The stranger's evening song

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The Stranger Evening Song is the title of a poem by Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck published in 1821 . It was published by Heinrich Christian Schumacher as part of a collection of Schmidt von Lübeck poems . The work is also known under the title Der Wanderer , which Franz Schubert gave to his setting of the poem. The melancholy poem is one of the best-known poems of German Romanticism , not least thanks to the much-quoted closing line and the Schubert setting .

text

I come from the mountains
The dawn lies on the forest and the sea;
I look at the evening star.
Home is so far, so far.

The night spans her blue tent
high above God's wide world,
the world so full and I alone,
the world so big and me so small.

They live downstairs house by house,
And go in and out peacefully;
But alas, the stranger's
wand goes up and down the country.

In many a dear valley it shines
The morning and evening rays,
I walk quietly and not very happy,
and the sigh always asks: where?

The sun seems dull and cold to me,
The blossom withered, life old,
And what they say, deaf sound,
I am a stranger everywhere.

Where are you, my promised land,
wanted, suspected and never known?
The land, the land so green of hope,
the land where my roses bloom?

Where my dreams go,
Where my dead rise,
The land that speaks my language,
And has everything that I lack?

I reflect on time and space,
I quietly ask flowers and trees;
It brings the breath back:
"Where you are not there is happiness!"

analysis

Formal aspects

The poem comprises eight stanzas of four lines each with four-part iambi . It only uses paired rhymes.

Content aspects

The first stanza begins with the description of a picturesque landscape of the soul. In stanzas 1 to 5 the melancholy of the lyrical self is depicted. It is driven by a longing for home, but cannot survive in the “full” and “big world”. It also distances itself from society, whose speeches appear to be "deaf sound" to it, while at the same time admiring the "peaceful" lives of other people. His longing makes it impossible for him to return to the imperfect world, which is why it sadly concludes: "I am a stranger everywhere."

Verses 6 and 7 express the wishful thinking of the lyrical ego of a “promised land” that it sought and suspected in vain. In this land the innermost desires of the lyrical self manifest.

The final eighth stanza expresses the incompatibility of the nature of his inner world with that of the outer world and ends with the tragic “breath of air”: “Where you are not there is happiness.”

meaning

The poem, written in a melancholy tone, is a typical work of German Romanticism. It deals with numerous essential motifs of romantic poetry , such as longing , homesickness , loneliness , world pain and wandering . The last line of the poem is one of the most famous quotes of romance as they sententious way the romantic feeling of Weltschmerz, of despair because of the inadequacy of the world and the insatiable desire, expresses.

Settings by Franz Schubert

The hiker

For its setting, Franz Schubert gave the poem the title “The Wanderer” and thus weighted the hiking motif even more strongly. He shortened the poem, made slight changes to the text and dissolved the stanza structure. The song bears the number D 489 in the Schubert catalog raisonné (in an earlier version of the catalog: D 493) and is not to be confused with the song D 649, which also bears the title “Der Wanderer”, but a different poem (by Friedrich by Schlegel ).

The song is in C sharp minor . The prelude is characterized by triplets in changing chords and anticipates the melancholy mood. The melancholy opening part is headed “Very slowly” and increases with the transition to the description of the “promised land” (in Schubert “beloved land”) via “something quicker” to “speed”. The tragic final section, which of course ends in major , is to be played a tempo again . In addition to these tempo changes, the piece is also rich in crescendos , decrescendos , dissonances and other dramatic stylistic devices.

Wanderer Fantasy

In the four-movement Wanderer Fantasy for piano , Schubert processed the musical and non-musical themes of his song.

literature

  • Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck: Poems . Altona 1847.
  • Schubert album for medium voice- Volume I . CF Peters, Leipzig.

Recordings

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck: Poems. Altona 1847. p. 76.
  2. ^ Schubert album for medium voice , Volume I, CF Peters, Leipzig, p. 185.

Web links