quote help

Hi Sephine. I saw this film last night for the first time. After all this time, you have probably tracked this quotation down. But for the benefit of anyone interested, it is actually stirb und werde! - "die and come into being".

It is the punchline of Goethe's poem Selige Sehnsucht - “Yearning in the Soul”. (Even Led Zeppelin knew that sometimes words have two meanings. Selig translates as “blessed”, but can also refer to the condition of having died. And by the way, Blech means the metal “tin”, but also means “nonsense” and blechen means “to pay what is due”.)

Here is an English translation I found:

Tell this to no one but the wise,
for the masses will just ridicule it:
I would praise the living thing
that yearns for death in the flames.

In the cool hush of nights of love,
when you conceive as you were conceived,
a strange feeling overcomes you
when the quiet candle gleams.

No longer do you remain captive
in the darkness of these shadows;
and a new desire rips you
toward a loftier intercourse.

No distance can make you heavy:
you come flying and spellbound,
and at last, eager for the light,
poor moth, you are burned to death.

And so long as you have not attained it,
this, "Die and become!",
you will only be a gloomy guest
on this dark earth.

Pick up a pipe for yourself
to make the world a little sweeter!
May it lovingly chase away
my writing-pipe!

As you see, it is nominally about the urges of a moth to procreate and also to be drawn to light. The light is often fatal to the moth, as it comes from fire. People too have powerful sexual urges and are often attracted passionately to dangerous causes without understanding why or foreseeing the consequences. The poem’s many themes include passion, destiny, regeneration, heightened awareness, acceptance and transcendence. I wonder whether Aimee Mann was aware of this poem when she wrote her song "The Moth".

The phrase is ironically quoted by Oskar's neighbour Greff when he scorns Oskar's ambition to learn to write, let alone read "the classics". Greff apparently considers himself one of "the wise", when he is definitely one of "the masses". Although he has a replica of the statue of David in his shop, that is not because he is cultured but because he is homosexual. His idea of good sculptural form is a potato.

An early adopter of Nazism, he is a vegetarian like Hitler, apes Hitler's hairstyle and wears a brown uniform with short pants. He seems to be a leader of the Hitler-Jugend - the Hitler Youth branch of the SA (Sturmabteilung), who were Hitler’s original “brownshirt” goon squad of brutal supporters. Many were later murdered by Hitler when they became an embarrassing inconvenience.

Greff is a paedophile, an unprincipled opportunist and a knife-wielding thug.