Memories of Youth in the Countryside - by Franz Grillparzer
An English translation of the poem "Memories of Youth in the Countryside" by Franz Grillparzer
This is the bench, these are the same trees,
Where once, the dark schoolbook in hand,
Fearful of the exam, head full of spring dreams,
Years ago, the boy often found himself.
There he sat, from the dark letters,
To many a foreign word heavily joined,
His gaze drifted up to those fresh leaves,
In which the west wind playfully sways.
And spirits of future shapes and creations
And the joy of future achievements
Appeared to him in the bending of the treetops,
Sounded to him in a heart full of premonition.
The barely dared hope was fulfilled,
The premonition held what it had foretold,
The golden gates of action stand open,
One step succeeded, a second was ventured.
And now, after many years' intervals,
Matured into a man, weighed and recognized,
I find myself again under these trees,
My gaze, as then, turned upwards,
And sighs, swelling as then, lift
The weary chest, heavy with many a worry,
Until the tear, which is no longer given,
Everything is as it was then, all around.
Unsatisfied heart, why are you troubled?
What you so ardently desired, stands here!
The hour of fulfillment has come,
You have what your wish saw in the distance.
What? or was the abundance of colorful images
Not the content of what you desired,
Just the outer shell of deeper longing,
Only the garment of what you found desirable?
Did you perhaps strive to create beauty,
To feel more beautiful yourself with it?
Was striding in the fields of knowledge's light
Also a step in the land of desire for you?
Did you perhaps long for honor and fame,
Blending in thoughts, youthful,
The eye with which the world views the man,
And that with which he views himself?
Did the world with its vast distances
Seem to you a primeval image, worthy of imitation?
Where it shimmered, did you dream of stars?
Of reality at every sweet illusion?
O deceiver from the beginning, you, o life!
I entered pure as a young man with you,
Pure was my heart and pure all my striving,
But you paid me with deceit and illusion.
Friendship spoke, my inner self echoed,
We, two, boldly swam away from the shore.
He sank, I still held him, he pulled me down
And exhausted, saved himself to land.
More powerful secret drives stirred,
An unknown longing awoke,
They called it, I myself called it love,
And pursued a lovely one's image.
Barely seen, no word from her heard,
She seemed to originate from a higher light,
Through mountains and valleys, ignited within,
I pursued her fleeing image.
Then came the day, the veil was torn,
Commonness stood where once an angel flew.
Narcissus-like, longing dreamed of itself,
And died, like him, at the spring that deceived it.
A curtain covers, what follows that place;
I do not lift it, mention is enough,
Two sphinxes rest at the hidden threshold,
The godhead attached to the animal body.
The entrance seems to justify hopes,
The end would be good enough as a beginning,
But before the spirit seizes the consequence,
The coarse deceit is already over.
There I found her, who will never escape me,
Who will never be replaced in my life,
I believed to find my bliss,
And my innermost being cried: only she!
Feeling, basking in the warmth of the heart,
Understanding, although overshadowed by kindness;
What she could do for others bordered on fairy tale,
What she denied herself, on halo.
The doubt that often darkly followed me:
Whether goodness exists? it was illuminated through her;
Man is good, I know it, for she lives,
Her heart is surety to me for a world.
In fiery embrace we plunged together,
Every beat sparked and gave light;
Yet indestructible we found ourselves in the flames,
We glowed, but alas, we did not melt.
For halves can be fitted together,
I was a whole and so was she,
She willingly would have left her deepest being,
But too tightly wound was the wreath.
Thus both stood, trying to unite,
To completely absorb the other,
But all in vain, despite struggling, storming, weeping,
She remained a woman, and I was always I.
Yes, to the point of anger was heightened the effort,
Sought in the individual, what lay in the whole,
No fault was forgiven, no word any more,
And new torment brought each day.
Then I became hard. In the eternal play of the winds,
In the storm, never penetrated by the sun,
The stronger sapling wrapped itself in bark
Continuing the translation from where it left off:
The stronger sapling covered itself with bark,
The weaker one bent and was broken.
O blessed feeling of the early days,
Why did you have to be a dream?
Does beauty only live in image and legend,
And does reality consume it like fog?
Even there, not homeless in image and word,
I fled, like the sailor pressed by the sea,
As often as the storms opened the gate,
Into the protective area of that harbor.
Lying in the scent of foreign herbs,
Played by the gentle breeze of foreign treetops,
I saw in a dream the high ladder to heaven,
On which spirits ascend and descend.
And inspired to climb it myself,
To look around in the vast space,
I tried, returned, to describe,
What I had seen, half truth and half dream.
"The poor one, to whom a god turned away,
The poet's dazzling, sad fate,
How the mind ends in its own abyss,
The fleeting luck of earthly greatness."
And blazingly I recounted the vision,
The listener, though cold, did not escape me,
For the pulse of life ran through my songs,
And true, like my feeling, was my poem.
Foreseeing I dared to say to the great,
Already enveloped in fame like sacrificial smoke:
As high as you no wing may carry me,
But, masters, look! a painter I am too.
Then came sobriety in its nakedness,
Thinking itself great, because hollow but wide;
It measured my human greatness in inches,
The substance's solidity in pounds and ounces.
But can a formula ever create life?
What is monstrous is not necessarily great.
A possibility towers over all distances,
The real only shows itself in space.
Where a thousand tints my eyes discerned,
Dull-mindedness saw stark green and blue,
Where riddles led me on to further riddles,
To them the truth was quite precisely known.
Was a meadow where I picked flowers,
Freshly driven there was the cattle breeding!
Where only their footstep pressed into the ground,
Lay mud and grass in disgusting mix.
What not to say, that was the talk,
What not to express, that was their word;
Even if you disdain their weapons for the feud,
It's nonsense to choose their ground.
Forms, that my spirit embraced in fervor,
Roughness laid its filthy hand on them,
I saw the mark on the desecrated cheeks,
And my soul, it felt estranged.
And as man avoids the most beautiful, precious place,
Once something horrible has visited it,
So my spirit fled from my youth's gardens,
Appalled by the betrayal of its holiest.
Hard on its heels the long line of malice,
Envy, hate, armed to behold,
Their arrows hit with double impact,
For, alas, who sings, cannot go in armor;
And if he faces them, aiming at him,
Seizes the angry equipment of strife,
The heavy armor presses hard calluses,
Over which the sense of feeling escapes.
So I fled from the combat's fiery burden
Back to nature, where life recreates itself,
I pressed my chest to Mother Earth,
To rise again in strength like Antaeus.
But she, who often fought my cause,
Who so often and gladly comforted me before,
Had lost the language for me,
The language, or I the ear for her.
Formerly docile at her pious side,
Now only stubborn creation seemed gain to me,
Her word faded in the expanse of my chest,
Her sign disappeared before my dull sense.
And shuddering before the world and its actions,
Scorning every bond it weaves,
I could not live it, could not describe it,
And almost could not bear the sight.
Yes, listening to the inner gentle voices,
My soul shudders when it seems,
A tone rings, echoed by tones,
With which the common drove me away.
Where once the boy dreamed, sat and pondered.
If only I had what I lost again,
How gladly I would give what I have gained since then.