Gods, heroes and Wieland
| Data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Gods, heroes and Wieland |
| Genus: | farce |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Johann Wolfgang Goethe |
| Publishing year: | 1774 |
| Place and time of the action: | in Hades at night |
| people | |
Götter, Helden und Wieland is a satire by Johann Wolfgang Goethe , written in the style of Lukian's funeral talks in autumn 1773. The printed version was available in March 1774.
Wieland, Goethe and sensitivity
Wieland went to Weimar in 1772 and stayed there. As a prince educator at the court, as editor of the fiction magazine Der Teutsche Merkur and as a book author, he had secured himself materially. For his Merkur , which he published until 1789, he constantly devised and wrote his own articles.
Wieland had to make his contribution to the entertainment at court. Inspired by Gluck's Alceste (1767), he wrote the Singspiel Alceste in German in 1773 together with the conductor Anton Schweitzer and had it performed by the Seyler's troupe in Weimar. In the first volume of the Teutscher Merkur from January – March 1773 he brought the letters to a friend . In it he emphasized the sensitivity - the virtue of the characters in his Singspiel Alceste - against the heroism of the ideal heroes in Euripides ' ancient tragedy Alcestis . Wieland discussed the mistakes of Euripides.
The young Goethe in Frankfurt, who decidedly preferred the authors of Greek antiquity to gentle, smooth rococo , was over the top. So he wrote carelessly, storming and urging with youthful recklessness, the daring farce Gods, Heroes and Wieland - allegedly in one afternoon. To make matters worse, the work was also printed. The title contains a direct allusion - read: Gods , He lden and Wieland .
Wieland reacted in an urbane manner by announcing the print in Merkur and praising Goethe's farce as a masterpiece of satirical in the June 1774 issue of his magazine .
Goethe, whose sails were blown, received help from his friends Karl Ludwig von Knebel and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi as well as from Wieland's childhood friend Sophie von La Roche in making peace and wrote a letter of reconciliation to Wieland in December 1774. Goethe's move to Weimar brought the rapprochement that culminated in Goethe's saying of July 1776: With Wieland I have divinely pure hours. That comforts me a lot.
content
Wieland, with the nightcap, is brought into the gloomy, shadowy kingdom of Hades for the duration of the farce while he was asleep in Weimar . Down there with the gods, heroes and other dead Greeks, the court counselor and prince-court master of Weimar must answer in a dream for his drama and the five letters he wrote on it. Despite night clothes, Wieland's shadow does not cut the worst figure when he fends off the numerous attacks against himself and his work. Wieland replies succinctly to Euripides and the characters from his Singspiel Alceste
- My audience, Euripides, is not yours .
- You look at it differently than I do.
- You won't persuade me to do that.
And Wieland speaks aside
- They talk about what they want: let them talk yet, why should I care .
No praise comes from the dead lips of the Greeks. You quarrel with the shadow of your German author.
- - Euripides almost fell asleep over Wieland's insignificant drama, which was mixed together . He has to rate it as mediocre . Unforgivable - Wieland portrayed him as an unfortunate colleague . Euripides cannot get over the fact that Wieland speaks of Euripides' mistakes and imperfections which he - Wieland - avoided . Wieland, the poet on Euripides' ruins, used the term dignity of humanity, a thing that God knows where is abstracted from. Wieland also blends nature and truth according to theater conventions and gradually patched up statutes .
- - Admet , Alceste's husband, takes the same line. A little punitive reverence for the good poet Euripides would have been appropriate on the part of Wieland. Admet can hardly believe that he should be so disgusting to Wieland just because he didn't want to die.
- - Alceste rebukes Wieland's influence on the audience - called emotion : I went over how to move away from a disgruntled zither. Furthermore, Wieland did not portray her victim (she had gone to Hades instead of Admets) big enough.
- - Hercules , who doesn't get off well with Wieland either, asks his German poet: Have you seen virtue , Wieland? I've been around the world too, and haven't seen anything like that. And vice is another fine word. At the end Hercules speaks plainly to Wieland's address: If you hadn't sighed too long under the bondage of your religion and moral doctrine, you could still have become something.
Wieland awakens from the dream.
Testimonials
"My nasty stuff against Wieland makes more noise than I thought."
"I thought Wieland shouldn't act so silly."
“I had a shameful thing printed on Wielanden, under the title: Gods, Heroes and Wieland , a farce. I turlupinire him in a nasty way about his modern, dull-heartedness in the representation of giant figures of the marcky fabulous world. "
"Wieland came in the evening and we were very funny."
literature
- source
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Gods, Heroes and Wieland. A farce . In: Poetic Works, Volume 3. pp. 525–534. Phaidon Verlag Essen 1999, ISBN 3-89350-448-6 .
- Secondary literature
- Richard Friedenthal : Goethe - his life and his time. Pp. 156-158. R. Piper Verlag Munich 1963.
- Sven Aage Jørgensen, Klaus Bohnen, Per Øhrgaard : Enlightenment, Storm and Drang, early Classics 1740–1789 . S. 442. In Helmut de Boor (Ed.), Richard Newald (Ed.): History of German Literature, Volume VI . Pp. 281-326. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-406-34573-5 .
- Nicholas Boyle : Goethe. The poet in his time. Vol. 1: 1749-1790. Pp. 179-180. Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39801-4 .
- Gero von Wilpert : Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 , pp. 404-405.
- Karl Otto Conrady : Goethe - life and work. Pp. 179-180. Düsseldorf and Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-538-06638-8 .
- Robert von Ranke-Graves : Greek Mythology. Pp. 201-202. Reinbek 1999, ISBN 3-499-55404-6 .
- Ruth Petzoldt : literary criticism in the realm of the dead. The literary conversation with the dead as a literary satire using the example of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's farce "Götter, Helden und Wieland." In: Wirkendes Wort. German Language and Literature in Research and Teaching, Volume 45, Issue 3, December 1995, pp. 406–417.