“Portrait of Adam Mickiewicz on the Rock of Judah,” painted by Walenty Wańkowicz (1800–1842), is housed at the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland.WIKIPEDIA
Na Sung-in
The author is a music critic and director of the classical music brand Poongwoldang.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship” (1795-96) features a mysterious girl named Mignon. Abducted by a traveling theater troupe in childhood, she has spent her life wandering. Born in Italy, she travels through Germany under a name usually given to French boys.
Her speech is an almost incomprehensible mixture of languages. Hardship has stunted her growth. She combines a child’s innocence with the solemnity of someone who has endured tragedy, making her an enigmatic figure whose inner life remains difficult to fully understand.
Yet Mignon undergoes a transformation whenever she sings. Her awkwardness and halting speech disappear, leaving only a yearning that touches the listener’s heart.
In Goethe’s novel, the protagonist, Wilhelm, rescues the girl from abuse and becomes something of a foster father. Experiencing genuine human kindness for the first time, Mignon soon develops a secret romantic attachment to him.
Her song “Do You Know the Land?” (1795) expresses her wish to travel with Wilhelm to her beautiful homeland, Italy. To her, he is at once a beloved, a protector and a father.
The poem stirred generations of composers. Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Carl Loewe, Robert Schumann and Hugo Wolf were among those who set Goethe’s verses to music. Each found a musical expression for the longing embodied in Mignon’s words.
But the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz gave the poem a different meaning while traveling in Naples.
Where Goethe’s Mignon looks toward a hoped-for future, Mickiewicz transforms that yearning into a melancholy recollection: “Where you once were, there was paradise.” The longing to reach a place with someone beloved becomes a remembrance of happiness that has already vanished.
Perhaps, surrounded by the beauty of southern Italy, Mickiewicz was thinking of Poland, the homeland he had lost. Mignon’s longing for Italy thus became, in his adaptation, a longing for Poland, a country that had been erased from the map through partition.
Stanisław Moniuszko, widely regarded as the father of Polish opera, subsequently set Mickiewicz’s adapted poem to music.
In this way, Goethe’s evocation of longing gave birth to another kind of longing in Mickiewicz’s imagination. One looks forward to a dreamed-of destination, while the other looks back toward an irretrievable past. Both found their voices in song, and both continue to move listeners today, across different languages, countries and generations, long after the worlds that first inspired them have disappeared.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
