Shapeshifters of Innocence: A Poetic Analysis of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde

Note: I wrote this poem while listening to the last three movements of Das Lied von der Erde: "Von der Schönheit", "Der Trinker im Frühling" and "Der Abschied." I included hyperlinked time stamps to my favorite moments throughout the poem, but I highly recommend listening to each movement in its entirety. It is so moving! Thanks for reading ❤

In Gustav Mahler’s orchestral song cycle,

Das Lied von der Erde, or Song of the Earth

we are shapeshifters of innocence

A musical meditation

on transient beauty:

on fleeting exuberance,

and crippling despair

Blindly we plunge

into evanescent delusions

all (eventually) rendered small specks

in this hardly centennial life.

Das Lied

is stunning song to

our universal watchword:

“Ignorance is bliss”

Listen,

its overtones hum,

Impermanence is truth

_______________________________

"Von der Schönheit":Of Beauty

Somewhere upwind of us,

trills of flutes, trailed by violins

paint the crystalline gaze of maidens

picking lotus flowers along a river

“Golden sunlight weaves among the figures

mirroring them in the shining water.”

Sweet spools of ethereal verse!

buoyed along a lyric loch

by Kathleen Ferrier’s velvet voice

Between the shores of their “slender limbs”

and “sweet eyes”

Ferrier’s diaphanous vibrato,

loping through luminous timbres,

gleams a realm of refuge and renewal

But hark!

A fiery horse gallop

Flared by brassy contour

To this abundant idyll

Hark!

“the fresh faced young men are approaching!”

rambunctious rips race through

the orchestra

“The horse of one of them whinnies merrily!”

an unforeseen turbulence

between the gaudy tubas

and effervescent strings

“Glittering like the sunbeams”

a throbbing timpani

beats the accelerating pulse

of besotted girls

I am a nineteen year old

nostalgic for youthful infatuation

embodied in

Ferrier’s cosmic highs and

Bassoons’ triplets,

one, two, three

Counterpoised by the flutes’ duplets

one, two

But

blink too soon

and time

“canters and shies [the riders] away”

Crestfallen,

the maidens sink back into

ineffable inwardness

their lotuses awash in languor

“The thrill of [one maiden’s] heart flies plaintively to him.”

the ebb and flow of her melody dissolves

in Ferrier’s wading legato

Eroded sediments of sound are

buoyed by the last coos

of cellos and flutes

the world’s lustful dream

flirts with its expiration date

__________________________________________

"Der Trinker im Frühling": The Drunkard in the Spring

Oh!

to walk the line

between terrestrial worms feasting upon your guts

and the warm waters of your mother’s womb

To drunkenly walk life’s black tightrope

like tenor Julius Patzack in Der Trinker im Frühling!

Wine dissolved almost magically into

his vortex of grief

an absorbing congeries of rich and dusky savors

He revels in delusion

“And when I can drink no more

For belly and gut are full,

I stagger to my door

And sleep wonderfully!”

A flourish of french horns

and sweeping strings trail

Patzack’s erratic heavings to a

mythic horizon

Until, hear now!

Spring presses its

blushed face against the window pane

Suddenly

insinuations of bitterness

are assuaged by the faintest

echoes of something lush and gathering

developing a flavor that unveils

some new ideal

“A bird sings in a tree.

I ask him if Spring has come–

it’s like a dream to me.”

rubbing away the film of sleep

From his maudlin eyelids

He flips his sunless tunnel

into a microscope of

Sentient wonder

“The bird twitters, “Yes! Spring

is here, it has come overnight!”

I listen with awestruck sighs —

the bird sings and laughs!”

Oh sprouting gaiety!

Oboes and piccolos

Twirl about its heavenly sap

…but alas,

such tranquil ballet

Is bound to unravel

into the nihilistic wallow

of our heartbroken cyclops

Who sings with

his beloved horns again:

“I fill my goblet afresh

and drain it to the bottom…

What does Spring mean to me?

Let me be drunk!”

Oh, to dance upon a finite scale like this tenor!

To numb oneself to

the joys of its beginnings

And the grievances of its endings

…Or, more deeply,

To resist peaceful coexistence

with universal impermanence

Listen again,

we are all cyclopes

Der Trinker im Frühling

is humanity’s anthem

__________________________

"Der Abschied": The Farewell

Der Abschied, my dear

Nature is but a woman

Connected to everything,

Attached to nothing

Feel Ferrier’s voice transcending

The mountain peaks

Quietly floating through “valleys…

Shadows filled with coolness”

If faith is a celestial tie,

Then life is an earthly one.

Hold both, and smile wistfully

When the latter slips

through your fingers.

“Everywhere and always,

blue light in the distance!”

Always, always

Beauty in transit

________________________________________

Special thanks to Benjamin Rossen for introducing me to this piece!