Читать книгу The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03 - Коллектив авторов, Ю. Д. Земенков, Koostaja: Ajakiri New Scientist - Страница 42
POEMS
RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG (1803)
ОглавлениеA BALLAD
[Hinrichs properly classes this striking ballad (together with the yet grander one of the "Fight with the Dragon") amongst those designed to depict and exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in Ægidius Tschudi, a Swiss chronicler; and Schiller appears to have adhered, with much fidelity, to the original narrative.]
At Aachen, in imperial state,
In that time-hallow'd hall renown'd,
At solemn feast King Rudolf sate,
The day that saw the hero crown'd!
Bohemia and thy Palgrave, Rhine,
Give this the feast, and that the wine;[19]
The Arch Electoral Seven,
Like choral stars around the sun,
Gird him whose hand a world has won,
The anointed choice of Heaven.
In galleries raised above the pomp,
Press'd crowd on crowd their panting way,
And with the joy-resounding tromp,
Rang out the millions' loud hurra!
For, closed at last the age of slaughter,
When human blood was pour'd as water—
LAW dawns upon the world![20]
Sharp force no more shall right the wrong,
And grind the weak to crown the strong—
War's carnage-flag is furl'd!
In Rudolf's hand the goblet shines—
And gaily round the board look'd he;
"And proud the feast, and bright the wines
My kingly heart feels glad to me!
Yet where the Gladness-Bringer—blest
In the sweet art which moves the breast
With lyre and verse divine?
Dear from my youth the craft of song,
And what as knight I loved so long,
As Kaiser, still be mine."
Lo, from the circle bending there,
With sweeping robe the Bard appears,
As silver white his gleaming hair,
Bleach'd by the many winds of years;
"And music sleeps in golden strings—
Love's rich reward the minstrel sings,
Well known to him the ALL
High thoughts and ardent souls desire!
What would the Kaiser from the lyre
Amidst the banquet-hall?"
The Great One smiled—"Not mine the sway—
The minstrel owns a loftier power—
A mightier king inspires the lay—
Its hest—THE IMPULSE OF THE HOUR!"
As through wide air the tempests sweep,
As gush the springs from mystic deep,
Or lone untrodden glen;
So from dark hidden fount within
Comes SONG, its own wild world to win
Amidst the souls of men!
Swift with the fire the minstrel glow'd,
And loud the music swept the ear:—
"Forth to the chase a Hero rode,
To hunt the bounding chamois-deer;
With shaft and horn the squire behind;—
Through greensward meads the riders wind—
A small sweet bell they hear.
Lo, with the HOST, a holy man—
Before him strides the sacristan,
And the bell sounds near and near.
"The noble hunter down-inclined
His reverent head and soften'd eye,
And honor'd with a Christian's mind
The Christ who loves humility!
Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves
A brook—the rains had fed the waves,
And torrents from the bill.
His sandal-shoon the priest unbound,
And laid the Host upon the ground,
And near'd the swollen rill!
"What wouldst thou, priest?" the Count began,
As, marveling much, he halted there,
"Sir Count, I seek a dying man,
Sore-hungering for the heavenly fare.
The bridge that once its safety gave,
Rent by the anger of the wave,
Drifts down the tide below.
Yet barefoot now, I will not fear
(The soul that seeks its God, to cheer)
Through the wild wave to go!"
"He gave that priest the knightly steed,
He reach'd that priest the lordly reins,
That he might serve the sick man's need,
Nor slight the task that heaven ordains.
He took the horse the squire bestrode;
On to the sick, the priest!
And when the morrow's sun was red,
The servant of the Savior led
Back to its lord the beast.
"'Now Heaven forfend!' the Hero cried,
'That e'er to chase or battle more
These limbs the sacred steed bestride
That once my Maker's image bore;
If not a boon allow'd to thee,
Thy Lord and mine its Master be,
My tribute to the King,
From whom I hold, as fiefs, since birth,
Honor, renown, the goods of earth,
Life and each living thing!"
"'So may the God, who faileth never
To hear the weak and guide the dim,
To thee give honor here and ever,
As thou hast duly honor'd Him!'
Far-famed ev'n now through Swisserland
Thy generous heart and dauntless hand;
And fair from thine embrace
Six daughters bloom,[21] six crowns to bring,
Blest as the daughters of a KING,
The mothers of a RACE!"
The mighty Kaiser heard amazed!
His heart was in the days of old;
Into the minstrel's heart he gazed,
That tale the Kaiser's own had told.
Yes, in the bard the priest he knew,
And in the purple veil'd from view
The gush of holy tears!
A thrill through that vast audience ran,
And every heart the godlike man
Revering God—reveres!
Wagner]
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: Though the Ideal images of youth forsake us, the Ideal itself still remains to the Poet. It is his task and his companion, for, unlike the Phantasies of Fortune, Fame, and Love, the Phantasies of the Ideal are imperishable. While, as the occupation of life, it pays off the debt of Time, as the exalter of life it contributes to the Building of Eternity.—TRANSLATOR.]
[Footnote 4: "Die Gesalt"—Form. the Platonic Archetype.]
[Footnote 5: This idea is often repeated, somewhat more clearly in the haughty philosophy of Schiller. He himself says, elsewhere—"In a fair soul each single action is not properly moral, but the whole character is moral. The fair soul has no other service than the instincts of its own beauty."—Translator]
[Footnote 6: "Und es wallet, and siedet, und brauset, and zischt," etc. Goethe was particularly struck with the truthfulness of these lines, of which his personal observation at the Falls of the Rhine enabled him to judge. Schiller modestly owns his obligations to Homer's descriptions of Charybdis, Odyss. I., 12. The property of the higher order of imagination to reflect truth, though not familiar to experience, is singularly illustrated in this description. Schiller had never seen even a Waterfall.—TRANSLATOR.]
[Footnote 7: The same rhyme as the preceding line in the original.]
[Footnote 8: "—da kroch's heran," etc. The It in the original has been greatly admired. The poet thus vaguely represents the fabulous misshapen monster, the Polypus of the ancients.]
[Footnote 9: The theatre.]
[Footnote 10: This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antæus, the Son of Earth,—so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,—so the soul contends in vain with evil—the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antæus was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's offspring), when bearing it from earth itself and stifling it in the higher air.—Translator.]
[Footnote 11: Translated by Edward, Lord Lytton (Permission George
Routledge & Sons.)]
[Footnote 12: "I call the Living—I mourn the Dead—I break the Lightning." These words are inscribed on the Great Bell of the Minster of Schaffhausen—also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air, caused by the sound of a Bell, broke the electric fluid of a thunder-cloud.]
[Footnote 13: A piece of clay pipe, which becomes vitrified if the metal is sufficiently heated.]
[Footnote 14: The translator adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others.]
[Footnote 15: Written in the time of the French war.]
[Footnote 16: That is—the settled political question—the balance of power.]
[Footnote 17: Apollo.]
[Footnote 18: "Everywhere," says Hoffmeister truly, "Schiller exalts Ideal Belief over real wisdom;—everywhere this modern Apostle of Christianity advocates that Ideal, which exists in Faith and emotion, against the wisdom of worldly intellect, the barren experience of life," etc.—TRANSLATOR.]
[Footnote 19: The office, at the coronation feast, of the Count Palatine of the Rhine (Grand Sewer of the Empire and one of the Seven Electors) was to bear the Imperial Globe and set the dishes on the board; that of the King of Bohemia was cup-bearer. The latter was not, however, present, as Schiller himself observed in a note (omitted in the editions of his collected works), at the coronation of Rudolf.]
[Footnote 20: Literally, "A. judge (ein Richter) was again upon the earth." The word substituted in the translation is introduced in order to recall to the reader the sublime name given, not without justice, to Rudolf of Hapsburg, viz., "THE LIVING LAW."—TRANSLATOR.]
[Footnote 21: At the coronation of Rudolf was celebrated the marriage-feast of three of his daughters—to Ludwig of Bavaria, Otto of Brandenburg, and Albrecht of Saxony. His other three daughters married afterward Otto, nephew of Ludwig of Bavaria, Charles Martell, son of Charles of Anjou, and Wenceslaus, son of Ottocar of Bohemia. The royal house of England numbers Rudolf of Hapsburg amongst its ancestors.—TRANSLATOR.]
* * * * *
