The beast blew off his shirt of flute...
"How come you look so strange and brute?"
Shawmalasound, shawmalashoot -
Hedgehag did to the neighbour sneak! -
Poor Hedgehog, swept up by the creek,
beneath the waves lies mute.
Wivela, wavela,
wavalaya hoot:
toot, toot...
NON-SENSICAL DIABLOG
Non-sensical, you say? Only to the ultraconservative!
For me, the Morgenstern poem - or doggerel, if you insist - is by no means non-sensical. Morgenstern directs his barbed quill at the old love>loss>death cliché. And reinforces the dictionary words by adding seemingly senseless ones, as in fanciful yodeling.
Except that, there as here, these non-dictionary words raise in the reader distinct and definable emotions and memories. Poetry by sound and allusion - what should be new about that?
You ask for examples? Have some:
Line 3:
" Schalmeiala, schalmeialü!"
The two words are composed of "Schalmei" + "ala" and "alü"
"Schalmei" is the German word for the shawm (14th century English: shalmye), i.e. a medieval type of conical, flared, double-reeded oboe. The German word "Schalmeientöne" (the sounds of the Schalmei) is still in common use: it means sweet, seductive entreaties.
The "ala" and "alü" - I don't know, what Morgenstern had in mind here, perhaps female and male diminutives? - are vowel variations quite common to the German tongue. Compare such phrases as "Halli-Hallo" (a call or a greeting between people that know one another) or "Halali" (the sound of the hunting-horn). Igel and Agel (male and female) is of the same ilk.
Now to line 5:
"und tat ihm schnigel schnagel"
No, it's not just a rhyme on "Agel". A sensitive German will have a strong associative reaction to "schnigel schnagel". Let's, for example, take the Viennese dialect (which I know best, and which provides a refugium for many older words expelled from today's "High-German"). "Schnickl" is Viennese for the male member. "Schnackeln" (or "schnackseln") means to make love. (Note: the Viennese dialect offers more than twenty words for this delightful activity, and far more descriptive and picturesque ones at that - but, sorry, I digress.) I ask you: Could Morgenstern have been any clearer than that?
And in the last two lines of his first stanza
"Schnigula schnagula
schnaguleia lü!"
he restates the sex theme. Very musically, too.
Its rhyming prosodical counterpart, the last three lines of his second stanza,
"Wigula wagula
waguleia wü"
echo it, but add - let's wager here - wiegen (to rock, as in a cradle), wogen (to make waves, as in water), wagen (to dare or risk) and wackeln (to wobble or waver back and forth). Cf. Viennese "Wigl-Wogl" (uncertainty of opinion, also a drunkard's walk).
Incidentally, Wagner's Rhine Maidens sing similar syllables as they float around in the Ring. (Very female, that, for whatever it's worth.)
The last line
"tü, tü..."
is less clear. Is it the flute/qill that has the last word? To an associatively modern German, the words would suggest a high-pitched car horn (did the carriages in Morgenstern's time have such a thing?) Private cars in Germany make tü! tü! (or tüt! tüt!), while police, ambulance and firefighters make ta-Tü! ta-Tü! ta-Tü! - at least that's what German children are taught. In either case the tones announce: Here it comes/goes! Get on with it or get lost!
How to pronounce such "nonsensical" words, you ask? And which syllables are you to stress and which ones not? Well, when in a Morningstar poem, do as the Morningstar does: rise and shine. Because - courtesy of Yours Truly, who prepared the lay - the prosody of the translation does mimic precisely the prosody of the original.
[So it could actually be sung to the various melodies that have graced it (by Eduard de Boer, Paul Graener, Erik Bergman and perhaps others. A musician I am not - and my memory I have largely lost.) Still, I wouldn't recommend subjecting the morning star to the wagging of the English tongue...]
Why did I not mention the Flötenhemd (the "flute shirt") among the "non-sensicals"? Oh, sorry, I thought that was obvious.
Note that our lovelorn Hedgehog plays his own quill. Nothing astonishing there. Take a quill, enlarge it to human proportions, let the blood drip out of its hollow interior, and you have all the beginnings of a bloody flute (so spake Amadeus?).
In other words, Hedgehog plays on his own armour and heartblood. He is a knight and he is an artist. He attracts Hedgehag - and loses his security and privacy in so doing. But what else is new?
By the way, the English word "quill" can also designate a medieval musical instrument of the flute family - not to mention its more familiar use for the (also hollow) shaft of the feather used in writing poetry. Quite an arty word. (I refuse to belabor, no matter how apropos, its abuse by Sigmund Freud.)
In this poem, Hedgehog loses his Flötenhemd, i.e. all his quills, for, well, for playing his melodies. With his last quill, his last melody and his last defense depart: All his protection has vanished...
The protection that music affords: think, for instance, of the Zauberflöte (the magic flute) protecting Tamino and Pamina (another one of those vowel-variant couples) from being consumed by fire and water. And "Music my rampart, and my only one", says Edna St. Vincent Millay, who knew wereof she spoke. And, speaking of writers, the "Power of the Quill" (sorry, "Pen"!) was acknowledged even by Popes...
So, poor Hedgehog loses his shirt, his love, his art, his attractiveness, and his armour. It's like Linus losing his security blanket. He starts to waver and the brook sweeps him away, right down to the local fish-pond. Only some non-sensical waves tell of his sorry plight...
(Yes, I know. It does sound like the end to Schubert's Schöne Müllerin, when the waves of the brook sing the hapless miller a lullaby. But I digress...)
Ah, finally. The question I expected. What does "switter-swatter" mean, you ask? Well, it means "schnigel-schnagel", does it not? And what does... Oh, dear. You haven't paid attention, did you. But never mind...
You see, the phrase occurs in an old (but good!) English gossip book about famous people. People like Sir Walter.
Sir Walter's -- well -- "switter- swatter" was immortalized by Henry Purcell's ribald renaissance round (a "catch", a type of canon), not surprisingly titled "Sir Walter". Now, how in the html did it come round again?
"Sir Walter, enjoying his damsel one night... ... ... Oh switter swatter!" Which, come to think of it, I'd love to hear sung by Chor Leoni. And that - please forgive me! - is how I came to use it....
