit

(Poet's title: Dithyrambe / Der Besuch)

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A dithyramb is a drinking song, so it is appropriate that the first of the gods to join the party is Bacchus himself. As the poet notes, Amor and Bacchus are inseparable. Dionysus gets the juices going. We are familiar with the stages of drink (‘jolly Bacchus’): affection, humour, attraction (‘Amor, the smiling lad’) and self-confidence, here seen as ‘the majestic Phoebus’ but perhaps experienced by others as pomposity rather than majesty. The ordinary (‘this earthly hall’) seems transformed (‘filled with gods’).

Stanza one is about the guests approaching, arriving and settling in. The poet now begins to feel the stress of being the host. He is conscious of not being up to the job. How can a mortal entertain all these immortals? He has nothing to offer. Real parties and true joy cannot exist here. The host has to become the guest; the bowl needs to be filled with nectar not plonk.

Suddenly the pronouns shift: ‘I’ becomes ‘him’ and ‘they’ become ‘us’. There is a sacramental transformation as the gods welcome the poet as their own guest. He is made to feel as if he is ‘one of us’. He can ‘cross over’ without having to brave the Styx and is given access to the sparkling heavenly spring. His breast becomes calm and his eye bright.

There is no single perspective from which to view what has happened. We can read it is an intense mystical transformation whereby the poet is granted access to a world of calm truth, goodness and beauty, with Schiller using classical imagery to revive and reinvigorate the Christian language of transfiguration and the Eucharist. Or it is an ironic commentary on the process of getting drunk, with the speaker moving through a tipping point from merriment to delusion and ending in a catatonic stupour. It will probably appear to be one or other of these options (or a cocktail of both) depending on what we have been drinking.

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Original Spelling

Dithyrambe

Nimmer, das glaubt mir, 
Erscheinen die Götter,
Nimmer allein.
Kaum daß ich Bacchus den lustigen habe,
Kommt auch schon Amor, der lächelnde Knabe,
Phöbus der Herrliche findet sich ein,
     Sie nahen, sie kommen, 
     Die Himmlischen alle,
     Mit Göttern erfüllt sich 
     Die irdische Halle. 

Sagt, wie bewirth ich, 
Der Erdegeborne,
Himmlischen Chor?
Schenket mir euer unsterbliches Leben,
Götter! Was kann euch der Sterbliche geben?
Hebet zu eurem Olymp mich empor!
     Die Freude, sie wohnt nur 
     In Jupiters Saale,
     O füllet mit Nektar, 
     O reich mir die Schale! 

Reich ihm die Schale! 
O schenke  dem Dichter,
Hebe, nur ein. 
Netz' ihm die Augen mit himmlischem Thaue,
Daß er den Styx, den verhaßten, nicht schaue,
Einer der Unsern sich dünke zu sein.
     Sie rauschet, sie perlet, 
     Die himmlische Quelle,
     Der Busen wird ruhig, 
     Das Auge wird helle.

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1797, herausgegeben von Schiller. Tübingen, in der J.G.Cottaischen Buchhandlung, pages 120-121, and with Gedichte von Friederich Schiller, Erster Theil, Leipzig, 1800, bey Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, pages 151-152.

First published 1797 with the title “Der Besuch” (The visit) in Schiller’s Musen-Almanach

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 119 [125 von 292] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ207858202