Träd fram du Nattens Gud

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"Träd fram du Nattens Gud"
Art song
Sheet music
First page of sheet music
EnglishStep forth, thou god of night
Textpoem by Carl Michael Bellman
LanguageSwedish
MelodyUnknown source, possibly Bellman's own
Published1791 in Fredman's Songs
Scoringvoice and cittern

"Träd fram du nattens gud" (Step forth, thou god of night), "Aftonkväde" (Song at Nightfall), or Fredmans sånger no. 32[1] is a nature-lyrical Swedish song by Carl Michael Bellman, a nocturne in the style of Edward Young's Night-Thoughts.[2]

Context[]

Carl Michael Bellman is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and a powerful influence in Swedish music, known for his 1790 Fredman's Epistles and his 1791 Fredman's Songs. A solo entertainer, he played the cittern, accompanying himself as he performed his songs at the royal court.[3]

Jean Fredman (1712 or 1713 – 1767) was a real watchmaker of Bellman's Stockholm. The fictional Fredman, alive after 1767, but without employment, is the supposed narrator in Bellman's epistles and songs.[4] The epistles, written and performed in different styles, paint a complex picture of the life of the city during the eighteenth century. A frequent theme is the demimonde, with Fredman's cheerfully drunk Order of Bacchus,[5] a loose company of ragged men who favour strong drink and prostitutes. At the same time as depicting this reality, Bellman creates a rococo picture of life, full of classical allusion, following the French post-baroque poets; the women, including the beautiful Ulla Winblad, are "nymphs", and Neptune's festive troop of followers and sea-creatures sport in Stockholm's waters.[6] The juxtaposition of elegant and low life is humorous, sometimes burlesque, but always graceful and sympathetic.[3] The songs are "most ingeniously" set to their music, which is nearly always borrowed and skilfully adapted.[7]

Song[]

Music and verse form[]

The song is in 2
4 time and is marked Andante.[8] No source has been found for the elegant and neat melody, implying it may be Bellman's own composition; the metre is certainly Bellman's. Each stanza is of five lines, consisting of two alexandrines, a hemistich (half-length line), an alexandrine, and a final hemistich;[9] the rhyming scheme follows the same pattern, AABAB.[8]

Lyrics[]

"Aftonkväde" is included among Bellman's 1791 Fredman's songs as number 32; its first version was written in 1780, but it was reworked in 1784 prior to printing. From being a classicist depiction of an animated archaic landscape peopled by ancient gods, it contains more realistic details in the spirit of James Thomson. The verse size is similar to that used by Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna in his poem Natten (Night).[10] The poem first appeared in Bellman's 1780 En stuf rim, a collection of his earliest poems with some new compositions, like this one, imitating Oxenstierna, who in turn was following Edward Young's popular Night-Thoughts, published 1742–1745.[9] The poem has been translated by Paul Britten Austin.[9]

Versions
Aftonkväde, 1791
Carl Michael Bellman[8] 		Prose translation Song at Nightfall, 1967[9]
Paul Britten Austin

Ditt täcke gömmer allt... Betraktom Floras gårdar!
Här skönsta höjder fly, där mörka griftevårdar
   på svarta kullar stå;
och under uvars gråt mullvadar, ormar, mårdar
   ur sina kamrar gå.

Your quilt covers everything... Look at Flora's gardens!
Here the most beautiful heights flee, there dark barrow-wights
   stand on black hills;
and under owls' crying moles, snakes, and martens
   leave their chambers.

All hid beneath thy cape, see Flora's gardens slumber;
Lo, fairest summits flee and ancient barrows sombre
   On sable hillocks low!
Where weeps the hungry owl, moles, serpents without number
   From out their chambers go.

Works imitated[9]
Night-Thoughts 1742–1745
Edward Young[11] 		Natten, 1770
Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna[12] 		Prose translation

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps.

Den vind, som smyger hit, bland täta löf försvinner:
Här Sömnens trötta Gud en älskad hvila finner,
Bland Vallmog och Cypress, som kring hans hjessa gro.
Här retas ingen våg; här löfven aldrig bäfva;
Fast drömmar spridas här och kring hans läger sväfva,
De störa ej hans ro.

The wind that creeps here, among dense leaves disappears:
Here the weary God of Sleep finds a beloved rest,
Among Poppies and Cypress, which grow around his head.
No wave is teased here; here the leaves never tremble;
Though dreams spread here and around his camp hover,
They do not disturb his peace.

Analysis[]

Classical mythology in a natural setting: "Zephyr Crowning Flora". Painting by Jean-Frédéric Schall (1752–1825)

In terms of content, the poem combines a poetic integration of gods and other mythological beings, with a realistic, though idealized, depiction of a summer night after a long period of drought. Technically, it resembles several of Fredman's epistles, since the poet commands "the god of the night" to transform day to night and bring coolness to the world and the minds of the people, which are thus linked together. The nightly landscape, however, offers not only peace and rest, but threatening creatures - initially "moles, snakes, and martens", then cyclops, fauns and supernatural guests, who, however, are asked by the shepherd Alexis to lie down to rest. After he has similarly quieted the powers of the wind and the water, the poem's last stanza shows a typical ambiguity for Bellman, when Arachne (a Greek nymph, her name meaning "Spider") is asked to trap his needle: is it a question of the myth or a poetic rewriting for the spider, related to the serpents and the martens? Regardless, the poem ends with another typical scene, with the announcement that the narrator is about to fall asleep, which certainly was meant to be depicted at the performance.[10]

The suggestion that the poem depicts the farm Sågtorp at Erstavik, based on its dedication to the assessor Weltzin, who had this farm as a summer residence, is doubtful.[10]

Carina Burman writes in her biography of Bellman that the song's fifteen stanzas describe how night falls. In a strongly mythologised Nature, night does not fall because of the laws of physics but because a god commands it, as acknowledged in the line "Your quilt covers everything". This applies on the large scale and the small: the lake cools, as does people's blood. Both humans and Nature's mythical beings – "Cyclopses, Fauns" – are made to be quiet: "Apollo himself is playing". The god's performance brings sleep to the mythical beings, and the poet himself ends the song by going to sleep: "But now – now I shall sleep". Burman comments that the poet's sleep brings the whole world to rest, as no-one is left to portray it in song.[13]

References[]

  1. ^ Bellman, Carl Michael (1766). "N:o 32 Träd fram du nattens gud" (in Swedish). Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  2. ^ "N:o 32" (in Swedish). Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  3. ^ a b "Carl Michael Bellmans liv och verk. En minibiografi (The Life and Works of Carl Michael Bellman. A Short Biography)" (in Swedish). The Bellman Society. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  4. ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 60–61.
  5. ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 39.
  6. ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 81–83, 108.
  7. ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 63.
  8. ^ a b c Hassler & Dahl 1989, pp. 213–217.
  9. ^ a b c d e Britten Austin 1967, pp. 130–132
  10. ^ a b c Lönnroth 2005, pp. 225–228
  11. ^ Young, Edward. "The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality". Eighteenth Century Poetry. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  12. ^ Oxenstierna, Johan Gabriel (1770). "Natten". Litteraturbanken. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  13. ^ Burman 2019, pp. 548–550.

Sources[]

  • Britten Austin, Paul (1967). The Life and Songs of Carl Michael Bellman: Genius of the Swedish Rococo. New York: Allhem, Malmö American-Scandinavian Foundation. ISBN 978-3-932759-00-0.
  • Burman, Carina (2019). Bellman: Biografin [Bellman: The Biography] (in Swedish). Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag. ISBN 978-9100141790.
  • Hassler, Göran; Dahl, Peter (illus.) (1989). Bellman – en antologi [Bellman – an anthology]. En bok för alla. ISBN 91-7448-742-6.
  • Kleveland, Åse; Svenolov Ehrén (illus.) (1984). Fredmans epistlar & sånger [The songs and epistles of Fredman]. Stockholm: Informationsförlaget. ISBN 91-7736-059-1.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (with facsimiles of sheet music from first editions in 1790, 1791)
  • Lönnroth, Lars (2005). Ljuva karneval!: om Carl Michael Bellmans diktning. Stockholm: Bonnier. ISBN 91-0-057245-4.

External links[]

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