Fountain as a motif

The fountain is a widely used motif in both literature and art . It can stand for courtship and love, meditation and reflection, captivity and humiliation with later exaltation, or life and fate in general.

The ambiguity of the motif reflects the ambiguity of the word fountain . The German word means both the free-flowing spring and its water, the enclosed spring (including the fountain) and the dug tubular (draw) wells until modern times. The word also serves to translate terms from Mediterranean cultures that could also mean cisterns and cattle troughs. The motif therefore touches and overlaps in many ways with the motif of the source or water of eternal life (see also under fountain of youth ). Already in ancient times, the contained wells were understood either as drawing wells of a spring or as cisterns, which were regarded as the residence of gods and to each of which a high symbolic content ( eye , mouth ) was ascribed.

The well in the Bible

In the Old Testament , for nomads wandering around the edge of the desert, the well is first and foremost a place where vital and precious water can be found.

Symbol of love, consolation, promise and fulfillment

In the stories of Genesis 1 , the well is also found as a place of love and a symbol of femininity . In Genesis 24, 62–67, Isaac first saw his future wife Rebecca at the well of Lahai-Roi . Before that, Hagar , the maid and concubine of Abraham , met the angel of the Lord in Gen 16, 7-16 at this well. In addition to the consolation and encouragement that Hagar receives from the angel, the angel also announces the birth of Ishmael to her , so that the fountain receives the folk etymological interpretation of Lahai-Roi after El-Roi, the God of seeing. (The naming suggests an original local deity (local numbers)). After the meaning of love and consolation, the fountain also receives the meaning as a place of promise and fulfillment. This appeal is thwarted in the desolation of Gretchen sitting at the fountain in Goethe's Faust I.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo , Rebecca and Eliezer at the fountain (mid- 17th century ) shows how Eliezer meets Isaac's future wife

With Rebecca the fountain is then in front of the gate. Since it is not Isaac himself but a servant of the father who is sent on a search, divine guidance and dispensation can also be found here (24: 7). The girl Rebecca, whom the servant finds at the well, is judged not only for her beauty, virginity (24:16) and friendliness, but also pragmatically: it seems that she not only gives water to the servant leading the camels, but also to the animals to establish a large part of her suitability for the wife of Isaac (24: 17-22). In gratitude, she was presented with a nose ring and two braces (24:22).

Gen 29, 1:14 with Jacob and Rahel offers another love story at the well .

Wells as an issue

Conversely, the filling of wells, as the Philistines do in Gen.26.15, is a serious cause for disputes - which only begin at this point when the shepherds of Isaac dug the wells free again, which the competing shepherds of Gerar immediately dig for themselves claim. The disputes listed in Gen 26: 17-22, in which even two of the three fountains were given the folk etymological names "Zank" (Esek) and "Enmity" (Sitna), seem to have an old legend as their core Parallels with some oriental fairy tales. The dispute is settled by means of a third well, the Rehobot, called "width", since it remains for the first time without a dispute with the Abraham people and thus "leaves room for them".

This indicates that a well always has a certain environment on land to be expected, which also falls to the owner of the well. But even more important about this story, which is based in the Jacob-Laban circle, is the following blessing that Abraham receives from his God at night. Then a fourth well is dug, where the next day Abimelech appears and swears a solemn oath of peace. The well called Be'er Scheva is interpreted after this oath ( sebua ) " oath well " and stands not only for the blessing of God obtained there or the peace made there, but a recognized award. The people of Israel becomes visible in the people of Abraham. This pacifying meaning is also taken up in Isaiah . Here, too, it is assumed that wanting to drink from someone else's well evokes disputes when the King of Assyria "Make peace with me ... you shall ... each one drink the water from a well" (Isa. 36, 16) can demand.

The imprisonment of Joseph Gen 37 18–30 in a cistern also gives the fountain the meaning of fulfillment, which is only achieved here in the course of the Joseph novella. The cistern as a parable of vanity is quoted by the prophet Jeremiah when he contrasts it with the source: “My people have committed a twofold sin: they have left me, the source of living water, to dig cisterns for themselves, cisterns with holes that have no Hold water " (Jer 2:13). The well stands with him as a place of imprisonment and humiliation when it says: “So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of the king's son Malkiah, which was in the guard yard, and they let Jeremiah down with ropes. There was no water in the cistern, only mud, and Jeremiah sank into the mud ” (Jer 38: 6). The mud at the bottom of the well stands for disregard. The prophet himself sinks, totum pro parte, to clarify the downfall of his disregarded word.

Fountain as a symbol of the beloved

Metaphorically, in Old Testament poetry, the fountain then also stands for the sexually failing and then surrendering lover. In Solomon's Song of Songs : " A locked garden is my sister and bride, a locked garden with a sealed spring" ( Saints 4:12). The above-mentioned renunciation, however, goes from "My garden spring is a well of living water ..." (4.15) to "... come into his garden and eat its delicious fruits" (4.16) and "... get intoxicated in love! « (5.1) completely dismantled. Only the choice of the pronoun (Eng. "His" instead of "my") indicates the tentative attempt to transform the erotic context religiously. The fountain motif appears interwoven with the paradise motif , but without showing the meanwhile common connotation of the Fall of Man.

Well as a metaphor for marriage

The Book of Proverbs knows the fountain primarily as a metaphor for marriage. "Drink water from your cistern and fresh drink from your own well" (Prov. 5:15) warned against adultery and "For a deep pit is the wooer and a narrow well is a stranger" (23:27) expands adultery the wife of another ("stranger") at the prostitute.

The fountain in mythology

Greek mythology

In Greek mythology , Hera , who is equated with Juno by the Romans , took a cleansing bath every year in a spring for restoration. The cleansing idea seems to have been borrowed from human menstruation, but then transferred to the larger growth cycle of a year. The year, in turn, was represented by phases of the moon and the moon as Hera's lover, who in the end has to give up his life. Hera, who was the deity of cyclical growth as well as marriage and discipline, then also regenerates her virginity after killing the lover.

In other ideas it is Artemis , also a moon deity, who likes to bathe naked at springs and so once turned Aktaion , the son of Aristaios , who not only observes them but also brags about this observation, into a goat, which a pack of dogs then turns mangled. In this apparition of Artemis, in turn, a more original nymph goddess, who was also called the "woman of wild things" in Crete and was considered the leader of the nymphs , is said to be found again. Elsewhere, Pasiphaë is the goddess of the moon and Leukippos is torn to pieces by the wild nymphs who clean themselves afterwards by bathing. Also Orpheus struck by that tragic fate. Here, where, according to Ovid, is always accompanied by a flock of nymphs, Thracian women do the deed. Hylas, on the other hand, is drawn down into the well in a similar manner by Dryope and her nymphs, the naiads , and dismembered when fetching water . Here the beauty of the youth is named as the trigger for the deed. And the well becomes a symbol of the deadly abyss again.

Celtic mythology

The Celtic mythology knows the cleansing fountain in a more exaggerated form as a fountain of youth . The idea of a bath that gives youth and immortality is closely related to the idea of a sin-eradicating effect of the ritual bath . The land of Tir Nan Og (also tír na n-óg ), in which this fountain is supposed to be found, is a place of lightheartedness and freedom from suffering charged with ideas of paradise . It was considered the home of elves and unicorns and was presented as an island. Outside of Irish myth, it often merges with the Avalon concept . The fountain of youth located here has become a popular paradise motif, alongside the land of milk and honey, which the elder Lucas Cranach , among others, picked up (see below).

Norse mythology

In the creation stories of Nordic mythology , the Hvergelmir fountain in Niflheim is the source of twelve rivers ( elivâgar ) from which the ice giant Ymir is said to have originated. The following giants named Örgelmir , Thrudgelmir and Bergelmir are said to have echoes of the wells of their origin in their names. A second source is Mimir's well , which the giant Mimir of the same name guards as a fountain of knowledge and wisdom. Hvergelmir and Mimirquelle feed the world ash Yggdrasil together with the Urð-Brunnen ( urðarbrunnr ). While Hvergelmir is the dark place of origin of evil, the Urð-Well (also: Urðar ) is the place where the gods gather daily for meetings. When they are visited here by Loddafnir , who strives for knowledge and wisdom, the attributes of the Mimir spring seem to pass over to the Urð well.

But the Urd fountain is even more clearly linked to life and fate . The fountain itself is located at the foot of the Yggdrasil World Ash, which is intended to present the construction to the entire world. Sitting next to him are the three Norns who, like the Parzen, weave the threads of fate. Urðr (or urðr , wurð , orð ) brings out the thread, Verðandi weaves it into the bond of life, and Skuld cuts it on the day of death. The trinity of the Norns, which is supposed to symbolize past, present and future, is adapted to that of the Greek Moiren . Also Klotho , Lachesis and Atropos are similarly presented, with Lachesis goes where Zeus , as in Delphi itself lays claim to the current workings. Even Homer knows Aphrodite as a goddess of fate.

The Nordic myths, on the other hand, know many women of fate, often unknown by name. The Valkyries , who specialize in war and battle, are also included here. The mightiest of the Norns is Urd, since she is the most primitive of the Norns. Unlike its Greek counterpart, it is not obliged to any master. Therefore the fountain is named after her. Urð ( wyrð ) can already be found in Beowulf and also in Heliand . In Iceland one also knows urðarköttur , the Urð cat, the sight of which means death. Nevertheless, Urð and the later added Verðandi are ascribed a moderate nature. Only Skuld appears in some folk tales to be of bad disposition. Increasingly, however, Norns, fairies and other wise women are mixed up. Only clearings and fountains and other magical places then still know their local spirits.

The fountain in the fairy tale

Urð should also correspond to that Mrs. Holda or Hulda, who lives on in the Grimm fairy tale Mrs. Holle . The connection to a lower world, which already seems to be evident in the proper name "Holle" ("Hell"), is still so present in the early Middle Ages that prophesies are made from wells. Here the two disparate ideas of a shaft-like, empty well that only donates water at the bottom and a filled, almost overflowing well coincide. While the shaft suggests the connection to the underworld seat of the Norns, the image on the water surface is used for divination. Despite a ban on this well divination, which Pope Gregory III. 731 , there are various associated ideas in popular belief. So anyone who drinks from three fountains unspoken at Christmas time while the mass is still being rung and then looks back over the right shoulder with the bells arriving can look back at his future. (cf. HDA 1, 1674f.). The mirror motif still connected to the prophecy in the concrete show at the edge of the fountain seems to be temporally and spatially detached from that of the fountain.

The adage of the child who "fell into the well" is not fulfilled in the Holle fairy tale. The fountain proves to the girl as a gateway to a walk-in underworld, which has at least a larger meadow and a garden. In this fairy tale, too, the fountain remains a haven of happiness. Both the closeness of the Holle figure to Freya's similarly named companion and the enigmatic "big teeth" that may be reminiscent of the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood are questionable. More recent psychoanalytic attempts to see the tooth size phallically do not offer any explanation beyond this interpretation. At least, however, also found in Holda an opponent of idleness . But even if the goddess Holda is sometimes portrayed in a forgiving manner and sometimes as a terrible participant in the wild army , she does not explain the contradicting nature of the figure of the fairy tale hell; Frau Holle lives in the depths of the fountain underworld, but at the same time she is in the sky from which she lets it snow and in the end she is neither fountain nor air spirit, but just seems to be a housemother who cares about diligence and order.

Popular belief, which also knows this fairy tale character, links various ideas with considerable regional fluctuations to the Holle and its fountain. In addition to the notions of a dangerous old woman who is concerned about order and justice, but who seems to be prone to malice, that of the frugal deity shines through in some places. Here the Holle figure then wanders across the fields, whose fertility is preserved in this way. Elsewhere, the wreath of ideas from the fountain of youth (see above) is also woven into the Holle story, if one believes that old women would be rejuvenated when they descended into the fountain. And finally there are also ideas that see hell as the guardian of unborn souls. This Christianized variant is then given a pagan element, the stork, from which the children are transported to birth, that is often found in Biedermeier representations.

The king's daughter from the Frog King looking into the fountain after an illustration by Bernhard Wenig

More sharply drawn variants of the fairy tale itself then make it seem obvious to see the girl's motherly protector in hell. The Naubertine Collection still knows a deliberately planning stepmother who wants to bring about the girl's death. Similar to the story of the biblical Joseph, the well becomes a place of horror. In this variant, the girl is helped by a mermaid who first has to untangle her hair. In a third variant (cf. Panzer's remarks on the original version), in which the fountain is only intended to be used for cleaning, the girl who goes by the name of "marmot" falls into the crystal ball of the fountain woman. Here too, after a few tests, the good girl is rewarded and the bad girl sent behind is punished. The reward for the "marmot" is still rather immaterial here. A precious dress that is given to the girl is mentioned, but a staff that can be used against wild animals appears more valuable. And even more important is the promise of the well woman to help the child in need at all times - a promise which in turn is based on the idea of an interconnected system of wells. The nameless bad sister, on the other hand, who also jumps into the well, doesn't even land in the ball. The bottom of the well is a swamp here.

The crystal ball is found again in the fairy tale The Frog King or the Iron Heinrich . The fountain motif as a meeting place for the female and male protagonists also overlaps here with the motif of the fountain of youth . In the current version available from Grimm, this is darkened, however, a look at the fairy tale parallel The Frog Prince ( KHM Anh. 21 ) and the fairy tale The Well at the End of the World (by Joseph Jacobs ). The frog can clean the contaminated life-saving well water, provided that the frogman agrees with its conditions, whereupon the youngest of the three sisters gets involved and ultimately wins not only the water of life for the sick father but also the prince.

Fountain and fountain motif in the Middle Ages

The fountain in medieval literature

In the Iwein by Hartmann von Aue , which in turn is based on the Yvain ou Le Chevalier au lion by Chrétien de Troyes , the source is the place where the decisive aventiure must exist. Iwein kills the well guard Askalon (v. 945–1134) and wins his wife Laudine as his wife (v. 1135–2445). The Old Testament advertising at the fountain appears to have been incorporated into the motif. With Ascalon, however, an empire and a guardian are added to the source. Hades or Anubis may be discovered in this; closer are the literary references to the Celtic world of death and the other. The source seems to represent Laudine herself even more clearly. The topographical layout of the spring, garden, wall and fall gate refers to the sexual conquest that was also meant. But first of all, the spring, the stone and the twittering of birds, the linden tree and the gold vessel are part of a locus amoenus , a paradise . Only the water poured on the stone by Iwein can briefly indicate the festering calamity with the following rumble of thunderstorms, but it removes the locality as a magical place all the more clearly from everyday life.

The fountain house in Heiligenkreuz Abbey near Vienna

The connotation of the well as an unpredictable abyss, however, remains. In the thirteenth century, Hugo von Trimberg was able to speak of a "fountain of greed" as an allegorical description of one of the deadly sins in Renner . The Minne Born, on the other hand, an allegorical poem from the 14th century , takes up the Parzen crowd (one person expanded) with the four queens standing around a fountain in a forest. The four women, who represent love, hope, doubt and constancy, stand as attributes of love. Remembering these attributes, the first-person narrator is then allowed to drink from the fountain of love. Only a fifth attribute, caution, is separate in its warning function. With it the narrator is to be warned against excessive indulgence. A well poisoning coming from outside is also able to survive love.

While the motif of the "fountain" seems to have retained its width in tradition, the term "fountain poisoner" is narrowed in the Middle Ages. In all the descriptions of the well that see it as a place of life, be it for the nomads of the Old Testament or the later village and urban cultures, the "well poisoner" is the criminal. And just as the fountain could be stylized into an idyll , a locus amoenus , so, conversely, poisoning a fountain was an unspeakable sacrilege. The medieval name of the well poisoner can now be found in connection with the great European plague pandemics from the 14th century in an anti-Semitic color. With " well poisoners " is meant the person of Jewish faith, so that this stereotype , which Hitler then also used in Mein Kampf , is increasingly found in the propaganda before pogroms .

Well and well motif in alchemy

The alchemy knows the legendary Book of Nicolas Flamel , the first image is said to have shown a well in its fifth leaf. The fountain was located in a beautiful garden, in the middle of which there was said to have been a hollowed-out oak tree , around which a rose tree grew. The white water then rose to the roots of the tree. It remains to be seen whether this fountain, which combines elements of originality (wisdom) and purity with old ritual notions of sacrifice, comes from an older cult. The other picture on the page shows at least a cultic scene with the sacrifice of children, in whose blood the personified sun and moon bathe. The white water and red blood, which is sometimes shown as bubbling out of a double fountain, already symbolize the two "water" Mercury and Sulfur, which according to the doctrine of alchemy are the basic components of all metals.

Even if the path to the Philosopher's Stone remains in the dark, the Mercurius Fountain has always been a popular motif in alchemy. For example, in the Rosarium Philosophorum , which Carl Gustav Jung commented on in detail in The Psychology of Transmission , the multi-level union of Sol and Luna is described as one of several baths. After a fire and a water bath, a hermaphrodite is created , which still shows the heads of both. The animation of this hermaphrodite, which perhaps initially only contains the feminine elements and thus represents the silver obtained here in the alchemical imagination, then leads, according to some illustrations, such as those of the Chymische Lustgartenleins by Stoltzius , to a loosening bath again. Only the next union in the well now seems to bring about the change - so that in the end gold and silver should be won.

The last exit from the well shows a pelican as a symbol of blood. Then ouroboros and lion follow as symbols for the initial chaos of the world and the dissolution next to a germinating sapling of sun fruits. Finally, before the adoration of the new king, the Weisenstein is shown as the son of the couple, again shown separately. It is not certain whether this is based on an older view of a couple named Gabricus and Beya . However, the first picture from the rosarium warns of the unsafe outcome with the words:

Wyr are the beginning of metal and first nature,
art makes the highest tincture through us.
Can you brunn still water is meyn gleych
I make you healthy poor and rey?
Un I am now and gyftig and godly.

The fountain motif in modern literature

The motif of the fountain also appears in Goethe's drama Faust I from 1808 as the scene of Gretchen and Lieschen's gossip about a mutual acquaintance.

In Ein Doppelganger from 1887 , Theodor Storm takes up the ideas condensed into a fairy tale in Frau Holle when he drops John Hansen into a no longer used well at night. Hansen, who was just about to steal potatoes out of necessity, disappears forever. The frame narration reports the fate of his daughter Christine. The abyss that engulfs the worker and emergency thief, it seems, consists primarily of social conceit, which makes a comparison with the fairy tale The Frog King or the Iron Henry seem more obvious.

At the fountain in front of the gate -
Austrian picture postcard from 1913

The motif of the fountain is often taken up in poetry , for example by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer ( The Roman Fountain , 1882), by Hugo von Hofmannsthal ( World Secret , 1894), by Rainer Maria Rilke ( Römische Fontäne , 1906; La Fontaine , 1924) , Hans Carossa ( The old fountain , 1910) or in the cycle of poems The deep fountain by Emanuel Bodman from 1924. In particular, Wilhelm Müller's poem Der Lindenbaum from 1822, where the fountain and the linden tree symbolize a wistful longing for the whole past becomes. It achieved world fame in its setting by Franz Schubert in Winterreise , but also later as a folk song .

One of the most impressive uses of a fountain motif condensed into a poetological symbol is offered by Thomas Mann in his novel Joseph and his brothers . The chapter of the prelude with the heading »Hell's Journey« , which is also the beginning of the entire novel, begins with:

“The well of the past is deep. Shouldn't he be called unfathomable? Namely, even and maybe even then, when it is only the human being whose past is under discussion and question [...] Since then it happens that the deeper one digs, the further down into the underworld of the past one penetrates and gropes, the beginnings of the human, its history, its morality, turn out to be completely insoluble and, in front of our plumb bob, at whatever adventurous length of time we unwind its cord, again and again and further back into the abyss. But it is true to say here 'again and on'; Because with our exploratory affair the unsearchable plays a kind of puffing game: it offers her pseudo-content and route goals, behind which, when they are reached, new stretches of the past open up, as happens to the coastal hunter who finds no end to wandering because behind every clayey Dune backdrop, which he strove to lure forward to new expanses to new foothills. " (Thomas Mann, Joseph and his brothers 1, 9)

The "fountain of the past" condenses the topographical into a temporal as well as a mental one, the model of Freud's psychoanalysis with encompassing metaphors. He combines myth and history in remembrance and assigns an impossibility to the undertaking of wanting to penetrate this matter as "inexplicable" (in which Otto's " Numinosum " echoes), in that, and despite this, this was just started in the beginning of the text. To use the history of mankind and man in the fountain metaphor as a "prelude" (a reference to Faust I ), but in a nutshell , concentrates the entire text from the beginning and thus forms a rare leitmotif that is still a motif and yet also through the material-leading appeal, a motif that was compositionally underlaid the text and yet taken from its core. In this way, the well into which the brothers throw Joseph, the well that signifies imprisonment and deportation, exaltation and reconciliation in one, becomes a symbol of the history of every single human being and of his whole kind and shows its limits as well as - cum grano salis that of the novel.

The fountain motif in modern painting

The picture entitled The Fountain of Youth (1546) Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä. shows a sweeping fountain system. The old women coming from the left enter the facility dragging, are carried or brought in in the car. Visibly rejuvenated, with alabaster skin and an upright corridor, they then leave the fountain to the right, where they are received by noble-looking young men with robes and a meal. The representation not only ties happiness to beauty and beauty to youth, but also offers gender-specific emphasis with the user group limited to women. The depiction already points to a woman's youthful delusion , which is opposed to the future husband's youthful demands directed at the woman . A series of woodcuts by Sebald Beham from 1536 offers a similar representation of a fountain of youth .

The fountain motif in modern music

The constant flow of water in ornamental fountains has inspired composers of the late Romantic period in particular to create instrumental works that imitate the flow in a variety of ways. Franz Liszt composed his piano work Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este (from: Années de pèlerinage: Troisième année ) under the impression of the fountain of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli . In the symphonic poem Le fontane di Roma (1916) Ottorino Respighi depicts the fountains of the city of Rome.

Psychological interpretation

The analytical psychology in the tradition of Carl Gustav Jung is considered the fountain as a manifestation of the so-called. Mother archetype .

Individual evidence

↑ According to the translation from http://theol.uibk.ac.at/leseraum/bibel/jes36.html one could read Isa. 36,16 also understand differently.

literature

For general and overarching literature, see the bibliography on "Substance and Motif"

D. Arendt, The symbol of the fountain between antiquity and modernity , in: WW 26 (1971)
Ursula Wiegers , The fountain in German poetry. An investigation into the history of the subject. Bonn 1957, DNB 480561281 (Dissertation University of Bonn June 15, 1955, 295 pages).
Robert Wolff, The fountain as a symbol and motif in poetry ; in: Hans-Michael Speier , D. Straub (Ed.), Turn around in the picture. Commemorative publication Victor A. Schmitz , RG Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-88323-464-8 .