wolfenmann.com

What they call Interests, those have gone;

New ones in their place must be born;

I sit, pensive, pensive ’bout nothing –

Nowhere to go and nothing to sing –

And when I try, ’tis the world’s own discord;

But I can still listen to the Lord.

What they call Passions, those I control;

For if I don’t, they’ll cause misery untold;

I sit motionless, thinking about but nothing –

The heavens to attain if thought but took wing!

But such’s not to try, for it moves of its own accord;

Yet, in such dimness, I can listen to the Lord.

What they call Strength, in me I don’t witness;

Call it or strength, or life, or passion, or finesse;

All’s sapped into but a single thought –

A thought of nothingness, one large Nought;

No Should nor Ought for me now. I can’t afford

Not to keep listening and listening to the Lord.

Beethoven-Lord empowers the survival-will

Of those by Life made miserable-ill;

I go to him who Acts not on Whim;

For dear life now I hang by Him.

The name of Wilhelm Müller has been with me for 15 years now as a shadowy presence. Some of Schubert’s most famous Lieder are from what Müller wrote, which is why he seemed important. But beyond that, the peculiarities: How childishly simple the words! How repetitive, but so much fascination in the repeated themes! So much sadness… in one place!

As far as I’m concerned, the charm of Müller is that his words (in many places, and artlessly) capture the essence of sadness. I got reminded of this today, seeing (for the first time) the similarity between a line in Die Winterreise and one in Die schöne Müllerin. From the former, “Kalt starrt ihr Bild darin…” and from the latter, “Das Wild das ich jage…”

They’re from two entirely different (but connected in that eerie, depressive way!) sets of songs, two different stories that share the main theme. The former says about how the person “must not let go of that which is killing me,” that is, “I perceive that I will die if I let go of my misery.” The latter says about how the person “wishes for death, and what stands between him and his wish is his pain.” But: His wish for death is exactly because of that pain!

And that really is the reason for sadness. Literally, the reason, that is, the explanation. One remains sad because there is the misguided yet all-too-real perception that if one were to stride away from it, something bad might happen.

It makes me think about all the mind-loops and life-sucking vortices we get into; some make us stray from our purpose, some are addictions, some are deep pleasures and so on; it’s very useful to see sadness in the same light.

So, well, I looked at a few of Müller’s poems, and I came across this gem of history: Müller was not just a poet, he was also a translator. It was he who translated Marlowe’s Faustus into German, which was the inspiration — or perhaps germ-idea — for Goethe’s Faust!

Amazing, really. A silent kind of person who did “little” stuff like translating — and writing poems with, most often, very simple ideas — ending up inspiring much of Schubert and even more of Goethe.

Höre mich an, Welt! Höre an den Knecht des Vaters! I know why Schubert didn’t finish the unfinished one. It’s because the first two movements set the ground for something greater than the Master had given.

Franz the upstart was too young. He did not see that his Work *should* have been to continue what The Master had taught him. He saw only this much: Master has shown me.

Beethoven’s 10th symphony? Why, if Franz Schubert had finished his unfinished one, it would have been the Master’s 900th! And that is terrible, unthinkable, ganz unhöflich, doch schrecklich!!