When Friedrich Klopstock says in his poem Das Rosenband "my life hung with that gaze on her life" and later "her life hung with this gaze on my life" ("mein Leben hing mit diesem Blick 'an ihrem Leben" and "Ihr Leben hing mit diesem Blick' an meinen Leben"), he doesn't say anything that he and his fiancée, Margareta Moller, wouldn't say to each other in their letters. If the tenderness and gentleness of Klopstock's poems matched, as it seems, with reality, the couple's time together should have been really happy. Let's take, for instance, [...]

 

Last June, I told you about a Lied by Schoenberg, Erwartung, the first out of the four Lieder included in the composer's opus 2. While preparing that article, I also listened one more time to those three other songs and I jotted down the second one for today’s post; it's Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm (Give me your golden comb), which is probably not so well known as Erwartung but equally gorgeous.

 

In 1895, the French translation of the work of a Greek poet from the VI century b.C. was published: Les chansons de Bilitis. Traduits du grec pour la première fois par P.L. The translator P L was (as unveiled in the second edition, in 1898) Pierre Louÿs, writer and poet, who had previously published other translations of works from the classical era. The poems had been found in Bilitis's tomb, discovered by the German G. Heim; the verses were engraved on its walls. Heim had published his discovery in 1894, in Leipzig: Bilitis sämtliche Lieder, zum ersten Male herausgegeben und mit einem Wörterbuche versehen (Complete songs of Bilitis, first published and provided with a dictionary). Louÿs's version wasn't complete; the not-yet translated poems were included in an appendix. Seven more were also mentioned, but, as the translator explained in a letter, he couldn't publish [...]

 

One of my friends says that Romanticism was really damaging, and we still suffer the consequences. I agree on some aspects; for example, now, already in the 21st century, we still carry certain habits that are nothing but distortions of the original, as it happens with the adjective "romantic"; Its current meaning has little to do with what it used to mean. We emptied its significance up to the point that we forgot that Romanticism was a revolutionary movement, a reaction to the Enlightenment. For my friend, and me, Enlightenment is a fascinating period: to break away with absolutism and lay the foundations for modernity, scientific and social advances, reason as the light that will end darkness, knowledge as the path to happiness ... What could go wrong? Maybe their faith in reason was excessive and Kantian severity could become quite annoying; sooner or later [...]