GreatWritersFranzKafka

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Tuesday, 10 April 2012

"But to us is given In no place to rest": Hyperion's Song of Fate by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843)

Posted on 08:04 by Unknown

You wander above in the light
On smooth ground, blessed genii!
Gleaming airs of heaven
Touch you softly
As the girl-player’s fingers
Touch holy strings.




Fateless, like the sleeping
Infant, breathe the heaven-dwellers;
Chastely guarded
In modest bud
Everlastingly
Blooms their spirit,
And their blessed eyes
Gaze in tranquil
Eternal clarity.




But to us is given
In no place to rest;
Suffering mankind
Vanishes, falls
Blindly from one
Hour to the next,
Like water hurtled
From rapid to rapid,
Yearslong into uncertainty down.



(translation Jay Macphers)



You wander above in the light
on soft ground, blessed genies!
Blazing, divine breezes
brush by you as lightly
as the fingers of the player
on her holy strings.



Fateless, like sleeping
infants, the divine beings breathe,
chastely protected
in modest buds,
blooming eternally
their spirits,
and their blissful eyes
gazing in mute,
eternal clarity.



Yet there is granted us
no place to rest;
we vanish, we fall -
the suffering humans -
blind from one
hour to another,
like water thrown from cliff
to cliff,
for years into the unknown depths.


(Translation Emily Dust. Translation copyright © by Emily Ezust,
from The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive -- http://www.lieder.net/)


Ye wander there in the light
On flower-soft fields, ye blest immortal Spirits.
Radiant godlike zephyrs
Touch you as gently
As the hand of a master might
Touch the awed lute-string.



Free of fate as the slumbering
Infant, breathe the divine ones.
Guarded well
In the firm-sheathed bud
Blooms eternal
Each happy soul;
And their rapture-lit eyes
Shine with a tranquil
Unchanging lustre.



But we, ’tis our portion,
We never may be at rest.
They stumble, they vanish,
The suffering mortals,
Hurtling from one hard
Hour to another,
Like waves that are driven
From cliff-side to cliff-side,
Endlessly down the uncertain abyss.



(Translated by Charles Wharton Stork)

Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
Auf weichem Boden, selige Genien!
Glänzende Götterlüfte
Rühren Euch leicht,
Wie die Finger der Künstlerin
Heilige Saiten.



Schicksallos, wie der schlafende
Säugling, atmen die Himmlischen;
Keusch bewahrt
in bescheidener Knospe,
Blühet ewig
Ihnen der Geist,
Und die seligen Augen
Blicken in stiller
Ewiger Klarheit.



Doch uns ist gegeben,
Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn;
Es schwinden, es fallen
Die leidenden Menschen
Blindlings von einer
Stunde [zur] andern,
Wie Wasser von Klippe
Zu Klippe geworfen,
Jahrlang ins Ungewisse hinab.















Hyperion's Song of Fate


Friedrich Hölderlin -- Hyperions Schicksalslied



J. Brahms - "Schicksalslied" (Song of Fate) Op. 54 for mixed choir and orchestra
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • "A tiger - in Africa?" - Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983): The First Zulu War. Natal 1879 (not Glasgow)
    Democracy and humanitarianism have always been tarde marks of the British Army and have stamped its triumph throughout history, in the furth...
  • California Through the Lens of Hollywood by Dana Polan
    From the cartoons that I watched on television in my East Coast childhood, I remember what was for me a primary image of California. Several...
  • Most Evil Women in History: Satan's Daughter Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
    Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, (born July 10, 1846, Röcken, near Lützen, Prussia [Germany]—died Nov. 8, 1935, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach [G...
  • The Two versions of the Imaginary - Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature
    But what is the image? When there is nothing, the image finds in this nothing its necessary condition, but there it disappears. The image ne...
  • Poesia e Composição - A Inspiração e o Trabalho de Arte, João Cabral de Melo Neto (Versão Integral)
    (Conferência pronunciada na Biblioteca de São Paulo, em 13.11.52,no curso de Poética) A composição que para uns é o alto de aprisionar a poe...
  • Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine by Barbara Creed
    The science fiction horror film Alien (1979) is a complex representation of the monstrous-feminine in terms of the maternal figure as perce...
  • The God’s Script by Jorge Luis Borges
    The prison is deep and of stone; its form, that of a nearly perfect hemisphere, though the floor (also of stone) is somewhat less than a gre...
  • The Genius of Josef Lada
    The hugely popular illustrator, cartoonist, painter, and novelist, as well as a successful caricaturist and stage designer, Josef Lada was b...
  • Hegelianism For Dummies
    No doubt we are intelligent. But far from changing the face of the world, on stage we keep producing rabbits from our brain, and snow-white ...
  • The Mother of All Bubbles - Gordon Gekko - Wall Street: Money never sleeps
    You wanna know what the mother of all bubbles was? Us. The human race. Scientists call it the Cambrian Explosion, from the Cambrian fauna.It...

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (133)
    • ►  August (6)
    • ►  July (11)
    • ►  June (22)
    • ►  May (23)
    • ►  April (21)
    • ►  March (17)
    • ►  February (19)
    • ►  January (14)
  • ▼  2012 (269)
    • ►  December (20)
    • ►  November (15)
    • ►  October (12)
    • ►  September (7)
    • ►  August (22)
    • ►  July (21)
    • ►  June (27)
    • ►  May (27)
    • ▼  April (22)
      • Aleluia, Gretchen Aleluia, Juliano
      • Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine by Barbara Creed
      • El Maestro Diego Velázquez´s Thinking Eye: Las Men...
      • Fatzer +- Keuner de Heiner Müller* (Revista SÍNTES...
      • Die Heilige Familie: Germania Tod in Berlin - A Sa...
      • The gospel train is coming to Memphis
      • Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust (20...
      • “Willowy, Blonde and Cool": The Icy Blondes, by Ph...
      • Brazil`s Manifest Destiny: Entranced Earth (1966) ...
      • Westall '66 : A Surreal Suburban Tale by Rosie Jon...
      • Heiner Müller - Alemanha Nenhum Lugar: Discurso de...
      • Edgar Allan Poe´s Literary Kaleidoscope as Visual ...
      • "But to us is given In no place to rest": Hyperion...
      • Um Bilhão de Sacadas Voltadas para o Sol - Cachorr...
      • A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun - John Gray's S...
      • What's the difference between morals and ethics an...
      • Shakespeare a Difference: Text of an Address - Hei...
      • The Most Beautiful Love Song Ever: Il Mio Canto Li...
      • "Americans have never lost and will never lose a w...
      • Auschwitz ad Infinitum: A Discussion with Heiner H...
      • "Kill Them All, For God Will Know His Own" (Arnaud...
      • Elizabethtown - There's a difference between a fai...
    • ►  March (24)
    • ►  February (31)
    • ►  January (41)
  • ►  2011 (98)
    • ►  December (26)
    • ►  November (55)
    • ►  October (17)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile