Month: August 2018

Translation and Reading of Gustav Mahler’s ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’ (‘The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow’)

Talk of flogging a dead horse. At times, life just likes to knock you down, spit on your face, and trample over your body. But even this metaphor cannot come close to what occurred to Gustav Mahler in the summer of 1907.
Gustav Mahler, 1907

The growing spirit of antisemitism forced him to resign as Director of the Vienna Court Opera, despite his long and glorious career. His eldest daughter Maria died after suffering from scarlet fever and diphtheria. To add insult to injury, the composer himself was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.

It’s not surprising that Mahler, enduring the worst period of his life, turned to the arts for salvation – and to seek some form of transcendence – some form of escaping and emerging out of the abyss he found himself in – in the depiction of beauty. He was inspired by Hans Bethge’s Die Chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute) which was also published in 1907. He adapted six of Bethge’s poems and set them to music in his Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth).

The symphony incorporates Mahler’s typical uncomfortable style. I don’t mean that in a negative sense: Mahler composed in a transitionary period between High Romanticism and (very) early Modernism. Consequently, in his music we constantly feel the pressure of modernity, the growing uncertainties regarding tradition, and the onslaught of the inevitable collapse of the Romantic spirit.

Unlike his previous symphonies, however, Erde doesn’t only contain a sense of cultural pressure, but also a spirit of personal tragedy. The six songs explore themes such as living and dying, parting, salvation and solitude. Indeed: Li Bai – the Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty from whom Bethge derived many of his poems – was an expert at writing about those themes, which we can also see in Ezra Pound’s volume of poetry Cathay.

The first movement in A minor, the ‘Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’ (‘The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow’) is a heart-wrenching piece depicting a depressed drunkard drowning his sorrow in wine. Rather than suffering in solitude, however, he halts the drunken exaltations and announces his resentfulness at the world.

For your pleasure, here is the text of the song, quoted from Lieder.net because I’m lazy, with my own translation; the text is still under copyright in the EU by YinYang Media Verlag:

Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde

Schon winkt der Wein im gold’nen Pokale,
Doch trinkt noch nicht, erst sing’ ich euch ein Lied!
Das Lied vom Kummer soll auflachend in die Seele euch klingen.
Wenn der Kummer naht, liegen wüst die Gärten der Seele,
Welkt hin und stirbt die Freude, der Gesang.
Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod.

Herr dieses Hauses!
Dein Keller birgt die Fülle des goldenen Weins!
Hier, diese Laute nenn’ ich mein!
Die Laute schlagen und die Gläser leeren,
Das sind die Dinger, die zusammen passen.
Ein voller Becher Weins zur rechten Zeit
Ist mehr wert, als alle Reiche dieser Erde!
Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod!

Das Firmament blaut ewig, und die Erde
Wird lange fest steh’n und aufblüh’n im Lenz.
Du aber, Mensch, wie lang lebst denn du?
Nicht hundert Jahre darfst du dich ergötzen
An all dem morschen Tande dieser Erde!
Seht dort hinab! Im Mondschein auf den Gräbern
Hockt eine wild-gespenstische Gestalt —
Ein Aff’ist’s! Hört ihr, wie sein Heulen
Hinausgellt in den süßen Duft des Lebens!
Jetzt nehmt den Wein! Jetzt ist es Zeit, Genossen!
Leert eure gold’nen Becher zu Grund!
Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod!

Translation:

The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow

Now the wine beckons in a golden cup,
But don’t drink yet, first I’ll sing you a song!
The song of sorrow shall laughingly sound in your soul.
When sorrow nears, the gardens of the soul lie waste,
The joys and the songs wither and die.
Dark is Life, dark is Death.

Lord of this house!
Your cellar holds the wealth of the golden wine!
Here, this lute I call mine!
To play the lute and to drain the glasses,
These are the things that go so well together.
A filled cup of wine at the right time
Is worth more than all the kingdoms of this Earth!
Dark is Life, dark is Death.

The heaven’s blue lasts forever, and the Earth
Will stand for long and blossom in Spring.
But you, human, how long do you live?
Not a hundred years may you regale
In all the rotten baubles of this Earth!
Look down there! In the moonlight on the graves
Squats a wild and ghostly figure –
It’s an ape! Hear you, how its howling
Consorts in the sweet scent of Life!
Now take the wine! Now it is time, my friends!
Drink your golden cups to the drain!
Dark is Life, dark is Death!

Reading the lyrics

The song opens with the bombastic sound of the full orchestra, as the speaker relishes in the chance to drink to his heart’s content. But before indulging in his pleasures, he tells his friends to halt for a moment: ‘first I’ll sing you a song!’. As the listener awaits to hear what the drunkard will sing about, the music’s harmonies still indicate that it will be a song of joy.

The speaker, however, announces that it will be a song of sorrow – which will ‘laughingly sing in your soul’. At this moment there is a change both in key and tone, indicating the dark nature of the song. This is developed in the following lines:

When sorrow nears, the gardens of the soul lie waste,

The joys and the songs wither and die.

The speaker concedes that sorrow is the ultimate cause of suffering, and that it completely wastes any form of development or joy we might have had at any point in our lives – all joys and even songs come to an end. This is culminated in the song’s refrain, ‘Dark is Life, dark is Death.’

In a clever twist, Mahler returns to the song’s opening harmonies at the beginning of the second stanza. With major cords and an elongated version of the melody from the start, the speaker tries to distract himself from his sorrows:

Lord of this house!

Your cellar holds the wealth of the golden wine!

Here, this lute I call mine!

To play the lute and to drain the glasses,

These are the things that go so well together.

At this point, the drunkard seems to be indulging in decadence – in excessive pleasures. But the unspoken sadness of these lines is this: he only ever plays the lute and sings when he is getting drunk. What follows is the acknowledgement that when he isn’t drinking he also isn’t singing. The change in harmony to minor keys in the following lines suggest that view. Although still praising the joys of wine-drinking, the music repeats the depressing tone of the wasted gardens of the soul from the first stanza:

A filled cup of wine at the right time

Is worth more than all the kingdoms of this Earth!

In other words, the speaker cannot experience any kind of joy while sober. These lines aren’t a celebration, but an utterance of bitter defeat and growing resentfulness. As he concedes after these lines again, ‘Dark is Life, dark is Death’.

As though this wasn’t depressing enough, the speaker doesn’t join in the somewhat-uplifting harmonies in the following instrumental section. Instead, the orchestra does its own thing until he utters his discontents in a new section with a new melody. And his outrage at the world is at its clearest here:

The heaven’s blue lasts forever, and the Earth

Will stand for long and blossom in Spring.

But you, human, how long do you live?

Not a hundred years may you regale

In all the rotten baubles of this Earth!

The speaker contrasts the never-ending natural world and how it seems to proceed without human intervention, whereas the sad reality of humanity is that they die eventually – not even one hundred years are we allowed to live. And what do we do in that comparatively short amount of time? ‘Regale in all the rotten baubles of this Earth!’ In other words, life’s a shit and then we die.

This also provides us with the only slight hint at what has happened to the drunkard: since he is bemoaning the shortness of human life, it might be that he has lost a loved one – and life without anything that offers transcendence only leaves him with insufficient pleasures. But at this stage, he is particularly resentful, seeing his fellow humans as little more than animals:

Look down there! In the moonlight on the graves

Squats a wild and ghostly figure –

It’s an ape! Hear you, how its howling

Consorts in the sweet scent of Life!

In this state of utter cynicism, the speaker sees us all as apes who squat on graves in the moonlight. There is nothing beautiful in it. The only – admittedly very slim – sense of hope comes from the fact that this ape is at least enjoying the ‘sweet scent of life’. But given all that has come before, this is hardly good consolation. No: the final lines, too, reek of depression. Having uttered his tragedy – as detached and impersonal as he possibly can – the speaker finally invites his friends to drink with him.

Now take the wine! Now it is time, my friends!

Drink your golden cups to the drain!

And, finally, he repeats the refrain for the last time.

Dark is Life, dark is Death!

Depression is a face that wears a mask. Those who endure it know how hard it can be to speak about issues that plague the soul; in such cases, intoxication often leads to outcries of the calibre Mahler demonstrates in this haunting song.

A recording of the entire Das Lied von der Erde, conducted by the great Leonard Bernstein; ‘The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow’ runs from 0:00-8:30:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idRevTkIPts

If you liked this reading and translation, please feel free to leave a comment and share it on social media, using one of the tender buttons below.

Three Pre-Raphaelite Paintings

Ah yes. The year 1848. A time of unrest, of a growing gap between the rich and the poor. A time of many revolutionary groups throughout Europe declaring their fed-upness (that’s not a word) with the status quo, attempting to overthrow the previous political establishment. A revolutionary spirit was haunting the continent – mainly in France and Germany – but also England, where the Chartists marched in unity.

While writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens were happily writing away about the depressing state of affairs, the world of the visual arts remained largely silent. That is, until Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, among others, founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – the PRB – in September 1848.

It was the perfect time for the PRB to emerge as a new, triumphant school of art. The Industrial Revolution was raging on, confronting the state with political issues. Technological progress provided new and exciting possibilities for all (or at least for the rich). Scientific discoveries renewed religious tensions.

However, despite this being the perfect time for the PRB to establish themselves on the political scene, they had no clear agenda of their own. They were merely infused with a revolutionary spirit – and the desire to reject the tired academic traditions of the Royal Academy of Arts.

And indeed: we can see, quite clearly, that their style was rather different when compared with pre-1848 art. Rather than the ‘Raphaelite’ focus on creating beautiful and idealised paintings, the PRB attempted to depict portrayals of the real, with all its flaws. Strangely, by being quite hyper-realistic, the paintings often seem too colourful, too vibrant, too perfect in their attention to detail, so that they appear more like caricatures of realism.

They often contain a tension between the real and the symbolic, history and the present. Personally, I often find them quite funny to look at – as much as I enjoy them. The PRB’s themes range from religious to social subject matters, demonstrating a wide interest – but also their lack of focus. But it won’t do to discuss art in the abstract – so it’s time to discuss them in the particular! I’m just providing some of my impressions of the paintings. This is by no means an exhaustive or conclusive essay, and it serves mainly to introduce you to the delights of Pre-Raphaelite art.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Ecce Ancilla Domini!* (The Annunciation)

This is one of my favourite PRB paintings. Why, you ask? Why not, I reply! How can you not like it? It depicts the scene of the ‘annunciation’, that is, when the archangel Gabriel visits Mary to tell her that the Holy Spirit has impregnated her with the son of God.

And dear Rossetti gives us the usual symbolism you’d expect from such a painting: the dove in the background represents the presence of the holy spirit, the blue cloth symbolises the colour of the Virgin Mary, and the redness of the… I have no idea what it is in the foreground foreshadows the death of Christ on the cross.

But it all comes with a severe plot twist: it’s an uncomfortable scene. Despite both having halos, Mary looks less than pleased to welcome Gabriel to her home. Who would blame her? He just told her that she’s pregnant – and, being a virgin (THE virgin), she probably didn’t think too much of that. Not to mention the awkwardness of the conversation she would have to have with Joseph…

So rather than looking as serene, calm and holy as she usually does, this young virgin is staring somewhat perplexed at Gabriel. Or rather, towards the location where she would anticipate his naughty bits. Perhaps this, too, isn’t particularly surprising, considering our very human-looking Gabriel (who doesn’t have any wings!) is wearing absolutely nothing beneath his white piece of cloth. On top of that, he’s young. Sexy. Muscular. Does it make it even more uncomfortable that the model for Mary was Rossetti’s sister, Christine? The sexual tension is as hot as Gabriel’s flaming feet!

The painting clearly depicts the growing awareness of religious tensions at that time. These aren’t idealised versions of the characters present at the Annunciation – these are real humans (or… one real human and one ‘real angel’?) in what would have been an uncomfortable situation… perhaps this is why the PRB was often considered blasphemous?

John Everett Millais – Mariana

While this, at first glance, might appear to be a young woman suffering from an early onset of rheumatism, it actually depicts a scene from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Mariana is rejected by her fiancé when her dowry is lost, and in this scene, she is waiting for her lover to return – but to no avail. It is also, partly, based on Lord Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Mariana in the Moated Grange’, which is based on the same play (and which is also one of my all-time favourite poems!).

Whereas The Annunciation is quite sparse with details and colours, this one is abundant with them. I find the details quite breath-taking: the perfect depiction of the vibrant colours in Mariana’s velvet dress, the shades in the background, the coat of arms in the window…

If you compare the poem with the painting, you will notice that Millais has included some gorgeous details. In the bottom-right hand corner, there is the mouse (referred to in the final stanza of Tennyson’s poem), and the passing of time is evoked through the progress Mariana has made while weaving the cloth and by her stretching herself – as though she’s been sitting for hours.

Another wonderful detail is Mariana glancing at the left window – where an angel is depicted lifting his hand, as though to calm her in her grief (although I would argue that she looks more as though she’s slightly annoyed than in deep melancholy). Furthermore, the leaves covering the floor and the table might signify the gradual way in which nature is taking over, leaving no room for the very human world of a love-affair.

Despite the insane attention to detail and the colourful vividness of the picture, I would not subscribe to the view that it is as accomplished as Rossetti’s picture – not that ranking the pictures is necessary at all. I think it is a wonderful adaptation of a play and a poem, but I’m not sure the emotion – the tragic loss of a lover – comes through on its own, without knowledge of the source material. In Millais’ favour, if the painting was based more on the play, the emotional abyss she finds herself in is not quite as clear-cut as in the poem.

William Holman Hunt – The Awakening Conscience

The final picture I want to share with you today is Hunt’s The Awakening Conscience. This painting is, again, in the more humorous corner of Pre-Raphaelite art. Also, again, the attention to detail is astounding.

This time, the artist presents us not with a scene from religion or literature, but quite a common one from every-day life (or, at least, the every-day life of a certain class of people…). The man in the chair is a random rich bloke sitting with his mistress, the woman, for a leisure-laden afternoon. After some flirting, groping and what-not in the chair, the mistress receives a realisation – an awakening – and stares out of the window (which you can see reflected in the mirror in the background).

So while it is not religious in tone, it does provide us with a moment of transcendence, of realising the ‘error of one’s ways’. That the woman is indeed a mistress is made evident by her lower-class clothing against the elaborate – and partly embroidered – decoration of the room, and because she doesn’t have a wedding ring.

My favourite part of the picture is probably the cat beneath the coffee table on the left. Mirroring the glance of her master, she, too, is looking at the mistress in her moment of awakening. And, if you look closely, you can see a bird at the cat’s paw – so this scene is, in a sense, replicating the central theme of the painting.

The most striking feature is probably the mirror’s reflection, through which we can see that the prostitute is staring outside. Against the stuffy, dimly lit room, the light from the sun and the natural world ‘awaken’ the mistress in such a manner that she gets up an realises what must be done. We can make out a tree in the reflection, and another building behind that.

Like The Annunciation, I think this picture is both very well done and rather beautiful to look at.

Closing Words

If you’re living in London, the go-to place to indulge in the delights of Pre-Raphaelite art is, without a doubt, the Tate Britain in Pimlico. The gallery contains a large range of British art from the sixteenth century to the present day and is most certainly worth a visit or three.

If you enjoyed this post or disagree with some of my impressions, please feel free to leave a comment below. Otherwise, please share it on social media by clicking one of the tender buttons below!

 

*Behold the handmaiden of the Lord!