In 1990, when I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in German, I did my thesis on Goethe.  Part of the thesis included my performing Goethe's Der Erlkönig (in it's original German) by memory. I had already memorized the poem in high school so it was easy. Today, the entire verse is still indelibly etched in my mind. My fascination with Goethe sprung out of encouragement I received, at an early age, from my father, José Rodríguez Bernard.  My father is a retired electrical engineer and professor of electrical theory.  He instilled in us an understanding of science and math.  Both my father and my mother, also nurtured my artistic and dramatic inclinations and nourished my finding ways to combine my interest in science with my love for art and theatre.  My father urged me to learn German, as a child. He told me that from Germany and Austria, there hailed many groundbreaking scientists and doctors (such as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud), composers (such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and the bunch), and poetic dramatists (such as Johann Goethe and Bertolt Brecht).  My father said that I would benefit in knowing the German language, because I would therefore be able to read the documents of those pioneers in their original language. My dad also said that I would enjoy learning German, because the language in itself is very scientific.  

In the seventh grade, I began my formal education in German and took classes in the language every year, until I graduated from high school.  Learning another language came easy to me, because I had to learn to speak English in kindergarten. We had immigrated to the United States from our birth country of Cuba, where Spanish was our mother tongue. Studying German, was an activity from which I derived much pleasure as a teenager.  Art, however, was the focal point of my creative and academic pursuits. Theatre was secondary.

After high school, I entered Cornell University in the Fine Arts program with a goal of receiving a BFA in painting.  Lacking maturity and focus, I switched out of the BFA program and began studying biology.  Concurrently I took courses in German and Theatre. After three years of Cornell University, I left to study theatre in New York City under the legendary Russian actress/writer Sonia Moore who was a personal student of Konstantin Stanislavsky's. Considered to be the "Father of Theatre," Stanislavski (a contemporary of Sigmund Freud) invented the "The Method" of acting. Sonia Moore's books were required reading in my theatre

classes at Cornell University. My father encouraged me to finish my Bachelor's degree, while I worked as an actress in New York City. With my parents support, I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in German from City University of New York, while achieving some success as a theatre and television actress and while painting prolifically in the privacy of my home. Goethe, being a German dramatist, scientist, poet and painter, was therefore an obvious choice for my thesis topic. I relished being able to read Goethe's play, "Faust," in its original German and to be able to dramatically perform his Erlkönig poem (also in its original German) as part of my thesis. My professors in college, nourished my merging of German, science, art and theatre, as did my parents.  I look at multi-talented individuals such as the Italian Leonardo da Vinci, the German Johann Goethe, the African-American Paul Robeson and the Panamanian Ruben Blades as role models. Their accomplishments remind me of mankind's ability to excel in several different fields, during one life time.  To an outsider, these fields may appear to be unrelated.  The truth is that science, language, art, music and writing are intrinsically intertwined.  Most importantly, these men exemplify that the understanding of and the appreciation for these fields of academia and art cross cultural boundaries. To the right is portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which is housed in the Neue Pinakothek (museum) in Munich.

When German-speaking people wander into my studio, I treat them to my dramatic reciting of Der Erlkönig in its original German, alongside of my painting.  Currently, I am composing (in play-writing format) a short theatrical piece of Der Erlkönig. The composition incorporates an on-stage mixing of German and Afro-Cuban art, music, dance and culture.  The piece opens with lights out and a single spotlight on me dressed in black, as I simply recite, a cappella, Goethe's Der Erlkönig poem in its English translation. Lights swell, revealing a stage full of alder trees. A waterfall flows through jagged rocks. Wind blows. Leaves rustle. Now dressed in masculine eighteenth century European attire, I begin to very dramatically recite Goethe's famous poem in its original German. Through choreographed dance to the beat of African drums, I change costume (on stage) before each of the characters' voices I am about to dramatically recite. Intermittently, puppets enact the scenes which I recite, while video montages flash images of windy forests, gleaming water in darkness, horses galloping, spirits twirling in Afro-Cuban Orisha dances and ballet, and paintings of Der Erlkönig by dead European artists and by Lili Bernard. Upon completion of the poem, lights come up on my cousin's cousin, Reina Powell (a young Black Cuban Opera Singer), dressed in traditional Afro-Cuban vesture. Behind her is a classical European musical orchestra who accompanies Reina as she belts out classical composer Franz Schubert's song "Der Erlkönig," which was inspired by Goethe's poem. Towards the end of Reina's singing, Ballet dancers emerge as conga drums swell. Afro-Cuban drums accompany the classical orchestra as they continue playing Schubert's piece. Orisha dancers flood the stage, intertwining with the ballerinas whose dance now funktafies into modern dance. Meanwhile, a spot comes up on a blank canvas. The dancers pull me on stage and place paintbrushes in my hands. Dancing with them, to the beat of the conga drums and to the strains of the classical orchestra; I paint on stage, in moments, a very large canvas of a scene from Der Erlkönig. Lights out. The goal of this short performance piece would be three-fold: to shed light on how one art form inspires another; to expose the truth that interpretation of art, literature, music and dance transcends all cultural and generational boundaries; and to show the profundity of a father's love for his child, through the eyes of a mother.

The poem Der Erlkönig is told in four voices.  The poem begins with a third-person narration, as a sort of anonymous eyewitness to the spectacle of a boy dying in the arms of his father, on horseback, through the Alder forest in the night and wind.  Alder is a deciduous plant, belonging to the Birch family. The most common Alder is the Black Alder Tree found in Europe.

They thrive near water and have beautiful long catkin flowers. Pictured to the left and right are male and female catkin flowers of the Adler. In my painting, the Adler flowers and leaves were useful in portraying the wind.

The next voice in the poem which is heard is that of the father, asking his child in his arms why he looks so frightened.  The child responds by asking the father, "Don't you see the Alder King there?" What ensues is a discourse between the father and son.  The boy alerts his father to each of the apparitions or hallucinations that he sees along the ride.  The father reassures the son that his visions are merely wisps of fogs and other natural phenomena. In between the dialogue of the father and son, the Alder King interrupts with alluring words, directed to the youth.

In German and Danish folklore, the Alder King is a sort of mischievous spirit of death who entices children with false

promises and who lurks in the Alder forests.  He appears to people who are dying. Legend has it that if the expression on the Alder King's face is kind and friendly, then the death will be painless and peaceful.  If the expression on his face is mean, then the death will be painful and traumatic. In my painting I made no face on the Alder King for two reasons. First, in Goethe's poem, the Alder King starts with a kind expression.  At the end of the poem, he is mean and forceful.  The second reason is that I wanted to imply that the Alder King, and his faceless mother and daughters are merely figments of the boy's imagination and not real.

I enjoyed the challenge of painting people illuminated in a night time scene, while trying to yet maintain a colorful look. I chose to paint the Alder trees in bloom because it allowed me to create a mosaic of nature around my subject matter. I enjoy incorporating mosaics of flora framing figures in my painting. I try to make the human figures one with the nature around them.

I made the Alder King's mother (in the golden robe at the top right) deliberately young to suggest that she is immortal and ageless. I attempted to suggest sensuality with the three flat chested daughters (lower right) by employing a minimal use of lines in their hair and vesture. The idea was to suggest a gentle seduction, without compromising the integrity of the painting, so that it could still be hung in a child's room. My four-year old son, Uriel, when looking at the finished painting, passionately remarked "Oh gross, Mommy!  That's disgusting! You shouldn't paint sexy girls!" I consider my children's criticisms to be the most valuable.  They very honestly let me know if I've succeeded or failed in my intentions.

The painting and the drawing below, are the works of art by two other artists, that I use in my performance piece for my "Goethe’s Der Erlkönig" painting. In my painting, I borrowed the posture of the girls from a nineteenth century painting (below left) by Vienna-born artist Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871). Schwind was a friend of Austrian composer Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) and illustrated many of Schubert's compositions. Schubert, well known for his "Ave Maria" song, received the most notoriety for his song, "Der Erlkönig," which was inspired by Goethe's poem.  For lyrics, Schubert uses Goethe's poem, maintaining the integrity of the text. Goethe's poem, inspiring Schwind's painting and Schubert's classical song, lends testimony to the transcendent nature of literature, art and music.

In homage to art inspiring art; in my painting I posed the father and son, similarly as did the artist Albert Sterner, in his 1910 drawing, "The Erlkönig," which was inspired by Goethe's poem, "Der Erlkönig."

There are several differences between Sterner's father and son (above right) and mine.  See if you can find them!

Goethe wrote "Der Erlkönig" in 1782, after an incident he had seen at his friend's house.  He and his friend were outside on a windy night, when suddenly they saw a man on horseback, galloping through the forest with a bundle in his arms.  The next morning they found out that it was a neighbor, carrying his sick son to the doctor.  That incident, along with a Danish poem (which had been translated to German by Johann Gottfried von Herder in 1778) called "Erlkönigs Tochter" ( "The Alder King's Daughters"), was said to have inspired Goethe to write his famous poem.

It was not until I gave birth to my own five sons (all born in a seven year span), that I understood the profound love between a parent and child. As I witness my husband's interaction with our children, it is most evident that the love he feels for our children is as profound as the love I feel for them.  My having been the one through whose physical suffrage our children came into the world, does not make my love for our children any deeper than my husband's. The love we both have for our children is one that tugs strongly and evenly at both our hearts. My having birthed five sons (the eldest who is just nine) has allowed me to look at Goethe's Der Erlkönig poem from a more intimate perspective than I did before, when I was in college, without children.  Our experience with our third-born son in particular, allows me to empathize more deeply with the father in this poem, who is holding his ailing son.

In 2004, at the age of four, our third-born son, Elias, lost the hearing in his right ear due to neural damage from a cold virus. At the onset of the viral attack, Elias suffered complete right-sided facial paralysis.  He was not able to close his eye, which became very irritated. His pupil stayed dilated, which was painful, when exposed to light. For a few days he was not able to talk, walk or stand.  The vertigo caused him to vomit so much that he had to be hospitalized on IV fluids for a day.  At Elias' pre-school, I used to visit him, right before nap time, to adhere his eyelid shut with a sticky patch, so that it would stay closed and enable him to sleep. During recess, outdoors, he had to wear dark sunglasses. He was unable to eat without drooling food out of one side of his mouth and he could not sip from a straw.  He became conscious of how his face looked and began covering the right side of his face with his hand, upon occasion.  After a couple of months, he regained most of the control of his face, thank God. However, gradually he began losing the hearing in his right ear. A year later, Elias started kindergarten with an ear infection in his hearing ear (the left one).  It took several months for the fluid to completely dissipate from the hearing ear.  As a consequence, Elias began kindergarten nearly deaf.  It was a difficult time in Elias' life.  He bravely endured many doctor visits and grueling tests.  On one incident he was hospitalized under general anesthesia for a lengthy MRI.  Thanks be to God, Elias has since regained complete hearing in his left ear and has adjusted well to the loss of hearing in his right ear.  It is barely noticeable that he is functioning with unilateral hearing loss. He is a very happy, well-adjusted little boy, excelling in academics and sports.  We gratefully welcome prayers, on behalf of Elias, that he may regain the hearing in his right ear.

When I recite Goethe's "Der Erlkönig" poem, I can't help but think of how my son, Elias, has suffered in his young life. Tears come quickly to my eyes.  The image of the bare-breasted child in his father's fully-clothed arms, being swiftly escorted to a doctor, reminds me of when we took Elias to the doctor, at the onset of his illness, in only his underwear. Our pediatrician had instructed us to keep our son naked and cool, because his fever was so high.   At the end of the poem, the man's son dies. At that point, I can't help but think of how my dear cousins, Fernando and Sira Perez, suffered when their child, my cousin Roxana, was killed in a car accident. I think of how so many parents and children go through far worse suffrage than Elias and our family have.  I thank God that Elias is able to hear so well out of that left ear and that he is able to hear at all.  It makes me very grateful for my own ability to enjoy sound and sight.

Below left, is the original text in German of Goethe's "Der Erlkönig." To the right of it is the literal translation in English.

Literal English Translation

The Alder King

Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He holds the boy in the crook of his arm
He holds him safe, he keeps him warm.

"My son, why do you hide your face so anxiously?"
"Father, do you not see the Erlking?
The Erlking with crown and cloak?"
"My son, it's a wisp of fog."

"You lovely child, come, go with me!
Many a beautiful game I'll play with you;
Some colorful flowers are on the shore,
My mother has some golden robes."

"My father, my father, can't you hear,
What the Erlking quietly promised me?"
"Be calm, stay calm, my child;
The wind rustles through dry leaves."

"Do you want to come with me, fine lad?
My daughters should be waiting for you;
My daughters lead the nightly dances
And will rock and dance and sing you to sleep."

"My father, my father, can't you see there,
The Erlking's daughters in the gloomy place?"
"My son, my son, I see it well:
The old willows seem so gray."

"I love you, your beautiful form entices me;
And if you're not willing, I shall use force."
"My father, my father, he's grabbing me now!
The Erlking has wounded me!"

The father shudders; he rides swiftly,
He holds in his arms the moaning child.
Barely he arrives at the yard in urgency;
In his arms, the child was dead.

The Erlking

O who rides by night thro' the woodland so wild?
It is the fond father embracing his child;
And close the boy nestles within his loved arm,
To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm.

"O father, see yonder! see yonder!" he says;
"My boy, upon what dost thou fearfully gaze?"
"O, 'tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud."
"No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud."

"O come and go with me, thou loveliest child;
By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled;
My mother keeps for thee many a fair toy,
And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy."

"O father, my father, and did you not hear
The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear?"
"Be still, my heart's darling—my child, be at ease;
It was but the wild blast as it sung thro' the trees."

"O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy?
My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy;
She shall bear three so lightly thro' wet and thro' wild,
And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child."

"O father, my father, and saw you not plain
The Erl-King's pale daughter glide past thro' the rain?"
"Oh, yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon;
It was the grey willow that danced to the moon."

"O come and go with me, no longer delay,
Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away."
"O father! O father! now, now, keep your hold,
The Erl-King has seized me—his grasp is so cold!"

Sore trembled the father; he spurr'd thro' the wild,
Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child;
He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread,
But, clasp'd to his bosom, the infant was dead.

Translated by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

The Elf King

Who rides so late through the windy night?
The father holding his young son so tight.
The boy is cradled safe in his arm,
He holds him sure and he holds him warm.

Why is your face so frightened my son?
The King of elves, father, see him yon?
The Elfin King with his tail and crown?
It is the fog, my son, streaming down.

Yes, you my dear child, come go with me!
The games I play, you'll like them, come see.
The shore is coloured with flow'rs in bloom,
My mother's gold gowns, you will see soon.

Oh father, father, can you not hear
What the elfking promises? I fear!
Be calm, stay quiet my dearest son,
The wind blows the dry leaves of autumn.

My darling boy, won't you come with me?
I have daughters in whose care you'll be.
My daughters dance round the fairy ring.
Each night they'll cradle you, dance and sing.

Father, dear father, can you not see
The elf king's daughter staring at me?
My son, my son, I see it so well:
Gray meadows on which the moonlight fell.

I love you for your beauty of course,
If free you'll not come, I will use force.
Father, dear father, he's touching me.
Of elf king's hurt, father please, free me.

Dread grips the father, he spurs the roan,
In loving arms he feels the boy moan.
At last, the courtyard, with fear and dread,
He looks at the child; the boy is dead.

Translated by Frank

To enjoy hearing Schubert's Der Erlkönig song, click on this link: http://www.carolinaclassical.com/articles/erlking.html