Song
(Poet's title: Lied)
Set by Schubert:
D 373
[January 15, 1816]
Mutter geht durch ihre Kammern
Räumt die Sachen ein und aus,
Sucht, und weiß nicht was, mit Jammern,
Findet nichts als leeres Haus.
Leeres Haus! O Wort der Klage,
Dem, der einst ein holdes Kind
Drin gegängelt hat am Tage,
Drin gewiegt in Nächten lind.
Wieder grünen wohl die Buchen,
Wieder kommt der Sonne Licht,
Aber, Mutter, lass dein Suchen,
Wieder kommt dein Liebes nicht.
Und wenn Abendlüfte fächeln,
Vater heim zum Herde kehrt,
Regt sich’s fast in ihm, wie Lächeln,
Dran doch gleich die Träne zehrt.
Vater weiß, in seinen Zimmern
Findet er die Todesruh,
Hört nur bleicher Mutter Wimmern,
Und kein Kindlein lacht ihm zu.
The mother goes through her rooms,
She rifles through her things,
She is searching, and she does not know for what, she wails but
She finds nothing but an empty house.
Empty house! Oh lamentable word
For someone who once had a beautiful child
To dangle there during the day,
Who used to rock it gently to sleep there at night.
The beech trees are already turning green again,
The sun’s light is coming back,
But, mother, put an end to your search,
Your darling is not coming back.
And when evening breezes stir,
The father returns home to the hearth,
Something moves within him, like a smile,
But then suddenly tears take over.
The father knows that in his rooms
He will find a deathly calm,
All he can hear is the pale mother’s whimpering
And no child is going to smile back at him.
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.
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Themes and images in this text:
Beech trees Cradles Daughters Emptiness and fullness Evening and the setting sun Fading and losing colour Father and child Green Hearths and fireplaces Houses Laments, elegies and mourning Light Lost and found Mother and child Night and the moon Rooms The sun Tears and crying Wind
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s short novel Undine was one of the pioneering texts of an extremely popular theme throughout the 19th century: the story of a water nymph who chooses to leave the spirit world when she falls (tragically) in love with a mortal man. Her fate appealed to writers all over Europe (from Pushkin’s Rusalka, 1832, through Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, 1837, to Oscar Wilde’s The Fisherman and his Soul, 1891) as well as to composers using a variety of genres (e.g. Lortzing’s 1847 opera Undine and Reinecke’s Undine Sonata for piano and flute, 1882).
In most versions of the story the water spirit’s fate is sealed when her beloved abandons her in favour of a mortal woman; in the case of de la Motte Fouqué’s novella this character is called Bertalda, who has been raised in a noble family and believes that she is a worthy match for the knight Huldbrand (Undine’s beloved). However, Undine’s songs in chapter 11 of the novella lead to the revelation that Bertalda was in fact a foundling and that her birth parents are the fisherman and his humble wife who had adopted Undine three years after the loss of their own daughter. Bertalda does not react well to the idea that she is not nobly born.
The two songs that Undine sings on the occasion of Bertalda’s birthday set the scene for this dramatic revelation. Huldbrand and Undine’s foster parents (the unnamed fisherman and his wife) ask Undine for a song. She picks up her ‘lute’ and sings about the glorious experience of finding a young child.
Morgen so hell,
Blumen so bunt,
Gräser so duftig und hoch
An wallenden Sees Gestade!
Was zwischen den Gräsern
Schimmert so licht?
Ist´s eine Blüte weiß und groß,
Vom Himmel gefallen in Wiesenschoß?
Ach, ist ein zartes Kind! –
Unbewusst mit Blumen tändelt´s,
Fasst nach goldnen Morgenlichtern; –
O woher? Woher, du Holdes? –
Fern von unbekannten Strande
Trug es hier der See heran; –
Nein fasse nicht, du zartes Leben,
Mit deiner kleinen Hand herum;
Nicht Hand wird dir zurückgegeben,
Die Blumen sind so fremd und stumm.
Die wissen wohl sich schön zu schmücken,
Zu duften auch nach Herzenslust,
Doch keine mag dich an sich drücken,
Fern ist die traute Mutterbrust.
So früh noch an des Lebens Toren,
Noch Himmelslächeln im Gesicht,
Hast du das Beste schon verloren,
O armes Kind, und weißt es nicht.
Ein edler Herzog kommt geritten,
Und hemmt vor dir des Rosses Lauf;
Zu hoher Kunst und reinen Sitten
Zieht er in seiner Burg dich auf.
Du hast unendlich viel gewonnen,
Du blühst, die Schönst´ im ganzen Land,
Doch ach! die allerbesten Wonnen
Ließ´st du am unbekannten Strand.
The morning is so clear,
The flowers are so bright,
The reeds are so aromatic and stand so high
On the banks of the heaving lake!
What is it amongst the reeds
That is shining so brightly?
Is it a large white blossom
That has fallen from heaven into the lap of the meadows?
Oh, it is a tender child! –
Unknowingly it is playing with flowers
And trying to grasp the early morning light; –
Oh, where are you from? Where are you from, you beauteous child? –
From a distant unknown shore
The lake must have carried you here; –
No, tender life, do not try to grasp things,
Do not move your little hand around;
No hand will be held out to you in return,
The flowers are so alien and silent.
Yet they know how to adorn you beautifully,
How to emit a scent in accordance with the heart’s desires,
But none can pull you to itself,
Your familiar mother’s breast is far away.
So soon past the gateway into life,
With heavenly smiles still on your face,
You have already lost the best thing,
Oh you poor child, and you do not know it.
A noble Duke comes riding up,
And pulls up his horse in front of you;
To high art and pure habits
He carries you off to his castle.
You have won an infinitely great amount,
You blossom, the most beautiful in the whole land,
But oh! the best of all joys
You have left behind on an unknown shore.
At this Bertalda’s noble step-parents well up with tears as they recollect their joy when they took in the foundling.
Undine then remarks that it is important to imagine what it was like for the birth parents to lose their child. She touches the strings and sings, ‘Mutter geht durch ihre Kammern’, a heart-breaking evocation of loss. We are so used to referring to the death of a loved one as ‘loss’ that we forget that this is a metaphor (as Nietzsche put it, ‘truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power’[1]). The fact that the mother is presented as physically looking for a missing child, that the father is presented as having to come to terms repeatedly with the fact that the girl is not where she should be, shocks us out of our normal complacency when we hear that people have ‘lost’ their daughter. It happens in real life as well as poetry; neighbours and strangers often get involved in the physical search for a missing child where they would show much less sympathy if they knew that a child had actually died.
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense‘ 1873, English translation by Walter Kaufmann
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Original Spelling and note on the text Lied Mutter geht durch ihre Kammern Räumt die Sachen1 ein und aus, Sucht, und weiß nicht was, mit Jammern, Findet nichts, als leeres Haus. Leeres Haus! O Wort der Klage, Dem, der einst ein holdes Kind Drin gegängelt hat am Tage, Drin gewiegt in Nächten lind. Wieder grünen wohl die Buchen, Wieder kommt der Sonne Licht, Aber, Mutter, laß' Dein Suchen, Wieder kommt Dein Liebes nicht. Und wenn Abendlüfte fächeln, Vater heim zum Herde kehrt, Regt sich's fast in ihm, wie Lächeln, Dran doch gleich die Thräne zehrt. Vater weiß, in seinen Zimmern Findet er die Todesruh', Hört nur bleicher Mutter Wimmern, Und kein Kindlein lacht ihm zu. 1 Schubert changed 'Schränken' (cupboards) to 'Sachen' (things)
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s probable source, Neue romantische Unterhaltungs-Bibliothek für die gebildete und elegante Lesewelt. I. Band. Undine, eine Erzählung. Von Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqué. Wien 1814. In der F. Haas’schen Buchhandlung, page 97; and with Die Jahreszeiten. Eine Vierteljahresschrift für romantische Dichtungen. Herausgegeben von Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqué u.a.m. 1811. Frühlings-Heft. Berlin, bei J. E. Hitzig, pages 108-109.
To see an early edition of the text, go to page 97 [107 von 184] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ174754400