Greetings from... (XI)

La Gare Saint-Lazare – C. Monet

I look up at the sky, always overcast, fasten my jacket tightly (it’s chilly!) and think that in a few days I'll be back in Barcelona, with much warmer temperatures and a much bluer sky. But there is still time to send you a second musical postcard from my travels: Stehe still [stand still], the second of Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, composed in February 1858.

It is often recommended to read Mathilde Wesendonck’s poem with Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy in mind, as this is the path that allows a deeper undestandig of her words and of Wagner’s music. I would suggest, however—if only as a way of beginning to unravel the thread—a first reading that relates the poem to the acceleration of modern live. An acceleration that, by the mid-nineteenth century, was already beginning to make itself felt—think, for example, of the extraordinary changes brought about by the development of railway networks—and today… well, what more need I say!

Wagner represents this initial turmoil with dramatic, hurried music that encompasses the first stanza of the poem and the first six lines of the second; in other words, the opening section of the song is in strophic form. From the line “Daß in selig süßem Vergessen” [That in blessed, sweet forgetfulness] the music changes in search of calm, moving forward and continuously transforming, until it becomes almost static before the final outburst of the voice; it is the postlude that restores peace once again.

The Wesendonck Lieder were written for voice and piano, but it is usual to hear them in the orchestral version by Felix Mottl, a fine connoisseur of Wagner’s music, in which the connections with Tristan und Isolde –the opera on which the composer was working at the same time as these lieder– are heard even more clearly. We shall listen to Stehe still, performed by Júlia Várady with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Greetings from...

Stehe still

Sausendes, brausendes Rad der Zeit,
Messer du der Ewigkeit;
Leuchtende Sphären im weiten All,
Die ihr umringt den Weltenball;
Urewige Schöpfung, halte doch ein,
Genug des Werdens, laß mich sein!

Halte an dich, zeugende Kraft,
Urgedanke, der ewig schafft!
Hemmet den Atem, stillet den Drang,
Schweiget nur eine Sekunde lang!
Schwellende Pulse, fesselt den Schlag;
Ende, des Wollens ew'ger Tag!
Daß in selig süßem Vergessen
Ich mög alle Wonnen ermessen!

Wenn Aug' in Auge wonnig trinken,
Seele ganz in Seele versinken;
Wesen in Wesen sich wiederfindet,
Und alles Hoffens Ende sich kündet,
Die Lippe verstummt in staunendem Schweigen,
Keinen Wunsch mehr will das Innre zeugen:
Erkennt der Mensch des Ew'gen Spur,
Und löst dein Rätsel, heil'ge Natur!

Roaring and rushing wheel of time,
You are the measurer of Eternity;
Shining spheres in the wide universe,
You who surround the world globe,
Eternal creation, halt!
Enough development, let me be!

Cease, generative powers,
The primal thoughts which you are ever creating!
Slow your breathing, still your urge
Silently, only for a second long!
Swelling pulses, fetter your beating,
End, o eternal day of willing!
That in blessed, sweet forgetfulness,
I may measure all my bliss!

When one eye another drinks in bliss,
And one soul into another sinks,
One nature in another finds itself again,
And when each hope's fulfillment is finished,
When the lips are mute in astounded silence,
And no wish more does the heart invent,
Then man recognizes the sign of Eternity,
And solves your riddle, holy Nature!

(translation by Emily Ezust)