Death and the Maiden (poem)

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Death and the Maiden is the title of a short poem by Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), which was published in 1774 in the Göttingen Musenalmanach .

background

In literary terms, the poem uses the subject of death and the girl , which has existed in the visual arts since around 1500, is therefore thought / reflection poetry in the context of a general educational consensus (of the educated class) and not a subjective expression of one's own experience or atmospheric snapshot.

The attitude towards death - typical of the 18th century - is optimistic and “a much closer relationship, mixed with horror and religious intimacy”, less taboo than usual today.

content

In the direct confrontation with death, the girl is afraid. But death introduces itself as a friend and tries to take the girl's fear away.

The girl:

Over! Oh over!
Go wild boneman!
I'm still young, go dear!
And don't touch me.

The death:

Give your hand, you beautiful and delicate figure!
I am a friend and do not come to punish:
Be of good cheer! I'm not wild.
You shall sleep softly in my arms.

layout

In a very subtle way, Claudius creates opposites ( antithetics ) and connections ( congruences ) between the two figures. The meter is iambic throughout , but in the girl's stanza only three-part , which corresponds to the short exclamations, incomplete sentences and imperatives that express fear. In the 2nd stanza the iambus is initially five-lever , which immediately takes the tempo out of the dialogue. The quadruplicity in the last three verses lets this swing more than in the 1st stanza and supports the calming effect. Death has just as many imperatives , but in the context of the long sentence structure and the signal words (friend, gentle) they seem like consolation. What the verses of both stanzas have in common is the alternation of male and female endings ( cadences ), but the order is different: the first verse of the girl ends feminine, that of death masculine. Both only use rhyming words on i and a in the same order, but the vowel length is again opposite according to the cadences (in girls long i and short a, in death the other way round). The complex detail design is an expression of the content, namely the close relationship between the two characters and the positive assessment of death, which the girl can get involved with.

interpretation

The poem, designed as a dialogue, contrasts the girl antithetically with death, i.e. the young woman with the old (bone) man. Death meets their fear and defense with appeasement, calm and gentleness. He experiences a (re) evaluation in the positive, whereas the girl formulates the general fear of death. Since the girl no longer replies, the message of the poem that there is nothing terrible about death remains and the girl could give herself to death. In the poem it demonstrably does not do this (his answer is missing), but in the setting of Franz Schubert's art song it does because of the musical structure. Here Schubert continues what is only hinted at in the poem by having the art song composed in D minor end in an optimistic D major.

Matthias Claudius is attributed to the sensitivity , which in turn develops on the basis of the Enlightenment . Both are reflected in the poem: the positive, optimistic attitude towards death refers to the Enlightenment, the intimate, familiar choice of words of death to sensitivity.

Settings

literature

  • Matthias Claudius: works in one volume . Based on the text of the first editions and original prints. Winkler, Munich undated [1968], p. 86.
  • Ulrich Karthaus (Ed.): Storm and Drang and Sensibility (= Otto F. Best (Ed.): The German literature in text and representation , Volume 6). Reclam, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-15-009621-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Musenalmanach 1775. Dieterich, Göttingen and Gotha 1775, p. 157 ( digitized in the Munich digitization center (MDZ)).
  2. ^ Matthias Claudius: Works in one volume . Based on the text of the first editions and original prints, remarks by Wolfgang Pfeiffer-Belli. Winkler, München undated [1968] (the relationship between the 18th century and death in the afterword on p. 984, see also DNB 456282130 ).