Elysium, D 51, D 53, D 54, D 57, D 58, D 60, D 584

Elysium

(Poet's title: Elysium)

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 was a classicist and would have been very familiar with the passage in Homer’s Odyssey Book 4 in which Menelaos is told about the nature of life on the Elysian fields. Freed from care and work, people would be refreshed by westerly breezes. Schiller’s text makes more explicit reference to a similar passage in Vergil’s Aeneid (Book 6), where Aeneas visits his father Anchises in Elysium (the Latin source favours the noun rather than the adjective, Elysian, as used by the Greeks). Most of the attractions of the place (spacious lawns, music, the opportunity to rest, feast and love etc.) are described by Anchises, who puts particular stress on the value of the waters of the river Lethe, enabling former warriors to forget past pain.

Schiller uses these details to construct an image of heaven that owes little to the Christian tradition. It may not even be an image of an afterlife at all. The text simply evokes a dream of contentment and echoes our inner conviction that our journey must have a destination, our struggle must be worth fighting, our thirst must be quenched and our love must be requited. Some scholastic theologians referred to this way of thinking as the ‘via negativa’, the negative way, whereby perfection is presented as the absence of imperfections (which is all that any of us in our current limited situation can know). No pilgrim ever gets to the end of the road, no warrior can ever stop hearing the sound of battle (post-traumatic stress disorder tends to be incurable) and no lovers can ever escape the fear that death is going to deprive them of their partner. It is just the absence of these pains, frustrations and agonies that we call rest, peace and love. The nouns themselves do not denote anything positive. Similarly Elysium is no place (the Greek for ‘no place’ is, of course, ou topos, Utopia). Perhaps the Greeks understood it better than the Romans. Life might be Elysian. We perhaps do not even need to go anywhere else to live on Elysian fields.

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Original Spelling and note on the text

Elisium

Vorüber die stöhnende Klage!
Elisiums Freudengelage
          Ersäufen jegliches Ach -
       Elisiums Leben
       Ewige Wonne, ewiges Schweben,
Durch lachende Fluren ein flötender Bach.

       Jugendlich milde
       Beschwebt die Gefilde
          Ewiger May,
Die Stunden entfliehen in goldenen Träumen,
Die Seele schwillt aus in unendlichen Räumen,
Wahrheit reißt hier den Schleier entzwei.

       Unendliche Freude
       Durchwallet das Herz.
Hier mangelt der Name dem trauernden Leide,
Sanftes Entzücken nur heißet man Schmerz1.

Hier strecket der wallende Pilger die matten
Brennenden Glieder im säuselnden Schatten,
     Leget die Bürde auf ewig dahin -
Seine Sichel entfällt hier dem Schnitter,
Eingesungen von Harfengezitter,
    Träumt er geschnittene Halme zu sehn.

Dessen Fahne Donnerstürme wallte,
Dessen Ohren Mordgebrüll umhallte,
       Berge bebten unter dessen Donnergang,
Schläft hier linde bei des Baches Rieseln,
Der wie Silber spielet über Kieseln,
       Ihm verhallet wilder Speere Klang.

Hier umarmen sich getreue Gatten,
Küssen sich auf grünen sammt'nen Matten
       Liebgekost vom Balsamwest,
Ihre Krone findet hier die Liebe,
Sicher vor des Todes strengem Hiebe
       Feiert sie ein ewig Hochzeitfest.

1  Schubert slightly changed Schiller's original line here: Sanfter Entzücken nur heißet hier Schmerz

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Gedichte von Friederich Schiller. Zweiter Theil. Zweite, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Leipzig, 1805. Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, pages 151-153.

First published in Anthologie auf das Jahr 1782, anonymously edited by Schiller with the fake publishing information “Gedrukt in der Buchdrukerei zu Tobolsko”, actually published by Johann Benedict Metzler in Stuttgart. The poem (pages 196-198) has the subtitle “Eine Kantate” and “M.” as the author’s name.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 107 [113 von 310] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ207858305