Rastlose Liebe, D 138

Relentless love

(Poet's title: Rastlose Liebe)

Part of  Goethe: The April 1816 collection sent to Goethe 

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‘Restless Love’ does not seem to be quite right as an English translation of the title. We might have a restless night if we are particularly agitated, or we might feel restless if we are not sufficiently occupied or stimulated, but Goethe seems to be writing about something slightly different from this sort of anxiety. He has to keep going, ‘Ohne Rast und Ruh’, without a break, with no respite. There is neither pause (Rast) nor calm (Ruh); the experience is relentless. In a sense it is the opposite of the experience of stasis evoked in Meeresstille (D 216), where the becalmed ship becomes a metaphor for an inner lack of direction or drive. Here there is nothing but drive. I have therefore settled on ‘Relentless Love’ as a translation.

Perhaps ‘Unsettled Love’ would be better, though, given the circumstances in which the text was produced. In November 1775 Goethe decided to visit Weimar, and very soon afterwards he took the life-changing decision to stay there. In the first volume of his biography of Goethe, Boyle (1991) devoted a whole subchapter to the question of ‘Why Goethe Stayed’, concluding that one of the main reasons was his need to adjust to the life of a German milieu that he saw as increasingly significant. At the age of 25 he needed to cast off his identity as the author of the shocking Werther and move on from his background in the Free Cities of Frankfurt and Strassburg, to avoid the temptation of Swiss Republicanism and become part of a ‘typical’ German court. He decided to settle.

His main mentor as he learned to play the part of a courtier was someone born and bred in the culture he had decided to adopt. Charlotte von Stein (1742 – 1827), a Lady-in-Waiting, was the daughter of the Chief Marshal and wife of the Chief Equerry. This was not the bourgeouis Charlotte buttering the bread that Werther had fallen for. Goethe has moved on, and moved into a new social world, but his attempts to settle in seem to have been thrown by his encounter with Frau von Stein. By the spring of 1776 he was in love (though they were not lovers). In May of that year, it snowed. Presumably the snow did not settle, and neither did Goethe.

‘Unsettling Love’ might therefore be an even better translation of the title. In the late spring-time of his life (aged 26) he is faced with unexpected snowfalls and headwinds in the shape of a love that is buffetting him. Just as he should be settling down (to learn, to work and to mature) he finds that he cannot stop. He tries to be grounded by learning about mines, but as he goes through clefts and gorges he cannot help thinking about clouds (Im Dampf der Klüfte / Durch Nebeldüfte); there is no staying still. He finds the joys of life hard to bear and says he would rather experience raw pain, which would be less agonising than all this subjugation of heart to heart. The verb ‘neigen’ (bending or bowing down) is presumably an echo of the courtly gestures he is attempting to learn and at which Charlotte von Stein is so adept. The tilt of her polite head has resulted in Goethe’s more complete bow; how these outer gestures relate to inner inclinations and personal inter-relationships more deeply is part of the mystery that he wanted to learn from her. He had not expected the lessons in decorum to result in such turmoil.

The automatic response is to escape, as he had done on previous occasions, but he immediately realises that it would be pointless. There is no escaping from this experience, even in the woods (or Rousseau’s world of nature, untarnished by the courtly rituals of supposed civilisation). Love is the crown of life, but the only problem is that its happiness cannot come with peace or calm. Unsettling, that’s what love is.

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Original Spelling

Dem Schnee, dem Regen,
Dem Wind entgegen,
Im Dampf der Klüfte
Durch Nebeldüfte,
Immer zu! Immer zu!
Ohne Rast und Ruh!

Lieber durch Leiden
Möcht´ ich mich schlagen,
Als so viel Freuden
Des Lebens ertragen.
Alle das Neigen
Von Herzen zu Herzen,
Ach wie so eigen
Schaffet das Schmerzen!

Wie soll ich fliehen?
Wälderwärts ziehen?
Alles vergebens!
Krone des Lebens,
Glück ohne Ruh,
Liebe, bist du!

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Goethe’s sämmtliche Schriften. Siebenter Band. / Gedichte von Goethe. Erster Theil. Lyrische Gedichte. Wien, 1810. Verlegt bey Anton Strauß. In Commission bey Geistinger. page 74; with Goethe’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand, Erster Band, Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J.G.Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1827, page 93, and with Goethe’s Schriften, Achter Band, Leipzig, bey Georg Joachim Göschen, 1789, pages 147-148.

To see an early edition of this text, go to page 74 [88 von 418] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ163965701