You are rest
(Poet's title: Du bist die Ruh)
Set by Schubert:
D 776
[1823]
Du bist die Ruh,
Der Friede mild,
Die Sehnsucht du,
Und was sie stillt.
Ich weihe dir
Voll Lust und Schmerz
Zur Wohnung hier
Mein Aug und Herz.
Kehr ein bei mir,
Und schließe du
Still hinter dir
Die Pforten zu.
Treib andern Schmerz
Aus dieser Brust.
Voll sei dies Herz
Von deiner Lust.
Dies Augenzelt,
Von deinem Glanz
Allein erhellt,
O füll es ganz.
You are rest,
Gentle peace,
You are longing
And what quenches it.
I dedicate to you,
Full of pleasure and pain,
A dwelling place here in
My eyes and heart.
Take up your home with me
And close the gates
Quietly behind you,
Close the gates.
Drive other pain
Out of this breast.
May this heart be full
Of your delight.
My field of vision
Takes in your radiance
And is lit by that alone,
Oh fill it completely.
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:
Chest / breast Doors and gates Emptiness and fullness Eyes Hearts Longing and yearning Noise and silence Pain Rest
The first two lines of this lyric are not an accurate summary of the ideas in the text as a whole. If the person being addressed were truly ‘rest’ and ‘peace’ that would be the end of it. Although the beloved is what quenches longing, the fact is that longing remains (Die Sehnsucht du). The speaker does not only feel delight in the presence of the beloved; there is also pain. Even when the beloved is invited to take up a home in the poet’s breast, this only drives out ‘other’ pain. THIS pain is still acute.
A home is offered in the speaker’s breast / heart and eyes. Both need to be filled with the beloved. It is therefore clear that neither is totally taken up with the beloved yet. ‘This heart’ is not yet ‘full of your delight’. Although the only light entering the poet’s eyes is the radiance of the beloved, there is room for more. Rückert invents a new compound noun to refer to the poet’s scope of vision: ‘dies Augenzelt’, literally ‘this eye tent’ or ‘this eye canopy’. The idea of a tent picks up the earlier reference to the eye offering a ‘Wohnung’, a dwelling place, somewhere to live, and it associates it with the Oriental context assumed by this sort of Persian-inspired lyric (the poem was first published in a collection called Östliche Rosen, Eastern Roses).
The ‘eye tent’ is the only complex word (or idea) in a text made up of extremely simple vocabulary. However, a cluster of images comes together to express a consistent message. There is a space that still needs to be entered and closed off. There is a space that still needs to be filled. There is a ‘you’ that is not yet ‘here’ with or in ‘me’. ‘I’ am not yet at rest or in peace. For that, I need ‘you’.
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Original Spelling Du bist die Ruh Du bist die Ruh, Der Friede mild, Die Sehnsucht du, Und was sie stillt. Ich weihe dir Voll Lust und Schmerz Zur Wohnung hier Mein Aug' und Herz. Kehr' ein bei mir, Und schließe du Still hinter dir Die Pforten zu. Treib andern Schmerz Aus dieser Brust. Voll sey dies Herz Von deiner Lust. Dies Augenzelt Von deinem Glanz Allein erhellt, O füll' es ganz.
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Oestliche Rosen von Friedrich Rückert. Drei Lesen. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. 1822, pages 125-126; and with Gesammelte Gedichte von Friedrich Rückert. Vierter Band. Erlangen, Verlag von Carl Heyder. 1837, pages 107-108.
Note: The poem was first published 1822 in Rückert’s Oestliche Rosen where all the poems have no titles. In subsequent editions (Erlangen, 1837: Gesammelte Gedichte, Frankfurt a. M., 1868: Gesammelte Poetische Werke) this poem got the title Kehr’ ein bei mir!
To see an early edition of the text, go to page 125 [Erstes Bild 133] here: https://download.digitale-sammlungen.de/BOOKS/download.pl?id=bsb10117423