Faith and Hope in the Last Lieder of Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn

Faith and Hope

in the Last Lieder of

Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn

        The Judeo-Christian origins of the German Romantic movement are the subjects for other blogs, and perhaps books. Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny, both devout Christians, and both grandchildren of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, grew up in the heart of the Judeo-Christian German Romantic Movement, and the poet for two of their last Lieder, Joseph von Eichendorff, was one of the very greatest of the German Romantic poets. Felix and Fanny wrote marvelous Eichendorff settings (Fanny's Lieder for soloist and piano, and Felix's choral Lieder for four part mixed chorus), because they belonged to the same vibrant Judeo-Christian artistic movement as the poet himself. When Felix Mendelssohn and his beloved sister Fanny died, the exuberance of the early Romantic Movement died with them.

        Fanny’s last Lied, which she wrote on the day before she died, looks onward into the Kingdom of Heaven, and Felix’s late Lied, written after Fanny’s death, looks forward to the resurrection.

        Fanny Hensel, the sister of the famous, but nonetheless underrated, composer Felix Mendelssohn, and

the wife of the once famous German painter Wilhelm Hensel, is truly the queen of German Lieder. Her songs are often graceful, subtle, and harmonically complex, and they are always beautifully melodic, and they follow the poem texts very closely. Movements in the melody and accompaniment are placed to express the meaning of the text. Fanny’s songs are gems in the world of German Lieder.

        This is by no means Fanny’s most harmonically complex song, but it is beautiful and filled with the exuberant joy which characterizes so many of her settings of Joseph von Eichendorff’s poetry. Fanny Hensel used the last three verses of Eichendorff’s poem Durch Feld und Buchenallen for her final Lied, Bergeslust.

Bergeslust

O Lust, vom Berg zu schauen
weit über Wald und Strom,
hoch über sich den blauen
klaren Himmelsdom!

Vom Berge Vögeln fliegen
und Wolken so geschwind,
Gedanken überfliegen
die Vögel und den Wind.

Die Wolken ziehn hernieder,
das Vöglein senkt sich gleich,
Gedanken gehn und Lieder
fort bis in das Himmelreich,

Gedanken gehn und Lieder
fort bis ins Himmereich,
fort bis ins Himmelreich!

~Joseph von Eichendorff　

        The first verse is about the desire to gaze over Creation, in this case forests and streams, from the top of a mountain, which is followed by the desire to look up to the heavens. Fanny’s Lied begins with galloping notes in the piano, which evoke an eager scrambling up the side of the mountain, and the entire texture of the melody in the vocal part has an upward motion, which brings to mind images of the Alps in southern Germany and Switzerland, and the entire song is filled with exuberance, joy, and energy.

        In the second verse, the birds, the clouds, and the wind fly swiftly upward from the mountains, but, says the poet, thoughts “over-fly,” or fly further, than the birds and the wind. The third and fourth lines are repeated, with a high note on überfliegen which signifies the flight of thoughts. Thoughts can rise even above the majestic glory of Creation, but where to they rise to?
  
        In the third verse, the clouds sink down, and the birds also fly downwards, both in quick melodic phrases, but thoughts and songs rise onward into the Kingdom of Heaven. Fanny repeats the word Gedanken, placing it on a held note, and then places Himmelreich (Kingdom of Heaven) on a soaring high A, the highest note in the entire Lied, and then concludes the piece energetically, exuberantly, hopefully, confidently, and very joyfully by repeating fort bis ins Himmelreich!

        This Lied is very much the work of a woman who was looking forward to many more years of life in this world, but who also was in a state of soul well disposed to meet her own Creator.

        When Fanny wrote this piece, she was looking forward to traveling with her husband and son Sebastion, and with her sister Rebecka Dirichlet. The next day, while surrounded by her family and friends, and while happily rehearsing for one of the weekly concerts which she held in her home, she was suddenly stricken with nervous failure, and very shortly afterwards she died, at only the age of forty-one. At the time of her death the original score of Bergeslust, which she had penned just the day before, was still lying on her piano’s music stand, and the words Gedanken gehn und Lieder bis in das Himmelreich are chiseled upon her grave.

Listen to "Bergeslust" by Fanny Hensel

        Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, who was one of the best known artists in Germany in the early half of ^th Century, was hardly able to paint or draw after her death. Her brother, Felix, who was as close to her as one twin to another twin, although she was four years his senior, was stricken by the same nervous malady when he received the news of her death at his home in Leipzig, but he recovered temporarily, and spent the next six months in the care of his loving wife Cecielle, who had herself been very close to Fanny.

        Felix was hardly able to compose after his sister’s death, but, although his physical health was destroyed, his faith in God never waivered. Nachtlied, also an Eichendorff setting, is one of the few pieces of music that he was able to compose in the few months between Fanny’s death and his own.


Nachtlied

Vergangen ist der lichte Tag,
Von ferne kommt der Glocken Schlag;
So reist die Zeit die ganze Nacht,
Nimmt manchen mit, der’s nicht gedacht.

Wo ist nun hin die bunte Lust,
Des Freundes Trost und treue Brust,
Der Liebsten süßer Augenschein?
Will keiner mit mir munter sein?

Frisch auf denn, liebe Nachtigal,
Du Wasserfall mit hellem Schall!
Gott loben wollen wir vereint,
Bis dass der lichte Morgen scheint!
Gott loben wollen wir vereint,
Bis das der lichte Morgen schein!

~Joseph von Eichendorff

      Felix’s Lied starts out with a simple melody. The first phrase sounds like a hymn, and the second phrase like the pealing of bells, which is what Glocken Schlag means. Then the melody reaches upawrd in the third phrase, and then in the fourth falls back down in odd intervals on nimmt manchen mit, der’s nicht gedacht.

        The next verse is repeated, with increased intensity on [Wo ist…] der Liebsten süßer Augenschein? And then the melody drops almost to a whisper, asking “will no one be merry with me?”

        The implied answer is that the loved one is not and cannot be present, and so the singer calls upon the nightingale and the waterfall to praise God with him until the morning light shines forth. Felix placed Gott on the highest note in the entire Lied for emphasis, just as Fanny had done with Himmelreich in her Lied.

        “God praising will we be united” proclaims the singer with strength and conviction, and “God praising will we be united” repeats the singer softly with faith and hope. Here, in one of his very last works, and in spite of his terrible grief, Felix expressed his great faith in God, and his confidence that he and Fanny and all of their loved ones will be united in praising God when that final morning light breaks forth.

Listen to "Nachtlied" by Felix Mendelssohn

What the Jews Taught me about German Poetry

I and the Other

What the Jews taught me

about German Romantic Poetry

In Memory of the two professors 
without whom I would not be able to write as I do now,

Doctor Laurent Gousie
and
Doctor Arthur Jackson,

both of whom have gone to be with the Lord.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, 
and may perpetual light shine upon them.

        One of our great English poets, T. S. Eliot, believed that the person of the poet had no place in the poetry, and that poems had to stand on their own completely apart from any personal experiences that the poet may have had. Eliot was reacting against Romantic poetry, English and American Romantic poetry, but like most other English authors, Romantic or otherwise, he mistakenly read the ideology of English Romanticism into the works of the original Romantic poets, the German Romantics.

       Eliot’s great objection to Romantic poetry is that it is too ego-centric. Many of the poems are told from the point of view of the poet (or a first person speaker who closely resembles the poet). Think of William Wordsworth’s poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. According to Eliot, the speaker of Wordsworth’s poem is too centered on his own personal experience when he sees the daffodils.

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay: 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood, 

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Even in the case of English Romantic poetry, Eliot is probably being unfair, because, as my mother pointed out, there is something universal about what Wordsworth was saying in this poem. We have all had similar experiences to the one that the speaker in Wordsworth's poem had with the daffodils (I hope!).　

        

        German poems are frequently told from the point of view of a first person narrator as well. T. S. Eliot said that such poems were ego-centric, but was he correct? Or is there something else happening in German poems which Eliot did not perceive?

        Let us begin with a simple Goethe poem, and before we go any farther let me point out that Germans do not consider Goethe a Romantic, but rather a neo-classical, poet, as was his friend Friedrich Schiller, but Goethe’s poetry transcended his age, (and so did Goethe himself, who lived to befriend many young Romantic artists such as Felix Mendelssohn and Clemens Brentano), and his lyric poems set the standard for all the lyric poems which were to come during the Romantic period proper.

        And now that we are finished with that very long sentence, let us begin with a simple Goethe poem. In this poem, Gefunden, the speaker of the poem is walking out in nature, just as the speaker in Wordsworth’s poem I wandered lonely as a cloud is doing, but there is a critical and obvious difference between the two poems. Can you find it? Here is Goethe’s poem:

Gefunden

Ich ging im Walde
So für mich hin,
Und nichts zu suchen,
Das war mein Sinn.

Im Schatten sah ich
Ein Blümchen stehn,
Wie Sterne leuchtend,
Wie Äuglein schön.

Ich wollt es brechen,
Da sagt es fein:
Soll ich zum Welken
Gebrochen sein?

Ich grub’s mit allen
Den Würzlein aus.
Zum Garten trug ich’s
Am hübschen Haus.

Und pflanzt es wieder
Am stillen Ort;
Nun zweigt es immer
Und blüht so fort.

If you can think like a little child, or like a big grown-up Jewish philosopher, or possibly like an Elf or an Ent, you have probably already seen the difference. In the Goethe poem, the speaker addresses the flower, and the flower talks back to him in return! In fact, in this poem the flower, not the speaker, wins the debate. Or rather the speaker and the flower have a dialogue, and because the flower speaks to him, and because the speaker listens to the flower, the speaker goes out of his way not to harm the flower, but rather to replant it in a garden, where it may continue to grow.

        If the speaker, the Ich of the poem conversed with the flower, shall we say the du of the poem, and the flower carried her point, on whom does the poem center, on the speaker, or on the flower?

         Some people interpret this poem allegorically, with the flower symbolizing Goethe’s wife Christiane (who died young), but even if the flower is the poet’s wife, the question still remains the same: is the emphasis on the ich or on the du? Or is it on both?

        The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber interpreted the use of ich (I) very differently from the way in which T. S. Elliot interpreted it.

“How beautiful and legitimate the full I of Goethe sounds! It is the I of pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; She reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. It believes in her and says to the rose: ‘So it is You’--and at once shares the same actuality with the rose.” *

According to Martin Buber, the ich of Goethe’s poetry learns from the du (Nature). The ich is focused on the du, on the other Creation that it is in dialogue with, not on itself. The ich of Goethe’s poems says “du,” not “me-me-me-me-me.”

        Martin Buber’s interpretation of Goethe’s poetry works just as well if the flower in Gefunden represents Goethe’s wife. In that case, Goethe, the ich of the poem is dialoguing with his wife, the du of the poem, and recognizing that she is another ich.

        By saying “du,” the ich of the poem recognizes the other Creation as another ich, not merely an es (it) for the speaker’s use. J. R. R. Tolkien expressed the same idea when he explained to one of his readers why Tom Bombadil has to be in The Lord of the Rings, even though he is not a part of the plot. Tolkien wrote that Tom Bombadil is

“A particular embodying of pure (real) science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent with the enquiring mind.”

        In his poem Wünschelrute, the devout Christian German Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff expresses the idea of Creation speaking, or singing, back to us:

Wünschelrute

Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen,
Die da träumen fort und fort,
Und die Welt hebt an zu singen,
Triffst du nur das Zauberwort.

In this poem Eichendorff is asking the reader to converse with Creation.

        But, you are saying, Clärchen dear, flowers don’t talk in real life! But is there a sense in which flowers and trees and mountains and rivers do talk? All of these are creations of God, and God reveals himself in many ways. Our modern society tells us to seek truth within ourselves, but one of the ways that we come to know God is by knowing things that are other than ourselves (it is for others to find truth in us, and for us to find truth in them). If we are talking about a creation, then we are talking about a thought of God.

        When the young, devout Christian German Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn, himself the grandson of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, traveled through the Swiss alps, he wrote home to his family saying “How beautiful are these thoughts of God!” and “I do not understand how anyone could see these thoughts of God, and not come to knowledge of the Creator.”

Swiss Alpine Scene by Felix Mendelssohn

        It is not sentimental to encounter a thought of God, and it is certainly not ego-centric. The focus of the poetry is on the other, (the other person or the other Creation), and on the dialogue between the speaker and the other, not on the self.

        Jews, like Martin Buber, and Christians like J. R. R. Tolkien and Joseph von Eichendorff, and Jewish Christians like Felix Mendelssohn, and Christian universalists like Goethe (Goethe’s universalism can be discussed at a different time), people who have revelation from God himself, are able to hear the other Creations speaking.

But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind. (Job 12:7-10)



*From "I and Thou" ("Ich und Du") translated from German to English by Walter Kaufmann

Better Living through Television?

Better Living through Television?
　
        Television means “sight from afar,” hence the German word for television, Fernseher (“far-seer”). Of course, television got its name because of the fact that you could watch something which was being filmed, say, in California from your living room, say, in Pennsylvania.         For us, however, television can offer a different type of far-seeing, the far-seeing back into time. Through television we can catch a glimpse of life in times when the traditional family was considered normal, when people wanted to sympathize with comic characters, when people lived in real fear that their world would literally go up in a mushroom cloud, when people wished to keep streets safe for those around them, and when religion, by which I mean Christianity and Judaism, was considered to be the foundation of society.
        I have chosen classic American television shows which I believe to be the best from each genre, including various types of comedies, dramas, westerns, science fiction shows, and detective shows, and I will dedicate a blog to each one of these shows.

Best Television show: The Twilight Zone
Best Situation Comedy: The Dick van Dyke Show
Best Family Sitcom: Father Knows Best
Best Workplace Sitcom: Car 54, Where are You?
Best Rural Sitcom: The Andy Griffith Show (first five seasons)
Best Western: Gunsmoke
Best Western to watch with children: The Rifleman
Best Family Drama: The Waltons (first five seasons)
Best Medical Drama: Emergency!
Best Science Fiction Drama: Star Trek (original series)
Best Courtroom Drama: Perry Mason
Best Detective Show: Columbo (original series)
Best Criminal Investigation Drama: Hawaii Five-0 (original series)

        What can the modern person learn from this sort of far-seeing? My brother learned how to introduce himself to people by watching situation comedies such as The Dick van Dyke Show and Father Knows Best. I learned many folk songs from watching The Andy Griffith Show. Most recently I learned that pineapple enzymes desolve fingerprints from watching Hawaii Five-0. The most valuable thing that I have learned, however, is that, although there is no perfect society, there was once a society which valued true morality. Even in crime shows such as Hawaii Five-0 and Columbo, it is essetial that the good characters actually know what is right and what is wrong. It is good for us who no longer live in a society which has morals to look back at one, albeit a flawed one, that did.

Ecumenism and Tradtion

Ecumenism and Tradition

     Those of you who know me well know that I have often complained that many of my fellow young Catholics alienate me, because they treat my Methodist and German Lutheran heritage with disrespect. This is a fact which I have been unable to explain to anyone except for my mother (the Protestant) and one or two of my closest friends. Even my father thinks that this disrespect of which I have been complaining is in my imagination. Last September, however, an incident occurred which showed me that this disrespect is real, not imaginary, and that Catholics with Protestant heritage are not its only victims.

Tradition   

 In an effort to find some kindred spirits, I attended a youth mass last September. The mass was followed by a nice reception, during which I struck up a conversation with a young man and a young lady. The young lady was talking about how peculiar it seemed to her that there were so many Catholics married to Jews. “How could you marry someone who does not share your faith in Christ?” she asked.
     I said, “Of course, it would be completely different if we were talking about Christian Jews.”
     “What kind of Jews???” the young man and woman asked together.
     “Christian Jews.” I said. Seeing the blank looks on their faces, I continued, “You know, Jewish Christians who still celebrate Jewish holidays and traditions.”
      After they were finally persuaded that such people actually exist, they asked “Why would anyone do that?!?!”
      I ought to have replied “Tradition!” (quoting from the man in Fiddler on the Roof), but I was too stunned by the question to think of an answer that clever. How do you answer a question which is so stupid, that it should never have been asked in the first place? At this point I wanted to scream “Give me an Evangelical!” because even the most poorly educated Evangelical can understand the concept of a Hebrew Christian.

    Before I continue, I should clarify two points. The first is that the Catholic Church itself is quite aware of the debt of gratitude that we owe to the Jews. Pope Benedict often refers to them as our elder brethren in faith, and much of our liturgy, and that of other liturgical churches, is based dirently on Jewish tradition (but others are much more qualified to talk about this than I am), and because the Jewish customs were instituted by God himself, Catholics are allowed to participate in them (even though they are not necessary for salvation). The second is that the Catholic Church is quite aware that other Christians are real Christians. The Pope himself has written about the gifts that other types of Christians have brought to the faith. Also, not believing that other Christians are true Christians is grounds for excommunication from the Catholic Church. The problem, then, is not with the Catholic Church, but with many of its members.

An Analogy

 

      This conversation bothered me for months afterwards, but I couldn’t figure out why. I’m not a Hebrew Catholic--why was this troubling me so much? Then the answer came to me. My situation as a Catholic with Protestant heritage is in many ways analogous to that of a Catholic (or any Christian) with Jewish heritage. I may not be able to claim Jewish heritage (well, perhaps a little bit, but I cannot prove it), except in the sense in which all Christians, as adopted descendents of Abraham, can claim Jewish heritage, but I do claim Lutheran and Methodist heritage. My ancestors might not have been the first to hear the word of God, but they did give the world the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and the hymns of Charles Wesley, and there is no more reason for me to abandon that tradition of devotion than there is for a Catholic of Jewish descent to throw his Hebrew prayer book out the window.

      A Christian is a follower of Christ. A Catholic is a follower of Christ with the theological views of the Roman Catholic Church. I sincerely believe these theological views to be correct, which is why I am a Catholic. Unfortunately, Catholics all to often present their faith as a collection of rosaries, novenas, and other prayers which, although perfectly good, are by no means the only good prayers for Catholics to say. Similarly, Gregorian chant is by no means the only form of good music for Catholics to sing.


My Tradition

      It used to bother me that I did not have the same love for Gregorian chant and the Latin mass that many of my Catholic friends have. I felt that this was an inconsistency in myself, since I am usually such a traditionalist. I have come to realize, however, that it is precisely my love for tradition--my tradition--that makes me long for the Christian music of my ancestors--all of my ancestors, not just the Italian Catholics.

      My Christian heritage on my mother’s side is twofold. Her ancestors were German Lutherans, most of whom came from the Pfalz (lower Rhineland) district of Germany to escape religious persecution after the Thirty Years War, but some of whom (my great grandmother’s family, the Schwartzes) came from Heidelberg at the end of the 19^th Century, and it was the Schwartzes who brought the music with them (it is also my opinion that the Schwartzes had Jewish ancestry, but that is a theory of mine which has yet to be proven). My mother herself, however, was raised in the Methodist church, in the days when the Methodists still believed in the teachings of their founder, Charles Wesley.

The Wesleys

      Charles Wesley was a reformer from within the Anglican church (he did not fight the Catholic Church, and therefore he is usually ignored by Catholic education programs). Much of what he taught was very, well, Catholic. He fought against Calvinist predestinationism, for example. He also followed the seasons of the church year, and he taught that marriage is a sacrament.

      Charles Wesley and his brother, John Wesley, were also hymn writers. All Catholics in the English speaking world are familiar with their hymns “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” (although I agree with my mother that their hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today--set to the same tune--is better), and some Catholics may even know “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.” What most Catholics don’t know is that these are just a few of hundreds of hymns written by the Wesleys for various times during the Church year (including Ordinary Time), all of which are perfectly compatible with Catholic teaching, and which, I might add, are a great deal more Catholic than what most Catholic hymn writers produce now (although that is not saying much). A priest once told me and my fellow Theology classmates to learn the hymns of the Wesleys, because, as he said, they are very Catholic.

The Lutherans

     The great gift of the Lutherans to Christianity was also one of hymns and music. In fact, they were the first people to have liturgical hymns with poetry (because hymn lyrics are poetry) written in the vernacular language (in the case of my ancestors, German) for congregational singing. Many Catholics are familiar with “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” All Catholics are familiar with “Now Thank we all our God” (to the point that this song becomes boring, since it is one of the only chorales that most Catholics know). These chorales are frequently attached to the liturgical year, something which Lutherans share with their Catholic brethren.

     I recently told a Lutheran gentleman (whom I met at a fundraiser for the Trivium, a private Catholic school in Massachusetts) that I will always be grateful to the Lutherans, because they gave the world Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach took the great tradition of Lutheran chorales and turned them into his beautiful Cantatas. Often I find that there are theological concepts or scripture passages which I can understand better when listening to the music of Bach than I can by reading any theologian, Catholic or Protestant.

     For example, I never really understood the idea of Christ as the Bridegroom until I listened to Bach’s cantata “Wachet Auf.”

Wachet Auf (Karl Richter, Müncher Bach-Chor)

An Ecumenical Artist

     One of my other favorite artists, Felix Mendelssohn, who is worth many blogs on his own, was a devout Lutheran, like Bach, but in addition to this he was also Jewish. He wrote that, without Christianity, he would not want to be alive, and he was very proud of his Lutheran heritage (he experienced much of the world through music, and he rightly believed that the Lutherans had the greatest tradition of Church music, although he appreciated Catholic music as well), and he was also very proud of his Jewish heritage (his grandfather was a famous Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, who was the first Jew to forge friendship between the Jewish and Christian communities), and he spent much of the later part of his short life contemplating the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and much of his music was born from the interaction of these two parts of his Judeo-Christian heritage.

     Perhaps the best example of this is his chorale “Es wird ein Stern aus Jakob aufgehen” (“A Star will go forth from Jacob”), which comes from the Epiphany section of his unfinished oratorio “Christus.”

Es wird ein Stern aus Jakob aufgehen (Neeber-Schuler-Chor)

     Perhaps the reader is now asking, why is any of this important?

     The answer is that all of these things are important because they are valid ways of worshiping the true God. It is because we take our faith seriously that we have differences of doctrine which cannot easily be overcome, but it is also because we all share a common faith in Christ that we are much more united than we are divided, and all Christians must have respect for both the Jewish people and their customs, because, if it were not for their faith, we would not have ours, and all of our traditions and all of our beliefs are rooted in theirs. And so it is because of my love for the Judeo-Christian tradition--the whole Judeo-Christian tradition--that I am an ecumenist.

Dinner with my Grandfather

    I was unsure whether or not to post this piece, but I decided that I wanted to provide everyone with a glimpse of a dinner with my grandfather. I hope that my readers will forgive my very slightly off-color political joke and my grandfather’s very corny sense of humor.

     My brother, Davey, and I sat down to dinner with my grandfather and his friend, Marie. The talk at the beginning of our dinner mostly surrounded the upcoming elections, and which candidates were the most reliably pro-life. Davey unintentionally sent the conversation in a different direction.
    “Do you want some potatoes, Davey?” I asked.
    “Ja.” Replied Davey, using the English pronunciation.
    “No, ja,” I corrected him using the proper German pronunciation, “Don’t speak phony German in front of your German grandfather!”
    “German American,” corrected Davey.
I sat back down at my plate and began to eat my dinner. My grandfather leaned over and asked me, “In German how do you say ‘I don’t know?’”
    “Ich weiß nicht.” I replied.
    “Ok,” said my grandfather, “in Dutch,” (by which he meant Pennsylvania German, not Dutch) “it’s Ich wes nit.” He then proceeded to tell a joke. “There was this Irishman who moved to Philadelphia….”
    “What was his name???” asked Davey.
    “Davey, it’s a joke,” said I, “He doesn’t have a name.”
     My grandfather began again. “There was this Irishman who moved to Philadelphia, and he got on a bus and sat down next to a Dutchman” (by which my grandfather meant a Pennsylvania German). “They passed a nice looking house, and the Irishman said to the German ‘Hey, that’s a nice house! Who lives there?’
     ‘Ich wes nit.’ replied the German.
Every time they passed a nice house, the Irishman would ask ‘Who lives there?’ and the German would reply ‘Ich wes nit.’ Finally the Irishman got angry, because he kept getting the same answer, and started shaking the German. The German got upset and started to shout ‘Genug! Genug! Genug!’
     ‘Genug!’ repeated the Irishman, ‘That’s it! I knew Ichwesnit couldn’t live in ALL those houses!’”
      We all laughed at my grandfather’s corny joke, and then I said, “That reminds me of the joke that went around the internet during the last presidential campaign.”
     “What was that?” asked my Grandfather.
     “There was a man from Chicago who went to rural Illinois to campaign for Barack Obama,” I began. “He came to a pond on a farm, bent down, and started to drink the water. The German farmer who owned the property came running out of the house and yelled ‘Nein! Nein! Trinken Sie das Wasser nicht! Die Kühe haben sich ins Wasser geschissen!’”
      Laughter from my grandfather and his friend. I continued, “The man said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m here from Chicago campaigning for Barack Obama.’ The German farmer looked at him and said ‘Use two hands. You get more.’”
      This joke went over well with my grandfather and his friend, who, in addition to appreciating the political humor, were also pleased with themselves for having been able to understand the High German that I had used. This led to a discussion of Pennsylvania German, which both my grandfather and his friend had grown up hearing, because their parents spoke it, but which neither of them could speak themselves, although they could understand it to some extent.
       I do not understand the disappearance of Pennsylvania German from the Poconos (it is still spoken in certain regions of Pennsylvania), just as I do not understand the disappearance of French from Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The German language in Pennsylvania goes back to some of Pennsylvania’s earliest settlers, Lutherans, Catholics, and other Christian groups who came to Pennsylvania, which, like Rhode Island, was founded as a colony for religious liberty, to escape persecution in various German principalities. In a story called Christmas at Valley Forge, by an author whose name escapes me, the Pennsylvanian militia men were described as speaking German, singing Christmas carols in German, and attempting, even under the horrible conditions at Valley Forge, to make a Christmas tree. So why the disappearance of this old, established language? My guess is that it disappeared because of mass media, mass culture, mass education, and the general desire to be exactly like everyone else everywhere else in the country.
       “My mother’s family,“ said my grandfather, “was from Heidelberg, and they spoke High German, not Dutch. Now they said that they couldn’t understand the people who came from Frankfurt.“
        My great grandmother’s family, the Schwartz family, immigrated from Heidelberg in the late nineteenth century, and therefore were considered High German, not Pennsylvania German. They were the musicians in the family. (My great grandmother, Clara Schwartz, was a classical pianist and organist who studied with the conductor Leopold Stokowski at the Philadelphia Music Conservatory.)
       I explained that the Pennsylvania German dialect, what my grandfather ad his friend call “Dutch,” (from the Pennsylvania German “Dietsch”), comes from the dialect spoken in the Rhineland (actually in the Pfalz district of Germany). My grandfather observed that there are also a lot of different dialects of Italian spoken in Italy.
      “There are even more dialects spoken in Germany,” I said, “and then there are the German dialects that are spoken in other parts of the world, like Pennsylvania German and Yiddish.”
      “Did you ever hear the joke about the Palestinian Paul Revere?” asked my grandfather, who, like everyone else in my family including me, is very pro-Israel.
      “No,” I said.
      My grandfather started to laugh at his own joke before telling it, as he always does. “He yelled out ‘the Yiddish are coming! The Yiddish are coming!’”
We laughed, and then my grandfather continued more seriously, “The Israelis’ big mistake was giving Palestine back the land that they won from them. The Palestinians abandoned it. They left their tanks and ran. The Israelis should have kept it.
       The Howers: Republican since the time of Abraham Lincoln, pro-Israel since there was an Israel, and German since, well, ich weiß nicht.

Happy First Sunday of Advent!

Happy first sunday of Advent, everyone!

Welcome to my Blog Site!

This blog is for those of you who wish to be the victims of my various literary endevours. I named the blog "Pied Beauty" because I am sick of being told that things I think are beautiful--things I know are beautiful--are not. This is one of my pet pieves. I have many, many more, and I will happily share all of them with you on this blog. That is, if I ever make the blog open to anyone but myself, which, given my propensity towards writer's block, is a matter of some doubt. Welcome to my blog site!