Carpe Diem
Carpe diem (Lat. For German "Enjoy the day" or literally: "Pick the day") is a sentence from around 23 BC Chr. Incurred Ode "An Leukonoe" the Roman poet Horace (65 * v. Chr .; † 8 v. Chr.). In the final line, as a conclusion to the poem, she calls on us to enjoy the short period of life today and not to postpone it until the next day. In German, the translation “use the day” has become a winged word , although it does not fully reflect Horace's intention. The appeal is meant hedonistically only in the sense of Epicurus , who advocated the simplest possible way of life.
Common translations such as “seize the day” or “enjoy the day” only inadequately meet the intended core of the metaphor. Rather, “Carpe diem” is a horticultural metaphor which, in the context of the poem, means “to pick the day”. It evokes the picking and gathering of ripe fruits or flowers, the experience of a moment that is rooted in the sensual experience of nature.
Author, source and parody
Horace wrote four books of poetry (“Liber I – IV”) with a total of 104 poems (“Carmina”). The first book contains the ode "An Leukonoë" and, like the second and third, was published around 23 BC. The fourth was written ten years later. In contrast to his Greek predecessors, Horace was only a poet and not a musician; therefore his “songs” were not set to music. Horace likes to combine a wide variety of topics in them, from love, friendship and problems of everyday life to political and philosophical questions. With apt images, gaps and subtle undertones, he succeeds in making subtle, subtle statements. Many of his poems start out powerful and then end lightly and cheerfully.
Carmen I, 11
| Original:
Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi |
translation
Do not ask (because an answer is impossible) which end the gods have given me, which end they have given you, |
The meter (meter) of the ode is the asclepiadeus maior, which is relatively rare in Latin poetry :
- - - | - vv - | - vv - | - vv - | vx
- - - | - vv - | - vv - | - vv - | vx
Example:
- spēm lōngām rĕsĕcēs. Dūm lŏquĭmūr, fūgĕrĭt īnvĭda
- aētās: cārpĕ dĭēm, quām mĭnĭmūm crēdŭlă pōstĕrō.
Christian Morgenstern parodied the famous song of Horace in 1896 as a “student joke”. Morgenstern not only took up the content of the model, but also imitated the meter .
Horatius travestitus I, 11
Don't ask questions! Don't worry about the day!
Martha! Don't go there any more, please, to the stupid gypsy!
Take your lot as it falls! Dear God, whether this is the last year that
will see us together, or whether we
are getting old like Methuselah , just see: that, dear darling, is not in our power.
Have fun and enjoy the wine and confectionery as before!
Sighing makes me nervous. But that's it! All of this is a waste of time!
Kiss me m'amie! Today is today! Après nous le déluge !
Baroque
Carpe diem is often referred to as the central motif of Baroque poetry . The experiences of devastating wars, in the Holy Roman Empire of the Thirty Years' War , led to a strong feeling of transience in the 17th century and thus the vanitas motif ( it's all vain ) and memento mori (remember that you have to die) . This also gave rise to the need to use the here and now. The sensuality of the Baroque and the playfulness of the Rococo are centrally attributed to this appeal. An example of this is Martin Opitz 's ode I feel almost a Grawen from 1624. One echo is Johann Martin Usteri's “Rundgesang” Rejoice in Life, Because the Lamp is Still Glowing (1793).
But while Horace, completely oriented on this world, understands his carpe diem as an invitation not to leave the unique life unlived, carpe diem basically has no place in Christianity oriented on the other side. The consciousness of finitude is - understood in Christian terms - the knowledge of the greater meaning of the life beyond. The focus on enjoyment, which lies in the carpe diem, therefore harbors the risk of wasting this otherworldly life.
Variations
- The attitude conveyed by Horace's poem of enjoying the moment and taking life from the positive side can also be found at other times, for example in ancient Egypt. In the Egyptian conversation of a life weary with his soul , the 68th line reads: Schemes heru nefer s: mech mech (no Egyptological transcription, but Egyptological pronunciation), German. Follow the beautiful days and forget your worries!
- This also includes the numerous variations that revolve around the related Motti Memento mori and Vita brevis, ars longa .
- The popular student song Gaudeamus igitur , which goes back to medieval origins, varies the same theme.
- Several of Shakespeare's sonnets , especially the so-called procreation sonnets 1–17, deal with the Carpe diem .
- The poem by the English Baroque poet To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) became famous. It tried to seduce a brittle beauty into (sexual) pleasure in the face of the short life of her youth.
- The same goal is pursued by Robert Herrick's poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time , which reminds the young women of how ephemeral their beauty is: "Pick rosebuds as long as you can, time rushes you very quickly"
- Chesterton disagreed: “Many of the most brilliant intellectuals of our time urge us to pursue rare amusements. […] It is the religion of the carpe diem; but that is not the religion of happier people, but of extremely unhappy people. The rosebuds which it can get hold of do not collect great happiness; her eyes are fixed on the immortal rose that Dante saw . "
- Gottfried Keller's poem "Abendlied" closes with the lines "Drink, o eyes, what holds your eyelashes / Of the golden abundance of the world!" Here the Horazsche carpe diem is far more appropriate than in all Baroque poems, because Keller formulates - based on Ludwig Feuerbach - a completely worldview.
- This attitude to life can also be found in many of today's sayings and proverbs, for example in the acronym YOLO .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Theodor Fontane : Frau Jenny Treibel , in Chapter 16 : “Listen, singer and brother, carpe diem. We Latins put the accent on the last syllable. Carpe Diem. [...] So again, what you want to do, do it soon. The moment is here; "
- ^ Maria S. Marsilio (2010). TWO NOTES ON HORACE, ODES 1, 11. Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica. New Series, Vol. 96, No. 3 (2010), pp. 117-123. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23048886?mag=how-carpe-diem-got-lost-in-translation
- ↑ Quintus Horatius Flaccus: Carmina : Carmen 1,11
-
↑ See “literal translation” by Hans Zimmermann, Görlitz, at 12koerbe.de ;
see also the translations
by Jakob Friedrich Schmidt 1776 books.google p. 61 ,
anonym 1782 books.google p. 110 ,
by Karl Wilhelm Ramler († 1798) books.google p. 12 ,
by Johann Heinrich Voß 1806 books.google p. 28 ,
by Johann Heinrich Martin Ernesti (1755–1836) books.google p. 28 ,
by Karl Georg Neumann 1845 books.google p. 12
and by Wilhelm Binder 1855 books.google p. 12 - ↑ https://www.archive.org/stream/bub_gb_4qlBAAAAYAAJ#page/n20/mode/1up
- ↑ Comparison at 12koerbe.de
- ↑ See the ode I almost feel a grawing at Wikisource . It is a free adaptation of Pierre de Ronsard's J'ai l'esprit tout ennuyé from 1554, see Dirk Werle : “I sing as the bird sings”. Determination of poetry from Goethe to Opitz. In: Jörg Robert (Ed.): Intermediality in the early modern times. Forms, functions, concepts (= studies and documents on German literature and culture in a European context. Volume 209). De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2017, pp. 116–136, here p. 125 . Achim von Arnim took up the poem in a linguistically modernized version under the title Ueberdruß der Gelichteheit in Des Knaben Wunderhorn .
- ↑ Jan Assmann : The "suffering righteous" in ancient Egypt. On the conflict potential of the Egyptian religion. In: Christoph Elsas, Hans G. Kippenberg (Hrsg.): Loyalty conflicts in the history of religion. Festschrift for Carsten Colpe . Würzburg 1990, p. 203 ff., Here p. 213 (PDF) .
- ↑ Gilbert Keith Chesterton: Heretic. A defense of orthodoxy against its despisers. German by Monika Noll and Ulrich Enderwitz. 1995. Heretics (1905). 7. Heretics - Omar and the Sacred Vine. In: cse.dmu.ac.uk. April 17, 1996, accessed January 17, 2015 .
- ↑ http://www.zeno.org/nid/20005141346
- ↑ cf. Florian Trabert: Gottfried Keller . Literature compact. Marburg 2015. PT355 books.google .
