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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
THE POEM “SELIGE SEHNSUCHT” from the West-östlicher Divan is the locus classicus of the love-death theme in Goethe.
SELIGE SEHNSUCHT
Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen,
Weil die Menge gleich verhöhnet,
Das Lebend'ge will ich preisen,
Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.
In der Liebesnächte Kühlung,
Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest,
Ueberfällt dich fremde Fühlung,
Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.
Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen
In der Finsterniß Beschattung
Und dich reißet neu Verlangen
Auf zu höherer Begattung.
Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig,
Kommst geflogen und gebannt
Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig,
Bist du, Schmetterling, verbrannt.
Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und werde!
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.
Goethe's (probably apocryphal) last words, as he went more or less gently into that good night, were, “Mehr Licht!” To have sought still greater illumination in his last moments would have been characteristic of the man who took more pride in his theory of color than in any of his belletristic achievements. Remarkably, the poem that most brilliantly exploits the light-darkness polarity is as notorious for its obscurity as his Farbenlehre is for its wrong-headedness. “Selige Sehnsucht” has been called “perhaps the most difficult of all of Goethe's poems,” although this seems an exaggeration and must refer either to the difficulty of arriving at a definitive reading or, as Ewald Rösch believes, of fitting the poem to a procrustean preconception of what is “Goethean.”.
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