The conversation about poems

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The conversation about poems is a literary dialogue by Hugo von Hofmannsthal , which appeared in February 1904 under the title “Über Gedichte” in Der Neuen Rundschau , Berlin.

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Two art lovers - Gabriel and Clemens - talk about poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Hebbel and Stefan George . For example, Goethe will discuss Selige Sehnsucht , Hebbel You will not see each other again and George After the reading . In the course of the conversation, the dialogue partners turn out to be connoisseurs of poetic works. Gabriel especially wants to get to the core of such poetry.

It's about feelings and half-feelings, about "all the most secret and deepest states of our inner being". A “limitless state” from the “magic circle of childhood” is “caught in the pure deep mirror of insatiable longing”. The emphasis is on exactly one state of mind . Because the "game of feelings" cannot be expressed with a poem. These states are, for example, in the Hebbel poem discussed above, anxious lust and mournful audacity . The poet sees “every thing for the first time every time” as if it were surrounded “with all the wonders of its existence”. In the poem “one thing is never used for another”. When Hebbel writes about two swans in his above-mentioned poem, swan is one of the “ciphers with which God wrote unspeakable things into the world.” Hebbel, who succeeded in writing this poem, should be called happy in this context. The poet utters words for the sake of their magical power. With that he could transform us incessantly. Our soul nourishes itself from the poem - especially when a breath of it blows us from it. Hofmannsthal makes several references to the songs of the young Goethe. The two art lovers, however, celebrate verses by the 66-year-old Goethe:

No distance makes you difficult
You come flying and banned
And finally, eager for the light,
Are you, butterfly, burned.
And as long as you don't have that
This: Die and become!
Are you just a dreary guest
On the dark earth.

Sprengel, who briefly discusses Hofmannsthal's work, conforms to the poetry outlined above about the highlighted illumination of the human ground of being. Likewise, the Goethe admirer Gabriel names one of the conditions mentioned above when he admires the two above stanzas: “Do you hear this sound as sung by an enchanted night bird into the room where someone dies? They say he did it on the night Christiane Vulpius died. "

reception

  • Lublinski calls the text from 1909 both attractive and demanding. Hofmannsthal distinguishes between two types of poets. While some articulated our “darkest feelings”, others formulated clear images of that world outside of our self. In 1938 Karl J. Naef sees “the boundaries between me and the world” differently. In looking, the I becomes the world and goes out. “The law of the universe” is “also that of our interior”.
  • Walter H. Perl said in 1935 that a poem was created, as it were, in a moment of “experiencing and creating”. In his text, Hofmannsthal tries to cast this process in prose.
  • Sprengel emphasizes the irrational in art production and appropriation. In particular, he goes into Hofmannsthal's thoughts on the role of the symbol in poetry and names the author a poet who ties in with tradition with his dialogue on poetry. The dialogue partner Gabriel is Hofmannsthal's mouthpiece.
  • According to Wunberg (Wunberg, p. 22, 10. Zvo), Hofmannsthal's comments on George's poetry were by no means negative.

literature

  • Gotthart Wunberg (Ed.): Hofmannsthal in the judgment of his critics . Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1972 (without ISBN, 612 pages)
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. 924 pages. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9

First book edition

  • Georg Brandes (Ed.): Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Conversations about literary objects: About poems - a dialogue. About characters in the novel and drama. With two heliogravures , ten full images and many vignettes. - The literature. Collection of illustrated individual representations. First volume. 155 pages. Publishing house Bard / Marquardt, Berlin 1904

Quoted text edition

  • Hugo von Hofmannsthal: The conversation about poems . P. 495–509 in: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Collected Works in Ten Individual Volumes, ed. by Bernd Schoeller in consultation with Rudolf Hirsch , S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1949 (edition from 1986), volume stories. Made up conversations and letters. Travel . 694 pages, ISBN 3-10-031547-2

Web links

Individual evidence

Source means the quoted text edition

  1. ^ Source, p. 675, 1st entry
  2. ↑ Michael Maria Rabenlechner in Wunberg (Ed.), P. 413, 19. Zvo
  3. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : West-Eastern Divan in the Gutenberg-DE project The writing in the two Goethe stanzas does not follow the links listed, but the print of the poem in the cited text edition, p. 508, 14th Zvu
  4. ↑ Friedrich Hebbel : You will not see yourself again in the Gutenberg-DE project
  5. ↑ Stefan George : After the harvest in the Gutenberg-DE project
  6. ↑ Source, p. 497, 11. Zvo
  7. ↑ Source, p. 499, 5th Zvu
  8. ↑ Source, p. 501, 17. Zvo
  9. ↑ Source, p. 503, 20. Zvo
  10. ^ Sprengel, p. 587, 14th Zvu
  11. ↑ Source, p. 508, 6th Zvu
  12. ^ Samuel Lublinski in Wunberg (Ed.), P. 213, 5. Zvo and p. 216, 21. Zvo
  13. ↑ Karl J. Naef in Wunberg (Ed.), P. 421 above and p. 427, 4th Zvu
  14. ↑ Walter H. Perl in Wunberg (Ed.), P. 416, 1. Zvo
  15. ↑ Sprengel, p. 58, 5. Zvu, p. 587 Mitte and p. 728, 15. Zvo