I struggle with a bee. Melanie Heinz sings about one. (Schoenberg's Op. 6 No. 5)

Heinz' recording of Schoenberg's "Ghasel" (Schoenberg's setting of a Richard Dehmel poem about a bee) was perfectly matched to the length and dramatic pace of my footage of a bumble bee that I struggled to usher out of my kitchen.

Ich halte dich in meinem Arm, du hältst die Rose zart,
Und eine junge Biene tief in sich die Rose hält.
So reihen wir uns perlenhaft an einer Lebensschnur,
So freun wir uns, wie Blatt an Blatt sich an der Rose schart.
Und glüht mein Kuß auf deinem Mund, so zuckt die Flammenspur
Bis in der Biene Herz, das sich dem Kelch der Rose paart.

I hold you by my side, you hold a tender young rose,
And the rose holds a young bee, in its depths,
Thus we align, bead-like, on a thread of life,
Thus we rejoice, as in the rose, petal after petal assembles.
And as my kiss glows upon your mouth, the pure flame flickers
In the bee's heart, paired with the calyx of the rose.
[Translation: Ben and Brigitta Carson.]

The German words "Biene Herz" are an odd, or old-fashioned, way of saying das Herz der Biene—"the bee's heart." Think for a minute about the final couplet: Our translation of the last two lines fails to obtain their best quality, being, in Brigitta's words, "...how to connect the heat and energy of the four objects: two lovers, rose, and bee. To connect them assuredly, to let us see their connection as a flash or realization, something unavoidable and quick and exciting." The whole couplet tightens and winds a "thread of life" into something that we can only experience as a moment.

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