free art
Free art is the title of a poem published in 1813 that is one of Ludwig Uhland's best-known lyrical works . It is considered programmatic for German Romanticism . The first verse has become the winged word .
text
Sing to whom singing is given,
In the German poet forest!
This is joy, this is life
When it echoes from every branch.
Song art is not banned by
names
that are not very proud ;
The seed is spread
over all German land.
The urges of your full heart,
give them cheekily in the sound!
Your love rustles,
your anger thunders past us!
If you don't
sing your whole life, sing urge in your youth;
Nightingales
only sing
their song in the blossom moon.
If it cannot be bound in books
what the hours give you,
give a flying leaf to the winds!
Lively youth catches it.
Go well, secret customers,
necromancy, alchemy.
Formula does not keep us bound
Our art is called poetry.
We respect spirits holy,
but names are mist to us;
We honor the masters worthily,
but art is free to us!
Not in cold marble stones,
not in temples dull and dead,
In the fresh oak
groves the German god weaves and rustles.
Formal aspects
The eight stanzas each comprise four verses in the cross rhyme scheme . The verses have four-part trochaes in alternating cadence .
interpretation
Essentially, the poem is about poetry and singing, which is considered a special gift of the Germans. Verses one to five celebrate this talent and call for free, emotionally motivated poetry. The sixth stanza is directed against forms of pseudoscientific superstition , but at the same time against the rationalistic scientific ideals of the Enlightenment (“Formula does not keep us bound”). These teachings are contrasted with the free and unadulterated poetry of the heart. The seventh stanza testifies to the respect for the cultural work of previous masters, but emphasizes the freedom of poetry. This can be viewed as an allusion to different epochs of German poetry, in which strict rules opposed an intuitive, “free art”, such as the epoch of the Meistersinger or the German classical period . The latter seems particularly obvious, as the eighth stanza clearly alludes to the classics' turn to ancient culture. The “dead temples” of the classic are contrasted with the “fresh oak groves” of the romantic.
The poem rejects superstition as well as the rationalistic sciences and strict classicism, and pleads for a free, emotionally driven art that can develop particularly in the local landscape. The poem is thus programmatic for the romantic understanding of art.
effect
The poem was processed in his own lyric works by the late romantic Adelbert von Chamisso in 1831.
The first verse has become a catchphrase in the German-speaking world. Often times it is tried to express that someone is not very talented in a certain area.
Individual evidence
- ^ German poet forest. By Justinus Kerner, Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqué, Ludwig Uhland and others. Tübingen: Heerbrandt 1812, pp. 3–4.
- ^ Uhland's works in four volumes. First volume. , J. Hallauer bookstore Zurich, 1880
literature
- Uhland's works in four volumes. First volume. , J. Hallauer bookstore Zurich, 1880
- The German romantics. Second volume: Romantic poetry. , Weltbild Verlag Augsburg, 1994