LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,105)
  • Text Authors (19,457)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

×

Attention! Some of this material is not in the public domain.

It is illegal to copy and distribute our copyright-protected material without permission. It is also illegal to reprint copyright texts or translations without the name of the author or translator.

To inquire about permissions and rates, contact Emily Ezust at licenses@email.lieder.example.net

If you wish to reprint translations, please make sure you include the names of the translators in your email. They are below each translation.

Note: You must use the copyright symbol © when you reprint copyright-protected material.

by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
Translation © by Bertram Kottmann

I felt a funeral in my brain
Language: English 
Our translations:  CAT FRE GER GER ITA
I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of [lead]1.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down --
And hit a world at every plunge,
And finished knowing -- then --

Available sung texts: (what is this?)

•   A. Copland 

A. Copland sets stanzas 1-4

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Copland: "lead, again"

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1896 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990), "Treading", 196-? [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990), "I felt a funeral in my brain", 1949-50, stanzas 1-4 [ mezzo-soprano, piano ], from Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, no. 9 [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Michael M. Horvit (b. 1932), "I felt a funeral in my brain", published 1970 [ soprano and piano ], from Three Songs of Elegy [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , "Vaig sentir un funeral al meu cap", copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "J'ai senti un enterrement dans ma tête", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Walter A. Aue) , copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 20
Word count: 117

Begräbnis fühlt’ ich im Gehirn
Language: German (Deutsch)  after the English 
Begräbnis fühlt’ ich im Gehirn:
Trauernde her und hin
bewegten und bewegten sich,
bis sich ergab ein Sinn.

Und als sie Platz genommen,
tönt dumpfer Trommelklang:
es schlug und schlug bis es mir schien,
es raubt mir den Verstand.

Dann hört’ ich, wie ein Sarg sich hob,
wie Stiefelknarren stach
durchs Herze mir, und dann im All
ein voll Geläut anbrach.

Die Himmel nur ein Glockenton,
ein Hören nur mein Sein,
mein Ich, die Ruh ein fremd Geschlecht,
gestrandet und allein.

Dann brach der Dachstuhl der Vernunft
und stürzt’ und stürzt’ hinab,
schlug Sturz um Sturz auf eine Welt
bis all Erkennen schwand.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • Translation from English to German (Deutsch) copyright © 2015 by Bertram Kottmann, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you must ask the copyright-holder(s) directly for permission. If you receive no response, you must consider it a refusal.

    Bertram Kottmann.  Contact: BKottmann (AT) t-online.de

    If you wish to commission a new translation, please contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

  • a text in English by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1896
    • Go to the text page.

 

This text was added to the website: 2015-06-10
Line count: 20
Word count: 103

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris