Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (German: Childe Harolds Pilgerfahrt ) is one of the most famous and successful works by the British poet Lord Byron . The verse epic was published between 1812 and 1818 .
The title goes back to the medieval name "childe" (German: Schildknappe ) for a young aspirant to the knighthood .
content
The work, a long narrative in verse , describes the travels of a young man who, disappointed in his luxury life, seeks diversion in foreign countries. It expresses the melancholy and disappointment felt by a generation tired of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars .
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage consists of four Canti , which are written in Spenser stanzas , each consisting of eight iambic five-cues , followed by a twelve-syllable iambic alexandrine , with the rhyme scheme [ababbcbcc].
The work has strong autobiographical features. The first parts are based on Lord Byron's travels between 1809 and 1811 via Portugal, Spain and Malta to the Ottoman Empire , the center of civilization, to the Parthenon in Athens. In the later Canti, the author himself appears, so that the distinction between protagonist and author becomes more and more difficult. Childe Harold became a vehicle for Byron's own beliefs and ideas; In the foreword to the third book, Byron writes that his hero is only an expression of himself.
meaning
The release of the first Canto was a sensation. “I woke up one morning and was famous,” Byron is reported to have said. Women in particular were fascinated by Harold's character, his premonitions and indescribable vices. Lord Byron quickly became the darling of the influential aristocrats of the time.
The work introduced the literary archetype of the Byronic Hero , a form of the antihero and outsider who puts one's own personality above the world itself.
Adaptations
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage inspired Hector Berlioz to write the tone poem Harold en Italie .
Print editions
- The Poems and Plays of Lord Byron. Vol. 2: Poetry and the Drama. Series: Everyman's Library , 487. JM Dent & Sons, London 1910 u. ö, 1926. pp. 1-124
- Complete Works, Vol. 1: "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and other verses. Translated from Otto Gildemeister and Alexander Neidhardt. Artemis & Winkler , Mannheim 1996 ISBN 3538052743
Web links
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as full text (English) in Project Gutenberg
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (= Lord Byron's works. Translated by Otto Gildemeister. In six volumes , Vol. 2, 1862)
- Junker Harold's Pilgrimage , translated by Georg Nicolaus Bärmann (= Lord Byron's entire works , vol. 2, 1830)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barbara Spengler-Axiopoulos: The skeptical cosmopolitan , NZZ , July 1, 2006.