Thoughts on Der Taucher

 I took as my writing project last month a translation of Friedrich Schiller's "Der Taucher" (The Diver) - having recently revisited my version of "Ode to Joy" and remembered the pleasant challenge of transposing from an unfamiliar language within the constraints of meter and slant-rhyme.  I thought I might try again - and picked another of Schiller's poems roughly at random.  Not quite what I expected!

Understand that I had not previously read this or been familiar with the story.  I deliberately didn't look at any other English translations because they would be bound to bias me.  My German is poor enough that just scanning ahead did not give me much more than a few recognizable words. So I found out what was going on one stanza as a time, as I translated each one with the dictionary.  It went something like this:

Stanzas 1 and 2:  Okay.  Nice adventure setup here.

3 and 4: Or, setup for a comedy.  Of errors.

5 and 6: Oh dear. That got... very intense very fast.  I think this is what they call Sturm und Drang?

7:  OMG Shit is getting real!

8:  Jesus Mary and Joseph it is not even halfway over yet!

And it carried on from there...

The big theme is the Romantic awe of the natural world, which is indeed magnificently rendered and of which more in a moment, but first let us pause and acknowledge the indisputable fact that the king's daughter is the only character in the story with the sense that God gave a barnyard goose.  I take no responsibility for poor decisions made by these people.. The diver lad stretches the line between bravery and stupidity out to a vanishing point like a spiderweb.  And the king - well, judging by his behavior, my guess is that goblet had already seen heavy alcoholic use that afternoon.  Dude!  You're sending him down there again?!? I'm not sure the kid even had time to taste his victory champagne.  I guess some guys are just mean drunks. 

But more seriously... the way Schiller perceives the energies and creatures of the ocean is a strange combination - fearful rapture at the wild chaos, underlain by a kind of existential horror at what exists in the depths.  And it's hardly wrong to do so; since still every winter I read news stories of vacationers swept away by a rogue wave on the Pacific coast.  

But in a way it is also a function of the technological abilities of the time in which he was writing.  In 1797, anyone observing the sea from fifty fathoms down would have done so very briefly before a quick and untimely death; so I guess it stands to reason that Schiller would think of it as an aquatic hellscape.  As the diver looked down into the abyss I was half-expecting to glimpse Cthulhu gazing back at him.  And I am still not quite sure he wasn't.

But I did also grow up watching the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau!  Scuba divers amid brilliant silvery fish schooling and flashing in unison, kelp forests swaying in the waves, luminescent jellyfish gracefully pulsing across the blue... I know that the world beneath the sea has every bit the beauty of a summer forest. And to paint it all in tones of shuddering horror perhaps tells us more about the perspective of the writer than about the reality.  

Not that any part of Earth's natural world is exempt from pain and mortality.  Every fractal beauty and graceful curve is formed out of the incarnate history of the world; these intricate unfoldings, these joys in motion, are exactly what has survived and persisted beyond billions of generations of deaths. 

So, strange to hear the same poet saying

From the breasts of Nature
Every creature drinks of joy its fill.
Good and wicked, each is drawn 
To follow on her rosy trail

yet also

But terrible dread still abides down beneath,
And Man should not tempt the old gods in their might,
And never should crave to display unconcealed 
The night and the horror they've mercifully veiled. 

Both true - inextricably, inexplicably, intertwined.

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