The Eternal Reunion

The Eternal Reunion

Das ewige Wiederfinden

“Es liegt also auf den Zügen der Oper keinesfalls jener elegische Schmerz eines ewigen Verlustes, vielmehr die Heiterkeit des ewigen Wiederfindens.”

Nietzsche: Die Geburt der Tragödie

A Parcel from Switzerland

Can you expect a gift between Thanksgiving and Christmas—a gift without occasion?  

I got one today.

It’s a petite parcel from Switzerland.  As I opened it I saw a music CD decorated with exquisite patterns:

Rodrigo

Concierto de Aranjuez

Besides a one-line note:

Sehr herzliche Grüße und intensive Wünsche, du Wunderkind!

I recognized the sender without looking at the signature.  I know his tone and style.   

Although we only met once. 

Once upon a time.                         

It All Began by His Cutting a Pear

We were sitting at table.  All 12 of us invited translators to the Wolfenbüttler Übersetzergespräche. 

At that time, he was already a prominent senior translator from French into German; I was yet an unkown student translator from Chinese into German.  While others got together on time and behaved themselves like well-mannered guests, he came late and simply claimed the place supposed to be reserved for the host.  However, I immediately sensed that it had nothing to do with arrogance; he just did not care about trivia.

He cared about details.

I knew this from the way he cut a pear with a knife in his plate.  I had never seen anybody treating a pear with such sensitivity, empathy, and grace.   All at once, he was building an architectural model out of the pear, holding a conversation with it, and paring it with the silver knife to waltz in the china plate.

I cannot recall who initiated the dialogue; but I remember that his deep, bassy voice further stimulated my curiosity.

So, to me, he was an enigma in silence; once he spoke up, he became a spectacle.

Flashback II: “What Halloween Brought Me”

On October 31, I wrote a diary entry, “What Halloween Brought Me”:

When I was 12 years old, I borrowed an audio cassette tape from one of my classmates and was allowed to have it for one night.  It’s a collection of more than 60 compositions; each reduced to 1-2 minutes.  I listened to it while rearranging my bookshelves.  Suddenly, a melody struck me like lightning.  My body was transformed into a statue, while my soul was taken to a heavenly garden alone—afar—, floating, watching, and recollecting. 

As soon as the melody was over, I looked at the label for information about the piece of music; in vain.  I hence could do nothing but click the “withdraw” button every two minutes and listen to the anonymous melody all night. 

The tremolo seemed unearthly, impossible, yearning, and insufferably beautiful.  By the next morning I returned the cassette, I got the entire piece carved into my heart, note by note.

But I never encountered it again. 

Tonight, while others were celebrating Halloween, I was listening to internet radio and translating two sonnets from Chinese into English.  Suddenly, a melody stuck me like lightning, and I was right away thrown back to two decades ago.  I looked it up online:

Title: Concierto de Aranjuez

Composer: Joaquín Rodrigo

This was a different interpretation; but the melody shook me just as intensively as two decades ago.  The melancholy it then planted into my body has now grown up. 

The heavenly garden is no longer afar, but within me. 

A Token of Reviving Spirit

After Wolfenbüttel I never met him again.

For years we preserve a correspondence via electronic and regular mail. 

This morning I jumped as I opened the parcel.  Not only for the CD, but also for a secret anticipation: I believed to recognize a curious coincidence between my chance meeting with the Concierto de Aranjuez and my encounter with him. 

Wenn ich die verloren geglaubte Melodie nach 20 Jahren wiederfinden kann, kann ich vielleicht auch ihm wiederbegegnen.

Eigentlich sind wir für einander nie verloren.