Dear Friends,
I’m so happy to offer you Wehmut, “Sorrow”, ninth song in Schumann’s Eichendorff Liederkreis (here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth):
Wehmut [Sorrow]
A setting by Robert Schumann (1810 — 1856) of the poem by Joseph Freiherrn von Eichendorff (1788 — 1857)
performed by Ishmael Wallace, tenor and pianist
Yes, I can sometimes sing
As if my heart were light,
But still, in silent struggle,
The tears force a way out.
The nightingales, in springtime,
As outside, zephyrs roam,
Send forth the song of longing
From durance in the tomb,
And every heart receives it,
And every heart is cheered,
But none can hear the sorrow,
The inner note of tears.
(translation by IW; for the original, please scroll down)
Within the heart, within the prison of the tomb, the song of longing. In silence, tears force a way out; in full-throated song, the nightingales publish the song abroad. But something fails to cross the border.
In the song just previous, the eighth, the nightingales already had something they wished to get across:
The nightingales are gushing
Among the lonely trees
As though they longed to give me
A word of bygone days.
They bear a message from the dead, from the home long lost. In the twelfth song, they will speak more directly.
The divorce Eichendorff is describing, the divorce of outer and inner — it shows up of course in philosophy, in our need to prove the existence of an, as we put it, “outside” world; but at its root, it is a problem in living: we feel, for example, we can live, but on condition our soul remain hidden.
The problem has been well addressed — in philosophy: as Heidegger puts it, our being is being in a world; as Ouspensky puts it, the world of things is the world of spirit “perceived strangely1”. But to address it in life — this may take many years. I find more and more, it is possible! The model here is the life of Christ…
Thank you so much.
With every good wish,
Ishmael
Eichendorff’s original:
Wehmut
Ich kann wohl manchmal singen,
Als ob ich fröhlich sei,
Doch heimlich Tränen dringen,
Da wird das Herz mir frei.
Es lassen Nachtigallen,
Spielt draußen Frühlingsluft,
Der Sehnsucht Lied erschallen
Aus ihres Kerkers Gruft.
Da lauschen alle Herzen,
Und alles ist erfreut,
Doch keiner fühlt die Schmerzen,
Im Lied das tiefe Leid.
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“…there is no greater error than to regard the world as divided into phenomena and noumena…the “phenomenal world” is simply our incorrect perception of the world. As Carl DuPrel has said, “The world beyond is this world, only perceived strangely.” It would be more accurate to say, that this world is the world beyond perceived strangely. (Tertium Organum, Ch. XII)
