Wonne der Wehmut, D 260

The pleasure of sadness

(Poet's title: Wonne der Wehmut)

Part of  Goethe: The April 1816 collection sent to Goethe 

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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Sadness can be either a temporary emotion or a psychological trait, involving an inclination towards ‘melancholy’ or ‘depression’. It is not quite the same thing as ‘unhappiness’, which usually refers to a passing phase, where we lack something that will return (‘happiness’). When we are ‘sad’ or ‘low’ there is a sense of loss; something irrecoverable has gone from our lives, and how we manage the loss will determine whether our sadness will turn from a mood or a momentary emotion into a more permanent fixture of our personalities.

Tears are therefore a coping mechanism. In Goethe’s poem ‘Trost in Tränen’ (Schubert’s D 120) they are explicitly seen as offering comfort or consolation in a difficult world. Here, though, they offer not just ‘Trost’ but ‘Wonne’ (pleasure? bliss? delight? – definitely something stronger than just ‘comfort’). They are a sign that we can still feel, that we are still engaged with the world. They protect us from the bleakness and emptiness of depression. Even ‘half-dried’ eyes (in cases where we have started to numb ourselves to pain) lead us to see the world as barren and dead (wie öde, wie tot). We need to keep the tears flowing in order to retain our sensitivity to the full range of pleasure and pain.

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Original Spelling

Wonne der Wehmuth

Trocknet nicht, trocknet nicht,
Thränen der ewigen Liebe!
Ach! nur dem halbgetrockneten Auge
Wie öde, wie todt die Welt ihm erscheint!
Trocknet nicht, trocknet nicht,
Thränen unglücklicher Liebe!

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Goethe’s sämmtliche Schriften. Siebenter Band. / Gedichte von Goethe. Erster Theil. Lyrische Gedichte. Wien, 1810. Verlegt bey Anton Strauß. In Commission bey Geistinger, page 87; with Goethe’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand, Erster Band, Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J.G.Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1827, page 108; and with Goethe’s Schriften, Achter Band, Leipzig, bey Georg Joachim Göschen, 1789, page 151.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page  87 [101 von 418] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ163965701