Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten,
Sie fliegen vorbei wie nächtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschießen
Mit Pulver und Blei, Die Gedanken sind frei!
Our thoughts they are free, and no one can guess them
They fly right on by like shades—you can’t catch them
No human can know them, no hunter shoot down,
No way José and nay! Our thoughts they are free.
The quotes is from a German song with the same title as this post; the free and somewhat Americanized translation is mine. The poem “freely” wandered into my thoughts in the context of the last posting on the sovereign will—because our thoughts symbolize our essential character, namely our absolute freedom. No—as embodied beings held in the thrall of matter we are bound and fettered in many ways, but the core that we are is not. And this poem, which has strong political undertones—it was, for instance, prohibited in Germany during the Nazi years—was evidently composed to signal the ultimate defiance of the free soul against all constraint.
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