Daphnis and Chloe

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Jean-Pierre Cortot : Daphnis and Chloe (marble, Louvre )

Daphnis and Chloe ( Greek  Δάφνις καὶ Χλόη ) is a late antique romance novel by the Greek writer Longos ( Latinized : Longus), which was probably written towards the end of the 2nd century and is set on the Aegean island of Lesbos .

Longos tells the story of the foundlings Daphnis and Chloe, who experience their childhood with shepherds on Lesbos, are separated from each other, find each other again, love each other and finally find their parents again and marry. The work is a mixture of the bucolic and the ancient adventure novel.

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first book

Daphnis is fed by a goat in the forest, found by the goatherd Lamon and taken in by him and his wife Myrtale as a child. Two years later, Chloe is nourished by a sheep in a nymph cave, found by the shepherd Dryas and raised by him and his wife Nape. The two children were given gifts that indicate a noble origin.

The herds of the two adoptive parents graze close to each other, so that a friendship between Daphnis and Chloe develops during childhood.

The feelings of the two become clear for the first time when Chloe rescues Daphnis from a pit he fell into and then watches him bathing. She can't really understand her feelings yet, but realizes that Daphnis is the cause and feels the need to see him bathe again.

At this point, Dorkon, a cattle herder, enters the main story. He helped rescue Daphnis from the pit and fell in love with Chloe. In a beauty contest between Daphnis and Dorkon, Chloe declares Daphnis the winner and gives him a kiss as a prize. This is the second key point, as Daphnis is now inflamed for Chloe. But he cannot name his feeling either.

The erotic tension is briefly interrupted towards the end of the first book when pirates attack the coast and kidnap Daphnis. When Chloe Dorkon wants to ask for help, she finds him seriously injured and dying with his herd. Shortly before his death, he gives her his Syrinx and tells her how she can use it to save Daphnis. Chloe uses the Syrinx to get the cattle to throw themselves into the sea and capsize the pirate ship to enable Daphnis to escape.

second book

In the second book the two lovers approach each other again. At a festival in honor of the god Dionysus they meet the old man Philetas, who tells them about the god Eros and explains what love is. Daphnis and Chloe also learn from him how they can cure their lovesickness:

“Because no remedy helps against eros, not what has been drunk, not what is ingested, not what is spoken in magic songs; none other than kiss and hug and lying together with naked bodies. "

- Longos : Daphnis and Chloe

The two lovers still hesitate with the last resort, especially since they don't even know what it actually means.

Events become dramatic when rich youths from the city of Methymna land on the coast and Daphnis is beaten by them. However, he is rescued by Chloe and a few other shepherds and the young men are put to flight. They return with troops and kidnap Chloe. Daphnis begs the nymphs and the shepherd god Pan for help. This causes Chloe's release. Reunited, the two lovers swear eternal love to each other.

Third book

The erotic tension between Daphnis and Chloe intensifies when Daphnis visits Chloe in the middle of a deep winter. In the spring, the two try to follow Philetas advice and lie together naked. Since that alone doesn't help, they try to imitate their animals. But even that is not crowned with success

A farmer's wife, Lykainion, who desires Daphnis and knows about the frustration of lovers, takes advantage of the situation. She lures Daphnis over on a pretext, tells him she will teach him how to satisfy his desires with Chloe, and sleeps with him.

However, Daphnis is afraid to sleep with Chloe as Lykainion tells him that when girls become women, they bleed profusely.

Meanwhile, many other men woo Chloe from their foster father Dryas. Daphnis has a vision of the nymphs, which ultimately lead him to a washed up bag full of money, which brings him the award of Dryas, so that nothing seems to stand in the way of the couple's marriage.

Fourth book

Daphnis and Chloe -Louise Marie-Jeanne Hersent-Mauduit

The landowners come to visit their lands: among them Dionysophanes, his son Astylos and his "parasite", the wolverine Gnathon. He tries to win Daphnis as a lover. To prevent this, the Lamon tells the story of his foster son, and it turns out that Dionysophanes is the father of Daphnis.

Chloe is kidnapped by Lampis, a cattle herder, who believes that Daphnis has given up the plan to marry her through his new life. When Daphnis learns of the kidnapping of his loved one, Gnathon rushes to his aid and frees Chloe in order to win back Daphnis' favor, since he, as the son of Dionysophanes, is now also his master. Daphnis forgives Gnathon his original reenactment. Now it turns out that Chloe comes from a rich family too. Daphnis and Chloe can finally get married.

The two celebrate their wedding in the country and largely forego the luxury of the city for the rest of their lives:

"And not just then, but as long as they lived, they led a pastoral life, worshiped the gods, the nymphs, Pan, and Eros, raised large flocks of sheep and goats and knew no sweeter food than fruit and milk."

- Longos : Daphnis and Chloe

Thanks to Lykainion, they can now give free rein to their love and later have two children who are nourished by a goat (boy) and a sheep (girl).

Characters

Daphnis

Daphnis appears as a youth of about 15-16 years for almost the entire story. He is described as suntanned, dark-haired and not particularly strong. He is mostly reserved, modest, shy and childishly naive.

In the course of the action, he repeatedly gets into dangerous situations from which he cannot, however, free himself. Because of this need for help, he does not correspond to the classic definition of an ancient hero.

When the meeting with his birth parents greatly improved his living conditions and a future full of prosperity awaits him, he voluntarily renounces it to continue the simple life among shepherds and farmers with his beloved Chloe.

The person of Daphnis is apparently inspired by the mythical Daphnis .

Chloe

Chloe is two years younger than Daphnis and at the end of the novel she is of marriageable age according to ancient custom. She is a dear, innocent girl, also beautiful and, like Daphnis, childishly naive. For many boys and men, she is an object of desire, which often brings both her and Daphnis into tricky situations.

She, too, appreciates the simple shepherd life more than the luxury in the city and enjoys the little things and her pure love for Daphnis, the sheep and nature.

Location

Longos chooses Lesbos as the setting for the action , which he describes as very idyllic. The story takes place near the port city of Mytilene .

“There is a city on Lesbos, Mytilene, as big as it is beautiful; for it is cut by canals into which the sea flows, and adorned with bridges of hewn and white stone. You will think that you are not seeing a city but an island. From this city of Mytilene, then, about two hundred stadia away, lies a rich man's estate, a splendid possession; Wild mountains, fruit-bearing plains, hills covered with vines, pastures covered with herds, and the sea tides wash up on the soft sand of the long coasts. "

- Longos : Daphnis and Chloe

Apart from a few brief kidnappings and a trip to the city of Mitylene, the protagonists never leave their village.

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The novel Daphnis and Chloe takes on the typical features of the ancient adventure novel. This includes, for example, the concept of a completely symmetrical love: Daphnis and Chloe love each other on an equal footing, as do the hero couples in Heliodorus (approx. 4th century) or Achilleus Tatios (2nd century). Whole passages in Longos seem to be inspired by the novel by Achilleus Tatios.

At the same time, the work is relocated to the area of bucolic poetry : it is not about long journeys, as in the other adventure novels, but about the development of sexuality and love. The journeys are transformed into an inner journey, as it were. Theocritus is regarded as the archegete of the bucolic , and Longos takes entire passages from him.

Another poet Longos refers to is Philetas , after whom he names a wise shepherd who taught Daphnis and Chloe about Eros. Unfortunately, hardly anything has come down to us about this Philetas.

Like all ancient novelists, Longos makes frequent references to historiography , especially Thucydides , and the New Comedy . There are also many quotations from Homer and Sappho . A reference to the poet Anyte is striking .

But Longos not only tells an exciting love story, but also designs a love model and his own poetics. With the help of quotations he compares both with Plato , especially with his dialogue Phaedrus , which deals among other things with the essence of Eros and the inspiration of the poets.

style

The style of the longos corresponds to the styles of sweetness and simplicity described by Hermogenes von Tarsos and thus fits the naive nature of the protagonists Daphnis and Chloe. At the same time, entire passages of the Greek original are strikingly rhythmic and rhymed. Rhyme, which played no role in ancient poetry, was a stylistic device of virtuoso prose. The rhymes and the rhythm were not taken into account in the previous translations into German. The first translation that mimics the rhyme and rhythm is that of Ondřej Cikán and Georg Danek .

The poetic passages alternate with scenes that are comical, almost grotesque.

The well-composed motivation of the plot is also typical of Longos. Each action element builds on another. For example, the wealthy Methymneans land near the pastures of Daphnis and Chloe. A farmer steals the rope from their ship. Instead, they use willow bark and go hunting. Their dogs drive the goats of Daphnis from the mountains to the shore. A goat eats the willow bark, the ship drifts off the bank and sinks. Later Daphnis finds the bag of money that was washed ashore after the shipwreck, and can use this money to woo Chloe.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once raved about Longos' work: It was a masterpiece that he had often read and admired and in which

"Mind, art and taste appear at their highest peak."

- Johann Peter Eckermann : Conversations with Goethe. Volume 2, Leipzig 1836

Modern adaptations

Operas

ballet

Léon Bakst : stage design for the ballet Daphnis et Chloë by Ravel , 1912

movie theater

The work was made in 1931 by Orestis Laskos as a film, which is considered one of the first Greek cinema classics and caused a sensation with the nudity in some scenes, which was unusual for the time.

The story also served as a template for the 1963 film Μικρές Αφροδίτες (Mikres Afrodites), or "Young Aphrodites", by the Greek filmmaker Nikos Koundouros, with a script by Vassilis Vassilikos.

The film The Blue Lagoon by Randal Kleiser , USA 1980, is also inspired by Daphnis and Chloe .

Literary reception

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote that one would do well to read it once every year. And raves:

the wonderful landscape, always the bluest sky, the most graceful air and no trace of dull days! Even if a lot is told about shepherds of all kinds, field workers, gardeners and winemakers, their work is never portrayed as hard work, but as an occupation that fits into the surrounding nature.

Daphnis and Chloe were the models for many works of the European shepherd poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries. Century, e.g. B. La Sireine by Honoré d'Urfé , the Diana enamorada by Jorge de Montemayor , the Aminta by Torquato Tasso and The Gentle Shepherd by Scots Allan Ramsay . The immensely successful novel Paul et Virginie (1784) by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is a later descendant.

But modern works are also based on Daphnis and Chloe , including the Japanese novel The Surf ( Shiosai ) by Mishima Yukio .

Visual arts

Numerous illustrated editions are available, the one with the drawings by Pierre Paul Prud'hon deserves special mention. The series of lithographs by Marc Chagall is particularly famous . Auguste Rodin created a sculpture showing Daphnis and Chloe. Rolf Brem and Wim Delvoye should be mentioned among the modern sculptors who worked with Daphnis and Chloe .

Translations and edition history

The novel was translated into French by Jacques Amyot , later Bishop of Auxerre , in 1559. This version (especially in the revision by Paul-Louis Courier ) was more widely used than the original Greek text. This was first printed 39 years later in Florence by Columbani.

Significant further editions are those of

literature

Commented translations into German

Older translations into German

More commented translations

  • JR Morgan: Longus: Daphnis and Chloe . Aris & Phillips, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-955495-1 .
  • J.-R. Vieillefond: Longus: Pastorales . Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-251-00383-5 .
  • Maria Pia Pattoni: Longo Sofista: Daphni e Chloe . Rizzoli, Milano 2005, ISBN 88-17-00609-2 .
  • Jeffrey Henderson: Longus, Daphnis and Chloe. Xenophon of Ephesus, Anthia and Habrocomes . Loeb, Cambridge (Mass.) 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-99633-5 .

Secondary literature

  • Klaus Alpers : The Garden of Philetas. Longos and Lukian. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. 136, 2001, pp. 43-48.
  • Jean Alvares: Reading Longus 'Daphnis and Chloe and Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon in Counterpoint. In: Sh. N. Byrne, EP Cueva, J. Alvares (Eds.): Authors, Authority, and Interpreters in the Ancient Novel. Groningen 2006, pp. 1-33.
  • Ewen L. Bowie : The Function of Mythology in Longus'. Daphnis and Chloe. In: JA López Férez (ed.): Mitos en la literatura griega helenistica e imperial . Madrid 2004, pp. 361-376.
  • Gerlinde Bretzigheimer : The comedy in Longos' pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe. In: Gymnasium. 95, 1998, pp. 515-555.
  • Ondřej Cikán : buried wine, profitable syrinx. On Longo's humor and a translation problem (I, 19 and III, 29). In: Folia Philologica. 140, 2017, pp. 315–341.
  • Beate Czapla : literary reading, art and love models. An intertextual interpretation of Longos' pastoral novel. In: Antiquity and the Occident. 48, 2002, pp. 18-42.
  • Georg Danek , Robert Wallisch: Notes on Longos, Daphnis and Chloe. In: Vienna Studies. 106, 1993, pp. 45-60.
  • Stephen J. Epstein .: Longus' Werewolfes. In: Classical Philology. 90, 1995, pp. 58-73.
  • Christos Fakas: Piracy and homoeroticism in Longos. In: Würzburg Yearbooks for Classical Studies. 29, 2005, pp. 185-191.
  • Richard L. Hunter : A study of "Daphnis and Chloë" . CUP, Cambridge, Mass. 1983, ISBN 0-521-25452-3 .
  • Bruce D. MacQueen: Myth, Rhetoric, and Fiction: a Reading of Longus' Daphnis and Chloe. University of Nebraska, Lincoln / London 1990, ISBN 0-8032-3137-7 .
  • Silke Trojahn: Shepherd idyll, shepherd kitsch, eroticism, art. Illustrated editions of Longos' "Daphnis and Chloë" in the Berlin collection "Artistic Prints". In: library magazine. Messages from the state libraries in Berlin and Munich. Issue 1, 2011, pp. 8-12.
  • Michael D. Reeve : Hiatus in the Greek Novelists. In: Classical Quarterly. 21, 1971, pp. 514-539.
  • Dörte Teske: The novel of Longos as a work of art. Investigations into the relationship between physis and techne in Daphnis and Chloe. Aschendorff, Münster 1991, ISBN 3-402-05410-8 .
  • Katharina Waldner: Religion in the Roman des Longos: The invention of the "Shepherd Eros" on Lesbos. In: Archives for the history of religion. 11, 2009, pp. 263-283.
  • Günter Wojaczek : Daphnis. Studies on Greek bucolic (= contributions to classical philology . Issue 34). Anton Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1969, DNB 458692573 (dissertation University of Cologne 1969, 155 pages).
  • Froma I. Zeitlin : The Poetics of Erôs: Nature, Art, and Imitation in Longusʼ Daphnis and Chloe. In: DM Halperin, JJ Winkler, FI Zeitlin (Ed.): Before Sexuality: the Construction of the Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. Princeton 1990, pp. 417-464.

Web links

Commons : Daphnis and Chloe  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files