Als ich sie erröten sah, D 153

When I saw her blush

(Poet's title: Als ich sie erröten sah)

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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The poetic speaker makes it clear that the image of the beloved’s face is not an objective record of her appearance. Her image is woven by his own thoughts and so her face is formed in response to his own glance. The redness of her blush seems to follow rather than to cause the flame she has lit in his breast. Her own eye is blue (cold?), but the light streaming from it paints a rosy picture ‘for me’.

It is conventional to wear rose-tinted spectacles when thinking about the past, but here la vie en rose is an image of the future, a promise. The poet therefore links the beloved’s appearance with the red glow of dawn rather than sunset; the blush is a herald of something new on offer. The pink has taken on a purple tinge, noticed both in the sky and in her cheek.

In the final two stanzas we are left slightly confused about who is looking at whom (surely the poet is not saying that his own eyes are inexpressibly beautiful). Presumably the beloved’s glances are surreptitious; we are supposed to imagine a conventionally bashful young woman who cannot speak her love. However, the poetic persona’s gaze is direct and unashamed. His enflamed passion brings a blush to her cheeks that signifies an inextinguishable fire connecting them both.

There are other attempts to express the connection, using different metaphors from that of the spreading flame that underlies the cluster of ‘red’ imagery: harmony and inspiration.

You inflame my breast
With the harmony of the lyre,
You inspire more than do the Muses
And you offer more delight than they!

It is hard to picture how a breast can be ‘inflamed’ with the ‘harmony of the lyre’. Does the poet mean that the fire has been sparked by her playing music or is he just trying to say that the way in which the flame spreads is similar to the way that overtones resonate on a well-played instrument? Similarly, when he compares the beloved to a Muse inspiring him he is probably most interested in the connection between them rather than in her initiating the whole process (the verb ‘begeistern’ could refer to either the Muse implanting her own spirit [Geist] in the poet or her setting the poet’s own spirit in motion).

Although the poet has struggled hard to emphasise the mutuality and interconnectedness of the coup de foudre when she glanced and he gazed, the fact of the matter is that she blushed but he exulted. He is the one that gets all the delight; it is he that is drunk with bliss. For all his talk of a connection, we have no way of knowing if she can or will share the delight.

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Original Spelling

Als ich Sie erröthen sah

All mein Wirken, all mein Leben
Strebt nach dir Verehrte hin!
Alle meine Sinne weben
Mir dein Bild o Zauberinn!

Du entflammest meinen Busen
Zu der Leyer Harmonie,
Du begeisterst mehr als Musen
Und entzückest mehr als sie. - -

Ach, dein blaues Auge strahlet
Durch den Sturm der Seele mild,
Und dein süßes Lächeln mahlet
Rosig mir der Zukunft Bild.

Herrlich schmückt des Himmels Gränzen
Zwar Aurorens Purpurlicht,
Aber lieblicheres Glänzen
Überdeckt dein Angesicht,

Wenn mit wonnetrunknen Blicken
Ach! und unaussprechlich schön,
Meine Augen voll Entzücken
Purpurn dich erröthen sehn.

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Erstlinge unserer einsamen Stunden von einer Gesellschaft, Zweytes Bändchen. Prag, gedruckt bey Johann Diesbach, 1792, page 25. Note: this source shows no stanza breaks.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 25 [47 von 180] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ7520207