The Art Of Recitation And Declamation

GA 281 — 9 February 1913, Berlin

On the Nature of the Folk Song

I would like to say a few words in advance about the event “On the Essence of the Folk Song,” which is to take place here in the form of recitation. We can picture the scene that Goethe presented to friends and visitors at the Weimar court on December 18, 1818. There was a great masked procession, a great procession of living pictures. Among them were two that we would like to look at in particular. One depicted one of those old singers who, since time immemorial, have traveled from country to country singing to the people about the deeds of many a hero, but also about the feelings and emotions in the hearts of ordinary people. The other was a woman who was to represent the legend, the popular tale of good, noble deeds, of good, noble happenings. And these two figures were addressed by Goethe, the speaker who had to explain everything. Among other things, she said:

A noble man, eager to fathom
How man's purpose springs up everywhere,
Listens to the world for sound as a word,
That flows through the lands with a thousand springs;
He passes through the oldest, the newest regions
And listens in all zones. And so from nation to nation he hears singing,
What stirred everyone in the mother's womb,
He hears tell of the good things
That the word of the forefather brought to the father.
All this was delight and teaching,
Feeling and action, as if it were one. What suffering may bring and what is enough,
Bewilders confuses and unhoped unites,
That is what a thousand languages and idioms have meant,
From paradise to today. So the bard sings, speaks legend and saga, We feel it as if it were our own days. When black the rock, surrounded by atmosphere
For dream images of dark lamentation forces,
There bright sunshine in the open sea
The high song of the delighted soul sounds;
They mean well and piously, they want
Only the human thing that everyone should want. Where it is hidden, he would know how to find it,
Seriously veiled, disguised slightly as a game;
In the highest sense of the future to establish,
Humanity is our eternal goal.
Oh, why doesn't he look these days
Cured by humanity, the worst plagues!

This man had already been dead for fifteen years in 1813. Goethe had met him in Strasbourg in 1770. He describes in his “Poetry and Truth” how he entered a house in Strasbourg and encountered a man who, like himself, was about to go up the stairs and who immediately made a great impression on him. This man looked a little strange on the outside, like a poet, but at the same time like a clergyman; he was one, because it was Herder. He had a long silk coat, this coat he had hanging down, the tips tucked into his pocket. Herder was already sick at the time, but a person searching for greatness wherever it could be found. Goethe became friends with him and now the two of them collected folk songs and folk poems in Alsace. One may ask: why did they do that? Why did they go to the country roads, to the villages, to collect folk songs? And why, fifteen years after Herder's death, does Goethe praise the voices that come from the most diverse countries and peoples? Because even then, Goethe and Herder felt a certain urge within themselves to infuse poetry, which had strayed far from all that is genuine and true, with the sounds of the genuine popular heart. Herder went further in this than Goethe; it was he who rekindled the German people's love for the folk song. He collected folk songs wherever he could find them, from the northern Lapps to the southern peoples of the Orient. In 1778/79 he published the “Stimmen der Völker” (Voices of the Nations). It was a general surprise when people realized what poetry lives in the people, poetry that expresses the truest human feeling. Today we can discuss some of these matters in more detail than Herder was able to at the time. We have since learned a lot about the origin of these folk songs, but Herder already sensed all of this. That people originally accompanied everything, work and everything, with the sung word, in which there was rhythm and dance, that Herder already sensed, as did whooping and being sad in the folk song. He was the first to examine these things, then it went away; Uhland, Achim von Arnim continued to seek what people in the simplest of circumstances had written. And it was realized that what Goethe and Herder had written in their youth had an untruth in it; it was only customary in those days to write poetry. When Herder compares a Lappish poem with a poem by a distinguished poet, a poem by Ewald von Kleist, he has to say: What is it that Major von Kleist has written when you read the folk song in comparison? They were looking for what was genuine feeling, genuine poetry, in the folk song. Uhland, Mörike, Goethe himself would not have become such great poets if they had not first recognized the genuine. Today it is no longer possible to accompany work in this way with songs; work has lost all poetry, work has become a heavy burden. But one must see clearly that the folk song did not arise out of the fog.

So how did it come about? It is the human soul's moods that make people joyful or sad, that dismay them, that make them happy or unhappy; everything is in it. And it is always individual people who can feel with the people, who give poetic expression to what lives in the people; they are never numerous, they do not grow like cabbages in the field. Folk fantasy does not create as today's scholars would have it done off the cuff. That is simply nonsense. It is always individual people who have this ability. Even today there are still such people, even if they are very rare.

Depending on the time, folk songs took on different forms, for example in the 16th century. Who started a folk song then? It was wandering people who wandered around with views that had no rights; traveling people from country to country who didn't have much money in their pockets, so there were often cravings for the other pocket that was not with them: such feelings are also expressed, one can say honestly in a folk poem like “Schwartenhals – Schwartenhals” (literally: “The rind of the pork neck”), because others eat the pork neck and the meat, and he only gets the rind; “I came to a landlady's house – he had to leave me his pocket.”

Besides these there are also folk poems in which there is something sublime. All this was collected, and the poets learned an enormous amount from the truth and naturalness of feeling. The best of Goethe's poems, which so beautifully express human mood, human suffering and human desire, are inspired by folk songs. Everything that has ever been alive in the people, as long as the people have not yet grown tired, is expressed in their poetry. An example will be given of how a people in the 19th century still felt about those people whom they knew were their heroes. And Goethe felt this by translating the Neo-Greek-Epirotic heroic songs. They are the songs of the Albanian people; they are very significant and beautifully translated by Goethe. They sing of how the Albanian people feel about their enemy, the Turks, and how they long for freedom and want to summon all their strength against the Turkish occupation. One can say of such poems that they are timely, if not current. How people long to take up the sword to free themselves, something like the roaring of the wind lives in these heroic songs of the Epirotic Albanian people. And these feelings were already alive in Goethe's time. The rhythm and words resound with rushing and roaring feelings of freedom. The final poem is particularly beautiful: Charon, the guide of the dead; more than a guide, a charioteer. People who know modern Greek say that in this, Goethe has achieved something particularly beautiful in imitating what lives in these modern Greek poems.

Finally, a poem will be recited that best shows how folk poetry has been incorporated into art poetry. Genuine ballad tones are conjured up before us by Goethe's “Erlkönig”. This could only have been created by a person like Goethe, who, guided by Herder, then became a ballad poet himself. Goethe's “Etlkönig” is connected to the folk-style poem, as previously collected by Herder, through rhythm and tone.

The following poems by Goethe were recited: “Heidenröslein” (text see p. 28); also “Der König in Thule” and “Der Fischer”.

THE KING IN THULE

There was a king in Thule
Most true in life,
And dying, to his love
A golden cup he gave.

Nothing was better for him,
He emptied it at every feast;
His eyes overflowed
Every time he drank from it.

And when he came to die,
He counted his towns and his kingdom,
Gave everything to his heirs,
But not the cup at the same time.

He sat at the royal table,
The knights around him,
On high Father's Hall,
There at the castle by the sea.

There stood the old reveller,
Drank his last life's glow,
And threw the sacred cup
Down into the flood.

He saw him fall, drink
And sink deep into the sea.
His eyes would sink:
Never drank another drop.

THE FISHERMAN

The water rushed, the water swelled,
A fisherman sat there,
Looking at the fishing rod, peaceful,
Cool up to the heart. And as he sits and listens,
The flood parts up:
From the moving water rushes
A wet woman.

She sang to him, she spoke to him:
What lures you, my brood
With human wit and human guile
Up into the heat of death?
If only you knew how it is for little fish
So comfortably on the ground,
You would descend as you are,
And would only be healthy.

Does not the dear sun delight,
Does not the moon delight in the sea?
Breathing in waves, does not her face
Return twice as beautiful?
Does not your own face beckon you
Back in eternal dew?

The water rushed, the water swelled,
Wetting his naked foot;
His heart swelled so full of yearning,
Like greeting from his sweetheart.
She spoke to him, she sang to him;
Then it happened to him:
Half drawn, half sank he,
And was no longer seen.

NEW GREEK EPIRUS HERO SONGS

I.

When fields have become Turkish,

Otherwise the property of the Albanians;

Stergios is still alive,

He does not respect any pasha.

And as long as it snows up here,

We will not bow to the Turks.

Put your advance guard there,

Where the wolves nest!

Be the slave city dwellers,

The city district is for our brave

Deserted rock crevices.

Rather live with the wild animals

II.

A black ship cleaves the waves
Near the coast of Kassandra,
With black sails above it,
And the blueness of the sky above them.
If a Turkish ship comes towards it,
Its scarlet pennants shine brightly,
“Strike your sails immediately,
Lower the sails dul'
No, I do not lower the sails,
Never do I let them down,
Do you threaten me as if I were a bride,
Bride, that is to be frightened.
I am Jannis, son of Stada,
Son-in-law of Bukovalas.
Come, my friends, to work! With his sword in his fist;
The beams drip with blood
And the waves are reddened.
Allah! Allah! Scream for mercy
The unbelievers on their knees.
Sadly, the winner calls, life! Stay now for the defeated!

III.

Bow, Liakos, to the Pasha,
Bow to the Vizier.
Before thou wast Armatole,
Lord of the land thou now shalt be.
“If Liakos only live,
He will never bow.
His sword is his Pasha,
His vizier is his gun."
Ali Pasha, hearing this,
is angry with the unwelcome guest,
writes the letters, the orders;
he decides what is to be done:
Veli Guekas, hurry vigorously,
through the cities, through the countryside,
Bring me Liakos at once, From the rampart's lofty stand:
Hearty, my children! to work,
Children of mine, to the fray!
Liakos appears nimbly,
Holding the sword in his teeth.
Day and night the fighting raged,
For three days and three nights.
Albanian women weep,
Dressed all in black in mourning;
Veli Guekas returns only to be
Strangled in his own blood.

IV.

What a noise? Where is it coming from?
What a mighty shaking?
Are they bulls before the slaughterhouse,
Wild beasts in fierce battle?
No! Bukovalas, leading fifteen hundred fighters to war,
Fights between Kerasovo
And the great city district.
Gunshots, like rain,
Bullets, like the lock's blow!
A blonde girl calls down
From the window of the gatehouse:
Stop the fighting, Janny,
This loading, this shooting!
Let the dust fall down,
Let the gun smoke blow away,
And then count your warriors,
So that you know who lost!
Three times the Turks were counted,
And four hundred dead lay,
And as the fighters were counted,
Only three faded away.

V.

The sun has set,
The crowd comes to the leader:
Up, companions, draw water
Share in the evening meal! Braid them into my bed;
Bring the confessor to the place,
That I may confess to him,
Reveal to him the deeds
I have done for my life.
Thirty years I am Armatole,
Twenty years a fighter already;
Now I will steal away to my death,
That I may be well satisfied.
Now prepare my grave,
That it may be high and spacious,
Upright, that I may be able to fight,
Able to load the pistols.
On the right I want an open window,
That the swallow may herald spring,
That the nightingale in May
May sing of the loveliest things.

It was followed by: Der Olympos, the Kissavos; Charon (see p. 30 for texts); Herder: Erlkönig's daughter (see p. 28/29 for text).

ERLKÖNIG

Who rides so late through night and wind?
It is the father with his child;
He has the boy well in his arms,
He holds him securely, he keeps him warm.

My son, why do you hide your face so anxiously?
Do you not see, Father, the Erl-King?
The Erl-King with crown and tail?
My son, it is a fog bank.

"You dear child, come, go with me!
I will play very beautiful games with you;
Many a colorful flower is on the beach,
My mother has many a golden robe.

My father, my father, and do you not hear
What the King of the Alders promises me softly? —
Be calm, stay calm, my child:
The wind whispers in dry leaves.

“Will you, dear boy, come with me?
My daughters shall wait on you well;
My daughters lead the nightly round,
And sway and dance and sing you to sleep.”

My father, my father, and do you not see there
Erlking's daughters in the gloomy place? —
My son, my son, I see it clearly:
The old willows seem so gray.

“I love you, I am attracted by your beautiful form;
and if you are not willing, I will use force.”
My father, my father, now he is touching me!
Erlking has harmed me!

The father is horrified, he rides away,
He holds the groaning child in his arms,
He barely reaches the farm;
The child is dead in his arms.

J. W. Goethe