Ode to Sleep Fanart Ode to Sleep Fan Art
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In 1786, Friedrich Schiller published his best-known work, a verse form entitled "An die Freude," known in English as "Ode to Joy." Schiller's verse form was an instant hit. In fact, it was such a success that it soon sparked the imagination of another famous German artist. Soon later on its limerick, Ludwig van Beethoven aspired to set the text of "Ode to Joy" to music.
What was information technology about Schiller's poem that captivated Beethoven's imagination? From the deification of joy, freude, every bit a metaphysical goddess animating all of cosmos:"Joy, thou brightest heaven-lit spark!" to the rousing, rallying weep: "All mankind are brothers!" Schiller's text artfully captures a spirit of unity and jubilation, a prevailing ethos cogitating of the late 18th century High german Enlightenment, co-ordinate to Hugh Barr Nisbet in On the Literature and Thought of the German Classical Era. At the time of the verse form'south publication, there hadn't been any major wars in Europe for some fourth dimension. Enlightenment philosophy was at its summit and ever hopeful for the potential of homo progress. "Ode to Joy" celebrates the bond of human friendship and the triumph of eternal cosmic happiness over despair.
Unfortunately, the optimistic age for which Schiller'due south poem was written before long dissipated at the end of the century. In the wake of the violent political and social upheaval of the French Revolution, Schiller's lighthearted "Ode to Joy" seemed a relic of a bygone naïve era. Even Schiller himself was quick to betoken out the flaws of his own piece of work. He published a scathing condemnation of information technology in 1800 calling information technology "thoroughly faulty" and a "bad poem." Schiller continues in a letter to his friend Christian Gottfried Korner, "But because information technology appealed to the lacking taste of time, information technology received the honour[sic] of condign something of a folksong."
In other words, Schiller attributed the success of his work to the generational spirit of optimism with which it was composed. Yet, he was quick to altitude himself from the original sentiments of "Ode to Joy." Schiller even wrote a revised version of the poem. In 1805, the revised version was published — and would eventually become the version Beethoven set to music.
In his revised version, Schiller dilutes some of his near radical rhetoric, says Nisbet. The central line, "All mankind are brothers," was originally, "Beggars go princes' brothers," implying the erasure of class distinctions. In the revised version, Schiller removes references to a sword. He besides eliminates much of his overtly Christian language. Whereas in the 1786 version, Schiller alludes to apocalyptic theological themes, describing an ultimate resurrection from the expressionless and the final pardon of all sins. Fascinatingly enough, in Schiller's original version of the verse form, even hell itself will ultimately exist obliterated: "Every sin shall be forgiven, hell itself shall finish to be." He describes the dead being raised up to join the living. Schiller's original version ends:
"A serene hr of difference!
A peaceful sleep below the shroud!
Brothers—and a gentle verdict
On the dead the approximate may utter!"
In Schiller's original version, there is an eternal triumph of peace and hope over decease and despair: this is the source of our nigh ultimate freude.
But this joy, Schiller believed, was contrary to his changing context. Thus, he redacts his work of fine art. He rewrites information technology. Considering grave and violent realities that abruptly transformed the world around him, he dismisses "Ode to Joy" every bit outdated. Irrelevant. In soft-pedaling the rhetorical strength of his original work, it is equally though Schiller gives up on the final triumph of freude. For how can joy truly triumph when then much suffering and evil still exists in the globe?
This Holy Week, we may exist asking ourselves a similar question. In the context of the crisis currently unfolding in Ukraine and with the abiding talk of pandemic trauma, we might be reluctant to celebrate the festal fanfare of Easter this year. Perhaps lingering in the all the same silence of Holy Sat feels more appropriate.
On Holy Sat, the church commemorates Christ'south "harrowing of hell." This "harrowing" is understood every bit the Son of God's descent into the underworld to release the expressionless souls in captivity. This Christian teaching finds scriptural back up in 1 Peter iv:6, which states that "the gospel was proclaimed to the dead," and in Ephesians 4:9, which states that Christ "descended into the lower parts of the earth." Then, of course, there's that niggling loaded phrase we corporately profess in the Apostles' Creed: "He descended into hell."
On Holy Sabbatum, the church sinks down into the lower depths with Jesus. Nosotros contemplate that lonely, hollow abyss, hoping and praying for deliverance. Our souls ache for the light. Here in the void, we wait.
Even so Christ descends into hell not for the sake of gloom and despair. But for the sake of the ultimate triumph of joy! Christ descends into hell to raise every soul – living and dead – to eternal life with him. In our metaphorical descent with Jesus, we realize the triumph of Easter isn't complete without the anguish of Holy Sat. Christ must enter the fullness of our sorrows to lift us upwards into the fullness of his joy.
Still we wonder, is it right to celebrate the triumph of joy and hope in a earth that is yet so hopeless and broken? Beethoven thought so.
In 1824, Beethoven'southward dream to set Schiller'southward poem to music was finally made manifest in the "Choral Finale" of his notorious Ninth Symphony. At the time, Vienna was finer a police state, and the line, "All mankind are brothers," was a cry of protest. In Schiller'south "Ode to Joy," Beethoven found an aspiration vision of freude for all humankind, a unifying telephone call for promise and happiness. But for Beethoven, this vision of joy is neither cheap nor instantaneous.
For three entire movements of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the listener spends her time with only instruments. Harvey Sachs describes the first movement as "brutality and despair," the second movement equally "harsh struggle," and the third move as "credence of life every bit it is." In her journey through Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the listener experiences her own "harrowing of hell" and emerges out the other side to the 4th and final movement, a euphoric choral celebration. At terminal, the soaring voices singing Schiller's text bring her home. In the fourth motion, "what Beethoven wants us to experience at present is all-embracing joy," writes Sachs in The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824.
In the end, history would not remember the text of Schiller's poem without Beethoven's Ninth. It's the soaring euphoria of Beethoven's "Choral Finale" that best captures Schiller's original vision of happiness. Yet it's besides the deep sadness and struggle of the get-go 3 movements that take the listener on a slow, meandering quest. But one time she arrives at the symphony's last motility, she has constitute joy at long concluding.
On our ain journeying through Holy Calendar week this twelvemonth, we might want to linger a lilliputian longer in Holy Saturday. Though nosotros mustn't forget that in the harrowing of hell, Christ triumphed even over the bleak pathos of the completeness. Therefore, when joy is absent from the globe and from our hearts, as Christians, we wait to the cross. We are reminded of the promise that we belong to God in life and in expiry. For once we finally arrive at the end of our life's journeying, at the conclusion of a race well run, the fullness of Christ's eternal bliss for us will be consummate.
Freude. Joy!
Katy Shevel is the associate pastor for congregational life at Wayne Presbyterian Church in the Philadelphia area. She enjoys a good cup of tea, nerding out nearly theology and history, paddleboarding and pretending to have a green pollex.
Source: https://pres-outlook.org/2022/04/ode-to-joy-and-the-harrowing-of-hell/
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