The Poem as Hieroglyph: Goethe’s “Über allen Gipfeln”

Abstract

Commentators are practically unanimous about the tenor of Goethe’s little poem “Über allen Gipfeln”: release of tension, imminent repose, harmony, and so on. My own sense of the poem—at least of its final version, as it appeared in print from 1815 on—is different. I find in it practically nothing but dissonances, incongruities, contradictions. And I think the recognition of these qualities produces a distinctly better overall reading of the text than most others.