Evening (Gryphius)

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Evening is a sonnet by Andreas Gryphius , one of his most famous poems, "a recognized poetic masterpiece". It was first published in 1650 in Frankfurt am Main in Gryphius' sonnet collection "Das Ander Buch" . After the “ Morning Sonnet ” and the “Noon” sonnet, it is the third of the four sonnets of the time- of- day cycle that opens the book. During Gryphius' lifetime it was reprinted with the “Ander Buch” in 1657 in the first authorized complete edition and in 1663 in a final edition with changes.

The 1650 version was reprinted in 1963 in Volume 1 of a complete edition of the German-language works for which Marian Szyrocki and Hugh Powell were responsible, the 1663 version in 2012 by Thomas Borgstedt.

text

The text comes from Szyrocki's reprint. The reprints during Gryphius' lifetime show only minimal orthographical changes (for example verse 1 “the night swings its flag” 1650, “the night swings its flag” 1663.)

Eve.
The quick day is gone / the night swings its flag / and raises
the stars. The tired flock of people
abandoned fields and work / where animals and birds were
Trawrt now is loneliness. How's the time gone!
The port approaches more and more to / to the limbs of the boat.
Just as this light decayed / so in a few years
I / you / and what you have / and what you see / will go there.
This life comes before me as a race track.
God, God, don't
let me slide on the running place / don't let me be tempted oh / not splendid / not lust / not fear.
Your eternally brighter shine is in front of and next to me /
Let / when the tired body falls asleep / the soul watch and
when the last day is evening with me /
So pull me out of the valley of darkness to you.

interpretation

shape

Gryphius only occasionally mentions his Silesian compatriot Martin Opitz , who in 1624 put German -language poetry on a new basis with his book about the German poetry . However, as early as 1637, in his first book of poems, the Lissa Sonnets , he followed Opitz's instructions very precisely. Like most of Gryphius' sonnets, "Abend" is written in the meter of the Alexandrian recommended by Opitz :

◡ — ◡ — ◡— ‖ ◡ — ◡ — ◡— (◡)

The quick day is gone / the night swings its flag / and raises
the stars. The tired crowd

The rhyme scheme also corresponds to Opitz's rules: "abba abba" for the quartets and "ccd eed" for the trios . The verses with the “b”, “c” and “e” rhymes are thirteen syllable, the rhymes are feminine , the verses with the “a” and “d” rhymes are twelve syllable, hence here according to the Szyrocki edition indented, the rhymes masculine . It has been judged that in “Abend” “the use of the Alexandrian verse was increased to virtuosity”.

First quartet

The poem begins with a contemplation of nature. As night falls, everything that is alive, people, animals and birds, step down. Here is not like in Matthias Claudius ' evening song

.... the world is so quiet,
And in the twilight cover
So cozy and so sweet!

Here there is not a cozy, gentle evening silence. In the deserted landscape, a "more desert than barren", loneliness mourns. "It cannot be overlooked that certain phenomena, similar in nature to Gryphius and strangely attractive to him, such as the night and the desert - often only in a single gesture - are awakened to a self-empowering life not known in himself or in the poetic environment." The mood of pure melancholy, however, subverts the adjective of speed "fast" in the first movement. “The fast day is over” - “short” would have been an alternative; "Schnell" brings a hint of movement, haste into the poem, which will break through again and again until the end - "tear me out of the valley". Verse 4 "Trawrt now loneliness" closes the nature contemplation. With the following half-verse, the description turns abruptly into reflection : “How's the time gone!” Less than the landscape itself, the poet is concerned with being subject to time. "The visual experience of nightfall is transferred into its allegorical meaning, namely the transience of life - it passes as quickly as daylight." The tradition of the metaphor goes back a long way. Allegorical dictionaries of the Middle Ages already gave the meaning “terminus vitae” for “vesper”, “evening”.

Second quartet

The landscape of the first quartet has disappeared. The second quartet further interprets the symbolism of “evening” (heading) and “time” (verse 4) for the human lifespan. The famous first verse is again a symbol: “The port is approaching more and more to the limb of the boat.” Gryphius used the seafaring motif more than 70 times in his poetry. What is unique in “Abend” is the reversal of the real direction of movement. It is not the ship that approaches the port, but the port approaches the ship. Inexorably, relentlessly, death draws closer to the person who is not an individual passenger, but rather has become part of the vehicle, a bundle of fragments, “the limbed boat”. The next two verses form the insight gained from images without images into a statement about the volatility of life that concerns everyone, including the ego, which appears for the first time in verses 7 and 8 in personal pronouns of the first person .

Jean Jacques Boissard: Graphic on p. 1 of the "Theatrum Vitae Humanae"

"Then with the breathtaking suddenness of Rilke's 'You have to change your life' comes the unexpected, daring picture, which in his everyday language contrasts with the upscale poetic style in front of it: 'This life comes before me as a race track.'" Two interpreters have that Movement chosen as the title of her essays. To the metaphor of life = daily routine, life = sea voyage, Gryphius adds a third life = racecourse. This takes up the initial movement of the “fast day” and expands it into an ethical mandate: people should prove themselves on the racetrack of life. The image has biblical and extra-biblical sources. Biblical sources are (from the Luther Bible from 1545 and the revised version from 2017):

  • the second letter of the apostle Paul to Timothy : “I fought a good fight / I finished the race / I kept believing. Hinfurt is attached to me the crown of righteousness / which the LORD will give me on that day / the righteous judge /. ”2017 ( 2 Tim 4,7-8  LUT ):“ I fought the good fight, I finished the course , I kept faith; henceforth the crown of righteousness lies ready for me, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day. "
  • the letter to the Hebrews : "Because we too / because we have such many witnesses vmb vns / Let vns discard sin / so vns stuck to each other and make trege / and let vns run through patience / in the fight / which is ordained by vns." 2017 ( Heb 12,1  LUT ): “Because we have such a cloud of witnesses around us, let us put aside everything that weighs us down and the sin that engulfs us. Let us run with patience in the struggle that is destined for us. "

Extra-biblical, the pre-Christian-ancient idea of ​​the “virtue run of the hero in the earthly arena” is added. Axel Vieregg has identified an emblem from Jean Jacques Boissard's collection from 1596, “Theatrum Vitae Humanae”, which shows the merging of both traditions. In the middle of the “Theatrum”, the racetrack, an obelisk points to the light-shining Hebrew letters for YHWH , “Yahweh”, God. To the left of it are Hercules and the personification of happiness, to the right are the Roman god Terminus and two metae , the target pillars of the run. In the foreground, carnal lust, sin, death and Satan torment and bind the first human couple. Threatened by them, the emblem wants to say, people, represented by Adam and Eve, have to walk the path to the goal, the metae , to God. The baroque poets loved emblems, combinations of a graphic ( pictura ) and a short explanatory, often moralizing text ( subscriptio ), and often designed their poems like emblems. It is possible that Gryphius knew Boissard's emblem.

The haste that came into the poem with the “fast day” and culminates in the image of the racetrack also influences the sound, the reading speed. "No other sonnet by Gryphius gives a similar impression of being rushed." Enjambements eliminate the pauses at the end of the first three verses and at the end of the 6th verse. The many monosyllabic words, almost exclusively with short vowels, force you to read staccato :

I / you / and what you have / and what you see / <...>.

In “Abend” there are only 34 polysyllabic words for 102 monosyllables, a ratio of 3: 1; in the “Morning Sonnet”, for example, there are 71 monosyllables versus 51 multisyllables, a ratio of 1.4: 1.

First trio

With the racetrack parable, the change from metaphor (first quartet) and interpretation (second quartet) to prayer (trios) is precisely prepared. The “Morning Sonnet” also closes with a prayer in the trio. With a “powerful hand” Gryphius ties quartets and trios in “Abend”. The “renne bahn” at the end of the quartets immediately becomes a “running place” at the beginning of the trios, on which the “highest God” should not let the ego slip:

God, God, don't
let me slide on the running place / don't let me be tempted oh / not splendid / not lust / not fear.

The anaphor “Let” - “Let” emphasize the prayer. Fervent supplication resists the Alexandrian convention. Verse 9 can not be read in iambic up and down with natural emphasis . The regular caesura after the sixth syllable is overrun in the “but not”. Verse 10 gets its own rhythm through the four times “ not plus monosyllabic noun”, through the antitheses eight / splendor and lust / angst and through the “ch”, “st” and “a” assonances . “The metric pattern is completely dissolved.” But then the first trio ends in a verse that reconciles metrics and stress, the first point of rest of the sonnet:

Your eternally brighter shine be in front of and next to me.

God's "eternally brighter shine" is the positive force through which the only earthly, time-subject - the "quick day" of verse 1, the transitory "light" of verse 6, "ah", "splendor", "lust" and " fear ”of verse 10 - to be transcended.

Second trio

The poem can expressly formulate the request for a life with God in the hereafter in a cautiously optimistic way.

Let / when the tired body falls asleep / the soul watch and
when the last day is evening with me /
So pull me out of the valley of darkness to you.

“Let” in verse 12 takes up the anaphora of the first trio again. But the verses no longer have anything urgent or impulsive. The one sentence that fills the three lines flows gently. The pairs of opposites “body” / “soul” and “asleep” / “wake” in verse 12, “day” / “evening” in verse 13 and “me” / “you” in verse 14 seem to be in balance for the time being. While in the first quartet “the tired crowd” was surrounded by an oppressive wasteland, “the tired body” now hopes for eternal life. The penultimate verse turns back to the “evening” motif, playing again with its ambiguity “evening of day” - “evening of life”.

An atmosphere of calm predominates in the second trio. However, the last verse confirms most emphatically that the poet's life was anything but calm, and that the end of life of the praying self is anything but sweet and sweet. In the Psalter of the Luther Bible of 1545, Gryphius found: "VNd whether I am already wandering in the dark valley / I fear no misfortune / For you are with me / Your stick and staff comfort me." According to the 2017 revision, the passage reads ( Psalm 23, 4  LUT ): “And although I have already wandered in the dark valley, I fear no misfortune; for you are with me, your stick and staff comfort me. ”Then Gryphius wrote the last, most intense appeal of the sonnet:

So pull me out of the valley of darkness to you.

With the biblical "valley of darkness", the poet refers back to reality, the darkness of the night and all threats and temptations, "ah", "splendor", "lust" and "fear". God has to "pull" people to himself. There remains a hope, in the goal of which the poem ends: "To you".

The whole

"Evening does not bring respite but the frightening awareness of the transitoriness of this life and the plea for salvation from the <...> darkness of death" - "Contemplation of the evening does not bring relief, but rather terrifying insight into the transience of life and Request for rescue from the darkness of death. ”According to Vieregg, the poem with its 14 lines measures the course that the individual (“ me ”,“ me ”) as well as humanity (“ The people tired of gathering ”) after the loss of the divine Light (“The fast day is gone”) on the “running place” until you find God again (“to you”).

In 'Abend', according to Schindler, the ego is not at the mercy of transience as an individual, but as a creature , together with the whole of creation, a part and indistinguishable from it. Neither the subject nor the poet's attitude to transitoriness is new, but Gryphius designed the subject and the answer in a sensitive, imaginative and verbose manner. The poem is by no means an exercise in landscape painting. Rather, it is an assessment of man's precarious position in the world, his being at the mercy, which Gryphius may have felt more deeply and painfully than most of his contemporaries. As part of the transitory and changeable world, in Gryphius man does not try to act and impose his will on the world; rather, powers beyond his control act on him. The prospect of help, support for the bravery he needs, hope for redemption in the hereafter come only from God.

The Germanist and theologian Hans-Rüdiger Schwab wrote in the Frankfurt anthology : “While one could deduce from the frenzied transience everywhere a passionate turn to the now, to the utmost savoring of the moment, with Gryphius this is forbidden for those who understand the meaning of things understands how to decipher it as an unfounded illusion. Is such a spiritualistic world negation? But rather striving for an unshakable distance to everything that sets the uncontrollable affects in motion, for an intangible, brave serenity. Gryphius 'Evening' is a poem that comes from afar. Strangely enough, despite the stylistic convention of its epoch, it conveys an evocative touching aura - as if despair had been overcome, and held in the midst of the catastrophe. "

literature

  • Thomas Borgstedt (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Poems. Reclam-Verlag , Stuttgart 2012. ISBN 978-3-15-018561-2 .
  • Fritz G. Cohen: The "Times of the Day" Quartet of Andreas Gryphius: Convergence of Poetry and Meditation . In: Argenis . 2, No. 1-4, 1978, pp. 95-113.
  • AG de Capua: Two Quartets: Sonnet Cycles by Andreas Gryphius . In: monthly books for German teaching . 59, No. 4, 1967, pp. 325-328.
  • Heinz Drügh: Allegory. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (Ed.): Gryphius-Handbuch, pp. 604–614. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 .
  • Gerhard Fricke The imagery in the poetry of Andreas Gryphius. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft , Darmstadt 1967. Unchanged reprint of the 1933 edition.
  • Dietrich Walter Jöns: The "sensory image". Studies on allegorical imagery with Andreas Gryphius. JB Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Stuttgart 1966.
  • Nikolaus Lohse: “Diss life seems like a race track to me”. Poetological remarks on a sonnet cycle by Andreas Gryphius . In: Journal for German Philology . 110, No. 2, 1991, pp. 161-180.
  • Marvin S. Schindler : The Sonnets of Andreas Gryphius. Use of the Poetic Word in the Seventeenth Century. University of Florida Press, Gainesville 1971. ISBN 0-8130-0301-6 .
  • Hans-Rüdiger Schwab: Life as a race track. Interpretation of Gryphius' sonnet "Evening". Frankfurter Anthologie Volume 18, pp. 20-22, 1995.
  • Blake Lee Spahr: Andreas Gryphius: A Modern Pespective. Camden House , Columbia, South Carolina, USA, 1993. ISBN 1-879751-65-8 .
  • Marian Szyrocki: The young Gryphius. Rütten & Loening , Berlin 1959.
  • Marian Szyrocki (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Sonnets. Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1963.
  • Axel Vieregg: "This life comes before me as a race track" - From symbol to sensual image in Gryphius' evening sonnet. In: Hansgerd Delbrück (ed.): “Sensuality in image and sound” - Festschrift for Paul Hofmann on his 70th birthday. Hans-Dieter Heinz Akademischer Verlag, Stuttgart 1987. ISBN 3-88099-193-6 , pp. 139–152.

References and comments

  1. ↑ Spahr 1993, p. 44.
  2. ↑ de Capua 1967, p. 326.
  3. ↑ Szyrocki 1963.
  4. ↑ Borgstedt 2012.
  5. ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 66.
  6. ↑ Borgstedt 2012, p. 37.
  7. ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 91.
  8. ↑ Lohse 1991, p. 169.
  9. ↑ From Gryphius' sonnet "Ensambkeit", Szyrocki 1963, p. 68.
  10. ↑ Fricke 1933/1967, p. 153.
  11. ↑ From the English; Cohen 1978, p. 108.
  12. ↑ Jöns 1966, p. 176.
  13. ↑ de Capua 1967, p. 326.
  14. ↑ Fricke 1933/1967, p. 48.
  15. ↑ Schindler 1971, p. 75 and Spahr 1993, p. 44.
  16. ↑ Last verse of the sonnet of Apollo's Archaic Torso .
  17. ↑ From the English; Spahr 1993, p. 44.
  18. ↑ Vieregg 1987 and Lohse 1991; similar to Schwab 1995.
  19. ↑ Vieregg 1987, p. 144.
  20. ↑ Axel Vieregg, b. 1938 in Berlin, was mainly due to the Massey University in New Zealand as a German scholar working digitized .
  21. ↑ Vieregg 1987, p. 147.
  22. ↑ Drügh 2016.
  23. ↑ The American Germanist Marvin Schindler compared the two quartets as a whole to an emblem; the first quartet corresponds to its pictorial part, the second to the explanatory epigram ; Schindler 1971, p. 74.
  24. ↑ Vieregg 1987, p. 147.
  25. ↑ Vieregg 1987, pp. 147-148.
  26. ↑ Vieregg 1987, p. 148.
  27. ↑ From the English; Schindler 1971, p. 78.
  28. ↑ Schindler 1971, p. 79.
  29. ↑ de Capua 1967, p. 326.
  30. ↑ Vieregg 1987, p. 349.
  31. ↑ Schindler 1971, pp. 85-86.
  32. ↑ Schwab 1995.