The Desiderata Phenomenon

If you thought poetry couldn't move the world, think again: an almost century-old poem by Max Ehrmann has touched millions of people in the internet age (just not the elites, apparently).

One of the moments that my readers dread the most is the realization: Oh no, he's published something to do with poetry again! The absolute worst case scenario is a poem of my own, but it's bad enough when it comes to other people's rhymes and verses. No matter how passionately I explain that engaging with poetry is an important antenna for perceiving the universe, and therefore one of the three pillars of my German language magazine, TWASBO, next to journalism and fictional storytelling ... it's all spoken into the wind.

Not that this could unsettle me at my age or distract me from the mission of holistically educating the minds and hearts of my audience. And so please buckle up, folks: This is another one of those moments.

So you believe that poetry has no influence on the masses, that it means nothing to normal people and is only for unworldly weirdos like me? You're in for a revelation. And yet the poem Desiderata by German-American Max Ehrmann, reproduced above in a YouTube version, was exactly what you suspected it would be during the poet's lifetime (1872-1945): a widely ignored flop. But more on how that changed later.

For now, listen to or read Desiderata at your leisure. I am happy to limit myself here to the American original, because the translations into German are - once again - shockingly weak. Translating the thing should have been reasonably easy, though, as it is a prose poem. So there is not even a difficult meter to match and no rhyme is in danger of being lost in translation, because there isn’t any in the whole poem. If you search, you will find German-language versions on YouTube, but you have been warned.

Desiderata takes its title from the Latin: desired or desirable. So it's about what you should “strive for” in life (which has, to my German ears at least, a slightly antiquated ring). Let’s just call it that which is worth achieving, or at least, worth trying. This poem is generally sold as “inspirational”, especially suited for difficult situations in life, when we have lost our ways. Because this is the text of a man who was 55 years old when he wrote it in 1927, almost a century ago. The poet had therefore a considerable amount of experience and advice to pass on to future generations.

In today's audiovisual age, this automatically creates an overdrive problem: There are dozens of YouTube versions in circulation, accompanied by unbearably cheesy music and soft-focus images of cornfields and sunsets. I'm not quite sure why this has to be the case, but many performers apparently believe that a concentrated dose of wisdom has to be served up with lots and lots of schmaltz. To which I simply say, BS!

The version above is still one of the most tolerable, with some reservations as regards the reciter's style and personality. There are far worse, really terrible amateur recordings - and unfortunately it soon becomes clear that neither the voices of young bored men nor, in particular, of even younger women with TikTok appeal match the dignity and solemnity of what is being recited.

But plenty of prominent actors also tried their hand at performing Desiderata. Surprisingly, one of the better ones was Spock. Yes, that's right, the pointy-eared officer of the starship Enterprise:

Unfortunately, Spock aka Leonard Nimoy left out the word “dark” before “imaginings” in this very early recording (I'm guessing the seventies), which shortens and distorts the meaning of the verse in question. But even some printed versions of the text contain this omission. Decades later, shortly before his death, Nimoy read the poem again, as it still had “validity and meaning” for him. And yet the word “dark” was once again omitted - even when the entire universe, the Vulcan's natural habitat, is dark. I don't get it. But I don't want to talk about the problems with this piece of poetry anyway.

For what blew me away were the user comments. Thousands are lined up under the multitude of Desiderata video versions. Men and women of all ages, languages and cultures recall their own first encounters with this text. And they all describe the same thing in different words: this poem has shaped their lives, changed them, given them comfort in a crisis, given them a goal, given them new hope, always accompanied them. It is a phenomenon! Here are just a few examples, cut at random from the collective stream of consciousness of those touched by Desiderata:

“I gave my son this poem when he graduated. He passed away 12 years ago he was 27, I would like to think he would read this often for he was such a kind and gentle soul. I miss you Jimmy”

“Today I have played this poem to my class. They all went silent. I asked them why, they said, they had a lot to reflect on from the poem. After the lessons, some of them followed me and shared their thoughts with me. I'm so glad that it inspired them.”

“I used to listen to the song Deserata, sung by Les Crane, every day to keep my sanity when I lost my daughter, mother, father and then my son in 1981, 1982, 1982, 1983... this song kept my sanity.”

“I have had this on a plaque since 1960's and I am 71 yrs old. Have striven to this my whole life. I have left a special note on the back for my grown children & grandchildren. Thank you & blessings”

“I am having some difficult days with school pressure, mom's constant nagging and lectures that makes me sad about myself but seeing this has really made me feel much better. Thank you Desiderata.”

And on and on - short messages and flashes of deceased loved ones, of life crises, of soulmates found, of remembering one’s father or grandmother, of falling down and getting up again, of the search for meaning, God and orientation. This is the mystery of the Power of Poetry: ordinary people - not the celebrities, the powerful, the privileged - remember Desiderata printed on posters in their teenage bedrooms, copied in velvet-bound poetry albums, recited at public readings, hidden on laminated slips of paper behind books on the shelf, presented in a change frame as a souvenir at high school graduation.

These people get emotional when the poem comes into play. Tears run down their cheeks. Long-forgotten images appear before their eyes. Names that have faded come back to life. A spiritual resonance arises, a resonance with Ehrmann, with their own ancestors, but also with unknown contemporaries all over the world. Do you know of a text by a contemporary author that achieves this? A speech by a ... cough ... German politician or literary prizewinner that would have had such an effect? Do you know of an act from the billion-dollar entertainment circus that can do something similar?

How did Max Ehrmann manage this is the obvious question. And the irony is that he himself probably least expected to start this wildfire. As the son of a German immigrant family in Indiana who made it to Harvard Law School, he initially tried his hand at a career as a lawyer, but to no avail. He then joined his parents' company, without success. And it was not until he was 40 that he found his calling: as an author, journalist, and poet. Nevertheless, he died in 1945 without his death making a big splash in the arts pages.

But then came the sixties, the Vietnam War and the American civil rights movement. Someone mistakenly published the poem with the Latin title in an anthology as the work of an “anonymous author from the 16th century”. Wow, the wisdom of those famous figures from ... er ... antiquity? The Middle Ages? Whatever. Desiderata suddenly had the vibes of a Greek philosopher’s, French monk’s or Shakespearean epigone’s work. Thus ennobled, the poem was now regarded in the US as a timeless message of hope, peace and inspiration. It was the myth of a long bygone era that endeared this text to the Peaceniks of 1968. Ehrmann's descendants had to fight to have his name rightfully printed under the text once more.

Another publicity stunt was provided by the American radio and TV talk show host Les Crane, whose psychedelic disco pop setting of the poem briefly reached No. 8 in the US charts in 1971:

Today, almost one hundred years after its first publication, the Internet has facilitated a dissemination of the poem Desiderata that Ehrmann could not have dreamed of. For example, you can watch a virtual reading by the poet himself, albeit in someone else's voice. You can listen to the Chinese star actor Ying Ruocheng recite a fragment of text that rhetorically outshines all other interpretations - and note with frustration that he was only working for a commercial for the major Swiss bank UBS. And if you have the nerve, you can even watch a clip in which the poem and montage serve to glorify the Ukrainian presidential actor Volodymyr Selenskyj. Oh yes, he too would do well to “remember what peace there may be in silence.”

However, the most aesthetically and conceptually sophisticated interpretation I could find comes from Asia. In the Philippine city of Caloocan, people with speech, hearing, and visual impairments have come together to form the Speech Choir. The artistic filming of their performance of Desiderata (beginning of the actual poem at 2'23") is a good way to conclude the exploration of this world-connecting phenomenon. Just like Max Ehrmann, the Speech Choir has a simple message to all of us:

“No matter what the world throws at you, be true to yourself, be cheerful and strive to be happy.”

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A German version of this article was originally published in TWASBO Magazine, July 2024.