Not complaining

Chris and I have had yet another discussion about how to interpret of Ich grolle nicht, the Heine poem set to music by Schumann in his Dichterliebe song cycle. Here's a literal translation of the German words showing the poet's and composer's emphasis on the word "heart" (Herz):

I bear no grudge, even when my heart is breaking,
eternally lost love! I bear no grudge.
Shine how you may in a magnificence of diamonds,
there falls no light into your heart's night.
That I have known for a long time.

I bear no grudge, even if my heart breaks.
Indeed I saw you in my dreams,
and saw the darkness in the chamber of your heart,
and saw the serpent feeding on your heart,
I saw, my love, how very wretched you are.
I bear no grudge.

In the Schumann setting, the climax (forte, top G in our copy ... top A in the original key) comes on the final repetition of "heart" in line 9.

Chris maintains that the words are sheer sarcasm and that the song should therefore be sung in an aggressive, furious manner, because actually he is complaining, very much. The girl has married another man, a rich man, what's more, hence the diamonds. The jilted lover is overwhelmed with sexual jealousy. The piano accompaniment would tend to bear out this assumption because it ends with a series of stabbing, staccato chords banged out with both hands.

However, the melody line for the singer is a lyrical flow, therefore I tend to disagree with this interpretation (also judging from the tone of some of the gentler, more forgiving songs in the cycle) and argue that the words could be taken literally. Because he loves her, the forsaken lover cannot blame this girl for being coerced into a marriage that doesn't suit her. In fact he feels sorry for her. With his poet's insight he empathises with her misery.

Is he singing to her, to himself, or to posterity?

It has just struck me that the poet-narrator / singer could be saying: "I won't complain to you because that would make you feel even more unhappy than you already are. I shall keep my own sufferings to myself"—thus making even more of a martyr of himself! In that case, of course, there's irony in the fact that, by singing about it, he's advertising his self-sacrifice to all and sundry.

The words were written 189 years ago, one of around 140 poems (!) within Heine's Buch der Lieder on the theme of unrequited love.

If you have the time and inclination to listen, here are three different interpretations by famous singers:

1. Fritz Wunderlich
2. Richard Tauber
3. Dietrich Fischer-Diskau

I like the first one best.