Human Hearts Can Never Stay

Winthrop H. Root, in his Introduction to: Poems and Letters of Nikolaus Lenau (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1964), 39-41:

Lenau was haunted continuously by an all too vivid awareness of the transitory nature of existence, the evanescence of things physical and human, as the romantic poet so often is, seeing only “how life crumbles in time’s to-and-fro” (“The Sick in Heart”). The tumultuous heart experiences the changing and not the enduring, since it measures all things by its own violent beating. The breeze blowing over the ruined castle tells Lenau that

                All things pass and die.

The graveyard merely bears witness that the fickle human heart cannot keep alive even its memory of the dead. Though the heart vainly tries

               To keep its heaven in eternal holding,

its emotions are swept away in “the mad flood” of existence; the very self changes; “the joyful tones of childhood” have

     Died with love’s magic song on some far shore;

joy itself is fleeting; “its last tone fades and fading dies” (“Evanescence”). The tree under which he was once happy warns that

              Bliss and blooming, bloom and blisses
              All too quickly pass away.
                            —“The Tree of Memory”

He tries to retain his faith in love and happiness but the lesson the tree teaches is so obvious that his heart is filled with mourning. The distant tone of the post horn tells him that “human hearts can never stay,” that “onward never ceases,”

             Though the cruel lashes’ crack
             Tears our hearts to pieces.

The lovely night itself lasts but a moment (“The Post Horn”). Time cannot be held from its onward rush “by any human passion”; the bough sways only briefly as the raven leaves it, he tells his sorrowing love, and

             Thus soon will cease the brief laments you utter.
                              —“Parting”

Lenau knows that

            “... To mourn what cannot tarry
            Is man’s autumnal fate. .. .”
                            —“Song of Autumn”

In an early philosophical poem, “The Skeptics,” he creates an apocalyptic vision of transience: it floods all life’s labyrinth, drawing all streams into its whirlpool; no dam can protect against its flood which sweeps away every living creature and overwhelms the human heart. “And if I look with trembling yearning to the stars that they may rescue my spirit, I yield to an illusion; they hear the roaring flood, they have a presentiment that they are not safe in their courses; they see the flood grow and are affrighted, as their trembling flicker tells me. Some day their shining array will sink down like weary swallows from their rapid flight.” “And then over the ocean only night will brood; then death’s great work will have been accomplished.” At times the thought that all is transitory is a welcome one, for it means that pain and suffering are also transitory and that there is an escape from them (“The Forest Chapel’’). The final release is death.

The transient nature of existence, its inability to preserve intact what is, makes Lenau's relation to the present and the past problematic. The stream of time flows on and carries away with its flood our happy youth. The innocence of childhood and youth do not last; time robs us of our youthful joys, dreams and ideals, leaving in their place disillusionment, loss of faith and guilt. The youth lingers in a flowery garden, amid roses and singing birds, happy in the dawn, a lovely expectation lighting his face; the world is heaven, man is god. ‘‘Be quiet lest you drive away the fleeting guests from him; for know that these dreams of youth are the best thing granted him in this world. But, alas, with iron stride reality approaches him, the birds fly forth forever, and the youth feels fear as he sees them take farther and farther flight’’ (‘‘Youthful Dreams’’). A man, lost in sadness, sees a vision of his youthful playmates in the gaiety of innocence and among them his own youthful self ‘‘with its happy mien of a stranger to earth’s realm of pain;’’ he laments that he ‘‘trusted the sweet fairy tale of existence’’ and so lost his happiness. In the vision, his youthful beloved appears and again the nightingales of youth sing; but the vision fades and youth and the flowers wither; where he saw the happy vision, he now sees only the pale, bare stone (‘‘The Rock’’).