Ode to Joy

A few years ago my daughter, practicing for her piano lessons, was plinking away at the keyboard and came upon the theme for the last movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the Ode to Joy.  With a number of repetitions, the melody began to sink into my brain - and I mulled over the fact that while I loved this movement, I did not comprehend the German choral part (written originally by Schiller and adapted by Beethoven) and had never really liked the English translations of it that I had seen.  Rather than a literal transcription it should be something that matched the melodic line of the symphony - and it occurred to me that this was something I could attempt.  

Since I really do not speak German - recognizing about one word in three - the effort involved several hours labor with a dictionary.  Rather than forcing full rhymes I went for a loose slant-rhyming scheme that kept the right rhythm, and I was happy with how nicely it danced!

Joy, ye shining spark of heaven,

Daughter of Elysium.

We draw near your holy temple,

Blessed spirit, drunk with flame.

Though this world may coldly sunder,

Your soft magic knits a bond.

Where your wing has lightly brushed us,

All men wake to brotherhood.

Who through toil has yet succeeded

To his friends a friend to be,

Who has won his only sweetheart,

Join with us in rhapsody!

Yes, whoever ’cross the world’s globe

One lone soul can call his own;

Let the rest who never loved go

Slink away and weep alone.

From the breasts of Nature every

Creature drinks of Joy its fill.

Good and wicked, each is drawn to

Follow on her rosy trail.

By her gift came wine and kisses,

Friendship proven to the end.

Pleasure to the Worm was given;

Rapt by God, an angel stands

Glad, as shining suns go sailing

By vast heaven’s splendid plan.

Fly, my brothers, down your raceway –

Joy to your victorious band!

May ye be embraced, ye millions,

Kiss the world entirely held.

Brothers, there beyond the star-veil

Must a loving Father dwell.

Do ye kneel to him, ye millions?

Do you sense your Maker, world?

Seek him there beyond the star-veil,

Past the star-fields must he dwell.

One point that struck me, after having reworked this poem word by word, is that there is a triple structure to the text that echoes the Christian Trinity; three stanzas relate to the Holy Spirit, then three to the Son, and lastly three to the Father. 

Later, some months after I had finished, a story I had once read by Ursula LeGuin came to mind, in which with her usual cool grace she had limned the Ode to Joy as an enduring brilliance of the human soul that could only be weakly counterfeited, but never truly expressed, by the service of an oppressive regime.  (By counterpoint, I remembered watching a viscerally appalling advertisement on television after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, in which the Ode to Joy was appropriated to accompany images of sea lions and dozens of other ocean creatures boisterously applauding Exxon's environmental stewardship.) Le Guin's story rested in my mind for a few days, and then I took the odd step of writing a letter to her and enclosing a copy of my little translation.  Some days later I was surprised and pleased to get a gracious response back by post, complimenting the verse.  It was gratifying to have such a moment of contact with an author whom I've admired for so many years - and through music!  

-GEC

Prologue

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne with swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour.
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breath
Inspired hath in every holt and heath
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half-course y-ronne
And smale foweles maken melodye
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages -
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrymages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes kouthe in sondry londes
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende
The holy blisful martyr for to seke
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Of course, this is how the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales commences, in Chaucer's original Middle English.  Many years ago I set out to memorize this, mostly because the title echoed my own name, but soon I found it specially fascinating because of the sound and flow of the language.  It seems about halfway between an English that we could comprehend without special effort and a fully foreign language.  Almost every word is at least related to a modern word of similar meaning, even if it is not immediately obvious (for "ferne halwes", think "far/foreign hallows/holies").  But the emphasis and intonation of the syllables is very different, so when I speak it aloud most people can only catch the meaning of a few phrases.

It has been a nice party trick from time to time.  I was able to commit it to memory as far as the portrait of the knight - about three minutes of verse - but I foundered on the squire, who was just a bit too insufferable for me to tolerate him as permanent resident in my head.

It seems an appropriate piece to set the tone here, since it actually does bear on multiple facets of my life.  The recognition of characters at a distance in time and space, remote enough that speech and custom have altered, but near enough that their common humanity is palpable.  The placement of everyday human life and meaning within the cycles of nature and the cosmos.  The threads connecting these people to us, and by implication those threads connecting us to our descendants seven hundred years hence.  And I have always been fond of the "smale foweles", although the ones I know best make their annual pilgrimages from the forests of western North America to the thorn scrub and cloud forests of the Neotropics.

Bifil that in that sesun on a day
At Southwerk, at the Tabard, as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury, with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde
The chambres and the stables weren wyde
And wel we weren esed atte beste
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
That I was of hir felaweshipe anon
And made forward erly for to ryse
To take oure way ther as I yow devyse
But nathelees, whily I have tyme and space
Ere that I ferther in this tale pace
Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
To tell you al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me
And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne
And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.

GEC