Horde (pt. 2)

Continuing the theme of the previous post, below are the lyrics to Einstürzende Neubauten classic song 'Kollaps' from their eponymous 1981 album. I've supplied an (admittedly mediocre) translation for all non-Germanophones.

In the lyrics, singer Blixa Bargeld invokes an 'us' (the band? Punks? Disaffected youth?) which is a "new Golden Horde", a Horde that will destroy cities.

The lyrics evince what André Breton called 'the temptation of the end of the world' (in his 1948 essay 'La Lampe Dans L'Horloge'). Breton described this longing for the world to end, this desire for the 'Kladderadatsch', as having its origin in '... the state of mind of men like Nerval, Borel, Baudelaire, Cros, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Mallarmé...', in other words; in Black Romanticism. Breton, writing at the beginning of the Cold War, believed that the threat of nuclear extinction had extinguished that temptation: "We no longer want it, since we see the features under which it takes shape and which, against all expectation, strike us as having become absurd."

Near the end of the Cold War, Bargeld's lyrics prove Breton wrong: the temptation of the end of the world, however absurd, was still very much a part of Black Romantic culture.

Norwegian Black Metal, which like the lyrics to 'Kollaps' used the term 'Horde' as a central metaphor, came into being at the tail end of the Cold War: Mayhem was formed in 1984, a year before Gorbachev came to power in the USSR. There can be no doubt that a nuclear holocaust must have appeared possible, even likely, to those involved in the Black Metal movement. Nevertheless, they - like Einstürzende Neubauten - invoked the Horde, as a symbol of the collapse of capitalist, urban society. As a heir to Black Romanticism, Black Metal too felt the temptation of the end of the world.



Kollaps

Kollaps / bis zum Kollaps
nicht viel Zeit
Kollaps / bis zum Kollaps
nicht viel Zeit
Kollaps / Unsre Irrfahrten
zerstören die Städte
und nächtliches Wandern
macht sie dem Erdboden gleich
Kollaps / alles was ich kriegen kann
Alles in mich rein
Kollaps / süßer Kollaps
bitter und bitter und bitter
bis zum Kollaps
Horden / die neue Goldene Horde
diesmal ohne Dschingis Khan
wir zerstören die Städte
nächtliches Wandern macht uns blind
Kollaps / sei mein Kollaps
Kollaps / nicht viel Zeit / nicht viel Zeit
schlag schneller schrei lauter
leb schneller / bis zum Kollaps nicht viel Zeit
wir sind die neuen Goldenen Horden
diesmal ohne Dschingis Khan
bis zum Kollaps nicht viel Zeit
verbrenn mich reiß mich nieder
bitter / bitter / bitter / bitter



Collapse

Collapse / Until the collapse
Not much time left
Collapse / Until the collapse
Not much time left
Collapse / Our wandering
Destroys the cities
And our nightly roaming
Razes it to the ground
Collapse / All I can get
Everything into me
Collapse / Sweet collapse
Bitter and bitter and bitter
to the Collapse / the new Golden Horde
This time without a Genghis Khan
We destroy the cities
Nightly roaming makes us blind
Collapse / Be my collapse
Collapse / Not much time left / Not much time
Beat faster cry louder
Live faster / Until the collapse not much time
We are the new Golden Horde
This time without a Genghis Khan
Until the collapse not much time
Burn me cut me down
Bitter / Bitter / Bitter / Bitter




Post scriptum May 20th 2008

The last line of the text has been changed from Bitter to Bitte and back again.

Sigivald had commented: "Having never bothered to look up the official lyrics, I'd always heard "bitter" as "bitte". For that matter, pleading for the Kollaps[e] strikes me as a more striking reading than calling it bitter." I've checked with a friend whom I consider to be an expert on all things Neubauten, and he at first suggested both readings might be valid as all lyrics were improvised by Bargeld and mutated over the course of time.

Further research however proved 'Bitter' to be correct: both in "Stimme Frisst Feuer" (book by Bargeld) as in Kollaps' cd-booklet the lyrics are "bitter bitter bitter" as opposed to "...suesser Kollaps".