Ballad of Outer Life
The ballad of outer life is a poem by the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal . It was created in his first working period, probably in 1894. It did not appear in the Blätter für die Kunst until 1896 . The original title of the poem "Terzinen of the Duration of External Life" was later changed by the young author.
text
1 And children grow up with deep eyes -
2 who know nothing grow up and die, a
3 and all people go their own way. -
4 And sweet fruits arise from the bitter a
5 and fall down like dead birds at night b
6 and lie few days and perish. a
7 And always the wind blows, and again and again b
8 we hear and speak many words c
9 and feel pleasure and fatigue in the limbs. b
10 And roads run through the grass, and places c
11 are here and there, full of torches, trees, ponds, d
12 and threatening, and withered to death ... c
13 What are they designed for? And same d
14 never each other? And are there innumerable many? e
15 What alternates between laughing, crying and turning pale? d
16 What good does it all do for us and these games, e
17 that we are great and forever lonely f
18 and wandering never looking for any destinations? e
19 What good is it to have seen such things? G
20 And yet he says a lot who says "evening" -
21 a word from which profundity and sadness run down f
22 like heavy honey from the hollow honeycombs. G
background
Hugo von Hofmannsthal was shaped by Viennese modernism and the fin-de-siècle , which brought about profound social changes throughout Europe. Many artists and society in general were of a by Modern caught accelerated perception of time in an identity crisis between fear of the future and faith in progress. On the eve of the First World War , apocalyptic ideas were not uncommon. This historical and social context is also reflected in Hofmannsthal's early working period. But personal background also played a role. The then 22-year-old author found himself in a personal crisis after his military service, in which the question of the meaning of being and life preoccupied him.
shape
Structurally, the poem is divided into seven stanzas of three verses (lines) each. The eighth and last stanza marks the final verse (4 lines). Contrary to the title chosen by the author, it is formally not a ballad , but a terzine . (The lowercase letters at the end of the line are intended to clarify the rhyme scheme typical of the terzines .) The verses are consistently led to the end mainly as eleven-syllable five - word iambi with a feminine ending. Only verses 17, 20 and 21 are ten syllable and end with a masculine cadence . In terms of content, they could stand for the only real thing, the evening, loneliness and profundity. Hugo von Hofmannsthal only uses the Terzine rhyme structure from the second stanza with the rhyme to "die" and breaks it through again in the last two stanzas. This is also a characteristic of the terzine, which never comes to rest and is always passed on. So one has the feeling that the many “and” at the beginning of the verse represent a series that can be continued and continued at will.
interpretation
The two parts of reality and art decisively determine the poem. The first four terzines are dedicated to the superficially perceptible phenomena of external life. As a turn of the poem (after the 4th stanza) one can determine that the enumerating "and" is replaced by a reflective instance, which is underlined with question adverbs. The last three terzines question the phenomena shown more deeply, making them a matter of inner life. In these questions the author moves again between fullness and emptiness as a mystical polarity, even if this is only an object of life. This polarity moves in a constantly boring repetition between growing and dying, maturing and lazy, lust and tiredness. Stylistically, the void is characterized by the verses that begin with the repetitive “and” and which are underlined by the monotony of the rhythmic structure. The verses somehow make no sense to the author himself, or they are contradicting themselves. Positive moments of the living are immediately broken by the reference to the determination. In response to the questions raised, the last question (verse 19) assumes a supposedly pessimistic position, which Hofmannsthal later relativized in a letter.
The meaning is finally found in the symbol of the evening. After the day, which has been broken in many ways, the evening becomes a unity of this never-ending process. The sweet meaning of the evening as profundity , sadness and infinity of the inside finally transcends the outer hollow limitation. The evening can bring fulfillment, even if this does not specifically apply to the "eternally lonely" Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Despite different approaches, the majority of research literature agrees on this interpretation, but of course it is not the only correct one.
literature
- Gerhard Bogner: Ballad of External Life . In: Otmar Bohusch (ed.): Interpretations of modern poetry . Verlag M. Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1962, p. 30-37 .
- Werlitz Julian: Ballad of External Life . In: Mathias Mayer et al. (Ed.): Hofmannsthal manual . Stuttgart 2016, p. 144 ff .
- Clemens Heselhaus : German modern poetry. From Nietzsche to Yvan Goll . Düsseldorf 1961, p. 81-86 .
- Freny Mistry: The Concepts of "Death" and "Evening" in Hofmannsthal's "Ballad of Outer Life" . In: Modern Austrian Literature . tape 7 , no. 3 , 1974, p. 77-86 .
- Walter Franke: The Ballad of External Life . In: Rupert Hirschenauer (ed.): Paths to the poem . Munich 1968, p. 273-278 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Ballad of the outer life. 1896, Retrieved November 8, 2016 .