Gute Nacht, D 911/1

Good night

(Poet's title: Gute Nacht)

Part of  Winterreise, D 911 

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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‘Fremd’ – an outsider, a foreigner, an alien. It is understandable that this was his status when he arrived, but why does he still not belong, or why has he been expelled? This is only the first of many questions that arise the more we explore this poem.

Why was it the girl, not the speaker, who talked about love? It was the clear expectation in early 19th century polite society that girls and women were not supposed to speak openly about their feelings and desires. Was the mother who talked about marriage the German equivalent of Mrs Bennett (in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice), whose sole concern in life was to find suitable husbands for her clutch of dependent daughters? If so, why is the speaker unable to comply? Was there some “just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together”[1]?

Why has he decided to do a ‘midnight flit’? What was so urgent (or so secret) that he was not able to say a normal goodbye and set off openly in daylight? Why did he have no choice about the time of his departure? What was going to happen to him if he had waited? Was he really going to be ‘driven out’? Why?

What precisely is a ‘moon shadow’ (Mondenschatten)? If it is going to act as his companion it is presumably his own shadow (cast by the moonlight), and yet he has just said that he is setting out into ‘darkness’ (dieser Dunkelheit). If the landscape is really covered in snow and there is a full enough moon to cast shadows, it is not really dark.

Where have the dogs come from? Or rather, what is the association of ideas which has led the speaker to link ‘being driven away’ with dogs howling outside their masters’ houses? A number of English translations of this poem render ‘irre Hunde’ as ‘stray dogs’, but it is hard to imagine how a stray has a master whose house it could bark outside. It is true that the verb ‘irren’ can mean ‘to stray’, but it refers mostly to getting lost, going off at a tangent or going off the tracks. Traditionally an ‘Irrenhaus’ was a ‘madhouse’, an asylum for those whose minds have gone astray. These howling beasts are mad dogs. It is as if the speaker is insisting that his departure is the sane thing to do; only a mad dog would pretend to belong to a house where it has no master.

He therefore has to set off as a ‘Wanderer’, a wayfarer, a traveller. ‘Die Liebe liebt das Wandern’, he insists, in what is surely a deliberate echo of the opening of Die schöne Müllerin (Schubert’s D 795 1 Das Wandern). So, what is the relationship between the protagonists of Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin? If the young miller had not already drowned it would be tempting to read Winterreise as the sequel. Instead of the story beginning with his arrival at the mill and encountering the miller’s daughter, it begins with him setting off from there, and leaving her (and his obsession) behind. He looks back on the bliss of May and on the colourful flowers before the world turned green, and he turns away from the delusion of daylight and summer to face the bleak realities of darkness and winter. It is as if Müller the poet has decided to give his namesake young miller/Müller a second attempt at life, a second chance to find his way. Off we go.

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[1] Thomas Cranmer, The Book of Common Prayer: The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony

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Comments and other points of view

Sometimes dogs just bark and bark, a sort of madness. Sometimes they howl to be let in, and it can sound mad in its persistence and futility.

Equally, we cannot have moonlight without it being dark. It sounds contradictory but is not really. Sometimes a little light highlights how dark it is.

Otherwise, it is an intrigue, definitely. It seems he is being driven away through some unspoken behaviour. He still feels tenderly toward the beloved and does not want to disturb her sleep but he does want her to know he thinks of her. So perhaps the mother took against him or perhaps the unmentioned father said he was not good (rich) enough. I quite like the hidden story here, and perhaps we find ourselves in situations and where it has all gone wrong but we really don’t know why. I almost get the feeling he is consoling himself (kidding himself?) that this must be, that he can handle it...‘love loves travelling‘ – sounds good, but I’m not sure it’s true. Is it a saying? Love usually wants to stay, cling, be greedy, wants at least more of the same. Is he rationalising his own need to run? A sophistry many a man commits.

Ambivalence. Perfect for Schuby.

John

Original Spelling and note on the text

Gute Nacht

Fremd bin ich eingezogen,
Fremd zieh' ich wieder aus.
Der Mai war mir gewogen
Mit manchem Blumenstrauß.
Das Mädchen sprach von Liebe,
Die Mutter gar von Eh' -
Nun ist die Welt so trübe,
Der Weg gehüllt in Schnee.

Ich kann zu meiner Reisen
Nicht wählen mit der Zeit:
Muß selbst den Weg mir weisen
In dieser Dunkelheit.
Es zieht ein Mondenschatten
Als mein Gefährte mit,
Und auf den weißen Matten
Such' ich des Wildes Tritt.

Was soll ich länger weilen,
Daß man mich trieb' hinaus?
Laß irre Hunde heulen
Vor ihres Herren Haus!
Die Liebe liebt das Wandern, -
Gott hat sie so gemacht -
Von Einem zu dem Andern -
Fein Liebchen, gute Nacht!

Will dich im Traum nicht stören,
Wär' Schad' um deine Ruh',
Sollst meinen Tritt nicht hören -
Sacht, sacht die Thüre zu!
Schreib´ im Vorübergehen
An's Thor dir gute Nacht,
Damit du mögest sehen,
An dich hab´ich gedacht1.


1  Schubert changed the word order of this line. Müller wrote ´Ich hab´ an dich gedacht´

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten. Herausgegeben von Wilhelm Müller. Zweites Bändchen. Deßau 1824. Bei Christian Georg Ackermann, pages 77-78; and with Urania. Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1823. Neue Folge, fünfter Jahrgang. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. 1823, pages 209-210.

First published in Urania (see above) with the title “Gute Nacht!” as no. 1 of Wanderlieder von Wilhelm Müller. Die Winterreise. In 12 Liedern.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 209  Erstes Bild 247 here: https://download.digitale-sammlungen.de/BOOKS/download.pl?id=bsb10312443