German Song Onstage. Laura Tunbridge

galop is recognizably a nod to Vienna’s Redouten.

      We owe a small troupe of bygone people thanks for the existence of these songs, beginning with one of medieval Persia’s most important poets, Khwaja Shams-ud Din Muhammed Hafez-e Shirazi, best known by his pen name Hafiz, born in the garden city of Shiraz in south central Persia (Iran) circa 1315. He died there in 1389 or 1390. The 486 ghazals in his Divan, or anthology, were meant to be sung (Hafiz was famous for the sweetness of his singing voice), and they are exceptionally complex, even for such a sophisticated form as this—easy comprehensibility was not his stock-in-trade.⁴⁹ All ghazals are written in couplets called “beyts,” or “houses,” each with a fixed rhyme at the end of the second line, except for the “matla” (which means “orient” or “rising”), that is, the first couplet with the rhyme in both lines; this couplet sets the stage by stating the subject matter and establishing the atmosphere of the poem. The other couplets are reactions to the matla and feature actions that change, viewed from different angles and progressing from one point to another along a deepening trajectory until we reach the “maqta,” the objective of the ghazal contained in the final couplet and usually including the poet’s name. Hafiz’s ghazals often tell of the movement of opposites toward unity, such as lover and beloved, friendship and solitude, life and death, ignorance and wisdom, grief and bliss, the world that is passing and God who never dies, separation and union, the soul yearning to be united with itself, and so on, and they had a rich afterlife.⁵⁰ These marvelous poems entered the German-speaking world through the auspices of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, born in Graz in 1774 and trained at Vienna’s Oriental Academy, founded by Empress Maria Theresa to teach diplomats the languages and customs of the Ottoman Empire. His translation of Hafiz was the first complete rendering into German, and it electrified Goethe when the publishing firm of Cotta sent him “some novelties” along with the books he had ordered from them in early 1814.⁵¹ “Hafiz is my sibling,” he wrote, in reaction to their shared fascination with the sensuous pleasures of life, precisely because they were both so aware of the temporal, transitory dimension of existence.⁵² The vital and erotic power of this poetry, its antidogmatic skepticism, and its typically Persian conversion of images from Nature into a substitute mythology drew him into another world, one that Marianne von Willemer joined after Goethe gave her a copy as a gift later that year and began writing poetry in which she is named Suleika and he becomes Hatem.⁵³ When Marianne invokes “Athem,” or “breath” in “Suleika I,” it is a West-East play of words on the name Hatem, from the Arabic “hātim” (one who ordains or decrees) and “khātim” (which means a seal, signet ring, or stamp).⁵⁴ Goethe also translated the Song of Solomon, and it was there that he discovered the Hebrew “hotem” or “seal,” cognate with the Arabic: “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thy arm: for love is strong as death” (Song of Sol. 8:6). The words Siegel and siegeln thereafter resound throughout the Divan as part and parcel of its secret-encoded passion. Ciphers, games, masks, and veils are everywhere in this collection.

      Example 1.5. Comparisons of Franz Schubert, “Suleika I,” D720 and “Suleika II,” D717.

      a. “Suleika I,” measures 109–14; “Suleika II,” measures 9–12.

      b. “Suleika II,” measures 129–34; “Suleika I,” measures 82–89.

      When Marianne in 1814 gave Goethe her poem “Hochbeglückt in deiner Liebe,” which Hugo Wolf would later set to music so beautifully, Goethe had to recognize that she loved him. Responding as he often did to erotic situations that he accepted as hopeless (in this instance, both parties were married and of disparate ages, Goethe 65, Marianne 20), Goethe fled to Heidelberg to confer with some learned orientalists—but both Willemers followed him there. On 23 September, Marianne gave Goethe a poem beginning “Was bedeutet die Bewegung?” that she had written in the coach on the way to Heidelberg, and when they parted for the last time three days later, she gave him “Ach, um deine feuchten Schwingen.” Goethe would incorporate her three poems, lightly edited, into his Buch Suleika in the Divan and would, shortly before his death in 1832, send her back the letters she had written him over the years, as “witness to the loveliest of times.”⁵⁵ It was not until nine years after her death in December 1860 that Herman Grimm (his father and uncle were the Brothers Grimm) revealed the true authorship of the three poems many had already identified as among the most beautiful in the volume.

      Marianne’s exquisite poem “Was bedeutet die Bewegung?” begins with multiple questions about meaning—precisely the sort that so often impels poetry.⁵⁶

Was bedeutet die Bewegung? Bringt der Ost mir frohe Kunde? Seiner Schwingen frische Regung Kühlt des Herzens tiefe Wunde. Kosend spielt er mit dem Staube, Jagt ihn auf in leichten Wölkchen, Treibt zur sichern Rebenlaube Der Insekten frohes Völkchen. Lindert sanft der Sonne Glühen, Kühlt auch mir die heißen Wangen, Küßt die Reben noch im Fliehen, Die auf Feld und Hügel prangen. Und mir bringt sein leises Flüstern Von dem Freunde tausend Grüße; Eh’ noch diese Hügel düstern, Grüßen mich wohl tausend Küsse. Und so kannst du weiter ziehen! Diene Freunden und Betrübten. Dort wo hohe Mauern glühen, Dort find’ ich bald den Vielgeliebten. Ach, die wahre Herzenskunde, Liebeshauch, erfrischtes Leben Wird mir nur aus seinem Munde, Kann mir nur sein Atem geben.57

What does this stirring portend? Does the east wind bring me joyous tidings? The refreshing motion of its wings Cools the heart’s deep wound. It plays sweetly with the dust, Chasing it about in light clouds, And drives the happy swarm of insects To the shelter of the vine leaves. It gently tempers the burning heat of the sun, And cools my hot cheeks; Even as it flies, it kisses the vines That adorn the fields and hillsides. And its soft whispering brings me A thousand greetings from my beloved; Before these hills grow dark, I shall be greeted by a thousand kisses. And now you may pass on, And serve friends and those who are sad. There, where high walls glow, I shall soon find my dearly beloved. Ah, the true message from the heart, The breath of love, renewed life, Will come to me only from his lips, Can be given to me only by his breath.

      Breezes from both east and west as messengers between lovers are a recurring element of medieval Persian verse, and both Goethe and Marianne availed themselves of it. “The musky morning breeze will gently blow again, / Once more the old world will turn young and grow again,” Hafiz writes at the start of one ghazal,⁵⁸ “Sweet breeze, convey the dust of our existence to that place / Where Splendor reigns” in another. “At dawn, upon the breeze, I caught the scent of my beloved’s hair,” he tells us in the initial couplet of yet another poem and “Last night, news of my departed friend was brought to me upon the wind” at the start of another.⁵⁹ “O morning breeze, abet me now, tonight, because to blossom as dawn lies in wait is what I long for,” and “The east breeze at daybreak brings a perfume from the beloved’s hair” are other lovely specimens—Marianne surely took note of the latter.⁶⁰ Dust as metonymy for both an earthly place and humanity’s envelope of flesh is also a frequent motif in Persian poetry; hence its appearance in Marianne’s poem (“Kosend spielt er mit dem Staube”); if I have not been able to find a happy swarm of insects in Dick Davis’s or Hammer-Purgstall’s translations, her invention of them is in accord with Persian poetic conversion of Nature into symbols with mythological power.⁶¹ Throughout five stanzas, Marianne-Suleika imagines reunion with the beloved, but in the final verse, her underlying fear that “Wiedersehen” will become “Trennung” breaks through. The Persian cliché of breezes as go-betweens (winds bring ill news, breezes bring love messages) now become something deeper: the beloved’s actual breath, which is also the bearer