A friend went to America
A friend went to America is one of the most famous poems by the Styrian folk poet Peter Rosegger . It was during Rosegger u. a. published in his volume of poems Ein Lied .
Emergence
The poem was written during the wave of emigration after 1880. At that time, for the third time in the 19th century, an increasing number of people moved from German-speaking areas to the United States. (→ emigration )
content
A friend went to America tells the story of a man who emigrated to America and for two years asked his friend in Styria for a gift from home: first for roses for his bride, then for water for the child's baptism. In the third stanza, the friend finally reveals a tragic stroke of fate: "Send me earth from Styria / Must bury woman and child!" A fourth stanza comments on the longing for "the blessing of the homeland", which the friend has stayed abroad.
text
A friend went to America
and wrote to me a few years ago:
Send me roses from Styria,
I have a bride to wreath!
And when a year had passed,
a letter came up:
Send me water from Styria,
I have a child to baptize!
And another year when the friend wanted,
oh, something else:
Send me earth from Styria, I have to
bury wife and child!
And so the poor man longed for the most
distant, strange paths
For the highest joy, for the deepest sorrow of
His homeland's blessings.
theme
The poem is not only about the maudlin story of the blows of fate of the friend abroad, the attachment to his homeland is also a central part of the plot - autobiographical for Peter Rosegger: throughout his life he praised the idyll of his Styrian forest home in the sense of the Heimatkunst movement in his works . “The right, genuine, firm and loyal person has to have roots somewhere, no different from a tree, a stalk of corn.” Regarding today's reception, the literary scholar Christiane Zintzen says: “You like the well-known stanza by Peter Rosegger in this place, at this time in reject in many ways: What appeals to them [...] is the image of exile and the foreign. "
shape
A friend went to America is a four-verse poem in the rhyme scheme [xaxa]. Only the 2nd and 4th verses of a stanza rhyme, the 1st and 3rd verses are rhyming orphans. The first three stanzas are closely linked and tell the real story of the friend who went to America. The fact that the stanzas belong together is also evident in the identical structure: the third verse of each of the stanzas begins with “Send me” and names the gifts that are asked for. The last stanza also stands stylistically next to the previous stanzas and finally comments less on the tragic suffering than on the bond with Styria, which the friend abroad has retained.
Dubbing
The setting of the poem by the duo Musyl & Joseppa from 1973 is a well-known example of the " Austropop " style. The singer Joseppa († March 2015) met the composer Paul Musyl “and asked him to set the poem about the 'friend who went to America' to music.” They also published the song as the B-side of “Body Shoe”, one of them Commercial single for the shoe retailer Humanic .
swell
- “A friend went to America” on the page about Peter Rosegger's birthplace in Styria
Individual evidence
- ↑ Roland Girtler: The fascination of the wilderness for former aristocrats, former game shooters and modern mountaineers - considerations of a cultural anthropologist (PDF; 503 kB) In: Series Kalkalpen National Park Volume 7 . Retrieved on September 12, 2008. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Eva Philoppoff: Peter Rosegger. Poet of the Lost Floe. A biography. Graz – Vienna – Cologne 1993 p. 10.
- ↑ Peter Rosegger: Jakob the Last , quoted from Eva Philippoff, Peter Rosegger , p. 140. For the author, the sentence for Rosegger has “truly emblematic significance”.
- ↑ Christiane Zintzen: An exile in the Lexik der Poesie - laudation for Rosa Pock . zintzen.org. Archived from the original on June 18, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 14, 2008.
- ↑ Joseppa - History . musyl.com. Archived from the original on August 12, 2008. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 12, 2008.
- ↑ A friend went to America . austriancharts.at. Retrieved September 14, 2008.
