The Loreley
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The Lore-Ley or Lied von der Loreley is a poem by Heinrich Heine from 1824 , which is based on the art saga Loreley invented by Clemens Brentano . It was particularly popular with the melody by Friedrich Silcher (1837).
text
I don't know what is it supposed to mean
that I'm so sad;
a fairy tale from the old days,
that doesn't get out of my mind.
The air is cool and dark,
and the Rhine flows calmly;
the top of the mountain sparkles
in the evening sunshine.
The most beautiful maiden sits
wonderfully up there;
her golden jewelry sparkles,
she combs her golden hair.
She combs it with a golden comb
and sings a song;
that has a wonderful,
powerful melody.
The skipper in the little ship is
gripped with wild pain;
he doesn't look at the rocky reefs,
he just looks up at the heights.
I think the waves will devour
boatmen and boat at the end;
and that's what
the Lore-Ley did with her singing .
Interpretations
With a view to the central theme of spurned and even punished love, some want to recognize an autobiographical component in this poem (Amalien experience); combing with the golden comb is partly interpreted as a narcissistic gesture, but above all as a recourse to the key scene of the fairy tale The Goose Girl from the children's and household tales of the Brothers Grimm (KHM 89) and a key point in Heine's Germany a winter fairy tale (Caput 14) . Others see the poem as a confrontation of Heine with romanticism or romantic poetry, which is embodied in the Lore Ley figure. He used motifs and means of representation from Romanticism and folk songs in order to ironize them (through accumulation and exaggeration, also through excessive pathos) and in this way to distance himself. The connection between vanity, seductiveness and transience indicates the revival of the vanitas motifs in Romanticism.
Settings
In the 19th century more than forty song versions of the text by Heine were made, none of which could achieve the popularity of the Silcher version. In 1841 and in a revised version in 1856, the poem by Franz Liszt was set to music under the title Die Loreley ( Searle 273) as a song for piano and voice. Liszt made additional arrangements for piano solo in 1861 (Searle 532) and voice and orchestra in 1860 (Searle 369). With its tone painting and its differentiated scenic depiction of mood, it cannot be compared with Silcher's simple folk tune. Clara Schumann set the text to music in 1843 as a song for piano and voice. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was planning an opera on the subject (Op. 98, unfinished). The Berlin composer Paul Lincke brought out an operetta under the title Fräulein Loreley in 1900 .
Also noteworthy is the setting by Josef Netzer for the unusual line-up of tenor, bass, clarinet (or horn) and piano. This composition is counted among the most important works of the Tyrolean.
Heine's Lore-Ley was received as a sentimental folk song for a long time, especially in the 19th century. By Walter A. Berendsohn and Theodor W. Adorno until today but blank - - which dates assertion that the song was so popular that it would not have dared even the Nazis in the Third Reich, it from the poetry anthologies to remove, although Heinrich As a Jew, Heine was one of the poets whose works were banned and burned. However, his authorship was suppressed and instead mostly stated "by an unknown German poet" or something similar.
Contemporary adaptations
Heine's poem is artistically processed up to the present day and adapted in contemporary work forms. Hans-Jürgen Buchner , head of the Haindling band , inserted the poem into the song Walzer from the 1985 album Spinn I. In addition, a comic version by Heines Lore-Ley by Kolja Wilcke appeared in the burgeoning Berlin comic scene in 2010 .
Research literature
- Helga Arend: The Loreley - Development of a literary figure into an international myth. In: Liesel Hermes, Andrea Hirschen, Iris Meißner (eds.): Gender and interculturality. Selected contributions from the 3rd specialist conference on women / gender research in Rhineland-Palatinate (= women and gender research in Rhineland-Palatinate. Vol. 4). Stauffenburg-Verlag, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-86057-794-8 , pp. 19-28.
- Rotraud Ehrenzeller-Favre: Loreley, origin and change of a legend. Hoops, Zurich 1948.
- Elisabeth Frenzel : Substances of world literature. A lexicon of longitudinal sections of the history of poetry (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 300). 9th, revised and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-30009-5 .
- Jürgen Kolbe (Ed.): "I don't know what it should mean". Heinrich Heine's Loreley. Pictures and poems. Hanser, Munich a. a. 1976, ISBN 3-446-12302-4 .
- Peter Lentwojt: The Loreley in its landscape. Romantic poetry allegory and cliché. A literary subject for Brentano, Eichendorff, Heine and others . Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-631-32076-0 . (= European university publications. Series 1: German language and literature. Bd. 1664). (At the same time: Stuttgart, University, dissertation, 1996).
Web links
- Heinrich Heine: The Lore-Lay in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Heine: The Loreley Analysis
- Loreley Lied - I don't know what should it mean (MP3)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Johannes Wilkes, “The Influence of Fairy Tales on the Life and Work of Heinrich Heine”, in: Märchenspiegel 1997, pp. 9–12.
- ^ Étienne François , Hagen Schulze (ed.): German places of memory. Volume 3. CH Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47224-9 , p. 490.
- ↑ Hans Christoph Worbs: Booklet of the CD by Margaret Price and Cyprien Katsaris : Franz Liszt - Lieder und 3 Petrarca - Sonette , Teldec Schallplatten GmbH, 1986, on CD by Teldec Classics International GmbH, Hamburg, 1999, page 5
- ^ Oeuvre van Clara Schumann-Wieck .
- ↑ Michael Aschauer: Josef Netzer (1808–1864) as a song composer. In: Scientific yearbook of the Tyrolean state museums. Volume 1, 2008, pp. 9-55, PDF on ZOBODAT .
- ↑ Tagesspiegel, Berlin's comics scene is becoming more and more international
- ↑ Kolja Wilcke, Deadly Beauty