DIE WINTERREISE: WASSERFLUT

Among the unpublished poems in Goethe's "West-Oestlicher Divan"
(West-Eastern Anthology) we find a text in defense of weeping: "Lasst mich
weinen" (Let me weep). In this poem we can read the wonderful (and true!)
lines: "Lasst mich weinen! das ist keine Schande. / Weinende Manner sind
gut." (Let me weep! that's no shame. / Weeping men are good.)

When I began to think about "Winterreise" for this cycle of essays I
remembered the poetic I as a constantly weeping man. But actually there
are only two out of 24 poems which show him crying. Either my memory was
very bad or these two poems are very impressive. The one poem is "Gefrorne
Traenen", the other one is "Wasserflut". The rest of the cycle shows a man
in the most profound grief but with no tears. Maybe that's part of his
problem (because weeping is nearer to "healthy" grief than to self-pity and
misguided stoicism), maybe the weeping in these two poems is enough for one
cycle.

"Wasserflut" is the first poem in the cycle with a clear and constant
trochee rhythm. All poems before used the iambic foot. For the ones
unaccustomed with metre: the iambus means that of two syllables the second
one is stressed. Knock this rhythm on your table and you see it's forward
pushing. The most famous and brillant example for use of the iambus in
German poetry is Goethe's "Willkommen und Abschied" where the metre
displays what the poem tells about: a night ride. The trochee now means
that of two syllables the first one is stressed. This foot's character is
stately, slow-paced, meditative. Here the most famous German example is
Schiller's grave "Lied von der Glocke" which indulges in wisdom.

"Wasserflut" is written in the folk song pattern of four-line stanzas (as
are all poems of the cycle with the exception of "Die Post", "Taeuschung
and "Die Nebensonnen") but with a different rhythm. This means that the
movement, the wandering has been stopped or altered. Up to now we saw a man
leaving a house ("Gute Nacht"), looking back at the house while wandering
("Die Wetterfahne"), noticing that he has been crying while wandering
("Gefrorne Traenen"), rambling through the winter landscape like mad
("Erstarrung"), thinking back of his happiness while wandering ("Der
Lindenbaum"). "Wasserflut" now offers no direct movement, the movement is
a movement of the imagination: the journey not of the wanderer but of
fantasy snow melting in fantasy spring. Let's follow the course of the
poem.

Here is the first stanza of "Wasserflut":

   Manche Traen aus meinen Augen
   Ist gefallen in den Schnee;
   Seine kalten Flocken saugen
   Durstig ein das heisse Weh.

(Some tears have fallen from my eyes into the snow; his cold flakes
thirstely suck in the burning pain.)

Nature often is animated and personified in Mueller's cycle: we remember
the moon-cast shadow in "Gute Nacht", the wind playing with hearts in "Die
Wetterfahne", the linden tree in "Der Lindenbaum". Here it is the snow.
Starting point of the poem is the sensation of hot tears falling into cold
snow. Mueller contrasts the "kalte Flocken" of the snow with the "heisse
Weh" the tears symbolize. Snow is seen here as a thirsty animal or person
who eagerly needs water to quench its or his (or her) thirst. It seems as
if Nature feeds on our unhappy friend - or that he is feeding Nature with
his grief which probably is nearer to the truth.

The second stanza:

   Wenn die Graeser sprossen wollen,
   Weht daher ein lauer Wind,
   Und das Eis zerspringt in Schollen,
   Und der weiche Schnee zerrinnt.

(When the grass plants want to shoot a mild wind blows along, and the
ice cracks into floes and the soft snow melts away.

This stanza seems to be a very harmless description of spring beginning
but there are undertones. Again Nature seems animated. The shooting of
the grass is due to a distinct will of the plants: they want to come forth.
So they seem to call the wind. It is not that the wind comes anyhow when
winter ends: the grass calls it. Nature is animated. - Then ice cracks,
snow melts away. That is banal. But Mueller deliberately uses two verbs
with the prefix "zer-" showing high energy and even destructive powers like
in "zerstoeren" (destroy), "zerreissen" (tear apart), "zerfleischen" (tear
to pieces). Something organic and whole is destroyed with forceful energy
(the poem is called "Flood" which is not something very comfortable). This
is not an idyllic image of spring returning, this is animated, slightly
eerie Nature awakening and destroying (every beginning is an end, you
know). After all winter is a kind of home for our wanderer and spring will
end this home.

Stanza three:

   Schnee, du weisst von meinem Sehnen;
   Sag, wohin doch geht dein Lauf?
   Folge nach nur meinen Traenen,
   Nimmt dich bald das Baechlein auf.

(Snow, you know of my longing; Tell me, where does your course go to?
Just follow my tears, the little brook will then absorb you soon.)

The wanderer speaks to the snow, gets into contact with animated Nature.
He fantasizes that the time of spring is already there and that the snow
begins its course. (But actually it is still in the middle of winter, still
everything dead and frozen and cold.) The wanderer gives a kind of advice
to the snow as if it didn't know where to go to when spring begins: just
to follow the tears of our hero. So the tears also become animated (as in
"Gefrorne Traenen" where they seemed like breaking forth off their own
bat). They lead the snow to where it belongs, the little brook (how is it
that Mueller's heroes are always on good terms with brooks?).

Here is the fourth stanza of "Wasserflut":

   Wirst mit ihm die Stadt durchziehen,
   Muntre Strassen ein und aus;
   Fuehlst du meine Tranen gluehen,
   Da ist meiner Liebsten Haus.

(You will flow through the city with it, in and out of lively streets;
if you feel my tears glowing there then is my beloved's house.)

The poem begins with tears falling into snow. It goes on with the image of
this very snow melting in spring. The snow does not melt simply, it follows
the tears to a little brook. The little brook now leads the snow into a
city (now this is what you call poetic licence), into its lively streets.
(The words "muntre Strassen" are somehow cynical spoken by the griefing
wanderer since "munter" can mean "lively" as well as "merry".) And here
the tears, independent beings, begin to heat up again when they pass the
beloved's house. Now, this is a really exaggerated image, isn't it? But
it matches the wanderer's idea of a world animated by his grief, a world
only making sense through his idea. Everything in this dead and cold world
applies to him and his miserable situation, in a negative or in a positive
way, and everything points back to the one person who gave him meaning: his
beloved. All his life, all his ideas have their only ground in his grief,
we see the world, animated, eerie, dark, strange, through the eyes of a man
totally and - yes - willingly given over to his pain. Strange, but
fascianting. Fascinating, but strange.

Have a Schubert kind of day,
Robert Peters
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