| Sopor Aeternus – In Der Palästra Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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As a transsexual myself, it is obvious that this song is about the disconnection one as a transsexual feels with one's body, and wishing one could just accept it as it is while it is impossible to do so. The song is about Anna showering, watching her own body but as with the perspective of another person, since she feels that the body is not hers. I will write down roughly how I interpret the verses, and go into details on some things. The first verse is an introduction to the setting, the shower, where she watches her body and feels the disconnection. Chorus: The masculine personality that was expected from her, that she could have embraced as herself, is a bold forward heterosexual man, and had she felt okay with that, she could have been interested in this world, but being in the situation she's in, she been exposed to a lot of negativity in the world and longs for the end (death or not I can't say). Second verse: The body she is in is one of a good-looking male body, and even if she is amazed at it, she feels disgust towards it and feels the yearning for repressing her feminine self and wishes she could just be an inbetween gender and feel okay with herself. The line about God is interesting because it suggests that if she believes in God, she feels he's done wrong, that she's defying him. Last verse: If she had been cisgendered and okay with her body, then she would also never have experienced the pains and sorrows she has suffered, and all the doubt about where to go with her gender identity (surpressing, living it out, treatments etc, all tough choices), and the disgust towards her own body, and in a way she envies that version of herself she could have been, yet if she met herself like that and tried to explain herself to him, he would not understand and not take her seriously, so in a way she's lucky to have a deeper understanding of life than had she not been transsexual. And now for some closer looks: "Yet, disappointment, oh, can't you see, he's still the cause and the cardinal symptom of my sick, sad reality." This is one of the best lines tbh. The body is the cause of her negative view of the world, through her experiences as a transperson in society and from the feeling of feeling so extremely wrong in her own skin, and it's also the symptom because she cannot do anything about it. "An ancient ghost awoke and fiercely arose in me: it was that old, savage, yet half-forgotten ideal of perfect neutrality." The neutrality spoken of is that of gender. The idea of her body being a perfectly fine male body gives her regret at feeling the way she does, which makes her wish she could be content with being an inbetween between the gender so she could be ok with her body, yet this ”ancient ghost” with the ideal is just a ghost, not her real self and her real wishes, something she created to try to suppress herself. |
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