The Roman fountain

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The Roman fountain is a poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer from 1882 in which he describes the Fontana dei Cavalli Marini in the Villa Borghese .

Emergence

Fontana dei Cavalli Marini

There are seven versions of this poem. Meyer was inspired to write the poem on his trip to Italy in 1858, he wrote the first version in 1860, but it was not until 1882 that the poem was published in its best-known form. For example, the fourth version is from 1866, the sixth from 1870 and the last from 1882. Meyer worked very carefully on this poem, reducing the poem from sixteen verses to eight and from two stanzas to one Verse. It was very important to him to convey as much as possible in as few words as possible, ie to "condense" the language.

content

With the image of the rising jet instead of the originally splashing “spring” Meyer switches off the acoustic associations and only turns to the eye.

Of the seven versions of the text, three provide a revealing insight into how it was created:

The fountain
(4th version, 1866) 		The beautiful fountain
(6th version, 1870) 		The Roman fountain
(7th version, 1882)


Hidden in a Roman garden is a
bronze , sheltered by the hard glow of the
midday sun,
it rises in a slender
beam
into a dark leafy night and sinks into a bowl
and gently pours it over.
The waters descend in the
middle of the second bowl,
and this is full again,
they flood into the third:
a take and a give,
and all stay rich,
and all floods live
and yet rest at the same time.

The spring splashes and pours
itself in the marble bowl Grund,
which, veiled, overflows
in a second bowl round;
And this gives, it becomes too rich,
the third surging flood,
and each takes and gives at the same time,
and everything flows and everything rests.

When the ray rises and falls, it pours
the marble bowl round,
which, veiled, overflows
in a second bowl of ground;
The second gives, it becomes too rich,
the third its flowing flood,
and each one takes and gives at the same time,
and flows and rests.

“The Roman fountain” belongs to the genre of thing poems , in which no lyrical ego speaks, but an object is described as vividly and objectively as possible.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Dieter Gelfert : What is good literature? How to tell good books from bad ones. 2nd revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 2006 [1. Ed. 2004], ISBN 3-406-60486-2 , p. 31.

literature

  • Karl Hotz: Poems from seven centuries. Interpretations. CC Buchners Verlag, Bamberg 1993. ISBN 3-7661-4311-5
  • Hans-Dieter Gelfert : Good, better, best: a masterpiece in the fourth attempt . In: Ders .: What is good literature? How to tell good books from bad ones. 2nd revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 2006 [1. Ed. 2004], ISBN 3-406-60486-2 , pp. 30-34.

Web links

Wikisource: The Roman Well  - Sources and full texts
Commons : fontana dei cavalli marini  - album with pictures, videos and audio files