Reflections in watery medium

Sanford Gifford, Twilight at Lago Maggiore (1871)

As the past few posts indicate, I have been obsessed with imagery concerning atmospheric effects and reflections, following on the mention in Goethe's diary of June 30, 1816: "Wiederschein der Bäume im trüben Wasser." Since that posting, I am constantly coming across such imagery in paintings, and this morning's reading was an article by Wolfgang Schadewaldt discussing such imagery in a Goethe poem. It begins "Dämmrung senkte sich von oben," and is the eighth poem in the 1827 collection Chinese-German Hours and Seasons (Chinesisch-deutsche Tages- und Jahreszeiten). Here is the poem in English translation by David Luke:

Dusk has fallen, and already
All that’s near grows faint and far;
But the first to rise has risen,
High it shines, the evening star!
All is in uncertain motion,
Creeping mists enshroud the sky;
Gulfs of night as deep as ocean
Mirrored on the dark lake lie.

Now I sense the gleam and glowing
Of the moonlight’s eastering day;
Slender willow-tresses flowing
With the nearby waters play.
Through the flickering shadows lunar
Magic dances, coolness seems
To have touched my eyes and soothes me,
Steals into my inmost dreams.

Wolfgang Schadewaldt was an awesomely erudite and far-reaching scholar such as are few and far between today. Besides being the foremost Homer expert in modern times, he was also quite well versed in Goethe, Winckelmann, and Hölderlin. I have on my desk the volume Goethe Studien: Natur und Altertum, a collection published in 1963 that contains the essay "Zur Entstehung der Elfenszene im 2. Teil des Faust" (from Dvjs 29 [1955]). The essay is an example of philology at its best, in which Schadewaldt deduces the date of composition of the "elves chorus" scene at the beginning of the second part of Faust by comparing it with the above "Chinese" poem. Here, again in Luke's translation, are the relevant verses from Faust (Anmutige Gegend, 4634f.):

When a fragrance has descended
All about the green-girt plain,
Richer air with mist-clouds blended,
Evening dusk comes down again;
Lulls to infant-sweet reposing,
Rocks the heat with whispering sighs,
And this wanderer feels it closing
On his daylight-weary eyes.

Now to night the world surrenders,
Sacred love joins star to star;
Little sparkles, greater splendors,
Glitter near and gleam from far,
Glitter in the lake reflecting,
Gleam against the clear night sky;
Deepest seals of rest protecting
Glows the full moon strong and high.

Soon the hours have slipped away,
Pain and happiness are past;
Trust the light of the new day,
Feel your sickness will not last!
Green the valleys, hillsides swelling,
Bushing thick to restful shade,
And the fields, their wealth foretelling,
Rippling ripe and silver-swayed!

Have you wishes without number?
Watch the promise of the dawn!
Lightly you are wrapped in slumber:
Shed this husk and be reborn!
Venture boldly; hesitation
Is for lesser men — when deeds
Are a noble mind’s creation,
All his enterprise succeeds.

It is via a comparison of the two poems that Schadewaldt sets the date of composition of the elves chorus in 1827, when we know from his correspondence, diary entries, and conversations with Eckermann that Goethe was occupied with Chinese literature. On February 5, 1827, he published a small piece in volume 6 of Kunst und Altertum entitled "Chinesisches," which included a translation of verses from a Chinese collection translated in 1824 by an Englishman named Peter Perring Thomas. This new "East-West" encounter, introducing Goethe to a remote and exotic world as well as new poetic forms and motifs, led to increased productivity on his part, especially in connection with Faust.

Wang Wei poem on painting by Xin Tian

Luke also mentions in the notes to his translations the similarity in meter and mood of the two poems. Schadewaldt goes further, noting the common musicality, as well as the identical setting (moon rising over a body of water), and imagery (Dämmrung, Nebel, See, with variations on nah/fern, Licht, Spiegel, Glanz). Both are also "times of day" (Tageszeiten) poems, with day understood as including both day and night. Finally, both concern the soothing effect of nature on the human soul, especially the delight in repose produced by the approaching quiet of evening.

For Schadewaldt, the correspondences suggest that the two poems have their origins in a similar sort of epiphany, but he then proceeds to the differences. The first poem is "experienced" nature (aus unmittelbarer Naturnähe gedichtet), while the latter represents a more structured form (mehr versammelter Gestaltung). In the first, every two lines represent an addition of the details concerning the event -- the emergence of twilight -- with the effect tiptoeing, so to speak, into the observer's soul and registered in the final two lines: "Und durchs Auge schleicht die Kühle/ Sänftigend ins Herz hinein." In contrast, in the elves chorus scene, the effect on Faust comes from outside. Ariel has already instructed the elves to soothe Faust's turmoil (des Herzens grimmen Strauß) and, thus, Faust is enveloped in a healing sleep that will allow him to forget the past and restore him to new life. Nature is still the mediator, but the images of nature extend beyond the immediate experience into the future, into the light of day itself: "Fühl' es vor! Du wirst gesunden;/ Traue neuem Tagesblick."

This turn in conception is for Schadewaldt evidence of the date of composition of the opening scenes of the second part of Faust. In 1816, when Goethe was writing down ideas about the second part of Faust, he had intended, according to Schadewaldt, a "Geisterchor" to open that part as a parallel to the chorus of spirits in part 1. This time around, Faust would be lulled with ironic visions of power, fame, and worldly honor. His work on the "Chinese" collection, however, led to a different conception. Through the healing sleep mediated by nature, Faust is not reformed or bettered or purified, but he is relieved of the sensuousness and passions that dominated in the first part. Moreover, what Schadewaldt calls the Volksbuch's "temptation structure" is abandoned. Faust will now go on to work in lofty regions of purposeful activity, still making mistakes, still deluded, still mistaken, but not on the lower, sensuous level of the first part.

Goethe and the Beloved

The subject of my dissertation so many years ago concerned Goethe's "escape from the idyll," by which I was referring to his abandonment of one of the literary forms he most loved in his youth, namely, the poetic idyll. Traditionally the idyll was inhabited by shepherds; thus, this form is also often called a pastoral. Goethe wrote many idylls, sometimes seeming to shed the pastoral element, though I contended in my dissertation and later in an article that the pastoral did not really go missing but was instead represented as endangered. For instance, the character of Werther in The Sorrows of Young Werther represents a pastoral shepherd. After all, the chief occupation of poetic shepherds is falling in love, and one of their chief activities is dancing. And where does Werther meet Lotte and fall in love with her? At a dance. His pining for her is also characteristic of poetic shepherds.

As in The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe's idylls are always shadowed by something dark. Though lovers in pastorals often fade away in love, they don't commit suicide, as does Werther. My argument concerning this short novel was that the idyll represented for Goethe a poetic suicide and that, to free himself and become the giant of German letters, he had to free himself from this poetic form, something that Werther failed at. Nevertheless, Goethe did not quite abandon his fondness for the poetic inspiration of his youth; instead, his works feature many idylls in which, however, it ends up being destroyed. One only has to think of one of the final scenes of Faust II, when the idyll of Philomen and Baucis is destroyed.

Love, as said, represents the chief occupation of poetic shepherds, and love is, I dare say, the most prominent theme of Goethe's literary works. Yet rather than the wholehearted poetic-shepherd embrace of the experience, the lover in Goethe's poetry seems more enamored of the recollection of love, from a distance. For instance, a very early poem entitled "The Night." The first two lines in its original version, from 1768, are as follows: "Gern verlass' ich diese Hütte,/ Meiner Schönen Aufenthalt." This is of course a paradox: he is happy to leave the abode of the beloved? Goethe seemed to recognize this paradox, for when he published the collection Neue Lieder in 1789 he changed the first line to read: "Nun [now] verlass' ich diese Hütte."

Love in absentia also characterizes a later and very beautiful poem, "Nähe des Geliebten," from 1795. As has been noted, Goethe wrote this poem after reading a similar one by Friederike Brun, entitled "Ich denke dein." In Brun's poem one has the feeling that the person being remembered has died, which is not the case in Goethe's poem. Here is a translation (from 1844) by William Edmonstoune Aytoun:

I think of thee when'er the sun is glowing
Upon the lake;
Of thee, when in the crystal fountain flowing
The moonbeams shake.

I see thee when the wanton wind is busy,
And dust-clouds rise;
In the deep night, when o'er the bridge so dizzy
The wanderer hies.

I hear thee when the waves, with hollow roaring,
Gush forth their fill;
Often along the heath I go exploring,
When all is still.

I am with thee! Though far thou art and darkling,
Yet art thou near.
The sun goes down, the stars will soon be sparkling
-- Oh, wert thou here.

Interestingly, Aytoun did not translate the title as per Goethe's title -- "Nearness of the Beloved" -- but as "Separation." The poet feels the nearness when the beloved is elsewhere. Of course, it should be added that the poetic voice in this case is feminine, as in Brun's poem.

Picture credit: Bonza Sheila

"Der Totentanz"

The warder looks down at the mid hour of night,

On the tombs that lie scattered below;

The moon fills the place with her silvery light

And the churchyard like day seems to glow.

When see! first one grave, then another opens side,

And women and men stepping forth are descried,

In cerements snow whit and trailing.

This is the first verse, in English translation, of Goethe's poem "Der Totentanz."

I had thought of devoting this post to Goethe's own death, which occurred on this day, March 23, in 1832. Goethe in his own lifetime was known to be averse to dwelling on the deaths of those he knew and loved. In 1828, he fled to Dornburg, rather than stay in Weimar and attend the funeral of Duke Carl August. But rather than focusing on his own fear of death, I thought it would be more fun to look at "Der Totentanz," one of his lighter products on death.

On Good Friday of April 1813, Goethe traveled to the spa at Teplitz via Dresden and Leipzig. This was a moment in the Napoleonic wars, when the inhabitants of Weimar were looking at an occupation by either the French or the Russians. Goethe got out. His diary and his letters offer a good account of what he saw. Amazingly, for a time of war -- constant presence of soldiers, including Cossacks and Russian Asians with camels -- Goethe always enjoyed good lodgings and, moreover, good food. In an April 20 letter to Christiane, he mentioned the excellent carp in "Polish sauce" he had for breakfast. He wrote about the art he saw, for instance, at the cathedral in Naumburg, and about a terrible production in Dresden of Cosi fan tutte: "Nein! so ein Schreckniß ist mir niemals vorgekommen" (No! I have never before experienced such a horror).

In his letter of April 21 to Christiane Goethe mentions that, "for amusement" (zu unserer Lust) he had written down in rhyme the death dance legend that his son August had told them. He sent the finished poem to August on May 22, with this message: "This bit of fun [Diese Späße] has at the same time the important purpose of telling you to be happy and cheerful, whatever your immediate daily circumstances; for the disaster that is occurring in our vicinity -- which we observe, safe but still with fear, like someone observing the shipwreck of entire fleets from a cliff -- is limitless." Goethe, on his trip to Teplitz, was clearly following his own advice.

The theme of the dance of death can be traced back to at least the 14th century in Europe, as epidemics like the Black Death brought the universal sway of death, to rich and poor alike, to the imagination. Movement, whether a dance or a journey, seems to have been a later addition. German woodcarvers and engravers produced famous prints, including the glorious rendition by Michael Wolgemuth of "Tanz der Gerippe" above. The beautiful chasuble at the left, from the Benedictine abbey of Kremsmünster now on exhibition (until April 9) at the delightfully named Museum für Sepulkralkultur in the city of Kassel, exemplifies the constant awareness of death in the world before the advent of antibiotics.

In "Der Totentanz," Goethe might have identified with the figure of the warder:

Now waggles the leg, and now wriggles the thigh,

As the troop with strange gestures advance,

And a rattle and chatter anon rises high

As of one beating time to the dance.

The sight to the warder seems wondrously queer

When the villainous Tempter speaks thus in his ear:

"Seize one of the shrouds that lie yonder."

There is much one could say about the language of this ballad, but the pace of action is particularly thrilling. As the midnight hour passes, the dead gather their garments and climb back into their graves. But there remains the one whose shroud has been taken by the warder: "The shroud he soon scents in the air." He goes in pursuit of it ("The shroud he must have, and no rest will allow") and begins to climb the Gothic edifice of the tower, "like a long-legged spider" (Es ruckt sich von Schnörkel hinan,/ Langbeinigen Spinnen vergleichbar). The warder quakes, would like to get rid of the shroud, but when he throws it down it gets caught on one of the spikes. Fortunately for him, the churchyard becomes dark as the silvery light that had filled it is obscured ("With vanishing lustre the moon's race is run"), the bell in the tower thunders loudly, and the skeleton falls to earth and is crushed to atoms. Goethe too escaped death for another day.

Goethe's behavior amid death and destruction actually seems the right way. Contrast it with that of a contemporary Jeremiah, W.G. Sebald. If you have read On the Natural History of Destruction, concerning the firebombing of German cities during World War II, you will know that Sebald loved to dwell on the Revelations-like horrors. For instance, "After the rubble had cooled down, they found people still sitting at tables or up against walls where they had been overcome by monoxide gas. ... Other victims had been so badly charred and reduced to ashes by the heat, which had risen to a thousand degrees or more, that the remains of families consisting of several people could be carried away in a single laundry basket." Pretty impressive stuff, what?

What really seemed to annoy Sebald, however, were instances of people, in the face of such destruction, attempting to go about their daily life. For instance, the cinema employee, a Frau Schrader, who, immediately after a bombing, commandeered a shovel and began clearing the rubble in front of the movie house so that people could get in for the 2 p.m. matinee. Or, as reported by the novelist Hans Erich Nossack, who wrote of walking in the suburbs of Hamburg shortly after the bombings of July 1943 and seeing residents of a building that had not suffered sitting on their balconies drinking coffee.

For a writer with a high moral point of view like Sebald, it was apparently difficult to imagine that people who, having seen their nearest and dearest incinerated (carried away in a laundry basket, for goodness' sake!), might wish to reclaim, however momentarily, a vestige of their humanity. No, for the pompous Sebald, such a scene exhibited "a lack of moral sensitivity bordering on inhumanity." Of course, his intent in The Natural History was to take Germans to task for their complacency after the war, their willingness to forget, to get back to coffee and cake in the afternoon, to rebuild their country. I prefer Goethe's attitude myself.

It was not until August 26-27 that the European armies clashed in Germany, in Dresden, then later in Leipzig, on October 16-18. For a comparative view, the Battle of York (seen above) was fought on April 27, 1813, the first important American victory on land during the War of 1812.

For an English translation of the full poem (and a wonderful accompanying illustration by the Czech artist Jiri Trnka), I am grateful to Ian Burkard's site (of August 3, 2007).

Post-Christmas Musings

Rick's aunt Micaela lives less than a mile down Riverside Drive from our apartment, so she is a frequent dinner guest, especially on celebratory occasions like Christmas and Chanukah. Every time she comes she brings (besides a bottle of champagne or a specially selected wine) some small object from her apartment. In the spring she gave me lovely mother-of-pearls earrings. This time it was a Merlot from Washington state, where her daughter and son-in-law live, and a copy of The New Yorker (click on image to enlarge) from January 29, 1938.

Yesterday, the day after Christmas, was a very lazy day. I spent some time reading the old New Yorker. There were some familiar names among the contributors: James Thurber, reporting on crime in Nice, and S.J. Perelman, being very cranky about the number of home-making magazines with articles "about a couple of young people who stumble across a ruined farmhouse and remodel it on what is inelegantly termed spit and coupons." If you've seen Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House (which I have, recently, a truly painful house restoration fantasy), you'll know what he is talking about. It wouldn't be the New Yorker if there wasn't an account of a lamentable social phenomenon, in this case the effects of unemployment on otherwise hardworking, decent (not only decent but also downright admirable) citizens. ("Why can't the government get things right?" is the implication.) It was by a writer named John McNulty, a byline not familiar to me. Then there was Genêt, the pen name of Janet Flanner, who wrote "The Letter from Paris" for half a century. During my first graduate school incarnation, several decades ago, this was my favorite feature of The New Yorker.

On January 29, 1938, Genêt reported on the appearance of three books. She began in the trademark New Yorker voice, that of a worldly, ironic, sensible "Yankee" : "To people who find Gertrude Stein difficult to read in English, it may be a relief to learn that her next book has been written in French, though as a matter of fact Miss Stein's French reads a great deal like her English." The book, in a series on French painters, was a homage to Picasso. Well, who else could write better on Picasso? Stein knew him well and, according to Genêt, had "lent about thirty of her Picassos for the recent great State exhibition." That sounds like she had a few more than thirty. Genêt also discusses André Malraux's L'Éspoir,  "a sort of novelized journal" of Malraux's experience of the Spanish War, "gained while serving as the head of the first international flying escadrille." I believe Genêt when she says it is "twice over a man's book."

What interested me was the report of a new story by Colette, "Bella-Vista," which I was not familiar with but which, Genêt claimed, "was ready for some future anthology of the world's great short stories." (Now that I think of it, Micaela resembles Colette.)

Back in that early graduate career I used to read a lot of Colette's novels and stories. It was the time (late 1970s) when I had my first apartment, in which certain objects began to accumulate: a mahogany desk; a bookcase for my German reference books, the sight of which gave me great pleasure; a collection of Bel Canto recordings; a bedspread from Mexico; a porcelain tea pot with a floral patten; a profusion of jade plants and ferns in colorful pots from Mexico (I was studying in Texas then, just a few hours from Piedras Negras); lace curtains on the windows. By the time I acquired my first cat, my surroundings were coming more and more to resemble the evocative interiors that play a supporting role in the novels of Colette. I didn't live in the Midi or have a garden in my backyard full of asparagus, tomatoes, and radicchio, but it seemed a kind of wisdom then to be concerned only about the pink cactus that was about to flower, or to appreciate the clink that the wine bottles make when they are being carried to the well to be stored for drinking later with dinner.

Indeed, it all sounds very much like a painting by Matisse, for instance, this one from 1905, entitled "Open Window." This in turn reminds me of the small book by Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just. Scarry is concerned about the attacks made by postmodernists against beauty, on the charge that it distracts us from concerns for justice. She makes an intricate argument for the way that Beauty trains us mentally to be more perceptive. She approaches the subject by elaborating on the experience we have all had in moving beyond youthful enthusiasms. Think of the tackiest paintings you loved at 18, say those by Walter Keane, which turn out to have been painted by his wife, Margaret.

With training, we leave such enthusiasms behind and grapple with more difficult paintings that, on first glance, might appear ugly. Scarry's example is Matisse's palm trees, which she always found ugly. But, then, one day she began to like those palm trees. And so, this process of intellectual self-correction can be applied to the moral world: we go, according to Scarry, from perception of "the fair" (lovely faces) to receptiveness to "fairness" (as in equal distribution of goods). Ingenious, as I said..

Some of the attractions of Manhattan, as advertised in the 1938 New Yorker, included The Women by Clare Booth at the Ethel Barrymore; Gertrude Lawrence in Susan and God ("A Comedy by Rachel Crothers," a revival of which I saw last year at the Mint Theater in Manhattan); Golden Boy by Clifford Odets; and A Doll's House starring Ruth Gordon. Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians were performing at the Roosevelt Grill at Madison and 45th Street. A two-page color insert featured "America's Fourmost Whiskies": Old Overhold, Old Taylor, Old Grand-Dad, and Mount Vernon. A full-page ad for Tiffany & Co. offered "Quality, Smartness and Variety Moderately Priced." I could go on, but enough for today.