At the tower
The poem “ Am Turme ” by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff from 1842 can be assigned to the Biedermeier or Romantic period .
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The poem begins with the following verses:
I stand on high balconies on the tower,
Umstrichen from screaming Stare,
And let 'like a maenad the storm
I dig in the fluttering hair;
O wild fellow, oh mad fan,
I would like to embrace you tightly,
And, string to string, two steps from the edge
For death and life then struggle!
The poem deals with the longing of a young woman who longs for an adventurous life in the wide world. Due to the lack of equal rights and emancipation of women at the time, the lyrical self in this poem is denied this wish. Particularly noteworthy is the continuous Knittel verse with double cross rhyme. Further shows in every verse of the subjunctive writing style of the author ( If I were a man, Had I a hunter). The poem consists of 4 stanzas, which in turn consist of 8 verses; male and female cadences alternate. Structurally, one can recognize a caesura after the third stanza, since the first three stanzas are connected with each other: The second and third stanzas each start with an "and" and thus follow on from the previous one. In addition, the fifth verse of the first three stanzas begins with an "O"; the fourth stanza, however, does not begin with an “and” nor is the “O” to be found in it, which connects the previous stanzas. The poem often contains symbolic acts, such as loosening the hair: in the time of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, people had a strict idea of what a woman's hairstyle should look like - disregarding these standards was considered something rebellious ( "And may only secretly loosen my hair / And let it flutter in the wind" , 4, 7)