Midnight

Fuseli, Midnight, 1765
Fuseli, Midnight, 1765


 The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.
 Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.

A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1

 There is an old tale goes that Herne the Hunter,
 Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
 Doth, all the winter time, at still midnight,
 Walk round about an oak, with great ragged horns,
 And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle,
 And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
 In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
 You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
 The superstitious idle-headed eld
 Received and did deliver to our age
 This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.

The Merry Wives of Windsor 4.4

Meg Page, one of Shakespeare’s very merry wives of Windsor, is not a great believer in folk tales like this about strange appearances at midnight. It is only ‘idle-headed’ elderly people who take such stories ‘for a truth’, which is why she is convinced that Sir John Falstaff will fall for her ruse. She takes it for granted that everybody has heard about ghosts appearing at midnight to rattle their chains and blight the cattle.

Similarly many of Schubert’s poets draw on these widespread folk traditions, without necessarily taking them too seriously. For example, it is hard to imagine that Matthisson intended the following lines to elicit terror:


Die bretterne Kammer		
   Der Todten erbebt,
Wenn zwölfmal den Hammer	
   Die Mitternacht hebt.

Rasch tanzen um Gräber
   Und morsches Gebein
Wir luftigen Schweber
   Den sausenden Reihn.

The wooden chamber
Of the dead shakes
When the hammer rises twelve times
And strikes midnight.

We dance quickly around graves
And rotten bones.
Suspended in the air
We whizz about in formation.

Matthisson, Der Geistertanz  D 15, D 15A, D 116, D 494

Hölty’s gory story about a dead nun who re-appears every night to inflict pain on the heart of her faithless lover might seem a little over the top to many of us:


Sobald der Hammer zwölfe schlägt,
Rauscht sie an Grabsteinwänden
Aus einer Gruft empor und trägt
Ein blutend Herz in Händen.

Die tiefen, hohlen Augen sprühn
Ein düsterrotes Feuer,
Und glühn, wie Schwefelflammen glühn,
Durch ihren weißen Schleier.
Sie gafft auf das zerrissne Herz,
Mit wilder Rachgebärde
Und hebt es dreymal himmelwärts
Und wirft es auf die Erde;

Und rollt die Augen voller Wut,
Die eine Hölle blicken,
Und schüttelt aus dem Schleier Blut
Und stampft das Herz in Stücken.

As soon as the clock strikes twelve
She rushes up, by the wall of gravestones,
Coming out of the vault, carrying
A bleeding heart in her hands.

Her deep, hollow eyes emit
A murky red fire,
And glow, just as sulphur fires glow,
Through her white veil.
She gawps at the ripped-out heart
With a wild vengeful gesture,
And lifts it three times towards heaven
And then throws it on the ground.

And she rolls her eyes, full of rage,
With a look of hell about them,
And she shakes blood out of the veil,
And tramples the heart to pieces.

Hölty, Die Nonne  D 208, D 212

It appears, though, that the young Schubert was greatly attracted to the genre of gothic horror, so he may well have taken these narratives more seriously than we might. Even the great rationalist Goethe did not mock this type of folk belief. His Faust was serious in his alchemical and mystical studies and his willingness to offer his soul to the devil is portrayed as a sincere attempt to achieve fulfilment and understanding. Goethe’s poem Der Schatzgräber (D 256) tells the story of a dabbler in the occult. A man goes off at midnight to dig for treasure using all the paraphernalia of Satanic rites, but is shocked to raise the spirit not of a fearsome demon but of a pure child who utters words of down-to-earth common sense:


Und ich sah ein Licht von weiten;
Und es kam, gleich einem Sterne,
Hinten aus der fernsten Ferne,
Eben als es zwölfe schlug.
Und da galt kein Vorbereiten.
Heller ward's mit einem Male
Von dem Glanz der vollen Schale,
Die ein schöner Knabe trug.

Holde Augen sah ich blinken
Unter dichtem Blumenkranze;
In des Trankes Himmelsglanze
Trat er in den Kreis herein.
Und er hieß mich freundlich trinken;
Und ich dacht´: Es kann der Knabe,
Mit der schönen lichten Gabe,
Wahrlich nicht der Böse sein.

Trinke Mut des reinen Lebens!
Dann verstehst du die Belehrung,
Kommst, mit ängstlicher Beschwörung,
Nicht zurück an diesen Ort.
Grabe hier nicht mehr vergebens.
Tages Arbeit! Abends Gäste!
Saure Wochen! Frohe Feste!
Sei dein künftig Zauberwort.

And I saw a light in the distance,
And it came like a star
From behind from the furthest distance
Just as it was striking twelve.
And then with no warning:
All of a sudden it became brighter
Shining out of a full bowl
That was being carried by a beautiful boy.

I saw beauteous eyes flashing
Underneath a thick garland of flowers;
In the heavenly glow of the drink
He stepped into the circle.
And in a friendly way he invited me to drink;
And I thought, "It is not possible that this lad
With his lovely gift of light
Can really be the devil."

"Drink the courage of pure life!
Then you will understand the teaching.
Do not come back, with anxious conjuring,
Do not come back to this place.
No longer dig here in vain:
A day's work! Guests in the evening!
Tough weeks! Jolly festivals!
Let this be your magic spell in the future."

Goethe, Der Schatzgräber  D 256

In a number of other poems, as the clock strikes midnight no ghosts or spectral figures are summoned. The stroke of midnight simply serves to highlight the speaker’s isolation and distance, either from wider society or from a lost beloved. In Mayrhofer’s Gondelfahrer (D 808, D 809), the speaker seems to have escaped from the social constraints of a ball in a Venetian palazzo, and now looks up at the dance of the stars above the lagoon. The chimes of midnight ringing out from the campanile of San Marco emphasise the isolation of the rocking gondola.


Es tanzen Mond und Sterne
Den flücht'gen Geisterreihn:
Wer wird von Erdensorgen
Befangen immer sein!
Du kannst in Mondesstrahlen
Nun, meine Barke, wallen,
Und aller Schranken los
Wiegt dich des Meeres Schoß.
Vom Markusturme tönte
Der Spruch der Mitternacht:
Sie schlummern friedlich alle,
Und nur der Schiffer wacht.

The moon and the stars are dancing 
In a fleeting, ghostly formation:
Does anyone want earthly cares
To shackle them for ever?
In the moonbeams you can
Drift now, my skiff;
And freed from all constraints
You are lulled in the lap of the sea.
Ringing out from San Marco's bell tower came
The chimes of midnight:
Everyone is sleeping peacefully
And only the boatman is awake.

Mayrhofer, Gondelfahrer  D 808, D 809

In Jacobi’s In der Mitternacht (D 464) it is the call of the night-watchman that resounds in the poet’s soul and echoes the loneliness and the despair within:


Todesstille deckt das Tal 
Bei des Mondes falbem Strahl! 
Winde flüstern dumpf und bang
In des Wächters Nachtgesang.  

Leiser, dumpfer tönt es hier 
In der bangen Seele mir, 
Nimmt den Strahl der Hoffnung fort, 
Wie den Mond die Wolke dort.  

A deathly silence is covering the valley
In the pale moonlight;
Winds are whispering, muffled and anxious,
In the watchman's night song.

It resounds here, more gentle, more muffled,
In my anxious soul,
It takes away the ray of hope
As the cloud up there removes the moon.

Jacobi, In der Mitternacht  D 464

Ernst Schulze’s similarly titled Um Mitternacht, written according to his poetic diary on 5th March 1815, records an awareness of isolation and loss when he becomes aware that he cannot even see the star from which his dead beloved usually beckons him:


Keine Stimme hör ich schallen,
Keinen Schritt auf dunkler Bahn,
Selbst der Himmel hat die schönen
Hellen Äuglein zugetan.
 
Ich nur wache, süßes Leben,
Schaue sehnend in die Nacht,
Bis dein Stern in öder Ferne
Lieblich leuchtend mir erwacht.
 
Ach nur einmal, nur verstohlen
Dein geliebtes Bild zu sehn,
Wollt' ich gern in Sturm und Wetter
Bis zum späten Morgen stehn.

I can hear no voice resounding,
No footsteps on the dark pathway;
Even the sky has
Closed its beautiful bright eyes.

Only I am awake, sweet life,
I am looking longingly out into the night,
Until your star in the barren distance
Wakes me up lovingly with its light.

Oh just once, if only furtively,
If I could see your lovely image just once,
I would happily stand in the storm and bad weather
Until late into the morning.

Schulze, Um Mitternacht  D 862

Why did the idea of midnight produce two such divergent ideas? The midnight world is either (over) populated with ghosts, spirits and fairies, or it is totally bleak and empty, forcing the writer / reader to confront his or her total isolation and abandonment. Is it significant that the young Schubert was attracted to the former type of text, but as he got older he selected the latter?

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