When the French laid waste the castle in Heidelberg one final time in 1693 they wanted to destroy the castle and the town. Their spoils would have been the Kurpfalz, the Electorate of the Palatinate, the state consisting of many smallish areas in the Upper … Continue reading The Jewel on the Neckar
Opera lovers might know E.T.A. Hoffmann from Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann or as the author of The Nutcracker. He was one of the most important and well-known German poets of Romanticism.
To really appreciate the quote one should know that “love” is feminine in German, whereas “thought” is masculine.
“What is space and time to love! Doesn’t she live in thoughts and does he recognise a measure?”
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Waldeinsamkeit is a German romantic concept, usually explained as “solitude in a forest”. The poem in this hut, which is dedicated to a former head forester, quotes all the clichés of the romantics’ conception of forest versus town.
It translates (more or less) like this: If you feel too crowded in the town, and too distressed at home, then leave the pressing throng behind and escape into the quiet woods. Allow yourself to settle down here. Calmness and woodland solitude creates peace, and unites once again what keeps the wicked world apart.
But still has another meaning and I wouldn’t be true to myself if I wouldn’t add this:
Is it still there?
Graf Hermann von Pückler-Muskau is credited with having coined the term meaning the sickening for far away places. He travelled extensively in the first part of the 18th century and used the term in his letters and travelogues. But the sentiment grew out of the times – the late Romantic era manifested probably best by the German poet Joseph von Eichendorff.
Although Eichendorff did not use the word, his poem Sehnsucht (Yearning or Longing) is the embodiment of the concept:
Yearning
The stars were shining with golden light
As I stood alone by the window
And listened to the distant sound
Of the posthorn in the still countryside.
My heart became inflamed in my body,
And I thought secretly to myself:
Ah, if only I could journey with them
Into that magnificent summer night!
Sehnsucht
Es schienen so golden die Sterne,
Am Fenster ich einsam stand
Und hörte aus weiter Ferne
Ein Posthorn im stillen Land.
Das Herz mir im Leibe entbrennte,
Da hab ich mir heimlich gedacht:
Ach, wer da mitreisen könnte
In der prächtigen Sommernacht.
Linked to the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Fernweh.
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