Après l'amour
Après l'amour is a 14-line poem by Durs Grünbein from his second volume of poetry, "Skull Base Lesson" (1991). It describes the body after sexual intercourse and the resulting longing for love.
shape
As mentioned in the poem itself, Après l'amour is a rondeau , although it does not strictly adhere to the form coined by Villon. On the one hand there is only one rhyme in the last two stanzas (goal / style), on the other hand the first two words do not form the refrain. Furthermore, there is neither a uniform meter nor a clear meter.
interpretation
By looking at the contents, however, the rondeau becomes obvious: After sex, the body parts have space again, they can relax and sleep, but the "pain of being alive" soon returns. That's why it doesn't take long before the dance starts all over again. This cyclical sequence corresponds to that of a roundabout. “Après l'amour” is also referred to as “the first endless loop in the erotic lyric poetry of the German tongue”.
construction
The poem is divided in such a way that the first seven lines show exhaustion and the following seven lines describe the renewed pleasure. In between, the transition of the two states is shown in a sentence, which holds the two parts of the poem together. This effect is supported by the great similarity of the first and last lines, which seem to embrace the poem.
Grünbein plays with contrasts, alternating in the poem between tension and relaxation, physical and emotional love, and life and death. Life is described as exhausting and as pain that can only be dampened by sex, which is an allusion to the French term petite mort (small death / orgasm). Coupled with the exact descriptions, this creates an exact picture of the act.
literature
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): German Poems Volume 12. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 2002.
Individual evidence
- ^ Sartorius, Joachim: About birds and its consequences In: Reich-Ranicki 2002, pp. 390–392