Some verses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2015
Summary
I am aware of an act of self-denial in presenting to the public verses which have no claim to make on poetic merit, simply because one cannot be poet and philosopher at the same time. This takes place solely and strictly for the sake of those who one day, in the course of time, will take such a lively interest in my philosophy that they will even desire to have some kind of personal acquaintance with its author, but which then will no longer be possible to make. Now since people dare to show their subjective inner selves more freely in poems, under the guise of metre and rhyme, than in prose, and generally communicate in a more purely human, more personal and in any case quite different way than in philosophemes, and precisely by doing so get a bit closer to their readers, so I make the sacrifice to those future sympathetic readers of a few attempts at poetry, mostly from my youth, presenting them here in the expectation that they will thank me for it. I ask any others to view this as a private matter between us, which just happens to be conducted here publicly. Publishing verse is to literature what singing solo is to society, namely an act of personal devotion – to which only the foregoing considerations have been able to motivate me.
Weimar, 1808
Sonnet
The long cold night of winter seems unending;
And the sun malingers as if gone for good;
The storm shrieks, hooting only as an owl could;
Weapons rattle on walls whose holes need mending.
And broken gaping tombs their ghosts are sending:
They encircle me, they seek to chill my blood,
To scare my soul into a desperate mood; –
But it's not to them my gaze will be bending.
The day, the day, I shall proclaim its broad sweep!
Night and ghosts will flee it, turn and run away:
The morning star betrays the night's undoing.
Soon it will be light even in places deep:
The world will don a coat of bright coloured day,
And boundless space an airy robe of blueing.
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- Information
- Schopenhauer: Parerga and ParalipomenaShort Philosophical Essays, pp. 586 - 591Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015