DIE WINTERREISE: ERSTARRUNG

"Erstarrung" uses the same stanza pattern as "Gefrorene Traenen" and
"Der Lindenbaum". I have already worked out that Mueller deliberately
chose the patterns he found in "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" to make his poems
folksong-like. He was a gifted and learned poet and used classical verse
for some of his works on Greece and the Greek. So everyone who calls him
a naive poet is - well - naive himself.  Sometimes the title of this Lied
is translated with "Numbness". This is not wrong but misses the point of
coldness, the associations of winter, of frozen water, of stiff limbs. I
would choose the words "Freezing" and "Paralysis" as title translations. It
is a paradoxical title since there is a lot of moving going on in the poem
but it is circular motion, leading nowhere.

Here is the first stanza of "Erstarrung":

   Ich such im Schnee vergebens
   Nach ihrer Tritte Spur,
   Wo sie an meinem Arme
   Durchstrich die gruene Flur.

(In vain I am seeking her footprint's trail in the snow where she
rambled on my arm through the green meadows.)

There are a lot of mad things people do when their hearts are broken. To
look for a long-gone trail or trace is not the most crazy. Yet the image
is moving: the stressed word in the first line is "vergebens" (in vain),
naiveley pointing out the senselessness of the poetic I's action. Here he
was happy once ("Der Mai war mir gewogen" as it was put in the first Lied),
here she went on his arm ("an meinem Arme"). The simplest contrast marks
the bitter change in his life: then the world was green, now it is white
and her trail is gone. Maybe "trace" is the better word:  in any case he
looks for her footprints to have something to follow, to have a guideline
in life again. Here is a man who is utterly lost, who has no concept, who
desperately needs to find a trace - but he won't find it because time has
changed.

The second stanza:

   Ich will den Boden kuessen,
   Durchdringen Eis und Schnee
   Mit meinen heissen Traenen,
   Bis ich die Erde seh.

(I want to kiss the ground, to pierce ice and snow with my hot tears
until I see the earth.)

Up to this line the wanderer is just another unhappy lover with no talent
to give up hope. Here he crosses the line to madness. The idea is clear
though utterly crazy: here he went together with her, here the two of
them left their footprints. Now snow covers the ground and together with
the ground their trail. If he could move away the snow he would find the
footprints again. He doesn't do it, he just wants to do it - but anyway:
the sheer idea of a man leaning on snow and melting away the ice with his
tears hurts. Mueller takes up the words of the last stanza of "Gefrorene
Traenen" here: the heat of the tears, the notion to destroy the snow.
"Durchdringen" is a word that is nearer to "penetrate with force" than to
"pierce" - there is energy and strength in in - the strength of
desperation.

Stanza three:

   Wo find ich eine Bluete,
   Wo find ich gruenes Gras?
   Die Blumen sind erstorben,
   Der Rasen sieht so blass.

(Where do I find a blossom, where do I find green grass? The flowers
have died away, the lawn looks so pale.)

The first two stanzas consist of one long sentence each, now there are
questions, questions without answers. The mad energy is gone, now there
is nothing but helplessness and despair. May has gone for good: what the
wanderer so urgently needs, some signs of the happy time of his life,
blossoms, green grass, has vanished. The world is dead, colourless
("blass"). The German participle "erstorben" stresses the act of dying, so
emphasizing the idea of gone life. Of all Winterreise poems this is the one
which leads into the most total loneliness and misery.

Here is the fourth stanza of "Erstarrung":

   Soll denn kein Angedenken
   Ich nehmen mit von hier?
   Wenn meine Schmerzen schweigen,
   Wer sagt mir dann von ihr?

(Shall I then take no keepsake with me from here? When my grief is
silent who will speak to me about her?)

Again questions.  Again no answers.  He wants a souvenir, a memento but
there is nothing.  The form of the question ("Soll denn...") stresses
the victim role of the poetic I - it seems like a stroke of fate, like a
deliberate act of mischievous gods that he is to leave without anything to
remind him of his gone happiness.  And now he speaks out:  left without
keepsakes like flowers or trails or whatever there are only his sorrows,
there is only his grief to remind him.  And when once his grief is stilled
nothing will remain of this time of this life.  Here we are at the heart of
the wanderer's "neurosis":  he desperately clings to his grief because he
cannot let go of the woman he so dearly loved.  He sees no alternative to
this concept:  suffering is the bond beetween him and her, he gives himself
over to this suffering.  The whole Winterreise is proof of this.  And
finally the poetic I becomes this very suffering.  The last Lieder do not
speak of the beloved anymore but they still speak of suffering:  man has
become the medium for grief, life and grief are identical.

The fifth stanza:

   Mein Herz ist wie erstorben,
   Kalt starrt ihr Bild darin:
   Schmilzt je das Herz mir wieder,
   Fliesst auch ihr Bild dahin.

(My heart seems like having died away, cold and frozen her image in it:
if my heart ever melts again her image, too, will flow away.)

This last stanza (no question, a statement) is a variation of the fourth
stanza. The wanderer cannot let go grief, it is his only connection with
her, his lost and unfaithful beloved. This stanza brings two interesting
details:

1) The wanderer's heart is "erstorben". Mueller used the same participle
for the flowers in stanza three - man responds to nature, is winter's
victim as nature is it.

2) "Kalt starrt ihr Bild darin" - the German verb "starren" can mean two
things. First it can be an old form of "erstarren" - to be frozen. This
would mean that the girl's image is frozen in a frozen heart. Secondly it
can mean "to stare". This would mean that the image has a dead, ice-cold
glance. This image is absolutely horrifying: the beloved seems to be
transformed into a kind of wicked and sinister icon. No tender and charming
atttributes remain. It is the more frightening that the wanderer wants to
hold on to this ominous love goddess. He cannot let go, he knows that it is
destroying his life but he simply cannot let go.

Have a Schubert kind of day,
Robert Peters
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