Die Lorelei

Several years ago – maybe around 1972 - my Aunt Madge tried very hard to teach me to read and speak German. I would stop by her house in Tampa once or twice a week on the way home from work for lessons and to listen to her stories about the Berg family heritage. I was corresponding with a cousin in Germany and was planning a trip in search of family roots. Both sets of my father’s grandparents were born and raised in Germany before sailing to America in the mid-1850s.

On those occasions Aunt Madge would have several words to add to my vocabulary, and she would have a lesson ready of verb conjugation. She would also insist on my memorizing phrases and simple poems. She became ill and died before reaching her goal of making me fluent in German, but one poem, not so simple, Die Lorelei, has stuck with me.

According to Germany legend, a beautiful young maiden named Lorelei threw herself off the mountain, now named for her, into the Rhine River because of the heartbreak she felt after the rejection of a faithless lover. The legend has it that her spirit returned to the mountain to live, where she sang haunting melodies and lured sailors to their doom on the rocks in the river below.

The trip to Germany materialized in 1985. We were guests of a cousin, Erich Jox. He and his family couldn’t have been more hospitable. When they learned that I had memorized Die Lorelei they insisted on taking us on a boat ride on the Rhine River past the Lorelei rock – that mountain named for the lady of the legend. The rocks that made passage around the mountain hazardous have long since been blasted away, so the river now flows smoothly around the mountain, but it is easy to visualize what it must have been like to navigate before. It’s a beautiful spot. We drove to the top of the mountain where, at an overlook, it’s possible to see for miles up and down the Rhine valley.

The poem and a translation goes like this:

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, Daß ich so traurig bin,
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt, Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt, Im Abendsonnenschein.

Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet, Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet,Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar,
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,Und singt ein Lied dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,Gewaltege Melodei.

Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe, Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe, Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'.
Ich glaube, am Ende verschlingen, die Wellen, Schiffer und Kahn,
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen, Die Lorelei getan.

English Translation (not quite literal):

I cannot determine the meaning, Of the sorrow that fills my breast:
A fable of old, through it streaming, Allows my mind no rest.
The air is cool in the gloaming, And gently flows the Rhine.
The crest of the mountain is gleaming, In fading rays of sunshine.

The loveliest maiden is sitting, Up there, so wondrously fair;
Her golden jewelry is glistening; She combs her golden hair.
She combs with a gilded comb, preening, And sings a song, passing time.
It has a most wondrous, appealing, And powerful melodic rhyme.

The boatman aboard his small skiff, Enraptured with a wild ache,
Has no eye for the jagged cliff, His thoughts on the heights fear forsake.
I think that the waves will devour, Both boat and man, by and by,
And that, with her dulcet-voiced power, Was done by the Loreley.