Lullaby for Mirjam

Lullaby for Mirjam is a poem with four stanzas and seven lines of verse by Richard Beer-Hofmann . It first appeared in Pan magazine on November 15, 1898.

text

Sleep my child - sleep it is late!
See how the sun goes to rest there,
Behind the mountains it dies in red.
You - you know nothing of the sun and death,
Turn your eyes to the light and the shine;
Sleep - there are so many suns still yours,
sleep my child, - my child falls asleep.

Sleep my child - the evening wind blows;
Do you know where he's from, where he's going?
Dark, hidden the ways are here, from
you, and also me, and all of us, my child!
Blind people - so we go, and go alone,
no one can be no companion here, -
sleep my child - my child go to sleep!

Sleep my child - and don't listen to me!
It only has meaning for me, and sound is for you;
Just sound like wind blowing, rivulet,
words - perhaps a lifetime's profit!
What I have won they dig in with me,
Nobody can be an heir to nobody here -
sleep my child, - my child fall asleep!

Are you sleeping mirjam - Mirjam, my child,
we are only on the shore, and deep within us runs
blood from what has been, - it rolls towards those to come;
Blood of our fathers, full of unrest and pride.
All are in us. Who feels alone
You are her life, - her life is yours, -
Mirjam, my life, - my child, go to sleep.

Emergence

The background for the creation is the birth of the daughter Mirjam Beer-Hofmann on September 4, 1897. Hugo von Hofmannsthal reacted to the birth with a plan for a festival The Child and the Guests, in which a lullaby also plays a role. Arthur Schnitzler corrected the draft of the lullaby in June 1898, mainly adjusting the punctuation. The fourth verse of the second stanza read in a variant: "You, and me, and all of us, my child."

interpretation

The poem addresses the role that a child has in the long line of ancestors. The ancestors live on in it, but it itself is only part of a chain that it has no idea of yet.

expenditure

First print: Lullaby for Mirjam. In: Pan, Jg. 4, H. 2., 15. November 1898, S. 88. ( online )
Albert Soergel : poetry and poet of the time. 11th edition, Leipzig 1911, p. 480, Textarchiv - Internet Archive
Printed in 1938 by Bermann-Fischer-Verlag , online
Facsimile print of Beer-Hofmann's manuscript, on stone, 1944 or 1945, in 25 copies

literature

Sören Eberhardt: Birth to Death - Life through Judaism. To Beer-Hofmann's lullaby for Mirjam. In: Nortbert Otto Eke, Günther Helmes (ed.): Richard Beer-Hofmann (1866–1945). Studies on his work . Würzburg 1993, pp. 99-115.

Individual evidence

^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Beer Hofmann: Correspondence . Ed .: Eugen Weber. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 71 .
^ Arthur Schnitzler, Richard Beer-Hofmann: Correspondence 1891–1931 . Ed .: Konstanze Fliedl . Europe, Vienna / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-203-51150-9 , p. 118 .

[1] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Beer Hofmann: Correspondence . Ed .: Eugen Weber. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 71 .

[2] Arthur Schnitzler, Richard Beer-Hofmann: Correspondence 1891–1931 . Ed .: Konstanze Fliedl . Europe, Vienna / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-203-51150-9 , p. 118 .