Seelenheil

I have little time this week, alas, so no extensive commentary; but here’s a video of a song by German hip-hop artist Xavier Naidoo, of whom I’ll probably have a bit more to say in the future (he’s both the young criminal and the old bearded guy in the video). From an immigrant background – as can be seen from his skin colour – and famous for spiritual and/or apocalyptic texts, especially in his participation in the hip-hop band “The Sons of Mannheim” (Die Söhne Mannheim). German opinion on him varies between regarding him as deep and meaningful and despising him as a pretentious manual overrider (…let he who has read Cryptonomicon decipher the euphemism.) I find him interesting and worthwhile; I suspect if I were a native German speaker I might think of him otherwise – one experiences lyrics differently in a tongue not your own. I’ll have to write a bit about this one day.  Anyway. Lyric translation below the cut.

When you can no longer be astonished, I pity you; there are no more chances for you.
When you cannot feel any more, it is over; you will remain eternally empty.
When you cannot forgive, you give up much; are your robes, then, clean?
If you can go on living like this, you will never experience your spirit being whole.

You’re no longer that child that you once were, that is true; although you’d be better off as you once were, that is true.
The child that in you sleeps, wake it up. The child that in you sleeps, bring it out.
The child that in you sleeps, wake it up. The child that in you sleeps, bring it out.

And when you can no longer be astonished, I pity you…

Perhaps you are good human: a good woman, a good man, and in this world as unwanted as it’s possible to be.
Do not storm off, please; stay alert. Salvation from a high house draws near.
Put your armour on – you know what I refer to. Put his armour on – such a one has none.
Put your armour on – you know what I refer to. Put his armour on – such a one has none.

And when you can no longer be astonished, I pity you…

You ask yourself, why are you here, in such a dark world? Make for yourself some light, at last; make it bright again.
It lies, really, in your hands, and what you make of it; not in the hands of the world, which laughs.
The world lies as a burden on us; the world drives us to hate; love has here no place, though love is a treasure.
The world lies as a burden on us; the world drives us to hate; love has here no place, though love is a treasure.

And when you can no longer be astonished…

The translation loses a little – the word “vergeben” is used twice in the chorus, once to mean “forgive” and once “pass up”, and the words “leben” (live) and “erleben” (experience) echo each other. “Good human” – the word for human, person, is mensch, cognate to and having the same monosyllabic strength as the old-school use of “man” before the feminists had their way (as in, “man is an animal who breastfeeds his children”) – if we’d kept the old “were” for man and “wife” for woman (cf. “werewolf”, wolf-man) we could keep the “good man” as gender-neutral term and render the line in the song as “Perhaps you are a good man – a good wife, a good were, and in this world so unwanted as one can unwanted be”.

The title literally means “wholeness of soul” – I think there is some word in theology, nicked from Greek or Hebrew, that expresses this exactly. I’m not sure how to render it in English, though I suspect there’s some word I’m forgetting. It can also be translated “salvation of the soul” – Heil extends from meaning “wholeness” to “salvation”, i.e. preservation (or granting) of wholeness. Incidentally, “Heil” and its derivates closely parallel a set of related words in English, although in English you might not notice them, whereas in German they’re pretty obvious. As an adjective, heil is directly equivalent to English hale, from which comes health (modern English has replaced hale with a adjectival derivative of its own noun form, healthy); as a noun, Heil (note capital) means health or wholeness (whole being another form of hale which picked up a gratuitous “w” somewhere along the line). To make healthy (heil machen) is to heal (heilen). To wish someone health is a form of greeting: in old times, was hael!, and later hail!, as in “Hail Mary!” (hail is also used as a verb in this sense); or, in German, Heil, as in “Heil Hitler!” (this sense of Heil has gone a bit out of favour since 1945.) And, lastly, from a time before either of these languages were written down, a variant on hale/heil has referred to spiritual haleness – in English holy, German heilig. So, in English: hale/whole, health, heal, holy, hail; German: heil, Heil, heilen, heilig, Heil.

(Germans typically use Gesundheit rather than Heil to mean “health”, though; Heil is used where we’d say “well-being” or “wholeness”. They mean basically the same thing but with different connotations; which means (this only occurred to me when writing this post) that the Nazis were literally walking around saying “Gesundheit Hitler!” all the time. The adjective form gesund is generally interchangeable with heil, and a related term also exists in English – old English gesund became modern English sound, as in “of sound mind.”)

(As mentioned, Heil also means “salvation”, from which – in a religious context – derives Heiland, “Saviour”; in English, from holy comes holiday, as a “holy day” is one where, in honour of the Lord, one does no work whatsoever. (It’s one of the more pleasant religious duties there is.))

(I thought “hello” was related to all this, but apparently not. Per wiktionary, it’s derived from “ho la!”, French for “ho there!”, which became holla, then hollo, then hallo, then hello, and also gave rise to the verb “holler”. Well, I never knew that.)