Der Sieg, D 805

The victory

(Poet's title: Der Sieg)

All translations into English that appear on this website, unless otherwise stated, are by Malcolm Wren. You are free to use them on condition that you acknowledge Malcolm Wren as the translator and schubertsong.uk as the source. Unless otherwise stated, the comments and essays that appear after the texts and translations are by Malcolm Wren and are © Copyright.

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On 6th March 1824 Moritz von Schwind wrote to Franz von Schober about Schubert’s recent work following his illness:

Schubert is pretty well already. He says that after a few days of the new treatment he felt how his complaint broke up and everything was different. He still lives one day on panada and the next on cutlets, and lavishly drinks tea, goes bathing a good deal besides and is superhumanly industrious. A new Quartet is to be performed at Schuppanzigh's, who is quite enthusiastic and is said to have rehearsed particularly well. He has now long been at work on an Octet, with the greatest zeal. If you go to see him during the day, he says, "Hullo, how are you? - Good!" and goes on writing, whereupon you depart. Of Müller's poems he has set two very beautifully, and three by Mayrhofer, whose poems have already appeared, 'Boating' ['Gondelfahrt' (sic)]; 'Evening Star' ['Abendstern'] and 'Victory' ['Sieg']. The last, indeed, I never knew well, but I always remember it as a rich, teeming, almost fairy-like poem, but now [it] is serious, ponderously Egyptian and yet so warm and round, very grand and genuine.

O. E. Deutsch, English translation by Eric Blom, Schubert. A Documentary Biography London 1946 p. 331

This is one of the richest pieces of evidence about how the literary and artistic group around Schubert responded to the poems they were reading and to the musical settings of those poems made by their friend. Mayrhofer was a central figure in this group from around 1818 and we can be sure that Schwind’s comments on the text (‘I always remember it as a rich, teeming, almost fairy-like poem’) are based on genuine familiarity. The poem would have been read aloud and discussed, but the way that Schubert’s music appeared to transform the tone of the text still came as a surprise to those who were close to him.

Schwind’s original impression of the poem as ‘fairy-like’ might be an echo of Schiller’s Die Götter Griechenlands (Schubert’s D 677):

Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder
Holdes Blüthenalter der Natur!
Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder
Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur.

Beautiful world, where are you? Come back,
Beauteous blossom time of nature!
Oh, it is only in the fairy tale land of song
That any trace of your magnificence lives on.

That would mean that Schwind had heard Mayrhofer’s text as one of the ‘fairy land’ songs which preserved a trace of the youthful exuberance and beauty of ancient Greece. Indeed the initial images (of life being ‘unclouded’, of flowers evoking ‘primeval dreams’) set a tone of unrealistic perfection. However, the main body of the text, explaining how this state of affairs has come about through some sort of victory, opens up darker dimensions, the ‘serious . . . very dark and genuine’ undercurrents which Schwind heard in Schubert’s musical setting.

What did he mean by the song being ‘ponderously Egyptian’, though? Otto Erich Deutsch suggested that Schwind was reminded of Sarastro’s arias in Die Zauberflöte. Graham Johnson’s idea is that he heard an echo of Schubert’s setting of Mayrhofer’s Memnon (D 541). It may simply be that the word ‘Sphinx’ was enough to make the association. Mayrhofer would have known about the Great Sphinx of Giza being the object of a major archaeological campaign in 1817 and, as with Memnon, he would have been fascinated by a figure from ancient Egypt who was significant in ancient Greece too.

It was the Greeks, of course, who named the human-headed lion figures of Egypt ‘sphinxes’, thereby linking them with their own stories about a woman-headed monster who wrought destruction. According to the poet of ‘Der Sieg‘, this dangerous monster was itself destroyed by ‘the Muses’ (the arts, and presumably poetry and music in particular) singing it to death.

At some point before the poem was published in 1824 Mayrhofer seems to have changed the word ‘Sphinx’ to ‘Schlang’ (snake or serpent). Although the idea of muses singing a snake to death is not particularly clear, the concept of defeating the evil tempter who appeared as a snake fits the imagery of being restored to a pre-lapsarian Garden of Eden. The victor can now feast on the fruits of that garden knowing that they are no longer forbidden. The curse that followed Adam and Eve as they were expelled from the garden has been overcome.

We are still left with questions, though. What is the nature of the victory that has been achieved? How has the spirit broken free from the lead-like matter that had been confining it? Who has awarded the victory palm and for what sort of race? How is it that the poet’s longings have been stilled? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the speaker is now dead. It was the mortal body that had been restricting the life of the spirit. The victory palm is a sign of the defeat of death by eternal life.

The muses have sung the evil beast to death. Yet, it was ‘my hand’ that accomplished this victory. On one level, this is the hand of the poet, whose lines (inspired by the Muses) produce the fatal song. Art achieves the perfection that is otherwise unattainable in life. On another level, it is the hand of the assassin, whose weapon destroys the body itself. It is hard not to read Mayrhofer’s poetry without recalling that he was later to commit suicide. There is evidence throughout his work (and in other documents) that he frequently had suicidal thoughts and he is known to have made two attempts on his own life before he jumped from a window in 1836. For Mayrhofer, victory meant defeating the sufferings and longings of life itself.

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Original Spelling and note on the text

Der Sieg

O unbewölktes Leben!
So rein und tief und klar.
Uralte Träume schweben
Auf Blumen wunderbar.

Der Geist zerbrach die Schranken,
Des Körpers träges Bley;
Er waltet groß und frey.
Es laben die Gedanken
An Edens Früchten sich;
Der alte Fluch entwich.
Was ich auch je gelitten,
Die Palme ist erstritten,
Gestillet mein Verlangen.
Die Musen selber sangen
Die Sphinx1 in Todesschlaf,
Und meine Hand - sie traf.

O unbewölktes Leben!
So rein und tief und klar.
Uralte Träume schweben
Auf Blumen wunderbar.


1  When Mayrhofer published this poem (in 1824) the word here was 'Schlang' (snake, not sphinx). It is impossible to know if Schubert made the change when he set the poem to music or if he was working from an earlier version of the text, though Schwind's reference to the song sounding 'Egyptian' is clear evidence that the word 'Sphinx' stood out.

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Gedichte von Johann Mayrhofer. Wien. Bey Friedrich Volke. 1824, pages 64-65.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 64  [78 von 212] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ177450902