Archibald Douglas (ballad)
Archibald Douglas is a ballad by Theodor Fontane from 1854. It depicts the inextinguishable love of the exiled title hero for his Scottish homeland , ready for every sacrifice , which ultimately also reconciles his king.
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The ballad begins with a self-talk by Archibald:
I wore it for seven years
and I can no longer wear it
wherever the world was most beautiful,
because it was boring and empty.
The aged Douglas can no longer bear his exile from Scotland. Despite the death penalty threatening him on return, he ventures home in pilgrim dress and meets his King Jacob on the hunt. He protests his innocence for what my brothers did to you and reminds the king of his childhood,
Where I fish and hunt gladly
And swim and jump taught.
The king doesn't kill him, but he doesn't want to hear him either:
I don't see you, I don't hear you,
That's all I can,
A Douglas in front of my face Would be
a lost man.
With these words the king drives his horse uphill. Count Douglas keeps pace and begs to kill him rather than refuse to return. Finally the king pauses, jumps off and takes the count back into his service as seneschal :
He is loyal in the deepest soul,
who loves home like you.
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In order to adapt his Douglas ballad to the old Scottish ballad tradition, Theodor Fontane adopted the so-called Chevy Chase verse of the Old English and Old Scottish ballad poets. In 1848, as he reported in his autobiography From Twenty to Thirty , published in 1898 , “ Bishop Percy's Reliques of ancient English poetry and, soon after, Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish border ” came into his hands, “two books that determined my direction and my taste for years. ”There, Scott gives a footnote in the introduction to the“ affecting story ”of Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, who, however, finds no mercy with his king, but returns to exile in France must where he dies of a broken heart. Scott cites David Hume of Godscroft: The History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus as his source . Scott has taken over the passage there with the "true story" of Archibald of Kilspindie verbatim and in full in note 12 to the fifth cant of his poem The Lady in the Lake with the addition that he himself would have made more use of its simple and touching peculiarities, if his friend John Finlay (1782–1810) hadn't already woven it into a poignant ballad.
On July 16, 1889, Fontane wrote to the Scottish singer Albert Bernhard Bach (1844–1912) about the source of his ballad from Kissingen:
- “The ballad dates from 1853. At the time I was leafing through a terribly poor translation by Walter Scott and found in this volume, which contains one of W. Scott's lesser-known larger epic poems (title unfortunately forgotten), a long, almost 7-page volume Note that tells of this quarrel between King Jacob - I believe the IV. - and the Douglas family, encapsulated, but rather briefly, also mentions the incident I have dealt with. The historical course was, however, as W. Scott reports in this very note, different. King Jacob did not pardon Archibald Douglas, which gives either the old chronicle writer or perhaps Walter Scott himself the reason to criticize the harshness of the king, because (copied so literally):
- A king's face
- Shall give grace.
- This rhyme looks just like it does here in the print, i.e. it is not in the middle of the text, but is explained by the white empty space on the left and right, which means that you can easily discover the passage when you turn the pages. So again: Less known epic poetry, long note and in the last note the very sharply different two lines. Not: Last Minstrel, not lady of the lake, not Floddenfield [...] "
The typographical peculiarity that Fontane emphasizes so much apparently only distinguishes the version of the Archibald-Douglas story offered in Chapter 26 of Scott's Tales of a Grandfather Being the History of Scotland , both the original English version and the German translation by Karl Ludwig Kannegießer (1781–1864). One can therefore, like Max Runze in 1899, consider it to be Fontane's first and decisive encounter with the subject, even if it is not a comment or an “epic poem”.
Fontane himself was not convinced of this, as he wrote to Richard Maria Werner in January 1893 :
- “Somewhere in Walter Scott - either in the tales of a grandfather or, more likely, in one of the smaller and less well-known epic poems - there is a long note which roughly says: Jacob V had a lot of arguments with the nobility, especially with of the Douglas family. Archibald Douglas was eventually exiled for life. After 7 years he came back and pleaded with the king. But the king refused him, and so he had to leave the country again. An English king, if I am not mistaken Henry VIII , disapproved of this and uttered the rhyme: 'A King's face / Shall give grace.' So much for the comment, incidentally the only thing I read from the whole thick book that I had only accidentally opened while dusting. This little Douglas story made a big impression on me, and since I was entirely of the opinion of Henry the Eighth, I modeled the material in the appropriate sense ... Douglas's address and the king's answer to it, I wrote on the same Evening, on the cold, whitewashed entrance hall of the Royal Theater . I picked up my wife and can still see myself standing, laying one small sheet of paper after the other on the pillar in order to be able to write better with the pencil, which no longer had the right tip, or to be able to hold down the most essential things. It was just 40 years ago. "
Since Fontane's ballad is most in agreement with the already mentioned footnote on Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border , Hans Rhyn saw Fontane's source there. Fontane's letter of May 20, 1868 to his wife that he was reading Scott's stories from a grandfather with delight does not suggest that a passage from it inspired Fontane to one of his first literary triumphs. Conversely, however, it is just as difficult to believe that Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border , one of two books which, according to Fontane's own words, “determined my direction and my taste for years”, is said to have been the “thick book” that he “ had only accidentally hit it when dusting ”, and was the only one to read the note about Archibald Douglas, which he was unable to identify as the source of his ballad until his death.
On December 3, 1854, Fontane performed the ballad under the title The Banished for the first time at the foundation festival of the tunnel over the Spree in “Arnims Hotel” (Unter den Linden 44) in the presence of Theodor Storm to great cheers. Fontane recalled this in From Twenty to Thirty as follows: “I belonged to the tunnel continuously for a decade and during this time I was probably the most contributing member of the association , along with Scherenberg , Eesekiel and Heinrich Smidt . The great majority of my ballads, taken from Prussian, but even more from Anglo-Scottish history, come from that time, and many a happy hour is attached to it. The happiest was when I - I think on the occasion of the foundation festival of 1853 or 54 - was allowed to present my "Archibald Douglas". The jubilation was great. ”
The first print took place, as it turned out only in 1986, in Deutsche Jugendzeitung , edited, published and published by Christian Julin-Fabricius , Volume 4, No. 2, 1st quarter 1856, page 31 f., Under the pseudonym "Bornemann (Berlin)".
The ballad first appeared under Fontane's name in Argo, Album for Art and Poetry , Breslau 1857, page 14 f. (Editors: Friedrich Eggers , Theodor Hosemann , Franz Kugler (historians) ). In the same year Carl Loewe set a setting for voice and piano Op. 128 before.
literature
- Edgar Neis: interpretations of 66 ballads, moritats and chansons. Analysis and Comments. Bange, Hollfeld 1978, ISBN 3-8044-0590-8 .
- Hans Rhyn: Theodor Fontane's ballad poem, with special consideration of his arrangements of Old English and Old Scottish ballads from the collections of Percy and Scott . Verlag von A. Francke, Bern, 1914. pp. 132-146 archive.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c The tunnel over the Spree , Chapter 2
- ↑ a b INTRODUCTION , footnote 14, p. xxv books.google
- ↑ (1475? –1536?), Called Greysteil , fourth son of Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus and uncle of Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus , husband of the widowed Isobel Hoppar (Hopper)
- ↑ pp. 107-108 books.google
- ↑ "I would have availed myself more fully of the simple and affecting circumstances of the old history, had they not been already woven into a pathetic ballad by my friend Mr Finlay." P. 121 books.google . John Finlay: Archie O'Kilspindie , books.google
- ^ Carl Loewes works. Complete edition of the ballads, legends, songs and chants for one voice, on behalf of the Loewesche family, edited by Dr. Max Runze . Volume III: Scottish, English and Nordic ballads. Breitkopf & Härtel Leipzig undated (1899), S. XI archive.org
- ↑ books.google
- ^ Zwickau 1828, p. 248 books.google
- ↑ M. Runze, op. Cit., Pp. XII f. archive.org
- ^ First publication of Two Letters Theodor Fontane in Die Nation (Deutschland) , Volume 16, No. 5. of October 29, 1898, pp. 71 , -72 books.google ; also in Fontane: Werke Volume 6, edited by Helmuth Nürnberger , Hanser, Munich, 3rd edition 1995. ISBN 3-446-11456-4 . P. 974
- ↑ Hans Rhyn: Theodor Fontane's ballad poem, with special consideration of his arrangements of old English and old Scottish ballads from the collections of Percy and Scott . Verlag von A. Francke, Bern, 1914. P. 138 f. archive.org
- ^ Karl Ernst Laage : On the way with Theodor Storm: a literary travel guide . Boyens, Heide 2002. page 87
- ↑ Roland Berbig. Theodor Fontane in literary life . de Gruyter 2000. Page 167 ff. books.google
- ↑ http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/dfg/periodical/pageview/1077008
