Somehow it seems natural to talk about someone having a thirst for glory or for revenge, a thirst for wisdom or understanding, yet it is rare to hear about people having a thirst for water. ‘Thirst’ seems to be one of those concepts that is primarily metaphorical.
In March 1811 the fourteen year old Schubert composed his first ballad, Hagars Klage (D 5), an account of Hagar’s agony as her son Ishmael appears to be dying of thirst in the desert. Even here, though, the thirst is not simply literal. On the most basic level, the readers and listeners know that Ishmael is not going to die. Even Hagar battles to understand how the situation can be reconciled with God’s promise that Abraham’s child will be the father of a mighty nation.
In the same year, the young Schubert set about composing his first Schiller text, a similarly long poem about a parent losing their child, Leichenfantasie (D 7). Here it is a father who is burying his son. The old man tries to comfort himself by saying that his son can now fulfil his ambitions, he can ‘quench his thirst for bliss’.
Geh, du Holder, geh im Pfade der Sonne
Freudig weiter der Vollendung zu,
Lösche nun den edlen Durst nach Wonne,
Gramentbundner, in Walhallas Ruh.
Go, beautiful one, follow the track of the sun
Joyfully on to fulfillment.
You can now quench your noble thirst for bliss,
Delivered from grief, in the calm of Walhalla.
Schiller, Leichenfantasie D 7
It is hard not to feel that young Franz Schubert felt the force of these two texts and their situations very intensely. He felt the constraints of his own powerful father’s expectations and probably identified with Ishmael dying of thirst in the desert. He probably experienced his own home as a desert that did not provide him with the necessary sustenance for his artistic development. Perhaps he felt that he had been called to great things, but was in no position to achieve them. Like the young man in Schiller’s ballad he could only disappoint his own hopes and those of his father, despite sharing a ‘noble thirst for bliss’ (Durst nach Wonne).
For some poets ‘thirst’ is a way of referring to different forms of desire or longing. Goethe’s Ganymed captures some of the multiplicity of meanings involved in an exploration of attraction and fulfilment. Face to face with nature on a spring morning, Ganymede experiences awe and bliss, physical and spiritual separation and fulfilment. In his rapture he senses that his burning thirst has been ‘cooled’. This choice of verb points to the complex nature of the thirst involved here. An everyday thirst will be ‘quenched’ but it tends to be lust or ‘ardour’ that is ‘cooled’.
Wie im Morgenglanze
Du rings mich anglühst,
Frühling, Geliebter!
Mit tausendfacher Liebeswonne
Sich an mein Herze drängt
Deiner ewigen Wärme
Heilig Gefühl,
Unendliche Schöne!
Dass ich dich fassen möcht
In diesen Arm!
Ach an deinem Busen
Lieg' ich, und schmachte,
Und deine Blumen, dein Gras
Drängen sich an mein Herz.
Du kühlst den brennenden
Durst meines Busens,
Lieblicher Morgenwind!
In the glow of the morning, how
You are heating things up around me,
Spring, beloved!
With a thousand-fold loving bliss,
Pressing onto my heart is
Your eternal warmth's
Sacred feeling,
Endless beauty!
If only I could get hold of you
In these arms!
Oh, on your breast
I am lying and languishing,
And your flowers, your grass
Are pushing themselves towards my heart.
You cool the burning
Thirst of my breast,
Lovely morning wind!
Goethe, Ganymed D 544
It was Novalis who made the most ambitious attempt to fuse the different levels of thirst (physical, allegorical, spiritual, psychological etc.) in an astonishing text that he included in his ‘Geistliche Lieder’ (Spiritual Songs). Here he inverts and subverts the standard conventions of poetic reference. Instead of the usual metaphor whereby an event or perception in the world points beyond itself to a more abstract dimension, Novalis takes the already spiritualised image of drinking the blood of Christ in the Eucharist as his starting point. From there he explores the nature of thirst, which he declares to be ‘eternal’ since it involves an unavoidable cycle of longing and fulfilment. In explicitly sexual language he fuses the act of holy communion and the congress of loving couples. We share one body. The blood for which we all thirst is what both what quenches us and what keeps us thirsty.
Wenige wissen
Das Geheimnis der Liebe,
Fühlen Unersättlichkeit
Und ewigen Durst.
Des Abendmahls
Göttliche Bedeutung
Ist den irdischen Sinnen Rätsel.
Aber wer jemals
Von heißen, geliebten Lippen
Atem des Lebens sog,
Wem heilige Glut
In zitternde Wellen das Herz schmolz,
Wem das Auge aufging,
Dass er des Himmels
Unergründliche Tiefe maß,
Wird essen von seinem Leibe
Und trinken von seinem Blute
Ewig, ewiglich.
Wer hat des irdischen Leibes
Hohen Sinn erraten?
Wer kann sagen,
Dass er das Blut versteht?
Einst ist alles Leib,
Ein Leib,
In himmlischem Blute
Schwimmt das selige Paar.
Oh dass das Weltmeer
Schon errötete,
Und in duftiges Fleisch
Aufquölle der Fels.
Nie endet das süße Mahl,
Nie sättigt die Liebe sich.
Nicht innig, nicht eigen genug
Kann sie haben den Geliebten,
Von immer zärteren Lippen
Verwandelt wird das Genossene
Inniglicher und näher,
Heißere Wollust
Durchbebt die Seele,
Durstiger und hungriger
Wird das Herz,
Und so währt der Liebe Genuss
Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit.
Hätten die Nüchternen
Einmal nur gekostet,
Alles verließen sie,
Und setzten sich zu uns
An den Tisch der Sehnsucht,
Der nie leer wird,
Und erkennten der Liebe
Unendliche Fülle,
Und priesen die Nahrung
Von Leib und Blut.
Not many people know
The secret of love,
Or have a feeling of insatiability
And eternal thirst.
The last supper's
Divine significance
Is a riddle for earthly minds;
But anyone who has ever
From hot beloved lips
Sucked up the breath of life,
Anyone who has experienced the holy glow
Melting their hearts in trembling waves,
Whoever has raised his eyes
In order to look at the sky
And measure its unfathomable depths,
That person will eat of his body
And drink of his blood
For ever and ever.
Who has guessed the earthly body's
Lofty significance?
Who can say
That he understands the blood?
There will come a point where everything is body,
One body,
In heavenly blood
The blessed couple will be swimming. -
Oh, if only the world ocean
Were now to turn red,
And, as fragrant flesh,
The cliff were to swell up!
The sweet meal never ends,
Love is never satiated.
Not sufficiently intimate, not sufficiently each other's,
The lovers can never have each other.
With increasingly tender lips
The companion becomes
More intimate and closer.
Hotter delight
Throbs through the soul,
More thirsty and more hungry
Becomes the heart:
And thus the pleasure of love endures
From eternity to eternity.
Imagine if the sober
Just once took a taste,
They would leave everything
And sit down with us
At the table of longing,
Which will never be empty.
They would acknowledge love's
Endless abundance,
And they would venerate the nourishment
Of the body and blood.
Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Hymne I D 659
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Descendant of:
WATER FOOD AND DRINKTexts with this theme:
- Hagars Klage, D 5 (Clemens August Schücking)
- Leichenfantasie, D 7 (Friedrich von Schiller)
- Wonne der Wehmut, D 260 (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- Ganymed, D 544 (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- Hymne I, D 659 (Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg (Novalis))
- Greisengesang, D 778 (Friedrich Rückert)