Abstract
This article deals with the ‘Nachdichtung’ of Classical Chinese poems in Gustav Mahler’s song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). Besides giving an overview of current studies on the Chinese sources of the song texts, the author also provides a detailed account of the additional alterations made by Mahler to the poet Hans Bethge’s already significantly altered versions of the original Chinese poems, on which he relied in a major way. Furthermore, the paper discusses the various backgrounds of Mahler’s adaptation, such as his physical and mental crisis, the resorting of European intellectuals to Chinese cultural resources, especially Taoism, considering the epistemology of death, and the social context of anti-Semitism in fin-de-siècle Vienna.
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Notes
- 1.
All the translations of the suite titles and quoted verses are from Mitchell (1985).
- 2.
Wang Qi (1696–1774) turned out to be the most influential compiler of Li Bai’s completed works.
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Acknowledgement
I am grateful to the National Social Science Fund of China for the support of the research project ‘Studies on Eurasian Literature Exchanges and Mutual Learning in the eighteenth Century’ (21 & ZD278).
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He, J. (2023). Textual Metamorphosis Along with Poetical Re-creation: The ‘Nachdichtung’ of Ancient Chinese Poetry in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. In: Jin, H., Stecher, A., Ehrenwirth, R. (eds) Contemporary German–Chinese Cultures in Dialogue. Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26779-6_10
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