Die vier Weltalter, D 391

The four ages of the world

(Poet's title: Die vier Weltalter)

Set by Schubert:

• D 391

  [March 1816]

Text by:

Friedrich von Schiller

Text written early 1802.  First published late 1802.

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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Schiller wrote this text when he was a Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Jena. There was a particular expectation that he would concentrate on history. His gave his inaugural lecture in this capacity on 26th May 1789 (only a few weeks before what would count for many people as a major turning point in world history: the outbreak of the French Revolution), entitled “The Nature and Value of Universal History”. In the following generation Hegel would take up the themes raised in this talk in his famous “Lectures on the Philosophy of History” (published posthumously in 1837). This attempt to find an overall pattern in human history, a way of identifying crucial turning points and finding a pattern that makes sense of the countless ‘events’ that make up human experience, fed in to most later attempts (Marxian, Freudian, modernist, post-modernist etc.) to argue that history was going in a particular direction (in essence: we are either making progress or things are not what they used to be).

Schiller inherited a number of models to help him construct a rough pattern to structure Western experience (his lecture makes clear that he shared the general assumption amongst his peers that the societies recently ‘discovered’ in Asia, Africa and the Americas were ‘primitive’ and presented a model of what European people had already gone through).

Hesiod, one of the oldest writers in the Western canon, divided history into five major periods in ‘Works and Days’ (c. 700 BCE) [English translations of Hesiod by Hugh G. Evelyn-White]:

1. The first was a golden age, of mortals who lived at the time of Cronos without pain or work. “They dwelt with ease and peace upon their lands with many good things.”
2. A silver age followed, when people were foolish and sinful. Since they refused to honour the Olympian gods, Zeus, the son of Cronos, became angry and “put them away.”
3. The people of the bronze age were themselves brazen. They were hard and violent, using their bronze weapons to attack each other. They “left no name.”
4. Zeus replaced these brazen humans with the semi-gods who fought as heroes in the Trojan War. Some of these heroes continue to live on in the Blessed Isles, where they enjoy “honey-sweet fruit.”
5. We now live in an inferior “iron” age. “Would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation,” wrote Hesiod, “but either had died before or been born afterwards.” People are so disrespectful and aggressive that Zeus is bound to destroy this generation.

In contrast to this narrative of decline, early Christianity offered a model of progress, or rather of fall and redemption. An initial world of perfection (the Garden of Eden) was lost as humans fell into sin. However, with the Mosaic Law God offered a deal that would redeem those of His people who kept the covenant. As St. Paul and other early Christians interpreted it, no humans were able to keep this Law, so God offered His Son as a sacrifice to redeem fallen humanity. This was the New Covenant or the New Testament, which represented the coming age of salvation. Christ’s resurrection was the first fruits of all the saints who would be raised to heavenly bliss out of the mire of sin and death.

In the 14th century Petrarch introduced an equally influential interpretation or model of European history, with the idea of ‘rinascimento’, the ‘rebirth’ or ‘renaissance’ of the ancient world. In this way of making sense of the relationship between the past and the present, the ‘decline and fall’ of the ancient world had produced an age in which the impressive culture of the Greeks and Romans had been forgotten. It was therefore the job of the present to restore (and, with luck and dedication, improve upon) what had previously been achieved. Whatever had been produced between the decline of Rome and the modern world (such as Gothic cathedrals or the songs of the troubadours) was therefore thought of as ‘medi-aeval’, something from the ‘middle’ ages.

When people constructed these overarching models of history their purpose was usually rhetorical; they were focused on attempting to change present-day reality. It may be true that some pre-historians and archaeologists in the 19th century were being fully objective when they divided human cultures into ‘the stone age’, ‘the bronze age’ and ‘the iron age’ (based simply on the surviving evidence of tool use and artifacts at different times), but most writers (such as Marx, with his view that capitalism was an advance on feudalism, and that socialism in turn would represent a step up from capitalism) used their schema to bring about change. Schiller’s prose works and dramas often similarly presented human history as a struggle for humans to escape from autocratic government into a new type of freedom, and there is a trace of this ‘progressive’ reading of history in ‘Die vier Weltalter’.

However, this is a poem rather than a lecture and, rather than assembling evidence to support his analysis of what distinguished the four ages identified, Schiller is more concerned to point to some of the continuities which characterised human experience in each period. The singer or minstrel who evokes the different ages is said to have lived through them all and in himself he embodies the universality of experience and the central role of the poet / musician in all of human life. With each change in human affairs the poet is at pains to point out what is never lost. When the golden age of Arcadian shepherds gave way to the age of battles and heroes “beauty remained the god of the world”. In the third, Classical, age ‘power blossomed into gentleness’ and beauty predominated as the Muses inspired the glories of Greek (and perhaps Roman) culture. Although it might appear that Christianity then brought about an assault on the artistic products of the ancient world (statues really did come crashing down), in fact all that was lost was ‘vain luxury’; humans concentrated on the inner beauty of thought and reflection. Nor did the Muses die out, as an altar remained for them in the form of the activity of the Minnesingers, who continued to praise love and beauty as “the flame of song flared anew.”

Notes on specific points and tricky culural references

Stanza 2

Er saß in der Götter urältestem Rat
behorchte der Dinge geheimste Saat

He sat in the original council of the gods
And listened in on the most secret seeds of things

It seems difficult to understand how it is possible to ‘listen’ to the most secret ‘seeds’ of things. Schiller perhaps took the word ‘seed’ here from Shakespeare, since he used the same word (Saat) when he translated Banquo’s ‘seeds of time’ speech, addressed to the witches (Macbeth Act I, Scene 3, 54-61):

My noble partner
You greet with present grace, and great prediction
Of noble having, and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear,
Your favours, nor your hate.

Stanza 4

Und wie der erfindende Sohn des Zeus
Auf des Schildes einfachem Runde
Die Erde, das Meer und den Sternenkreis
Gebildet mit göttlicher Kunde . . .

And just as the inventive son of Zeus took
The simple circle of the shield and on it presented
The earth, the sea and the circle of the stars,
Portraying them with divine art . . .

The ‘inventive son of Zeus’ was Hephaestos (Vulcan in Roman mythology), the metalworking god. According to Homer (Iliad Book XVIII) Hephaestos made a shield for Achilles (at the request of his mother, Thetis):

And the bellows, twenty in all, blew upon the melting-vats, sending forth a ready blast of every force, now to further him as he laboured hard, and again in whatsoever way Hephaestus might wish and his work go on. And on the fire he put stubborn bronze and tin [475] and precious gold and silver; and thereafter he set on the anvil-block a great anvil, and took in one hand a massive hammer, and in the other took he the tongs.

First fashioned he a shield, great and sturdy, adorning it cunningly in every part, and round about it set a bright rim, [480] threefold and glittering, and therefrom made fast a silver baldric. Five were the layers of the shield itself; and on it he wrought many curious devices with cunning skill. Therein he wrought the earth, therein the heavens therein the sea, and the unwearied sun, and the moon at the full, [485] and therein all the constellations wherewith heaven is crowned—the Pleiades, and the Hyades and the mighty Orion, and the Bear, that men call also the Wain, that circleth ever in her place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.

[490] Therein fashioned he also two cities of mortal men exceeding fair. In the one there were marriages and feastings, and by the light of the blazing torches they were leading the brides from their bowers through the city, and loud rose the bridal song. And young men were whirling in the dance, and in their midst [495] flutes and lyres sounded continually; and there the women stood each before her door and marvelled. But the folk were gathered in the place of assembly; for there a strife had arisen, and two men were striving about the blood-price of a man slain; the one avowed that he had paid all, [500] declaring his cause to the people, but the other refused to accept aught; and each was fain to win the issue on the word of a daysman. Moreover, the folk were cheering both, shewing favour to this side and to that. And heralds held back the folk, and the elders were sitting upon polished stones in the sacred circle, [505] holding in their hands the staves of the loud-voiced heralds. Therewith then would they spring up and give judgment, each in turn. And in the midst lay two talents of gold, to be given to him whoso among them should utter the most righteous judgment. But around the other city lay in leaguer two hosts of warriors [510] gleaming in armour. And twofold plans found favour with them, either to lay waste the town or to divide in portions twain all the substance that the lovely city contained within. Howbeit the besieged would nowise hearken thereto, but were arming to meet the foe in an ambush. The wall were their dear wives and little children guarding, [515] as they stood thereon, and therewithal the men that were holden of old age; but the rest were faring forth, led of Ares and Pallas Athene, both fashioned in gold, and of gold was the raiment wherewith they were clad. Goodly were they and tall in their harness, as beseemeth gods, clear to view amid the rest, and the folk at their feet were smaller. [520] But when they were come to the place where it seemed good unto them to set their ambush, in a river-bed where was a watering-place for all herds alike, there they sate them down, clothed about with flaming bronze. Thereafter were two scouts set by them apart from the host, waiting till they should have sight of the sheep and sleek cattle. [525] And these came presently, and two herdsmen followed with them playing upon pipes; and of the guile wist they not at all.

But the liers-in-wait, when they saw these coming on, rushed forth against them and speedily cut off the herds of cattle and fair flocks of white-fleeced sheep, and slew the herdsmen withal. [530] But the besiegers, as they sat before the places of gathering and heard much tumult among the kine, mounted forthwith behind their high-stepping horses, and set out thitherward, and speedily came upon them. Then set they their battle in array and fought beside the river banks, and were ever smiting one another with bronze-tipped spears. [535] And amid them Strife and Tumult joined in the fray, and deadly Fate, grasping one man alive, fresh-wounded, another without a wound, and another she dragged dead through the mellay by the feet; and the raiment that she had about her shoulders was red with the blood of men. Even as living mortals joined they in the fray and fought; [540] and they were haling away each the bodies of the others' slain. Therein he set also soft fallow-land, rich tilth and wide, that was three times ploughed; and ploughers full many therein were wheeling their yokes and driving them this way and that. And whensoever after turning they came to the headland of the field, [545] then would a man come forth to each and give into his hands a cup of honey-sweet wine; and the ploughmen would turn them in the furrows, eager to reach the headland of the deep tilth. And the field grew black behind and seemed verily as it had been ploughed, for all that it was of gold; herein was the great marvel of the work. [550] Therein he set also a king's demesne-land, wherein labourers were reaping, bearing sharp sickles in their hands. Some handfuls were falling in rows to the ground along the swathe, while others the binders of sheaves were binding with twisted ropes of straw. Three binders stood hard by them, while behind them [555] boys would gather the handfuls, and bearing them in their arms would busily give them to the binders; and among them the king, staff in hand, was standing in silence at the swathe, joying in his heart. And heralds apart beneath an oak were making ready a feast, and were dressing a great ox they had slain for sacrifice; and the women [560] sprinkled the flesh with white barley in abundance, for the workers' mid-day meal.

Therein he set also a vineyard heavily laden with clusters, a vineyard fair and wrought of gold; black were the grapes, and the vines were set up throughout on silver poles. And around it he drave a trench of cyanus, and about that a fence of tin; [565] and one single path led thereto, whereby the vintagers went and came, whensoever they gathered the vintage. And maidens and youths in childish glee were bearing the honey-sweet fruit in wicker baskets. And in their midst a boy made pleasant music with a clear-toned lyre, [570] and thereto sang sweetly the Linos-song1 with his delicate voice; and his fellows beating the earth in unison therewith followed on with bounding feet mid dance and shoutings. And therein he wrought a herd of straight-horned kine: the kine were fashioned of gold and tin, [575] and with lowing hasted they forth from byre to pasture beside the sounding river, beside the waving reed. And golden were the herdsmen that walked beside the kine, four in number, and nine dogs swift of foot followed after them. But two dread lions amid the foremost kine [580] were holding a loud-lowing bull, and he, bellowing mightily, was haled of them, while after him pursued the dogs and young men. The lions twain had rent the hide of the great bull, and were devouring the inward parts and the black blood, while the herdsmen vainly sought to fright them, tarring on the swift hounds. [585] Howbeit these shrank from fastening on the lions, but stood hard by and barked and sprang aside. Therein also the famed god of the two strong arms wrought a pasture in a fair dell, a great pasture of white-fleeced sheep, and folds, and roofed huts, and pens.

[590] Therein furthermore the famed god of the two strong arms cunningly wrought a dancing-floor like unto that which in wide Cnosus Daedalus fashioned of old for fair-tressed Ariadne. There were youths dancing and maidens of the price of many cattle, holding their hands upon the wrists one of the other. [595] Of these the maidens were clad in fine linen, while the youths wore well-woven tunics faintly glistening with oil; and the maidens had fair chaplets, and the youths had daggers of gold hanging from silver baldrics. Now would they run round with cunning feet [600] exceeding lightly, as when a potter sitteth by his wheel that is fitted between his hands and maketh trial of it whether it will run; and now again would they run in rows toward each other. And a great company stood around the lovely dance, taking joy therein; [605] and two tumblers whirled up and down through the midst of them as leaders in the dance. Therein he set also the great might of the river Oceanus, around the uttermost rim of the strongly-wrought shield. But when he had wrought the shield, great and sturdy, [610] then wrought he for him a corselet brighter than the blaze of fire, and he wrought for him a heavy helmet, fitted to his temples, a fair helm, richly-dight, and set thereon a crest of gold; and he wrought him greaves of pliant tin. But when the glorious god of the two strong arms had fashioned all the armour, [615] he took and laid it before the mother of Achilles. And like a falcon she sprang down from snowy Olympus, bearing the flashing armour from Hephaestus.

English translation by A. T. Murray, Harvard University Press 1924

Stanza 7

The battlefield of Scamander: this refers to the Trojan War (Scamander is a river that flows into the Hellespont near Troy)

Stanza 9

Verbannt ward der Sinne flüchtige Lust,
Und der Mensch griff denkend in seine Brust.

The fleeting pleasures of the senses were banished
And humans clasped thinking to their breasts.

The following footnote appeared in an 1861 English edition of Schiller’s poems (edited by Charles J. Hempel, published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania):

‘der Mensch griff denkend in seine Brust’ i.e. Man strove by reflection to apprehend the phenomena of his own being – the principles of his nature. The development of the philosophical, as distinguished from the natural consciousness, forms a very important era in the history of civilization. It is in fact the great turning-point of humanity, both individually and historically. Griff, Begriff – has a peculiar logical significance in German.

Stanza 11 

Die Flamme des Liedes entbrannte neu
An der schönen Minne und Liebestreu.

The flame of song flared anew
In praise of beautiful Love and loving devotion.

‘Minne’ here refers to the tradition of ‘Courtly Love’. The Minnesingers were the Germanic Troubadours. Poets such as the 12th century Gottfried von Strassburg (author of a version of the Tristan and Isolde story) were being rediscovered in Schiller’s age. For Schiller these minstrel-poets then became as much a part of the Christian ‘Middle Ages’ as self-flagellating nuns and knights-in-armour.

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Original Spelling

Die vier Weltalter

Wohl perlet im Glase der purpurne Wein, 
Wohl glänzen die Augen der Gäste, 
Es zeigt sich der Sänger, er tritt herein, 
Zu dem Guten bringt er das Beste, 
Denn ohne die Leyer im himmlischen Saal 
Ist die Freude gemein auch beim Nektarmahl.   

Ihm gaben die Götter das reine Gemüth, 
Wo die Welt sich, die ewige, spiegelt, 
Er hat alles gesehn, was auf Erden geschieht, 
Und was uns die Zukunft versiegelt, 
Er saß in der Götter urältestem Rath 
Und behorchte der Dinge geheimste Saat.  
 
Er breitet es lustig und glänzend aus
Das zusammengefaltete Leben, 
Zum Tempel schmückt er das irdische Haus, 
Ihm hat es die Muse gegeben, 
Kein Dach ist so niedrig, keine Hütte so klein, 
Er führt einen Himmel voll Götter hinein.   

Und wie der erfindende Sohn des Zeus 
Auf des Schildes einfachem Runde 
Die Erde, das Meer und den Sternenkreis 
Gebildet mit göttlicher Kunde, 
So drückt er ein Bild des unendlichen All 
In des Augenblicks flüchtig verrauschenden Schall.   

Er kommt aus dem kindlichen Alter der Welt, 
Wo die Völker sich jugendlich freuten, 
Er hat sich, ein fröhlicher Wandrer, gesellt 
Zu allen Geschlechtern und Zeiten. 
V i e r  Menschenalter hat er gesehn, 
Und läßt sie am  F ü n f t e n  vorübergehn.   

Erst regierte Saturnus schlicht und gerecht, 
Da war es Heute wie Morgen, 
Da lebten die Hirten, ein harmlos Geschlecht, 
Und brauchten für gar nichts zu sorgen, 
Sie liebten und thaten weiter nichts mehr, 
Die Erde gab alles freiwillig her.   

Drauf kam die Arbeit, der Kampf begann 
Mit Ungeheuern und Drachen, 
Und die Helden fingen, die Herrscher, an, 
Und den Mächtigen suchten die Schwachen, 
Und der Streit zog in des Skamanders Feld, 
Doch die Schönheit war immer der Gott der Welt.   

Aus dem Kampf ging endlich der Sieg hervor, 
Und der Kraft entblühte die Milde, 
Da sangen die Musen im himmlischen Chor, 
Da erhuben sich Göttergebilde! 
Das Alter der göttlichen Phantasie, 
Es ist verschwunden, es kehret nie.   

Die Götter sanken vom Himmelsthron, 
Es stürzten die herrlichen Säulen, 
Und geboren wurde der Jungfrau Sohn, 
Die Gebrechen der Erde zu heilen, 
Verbannt ward der Sinne flüchtige Lust, 
Und der Mensch griff  d e n k e n d  in seine Brust.   

Und der eitle, der üppige Reiz entwich, 
Der die frohe Jugendwelt zierte, 
Der Mönch und die Nonne zergeisselten sich, 
Und der eiserne Ritter turnierte. 
Doch war das Leben auch finster und wild, 
So blieb doch die Liebe lieblich und mild.   

Und einen heiligen, keuschen Altar 
Bewahrten sich stille die Musen, 
Es lebte, was edel und sittlich war, 
In der Frauen züchtigem Busen, 
Die Flamme des Liedes entbrannte neu 
An der schönen Minne und Liebestreu.   

Drum soll auch ein ewiges zartes Band 
Die Frauen, die Sänger umflechten, 
Sie wirken und weben Hand in Hand 
Den Gürtel des Schönen und Rechten. 
Gesang und Liebe in schönem Verein
Sie erhalten dem Leben den Jugendschein.

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s probable source, Friedrich Schillers sämmtliche Werke. Zehnter Band. Enthält: Gedichte. Zweyter Theil. Wien, 1810. In Commission bey Anton Doll. [korrigierter Druck] pages 29-31; and with Gedichte von Friederich Schiller, Zweiter Theil, Zweite, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage, Leipzig, 1805, bei Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, pages 33-37.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 29 [35 von 310] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ207858305