Goethe, REUNION....

Dear forum members......

please help me to understand Goethe's 'Reunion'.....
anyone can explain this beautiful poem?..........



Anu Antony..

Can you please put the poem up on this thread, Anu? Goethe wrote so many poems and there may be more than one with the same name.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Danik 2016

Can you please put the poem up on this thread, Anu? Goethe wrote so many poems and there may be more than one with the same name.

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THE REUNION
by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
AN it be! of stars the star,
Do I press thee to my heart?
In the night of distance far,
What deep gulf, what bitter smart!
Yes, 'tis thou, indeed at last,
Of my joys the partner dear!
Mindful, though, of sorrows past,
I the present needs must fear.

When the still unfashioned earth
Lay on God's eternal breast,
He ordained its hour of birth,
With creative joy possessed.
Then a heavy sigh arose,
When He spake the sentence: -- "Be!"
And the All, with mighty throes,
Burst into reality.


And when thus was born the light,
Darkness near it feared to stay,
And the elements with might
Fled on every side away;
Each on some far-distant trace,
Each with visions wild employed,
Numb, in boundless realms of space,
Harmony and feeling-void.

Dumb was all, all still and dead,
For the first time, God alone!
Then He formed the morning-red,
Which soon made its kindness known:
It unravelled from the waste
Bright and glowing harmony,
And once more with love was graced
What contended formerly.

And with earnest, noble strife,
Each its own peculiar sought;
Back to full, unbounded life,
Sight and feeling soon were brought.
Wherefore, if 'tis done, explore
How? why give the manner, name?
Allah need create no more,

We his world ourselves can frame.

So, with morning pinions brought,
To thy mouth was I impelled;
Stamped with thousand seals by night,
Star-clear is the bond fast held.
Paragons on earth are we
Both of grief and joy sublime,
And a second sentence: -- "Be!"
Parts us not a second time.




dear friend danik.....this is the poem......hope u can help me.......

Thanks, Anu, I´ll try to help you to help yourself. Hopefully there will be other help to.
Firstly find out when this poem was written and to which of Goethe´s poem´s collections it belongs.

This is a fully rhymed translation by John Storer Cobb into English of Wiederfinden by Goethe.
I know not whether the poem commemorates an actual incident or not but it depicts the poet’s joy at a reunion with his beloved with whom, it seems, he has had a catastrophic separation.
The first strophe recounts his joy at the later reunion but references his sensitivity at the disagreement that led to the break. He depicts their reunion in subsequent strophes as one similar to God’s creation of the universe (presumably reflecting his first meeting with his beloved), His subsequent awareness of loneliness without the, now, far flung constituents He formerly embraced (presumably reflecting the emptiness of parting) and His creation of the dawn in order to bring colour and hope into the gloom of existence (presumably the reunion of the lovers).
The dawn symbolises a new beginning for the couple who, in the final strophe, are, now, strengthened by experience and sealed within a new relationship that will overcome any recurrence of whatever it was that had separated them.
The Cobb translation is a wonderful piece of work but, nonetheless, retains an air of mysticism that may test comprehension in modern readers. I have, therefore, placed my own translation on my site, http://www.poemswithoutfrontiers.com/Wiederfinden.html, which may be useful as a simpler but faithful rendering. It is not rhymed, however.