To the crucified Jesus
On the crucified Jesus is a sonnet by Andreas Gryphius . It was first printed in 1637 in Gryphius' first sonnet collection in Lissa , Poland , one of the 31 sonnets from Lissa . It is the fourth of the five sacred sonnets that open the collection. It has been called a “masterpiece”, the climax of the spiritual sonnets.
Origin and tradition
Gryphius wrote the Lissa sonnets from 1634 in Gdansk while attending the academic high school there and then on the estate of his patron Georg Schönborner (1579–1637) near Freystadt in Lower Silesia . Later he kept fine-tuning them. "To the crucified Jesus" was published in four further editions during his lifetime, 1643, 1650, 1657 and 1663. The Lissa version was first reprinted by Victor Manheimer in 1904, then by Marian Szyrocki in 1963, the last edition of 1663, among others by Thomas Borgstedt 2012. The following texts come from Szyrocki's and Borgstedt's editions.
text
To Heyland, who was picked up at Creutz. (1637)
I don't want to leave here: Let all swords ring /
Put on spit and mist / make use of all weapons /
Custom Fewr / and what the world is tolerable for /
No death or Teuffel shall penetrate me from Christ's Creutz.
Whether I am killed immediately by hardship / fear / pain /
Whether earth and sea travel alike / whether the power of thunder
With dark red plitz on my head cracks /
Vnd the sky falls; but I want to sing merrily
For you, my dearest heart; this my poor band /
Sol von deim Creutz and Leib will never be turned away /
Here I want / if I have to give up the tired spirit /
But you who stand high on the wood
LORD JESUS / bow down your bloody face:
And hot by your death in death I live forever.
To the crucified Jesus.
Sarbievii: Hinc ut recedam. (1663)
I don't want to go away at all! let all swords sound!
Attack Spiss and Sebel! use the power of all weapons
Vnd Flamm '/ and what the world is unbearable.
No death / no devil should bring me from this Creutz.
I want to / if oh and fear and suffering kill me /
When the earth and the sea devour / yes, when the thunder is powerful /
Crashes on my head with dark red lightning
Yes when the sky falls / here I want to sing merrily.
Because my chest is still pounding / neither there nor here /
And now and forever let me not tear anything from you.
I want to / if I should / give up the tired spirit.
But you / who stand high on the wood;
LORD JESUS / bow down your bloody face /
And hot through your death in death I live forever!
interpretation
Like all sonnets in Lissa, the poem is written in Alexandrians and like all but one with the rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA for the quartets and CCD EED for the trio . The verses with the “A” and “D” rhymes are thirteen syllable, the rhymes are feminine , the verses with the “B”, “C” and “E” rhymes are twelve syllable, therefore here according to the editions of Szyrocki and Borgstedt indented, the rhymes masculine .
The interpretation is based on the Lissa version, but includes the latest version.
"Andreas Gryphius - philosopher and poet under the cross" is the title of an interpretation book by Mauser. For the strict Lutheran Gryphius , who is firmly committed to the Augsburg confession , the coordinates of the order of salvation history come together in the figure of the crucified Christ .
First quartet
"I don't want to go away here at all:", later with the exclamation mark in "I don't want to go!" Even louder: Self-assured, unmistakably, like a trumpet call, Gryphius places his life and work under the cross, at your feet, right from the start Jesus, who may bow his bloody face “high on the Holtz”. Word order has something hard and defiant about it. Every syllable weighs heavily, especially the words “here” and “not”, which are metrically unstressed according to the iambic verse foot . The half-verse also makes the place of the I evident in the typeface: The "here" comes under the heading and thus under "Heyland who were picked up at Creutz". The place of the poem is the place under the cross.
This place is a place of distress, fear and death. The war metaphors in the four imperative sentences that follow one another in rapid succession symbolize the extent of the threat. But the ego is willing to pass it. "Confessing, the quartet closes with a sentence that is tense to the extreme: Death and the devil have no power before believing in Christ's cross."
Second quartet
The second quartet initially continues the description of the distress - the accumulation of nouns "Ach vnd Noth / Angst / Weh / vnd Leid" is concretized in the elementary forces earthquake, thunder and lightning. But then a counter-movement sets in, which expresses the commitment again. In the Lissa version, only the “wil ich” of the first verse is repeated in a reinforcing manner. In the 1663 version, the affirmation is more impressive because all three introductory words “I want to hear” are repeated for the second time (verses 5 and 8). "But I want to sing happily / For you my dream heart" reminds of the sounds of hymns.
First trio
In the first trio of the Lissa version, “that my poor band / sol from deim Creutz vnd Leib is never turned away” recalls pictures of Mary Magdalene, for example in the Isenheim altar , wrestling her arms under the cross of Jesus ( Jn 19.25 EU ). With “Here will I” the beginning of the poem is repeated for the last time (verse 11), with “Here I will / if I should give up the tired spirit” the final consequence of standing under the cross is included. "From the here and now of contestation, the dimension expands to the realm of the timeless and eternal."
Second trio
With the second trio the poem ends in a faithful willingness to die. The flow of sentences is calm and measured. “The poet's words, which he addresses to the crucified Christ with the request for redemption, sound serious, even solemn.” “The calm and security of these three final lines is a special contrast to the excited, heavily apostrophized and imperative opening stanzas , so that the sonnet as a whole has the greatest effect. ”The antithesis “ high ”-“ bow down ”makes the difference between the spheres of Jesus and the self tangible: Jesus protruding into the hereafter, the self earthbound. The third line of the first trio and the second trio are the only parts that Gryphius left unchanged during the revisions.
The whole
In the title of Lissa version of the Crucified "Heyland" is called, the salvation -bringing God's son. So the poem is framed by the hope of redemption, by the nickname of the Redeemer at the beginning and the request "Vnd hot by your death in death me to live forever" at the end. Crucifixion and redemption, judges Wolfram Mauser, are in direct factual and optical connection in the sonnet. The insistent “Here will I”, the first-person form of the statement, the metaphorical culmination in each stanza are rhetorical means to poetically present the mutual dependency of the crucifixion of Christ and the redemption of man to eternal life. Even Friedrich-Wilhelm Wentzlaff Eggebert sees in the poem a happy coincidence of content and form.
Latin suggestion: Maciej Sarbiewski
From the 1650 edition on, Gryphius added "Sarbievii: Hinc ut recedam" to the now abbreviated poem title. He gave the sonnet to recognize as the translation or adaptation of a neo-Latin poem by the Polish Jesuit Maciej Sarbiewski . Sarbiewski was one of the most popular Latin-writing poets in Europe at the time. “Hinc ut recedam” comes from his poetry collection Lyricorum libri IV , which was printed in Antwerp in 1634 with a frontispiece by Peter Paul Rubens . Gryphius may have got to know the work in Georg Schönborner's library. He may have initially kept silent about the relationship with Sarbiewski in order not to irritate his Lutheran co-religionists, and later revealed it in order to make the influential Jesuits in his hometown Glogau weighed. The addition “should perhaps read: 'Look, we Protestants value you very highly and are in favor of peaceful coexistence.'” The Latin poem is reproduced here from Friedrich-Wilhelm Wentzlaff-Eggebert, the translation from Wolfram Mauser.
Ad pedes CHRIST in cruce morientis Auctor provolutus. Hinc ut recedam, non trucis ferri minae, Non nudus ensium timor, Unquam revellent a tua JESU cruce Hoc multa fleturum caput. Me teque tellus inter & caelum ruat, Versique tempestas maris, Mixtusque flammis nimbus, & ter igneis Caducus aer imbribus: Jacebo fixum pondus, & certum mori, Suique non usquam ferens; Tuosque clavos & tuas amantibus Ligabo plantas brachiis. At tu sereno, nam potes, vultu tuum Tuere, JESU, supplicem: Et hoc, Patri quem reddis, haud evanido Me stringe paullum spiritu.
The poet lying down at the feet of CHRIST dying on the cross . Should I give way here? Not grim lament drone, Not naked fear of swords will ever tear from your cross, O JESUS, my head rich with tears. Heaven and earth may fall between you and me And a rainstorm as big as the sea, A flaming cloud and three times fiery air stream like a downpour: I will lie firmly, determined to die And go nowhere; And I will embrace your nails and feet with loving arms. But you, because you can do it, look with a cheerful face, O JESUS, at your humble supplicant: And with your never-ending spirit, which you give back to the Father, just touch me a little.
In contrast to the sixteen-line Latin precursor, Gryphius' sonnet is in places quite free, but there are also almost literal transcriptions. The content of the two quartets of the sonnet correspond to the first eight verses of the Latin poem. From the verses "Tuosque clavos & tuas amantibus / Ligabo plantas brachiis" - "And I will embrace your nails and feet / with loving arms" becomes "this band of my arms / sol from deim Creutz and body will never be turned away".
In the Latin poem, too, writes Szyrocki, the form has been fully mastered. But the meter is too fluid, too smooth, to express the profession of following Christ with full force. Gryphius succeeded in remedying this weakness. Wentzlaff-Eggebert judges similarly. In the Latin original, the train of thought does not evoke the impression of an inseparable bond between the poet and the crucified Christ. The whole poem promises more of an expression of devotional faith than it holds. Karl Otto Conrady speaks of an "intensification" by Gryphius. Mauser calculates that Gryphius uses 70% more words in a poem that is only 10% longer. “But that means: It does not 'expand' the language, but rather compresses it extremely and thus accommodates far more 'mentions' in a stiffened linguistic body with a higher specific weight. It enriches qualitatively, not quantitatively, which is ultimately the reason for the observed 'intensification'. "
Although the place of man's salvation history is under the cross in the confession of the Lutheran and the Roman Catholic Church, Sarbiewski and Gryphius, according to Mauser, a different theology speaks from the two poems. In the last verses, Sarbiewski asks for a light touch - "Me stringe paullum" - with the Spirit of Christ, who in the sense of the Catholic doctrine of justification gives the ability to cleanse oneself from sins and enter into eternal life. This request is missing from Gryphius, who in the sense of the Lutheran doctrine of justification only asks for redemption through Jesus' death on the cross and God's grace - sola gratia . The “serenus vultus” - “cheerful countenance” of Sarbiewski is an expression of Catholic mysticism , the “bloody face” of Gryphius is an expression of Lutheran concentration on the suffering of Jesus.
literature
- Andreas Beck: Verstechnik (Alexandriner), verse commun. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (ed.): Gryphius-Handbuch, pp. 741–756. Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 .
- Ralf Georg Bogner: Life. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (Ed.): Gryphius-Handbuch, pp. 1–18. Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 .
- Thomas Borgstedt (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Poems. Reclam-Verlag , Stuttgart 2012. ISBN 978-3-15-018561-2 .
- Karl Otto Conrady: Latin poetry tradition and German poetry of the 17th century . Bouvier Verlag , Bonn 1962.
- 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 .
- Wolfram Mauser: Andreas Gryphius - philosopher and poet under the cross. In: Volker Meid (Ed.): Poems and interpretations. Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, pp. 210-243. ISBN 978-3-15-007890-7 .
- Marian Szyrocki: The young Gryphius. Rütten & Loening , Berlin 1959.
- Marian Szyrocki (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Sonnets. Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1963.
- Friedrich-Wilhelm Wentzlaff-Eggebert : Poetry and language of the young Gryphius: overcoming the Latin tradition and the development towards the German style. Walter de Gruyter publishing house, Berlin 1966.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 95.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 86.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 6.
- ↑ Borgstedt 2012, pp. 11–12.
- ↑ Mauser 1988, p. 211.
- ↑ Conrady 1962, p. 241.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 94.
- ↑ Beck 2016, p. 572.
- ↑ Conrady 1962, p. 241.
- ↑ Conrady 1962, p. 241.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 88.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 94.
- ↑ Wentzlaff-Eggebert 1966, p. 71.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 88.
- ↑ Wentzlaff-Eggebert 1966, p. 71.
- ↑ Wojciech Iwaoczak: Sarbiewski, Maciej Kazimierz. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 8, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-053-0 , Sp. 1357-1361.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 92.
- ↑ Wentzlaff-Eggebert 1966, p. 70.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 89.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 94.
- ↑ Conrady 1962, pp: 241-242.
- ↑ Mauser 1976, pp. 90-91.