Epigone

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The expression epigones ( ancient Greek ἐπίγονος epígonos "born after ") denotes the victorious descendants of the seven against Thebes in Greek mythology , but in modern parlance the successors of great models.

Greek mythology

In the Theban cycle of legends the epigones attracted ten years after the failed attempt of their fathers against Thebes , destroyed it and killed Eteocles ' son and successor Laodamas . This mythological war is known as the Second Theban War or War of the Epigones or Epigone War. The number and names of the contending epigones are given very differently in ancient sources. Only three names appear in all sources: Aigialeus , Alkmaion and Thersandros . After the library of Apollodorus , Aigialeus, Alkmaion, Diomedes , Thersandros, Euryalus , Amphilochus , Promachos , Polydoros and Sthenelos took part in the procession of the epigones.

Hellenism

In historical studies (since Gustav Droysen ) the successors of the Diadochi are also called epigones.

Figurative meaning

In a figurative sense, both in art and in (human) science, spiritual successors of authors or composers are referred to as their epigones; mostly pejorative (derogatory) in the sense of "insignificant imitators" or "free riders".

The earliest known evidence of a reflection on inevitable epigonal relationships to historical precursors is a complaint by Chacheperreseneb , an ancient Egyptian author during the Middle Kingdom : "For what was said is repetition and only what was said is said is said." Theories of rhetoric and poetry reflected the imitation of a poetic or stylistic model that must be achieved or surpassed. Theodoros Metochites said in the 13th century AD “Everything, so to speak, has already been anticipated by others” and “Wherever one could direct one's mind, one would have nothing new to say.” One of the most famous contemporary variations is from Karl Valentin : "Everything has already been said, just not by everyone." Valentin also reminds us that there is a gap between the aspiration of the new and its realization, which even with irony cannot easily be bridged.

Examples from music are Ferdinand Ries , who was considered a Beethoven epigone , and Ignaz Brüll as a Brahms epigone. Sometimes such ratings result from the “deification” of composers like Beethoven and Brahms.

Epigonal epochs

In intellectual and cultural history, epigones are the generations that, in retrospect, follow a classic epoch of particular intellectual and cultural prosperity. The derogatory classification of an epoch as epigonal presupposes, as a contrast, the assumption of a preceding epoch to which particularly outstanding cultural achievements of lasting value are ascribed. Known juxtapositions of classical and imitative eras, for example, classical Greece - Hellenistic Greece , the Golden Latinity - the Silver Latinity , the Weimar Classics - the Biedermeier .

In the first part of his cultural philosophy, Decay and Reconstruction of Culture , Albert Schweitzer blames philosophy for the decline of culture and therefore describes it as "learned epigone philosophy":

“After the collapse in the middle of the nineteenth century, philosophy had turned from a worker in the process of becoming a general cultural sentiment into a pensioner who, far from the world, occupied himself with what he had saved himself. ... Philosophy almost became the history of philosophy. The creative spirit had left her. ... It still played a role in schools and universities, but it had nothing more to say to the world. "

- Albert Schweitzer : Culture and Ethics , p. 19 f.

Epigonism in Germany

In Germany, epigones are often viewed as insignificant imitators without their own ideas. This disdain for the mere artful reproduction of earlier designs goes back, among other things, to the genius cult that arose during the German breakthrough phase of Sturm und Drang . So can Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Faust Mephistopheles say (vs. 1977): "Woe to you, that you are a grandson!" This reflects a twofold regret expresses. The cultural creations accumulated by his predecessors are a burden for him (Goethe), because he has to appropriate them, sift them through, sort them out, sort out the worthless in order to be able to do better himself. On the other hand, as someone born late, he must fear that after the great deeds of the ancients, everything essential has already been done and that he himself can no longer produce anything excellent.

This feeling of epigony, the frightening idea of ​​not being able to add anything essentially new to the classical creations of their predecessors, especially to ancient Greece, is a characteristic feature of the literary and cultural history of the 19th century that followed the Weimar Classic . In 1836, Karl Immermann published The Epigones, a relevant epoch-diagnostic novel. Even the classical philologist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is still completely under the spell of this notion, from which he can only be released through the construction of a “new person”. It is a strange phenomenon that precisely the epoch that felt itself and its time to be epigonal and suffered painfully from being only grandchildren left behind creations of the mind to which the grandchildren of the grandchildren recognized the rank of classical.

Epigonism in the rest of Europe

Outside Germany, especially in France , the disdain for the epigone was much less pronounced. On the contrary, the skilful, perfect imitation of the classical ideal (there more of Roman antiquity) was considered a sufficiently difficult and therefore, if successful, major cultural achievement in itself. In the French classical period, the ingenious and original idea was less important than the perfectly shaped execution and design of the subject. The situation was similar in the other romanized countries of Europe.

In Great Britain , which, according to T. S. Eliot's findings, did not produce a modern classical period, the concept of epigony, which presupposes the standard of the classical, is largely meaningless.

literature

  • Karl Kerényi : The Mythology of the Greeks [two volumes], volume 1: The stories of gods and humanity (= dtv , volume 30030), 16th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-30030-2 .
  • Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek : The Aesthetics of Epigonality. Theory and practice of repetitive writing in the 19th century: Immermann - Keller - Stifter - Nietzsche. Francke, Tübingen u. a. 2001, ISBN 3-7720-2759-8 (dissertation, University of Göttingen 1999/2000, 352 pages).
  • Marcus Hahn: History and Epigones. ›19. Century ‹/› Postmoderne ‹, Stifter / Bernhard (= Rombach Sciences , Series: Cultura , Volume 35). Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2003, ISBN 3-7930-9367-0 (Dissertation University of Konstanz 2000/2001, 508 pages).

Web links

Wiktionary: Epigone  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Michael Grant , John Hazel: Lexicon of ancient myths and shapes. 18th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-32508-9 (dtv 32508).
  2. z. B. Epigonen in the vocabulary portal of the University of Leipzig
  3. ^ Friedrich Prinz: Founding myths and chronology of legends (= Zetemata, monographs on classical antiquity . Issue 72). CH Beck, Munich 1979, p. 168 ff., See especially the overview table p. 169.
  4. ^ Libraries of Apollodorus 3, 7, 2.
  5. He used the term mainly in the work Johann Gustav Droysen: History of the Epigones. , Hamburg 1843. Reprinted from 2012 on GoogleBooks
  6. Andreas Sudmann: Serial outperformance. On the televisual aesthetics and philosophy of exposed increases . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-04532-4 , pp. 17–18 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. Hartmut Wecker: The Epigone. Ignaz Brüll - a Jewish composer in the Vienna Brahms circle . Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1994, ISBN 3-89085-919-4 (also dissertation at the University of Marburg 1991).