Amphiaraus
(Poet's title: Amphiaraos)
Set by Schubert:
D 166
[March 1, 1815]
Vor Thebens siebenfach gähnenden Toren
Lag im furchtbaren Brüderstreit
Das Heer der Fürsten zum Schlagen bereit,
Im heiligen Eide zum Morde verschworen.
Und mit des Panzers blendendem Licht
Gerüstet, als gält’ es, die Welt zu bekriegen,
Träumen sie jauchzend von Kämpfen und Siegen,
Nur Amphiaraos, der Herrliche, nicht;
Denn er liest in dem ewigen Kreise der Sterne:
Wen die kommenden Stunden feindlich bedrohen.
Des Sonnenlenkers gewaltiger Sohn
Sieht klar in der Zukunft nebelnde Ferne.
Er kennt des Schicksals verderblichen Bund,
Er weiß, wie die Würfel, die eisernen, fallen,
Er sieht die Möira mit blutigen Krallen,
Doch die Helden verschmähen den heiligen Mund.
Er sah des Mordes gewaltsame Taten,
Er wusste, was ihm die Parce spann.
So ging er zum Kampf, ein verlorner Mann,
Von dem eignen Weibe schmählich verraten.
Er war sich der himmlischen Flamme bewusst,
Die heiß die kräftige Seele durchglühte,
Der Stolze nannte sich Apolloide
Es schlug ihm ein göttliches Herz in der Brust.
“Wie? ich? zu dem die Götter geredet,
Den der Wahrheit heilige Düfte umwehn,
Ich soll in gemeiner Schlacht vergehn,
Von Periclimenos Hand getötet?
Verderben will ich durch eigene Macht,
Und staunend vernehm es die kommende Stunde,
Aus künftiger Sänger geheiligtem Munde,
Wie ich kühn mich gestürzt in die ewige Nacht.”
Und als der blutige Kampf begonnen
Und die Ebne vom Mordgeschrei widerhallt,
So ruft er verzweifelnd: “Es naht mit Gewalt,
Was mir die untrügliche Parce gesponnen;
Doch wogt in der Brust mir ein göttliches Blut,
Drum will ich auch wert des Erzeugers verderben!”
Und wandte die Rosse auf Leben und Sterben,
Und jagt zu des Stromes hochbrausender Flut.
Wild schnauben die Rosse, laut rasselt der Wagen,
Das Stampfen der Hufe zermalmet die Bahn.
Und schneller und schneller noch rast es heran,
Als gält’ es die flüchtige Zeit zu erjagen.
Wie wenn er die Leuchte des Himmels geraubt,
Kommt er im Wirbeln der Windsbraut geflogen;
Erschrocken heben die Götter der Wogen
Aus schäumenden Fluten das schilfichte Haupt.
Und plötzlich, als wenn der Himmel erglühte,
Stürzt ein Blitz aus der heitern Luft,
Und die Erde zerreißt sich zur furchtbaren Kluft;
Da rief laut jauchzend der Apolloide:
“Dank dir, Gewaltiger, fest steht mir der Bund,
Dein Blitz ist mir der Unsterblichkeit Siegel;
Ich folge dir, Zeus!” Und er fasste die Zügel
Und jagte die Rosse hinab in den Schlund.
In front of the sevenfold gaping gates of Thebes,
In a terrible fraternal conflict, lay
The army of princes ready for battle,
Sworn to murder with a sacred oath.
And with the blinding light of the armour
They were prepared, it appeared, to take on the world,
They were dreaming cheerfully of fights and victories,
With the sole exception of the noble Amphiaraus.
For he can look at the eternal circle of the stars and read
The names of those who are mortally threatened in the coming hours.
The powerful son of Apollo, he who drives the sun,
Sees clearly into the misty distance of the future.
He is familiar with the pernicious covenant of fate,
He knows how the iron dice are going to fall.
He can see Moira with bloody talons;
But the heroes scorn anything that comes from his sacred mouth.
He saw the powerful deeds of murder,
He knew what the Fates had in store for him.
He thus went into battle a doomed man,
Shamefully betrayed by his own wife.
He was conscious of the heavenly flame
Which was burning fiercely through his strong soul;
The proud man called himself an Apolloid
Since a divine heart was beating in his breast.
“What? I, to whom the gods have spoken,
Who am surrounded by the holy scent of truth,
Am I to die in battle along with the others,
Killed by the hand of Periklymenos?
I would rather perish using my own strength,
So that future ages would learn with astonishment,
From the sanctified mouths of future singers,
How I boldly plunged into eternal night.”
And when the bloody battle had begun,
And the plains were echoing with murderous cries,
He called out in despair, “It is approaching with power,
As spun for me by the infallible Fates.
But a divine blood is flowing in my breast,
And so, worthy of the one who sired me, I also shall perish.”
And he turned the horses to life and death,
And drove them into the foaming, flooding waters of the river.
The stallions snort wildly, the chariot rattles noisily,
The stamping of hooves crushes the roadway.
Faster and still faster it continues to race on,
As if in pursuit of fleeting time.
As if he had stolen the lights out of the sky,
He comes flying, caught up in a whirlwind;
In astonishment the gods raise the waves
And the head, covered in reeds, emerges from the foaming floods.
And suddenly, as if the sky had caught fire,
Lightning falls out of the agitated air,
And the earth opens up to reveal a terrifying crevasse;
The rejoicing son of Apollo cries out in a loud voice,
“Thank you, mighty one, you have held firm to the covenant.
Your lightning is the seal of immortality for me;
I will follow you, Zeus!”, and he held the reins tight
And drove the horses down into the abyss.
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:
Air The ancient world Apollo / Phoebus Blood Carts and chariots Chest / breast Doors and gates Dreams Earthquakes Echo Eternity Father and child Fire Fleeting (flüchtig) Floods and tides Flying, soaring and gliding Hearts Heaven, the sky Horses Husband and wife Iron Jupiter / Zeus Leaping and jumping Mist and fog Mouths Murder Near and far Night and the moon Reeds Riding – carriages Rivers (Strom) Smells Songs (general) Stars Surging Thunder and lightning Waves – Woge War, battles and fighting Wind
Amphiaraus, King of Argos, was one of the ‘Seven against Thebes’ (Aeschylus). He is said to have been reluctant to get involved, foreseeing failure, but his wife Eriphyle (the sister of Adrastus, the subject of an opera libretto that Schubert set in 1819) was bribed to persuade him to go to Thebes and fight. She was lured by being given Harmonia’s necklace, which was said to offer its wearer long-lasting youth and beauty (but needless to say it would guarantee her doom). Amphiaraus was aware of his wife’s dealings, and urged his sons to murder their mother if, as he predicted, he fell in battle at the siege of Thebes.
According to the ancient Greek story, and to Körner’s version of it, Amphiaraus was the only one of the heroes to go into battle at Thebes in the full knowledge that he would be killed, and this is presented as something out of the ordinary. Soldiers were expected to engage with the enemy with an unquestioning conviction that they would win. In reality, though, Amphiaraus cannot have been an exception in the course of military history. Most of the lads sent over the top in the trenches in World War One (and a good many of Köhler’s own young contemporaries used as cannon fodder in the Napoleonic Wars) would have had no illusions; they too would have known ‘how the iron dice were going to fall’.
Amphiaraus’s ability to see the future, and the fact that noone believed what he was saying, reminds us of Cassandra, the princess of Troy. In Aeschylus’s Agamemnon she is brought to Argos as a captive and immediately foresees the murder of her captor, Agamemnon, by his wife, Clytemnestra, along with her own death. “Apollo, leader of journeys, my destroyer! Why have you led me all the way here to destroy me?”, she cries. She exclaims that Apollo had given her the gift of prophecy in exchange for sex, but when she changed her mind and refused him, Apollo had cursed her by ensuring that noone would believe her prophecies.
Amphiaraus claims descent from this same Apollo, god of prophecy, and calls himself an ‘Apolloid’. Apollo was also, of course, the sun god (in the Hellenistic period he came to be identified with Helios the Titan), whose daily motion across the sky was often thought of as a chariot ride. Körner’s poem links the idea of Apollo the source of prophecy and Apollo the chariot rider in his son Amphiaraus being aware that his own journey was towards destruction. The sun always ends its journey by falling (either into the sea or into a cleft that opens up in the ground, depending on where we are when we observe the sunset), so there should be nothing surprising about an Apolloid knowing that he is doomed. What is important to remember, though, is that Apollo is also the god of order and clarity, so the imminence of destruction cannot be allowed to tarnish the hope that comes with enlightenment in all its forms. This may be why (in the Roman period) the Apollonian tradition developed into the cult of Sol Invictus (the unconquered sun) and why some believers (including the Emperor Constantine) were able to conflate Apollo / Sol Invictus and (the dying and resurrected) Christ.
Körner presents Amphiaraus as making a controlled and rational (=Apollonian) choice to accept his own death, so there is a complete balance of the forces at work in human fate. There are Fates that control us and there is our own character and willpower, which we can use to shape our fate. The metaphor of the horses both driving and being driven attempts to formulate this paradox in poetic rather than philosophical terms. We find ourselves in motion with horsepower as the driving force, but we have to learn to direct this energy. Amphiaraus has no choice: he is a driven character and the horses are in unstoppable motion. Yet, at the crucial moment he does make a choice and resolves on a course. He takes a tight hold on the reins and drives the horses and his chariots into the abyss. It is this freedom of manoeuvre at the point where he appeared to be at the mercy of outside forces that is presented as making him a hero. This comes from his ‘divine blood’ but what this means, of course, is simply that he is becoming fully human at this moment of decision. In opting to accept the inevitable, he has declared his freedom.
When Schubert came to set this text to music in 1815 he would have identified Amphiaraus with his creator, Körner, who had similarly made a decision to fight the doomed fight. In 1813, only a few months after Schubert had met him in Vienna, the 21 year old Theodor Körner was killed in a skirmish during the War of Liberation. His plays and poems immediately took on a new resonance as readers saw evidence within them that he was already aware of what was about to happen. In the same way, we cannot read the war poems of Rupert Brooke or Wilfrid Owen other than through the lens of their deaths in the First World War.
For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,
And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,
An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,
A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.
But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need
Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.
(Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918)
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Original Spelling and notes on the text Amphiaraos Vor Thebens siebenfach gähnenden Thoren Lag im furchtbaren Brüderstreit Das Heer der Fürsten zum Schlagen bereit, Im heiligen Eide zum Morde verschworen. Und mit des Panzers blendendem Licht Gerüstet, als gält' es die Welt zu bekriegen, Träumen sie jauchzend von Kämpfen und Siegen, Nur Amphiaraos, der Herrliche, nicht. Denn er liest in dem ewigen Kreise der Sterne, Wen die kommenden Stunden feindlich bedrohen. Des Sonnenlenkers gewaltiger Sohn Sieht klar in der Zukunft nebelnde Ferne. Er kennt des Schicksals verderblichen Bund, Er weiß, wie die Würfel, die eisernen, fallen, Er sieht die Möira mit blutigen Krallen, Doch die Helden verschmähen den heiligen Mund. Er sah des Mordes gewaltsame Thaten, Er wußte, was ihm die Parce spann. So ging er zum Kampf, ein verlorner Mann, Von dem eignen Weibe schmählich verrathen. Er war sich der himmlischen Flamme bewußt, Die heiß die kräftige Seele durchglühte, Der Stolze nannte sich Apolloide, Es schlug ihm ein göttliches Herz in der Brust. "Wie? - ich, zu dem die Götter geredet, Den der Wahrheit1 heilige Düfte umwehn, Ich soll in gemeiner Schlacht vergehn, Von Periclimenos Hand getödtet? Verderben will ich durch eigene Macht, Und staunend vernehm' es die kommende Stunde, Aus künftiger Sänger geheiligtem Munde, Wie ich kühn mich gestürzt in die ewige Nacht." Und als der blutige Kampf begonnen, Und die Ebne vom Mordgeschrei wiederhallt, So ruft er verzweifelnd: "Es naht mit Gewalt, Was mir die untrügliche Parce gesponnen. Doch wogt in der Brust mir ein göttliches Blut, Drum will ich auch werth des Erzeugers verderben." Und wandte die Rosse auf Leben und Sterben, Und jagt zu des Stromes hochbrausender Fluth. Wild schnauben die Rosse2, laut rasselt der Wagen, Das Stampfen der Hufe zermalmet die Bahn. Und schneller und schneller noch ras´t es heran, Als gält' es, die flüchtige Zeit zu erjagen. Wie wenn er die Leuchte des Himmels geraubt, Kommt er im Wirbeln der Windsbraut geflogen; Erschrocken heben die Götter der Wogen, Aus schäumenden Fluthen das schilfichte Haupt. Und3 plötzlich, als wenn der Himmel erglüh´te, Stürzt ein Blitz aus der heitern Luft, Und die Erde zerreißt sich zur furchtbaren Kluft; Da rief laut jauchzend der Apolloide: "Dank dir, Gewaltiger, fest steht mir der Bund, Dein Blitz ist mir der Unsterblichkeit Siegel, Ich folge dir, Zeus!" - und er faßte die Zügel, Und jagte die Rosse hinab in den Schlund. 1 Schubert changed ´Weisheit´(wisdom) to ´Wahrheit`(truth) 2 Schubert changed ´Hengste´ to ´Rosse´ 3 Schubert changed ´Doch´(but) to ´Und´(and)
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s probable source, Knospen von Theodor Körner. Leipzig bei Georg Joachim Göschen. 1810, pages 91-93; with Theodor Körner’s Gedichte. [Erster Theil.] Neueste Auflage. Wien 1815. Bey B. Ph. Bauer, pages 70-72; with Theodor Körners vermischte Gedichte und Erzählungen (poetischer Nachlass). Wien, 1815. In der Haasschen Buchhandlung, pages 37-40; and with Urania. Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1810. Amsterdam, im Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, pages 220-222.
To see an early edition of the text, go to page 220 [292 von 480] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ175488707