Arrows fly to and fro
(Poet's title: Ariette der Lucinde)
Set by Schubert:
D 239/3
[July 1815]
Hin und wieder fliegen die Pfeile;
Amors leichte Pfeile fliegen
Von dem schlanken golden Bogen;
Mädchen, seid ihr nicht getroffen?
Es ist Glück! Es ist nur Glück.
Warum fliegt er so in Eile?
Jene dort will er besiegen;
Schon ist er vorbei geflogen;
Sorglos bleibt der Busen offen;
Gebet Acht! Er kommt zurück!
Arrows fly to and fro;
Amor’s light arrows fly
From the slim golden bow.
Girls, have you not been shot?
It is a matter of luck! It is just luck.
Why does he fly so quickly?
He wants to overcome someone over there;
He has already flown past;
The breast remains open and carefree;
Be careful! He is coming back!
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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Themes and images in this text:
Amor / Cupid Bows and arrows Flying, soaring and gliding Gold Here and there
This lyric is sung by Lucinde to her cousin Claudine von Villa Bella in Act One of Goethe’s Singspiel. It is Claudine’s birthday and she has just received gifts and flowers from her family and from a visitor, Pedro, the son of her father’s old friend. Lucinde suspects that Claudine is falling in love with him, and in order to get her to confess her feelings she tells her cousin how she herself has recently met and fallen in love with ‘an adventurer’ (a Sicilian mafia boss).
It is all a matter of luck, she says. You can’t do anything about it. Cupid fires his darts indiscriminately. Falling in love is thus seen as letting your defences down, being attacked, being defeated. However, all resistance is futile and the breast is an open breach in the defences.
Later in the same scene Claudine responds to this view of love in her short aria ‘Liebe schwärmt auf allen Wegen’ (D 239/6) in which she contrasts erotic passion (the realm of Eros / Amor / Cupid) with true devotion. Where the one simply comes at you (as Lucinde’s song explains), the other has to be searched for. True love does not dart about in the way that Lucinde describes Amor’s toing and froing; it is calm and focused. It is about loving the other, not about enjoying the sensation of being enamoured.
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Original Spelling Ariette der Lucinde Hin und wieder fliegen Pfeile; Amors leichte Pfeile fliegen Von dem schlanken golden Bogen; Mädchen, seyd ihr nicht getroffen? Es ist Glück! Es ist nur Glück. Warum fliegt er so in Eile? Jene dort will er besiegen; Schon ist er vorbei geflogen; Sorglos bleibt der Busen offen; Gebet Acht! Er kommt zurück!
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Goethe’s sämmtliche Schriften. Fünfter Band. / Theater von Goethe. Fünfter Theil. Claudine von Villa Bella. Erwin und Elmire. Jery und Bätely. Lila. Die Fischerinn. Scherz, List und Rache. Der Zauberflöte zweyter Theil. Wien, 1810. Verlegt bey Anton Strauß. In Commission bey Geistinger page 12; with Goethe’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe lezter Hand, Zehnter Band, Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J.G.Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1827, pages 208-209.
To see an early edition of the text, go to page 12 [22 von 348] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ163965506