The cruelest month: Daughter of Elysium

Naturally, English is not the sole language of poetry. My focus is on my native tongue, but today’s entry in the National Poetry Month listing comes from Germany.

I could go with Heine, or Goethe, or Rilke; I had to read bits of them all in my German classes. But I’ll let you off easy: here’s “Ode an die Freude”, from Friedrich Schiller.

Well, I’ll give you the first stanza:

Freude schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium

wir betreten feuertrunken himmlische dein Heiligtum

Deine Zauber binden wieder was die Mode streng geteilt

alle Menschen werden Brüder wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Here’s an English translation; frankly, I don’t find it nearly as…interesting:

Joy, bright spark of divinity,

Daughter of Elysium,

Fire-inspired we tread

Thy sanctuary.

Thy magic power re-unites

All that custom has divided,

All men become brothers

Under the sway of thy gentle wings.

Now—poetry is meant to be heard, not just read. The way the words strike the ear is almost as important as the meaning they convey; or at least it’s a key component of the meaning. (I had this, uh, discussion with a French professor once; he insisted that poems are all about the sounds and not about the meaning. But then, being a Hungarian Olympic water polo player, he might have been suffering from too much time in chlorinated water trying to beat the vodka out of the Russian team.)

But in the case of “Ode to Joy” you can hear them sung—because Ludwig van Beethoven was so entranced by Schiller’s sentiments that he built a magnificent, iconoclastic choral element to his Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven, you’ll recall, was an ardent admirer of the principles of the French Revolution and the post-enlightenment hope in the brotherhood of mankind. (He originally dedicated his Third Symphony to Napoleon, whom he viewed as a revolutionary hero. After Bonaparte crowned himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven sent it to the publishers as “Sinfonia Eroica…composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand Uomo.” Heroic symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.) “Alle Menschen werden Brüder”

Well, we still live in hope of that. So crank up the volume on your PC and drink in Schiller and Beethoven.