The brevity (Hölderlin)
The brevity is a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin . It is one of the 22 short odes from Hölderlin's time in Frankfurt , which Friedrich Beissner called "epigrammatic odes" in the historical-critical Stuttgart edition of Hölderlin's works published by him, Adolf Beck and Ute Oelmann (* 1949) .
Origin and tradition
Hölderlin wrote the "epigrammatic odes" in 1798, towards the end of his stay in the house of the Frankfurt banker Jakob Friedrich Gontard-Borkenstein (1764–1843), whose wife Susette had become his Diotima . He sent eighteen, including Die Brief , to his friend Christian Ludwig Neuffer for his paperback for women of education , where the poem appeared in 1799. The brevity is one of the few "epigrammatic odes" whose manuscript has survived.
Hölderlin is quoted here from the Stuttgart edition . Except for a few punctuation marks, the brevity is identical to the first edition. This also applies to the historical-critical Frankfurt edition and the "reading edition" by Michael Knaupp. The print in Jochen Schmidt's “reading edition” has also been “modernized” orthographically.
text
The brevity.
"Why are you so short? do you love, as before, because
Now no longer the singing? you thought, as a youth, yes
In the days of hope
If you sang, never the end? "
Like my luck is my song. - Do you want in the evening red
Happy to bathe you? It's gone, and the earth is cold,
And the bird of the night is buzzing
Uncomfortable in front of you.
interpretation
Like most of the "epigrammatic odes", the poem follows the Asclepiadic meter . Similar to the simultaneous Socrates and Alcibiades , it consists of speech and counter-speech. Interpretations were given by Wolfgang Heise and Wolfgang Schneider .
“Why are you so short?” The title and the first stanza show that the brief, epigram-like short code for Holderlin was. He has broken away from youthful immaturity, which “never came to an end”, with a phrase that used the abbreviation of human applause to be “more verbose and empty”. Now he expresses himself authoritatively, laconically.
“Like my luck is my song. - “The statement is so fundamental, incontestable, apodictic,“ that the hyphen is an effective pause. ”However, luck and its brevity go beyond the fate of the lyrical self . Hölderlin issues a testimony to the epoch. The sunset is gone, the earth is cold. The "bird of the night" buzzes threateningly indefinitely. The everyday word “uncomfortable”, emphasized by the enjambement “buzzing / uncomfortable”, contrasts with the poetry of Hölderlin's language. The inversion in the last movement contributes to the disharmony . "The meter requires a stress on the last syllable, from which - also linguistically 'uncomfortable' - the following 'dir' results."
Settings
The shortness was set in 1906 by Arnold Schönberg for mixed choir as well as for voice and piano, in 1932 by Otto Vrieslander (1880–1950) for voice and piano, in 1970 by John Harbison for chamber music and before 1983 for piano by Robert-Alexander Bohnke .
literature
- Wolfgang Heise: Studies on Hölderlin. In: neue deutsche literatur 35, 1987, issue 12, pp. 75–88.
- Friedrich Hölderlin: Complete Works. Big Stuttgart edition . Edited by Friedrich Beissner, Adolf Beck and Ute Oelmann. Kohlhammer Verlag , Stuttgart 1946 to 1985.
- Friedrich Hölderlin: Complete Works . Historical-critical edition in 20 volumes and 3 supplements. Edited by Dietrich Sattler. Frankfurt edition. Stroemfeld / Roter Stern publishing house , Frankfurt am Main and Basel 1975–2008.
- Friedrich Hölderlin: Poems. Edited by Jochen Schmidt. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-618-60810-1 .
- Friedrich Hölderlin: All works and letters. Edited by Michael Knaupp. Carl Hanser Verlag , Munich 1992 to 1993.
- Wolfgang Schneider: A jolt into the modern age? In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): Frankfurter Anthologie Volume 28, 2005. ISBN 3-458-17281-5 , pp. 37-40.