The Geheimnis - The Mysteries

Johann von Goethe - written 1784 – 1785

Goethe never finished this poem , which he considered too advanced for its time. He nevertheless gave the plan of the work, reported in Goethe, his memoirs and his life ( Volume 2), Henri Richelot, 1861, bs. National Library of France (Paris, France) pp.321-323.

Text and translation: from German to French, Jacques Porchat, 1935.

A wonderful song is being meditated for you:
listen with joy and call everyone.
The road passes through mountains and valleys:
here the view is limited, there it is uncovered;
and, if the path winds gently through the groves,
do not think that this is a mistake.
We will know well, when we have climbed enough,
to approach the goal at the right time.

But let no one imagine that with all his wit
he will ever explain the song to the end.
Many people will gain much from it;
the fertile earth produces a thousand and one flowers;
one goes away from here with a gloomy look;
another remains with a joyful countenance.
Each must enjoy as he pleases;
the spring must flow for many a traveler.

Tired of a long day of walking,
which he had undertaken by a superior impulse,
leaning on his staff, in the manner of pious pilgrims,
Brother Marc, abandoning paths and trails,
arrived, one fine evening, in a valley,
to ask for some food;
full of the hope that he would find, for this night,
in the depths of the woods, a hospitable shelter.

At the foot of the steep mountain that rises before him,
he thinks he sees the traces of a path;
he follows the winding path,
and, as it climbs, folds around the rocks;
soon he sees himself raised above the valley;
the sun shows itself to him again, graceful and beautiful;
and soon, with a secret joy,
he sees near him the summit before his eyes.
And, beside it, the sun, which, in its decline,
still reigns magnificently between dark clouds.
He gathers his strength to reach the summit.
There he hopes to see his labor soon rewarded.
"Then," he says to himself, "then we will know
if human beings live in the neighborhood."
He climbs, he listens and he thinks he is reborn:
the sound of a bell resounds in his ears.

And when he has reached the highest peak,
he sees a nearby valley, gently sloping.
His peaceful eye shines with pleasure;
for, in front of the wood, he suddenly sees,
in the green meadows, a beautiful building.
The last ray of sunlight illuminates it just right.
He runs, across the meadows that the dew waters,
to the monastery that shines before him.

Already he sees himself very near the quiet place
that fills his soul with peace and hope,
and, on the arch of the closed door,
he observes a mysterious Image.
He stops and reflects and murmurs the pious words of devotion,
which awakens in his heart;
he stops and asks himself what this means.
The sun sets and the sounds fade away.

He sees, erected with magnificence, the sign
which is the consolation and hope of the whole earth,
to which countless minds have pledged themselves,
which countless hearts ardently implore,
which annihilates the power of cruel death,
which floats on many a victorious standard;
a source of refreshment runs through his weary limbs;
he sees the cross and he lowers his eyes.

He still feels what source of salvation has spread from there,
he feels the belief of half the world;
but he is seized with an entirely new feeling,
seeing how the image presents itself here to his eyes.
He sees the cross entwined with roses.
Who then associated the roses with the cross?
The crown blossoms to
softly surround the rough wood on all sides.

Light silver clouds sway,
to take flight with the cross and the roses,
and, from the center, a holy glory with three rays blossoms,
which start from the same point.
Around the image, no legend
that clarifies and reveals the secret.
In the twilight that becomes ever darker,
he stops and meditates and feels edified.

He finally knocks, when the high stars lower
their sparkling eyes upon him.
The door opens, and he is received
with open arms, ready hands.
He says where he is from, from what distance
the orders of superior beings send him.
They listen, they admire; they have celebrated the unknown
as a guest, they now celebrate the envoy.

Everyone draws near to hear also;
everyone is moved by a secret power:
not a breath dares to interrupt the wonderful host,
for every word resounds in the heart.
What he tells acts like the profound teachings
of wisdom that the lips of children publish;
in the frankness, the innocence of his manners,
he seems a man from another world.

“Welcome!” cries an old man at last; “welcome,
if your mission brings consolation and hope.
You see, we are all seized,
although your appearance awakens our souls.
The most beautiful happiness, alas! is taken from us;
we are moved with care and fear.
O stranger, it is at a decisive hour that our walls
receive you, in order to bear mourning with us.

"For, alas! the man who unites us all here,
whom we recognize as father, as friend, as guide,
who kindled in our life the flame and the courage,
in a short time, he will leave us forever;
it is quite recently that he declared it himself;
but he does not want to say either the manner or the hour,
and by that his certain departure is for us
full of mysteries and bitter sorrows.

"You see us all here, with white hair,
as nature has invited us to rest; we have received no man whose heart too soon bade him renounce the world
in his youth . When we had experienced the pleasures and pains of life, and the wind had ceased to fill our sails, we were permitted to land here with honour, in the assurance that we had found a quiet harbour.





The noble mortal who has led us to this place
bears the peace of God in his heart;
I have accompanied him on the path of life,
and I know well the times of old;
the hours in which he prepares himself in solitude
announce to us our approaching loss.
What is man, that he can give his life
for nothing and not for one better than himself!

This would now be my only wish!
Why must I renounce it?
How many have already gone before me!
It is he whose loss I must most painfully deplore.
With what kindness he would have received you.
But he has handed over the house to us.
And although he has not yet named his successor,
he is already separated from us in spirit.

He comes only for an hour every day;
he tells us stories; he is more moved than before.
We then learn from his own lips
how wonderfully Providence has led him;
we listen attentively, so that the exact knowledge of these facts
may be preserved for posterity, down to the smallest details.
We also see to it that one of us writes carefully,
and that the memory of our friend remains pure and true.

I would rather, I confess, relate many things myself,
than listen in silence as I do:
the smallest circumstance cannot escape me;
all this is still alive in my thoughts;
I listen, and I can hardly conceal
that I am not always satisfied.
If I once come to discourse on all these things,
the words of my mouth will publish them with more brilliance.

"As a simple witness, I would relate with more detail and freedom
how a genie first promised it to his mother;
how, at the feast of his baptism,
a star appeared brighter in the west;
how, with outstretched wings, a vulture swooped down
in the courtyard near the doves,
and, without striking furiously, without being severe as usual,
seemed to invite them gently to concord.

"Then he modestly kept from us how,
in his childhood, he tamed the viper
which he saw slipping around his sister's arm
and tightly clasping the sleeping child.
The nurse fled and abandoned the infant,
and he strangled the reptile with a sure hand.
The mother came, and, with quivering joy,
she saw the exploit of her son and the deliverance of her daughter.

"Nor does he say that, beneath his sword,
there gushed forth from a barren rock a spring
as strong as a stream, which, in rushing streams,
wound from the mountain into the valley.
It still flows, as lively, as brilliant,
as it first rushed before him.
And his companions, who saw this prodigy with their own eyes,
hardly dared to quench their burning thirst.

"When a man has been raised by nature above others,
it is no wonder that many things succeed for him;
one must celebrate in him the power of the Creator
who calls the weak clay to so much glory;
but when a man endures the most difficult
of life's trials and overcomes himself,
then one can joyfully point him out to others
and say: 'This is what he is, this is his own!'

For every force carries us forward,
carries us to live, to deploy our action here and there;
on the contrary, the torrent of the world hinders us and presses us
on all sides, and carries us along with it.
And this storm within and this struggle without
teach the intelligence the meaning of this difficult-to-hear word:
"He delivers himself from the power that binds all beings,
the man who overcomes himself."

How young he is still, when his heart
taught him what in him I hardly dare call virtue;
when he knew how to respect the severe discipline of his father,
and to show himself docile, while this austere and rigorous master
charged the free years of his youth
with a service to which the son submitted with joy,
as an orphan child, without shelter,
does by necessity, for a paltry salary!

He had to follow the warriors into the field,
first on foot, braving the storm and the sun;
tend the horses, set the table,
be at the service of every old soldier.
Quickly and willingly, he ran at all times day and night,
carrying messages through the forests,
and, accustomed in this way to living only for others,
he seemed to enjoy only fatigue.

How, in battle, he would pick up with joyful audacity
the arrows he found on the ground,
and then run to gather the herbs
with which he dressed the wounded!
What he touched soon healed;
the sick man wanted to be treated by his hand.
Who did not observe him with joy!
And his father alone seemed to take no notice of him.

Light as a ship under sail, which does not feel
the weight of its cargo and flies from port to port,
he bore the burden of his father's lessons;
obedience was the first and last word,
and, as pleasure carries the child, and honor the young man,
the foreign will alone carried him.
The father imagined new trials in vain,
and, if he wanted to demand, he was forced to praise.

Finally, he also declared himself defeated;
he recognized by his actions the merit of his son;
the old man's rudeness had disappeared;
he suddenly gave him a valuable horse;
the young man was freed from petty service:
instead of the short dagger, he carried a sword,
and, after these trials, he entered an order
to which he had a right by birth.

I could spend days telling you more
things that surprise anyone who hears them.
His life will certainly one day be equaled
by future races to the most admirable stories;
what, in fables and poems, seems incredible
to minds and yet charms them,
one can hear it here, and one must resolve,
doubly delighted, to receive it as true.

And you ask me what is the name of this chosen one,
whom the eye of Providence has chosen,
whom I have often praised and never enough;
to whom so many incredible adventures have happened?
His name is Humanus, the saint, the wise man,
the best man I have seen with my own eyes;
and his house, as the princes say,
you will know at the same time as his ancestors.

So spake the old man, and he would have said more,
for he was full of these wonders,
and what he was to tell us
would have charmed us many weeks longer,
but his discourse was interrupted,
at the moment when his heart was pouring out most eagerly to his guest.
The other brothers came and went,
and at last reduced him to silence.

And after supper, Mark,
having bowed down before the Lord and his guests,
asked for a cup of pure water,
which was also given to him.
Then they led him into the great hall,
where a strange spectacle presented itself to him.
What he saw there must not be passed over in silence;
I will describe it to you faithfully.

There was no ornament to dazzle the eyes;
a groin vault rose boldly,
and he saw arranged in order around the walls,
as in the choir of a church,
thirteen seats elegantly carved by skillful hands.
In front of each was a small desk.
There one felt disposed to devotion,
one felt the calm of life and social life.

He saw thirteen shields hanging on the walls,
for each seat was assigned its own.
They did not seem to boast proudly of their ancestors;
each one seemed considerable and chosen;
and Brother Mark burned with the desire to know
the hidden meaning of these figures.
In the center, he saw, for the second time,
the sign of the cross with branches of roses.

Here the soul can imagine many things;
one object distracted from another,
and helmets are suspended on some shields;
here and there one sees also lances and swords;
weapons, such as one can pick up on the battlefields,
decorate this place: here, flags
and weapons of foreign countries,
and, if I see well, also bonds and chains!

Each one prostrates himself before his seat;
beats his chest, collected in silent prayer;
from their lips are exhaled short hymns,
in which pious joy is nourished;
then the brothers, faithfully united, bless each other
for the short sleep that is not disturbed by fantasy.
While the others withdraw, Mark remains,
with a few, in contemplation in the hall.

However tired he may be, he longs to keep awake,
for many and many images draw him powerfully:
here he sees a fiery-coloured dragon,
quenching its thirst in furious flames;
there an arm in the mouth of a bear,
from which blood flows in bubbling streams;
the two shields were suspended at equal distances,
to the left and right of the cross with roses.

"You are embarking on marvelous paths,"
the old man said to him again kindly. "
May these images suit you to remain
until the time when the lives of many heroes will be known to you.
What these places conceal cannot be guessed:
it must therefore be revealed to you in confidence.
You suspect perhaps that
many things have been suffered and known and lost here and what has been conquered.

But do not think that the old man is speaking to you only of times gone by:
many events are still happening here;
what you see is more and more considerable
and covered sometimes with a carpet, sometimes with a crepe.
You are free, if it pleases you, to prepare yourself:
oh my friend, you have only passed through the first door;
you have been given a friendly reception in the vestibule,
and you seem to me worthy of penetrating inside.

After a short sleep in a quiet cell,
a dull chime awakens our friend.
He leaps out of bed with untiring vivacity;
the son of heaven follows the call of devotion.
Hastily dressed, he rushes to the threshold;
already his heart flies to the church,
obedient, peaceful, on the wings of prayer;
he latches at the door, and finds it bolted.

And, as he listens, at equal intervals,
three times a stroke is repeated on the sonorous brass:
these are not the strokes of the clock; they are not the sound of bells.
a sound of flute mingles with it from time to time;
this strange music, and difficult to explain,
comes alive in such a way that it rejoices the heart,
serious, engaging, as if happy couples
intertwined their dances while singing.

He runs to the window, perhaps to contemplate
what troubles him and seizes him wonderfully;
he sees day breaking in the distant east;
he sees light vapors spread out on the horizon.
And should he believe his eyes?...
A strange light wanders in the garden;
he sees three young people armed with torches,
moving around, running in the paths.

He sees distinctly their white clothes shining,
tight to the body and elegant in shape;
he can see their curly hair,
crowned with flowers, their belts surrounded with roses;
they seem to come from nocturnal dances,
revived and beautified by their joyous fatigues.
They run, they extinguish the torches
as the stars fade, and they disappear into the distance.