Walther von der Vogelweide, under der
linden:
Two Notes, and two Commentaries.
1. Peter Wapnewski: Note (1962).*
2. Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Love’s Happiness (1984).*
3. Ingrid Kasten, Note (1990).*
4. Richard Byrn, Dream on, middle-aged male! (2001).
* transl. by RFMB
Translations of under der linden into English:
by Harry Heyworth.
1.
Peter Wapnewski, Anmerkung:
Although
not the most beautiful, this is certainly the most famous of all
Walther’s Minnelieder. A conventional lover’s
role-poem, its stylised naivety clearly reflects a large measure
of artistic skill [Kunstfertigkeit] but also artificiality
[Künstlichkeit].
from Walther von der Vogelweide, Gedichte (p.247).
2. Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Love’s
Happiness
Scholars of German have long claimed that Minnesänger sing the praises of ‘Eros with a soul’ [den beseelten Eros]. Could this mean that, by emphasising the spiritual, they are actually trying to rid this poetry’s eroticism of its concrete allusions and so, as it were, to purify it – even ennoble it? Be that as it may, we are always left with the impression that the German poets of the Middle Ages only ever sang of Minne as lofty, solemn, pure and heavenly (1), thus ignoring or placing a taboo on the sensual, physical, earthy side of love.
Now, it is true that these poets were often retained precisely in order to sing the praises of their patron’s Lady – the Mistress of the Court. And the portrait painted of these ladies generally had to be abstract and, by and large, conventional. But there are also real women in this poetry – the poet’s very real sweetheart. Walther von der Vogelweide for example had not the slightest intention of excluding sexuality.
In what is rightly regarded as his most famous poem, the song Under der linden, he has a woman speak. We know nothing about her – neither her name nor her status nor her origin. All we know is that she is happy. And we are told immediately what it is she owes this happiness to. The first strophe sketches the scene of the action, thus indicating what happened. The clue lies in those broken flowers and bruised grass of the bed under the lime tree. Walther knew that his audience would understand. Even in those days, broken flowers were used by poets to symbolise the loss of virginity – ‘defloration’.
After evoking the scene as a place of desire and love, the poet takes us back in time. Only now – in the second strophe and the first three lines of the third – does he picture what preceded the action alluded to in the first strophe. But then we have a second jump in time – back to the present: Anyone who happens to pass along this path, when he sees the bed of flowers will laugh ‘inneclîche’, i.e. he will be filled with delight. Because, like all lovers, the girl cannot imagine that other people aren’t interested in her happiness.
In the fourth strophe we are confronted with the poem’s challenging conclusion, i.e. that the fact that she and her lover had slept together would indeed be a source of shame to her but only if anyone knew about it. And since only a little bird had watched them – and that bird can be relied on to keep their secret (getriuwe) – she feels not the slightest sense of shame. No pang of remorse casts a shadow over their secret, forbidden love.
Does this happy girl know that, in this life, love-affairs never turn out well, that disillusion and disappointment always follow on, that whoever’s heart swings up to heaven will also sink down to the depths of despair?(2) It’s unlikely. But even so, whatever the future may hold, the bliss she enjoyed under the lime-tree cannot be taken from her by anybody. That is why she sings a song that may not be cheerful or jolly but which is certainly serene and inspired – though admittedly in a minor key rather than major.
As a poetic construct it is perfect. Not a word is missing, nor any misplaced. And the way the girl speaks appears not only simple and natural but also gently flirtatious – which infuses this poem with a mix of complete naivety (in lyric poetry this is almost always a product of maturity) and extreme artistic subtlety. Walther’s artistic skill [Kunstfertigkeit] is free of all artificiality [Künstlichkeit]. Both the poet and his beloved are redolent of two qualities which survive across the centuries (the poem was composed about the year 1200) and which cannot be dissected in scholarly terms: charm and grace (3).
Only at a much later period did Germany again have a poet who wrote lines of comparable beauty: Goethe.
(1) hoch, hehr,
hold, himmlisch.
(2) Echoing Klärchen in Goethe’s Egmont: ‘himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt’.
(3) Charme und Anmut.
3. Ingrid Kasten, Anmerkung:
Scholars traditionally regard this poem
– probably the most famous of Walther’s Minnelieder
– as representing in exemplary fashion the deliberate
reaction of ‘Girls’ Songs’ [Mädchenlieder]
away from the conventions of ‘Service to Ladies’ [Frauendienst].
The probable model for this song – in which the poet puts
the case for sexually ‘fulfilling’ a ‘free’
love-relationship (a taboo subject in classical Minnesang)
– may well have been the pastorellas of this period’s
Latin poetry [Vagantendichtung].
from Frauenlieder des Mittelalters (p.263).
4. Richard
Byrn: Dream on, middle-aged male!
Talking about this poem is difficult for two reasons: firstly, the poem is breathtakingly beautiful – and with no breath, you can’t talk. But secondly, and more importantly, the poem is a confession, and anyone who has had the privilege of being confided in knows that, the more full and honest the confession, the less there is for the listener to say – the person speaking has (to borrow a nice German expression) ‘spoken herself free’.
In what sense is this poem a ‘confession’? As I use the word for this poem, I want to imply something inbetween its specifically religious and its non-religious meanings.
The occasion evoked by this lass is obviously not being recounted as a straightforward religious confession, because the poem was clearly not addressed to a priest or confessor. On the other hand, the speaker does have a slightly guilty conscience, otherwise she would not say “If anyone knew what the pair of us did (which God forbid!) I’d be ashamed.” What her lover did with her was their own private business – and the memory of it now wells up within her into a wonderful outpouring of joy. The lovers did, of course, have one confidant – tandaradei!, that glorious, pan-European lovers’ songster, a nightingale. And we know from experience that anybody who has a guilty secret always feels better if s/he has one person to share the secret with. Best of all, the particular confidant in this case, as the lass well knows, will not betray their secret.
Philologists argue at length about one particular phrase, ‘hêre frouwe’ (it comes at the pivotal point of verse 2). It means approximately ‘noble lady’. But how does the phrase fit into the poem syntactically? One line of interpretation maintains that it stands in apposition to the ‘ich’ of the line before, i.e. it means ‘[I was received] as a high-born lady’. Alternatively, because there is a natural pause in the verse at that point, this phrase might be the words used by her lover as he greeted her and accordingly they should be placed in inverted commas (that is how Heyworth translates it: ‘with “Gracious Lady” greeted me’). Yet others argue that the phrase is best understood as an ejaculatory prayer, with the sense ‘Mother of God!’ (Hamburger’s translation skillfully reflects the phrasing of the original, thus allowing all three possibilities.) Myself, I incline to third possibility – I read this poem as a near-religious confession in which the speaker evokes Mary, the Mother of God (who mysteriously, but notoriously, conceived her first baby out of wedlock), as a potentially sympathetic witness.
Entrancing though this poem is, there is one big ‘but’ about it – i.e. this ‘Frauenlied’ (Woman’s Song), as critics now generally categorize it, is not really a ‘Frauenlied’ at all. The singer may indeed be a young woman, but she is not singing her own words. They have been placed on her lips by a cunning, middle-aged male poet. This song is in fact a sublime male sexual fantasy: the perfect seduction! – She loved it. Her conscience isn’t troubling her too much. She’s making no demands. And there are no recriminations (at least not for the time-being).
This is Walther’s most famous love-poem, and it deserves the admiration it receives. The modern musical settings of it by Andrea von Ramm, Michael Kort, and Joana Emetz are testimony to its enduring inspirational power. But we would be disingenuous if we did not acknowledge the implication of its having been penned by a middle-aged male.