The fire rider (Mörike)
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Der Feuerreiter is one of the most famous poems by Eduard Mörike (1804–1875). He wrote it in 1823 or 1824 as a theology student at the Tübinger Stift and published the original four-stanza version in his novel Maler Nolten in 1832 . The final version, revised and expanded to include the current third stanza, was written in 1841.
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The romantic poem links the fire of a mill with the magical - legendary figure of a "fire rider". This, a seer who always strolls restlessly in his apartment when a conflagration is imminent and shows his "red cap" at the window (verse 1), is the first on horseback at the site of the fire when the mill fire breaks out (verse 2) to banish with a spell and cross relic " outrageously " (stanza 3). But this time he disappeared after the mill burned out (verse 4). Later, in the cellar of the ruin, a skeleton with a cap is found sitting on the skeleton of a horse, which soon crumbles to ashes (verse 5).
Form and linguistic means
The stanza consists of eight trochaic quadruples with the rhyme scheme [ababcddc], where a and d are masculine and b and c are feminine rhymes. This basic form is broken up, however, by inserting the two-time call "Hinterm Berg" (stanzas 1-4) or "Ruhewohl" (stanza 5) after the seventh line and the shortening of the eighth line to three accents, in stanza 4 even to a single one. The excited ringing and finally swinging of the fire bell , but also the conciliatory and soothing finale, are effective .
The linguistic tricks also include the repeated addressing of the reader in question and appeal, the flash-like and dramatically visualizing choice of words - grammatical present - and the use of assonance and alliteration .
Interpretative approaches
Different interpretive approaches understand the fate of the main character
- psychologically as a mental solo effort ending in madness - here the reference to Friedrich Hölderlin in the Tübingen "tower room" plays a role, which Mörike's friend Rudolf Lohbauer makes in a letter -
- morally as punished hubris or
- politically as a failed revolution - here the fire rider's headgear is interpreted as a Jacobin cap .
Mörike's romantic-irrational play with mythical , medieval-religious and elementary motifs is indisputable .
text
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Version 1824/1832 |
Final version |
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Do you see |
Do you see |
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Look, there he bursts furiously, |
Looks! then he bursts furiously |
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Who so often |
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It did not |
It didn’t |
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After the time a miller found |
After the time a miller found |
Musical arrangements
Mörike's sonorous, dramatic poem inspired Hugo Wolf to set a setting for voice and piano (1888), which he set for choir and orchestra in 1892, and Hugo Distler to create a six-part choral setting (1938). Further arrangements are by Robert von Hornstein (1862), Rabih Merhi (2005) and Wilhelm Killmayer (2007).
literature
- Potthast, Barbara. "The riddle of the burning mill. To Mörike's poem 'Der Feuerreiter'". In: Storm-Blätter from Heiligenstadt 2017 (published by the literature museum "Theodor Storm"): pp. 57–67.
- Mayer, Matthias. "The Fire Rider". In: Mörike Handbuch (edited by Inge and Reiner Wild). Metzler, Stuttgart 2004: pp. 102-103.
- Bosses, Heinrich. "Mörike's 'Feuerreiter', questioned historically and practically" . In: Goethezeit - Zeit für Goethe (edited by Konrad Feilchenfeldt and others). De Gruyter, Berlin 2003: pp. 187-199.
Web links
- Eva Reiprich: Eduard Mörike: The fire rider. A short interpretation by Eva Reiprich
- Ivonn Kappel: Small research overview on Mörike's fire rider . In: This: "We see our own image in foreign mirrors". Jean Amérys Lefeu or Der Abbruch, pp. 324–325
