kaberett is wonderful!

[liv]

So I have loved this bit of Heine, which is quoted in our prayer book, for many many years. And I've looked a couple of times for the original and never found it, mainly because I don't have good enough German to come up with plausible search terms (and anyway didn't know how close the translation we have was).

So anyway, the other day I asked kaberett, who speaks German well and knows poetry, and they found me the original! I'm reposting it here mainly because the site with the text is broken in weird ways and nearly impossible to link to directly. So now if I want to refer to it, I can find it:

Wenn der Frühling kommt mit dem Sonnenschein,
Dann knospen und blühen die Blümlein auf;
Wenn der Mond beginnt seinen Strahlenlauf,
Dann schwimmen die Sternlein hintendrein;
Wenn der Sänger zwei süße Äuglein sieht,
Dann quellen ihm Lieder aus tiefem Gemüt; -
Doch Lieder und Sterne und Blümelein,
Und Äuglein und Mondglanz und Sonnenschein,
Wie sehr das Zeug auch gefällt,
So macht's doch noch lang keine Welt.

Comments

[kaberett]

Holler if you'd like me to record myself reading it!

Thank you!

[liv]

I would love that very much! I don't think I've ever actually heard you speaking German and you're often talking about how you have a non-standard accent / dialect. And you're good at reading poetry, too. I mean, my schoolgirl German is good enough that I have a general feel for the melody of the poem, so I don't need a recording, but it's a really wonderful thing to offer, and thank you.

If it's not too much of an imposition, I'd also like some help with getting at a better translation of at least the last couplet; No matter how much such stuff may please / one can't keep living on things like these is weak. But I'm not sure what So macht's doch noch lang keine Welt literally means, even though I know what all the words mean, they're nice simple GCSE vocab :-)

Re: Thank you!

[mair_in_grenderich]

I am sure kaberett can do this better, but i searched a little out of interest;

this pdf https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/15205/Copeland_Rachel_2012.pdf?sequence=1
has the poem on p185 with a direct translation (but not poetic version)

and this https://prezi.com/fchyj5yypie7/to-tell-the-truth/ has
(eventually) an alternative translation (which I'm not sure I like much better, although it's different):
When springtime comes, the sun and showers
Bring out a host of dancing flowers;
And when at night the moon peeps through,
The starts begin to twinkle too;
And when the bard sees two blue eyes,
Soulful songs materialize; -
But songs and states and dancing flowers
And azure eyes and April showers,
However popular such stuff,
It’s never
really
quite enough

[liv]

Oh, those are great, thank you so much for helping me search. I'm really glad I put this in DW now, so people could join in the discussion. I quite like that second translation in its way.

Re: Thank you!

[kaberett]

"So macht's doch noch lang keine Welt" --

So macht's = So macht es = the thing is done in this way

doch is an intensifier-ish thing; still/after all/really...

noch is a sort of still-ongoing-again word? But again halfways serves as an intensifier here.

keine Welt = no world

-- so I'd translate the couplet as approx "however much these things do please, no world will let them last for long". Very, very ish. (Or "for all it's true these things are pleasing"...)

[liv]

Ooh, that's fascinating, thank you, so the world won't let the sentimental things last, that's a bit different from the sentimental things not being sustaining. <3

[lethargic_man]

You posted that a couple of months too early! ;^b

Whereabouts in the siddur is it quoted? The blessing of the new moon?

[liv]

I don't know, it's past Tu biShevat, and I've seen crocuses in flower, which surely count as Blümlein...

It's only the last decade or so that the MRJ came up with the innovation of giving indexes to prayerbooks, so with the older stuff I'm familiar with from childhood it's hard to find the passages I remember. I don't think the Heine is associated with a particular point in the liturgical calendar, it's in somewhere in the selections of readings that are organized by theme rather than time. Aha, found it, it's in the HHD machzor under the rubric of "Truth" :-)