To God the Holy Spirit
To God the Holy Spirit is a sonnet by Andreas Gryphius . It was first printed in 1637 in Gryphius' first sonnet collection in Lissa , Poland , one of the 31 so-called Lissa sonnets . Gryphius placed it there as well as in all editions of his sonnets that he later compiled (except for the Sunday and holiday sonnets).
Origin and tradition
Gryphius wrote the 31 sonnets from Lissa during his school days at the Academic Gymnasium Gdansk at the latest . In 1636 he left Danzig, spent about one and a half years as a private tutor on the estate of the lawyer and writer Georg Schönborner near Freystadt and after his death in 1637 accompanied two of his sons to the University of Leiden . At Schönborner and in Leiden he wrote 100 Sunday and holiday sonnets. In it he recorded “To God the Holy Spirit” as No. 37 of the Sunday sonnets in a revised version, between the sonnets “On Holy Pentecost ” and “On the Sunday of the Holy Trinity ”. This “Son and Feyrtags Sonnete” was published in 1639 in Leiden. For the sonnet editions of 1643, 1650, 1657 and 1663, Gryphius further revised “To God the Holy Spirit”. A single copy of the original print of the Lissa sonnets has been preserved in the library of the University of Wroclaw (picture). There and also in the 1643 edition, every line is broken because of the small format. Both editions were reprinted in 1963 in a complete edition of the German-language works for which Marian Szyrocki and Hugh Powell were responsible. The following texts come from this.
text
To GOD the Holy Spirit. (1637)
O true love Fewr! Well of all good gifts! O three times great God / O highest holiness! O master of all art / O Frewd / who drives away all suffering / O chaste deaf, before whom the bright ravens tremble! who still / before the mountains exalted / and before the world founded; eh the starry dress / put on the sky / yes already from eternity / the two who are completely alike / have left you! O wisdom without measure! O guest of the pure soul. O essential light! O tewre graces = source that you have moistened the tender body of Mary / Oh just let a drop of line / from your life staw Refresh my spirit! help so that I only shaw A funnel of your flame / so I am quite enlightened.
To God the Holy Spirit. (1643)
O Fewer true love! O brun of good gifts! O master of all art! O Most Holy! O three times great God! O lust who drives away everything ! O chaste deaf! O fear of the bright raven! The / or rather the desert sea / with mountains all around / Ehr air and earth was / or rather the staring garment was put on to heaven / yes already before the ages The two who have left you at the same time /. O wisdom without measure; O pure soul guest / O tewre grace spring / O consolation in herber load! O rain that moistened in fear with blessings from us! Oh, just let a drop of your life refresh my mind. Help that I just shaw a quintuple of your glow; so i am quite enlightened.
interpretation
It mainly applies to the Lissa version.
shape
The poem is like Gryphius' most sonnets in 1624 by Martin Opitz in his book by the German Poeterey recommended meter of Alexandrian written with the recommended also by Opitz rhyme scheme "abba abba" for the quartets and "ccd eed" for the trios . The verses with the “a” and “d” rhymes have thirteen syllables, the rhymes are feminine , the verses with the “b”, “c” and “e” rhymes are twelve syllable, hence the Szyrocki edition indented, the rhymes masculine . Gryphius enlivens the strict form, for example, by varying the syntactic arrangement - apostrophes , "O" exclamations in the first quartet and first trio against other structuring in the second quartet and second trio - and enjambements , especially the "drastic" one that spans the stanza Verse 4 to 5 "in front of which the light ones = ravens / tremble!", Which Gryphius eliminated for the 1643 edition.
invocation
The poem is a prayer to the Holy Spirit in the form of a solemn invocation . In Christian times, turning to the Holy Spirit had superseded the ancient invocation of the muses , but not completely; Depending on the subject of his work, Opitz turned to the Muses and Apollo in addition to the “spirit” . Even in his early Latin works, before the Danzig period, Gryphius had invoked the Holy Spirit, for example in "Olivetum or the Mount of Olives":
I also call you, O Holy Spirit, who is the
pure joy of heaven , loved by God's true Son,
Eternal and Eternal by God; o common source of
all power, o glow of the shy and reverential, lightning bolt of
true eloquence.
The invocation applies to the Holy Spirit as the lightning bolt of true eloquence, the "master of all art" and thus of poetry. The hope that the Holy Spirit would help with this could be based on David's word ( 2 Sam 23.2 EU ): "The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me, his word was on my tongue." The request is not limited to the formal Success of the work. For the Christian, the gifts of the Holy Spirit also include the power of inquiry and knowledge. Gryphius prays for two things: for the ingenious idea, the linguistic mastery, and the ability to grasp the true meaning of all earthly phenomena, to recognize the world structure as an order of salvation; he wants to unlock his fellow human beings as "philosophus et poeta" truth in perfect poetry.
The four stanzas
The first quartet makes people seeking help and redemption aware of the Holy Spirit as the giver of love, giver of all good gifts, comforter in suffering, protection from evil. The first line brings two epithets into close proximity in its “O” exclamations: “True love Fewr! Well of all good gifts! ”. Fire and water have always been indicative of the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost he descended on the Christian community in tongues of fire ( Acts 2.2-3 EU ). According to Martin Luther's translation of the Gospel of John, the believers receive him like “rivers of living water” . Antithetically , in lines 3 and 4 “Frewd” is set against “Suffering”, “Deaf” against “Hellen = raven”. Gryphius could have taken the “raven” picture from Luther's translation of an Isaiah prophecy: “And will be for and for desert / that no one will walk through it / for eternity / but rhordomels and yalks will have / night owls and ravens will live there . "
The second quartet prominently emphasizes the theology of the Holy Spirit. Even before the creation of the cosmos, he is the third person of the Trinity : “God's spirit floated over the water.” ( Gen 1,2 EU ) According to Evangelical Lutheran and Roman Catholic teaching , he proceeds from the father and the son . The verse “The two who have left you completely the same” fits into the sonnet a sentence of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that is common to both denominations : “We believe in the Holy Spirit, who is Lord and gives life, who makes the Father and the son. ”In Gryphius' time, anti-Trinitarian sects spread in Poland . Evangelical Lutheran preachers also tried to exalt the figure of Christ in relation to the Holy Spirit. Gryphius opposes all of them with his resolute “The two that are completely alike”, in other poems: “GOD pure spirit / you born me through you / three unity” and “Praise be God! the one and three ".
The first trio returns to the form of the first quartet with four “O” apples. It forms a bridge to the final stage in two ways. With “O essential light!” It takes up the “Fewr”, with “O tewre graces = source” the “well” of the first line and points to “Füncklin” and “Tröpfflin” of lines 14 and 12 ahead. With the allusion to the conception of Jesus through the “grace = source” of the spirit, it prepares the “life staw” metaphor of line 12. Verse 11 “You who have moistened the tender body of Mary” has disturbed some interpreters. The verse Gryphius sounded “too Catholic” even in the later revision; He works “jarring to the modern reader”, “with its connotative sexual overtones <...> indeed drastic, especially when concretized by the verb 'moisten'”. According to Wolfram Mauser, these irritations take too little account of the literary tradition in which Gryphius stood. The American German scholar Blake Lee Spahr points out two parallels in which water from heaven symbolizes the supernatural begetting of Jesus. Luther had translated to Isaiah: "Teuffel jr Heaven from above / and the clouds stir righteousness / the earth open up and bring salvation." Around 1660 Angelus Silesius sang about the " Thaw of Heaven" through which Jesus in his "Mother Au “Went.
The second trio expresses the actual request. The fire-water symbol chains that form the “anchor” of the poem are brought to an end: “Fewr” - “essential light!” - “Füncklin your Flam” and “Brunn” - “Graces = source” - “Tröpfflin only / of your life staw ”. As the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, may he refresh the believer's spirit. May his fire light up the believer. Similarly, in the quoted poem Angelus Silesius asks: The dew of the spirit may make the spirit of the believer fruitful and lively. Not only biblical imagery lives on in the Fire - Fünklein image area. According to Mauser, the doctrine of the heavenly spirit that comes over man as fire goes back to Heraclitus and myths such as that of Prometheus .
The whole
"As a whole, the sonnet gives an impression of the superior power and the saving power of the Holy Spirit, which are so strong that even a drop of it makes people infinitely rich." If one follows the appreciation of the interpreters, then the sonnet is perhaps the baroque- Splendid, eloquent, emotional and passionate paraphrase of the old Veni creator spiritus hymn, the first two stanzas of which Luther had translated:
Come, God Creator, Holy Spirit,
visit the hearts of men,
fill them with grace, as you know
that your creature was before.
Because you are called the comforter,
dear gift of the Most High,
a spiritual anoint applied to us,
a living well, love and fire.
Gryphius' “O true love Fewr! Well of all good gifts! ”Is represented in verse 4 of the second stanza of the hymn.
In the Lissa sonnets, after “To God the Holy Spirit”, the second sonnet is “Vber des LORD JESUS prisoners”, as a third “To the Heyland raised at Creutz”, and as a fourth “Vber LORD JESUS dead corpse”. In later editions, “To God the Holy Spirit” is followed by a second poem with the same title, then “ About the birth of Jesus ”, “About the Lord's prisoner”, “About the Lord's corpse” and “To the crucified Jesus”. The sequence invocation, birth of Jesus, imprisonment, death, crucifixion testifies “that the Holy Spirit speaks unceasingly and urgently to the suffering person through the figure of Christ and since the night of his birth.” That is the Lutheran understanding of the Bible, to which Gryphius himself with this composition confesses.
The revision
With most of the interventions, Gryphius Opitz wanted to comply with the rules of poetry. “You can trace almost all of your changes back to the principle of correctness .” Syncopation was to be avoided, so “Fewr” became “Fewer” (line 1), “founded” became “ward” (line 8), and apocopes as well , therefore “flam” became “glowing” (line 14). With the replacement of
before which the light ones = ravens
tremble! which still / before the mountains sublime /
by
O fear of the bright raven!
The / or the desert sea / dig around with mountains /
the unwanted identical rhyme sublime / to have and the unwanted "drastic" enjambement disappeared . The first trio was most strongly reshaped, according to Spahr, in order to get rid of the "offending line" 11, but certainly also to replace the impure rhyme "Seel / Quell" (with gast / last ). The interpreters are critical of the revision. It was not a pleasant idea how the poet had spent hours adapting his youthful works to standards. "The last version <of the poem> is perhaps more impeccable, but in the first we read more clearly the indistinct element of the nature of its creator."
literature
- HG Haile: The original and revised versions of two early sonnets by Andreas Gryphius. An evaluation . In: Modern Language Quarterly . 19, 1958, pp. 307-318.
- Victor Manheimer: The poetry of Andreas Gryphius. Studies and materials. Weidman Verlag , Berlin 1904.
- Wolfram Mauser: Poetry, Religion and Society in the 17th Century. Wilhelm Fink Verlag , Munich 1976. ISBN 3-7705-1191-3 .
- Blake Lee Spahr: Gryphius and the holy Ghost. In: Martin Bircher , Alois Maria Haas (Ed.): Deutsche Barocklyrik. Poetry interpretations from Spee to Haller. A. Francke Verlag , Bern 1973, pp. 175-184.
- Marian Szyrocki : The young Gryphius. Rütten & Loening , Berlin 1959.
- Marian Szyrocki (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Sonnets. Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1963.
References and comments
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 150.
- ↑ The editions of 1657 and 1663 also contain the 100 Sunday and holiday sonnets revised, but without “To God the Holy Spirit”, for No. 35 of the holiday sonnets, “absit mihi gloriari nisi in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi “, Is new.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 5.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 29.
- ^ Printing errors in the 1643 edition. Like the sonnet from Lissa, all later prints have “starry ones”.
- ↑ Spahr 1973, p. 180.
- ^ Translation by Friedrich Strehlke (philologist; 1825–1896) in: Olivetum or the Mount of Olives: Latin epic by Andreas Gryphius. Bavarian State Library digital.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, pp. 30-37.
- ↑ John 7: 38-39. In: The Luther Bible. Original edition 1545. Directmedia, Berlin 2000. Digital Library Volume 29, p. 4453.
- ↑ Isaiah 34: 10-11. In: The Luther Bible. Original edition 1545. Directmedia, Berlin 2000. Digital Library Volume 29, p. 2570.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 72.
- ^ Marian Szyrocki: Andreas Gryphius. Mixed poems. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1964, p. 73.
- ↑ Manheimer 1904, p. 105.
- ↑ Spahr 1973, p. 177; similar to Haile 1958, p. 316.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 37.
- ↑ † 2006. Obituary from the University of California, Berkeley
- ↑ Isaiah 45, 8. In: The Luther Bible. Original edition 1545. Directmedia, Berlin 2000. Digital Library Volume 29, pp. 2609-2610. The Bible verse has with "justice" to the Persian king Cyrus II. Down, but since Jerome as a prophecy of the Messiah understood
- ↑ a b In the poem “The psyche demands a pearl = mother of the pearl of JESUS to be”: “4. / I don't want to receive anything else, / As only heaven = Thau; / The thau through which you passed / In your mother Au: / So that only my heart's shrine / May your mother also be, / 5. / So drip down, / You spirit of eternity; / That it becomes fruitful and lively / My spiritual intimacy: / So that my heart's shrine / May JEsu pearls = mother be. ”In: Georg Ellinger (Ed.): Angelus Silesius, Heilige Seelenlust or spiritual shepherd songs of the psyche in love with their Jesus . 1657. (1668.) Max Niemeyer Verlag , Halle 1901.
- ↑ Spahr 1973, p. 177.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 38.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 41.
- ↑ Martin Luther: Collected Works. Edited by Kurt Aland. Directmedia. Berlin 2002, digital library volume 63, p. 4204.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 48.
- ↑ Manheimer 1904, p. 74.
- ↑ Haile 1958, p. 316.
- ↑ Haile 1958, p. 317.
- ↑ Manheimer 1904, p. 67.