The Problems

Commentators have been practically unanimous about the general atmosphere of Goethe's little poem “Über allen Gipfeln.” Release of tension, imminent repose, harmony, and so on, make up the general view. 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 mainly nothing but dissonances, incongruities, and contradictions. And in the end, I think, the recognition of these qualities produces a distinctly better overall reading of the text than most others.

1. The first jarring element is the title: “Ein gleiches” (Of the same sort). Ordinarily we do not expect a poem's title to present interpretive difficulties—or if it does, then only after we have worked our way through the poem itself, as in the case of “Ganymed.” But the title “Ein gleiches”—with lower-case “g,” hence requiring to be completed by an understood noun—compels us to look elsewhere to discover what it refers to. For most commentators, “look elsewhere” means simply “look elsewhere on the same page”—in either the 1815 edition or the “Ausgabe letzter Hand”—where we find above our poem the poem “Wandrers Nachtlied” (Wanderer's night-song).