Heidenröslein, D 257

Little rose on the heathland

(Poet's title: Heidenröslein)

Part of  Goethe: The April 1816 collection sent to Goethe 

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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These things hurt. It is not just a matter of feeling a little prick and then it is all over. The boy is attracted by the flower but his admiration and desire for possession leads to violence and violation. He picks the flower: the verb ‘brechen’ carries all of the force of ‘breaking’. His action is destructive. The flower in her turn acts in self-defence and pricks him, but the verb ‘stechen’ can equally mean ‘stab’ or ‘sting’. We say that mosquitoes ‘bite’ and that bees ‘sting’, so we have to think of this thorn acting similarly; its piercing injects some sort of poison that is intended to harm.

There is something about the rose’s transcience and fragility that adds to its allure at the best of times, and if it can perform its basic biological function of attracting pollinators and playing a part in reproduction and the continuation of its DNA then we can comfort ourselves that its brief blossoming and rapid decay is all part of the cycle of life. However, when we are forced to consider the assault involved in the human desire to cut flowers (and consequently deprive them of their primary function in the world) we are faced with the realisation that we use our own superficial senses of delight and pleasure to justify a form of killing. Although the plant might not die immediately, the flower cannot fruit. We have subjugated nature whilst asserting that we are enjoying or respecting it. Its defences built up over evolutionary time (in the form of spikes and thorns) managed to deter herbivorous predators, who left the plant to grow so that it could flower, but they are hardly sufficient to keep roses safe from passing humans. Although the lad has pricked himself and yells out, his ‘pain’ is as nothing to the destruction he has inflicted.

Unless of course we turn our attention to what is really going on. Who is it using the prick here? The strong lad uses his strength and assertiveness to overpower the under-aged Rose. She is never referred to as ‘a rose’ (eine Rose, feminine), but always a Röslein (a small rose, which could be an affectionate diminutive or an indication that she is still pre-pubescent – the German pronoun is es, it, as it is for Mädchen, girl). He takes her (it) without consent. Her (its) only line of defence is to infect him in some way. The prick will be painful, but he will have to bear it. He will indeed always think of her (we have to remember that this assault took place in an age before antibiotics, when many sexually transmitted diseases were incurable and life-changing). Some versions of the text appeared (even in Goethe’s life-time) which suggested that the boy did not really suffer as a result: they change the word ‘ihm’ to ‘ihr’ in line 4 of the third stanza. This would mean that as it was being plucked the rose cried out in pain but this did not help it (her), she (it) just had to put up with it. There have always been people who say the females just have to bear it, but this is unlikely to have been the moral that Goethe intended the reader to take from the story. Although the battle was unequal the rose did try to defend itself, and the boy found that the prick hurt.

We have so far not paid attention to the setting. It is not just a Röslein (little rose), it is a Heidenröslein, a little rose ‘on the heath’ or ‘in the heather’. The assumption has usually been that the setting is a generally bleak, probably wind-swept area of scrub or moorland, and that this is just a wild rose (or perhaps a member of the Cistaceae family) that has found some low-lying protection from the wind. There has been a suggestion, though, that there is a connection with heathens rather than heaths [1]. One idea reported on German Wikipedia [2] (though without naming the author of the theory or giving a full attribution) is that Goethe was playing on a double meaning of Heidenröslein, and that the phrase could be related to a passage in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (written around 1200-1210). Here Anfortas suffers extreme genital discomfort: he is castrated by the poisoned lance of a heathen opponent in a joust. The Middle High German word heidruose is used to explain where the lance pierced him: in the scrotum.

Although there might seem to be a world of difference between being pricked by a thorn (feeling a momentary stab of pain) and being pierced in the testicles by a poisoned jousting lance, what they have in common is that the opponent is fighting back. The encounter is not as one-sided as the lad assumes it is going to be at the beginning. He has reason to regret his action.

eins tages der künec al eine reit
(daz war gar den sînen leit)
ûz durch âventiure,
durch freude an minnen stiure:
des twanc in der minnen ger.
mit einem gelupten sper
wart er ze tjostieren wunt,
sô daz  er nimmer mêr gesunt
wart, der süeze oheim dîn,
durch die heidruose sîn.
ez was ein heiden der dâ streit
unt der die selben tjoste reit,
geborn von Ethnîse,
dâ ûzzem pardîse
rinnet diu Tigris.

Wolfram Parzival IX, 479


One day . . . the King [Anfortas] rode out alone to seek adventure under Love's compulsion and joying in her encouragement. Jousting, he was wounded by a poisoned lance so seriously that he never recovered, your dear uncle - through the scrotum. The man who was fighting there and rode that joust was a heathen born of Ethnise, where the Tigris flows out from Paradise.


English translation by A.T. Hatto 1980 (Penguin) p.244

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[1] Emily Bronte played with the same association when she created the ‘outsider’ Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidenröslein  Accessed 7th September 2016

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Original Spelling

Heidenröslein


Sah ein Knab' ein Röslein stehn,
Röslein auf der Heiden,
War so jung und morgenschön,
Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn,
Sah's mit vielen Freuden.
Röslein, Röslein, Röslein roth,
Röslein auf der Heiden.
 
Knabe sprach: Ich breche dich,
Röslein auf der Heiden!
Röslein sprach: Ich steche dich,
Daß du ewig denkst an mich,
Und ich will's nicht leiden.
Röslein, Röslein, Röslein roth,
Röslein auf der Heiden.
 
Und der wilde Knabe brach
's Röslein auf der Heiden;
Röslein wehrte sich und stach,
Half ihm doch kein Weh und Ach,
Mußt´ es eben leiden.
Röslein, Röslein, Röslein roth,
Röslein auf der Heiden.

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Goethe’s sämmtliche Schriften. Siebenter Band. / Gedichte von Goethe. Erster Theil. Lyrische Gedichte. Wien, 1810. Verlegt bey Anton Strauß. In Commission bey Geistinger, page 7; and with Goethe’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand, Erster Band, Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J.G.Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1827, page 17.

First published in a different version by Johann Gottfried Herder in 1772 with the title “Fabelliedchen”, and again in 1779 with the title “Röschen auf der Heide” 

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 7 [21 von 418] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ163965701