Longing
(Poet's title: Sehnsucht)
Set by Schubert:
D 52
[April 17, 1813]
D 636
[early 1821]
Ach, aus dieses Tales Gründen,
Die der kalte Nebel drückt,
Könnt ich doch den Ausgang finden,
Ach, wie fühlt’ ich mich beglückt.
Dort erblick ich schöne Hügel,
Ewig jung und ewig grün,
Hätt’ ich Schwingen, hätt ich Flügel,
Nach den Hügeln zög ich hin.
Harmonien hör ich klingen,
Töne süßer Himmelsruh,
Und die leichten Winde bringen
Mir der Düfte Balsam zu.
Goldne Früchte seh ich glühen,
Winkend zwischen dunkelm Laub,
Und die Blumen, die dort blühen,
Werden keines Winters Raub.
Ach wie schön muss sich’s ergehen
Dort im ew’gen Sonnenschein,
Und die Luft auf jenen Höhen,
O wie labend muss sie sein.
Doch mir wehrt des Stromes Toben,
Der ergrimmt dazwischen braust,
Seine Wellen sind gehoben,
Dass die Seele mir ergraust.
Einen Nachen seh ich schwanken,
Aber ach! der Fährmann fehlt.
Frisch hinein und ohne Wanken,
Seine Segel sind beseelt.
Du musst glauben, du musst wagen,
Denn die Götter leihn kein Pfand,
Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen
In das schöne Wunderland.
Oh, to get out of the bottom of this valley
Filled with cold mist;
If only I could find the way out
How happy I would feel!
I can make out beautiful hills over there,
Forever young and forever green.
If only I had wings; if only I could fly,
I would set off for those hills.
I can hear harmonies resounding,
The notes of sweet heavenly rest,
And the light winds are bringing
Me the fragrance of balsam.
I can see golden fruit glowing,
Waving within the dark foliage,
And the flowers that bloom there
Will never be ravaged by winter.
Oh how lovely it must be to stroll
There in the eternal sunshine;
And the air on those heights,
How refreshing it must be!
But I am hindered by the raging stream
That angrily roars and blocks my way.
Its waves are raised so high
That my soul is horrified.
I can see a boat rocking.
But oh! There is no ferry man.
Get in quick, don’t delay.
Its sails are hoisted.
You have to believe, you have to dare,
For the gods do not offer any security.
Only a miracle can convey you
To that beautiful land of wonders.
All translations into English that appear on this website, unless otherwise stated, are by Malcolm Wren. You are free to use them on condition that you acknowledge Malcolm Wren as the translator and schubertsong.uk as the source. Unless otherwise stated, the comments and essays that appear after the texts and translations are by Malcolm Wren and are © Copyright.
☙
Themes and images in this text:
Boats Ferries Fleeing Flowers Flying, soaring and gliding Fruit Gold Green Grey Harmony Heaven, the sky Hills and mountains Leaping and jumping Leaves and foliage Mist and fog On the water – rowing and sailing Rivers (Strom) Rivers – waterfalls, rapids and whirlpools Smells Valleys Waves – Welle Wind Wings Winter
Many of these metaphors are so basic to the way that we experience the world that we have forgotten that they are metaphors. We feel down or we are in a depression (geographically and meteorogically, here a mist-filled valley). We imagine being on a high (in this case up in the green hills rather than on cloud nine), but the way is blocked. In order to reach our destination we have to take a leap of faith.
From the linguistic point of view it makes sense that we use the concrete to represent abstractions. ‘Being up’ and ‘feeling down’ are not literal descriptions of our moods, but we have few other ways of referring to such inner conditions. Life is not ‘a journey’, but we cannot avoid thinking about ‘where we are going’. When we take ‘a leap’ into the unknown, we know what leaps are.
Poetry, however, can sometimes operate in a more complex way. Schiller’s text does indeed begin in a valley, with glimpses of hills through the mist. This is the everyday level of the external image allowing us to speak of inner, abstract life, but it is combined with a different tone. The whole of the first stanza (based as it is on the character’s location in a misty valley) is hypothetical: ‘if only I could find the way out of this valley, I would feel happy’, ‘if only I had wings, I would set off for those hills’. This is counter-reality, the opposite of the concrete realm where metaphors supposedly begin.
The vision of heaven, the unreal dream or fantasy, in stanza two, in contrast avoids hypothetical language. All the verbs are statements of fact. ‘I can hear the harmony’, ‘the winds are carrying the fragrance of balsam’, ‘I can see golden fruit waving in the foliage’, there are flowers ‘blooming’ there. Even the prediction that these blooms will never fall prey to winter is presented as an undisputed fact.
The second half of the text (stanzas three and four) plays on the ambiguity of the modal verb ‘must’. ‘It must be’ wonderful to be in that better world, so ‘you must believe, you have to take the risk’. This is a shift from epistemic to deontic modality; the word ‘must’ in stanza 3 indicates the limited nature of our knowledge of a realm that we cannot experience directly, but in stanza 4 it expresses an order and addresses the listener or reader directly (though the listener might also be the persona, the poetic ‘I’, so ‘you must’ could equally be ‘I must’).
The result of this daring leap is direct knowledge of what had only been glimpsed earlier: ‘that beautiful wonderland’. You must know that such a land is not a land.
☙
Original Spelling
Sehnsucht
Ach, aus dieses Thales Gründen,
Die der kalte Nebel drückt,
Könnt' ich doch den Ausgang finden,
Ach, wie fühlt' ich mich beglückt!
Dort erblick' ich schöne Hügel,
Ewig jung und ewig grün!
Hätt' ich Schwingen hätt ich Flügel,
Nach den Hügeln zög' ich hin.
Harmonieen hör' ich klingen,
Töne süßer Himmelsruh,
Und die leichten Winde bringen
Mir der Düfte Balsam zu,
Gold'ne Früchte seh ich glühen,
Winkend zwischen dunkelm Laub,
Und die Blumen, die dort blühen,
Werden keines Winters Raub.
Ach wie schön muß sich's ergehen
Dort im ew'gen Sonnenschein,
Und die Luft auf jenen Höhen
O wie labend muß sie seyn!
Doch mir wehrt des Stromes Toben,
Der ergrimmt dazwischen braußt,
Seine Wellen sind gehoben,
Daß die Seele mir ergraußt.
Einen Nachen seh ich schwanken,
Aber ach! der Fährmann fehlt.
Frisch hinein und ohne Wanken,
Seine Segel sind beseelt.
Du mußt glauben, du mußt wagen,
Denn die Götter leihn kein Pfand,
Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen
In das schöne Wunderland.
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Gedichte von Friederich Schiller, Zweiter Theil, Zweite, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage, Leipzig, 1805, bei Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, pages 23-24.
First published in Taschenbuch zum geselligen Vergnügen. Dreizehnter Jahrgang. 1803. Herausgegeben von W.G. Becker. Leipzig, bei Christian Adolph Hempel, pages 251-252. Here the second stanza is omitted.
To see an early edition of the text, go to page 21 [27 von 310] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ207858305