The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death. With a foreplay
The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death. With a prelude is the title of a cyclical volume of poems by Stefan George published in November 1899 . Initially only printed in 300 copies in the Blätter für die Kunst , it marked the departure from the aestheticism of the previous phase and the claim to a role as a seer with a following.
Once again, the three-part work is characterized by a symmetrical structure that clearly shows a will to form. The volumes of the first edition were provided with extraordinarily rich book decorations and illustrations by Melchior Lechter and were printed in types that were derived from George's handwriting.
content
The three parts Prelude , The Carpet of Life and The Songs of Dream and Death each comprise 24 poems with four four -line stanzas . About half of the poems is cross rhyme , only eleven of them are non-rhyming .
While the first, consecutively numbered part of the cycle is characterized by premisses held in a clear manner, the headlined carpet of life captures exemplary situations and figures, includes 12 dedicatory poems and appears less coherent. In contrast to the second part of the collection The Year of the Soul , the names of the dedicators are written out, for example Sabine and Reinhold Lepsius as well as Kitty and Albert Verwey , to whom George owed a lot.
George wrote the opening poem of the foreplay probably in the second half of 1895 and initially titled it The Visit . It illuminates the process of poetry itself in that the lyrical self searches for the right words for its grief until a naked angel approaches it and, as in the Jewish Malakh , introduces itself as a “messenger”. The programmatic beginning also sets out the direction that runs through the entire cycle of gradually liberating oneself from art for art's sake. The beautiful life presented and promised by the angel unites the traditional ideas with a new canon of values.
"I pale eagerly searched for the hoard:
After stricken inside, deepest cares
And things rolled dull and uncertain -
Then a naked angel stepped through the gate: against
the submerged sense of
the richest flowers he bore weight and no less than
almond blossoms were his fingers
and roses roses were around his chin.
No crown protruded on his head
And his voice almost resembled mine:
The beautiful life sends me to you
As
messengers : while he said this with a smile, the lilies and mimosa fell from him -
and when I bent down to lift
them, HE was also kneeling
happily bathed my whole face in the fresh roses. "
The sometimes memorable images of the second part gradually unroll the fine structure of a “carpet of life”, as described in the first poem. The first stanza reads:
"Here people with plant animals entwine
themselves in a stranger framed by silk franze
And blue sickles adorn white stars
And cross them in the frozen dance."
In other poems, George sketches out prehistoric situations, uses ancient language and draws on folk tales . In Die Fremde, for example, he draws the popular image of a witch who sings in the moonlight and finally sinks into the peat, an area in the primeval landscape in which only animals appear in the first two stanzas - eagles, wolves, doe - and the grass never " was sheared.
Background and reception
In the poems of the prelude, George gradually breaks away from the pure art of L'art pour l'art . In addition, the new ideal of the “holy youth” becomes clear, which is to serve George's task, a mission in which the relationship of Christ to the disciples is recognizable. The extraordinary relationship of authority between the poet called “Lord” and his followers is indicated, for example, in the verses of the 23rd poem from the Prelude: “We pull to the side of our strict lord / He who looks between his fighters / We don't cry from our star / no arm of the friend and no kiss of the bride. "
The visual art design is one of the most splendid ever designed for a cycle of poems and illuminates the development of the volume itself. In October 1899, George announced the extraordinary event to Clemens von Franckenstein and highlighted the book artist by name. Lechter had created an art monument that "has never been seen here before." The two had been busy preparing the printing since the end of 1898. Lechter considered which paper and which color print one should choose and wrote to the poet in early 1899 that one had to show one's "new child" to the world in a solemn, "unheard of" and unique form. Six months later, George sent him an advanced manuscript that Lechter was so enthusiastic about that he wanted to "suckle himself like a bee" and wrote him a euphoric letter at the end of July in which he stated that the work was "almost ascetic severity and solemnity ”to be the“ most sublime ”that George ever created. “What comes from eternity must necessarily proclaim eternity.” His enthusiasm reached so far that he, an admirer of Richard Wagner , took the manuscript to the Bayreuth Festival ten days later , attended performances by the Meistersinger and Parsifal , and some at the composer's grave Verses of the cycle recited.
Friedrich Sieburg , who saw a “rebirth of the German language” in the opening poem from the year of the soul and who euphorically praised the collection, also found the subsequent cycle to be an important work. The dandy-like members of the circle would have turned into a bundle of ambitious disciples. In the Carpet of Life, George shows himself to be the center of this special group, on whom “a ray of Hellas ” falls and who strive for a new style determined by him. As the poems no longer drift with “the flood of life's emotions and seasons” and are not tied to any occasion, George has “wrested classic proportions” from his genius. In spite of all the enchanting beauty and melancholy, especially of the second part of the collection, there is something “ inscribed ” that later increases “to the severity of the tablets of the law”. With the “Ray of Hellas” Sieburg took up a phrase from George's introductions and mottos for art . The Hellas reference is also found in the seventh poem of the prelude.
Interpretations
Theodor W. Adorno dealt with George in several essays, for example in his treatise George and Hofmannsthal , a radio lecture for Deutschlandfunk on April 23, 1964 and a conversation with Hans Mayer a few weeks later that referred to it. As much as he was repelled by the political implications, the elitist and anti-democratic stance of George and his circle, he emphasized the peculiarities of his poetry in individual works, praised the “stylization principle” and the linguistic reduction of the poems, with which they differentiate themselves from the “talkative and adorable “Would make a difference with Rilke. He mentioned the resistance of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , who had already been accepted into the George circle in his youth, and emphasized that George himself had not allowed himself to be captured at the end of his life. Even the “most artistically questionable” is to a certain extent atoned for in real terms. In the radio lecture, Adorno referred to individual poems that met his requirements and referred to the work The Perpetrator from the Carpet of Life . He speculated that Stauffenberg was present before his victim, the attempt at tyrannicide . The poem illuminates the actor before the risk, but presents the act apolitically or as such within the ruling groups. The first and second stanzas read:
I let myself down in front of the forgotten window: now
open the wings as always to me and cover the bottom
you always longed for me you blessing dawn for me today
I still want to give myself completely to the soothing peace.
Because tomorrow, when the rays are slanted, it will happen
What inescapably torments me in inhibiting hours
Then persecutors will stand behind me as shadows
And the random crowd will look for me that will stone.
As George calls up a heavenly being and refers to other passages of the Holy Scriptures , it becomes clear to Michael Titzmann that he can only raise his demands with reference to traditional schemes. The figure of the angel is a forerunner of Maximine , which goes back to Maximilian Kronberger , whom George idealized and deified in the following cycle The Seventh Ring . The turn of the "beautiful life" is also conceivable from the pen of Hugo von Hofmannsthal , who had been rejected as decadent by the George Circle .
If the angel remained a cipher inherent in poetry with the contemporaries Georg Trakl and Rainer Maria Rilke , in George Titzmann's view the inner and extra literary levels are amalgamated, which characterizes the problematic of his later work - the metaphor of rule detaches itself from poetry and makes demands within it the real world. The ideologically oriented lyric can also be found in the later cycle, Der Stern des Bund , with apodictic demands of the time-critical admonisher, and often brings it close to fascism .
For Albert von Schirnding , the prelude sheds light on the development of the poet George up to the creation of the carpet . He refers to Hesiod and Dante , in whose main works the new is introduced with comparable initiation experiences . If Hesiod is ordained as a shepherd by the muses as the poet of theogony in the introduction to the theogony, Dante, who has lost his way "in the middle of his life", lets himself be led through hell by Virgil .
According to Jürgen Egyptiens, the “envoy” not only delivers the message, but embodies it. Marshall McLuhan's formula “The medium is the message”, which can be found in his 1964 media-theoretical work Understanding Media , can therefore be applied to this scene . For him, the Angels despite its transcendent qualities (as the on Annunciation indicative, "ER" capitalized) finally an earthly sensuality and proximity to the poets, which enable the scene in the kiss to be open, which by embracing rhyme nor is formally underlined.
Secondary literature
- Jürgen Egyptien: Stefan George, poet and prophet ; Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, ISBN 978-3-8062-3653-8 , pp. 184-194
- Thomas Karlauf : Stefan George. The discovery of the charism. Karl-Blessing-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89667-151-6 , pp. 266-271
- Michael Titzmann: George, The Carpet of Life and the Songs of Dream and Death with a foreplay. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 6, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-463-43006-1 , pp. 233-234.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Titzmann: George, The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon . Volume 6, Munich 1979, p. 233
- ↑ Michael Titzmann: George, The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 6, Munich 1979, p. 233
- ^ Thomas Karlauf: Stefan George. The discovery of the charism. Karl-Blessing-Verlag, Munich 2007, p. 267
- ^ Jürgen Egyptien: Stefan George, poet and prophet ; Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, p. 184
- ↑ Michael Titzmann: George, The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 6, Munich 1979, p. 233
- ↑ Quoted from: Stefan George: The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. in: Works, edition in two volumes, Klett-Cotta, Volume I, Stuttgart 1984, p. 172
- ^ So Thomas Karlauf : Stefan George. The discovery of the charism. Karl-Blessing-Verlag, Munich 2007, p. 266
- ↑ Quoted from: Stefan George: The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. in: Works, edition in two volumes, Klett-Cotta, Volume I, Stuttgart 1984, p. 190
- ^ Jürgen Egyptien: Stefan George, poet and prophet ; Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, p. 185
- ↑ Quoted from: Stefan George: The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. in: Works, edition in two volumes, Klett-Cotta, Volume I, Stuttgart 1984, p. 186
- ↑ Quoted from Jürgen Egyptien: Stefan George, poet and prophet ; Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, p. 185
- ↑ Quoted from Jürgen Egyptien: Stefan George, poet and prophet ; Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, p. 186
- ^ Friedrich Sieburg : Stefan George. In: Zur Literatur, 1957–1963 , Ed. Fritz J. Raddatz, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, pp. 28–29
- ^ Theodor W. Adorno : George . In: Notes on literature . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 524
- ↑ Quoted from: Stefan George: The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. in: Works, edition in two volumes, Klett-Cotta, Volume I, Stuttgart 1984, p. 196
- ↑ Michael Titzmann: George, The carpet of life and the songs of dream and death with a prelude. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 6, Munich 1979, p. 233
- ^ So Albert von Schirnding : A ray of Hellas . In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.), 1000 German poems and their interpretations, Stefan George. Insel, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1994, p. 110
- ^ Jürgen Egyptien: Stefan George, poet and prophet ; Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, pp. 184–185