Donna Donna Lyrics – The Peanuts

Song Facts:

• Genre: Folk
• Featured Artists: None
• Lyricists: Aaron Zeitlin (original Yiddish lyrics), Sholom Secunda (original composer)
• Composers: Sholom Secunda
• Soundtrack: Featured in the soundtrack of "Beautiful Game."

Annotations and Meaning:

"Donna Donna," words by Aaron Zeitlin, music by Sholom Secunda, was popular throughout the world in many languages, such as this example in Japanese by The Peanuts. In the story of the song, a calf is led to be killed and compared the fate to a swallow, which has flown freely up into the sky.

In a Japanese version, the scene opens on a clear afternoon, and down the road to the market goes a cart with a young calf on it. This reveals a stage of reflection on fate and understanding whether the calf understands it has a grim future in the first place.

The burden of the lyrics: "ドナ・ドナ・ドンナ・ドナ 悲しみをたえ, ドナ・ドナ・ドンナ・ドナ はかない生命" (Donna Donna, bear the sadness, Donna Donna, fleeting life), "Donna Donna" underscores the emotional poignancy of the calf's fate through repetition of the title; it is repeated and seems inevitable.

On the other hand, the verse on the swallow, "つばめよそれを見て お前は何思う, もしもつばさがあったなら, 楽しい牧場に帰れるものを" (Swallow, do you think that looking at this, what do you think? If [the calf] had wings, it could return to the joyful pasture), the swallow then represents all the promise, open-endedness in life, which the calf can never get to. This juxtaposition within the lyric serves to deepen the already deep contemplation the song makes about the freedom, destiny, and often cruel way these are meted out to animals by human actions.