DIE WINTERREISE: GEFRORNE TRAENEN

Heinrich Heine, definitely one of the most gifted German poets of
all times, compared his poems with the ones by Mueller and came to
the (surprisingly) modest conclusion that Mueller's poems are real folk
songs wheras his own poems are only close to folk songs. And it is true:
although Heine wrote most of his poems in the manner of folk songs only one
("Die Lorelei") became a folk song (whatever that may be) - but a handful
of Mueller's poems are found in all folk song anthologies.  Like Heine
Mueller tried to write in a simple and clear manner, using prototypical
folk song stanzas."Gefrorne Traenen" (Frozen Tears) is written in a stanza
which is as "folksy" as can be. The probably most famous of all "folk
songs" uses it (if you read it as a song with four-line-stanzas): "Am
Brunnen vor dem Tore", Mueller's "Lindenbaum".  This stanza is No. 2 in
the hitparade of the stanzas most often used in German poetry and it was
especially popular with folk songs and folk song parodies: "Ich hoert ein
Sichelein rauschen", "Es ist ein Schnee gefallen", "Es wollt ein Jaeger
jagen", "Mariechen sass weinend im Garten", "Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken"
- all these songs are known to almost every one in German-speaking
countries who sings sometimes.  Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, two
of the key Romantiker figures, made these songs popular in their folk song
anthology "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" ("The Boy's Horn of Plenty") and, well,
let's say they updated the songs they had found and it is not sure that the
stanza they give us is the original one. Mueller, who definitely knew the
anthology, used the given stanza and knew that people would think of the
Wunderhorn folk songs. That's the way you made hits some 200 years ago.

Here is the first stanza of "Gefrorne Traenen":

   Gefrorne Traenen fallen
   Von meinen Wangen ab:
   Ob es mir denn entgangen,
   Dass ich geweinet hab?

(Frozen tears are falling down from my cheeks: have I failed noticing
that I have wept?)

This is a very simple stanza telling a very simple thing but the image is
so vivid and the whole thing so artisticly given that it belies everyone
who thinks Mueller a minor poet. It sounds exactly like an old folk song
and justifies Heine's envy: two lines for the real thing going on, two
lines for the meditation, deliberately semi-archaic words and expressions
("abfallen" sounds strange and old-fashioned but at the same time extremely
realistic, the old-fashioned and poetic "geweinet" instead of "geweint" has
a folk song flavour, the conjunction "ob" is odd and rare at this place).
We get a lot of emotion without unnecessary waste of words: a man weeping
in wintertime who failed to notice his weeping and now hears and feels the
falling-off of the frozen tears.  Frozen tears - that alone is a marvellous
idea (is it Mueller's?).  When we look at the words in the course of the
cycle the rage of "Die Wetterfahne" has gone. There are tears, there is
mourning, depression, pain, there may be numbness,  too, since the wanderer
doesn't notice his tears at first. (How long does it take for tears to
freeze? And can they freeze on a face? Aren't they supposed to fall off
because of gravity? Questions beyond poetic license.)

The second stanza:

   Ei Tranen, meine Tranen,
   Und seid ihr gar so lau,
   Dass ihr erstarrt zu Eise
   Wie kuhler Morgentau?

(Well tears, my tears, are you really so very lukewarm that you freeze
and become ice like cool morning dew?)

Mueller again uses folk song words: "Ei" doesn't mean "O" like some
translators have it, it is a word used in addressing people in harmless
mockery. Here the word is used to show the wanderer's surprise at the
temperature of his tears. He obviously expects tears to be hot (are they?
I have never measured my tears' temperature), especially his tears should
be hot (since he has suffered such pain) and now he finds them "lau" (and
Mueller says "gar so lau" which expresses reproach and even contempt). How
can his tears so willingly freeze like the cool morning dew, like cold
nature around him? Isn't he human, hasn't he got a hot heart?

Stanza three:

   Und dringt doch aus der Quelle
   Der Brust so gluhend heiss,
   Als wolltet ihr zerschmelzen
   Des ganzen Winters Eis!

(And yet you come out of the spring of the breast so blazingly hot as if
you wanted to melt away the entire winter's ice!)

After two rhetorical questions a tremendous exclamation, an outburst of
emotion. In four short lines an avalanche of words depicting heat and
energy: "gluhend heiss", "zerschmelzen" (the prefixe "zer-" means "tear
into two or more pieces", it is used in "zerstoren" [destroy], "zerfetzen"
 [to tear apart], "zergehen" [to dissolve]), "dringen" (which means "to come
with a lot of energy"). The tears may be lukewarm and given over to the
power of the cold winter but they press out of the wanderer's wounded
heart, they come out so blazingly hot (the very words hurt) that it does
not seem impossible that their aim is to violently melt away all the ice
of the winter. Well, this is a magnificently given powerful exaggeration
showing again simultaneously the pain the poetic I suffers, the pride he
takes in it - and his actual helplessness: his pain has no real effect, it
wounds only himself. The winter journey's fruitless turning-round goes on.

Have a Schubert kind of day,
Robert Peters
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