y Julian Scutts A jaunty wanderer's song with ominous implications "DAS WANDERN IST DES MLLERS LUST" BY WILHELM

MLLER Das Wandern ist des Mllers Lust, das Wandern ist des Mllers Lust, das Wandern. To wander is the millers joy, to wander. Das mu ein schlechter Mller sein, dem niemals fiel das Wandern ein, Wandern. It must be a bad miller indeed who never has spared a thought for wandering. Vom Wasser habens wirs gelernt, vom Wasser. Water taught us how to wander, water, Das hat nicht Rast bei Tag und Nacht, which knows no rest by day or night ist stets auf Wanderschaft bedacht, but has a mind to wander. Da sehn wir auch den Rdern ab, den Rdern: We catch it from the mill-wheels, too, the mill-wheels Die gar nicht gerne stille stehn, which cannot bear to be at rest die sich mein Tag nicht mde sehn, die Rder. but never tire throughout my day. Die Steine selbst, so schwer sie sind, die Steine. Even the mill-stones, heavy as they are, the mill-stones, Sie tanzen mit den muntern Reihen dance a sprightly roundelay, und wollen gerne schneller sein, and want to turn yet faster.

O Wandern, Wandern, meine Lust, o Wandern! O Wandering, wandering, is my joy. O wandering Herr Meister und Frau Meisterin, Master and Mistress Lat mich in Frieden weiter ziehn, und wandern. let me continue on my way in peace, and wander. To consider a poem in the light of the cycle of poems to which it belongs may sometimes give one cause to deepen one's sense of the poem's seriousness when popular interpretations suggest otherwise. Wilhelm Mller belongs to the German Romantic movement during its terminal phase. This is not to say that the quality of his poetry is necessarily inferior to that of other Romantic poets. In my view "Das Wandern ist des Mllers Lust" belongs to that class of poetry which appears beguilingly simple, even naive, yet which harbours unsuspected profundity and subtleties. The title refers at the primary level to "the miller", yet implies a reference to the poet himself, Wilhelm Mller. Is this apparently jaunty poem in the folksong tradition about the nature of the poet and the poet's identity? Mller's poem is the first in a cycle of so-called Lieder in the cycle of poems entitled Die schne Mllerin, (The Miller's fair Daughter) , published in 1820. The poem originated during a three-year Period of mental gestation produced by the experience of co-operating with other young poets and songsters who were then composing "Rollengedichte" ("role poems") at meetings in the Berlin house of one F.A. Stegermann, a well-situated Prussian official during the winter of 1816/17. This genre was greatly influenced by contemporary Italian opera as well as by strong patriotic undercurrents. On the surface, the poems contained in this cycle conjure up a seemingly uncomplicated Idyll of unspoilt rural life but this picture is not quite as ingenuous as it seems. Each song represents the point of view of a dramatic character playing a part as though a character in a play or opera. The story told by the cycle proves tragic, however jaunty the mood in the opening song, "Das Wandern ist des Mllers Lust". The dramatic person assigned to this song, a wandering miller's apprentice, finally drowns in the waters beside the mill the movement of which he celebrates in his first song. The miller's daughter spurns his overtures of love and bestows her affections on his rival in love, a young huntsman. The souring of the young apprentice's emotional state is reflected in his change of attitude to the colour green, which first evokes feelings of spring but later becomes associated in his mind with garishness and poison. The sublime evocation of a place of final rest for the weary wanderer echoes

Goethe's treatment of the theme of the wanderer's return to a hut, the symbol of a final solace. Mller's own name predestined him to play the role of the miller's apprentice. In fact, during the later stage of the cycle's composition, the role found a poignant corollary in Mller's emotional commitment to one by the name of Luise Hensel, a young poetess, who resembled the miller's daughter in rejecting Miller's ardent feelings of love. The rural idyll presented in the cycle also reflected an idealisation of native German values and the hope that they would soon help to mould a new united and free German nation. However, as the Romantic movement entered its dying years, an deepening sense of pessimism was seeping in. Such is intimated in Mller's "Der Lindenbaum", beautifully set to music and song by Franz Schubert. The speaker recalls the linden-tree beside the fountain outside the gateway of his childhood home but finally describes his vain attempt, as a distraught and wind-swept "wanderer", to return to the linden-tree of hallowed memory. In the wider historical context surrounding the poem, we trace the despair which attended Romanticism in its final throes, its demise being precipitated not so such by the after-effects of foreign occupation as by the stiffling oppression of Metternich's system. In some ways Mller was German Romanticism's Byron, for both he and Byron embraced the cause of Greek independence and both died at a comparatively young age. Though his philo-Hellenism was more pronounced than that of his contemporaries, with the possible exception of Friedrich Hlderlin, he typified a longing shared by other German writers and poets, including Goethe and Schiller, that a new age would usher in Greece on German soul, marrying the best of the ancient Greek heritage with the best in what was hoped would become a united and free German nation. This hope is reflected in the very title of Goethe's Epic poem Hermann und Dorothea, telling of the encounter and subsequent marriage of two young fugitives caught up in the disruptions caused by the invasion of French military forces during the Revolutionary wars. Goethe's idealisation of a symbiosis merging ancient Greece and his contemporary world is anticipated in "Wandrers Sturmlied" and possibly even in the Shakespeare Speech, in which Prometheus merges with a figure derived from native folklore.

ANNOTATIONS 1."Das Wandern ist des Mllers Lust", like "I wandered as lonely as a cloud" apparently suffers from the great popularity it enjoys in as far as its 'simplicity ' discourages critics from being willing to discover a deep level of significance.

2. The motifs of the miller's apprentice and the fair daughter of a miller find a precedent in Goethe's writings. The opposition of "wandering" and the wanderer's goal of rest and peace is evident both in the poetry of Goethe and the songs of Wilhelm Mller. Even the figure of a tragic "romantic" wanderer goes back to Goethe's early "Sturm und Drang" period of writing. Is the death of the lovelorn apprentice perhaps an expression of a poetological concern related to an awareness of the volatile or fluid aspect of a "musical" aspect in poetry? Literary references to drowning in Romantic - and post-Romantic literature (viz Grillparzer's Der Arme Spielmann (The Poor Musician) - imply the self-dissolution of the artistic process.