Combining Ignorances

I have this penchant, it seems, for sitting down to write about things about which I know nothing—natural grace, Germany, the religious temperament—and tonight in one crashing attempt to combine my various ignorances, Goethe.

I’m particularly interested, this time, in the poem Gesang der Geister über den Wassern. Here it is:

Des Menschen Seele
Gleicht dem Wasser:
Vom Himmel Kommt es,
Zum Himmel steigt es,
Und wieder nieder
Zur Erde muss es,
Ewig wechselnd.

Strömt von der hohen,
Steilen Felswand
Der reine Strahl,
Dann stäubt er lieblich
In wolken wellen
Zum glatten fels,
Und leicht empfangen
Wallt er verschleiernd,
Leisrauschend
Zur Tiefe nieder.

Ragen Klippen
Dem Sturz entgegen,
Schäumt er unmutig
Stufenweise
Zum Abgrund.

Im flachen Bette
Schleicht er das Wiesental hin,
Und in dem glatten See
Weiden ihr Antlitz
Alle Gestirne.

Wind ist der Welle
Lieblicher Buhler;
Wind mischt vom Grund aus
Schäumende Wogen.

Seele des Menschen,
Wie gleichst du dem Wasser!
Schicksal des Menschen,
Wie gleichst du dem Wind!

And here’s a very bad translation or, more accurately, an English paraphrase:

The human soul—
It’s like water:
From heaven descending,
To heaven returning,
And down again,
Drawn to the earth,
Back and forth—always, back and forth.

Pouring from a high,
Steep wall of rock,
A pure stream
Breaks into mist,
Into waves of clouds
On the smooth rock below.
Then lightly
It simmers, like lace.
Quietly it whispers
Into the deep.

Where cliffs rise up,
It plunges down,
Mad with foam
Downward, down, down
Into the depths.

In a shallow streambed,
It slips through a meadow.
The stars see
Their reflections
In a polished lake.

The wind is the wave’s
Sweet, sweet lover,
Stirring swells
Deep within.

The human soul—
How like water!
Human fate—
How like the wind!

I have the utmost respect for translators, but I wouldn’t want to be one. It’s too hard to try to capture both sound and sense and avoid going off on your own tangent. Anyway, by the time I’m done—even with a job so bad, or wandering, I can't call it a translation—I don’t have energy for much more than one or two or three questions, some with (very) tentative answers.

The religious temperament—is it likely to be allegorical? If so—and it seems to me it is—to what extent?

Is this the way natural grace “works,” that is, we read into nature what we hope to see there? I think it is, at least in the Protestant tradition: it’s a matter of faith finding understanding and not the other way around. Not ever.

Finally, is water like the soul and wind like fate? Or conversely, is fate like the wind? It does tend to blow where it wills and sometimes gently and sometimes a gale; so sometimes we do hear the sound of it, but sometimes we don’t.

Is the soul like water? I’m not even sure I know what that question means, but it is the more arresting image. For example, if it were, the soul would take the shape of its container. Which is what, the body? Or, perhaps, the deeds that shape it? It would take the shape of its container. It would also run downhill. It would freeze at a certain temperature and float on itself; it would boil at another temperature and float away. As Goethe says, it would go up into the heavens; and then it would come back down. And it could come, though he doesn’t say so, as snow or sleet or hail as well as rain.

Fallling on the just and the unjust alike.

Rick