Dalai Lama is a song by the band Rammstein, released in 2004 on the album Reise, Reise. Sung entirely in German, it is an adaptation of Erlkönig, a poem written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1782 and subsequently set to music by Franz Schubert in 1816. The band apparently considered calling the song "Erlkönig" in homage to Goethe's poem. "Flugangst" ("fear of flying", or more loosely "flight fright") was also considered as a name before Rammstein settled on "Dalai Lama" in reference to the current Dalai Lama's well-publicised dislike of air travel. Other than this somewhat oblique reference, the song does not have anything to do with Tibetan Buddhism or the Dalai Lama.

The song updates the storyline of Erlkönig, replacing the poem's travelling man and child on horseback with a man and child on an aircraft, and replacing the Erlkönig himself with the "king of all the winds". As in the poem, the travellers are menaced by a mysterious spirit which "invites" the child to join him (though only the child can hear the spirit's invitation). Rammstein's version differs markedly from Goethe's original in describing the fate of the child. In the poem, the child cries out that the Erlkönig is abducting it. The alarmed father rides for help, holding the child in his arms, only to find that his son is dead:

Dem Vater grausets, er reitet geschwind, Er hält in Armen das ächzende Kind, Erreicht den Hof mit Mühe und Not; In seinen Armen das Kind war tot.

The father shudders, he rides swiftly, He holds in (his) arms the moaning child. He reaches the farmhouse with effort and urgency. In his arms the child was dead.

Rammstein replaces this with a typically morbid twist: after running into a storm sent by the "king of all the winds" which threatens all the passengers, the terrified father suffocates the child by holding him too tightly and the child's soul joins its "brothers" in the winds:

Der Vater hält das Kind jetzt fest Hat es sehr an sich gepresst Bemerkt nicht dessen Atemnot Doch die Angst kennt kein Erbarmen So der Vater mit den Armen Drückt die Seele aus dem Kind

The father is now holding onto the child and has pressed it tightly against himself He doesn't notice its difficulty in breathing But fear knows no mercy So the father, with his arms, Squeezes the soul from the child

External links

• Lyrics and English translation by Jeremy Williams