... with a blank look


	~






	The music you may be hearing is one of many settings of a well-known poem by a person who shares my birthday, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Below is the first verse & my club-footed translation of it. (From German for Music Lovers.) Put the landscape into Antipodean terms, & we’d share the same feeling, Romantic tho’ it may be. Most of the material about him concentrates on his literary work rather than his scientfic thought, which is quite interesting & the basis of ideas still used today. We tried, following Goethe, to balance these aspects of our humanity, rather than denigrate one & elevate the other.

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin! dahin
Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn.

Do you know the land where lemon blossom grows,
Where among dark leaves the golden orange glows,
A soft breeze blows from the heavenly blue sky,
And the myrtle & laurel trees still stand high?
This land you know?
To there! to there;
Oh, my beloved, to there with you I'd go.


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