DIE WINTERREISE: DIE WETTERFAHNE

If there is a prototype of a German folk song stanza it is the one Mueller
uses for "Die Wetterfahne": four lines, iambic, four stresses in each
line, the last syllables of the first and third line unstressed, the last
ones of the second and fourth line stressed, the first and the third line
respectively the second and the fourth ones rhyming.  This is not only the
stanza most often used for German folk songs, but one of the stanza most
often used for all sorts of German poems (yes, there are people who count
things like these).  But the stanza is not really a folk song stanza.  It
is pretty unknown in the old folk song (14th to 17th century) and began its
career as a stanza for Barock songs of anacreontic nature.  It were the
Romantiker who began to use this stanza for poems which deal with love's
happiness and pain connected with displays of nature.  Mueller's poem "Die
Wetterfahne" speaks of love and loss but nature is only represented by the
wind, the rest of the scene is domestic.

Here is the first stanza:

   Der Wind spielt mit der Wetterfahne
   Auf meines schoenen Liebchens Haus.
   Da dacht ich schon in meinem Wahne,
   Sie pfiff den armen Fluechtling aus.

(The wind plays with the weather vane on my beautiful darling's house.
So I thought in my mania that it hissed at the poor fugitive.)

The situation seems to be very clear: in the last poem, "Gute Nacht", our
poor hero left the house he wanted to find his happiness in, the house of
his "schoenes Liebchen".  Now being outside, he notices the weather vane.
But when does all this happen? The first sentence is present tense, the
second past.  Is it memory what he tells us here and he is in fact already
far away, or is he still outside the house? Both is possible and maybe not
that important.  He notices the weather vane by its screeching, whistling,
hissing sound.  It is not necessarily a weather cock, probably it is a
metal flag in arrow shape on a pole.  Important is that the wind plays
with it.  Like the wanderer the vane is a passive object, it is nature's
plaything like the poetic I is love's plaything.  But the wanderer, in
his "Wahne", feels hissed and ridiculed by the sound.  He still loves the
woman he has to leave (he calls her "mein schoens Liebchen" - MY beautiful
darling - as if she still belongs to him) and feels deeply wounded and
humiliated being forced so unkindly out into the cold, dark, windy winter's
night: he calls himself a "armen Fluechtling" - a poor fugitive as if he
has to escape from some danger, as if he was helpless and forlorn.  His
self-assessment reeks of self-pity and gives us a hint why this guy
cannot find the way to a new hope.  He knows that he is manic, that he
exaggerates, he knows that the way he behaves is a "Wahn" - a word that
can mean mania, illusion, delusion, which is to be found in the German
word "Wahnsinn" - insanity, lunacy, madness.  He knows the state he's in
but he cannot overcome it.

The second stanza:

   Er haett es eher bemerken sollen,
   Des Hauses aufgestecktes Schild,
   So haett er nimmer suchen wollen
   Im Haus ein treues Frauenbild.

(He should have noticed it earlier, the sign put up on the house, so he
would have never wanted to look for a faithful woman.)

Aggression and anger at last.  He seeks relief in scolding his
beloved, calling her unfaithful.  But in his aggression against her is
self-aggression as well: he scolds himself for having been so naive.
The weather vane should have warned him.  It is a sign, a symbol for being
a changeable, moody, potentially unfaithful person.  To be changeable is
called "wetterwendisch" in German, and this is exactly what a weather
vane or flag does: getting turned constantly ("wenden") by the weather
("Wetter").  Nothing more of his (pretended) stoicism of the previous Lied
("Die Liebe liebt das Wandern" - Love loves to rove).  The poetic I's anger
is understandable but nevertheless not a sign of a very ripe person: love
is something voluntary, is always a present given to us as a kind of loan.
People fall in love and fall out of love and who is to be scolded? It is
true as Heine says in "Ein Juengling liebt ein Maedchen" (A lad loves a
girl - Lied No. 11 of Schumann's "Dichterliebe"): "Es ist eine alte
Geschichte, / Doch bleibt sie immer neu; / Und wem sie just passieret, /
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei" - It is an old story, but it remains ever new,
and the heart of the person to whom it just happens breaks in two.  - The
special thing about the Winterreisende that distinguishes him from other
wounded, but still sensible ex-lovers is that he deliberately falls from
one mania into the next.  He does not want to come to his senses - and so
the Winterreise can take place.  (For the ones who want to know everything:
"Frauenbild" is an old German word for "Frau" - woman.  "Frauenbild"
literally means "image / idol of a woman".  If you want to you can
interpret the use of this word here as a sign for the poetic I's desire
to idolize his lover, to turn her into an idol.)

Stanza three:

   Der Wind spielt drinnen mit den Herzen
   Wie auf dem Dach, nur nicht so laut.
   Was fragen sie nach meinen Schmerzen?
   Ihr Kind ist eine reiche Braut.

(The wind plays indoors with the hearts as on the roof, but not so loudly.
What do they bother about my grief? Their child is a rich bride.)

The wind turns the weather vane around.  It also turns people's hearts
around, making them moody, changeable and unfaithful.  (It is not the best
of metaphors: which wind does this? Better not ask.  We understand the
message.)

It is interesting how the poetic I replaces the object of his scoldings
with new ones: in stanza two he scolded his unfaithful betrothed and
himself, now he scolds her parents.  He and the girl now are shown as
victims of the wind, as passive objects of other people's motives and of
fate.  Obviously the parents preferred a second candidate with more money
(and it was not common to ask the girl who she herself wanted to marry).
This is the truth if we can trust the wanderer - but we cannot since he
himself admits that he is far from being sensible).  Again he sees himself
as the poor victim, left alone, treated utterly wrong.  No one asks for
his grief (the German word "Schmerzen" literally means bodily pain).

The wanderer's attitude is absolutely understandable if he is telling us
the truth: being Romeo-like and unjustly rejected is a bitter pill to
swallow.  But he holds on to his grief by raging so fruitlessly against
fate.  He holds on to his grief and his beloved and so throws away every
chance of becoming happy again - in another place, with someone else.  He
will continue to do so the whole cycle through.  It is not really love he
seeks.  See "Die schoene Muellerin": "Das Wild, das ich jage, das ist der
Tod" - the deer I am hunting is Death.

Have a Schubert kind of day,
Robert Peters
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