"Wanderer's Nightsong" (original German title: "German: Wandrers Nachtlied|italic=no") is the title of two poems by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Written in 1776 ("") and in 1780 (""), they are among Goethe's most famous works. Both were first edited together in his 1815 Works Vol. I with the headings "" and "" ("Another one"). The second poem was set by Schumann in his Lieder und Gesänge, Vol. IV, Op. 96. Both poems were set by Franz Schubert and catalogued as D 224 and D 768.
The manuscript of "Wanderer's Nightsong" ("") was among Goethe's letters to his friend Charlotte von Stein and bears the signature "At the slope of Ettersberg, on 12 Feb. 76"; supposedly it was written under the tree later called the Goethe Oak.[1] One translation is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
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Franz Schubert set the poem to music in 1815 (as No.3 in his Op.4, D.224), changing "stillest" and "füllest" to "stillst" and "füllst," and, more significantly, "Erquickung" (refreshment) to "Entzückung" (delight).
Wanderer's Nightsong II ("") is often considered the perhaps most perfect lyric in the German language.[3] Goethe probably wrote it on the evening of September 6, 1780, onto the wall of a wooden gamekeeper lodge on top of the Kickelhahn mountain near Ilmenau where he, according to a letter to Charlotte von Stein, spent the night.[4]
The mountain hut had already become famous as "Goethe's Cabin" by the late 1830s. Burnt down in 1870, it was rebuilt four years later. Parodies of "" were written by Christian Morgenstern ("Fisches Nachtgesang"), Joachim Ringelnatz ("Abendgebet einer erkälteten Negerin", lines 17–20), Karl Kraus ("Wanderers Schlachtlied" from The Last Days of Mankind), and Bertolt Brecht ("Liturgie vom Hauch"). A computational linguistics processing of the poem was the topic of the 1968 radio drama Die Maschine by Georges Perec and .[6] It is also cited in Daniel Kehlmann's 2005 novel Measuring the World,[7] in Milan Kundera's novel Immortality, and in Walter Moers' novel The City of Dreaming Books.
John Ottman's musical score for Bryan Singer's 2008 film Valkyrie contains a requiem-like piece for soprano and chorus in the closing credits with "" as lyrics. In the film's context, the poem serves as a lament on the miscarried assassination on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, mourns the proximate death of most of the assassins, and with the last two lines forecasts the demise of those whom they failed to kill.[8]
fr:Eugen Helmlé
. Die Maschine. Reclam. Stuttgart. 1972. de.