Song from the New Testament (Sanguineti, set by L. Berio) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


 Canticum
 
 in the year nineteen hundred and eighty and two
 at the beginning of the month of November
 once All Saints Day and All Soul's Day are both past,
 between five and six of the evening,
 (. . .)
 I, the hereby undersigned,
 (. . .)
 do publicly declare and certify
 that I renounce the world tor ever:
 be my witnesses, for an hour,
 and, for an hour, watch with me:
 
 Canticum
 
 consider that we are in autumn,
 and day departs as night comes on:
 (. . .)
 I'm here expressly to make my will,
 but you shouldn't expect anything for yourselves:
 if I make public my private business,
 (. . .)
 if today I close and clear away and let go and sever,
 if I throw in the towel, draw a line and make a new start,
 it's because I have good reasons,
 not all of which I'll tell you:
 
 Canticum
 
 it doesn't profit anyone to listen to me,
 if he can't get the moral that's there:
 lend me your ears, good sirs,
 and above all turn your gaze upon me:
 if someone here gives up life and the world,
 it's fair to assume he hasn't much to lose:
 (. . .)
 I haven't any regrets on that account, nor make recrimination:
 hopes, for me, have never increased,
 I'm not afraid of my fears,
 I take comfort in the thought that nothing's born again:
 
 Canticum
 
 then remember that Martinmas is upon us,
 that Indian summer arrives, which comes to me and touches me;
 setting my feet down, standing here upon the earth,
 I took possession of a little space:
 in a smaller space, as soon as I move on,
 l'll lose myself, laid down, stretched out:
 one is below, another walks above,
 or rather leaps, above the ground:
 
 Canticum
 
 I'm here expressly to make my will,
 but you shouldn't expect anything for yourselves:
 if I make public my private business,
 if from the rooftops I shout my wishes,
 if there are good-hearted people still living,
 it's much better that they leave me to my fate:
 
 Canticum
 
 I declare I leave behind me words of love:
 I declare those I wrote and did not write,
 I declare those I spoke and did not speak,
 those thought and those not thought,
 but which, I thought, nevertheless, about thinking:
 (. . .)
 one makes the bread for someone else to eat,
 one kneels for another to give him orders:
 here it's well said that this is a world of steps:
 you find one going down, but there's another going up:
 (. . .)
 thus it is among men, and also among women,
 thus it is for others, and also for me,
 in that whispering that I can still breathe,
 if a whisper breathes, it is the breathing of words:
 and so love finishes in a song,
 and comes to a close in ballads and old refrains:
 love dies in doggerel and ditty,
 expires in simple verse, in elegy, in sonnet:
 
 Canticum
 
 look into my eyes, that a veil veils,
 like fog dribbling down a window-pane:
 feel my pulse, which beats strongly,
 (. . .)
 upon my skin, that determined scribe,
 time's clock, has incised, with its little hand,
 from length to breadth, from head to toe, in a frantic rush,
 his black, accursed signature
 
 Canticum
 
 he who has given has given, but he who has received has received,
 and my time, for me, is time lost:
 and alone, with empty hands and slowly,
 I'm leaving now, my own nothingness awaiting me:
 (. . .)
 and here time goads me, or rather deserts me,
 and my heart's broken, and my flesh is tired:
 
 Canticum
 
 but if there stood an illiterate girl
 before me, o beautiful unlettered,
 who didn't know the signs that the sun has marked,
 turning, in a few circles, his sphere,
 above the soft limbs in which she breathes,
 and seeks keys to her sweet enigma,
 let her just open to me the pages of her book,
 and every tiny fold within her l'll decipher:
 (. . .)
 from a dusk to a dawn, and l'll ask no more,
 l'll translate faithfully such a text,
 unfolding the flesh in every pleat,
 and untying each resistent knot:
 l'll be echo, with my slow tongue,
 to every letter, every syllable, and word:
 if in a hand a destiny's signalled,
 within a body you see the life entire:
 (. . .)
 and for my friends, what I say is pointless,
 they, anyway, haven't even come to meet me
 
 Canticum
 
 but on the reverse the world's turned upside-down,
 (. . .)
 such that here, I sing for singing's sake,
 say for saying's, talk for talking's,
 to leave my will I undertake, not to deceive:
 I'm here to receive, not to give:
 
 Canticum
 
 thus I cut them short, my endless ramblings,
 for, in any case, night's already fallen.

Authorship

George Hall

Based on

text

Edoardo Sanguineti (1930-)

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

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Set in Italian, original text by Edoardo Sanguineti (1930-) ENG

Luciano Berio (1925-2003)

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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