Ode to Joy

בּרידער | “Brothers” – Y.L. Peretz’s Sardonic Rejoinder to Friedrich Schiller’s Paean to Universal Enlightenment, An die Freude (Ode to Joy)

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Y.L. Peretz rejected cultural universalism, seeing the world as composed of different nations, each with its own character. Liptzin comments that “Every people is seen by him as a chosen people…”; he saw his role as a Jewish writer to express “Jewish ideals…grounded in Jewish tradition and Jewish history.” This is Peretz lampoon of the popularity of Friedrich Schiller’s idealistic paean made famous as the lyrics to the climax of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. . . .

שִׁיר לְשִׂמְחָה | Shir l’Simḥa, Friedrich Schiller’s An die Freude (ode to Joy) in Hebrew, 1795

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In 1785 Friedrich Schiller wrote his ‘An die Freude an ode ‘To Joy’, describing his ideal of an equal society united in joy and friendship. Numerous copies and adaptations attest to its popularity at the time. The slightly altered 1803 edition was set to music not only by Ludwig van Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony but also by other composers such as Franz Schubert and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Hs. Ros. PL B-57 contains a Hebrew translation of the first edition of the ode (apparently rendered before the 1803 alteration), revealing that the spirit of the age even managed to reach the Jewish community in the Netherlands. Whereas the imagery of Schiller’s original is drawn from Greek mythology, the author of the שִׁיר לְשִׂמְחָה relies on the Bible as a source. In fact, he not only utilises Biblical imagery, but successfully avoids any allusion to Hellenistic ideas whatsoever. . . .

Prinzessin Sabbat | Princess Shabbat, by Heinrich Heine (1851)

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“Prinzessin Sabbat” by Heinrich Heine, in Romanzero III: Hebraeische Melodien, (“Princess Shabbat,” in Romanzero III, Hebrew Melodies.), 1851 was translated into English by Margaret Armour (1860-1943), The Works of Heinrich Heine vol. 12: Romancero: Book III, Last Poems (1891). We have replaced “schalet” (unchanged in Armour’s translation) with cholent. . . .


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