Fransiska
I met Fransiska in Uppsala, Sweden, where she and I were taking a three week Swedish language course. She always sat next to me on my right side.
Fransiska and her brother came from Rostock on the German Baltic coast. They were Prussians, and East Germans, and as such were rather tidy, and very fond of wearing blue jeans.
Fransiska was very pretty, even by today’s narrow standards, and her disposition was naturally sweet, and her sweet disposition was reflected in the sweetness of her face. She had long brown hair, large eyes, and very long legs, which she was perhaps overly fond of showing off--she wore very short denim shorts--but she never did so intending to put other women down.
Fransiska didn’t talk much about her family or her childhood in East Germany, but I do remember that, as she and I and another young woman passed a strawberry stand on one of the center streets in Uppsala, she told us that there were many strawberry stands in Rostock, and that her first job had been as a sales girl at a strawberry stand which was shaped like a giant strawberry.
When the teacher in the Swedish class found out that she was East German, he asked her if other Germans ever gave her a hard time because she was an Ossi. She said, “my boyfriend’s parents don’t like me because I am East German. They come from a small town in Bavaria, and when I first met them, they sat me down and asked me, ‘Bist du katholisch oder evangelisch?’ and when I told them that I was not religious, they didn’t like me.” Her boyfriend’s small town Bavarian parents, surely, had not objected to her because she was East German. They had very innocently assumed that everyone in Germany was either a Catholic or a Protestant. Had she said that she was a Jew, they would probably have understood, but the concept of being a-religious was utterly foreign to them. Sadly, the concept of being religious was foreign to Fransiska. She had been raised in a world where there were no people of faith, just as they had been raised in a world where there were no secularists. It was sad that someone so dispositionally suited to faith and fidelity would find herself cast in the role of a temptress to the young Bavarian county-boy, and yet she did not know that she was a temptress, for she was completely free of guile, and she intended him no harm.
I remember that when the Swedish teacher--his name was Björn, and he was in his late thirties, a man of uncertain beliefs (as are so many modern Scandinavians), but even so he was a family man, and conservative in his own life and actions, if not in his beliefs--asked us to talk about places we wanted to travel to, Fransiska told me that she and her boyfriend were planning to take a trip to Venice. “Oh!” I said, “I went to Venice when I was younger. You should make sure that you go into the cathedral, because the entire ceiling is covered with beautiful mosaics!” “Oh?” she asked me. She had never heard this, and it seemed that the idea of going inside St. Mark’s Cathedral had never occurred to her.
But, although she had no experience of Faith, she did not detest it in other people. She did not understand its importance, but she also did not consider it grounds to dislike another person, or to think less of another person’s intellectual abilities. Once Björn the teacher asked us to talk to each other about works of literature which were considered classics in our countries, Fransiska asked me what works of literature I had studied in my German classes, and we found ourselves bungling around in Swedish about topics that would better have been discussed in German. I said that I had read excerpts from "Parzival" and "Das Nibelungenlied" in Modern German translation, and she was impressed (I have since learned that Germans do not teach their Medieval epics in schools). Then she asked if I had read "Nattan der Weise," by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who wrote it as a tribute to his friend Moses Mendelssohn. I don’t know if Fransiska knew that there was a real devout Jew named Moses Mendelssohn behind the fictional Nattan der Weise, and she certainly did not know what it meant to be a Jew, but she did know that the fictional Nattan was a devout Jew, and because of that she said with conviction that “Nattan der Weise” should be read in schools in order to contribute to a greater understanding of morality.
The book that I remember Fransiska carrying was not anything as complex as “Nattan der Weise.” It was a small child’s book, and on the cover was a mother rabbit with her baby rabbit, and the cover read, “Weisst du, wie lieb ich dich habe?” I remember her packing this little book in her bag, along with some hand-written letters, one morning before we took out our Swedish textbooks.
Another remarkable characteristic of Fransiska was her deep, and rather old-fashioned, affection for her brother. The sight of a grown brother and sister sitting arm in arm is rare now, but for Fransiska and her brother sitting arm in arm was the most natural thing in the world. One night, as I was in my room in the Newman Institute student center getting ready for bed, just as I was about to turn my light out, I heard the voices of a man and a woman speaking gently to one another in German, and out of curiosity I lifted my shade slightly and looked out at the street below, and I saw Fransiska and her brother walking down trädgårdsgatan, in the direction of the Cathedral, in the dusk of the late Swedish evening, hand in hand.
Fransiska’s brother was studying to become a doctor, but when I fell and injured my elbow, which then became infected, it was Fransiska who was concerned for me and who helped me change my bandages. She took me out of the classroom and into the coffee area, and, as she began removing bandages, she said to me, “Please forgive me if I am too rough. I am a soldier, and I am not good at these things.” As she said this, she gently peeled off the row of band-aids on my elbow, and took me to the sink, where she bathed my wound. I thought of Eówyn’s words to Faramir in “The Lord of the Rings.” “Look not to me for healing! I am a shield-maiden and my touch is ungentle.” Yet Eówyn was gentle to Faramir, and so was Fransiska to me.
I found it incongruous that the same young woman who carried children’s books around with her was a sergeant in an army. Even if her brother had been the sergeant, it might have seemed strange to me, because most Germans are afraid of their own army--or at least so other Germans have told me. What could possibly have lead her to believe that she belonged in the military? But I saw that, although Fransiska was clearly not suited to be a soldier (her physical strength could not have been very great), she did have the virtues that make a good soldier. She was loyal, trustworthy, and disciplined. With such qualities she could be an excellent nurse, or for that matter an excellent wife. And with Faith? With knowledge of God? Yes, imagine the sort of person that she would be!
I did not keep up with Fransiska after the end of the class. Our lives were brought together for three weeks when we studied Swedish, and then they diverged again, and I think that each of us thought that there could not easily be a continued friendship between us, but before she and her brother left Uppsala, she asked to have her picture taken with me, as she said, “for the memories.”
Please pray for a young woman named Fransiska.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Abendbild (Evening Scene)
Abendbild
One of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s last Lieder, and one of my favorites, is a peaceful, yet very chromatic, setting of an uncharacteristically happy poem by her husband’s friend, Nikolaus Lenau.
Fanny only had one child, her son Sebastian, but she loved being an aunt. She sorely missed Felix and Cäcilie’s children when they moved back to Leipzig. Within the last two years of her life two little nieces were born, one to her sister Rebecka (the vocalist for most of her Lieder) and her brother-in-law Gustav Dirichlet, and the other to her brother Paul and his wife Albertina. Both little nieces were late in life children, and what in modern parlance would be called miracle babies. Perhaps one or both of these little nieces inspired Tante Fanny to compose this Lied.
Abendbild
Friedlicher Abend senkt sich aufs Gefilde;
Sanft entschlummert Natur, um ihre Züge
Schwebt der Dämmerung zarte Verhüllung,
und sie lächelt die Holde;
Sie lächelt, die Holde.
Lächelt, ein schlummernd Kind in Vaters Armen,
Der voll Liebe zu ihr sich neigt, sein göttlich
Auge weilt auf ihr, und es weht sein Odem
Über ihr Antlitz.
Friedlicher Abend senkt sich aufs Gefilde;
Sanft entschlummert Natur, um ihre Züge
Schwebt der Dämmerung zarte Verhüllung,
und sie lächelt die Holde;
Sie lächelt, die Holde.
Sie lächelt, die Holde.
~Nikolaus Lenau (alt. Fanny Hensel)
This very chromatic, yet completely coherent, Lied lilts gently all over the twelve tone scale. It is beautiful and unassuming, as is the scene that it portrays. The piano part has a rocking motion, which suggests that the baby is being lulled to sleep. Yet the singer of the lullaby is the mother, and the person holding the baby is the father.
The singer, I think, must be the mother. She and her husband have participated in God’s Creation, and she has brought this baby, a little girl, into the world, and she is finding joy in how much her husband loves the little daughter that she has given him.
The mother begins by singing about the peaceful evening which is settling on the natural world outside (the family is presumably inside), the soft slumbering of nature, and the tender veil of dusk. Her melody line here is gentle and folksong-like, but it wanders around the chromatic scale. What is happening in nature mirrors what is happening in the family circle. “She smiles, the beautiful one,” sings the mother, and then repeats the phrase with a short rest after lächelt emphasizing die Holde.
And then the mother sings about the scene inside, and her melody ascends to Kind and then descends to a chromatic note to emphasize the father‘s arms. “Softly slumbers a baby in her father’s arms, who, full of love for her, bends over her, and his breath wafts over her countenance.” As the father bends down towards the little girl, the mother’s melody also bends down, and then her melody ascends to an F to suggest the wafting of his breath, and then descends, using some chromatic intervals, on the word über, all the way down to a D (above middle C), on the end of the word Antlitz. It is as though the mother’s melody is also ascending and then descending to touch the countenance of her daughter. In describing her husband’s love for their child, she also expresses her own, but her focus is not on herself, but on her husband and daughter.
Then she, and the piano, pause for a moment, as if to reflect on the little miracle that is going on about them.
And then she returns to her song about the peaceful evening, the slumbering natural world, and the smiling little baby. The piano, rather than simply returning to its previous rocking, now follow’s the mother’s melody gently and sweetly.
“Und sie lächelt, die Holde, sie lächelt, die Holde.”
We do not know what small or great moments of struggle or chaos might have happened in the home of this family with a little newborn during the day, or what might happen later in the night, but at this moment all of Creation and the family are peaceful.
After the melody returns to the tonic note, Fanny repeats the final phrase again, this time with the mother's melody landing not on the tonic note, where a song would normally end, but on the mediant note. Somehow this rise to another high, extended note on lächelt followed not by the a resolution on the tonic note, but rather by one on the mediant gives the unassuming Wiegenlied a greater sense of tranquil, quiet awe.
The large world of Creation and the small world of the family are in gentle harmony.
“Sie lächelt, die Holde.”
Sadly, there are no recordings of this Lied on Youtube or any other internet site, but there is a very fine one in a collection of Fanny Hensel’s Lieder recorded by the soprano Susan Gritton. This CD may be purchased from Amazon.
If you wish to sing this Lied yourself, as I highly recommend that you do, you may download it for free from the International Music Library. You will find it at page eleven of the collection of Lieder, which was published shortly after her death, and which concludes with her final Lied, Bergeslust.
Fünf Lieder mit Begleitung des Pianoforte, componeirt von Fanny Cäcilie Hensel:
http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/0/0b/IMSLP100337-PMLP206034-Hensel_Fanny_Fuenf_Lieder_mit_Begleitung_des_Pianoforte_Op_10_Breitkopf.pdf
One of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s last Lieder, and one of my favorites, is a peaceful, yet very chromatic, setting of an uncharacteristically happy poem by her husband’s friend, Nikolaus Lenau.
Fanny only had one child, her son Sebastian, but she loved being an aunt. She sorely missed Felix and Cäcilie’s children when they moved back to Leipzig. Within the last two years of her life two little nieces were born, one to her sister Rebecka (the vocalist for most of her Lieder) and her brother-in-law Gustav Dirichlet, and the other to her brother Paul and his wife Albertina. Both little nieces were late in life children, and what in modern parlance would be called miracle babies. Perhaps one or both of these little nieces inspired Tante Fanny to compose this Lied.
Abendbild
Friedlicher Abend senkt sich aufs Gefilde;
Sanft entschlummert Natur, um ihre Züge
Schwebt der Dämmerung zarte Verhüllung,
und sie lächelt die Holde;
Sie lächelt, die Holde.
Lächelt, ein schlummernd Kind in Vaters Armen,
Der voll Liebe zu ihr sich neigt, sein göttlich
Auge weilt auf ihr, und es weht sein Odem
Über ihr Antlitz.
Friedlicher Abend senkt sich aufs Gefilde;
Sanft entschlummert Natur, um ihre Züge
Schwebt der Dämmerung zarte Verhüllung,
und sie lächelt die Holde;
Sie lächelt, die Holde.
Sie lächelt, die Holde.
~Nikolaus Lenau (alt. Fanny Hensel)
This very chromatic, yet completely coherent, Lied lilts gently all over the twelve tone scale. It is beautiful and unassuming, as is the scene that it portrays. The piano part has a rocking motion, which suggests that the baby is being lulled to sleep. Yet the singer of the lullaby is the mother, and the person holding the baby is the father.
The singer, I think, must be the mother. She and her husband have participated in God’s Creation, and she has brought this baby, a little girl, into the world, and she is finding joy in how much her husband loves the little daughter that she has given him.
The mother begins by singing about the peaceful evening which is settling on the natural world outside (the family is presumably inside), the soft slumbering of nature, and the tender veil of dusk. Her melody line here is gentle and folksong-like, but it wanders around the chromatic scale. What is happening in nature mirrors what is happening in the family circle. “She smiles, the beautiful one,” sings the mother, and then repeats the phrase with a short rest after lächelt emphasizing die Holde.
And then the mother sings about the scene inside, and her melody ascends to Kind and then descends to a chromatic note to emphasize the father‘s arms. “Softly slumbers a baby in her father’s arms, who, full of love for her, bends over her, and his breath wafts over her countenance.” As the father bends down towards the little girl, the mother’s melody also bends down, and then her melody ascends to an F to suggest the wafting of his breath, and then descends, using some chromatic intervals, on the word über, all the way down to a D (above middle C), on the end of the word Antlitz. It is as though the mother’s melody is also ascending and then descending to touch the countenance of her daughter. In describing her husband’s love for their child, she also expresses her own, but her focus is not on herself, but on her husband and daughter.
Then she, and the piano, pause for a moment, as if to reflect on the little miracle that is going on about them.
And then she returns to her song about the peaceful evening, the slumbering natural world, and the smiling little baby. The piano, rather than simply returning to its previous rocking, now follow’s the mother’s melody gently and sweetly.
“Und sie lächelt, die Holde, sie lächelt, die Holde.”
We do not know what small or great moments of struggle or chaos might have happened in the home of this family with a little newborn during the day, or what might happen later in the night, but at this moment all of Creation and the family are peaceful.
After the melody returns to the tonic note, Fanny repeats the final phrase again, this time with the mother's melody landing not on the tonic note, where a song would normally end, but on the mediant note. Somehow this rise to another high, extended note on lächelt followed not by the a resolution on the tonic note, but rather by one on the mediant gives the unassuming Wiegenlied a greater sense of tranquil, quiet awe.
The large world of Creation and the small world of the family are in gentle harmony.
“Sie lächelt, die Holde.”
Sadly, there are no recordings of this Lied on Youtube or any other internet site, but there is a very fine one in a collection of Fanny Hensel’s Lieder recorded by the soprano Susan Gritton. This CD may be purchased from Amazon.
If you wish to sing this Lied yourself, as I highly recommend that you do, you may download it for free from the International Music Library. You will find it at page eleven of the collection of Lieder, which was published shortly after her death, and which concludes with her final Lied, Bergeslust.
Fünf Lieder mit Begleitung des Pianoforte, componeirt von Fanny Cäcilie Hensel:
http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/0/0b/IMSLP100337-PMLP206034-Hensel_Fanny_Fuenf_Lieder_mit_Begleitung_des_Pianoforte_Op_10_Breitkopf.pdf
Monday, September 30, 2013
Faces of Beauty
My German Professor once said that every young woman--even the plainest girl--becomes beautiful on the day of her wedding. Herr Pater had performed many weddings, and had seen this happen many times, and while there was more than a hint of Romanticism about the kindly priest, there was quite a good helping of matter-of-factness in him as well. He did not say what he did not earnestly know to be true.
When I think of brides, I think of a painting, one of my favorite paintings. It’s famous now, if it wasn’t always. I am no art historian, and I do not know the story of the painting. All that I can offer is an educated guess that the young woman was one of Rembrandt’s neighbors. The painting is The Jewish Bride.
Behold the beautiful young woman in the picture! She is beautiful, but is it just because of her attire? No, she herself is beautiful.
Now change her attire to modern clothes, everyday modern clothes, and place her, not yet wed, and perhaps not even yet engaged, in modern society. Is she beautiful?
Is she beautiful according to modern society? No. According to modern society, she is "overweight," her face is "plain," she doesn’t come from an “exotic” ethnic group, she has fair skin and brown hair, she doesn’t look like much of an athlete. According to modern society, the beautiful woman in Rembrandt’s painting is ugly.
If you have ever had cause to join in a festival in Germany or Scandinavia, you will see something similar. Here is a picture of some young members of a German farming community dressed up in traditional dress for their village’s Erntedankfest, the day on which rural Germans give thanks to God for the harvest.
They are beautiful, aren’t they? I mean the men too, not just the two young ladies. But wait, would anyone call all of them beautiful on any other day of the year? No. The same thing happens to many of them--perhaps even all of them--that would happen to the Jewish Bride. In fact, I have been told point blank that Germans are never beautiful. They are just an ugly ethnic group.
Well, perhaps I am being just a little bit hard on modern society. After all, there are lots of young men who leave comments on you tube videos saying things like, “Wow, there’s a German woman in this video who is attractive! I am so surprised by this!”
But, ladies, lest you think that only gentleman can be guilty of the crime of depreciating beauty, ask yourselves, "Is the gentleman in The Jewish Bride beautiful? Are all of the young men in the Erntedankfest photograph beautiful, including the two who are peeking out behind the two young ladies on the right hand side?
And is the Jewish bride beautiful? Yes, she is. And the young farm girls celebrating Erntedankfest? Yes, they are beautiful as well. And no, beauty is not relative. The farmers are as beautiful in America as in their German village, and the Jewish bride is just as beautiful in the 21st Century as she was in the time of Rembrandt.
According to Confucius, beauty is present everywhere, but beholders are wanting. According to Pope Benedict XVI, beauty is objective, but we experience it subjectively. According to Herr Pater, love makes people beautiful, and all women are beautiful when they become brides. According to Clara Schwartz all people are beautiful. They are, after all, the creations of the Almighty.
“…for Christ plays in ten thousand places
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
~Gerard Manley Hopkins
When I think of brides, I think of a painting, one of my favorite paintings. It’s famous now, if it wasn’t always. I am no art historian, and I do not know the story of the painting. All that I can offer is an educated guess that the young woman was one of Rembrandt’s neighbors. The painting is The Jewish Bride.
Behold the beautiful young woman in the picture! She is beautiful, but is it just because of her attire? No, she herself is beautiful.
Now change her attire to modern clothes, everyday modern clothes, and place her, not yet wed, and perhaps not even yet engaged, in modern society. Is she beautiful?
Is she beautiful according to modern society? No. According to modern society, she is "overweight," her face is "plain," she doesn’t come from an “exotic” ethnic group, she has fair skin and brown hair, she doesn’t look like much of an athlete. According to modern society, the beautiful woman in Rembrandt’s painting is ugly.
If you have ever had cause to join in a festival in Germany or Scandinavia, you will see something similar. Here is a picture of some young members of a German farming community dressed up in traditional dress for their village’s Erntedankfest, the day on which rural Germans give thanks to God for the harvest.
They are beautiful, aren’t they? I mean the men too, not just the two young ladies. But wait, would anyone call all of them beautiful on any other day of the year? No. The same thing happens to many of them--perhaps even all of them--that would happen to the Jewish Bride. In fact, I have been told point blank that Germans are never beautiful. They are just an ugly ethnic group.
Well, perhaps I am being just a little bit hard on modern society. After all, there are lots of young men who leave comments on you tube videos saying things like, “Wow, there’s a German woman in this video who is attractive! I am so surprised by this!”
But, ladies, lest you think that only gentleman can be guilty of the crime of depreciating beauty, ask yourselves, "Is the gentleman in The Jewish Bride beautiful? Are all of the young men in the Erntedankfest photograph beautiful, including the two who are peeking out behind the two young ladies on the right hand side?
And is the Jewish bride beautiful? Yes, she is. And the young farm girls celebrating Erntedankfest? Yes, they are beautiful as well. And no, beauty is not relative. The farmers are as beautiful in America as in their German village, and the Jewish bride is just as beautiful in the 21st Century as she was in the time of Rembrandt.
According to Confucius, beauty is present everywhere, but beholders are wanting. According to Pope Benedict XVI, beauty is objective, but we experience it subjectively. According to Herr Pater, love makes people beautiful, and all women are beautiful when they become brides. According to Clara Schwartz all people are beautiful. They are, after all, the creations of the Almighty.
“…for Christ plays in ten thousand places
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
~Gerard Manley Hopkins
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Faith and Hope in the Last Lieder of Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn
Faith and Hope
in the Last Lieder of
Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn
The Judeo-Christian origins of the German Romantic movement are the subjects for other blogs, and perhaps books. Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny, both devout Christians, and both grandchildren of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, grew up in the heart of the Judeo-Christian German Romantic Movement, and the poet for two of their last Lieder, Joseph von Eichendorff, was one of the very greatest of the German Romantic poets. Felix and Fanny wrote marvelous Eichendorff settings (Fanny's Lieder for soloist and piano, and Felix's choral Lieder for four part mixed chorus), because they belonged to the same vibrant Judeo-Christian artistic movement as the poet himself. When Felix Mendelssohn and his beloved sister Fanny died, the exuberance of the early Romantic Movement died with them.
Fanny’s last Lied, which she wrote on the day before she died, looks onward into the Kingdom of Heaven, and Felix’s late Lied, written after Fanny’s death, looks forward to the resurrection.
Fanny Hensel, the sister of the famous, but nonetheless underrated, composer Felix Mendelssohn, and
the wife of the once famous German painter Wilhelm Hensel, is truly the queen of German Lieder. Her songs are often graceful, subtle, and harmonically complex, and they are always beautifully melodic, and they follow the poem texts very closely. Movements in the melody and accompaniment are placed to express the meaning of the text. Fanny’s songs are gems in the world of German Lieder.This is by no means Fanny’s most harmonically complex song, but it is beautiful and filled with the exuberant joy which characterizes so many of her settings of Joseph von Eichendorff’s poetry. Fanny Hensel used the last three verses of Eichendorff’s poem Durch Feld und Buchenallen for her final Lied, Bergeslust.
Bergeslust
O Lust, vom Berg zu schauen
weit über Wald und Strom,
hoch über sich den blauen
klaren Himmelsdom!
Vom Berge Vögeln fliegen
und Wolken so geschwind,
Gedanken überfliegen
die Vögel und den Wind.
Die Wolken ziehn hernieder,
das Vöglein senkt sich gleich,
Gedanken gehn und Lieder
fort bis in das Himmelreich,
Gedanken gehn und Lieder
fort bis ins Himmereich,
fort bis ins Himmelreich!
~Joseph von Eichendorff
The first verse is about the desire to gaze over Creation, in this case forests and streams, from the top of a mountain, which is followed by the desire to look up to the heavens. Fanny’s Lied begins with galloping notes in the piano, which evoke an eager scrambling up the side of the mountain, and the entire texture of the melody in the vocal part has an upward motion, which brings to mind images of the Alps in southern Germany and Switzerland, and the entire song is filled with exuberance, joy, and energy.
In the second verse, the birds, the clouds, and the wind fly swiftly upward from the mountains, but, says the poet, thoughts “over-fly,” or fly further, than the birds and the wind. The third and fourth lines are repeated, with a high note on überfliegen which signifies the flight of thoughts. Thoughts can rise even above the majestic glory of Creation, but where to they rise to?
In the third verse, the clouds sink down, and the birds also fly downwards, both in quick melodic phrases, but thoughts and songs rise onward into the Kingdom of Heaven. Fanny repeats the word Gedanken, placing it on a held note, and then places Himmelreich (Kingdom of Heaven) on a soaring high A, the highest note in the entire Lied, and then concludes the piece energetically, exuberantly, hopefully, confidently, and very joyfully by repeating fort bis ins Himmelreich!
This Lied is very much the work of a woman who was looking forward to many more years of life in this world, but who also was in a state of soul well disposed to meet her own Creator.
When Fanny wrote this piece, she was looking forward to traveling with her husband and son Sebastion, and with her sister Rebecka Dirichlet. The next day, while surrounded by her family and friends, and while happily rehearsing for one of the weekly concerts which she held in her home, she was suddenly stricken with nervous failure, and very shortly afterwards she died, at only the age of forty-one. At the time of her death the original score of Bergeslust, which she had penned just the day before, was still lying on her piano’s music stand, and the words Gedanken gehn und Lieder bis in das Himmelreich are chiseled upon her grave.
Listen to "Bergeslust" by Fanny Hensel
Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, who was one of the best known artists in Germany in the early half of th Century, was hardly able to paint or draw after her death. Her brother, Felix, who was as close to her as one twin to another twin, although she was four years his senior, was stricken by the same nervous malady when he received the news of her death at his home in Leipzig, but he recovered temporarily, and spent the next six months in the care of his loving wife Cecielle, who had herself been very close to Fanny.
-composer--10146603.jpg)
Nachtlied
Vergangen ist der lichte Tag,
Von ferne kommt der Glocken Schlag;
So reist die Zeit die ganze Nacht,
Nimmt manchen mit, der’s nicht gedacht.
Wo ist nun hin die bunte Lust,
Des Freundes Trost und treue Brust,
Der Liebsten süßer Augenschein?
Will keiner mit mir munter sein?
Frisch auf denn, liebe Nachtigal,
Du Wasserfall mit hellem Schall!
Gott loben wollen wir vereint,
Bis dass der lichte Morgen scheint!
Gott loben wollen wir vereint,
Bis das der lichte Morgen schein!
~Joseph von Eichendorff
Felix’s Lied starts out with a simple melody. The first phrase sounds like a hymn, and the second phrase like the pealing of bells, which is what Glocken Schlag means. Then the melody reaches upawrd in the third phrase, and then in the fourth falls back down in odd intervals on nimmt manchen mit, der’s nicht gedacht.
The next verse is repeated, with increased intensity on [Wo ist…] der Liebsten süßer Augenschein? And then the melody drops almost to a whisper, asking “will no one be merry with me?”
The implied answer is that the loved one is not and cannot be present, and so the singer calls upon the nightingale and the waterfall to praise God with him until the morning light shines forth. Felix placed Gott on the highest note in the entire Lied for emphasis, just as Fanny had done with Himmelreich in her Lied.
“God praising will we be united” proclaims the singer with strength and conviction, and “God praising will we be united” repeats the singer softly with faith and hope. Here, in one of his very last works, and in spite of his terrible grief, Felix expressed his great faith in God, and his confidence that he and Fanny and all of their loved ones will be united in praising God when that final morning light breaks forth.
Listen to "Nachtlied" by Felix Mendelssohn
Saturday, April 27, 2013
What the Jews Taught me about German Poetry
I and the Other
What the Jews taught me
In Memory of the two professors
without whom I would not be able to write as I do now,
Doctor Laurent Gousie
and
Doctor Arthur Jackson,
both of whom have gone to be with the Lord.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,
and may perpetual light shine upon them.
One of our great English poets, T. S. Eliot, believed that the person of the poet had no place in the poetry, and that poems had to stand on their own completely apart from any personal experiences that the poet may have had. Eliot was reacting against Romantic poetry, English and American Romantic poetry, but like most other English authors, Romantic or otherwise, he mistakenly read the ideology of English Romanticism into the works of the original Romantic poets, the German Romantics.
Eliot’s great objection to Romantic poetry is that it is too ego-centric. Many of the poems are told from the point of view of the poet (or a first person speaker who closely resembles the poet). Think of William Wordsworth’s poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. According to Eliot, the speaker of Wordsworth’s poem is too centered on his own personal experience when he sees the daffodils.
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Even in the case of English Romantic poetry, Eliot is probably being unfair, because, as my mother pointed out, there is something universal about what Wordsworth was saying in this poem. We have all had similar experiences to the one that the speaker in Wordsworth's poem had with the daffodils (I hope!).
German poems are frequently told from the point of view of a first person narrator as well. T. S. Eliot said that such poems were ego-centric, but was he correct? Or is there something else happening in German poems which Eliot did not perceive?
Let us begin with a simple Goethe poem, and before we go any farther let me point out that Germans do not consider Goethe a Romantic, but rather a neo-classical, poet, as was his friend Friedrich Schiller, but Goethe’s poetry transcended his age, (and so did Goethe himself, who lived to befriend many young Romantic artists such as Felix Mendelssohn and Clemens Brentano), and his lyric poems set the standard for all the lyric poems which were to come during the Romantic period proper.
And now that we are finished with that very long sentence, let us begin with a simple Goethe poem. In this poem, Gefunden, the speaker of the poem is walking out in nature, just as the speaker in Wordsworth’s poem I wandered lonely as a cloud is doing, but there is a critical and obvious difference between the two poems. Can you find it? Here is Goethe’s poem:
Gefunden
Ich ging im Walde
So für mich hin,
Und nichts zu suchen,
Das war mein Sinn.
Im Schatten sah ich
Ein Blümchen stehn,
Wie Sterne leuchtend,
Wie Äuglein schön.
Ich wollt es brechen,
Da sagt es fein:
Soll ich zum Welken
Gebrochen sein?
Ich grub’s mit allen
Den Würzlein aus.
Zum Garten trug ich’s
Am hübschen Haus.
Und pflanzt es wieder
Am stillen Ort;
Nun zweigt es immer
Und blüht so fort.
If you can think like a little child, or like a big grown-up Jewish philosopher, or possibly like an Elf or an Ent, you have probably already seen the difference. In the Goethe poem, the speaker addresses the flower, and the flower talks back to him in return! In fact, in this poem the flower, not the speaker, wins the debate. Or rather the speaker and the flower have a dialogue, and because the flower speaks to him, and because the speaker listens to the flower, the speaker goes out of his way not to harm the flower, but rather to replant it in a garden, where it may continue to grow.
If the speaker, the Ich of the poem conversed with the flower, shall we say the du of the poem, and the flower carried her point, on whom does the poem center, on the speaker, or on the flower?
Some people interpret this poem allegorically, with the flower symbolizing Goethe’s wife Christiane (who died young), but even if the flower is the poet’s wife, the question still remains the same: is the emphasis on the ich or on the du? Or is it on both?
The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber interpreted the use of ich (I) very differently from the way in which T. S. Elliot interpreted it.
“How beautiful and legitimate the full I of Goethe sounds! It is the I of pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; She reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. It believes in her and says to the rose: ‘So it is You’--and at once shares the same actuality with the rose.” *
According to Martin Buber, the ich of Goethe’s poetry learns from the du (Nature). The ich is focused on the du, on the other Creation that it is in dialogue with, not on itself. The ich of Goethe’s poems says “du,” not “me-me-me-me-me.”
Martin Buber’s interpretation of Goethe’s poetry works just as well if the flower in Gefunden represents Goethe’s wife. In that case, Goethe, the ich of the poem is dialoguing with his wife, the du of the poem, and recognizing that she is another ich.
By saying “du,” the ich of the poem recognizes the other Creation as another ich, not merely an es (it) for the speaker’s use. J. R. R. Tolkien expressed the same idea when he explained to one of his readers why Tom Bombadil has to be in The Lord of the Rings, even though he is not a part of the plot. Tolkien wrote that Tom Bombadil is
“A particular embodying of pure (real) science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent with the enquiring mind.”
In his poem Wünschelrute, the devout Christian German Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff expresses the idea of Creation speaking, or singing, back to us:
Wünschelrute
Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen,
Die da träumen fort und fort,
Und die Welt hebt an zu singen,
Triffst du nur das Zauberwort.
In this poem Eichendorff is asking the reader to converse with Creation.
But, you are saying, Clärchen dear, flowers don’t talk in real life! But is there a sense in which flowers and trees and mountains and rivers do talk? All of these are creations of God, and God reveals himself in many ways. Our modern society tells us to seek truth within ourselves, but one of the ways that we come to know God is by knowing things that are other than ourselves (it is for others to find truth in us, and for us to find truth in them). If we are talking about a creation, then we are talking about a thought of God.
When the young, devout Christian German Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn, himself the grandson of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, traveled through the Swiss alps, he wrote home to his family saying “How beautiful are these thoughts of God!” and “I do not understand how anyone could see these thoughts of God, and not come to knowledge of the Creator.”
It is not sentimental to encounter a thought of God, and it is certainly not ego-centric. The focus of the poetry is on the other, (the other person or the other Creation), and on the dialogue between the speaker and the other, not on the self.
Jews, like Martin Buber, and Christians like J. R. R. Tolkien and Joseph von Eichendorff, and Jewish Christians like Felix Mendelssohn, and Christian universalists like Goethe (Goethe’s universalism can be discussed at a different time), people who have revelation from God himself, are able to hear the other Creations speaking.
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind. (Job 12:7-10)
*From "I and Thou" ("Ich und Du") translated from German to English by Walter Kaufmann
Let us begin with a simple Goethe poem, and before we go any farther let me point out that Germans do not consider Goethe a Romantic, but rather a neo-classical, poet, as was his friend Friedrich Schiller, but Goethe’s poetry transcended his age, (and so did Goethe himself, who lived to befriend many young Romantic artists such as Felix Mendelssohn and Clemens Brentano), and his lyric poems set the standard for all the lyric poems which were to come during the Romantic period proper.
And now that we are finished with that very long sentence, let us begin with a simple Goethe poem. In this poem, Gefunden, the speaker of the poem is walking out in nature, just as the speaker in Wordsworth’s poem I wandered lonely as a cloud is doing, but there is a critical and obvious difference between the two poems. Can you find it? Here is Goethe’s poem:
Gefunden
Ich ging im Walde
So für mich hin,
Und nichts zu suchen,
Das war mein Sinn.
Im Schatten sah ich
Ein Blümchen stehn,
Wie Sterne leuchtend,
Wie Äuglein schön.
Ich wollt es brechen,
Da sagt es fein:
Soll ich zum Welken
Gebrochen sein?
Ich grub’s mit allen
Den Würzlein aus.
Zum Garten trug ich’s
Am hübschen Haus.
Und pflanzt es wieder
Am stillen Ort;
Nun zweigt es immer
Und blüht so fort.
If you can think like a little child, or like a big grown-up Jewish philosopher, or possibly like an Elf or an Ent, you have probably already seen the difference. In the Goethe poem, the speaker addresses the flower, and the flower talks back to him in return! In fact, in this poem the flower, not the speaker, wins the debate. Or rather the speaker and the flower have a dialogue, and because the flower speaks to him, and because the speaker listens to the flower, the speaker goes out of his way not to harm the flower, but rather to replant it in a garden, where it may continue to grow.
Some people interpret this poem allegorically, with the flower symbolizing Goethe’s wife Christiane (who died young), but even if the flower is the poet’s wife, the question still remains the same: is the emphasis on the ich or on the du? Or is it on both?
The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber interpreted the use of ich (I) very differently from the way in which T. S. Elliot interpreted it.
“How beautiful and legitimate the full I of Goethe sounds! It is the I of pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; She reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. It believes in her and says to the rose: ‘So it is You’--and at once shares the same actuality with the rose.” *
According to Martin Buber, the ich of Goethe’s poetry learns from the du (Nature). The ich is focused on the du, on the other Creation that it is in dialogue with, not on itself. The ich of Goethe’s poems says “du,” not “me-me-me-me-me.”
Martin Buber’s interpretation of Goethe’s poetry works just as well if the flower in Gefunden represents Goethe’s wife. In that case, Goethe, the ich of the poem is dialoguing with his wife, the du of the poem, and recognizing that she is another ich.
By saying “du,” the ich of the poem recognizes the other Creation as another ich, not merely an es (it) for the speaker’s use. J. R. R. Tolkien expressed the same idea when he explained to one of his readers why Tom Bombadil has to be in The Lord of the Rings, even though he is not a part of the plot. Tolkien wrote that Tom Bombadil is
“A particular embodying of pure (real) science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent with the enquiring mind.”
In his poem Wünschelrute, the devout Christian German Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff expresses the idea of Creation speaking, or singing, back to us:
Wünschelrute
Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen,
Die da träumen fort und fort,
Und die Welt hebt an zu singen,
Triffst du nur das Zauberwort.
In this poem Eichendorff is asking the reader to converse with Creation.
But, you are saying, Clärchen dear, flowers don’t talk in real life! But is there a sense in which flowers and trees and mountains and rivers do talk? All of these are creations of God, and God reveals himself in many ways. Our modern society tells us to seek truth within ourselves, but one of the ways that we come to know God is by knowing things that are other than ourselves (it is for others to find truth in us, and for us to find truth in them). If we are talking about a creation, then we are talking about a thought of God.
When the young, devout Christian German Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn, himself the grandson of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, traveled through the Swiss alps, he wrote home to his family saying “How beautiful are these thoughts of God!” and “I do not understand how anyone could see these thoughts of God, and not come to knowledge of the Creator.”
 |
| Swiss Alpine Scene by Felix Mendelssohn |
It is not sentimental to encounter a thought of God, and it is certainly not ego-centric. The focus of the poetry is on the other, (the other person or the other Creation), and on the dialogue between the speaker and the other, not on the self.
Jews, like Martin Buber, and Christians like J. R. R. Tolkien and Joseph von Eichendorff, and Jewish Christians like Felix Mendelssohn, and Christian universalists like Goethe (Goethe’s universalism can be discussed at a different time), people who have revelation from God himself, are able to hear the other Creations speaking. But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind. (Job 12:7-10)
*From "I and Thou" ("Ich und Du") translated from German to English by Walter Kaufmann
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Better Living through Television?
Better Living through Television?
Television means “sight from afar,” hence the German word for television, Fernseher (“far-seer”). Of course, television got its name because of the fact that you could watch something which was being filmed, say, in California from your living room, say, in Pennsylvania. For us, however, television can offer a different type of far-seeing, the far-seeing back into time. Through television we can catch a glimpse of life in times when the traditional family was considered normal, when people wanted to sympathize with comic characters, when people lived in real fear that their world would literally go up in a mushroom cloud, when people wished to keep streets safe for those around them, and when religion, by which I mean Christianity and Judaism, was considered to be the foundation of society.
I have chosen classic American television shows which I believe to be the best from each genre, including various types of comedies, dramas, westerns, science fiction shows, and detective shows, and I will dedicate a blog to each one of these shows.
Best Television show: The Twilight Zone
Best Situation Comedy: The Dick van Dyke Show
Best Family Sitcom: Father Knows Best
Best Workplace Sitcom: Car 54, Where are You?
Best Rural Sitcom: The Andy Griffith Show (first five seasons)
Best Western: Gunsmoke
Best Western to watch with children: The Rifleman
Best Family Drama: The Waltons (first five seasons)
Best Medical Drama: Emergency!
Best Science Fiction Drama: Star Trek (original series)
Best Courtroom Drama: Perry Mason
Best Detective Show: Columbo (original series)
Best Criminal Investigation Drama: Hawaii Five-0 (original series)
What can the modern person learn from this sort of far-seeing? My brother learned how to introduce himself to people by watching situation comedies such as The Dick van Dyke Show and Father Knows Best. I learned many folk songs from watching The Andy Griffith Show. Most recently I learned that pineapple enzymes desolve fingerprints from watching Hawaii Five-0. The most valuable thing that I have learned, however, is that, although there is no perfect society, there was once a society which valued true morality. Even in crime shows such as Hawaii Five-0 and Columbo, it is essetial that the good characters actually know what is right and what is wrong. It is good for us who no longer live in a society which has morals to look back at one, albeit a flawed one, that did.
Television means “sight from afar,” hence the German word for television, Fernseher (“far-seer”). Of course, television got its name because of the fact that you could watch something which was being filmed, say, in California from your living room, say, in Pennsylvania. For us, however, television can offer a different type of far-seeing, the far-seeing back into time. Through television we can catch a glimpse of life in times when the traditional family was considered normal, when people wanted to sympathize with comic characters, when people lived in real fear that their world would literally go up in a mushroom cloud, when people wished to keep streets safe for those around them, and when religion, by which I mean Christianity and Judaism, was considered to be the foundation of society.
I have chosen classic American television shows which I believe to be the best from each genre, including various types of comedies, dramas, westerns, science fiction shows, and detective shows, and I will dedicate a blog to each one of these shows.
Best Television show: The Twilight Zone
Best Situation Comedy: The Dick van Dyke Show
Best Family Sitcom: Father Knows Best
Best Workplace Sitcom: Car 54, Where are You?
Best Rural Sitcom: The Andy Griffith Show (first five seasons)
Best Western: Gunsmoke
Best Western to watch with children: The Rifleman
Best Family Drama: The Waltons (first five seasons)
Best Medical Drama: Emergency!
Best Science Fiction Drama: Star Trek (original series)
Best Courtroom Drama: Perry Mason
Best Detective Show: Columbo (original series)
Best Criminal Investigation Drama: Hawaii Five-0 (original series)
What can the modern person learn from this sort of far-seeing? My brother learned how to introduce himself to people by watching situation comedies such as The Dick van Dyke Show and Father Knows Best. I learned many folk songs from watching The Andy Griffith Show. Most recently I learned that pineapple enzymes desolve fingerprints from watching Hawaii Five-0. The most valuable thing that I have learned, however, is that, although there is no perfect society, there was once a society which valued true morality. Even in crime shows such as Hawaii Five-0 and Columbo, it is essetial that the good characters actually know what is right and what is wrong. It is good for us who no longer live in a society which has morals to look back at one, albeit a flawed one, that did.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)