The Asra
The poem Der Asra appeared in Heinrich Heine 's third volume of poems Romanzero in 1851 . The 15th poem of the Histories cycle deals with the unrealizable love of a slave for the sultan's daughter.
The text
The Asra
Daily the beautiful
sultan's daughter paced up and down.
At evening time at the fountain,
where the white water ripples.
Every day the young slave stood by the
fountain at evening time,
Where the white water ripples;
Every day he grew pale and paler.
One evening the princess
approached him with quick words:
I want to know your name,
your home, your clan!
And the slave said:
My name is
Mohamet, I am from Yemmen,
and my tribe are those Asra,
who die when they love.
shape
The poem consists of four stanzas with four verses each . There is no ending rhyme. The Trochaic four- levers are fulfilled in all verses. The cadence is female. The same beginning of verse (verses 1 and 5) indicates that it is a ritualized encounter. In the first verse there is an enjambement that enhances the adjective beautifully and emphasizes the meaning of the following word, here the social rank. In the second stanza the last two verses of the first stanza are repeated, which reinforces the simultaneous presence of the two. The next line jump leads to a brief tension, which soon discharges into a confrontation. Finally, the final enjambement reinforces the lover's revelation by delaying the disclosure of his name. At the same time, the taboo is broken.
Emergence
The ballad is based on the story of Majnun Lailā . Heine learned the material through Anton Theodor Hartmann's translation Medschnun and Leila. Know a Persian romance novel . The poet found further inspiration in a manuscript that Stendhal quoted in his De l'amour . On September 2, 1846, the poem was published in the Morgenblatt for educated readers .
reception
In 1863 Carl Loewe set the poem to music. The 6 songs by the Russian composer Anton Rubinstein were published as early as 1856 . As Kraj tanana šadrvana Heine Asra went to a translation of the Serbian poet Aleksa Šantić in the Bosniak Liedergut one.
In 1879 a "poetry book by Ludwig Ganghofer " was published under the title: Vom Stamme Asra . A direct reference to the poem is not discernible.
literature
Text output
- Heinrich Heine: Romanzero . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1851, p. 58.
Secondary literature
- Johann Christoph Bürgel: The Power of Women in Arabic-Islamic Poetry . In: Maria Haarmann (Ed.): Islam . CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-406-47640-2 .
- Hella Gebhard: Interpretation of the "Histories" from Heine's "Romanzero" . Erlangen, 1956.
- Wolfram Groddeck: “The Asra”: Intertextuality and poetology in a poem from Heinrich Heine's “Romanzero”. , In: Heine-Jahrbuch Vol. 31. Metzler, 1992, pp. 79-91.
- Joseph Anton Kruse : The Asra . In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): Frankfurter Anthologie Vol. 8. Insel Verlag, 1984, pp. 87-90.
- Ottmar Pertschie: “Der Asra” - a Bosnian folk song and / or a translation from Heine? : on an unresolved issue . In: Joseph A. Kruse (Ed.): Heine-Jahrbuch Vol. 40. Metzler, Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 129–135.
Reading aid
- Rüdiger Bernhard: Heine, The lyric creation . King's Explanations Special. Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-8044-3054-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Paul Peters: A Walk on the Wild Side: Heine's Eroticism . In: Roger F. Cook (Ed.): A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine . Camden House, New York 2002, p. 78.
- ↑ See Erika Tuner: La noblesse de l'adieu The son of Rabbi Israel - the slave Mohamet - the poet Heine . In: Dietmar Goltschnigg (ed.): Harry, Heinrich, Henri, Heine. German, Jew, European. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-503-09840-8 , p. 36.