Simultaneously, the wealth of his imagery sustains interest and the weight of repetition convinces the listener of the poet’s utter sincerity. Throughout, we admire Gryphius’ facility in inventing new metaphors for human misery. Despite Baroque overstatement and occasional bombast, we are still convinced that the poet is stating the truth of an inner vision. Rent by the disharmony of what is and what ought to be, Gryphius’ vision mirrors the age of the Thirty Years’ War when civilization and culture almost came to a standstill in Germany. But because of a few such men, ethics and aesthetics continued to live amidst the unleashed forces of bloodshed and violence, disease and destruction.
MENSCHLICHES ELENDE
Was sind wir Menschen doch? Ein Wohnhaus grimmer Schmerzen,
Ein Ball des falschen Glücks, ein Irrlicht dieser Zeit,
Ein Schauplatz herber Angst, besetzt mit scharfem Leid,
Ein bald verschmelzter Schnee und abgebrannte Kerzen.
Dies Leben fleucht davon wie ein Geschwätz und Scherzen.
Die vor uns abgelegt des schwachen Leibes Kleid
Und in das Totenbuch der grossen Sterblichkeit
Längst eingeschrieben sind, sind uns aus Sinn und Herzen.
Gleich wie ein eitel Traum leicht aus der Acht hinfällt
Und wie ein Strom verscheusst, den keine Macht aufhält,
So muss auch unser Nam, Lob, Ehr und Ruhm verschwinden.
Was itzund Atem holt, muss mit der Luft entfliehn,
Was nach uns kommen wird, wird uns ins Grab nachziehn.
Was sag ich? Wir vergehn wie Rauch von 1 starken Winden.
HUMAN MISERY
What, after all, is Man! A dwelling for grim pain,
A mere toy of false fortune, a will-o’-the-wisp of these times,
A stage for bitter fear, replete with cutting grief
A quickly melted snow and a candle soon burned down.
This life flies off like idle talk and jest.
Those who cast off before us the weak body’s dress
And into the book of death of great mortality
Have long been inscribed, have vanished from our mind and heart.
Just as a vain dream will lightly be forgotten
And as a stream flows on, which no force can arrest,
So too must disappear our name, praise, honor, fame.
What now is drawing breath, must vanish with the air.
What comes after us, will follow us to the grave.
What say I? We vanish like smoke before strong winds.
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
(1724-1803)
Klopstock’s poetry breaks through the playful rococo verses, dry rational poems, and the didactic fables of his predecessors like a fresh spring of genuine feeling. In the decades immediately preceding Klopstock’s arrival upon the literary scene, most poets considered poetry a trade, a chore of versifying, in which they “manufactured” Gelegenheitsgedichte (poems for the occasion) to gain the favor of the local prince; a trade in which their own emotions were rarely involved. But with the first line of Klopstock’s Miltonesque epic, Der Messias, the German public of the eighteenth century heard something entirely new; a poet convinced of the dignity of his calling, who introduced daring new images, a more pliant language shorn of artificiality, a free unrhymed rhythmic scheme which liberated German poetry from the shackles of the previous narrow and rigid “rules” about metrics. Equally important, Klopstock reintroduced human passion and religious fervor into its rightful place — lyric poetry. In the simple, serious, soulful and yet non-sensual love-poem Das Rosenband, Klopstock also displays his technical ability and inventiveness. The three-line stanza, rather unconventional in itself, is always capped by a climactic third line; the poem enriches the language by such new word formations as Frühlingsschatten, and introduces surprising turns of phrase as doch lispelt ich ihr sprachlos zu. These and other innovations paved the way for many of Klopstock’s successors.
DAS ROSENBAND
Im Frühlingsschatten fand ich sie,
da band ich sie mit Rosenbändern:
sie fühlt es nicht und schlummerte.
lch sah sie an: mein Leben hing
mit diesem Blick an ihrem Leben:
ich fühlt es wohl und wusst es nicht.
Doch lispelt ich ihr sprachlos zu
und rauschte mit den Rosenbändern:
da wachte sie vom Schlummer auf.
Sie sah mich an, ihr Leben hing
mit diesem Blick an meinem Leben
und um uns wards Elysium.
GARLAND OF ROSES
In the shade of spring I found her,
then with garlands of roses bound her:
she did not feel it and slumbered on.
I looked at her, my life depended
with this one glance upon her life:
I truly felt it, but did not know it.
But speechlessly I whispered to her
and rustled with the rosy garlands:
then she awakened from her slumber.
She looked at me; her life depended
with this one glance upon my life
and around us rose Elysium.
Matthias Claudius
(1740-1815)
Gentle Matthias Claudius, son of a clergyman, planned for several years to follow the calling of his father. Though he never became a pastor, he communicated his deeply felt religious convictions through his essays and poetry. Many of his poems contain the admonitions of a sermon, express Christian compassion, and, like the poem Mondnacht, resemble well-known church hymns. This evocation of a literary form with which almost everyone is familiar and the child-like piety which his poems communicate have caused his poems to be included in countless German school readers, beginning with those for the earliest grades.
Editor of various journals and country newspapers, he lived the greater part of his life in small towns and villages where he became deeply rooted in the life around him, so much so that his contemporaries frequently referred to Claudius simply by the name of one of his newspapers, Der Wandsbecker Bote. It is therefore scarcely surprising that in his poetry Claudius draws from rural scenes for his metaphors and imagery. In the poem Abendlied, as well as in many other of his lyric works, the nature around the poet testifies to God’s wisdom and goodness. In this world there is no room for the medieval concept of death, the grim reaper. Claudius sees death as a friend, a belief which was not shaken but fortified by the premature death of his brother and his own critical illness. He calls death Freund Hein, a euphemism which has since entered the German language. In the poem Der Tod und das Mädchen he states his view of death in the simplest terms, drawing directly upon the language of the common people with words like Knochenmann and phrases like sei gutes Muts. The contrast between the frantic outcry of the girl and the soothing speech of death, artistically expressed by the short lines of the first stanza and the long-voweled lines of the second, respectively, has been underlined by the musical setting which Schubert created for this poem.
DER TOD UND DAS MÄDCHEN
Das Mädchen:
Vorüber, ach vorüber
geh, wilder Knochenmann!
Ich bin noch jung! Geh, Lieber,
und rühre mich nicht an!
Der Tod:
Gib deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebildl
Bin Freund und komme nicht zu strafen.
Sei gutes Muts! Ich bin nicht wild!
Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!
ABENDLIED
Der Mond ist aufgegangen,
die goldnen Sternlein prangen
am Himmel hell und klar;
der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget,
und aus den Wiesen steiget der weisse Nebel wunderbar.
Wie ist die Welt so stille
und in der Dämmrung Hülle
so traulich und so hold!
Als eine stille Kammer,
wo ihr des Tages Jammer
verschlafen und vergessen sollt.
&
nbsp; DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
The Maiden:
Go past, oh, go past,
you wild skeleton!
I am still young! Go, dear one,
and do not touch me!
Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender shape!
I am a friend and do not come to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not wild!
You shall sleep softly in my arms!
EVENING SONG
The moon has risen,
the golden starlets sparkle
brightly and clearly in the heavens;
the wood stands black and silent
and from the meadows rises
the white fog wondrously.
Oh, how quiet is the world
and in the veil of twilight
so cozy and so lovely!
Just like a peaceful chamber
where the sorrow of the day
you shall forget and sleep away.
Seht ihr den Mond dort stehen?
Er ist nur halb zu sehen,
und ist doch rund und schön!
So sind wohl manche Sachen,
die wir getrost belachen,
weil unsre Augen sie nicht sehn.
Wir stolze Menschenkinder
sind eitel arme Sunder,
und wissen gar nicht viel;
wir spinnen Luftgespinste
und suchen viele Künste
und kommen weiter von dem Ziel.
Gott, lass uns dein Heil schauen,
auf nichts Verganglichs trauen,
nicht Eitelkeit uns freunl
Lass uns einfältig werden,
und vor dir hier auf Erden
wie Kinder fromm und fröhlich sein!
Wollst endlich sonder Grämen
aus dieser Welt uns nehmen
durch einen sanften Tod,
und, wenn du uns genommen,
lass uns in Himmel kommen,
du unser Herr und unser Gottl
So legt euch denn, ihr Brüder,
in Gottes Namen nieder!
Kalt ist der Abendhauch.
Verschon uns, Gottl mit Strafen,
und lass uns ruhig schlafen,
und unsern kranken Nachbar auch!
The moon, you see it stand there?
You can see but half of it
and yet it’s round and beautiful.
So are so many things,
which we presume to laugh at,
because our eyes don’t see them.
We proud sons of men
are nothing but poor sinners
and know not much at all;
we are spinning idle daydreams
and search for many arts
and get but farther from our goal.
God, let us perceive your grace,
not trust in passing things,
not glory in conceit!
Allow us to grow guileless,
and before Thee here on earth
be like children, devout and gay.
And, last, without affliction,
Take us from this earth
by means of gentle death,
And when Thou hast removed us,
let us get into heaven,
Thou our Lord and God.
So lie down then, brothers,
in the name of God!
The breath of eve is cool.
Spare us, oh Lord, from punishment
and let us sleep in peace
and our sick neighbor, too.
Gottfried August Bürger
(1747-1794)
The life of Gottfried August Burger was rent by constant privation, professional crises, and emotional turmoil. Up to the year of his death he was forced to supplement his sparse income by literary hack work and except for a brief career as professor of literature at the University of Göttingen, he held a series of positions which, he felt, all but smothered his creative abilities. His three marriages all ended catastrophically. After marrying Dorette Leonhart, he found himself equally in love with his wife’s sister, the Molly of his poetry. For nearly ten years, he maintained an unconventional household with both sisters, and then both died within a year and a half; first Dorette and then Molly, whom he had married upon the death of her sister. His brief third marriage ended in divorce. But out of his troubles were born several volumes of poetry which had already earned him during his lifetime the title of “the people’s poet.” By linking his poems to contemporary events and issues and by striking a consistently popular note, in the best sense of the phrase, he reached a wide and diversified audience. His lengthy ballad Lenore gained world-wide recognition and became a literary manifesto of the Age of Romanticism; his political essays have been called battle-songs against absolutism. His poem Der Bauer — An seinen Durchlauchtigen Tyrannen, which attacks the abuses of Germany’s petty tyrants with even greater force and conviction than his essays, is equally deserving of this label.
DER BAUER
An seinen Durchlauchtigen Tyrannen
Wer bist du, Fürst, dass ohne Scheu
Zerrollen mich dein Wagenrad,
Zerschlagen darf dein Ross?
Wer bist du, Fürst, dass in mein Fleisch
Dein Freund, dein Jagdhund, ungebleut
Darf Klau’ und Rachen hau’n?
Wer bist du, dass, durch Saat und Forst,
Das Hurra deiner Jagd mich treibt,
Entatmet wie das Wild? —
Die Saat, so deine Jagd zertritt,
Was Ross, und Hund, und du verschlingst,
Das Brot, du Fürst, ist mein.
Du Fürst hast nicht, bei Egg’ und Pflug,
Hast nicht den Erntetag durchschwitzt.
Mein, mein ist Fleiss und Brot! —
Ha! du wärst Obrigkeit von Gott?
Gott spendet Segen aus; du raubst!
Du nicht von Gott, Tyrann!
THE PEASANT
To His Gracious Tyrant
Who are you, Prince, that without fear,
Your wagon wheel may crush me,
Your horse may dash me down?
Who are you, Prince, that into my flesh
Your friend, your hunting-dog, unwhipped,
May sink his claws and jaw?
Who are you, that through crops and woods,
The yelling of your hunt will drive me,
Panting like the game? —
The crop that’s trampled by your hunt,
What horse and dog and you devour,
The bread, Prince, is mine.
You, Prince, did not, with harrow and plow,
Sweat through the day of harvest.
The effort and the bread are mine! —
Ha! You claim authority from God?
God hands out blessings; you but rob!
You are not sent by God, tyrant!
Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty
(1748-1776)
The staid University of Göttingen became a literary center from approximately 1770 to 1775, including among its members a remarkably large number of students with a gift for poetry. Prompted in part by the enterprise of two undergraduates, who founded a literary magazine, and encouraged by the blessings of Klopstock, then Germany’s foremost poet, these young men united in a literary society, Der Göttinger Hain. Here they set poetic tasks for one another and read and criticized each other’s work. The poems resulting from this cross-fertilization of ideas were frequently of lasting quality. This holds especially true for the poems of Ludwig Hölty, a student of theology, who lived only a short time after his university years. His poems often reflect his understanding and love of nature; just as frequently they strike a note of impending death. In this poem both themes are clearly discernible; the images are taken from nature, while early death strikes down both the young boy and the bride. But from this vision of death Hölty draws not melancholy but rather an affirmation of life. If death is inevitable, let us seize the day and taste to the full the joys of nature, love, and wine. This sentiment of car
pe diem unites Hölty with such poets as Herrick “Gather ye rosebuds,” Marvell “To his coy mistress,” Marlowe “Come live with me” and Ronsard “A la belle Hélène.”
Introduction to German Poetry Page 2