Like a wanderer, far from it the cloudy night

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Print in the edition of 1657

Immediately as a wanderer, but the cloudy night is a sonnet by Andreas Gryphius first printed in 1643 in Leiden, Holland . It bears in the 1643 collection of 50 sonnets - Gryphius called them “ANDREAE GRYPHII SONNETTE. The first book. ”- the number XLII and the heading“ To Eugenien ”, therefore belongs to the Eugenien poems .

Origin and tradition

The “first book” contains two further sonnets “An Eugenien”, with the numbers XXI and XXII and the opening lines Beautiful is a beautiful body that everyone's lips praise , and what else do you wonder, you rose of the virgins . According to most researchers, "Eugenie" - a fictional, "poetic" name - hides Elisabeth Schönborner, the daughter of Gryphius' patron Georg Schönborner (1579–1637) on his estate near Freystadt in Lower Silesia . Gryphius raised Schönborner's sons there from 1636 to 1638, before going to study at Leiden University in 1638 . “Beautiful is a beautiful body that everyone's lips praise” and “What else are you wondering, you rose of the virgins”, first printed in Lissa , Poland in 1637 , date from this time close to Elisabeth. “As a wanderer, then the cloudy night” was written far from Elisabeth and his Silesian homeland, probably in Leiden.

The poem was reprinted three times during Gryphius' lifetime, heavily revised in 1650, little changed compared to 1650 in the first authorized complete edition in 1657 and 1663. Marian Szyrocki changed the 1643 version in 1963 in volume 1 of a complete edition of the German language works for which he and Hugh Powell were responsible printed, the last 1663 edition among others Thomas Borgstedt 2012. The following texts come from Szyrocki's and Borgstedt's editions.

text

To Eugenia. (1643)
Same as a wandering man '/ in the case of the cloudy night
With thick finnernus airs earth and lake covered
Irt heavy back and forth / andterrified with fear'
Nowhere knows where he goes; never sees what he's doing:
It is no different with me. but when the moon wakes up
Vndt his stralen kertz 'in wolcken = infected house
Soon he finds his way and raht / so my spirit is awakened:
Whom ye give me your favor and write worthy of respect.
Load the ladder star firmly, want noble Jungfraw to stand.
Never lose the beautiful light:
The light / honesty and virtue within.
I am not defending what I want to defend
But the sun shines warmth what frost and snow devastates.
No matter how low it is, how high it is estimated.

To Eugenia. (1663)
Same as a wanderer / then the cloudy night
Covered with thick dark sweet / Lufft / earth / and sea /
Sadly wandering back and forth / and frightened with vil fear /
I don't know where he's going / nor what he's gnawing and doing:
That's how it is with me: but when the moon wakes up
Vnd his Stralen Kertz in Wolckenhauß;
Soon he will find the way and advice: so my spirit will be awakened;
Now the new consolation in your letter laughs at me.
But / why are you calling me to burn this beautiful pledge?
Do you want to recognize me by the glow in my night?
The fire of my heart discovers who I am.
As soon as the most beautiful / that Papir only touch my breast:
so it will soon be lost in ashes /
Where the flame does not make it frey through my weeping.

interpretation

Like most of Gryphius' sonnets, the poem is written in Alexandrians . The rhyme scheme is “abba abba” for the quartets and “ccd eed” for the trios . The verses with the “a” and “d” rhymes are thirteen syllables, the rhymes are feminine , the verses with the “b”, “c” and “e” rhymes are twelve syllable, therefore here according to the editions of Szyrocki and Borgstedt indented, the rhymes masculine .

in the first quartet Gryphius takes up the motif of melancholic erring Wanderers, which on Francesco Petrarch Canzoniere back "Solo e pensoso":

Solo et pensono i piu deserti campi
vo mesurando a passi tardi et lenti
et ogli occhi porto per fuggire intenti
ove vestigio human la rena stampi.

Alone and thoughtful
I cross the wildest lands with slow and indolent steps,
and my eyes peer out with the intention of fleeing
where a human trace appeared in the sand

Is tuned Similarly, the lyrical I in Gryphius' first 1,650 printed famous, not to Eugenia poems belonging sonnet "Solitude" and in Eugenie-sonnet that until 1698, 34 years after the poet's death, by his son Christian from the The estate was published:

Loneliness. (1650)
In this loneliness / which is more than desolate /
Stretched out on wild herbs / to the large sea:
I look at that valley and these rocks above
On which owls and silent birds nest.

To Eugenia. (1698)
I find myself alone and live in loneliness /
Whether I am not already hidden in the vast deserts /
In which tyranny animals and wild birds nest.
I find myself immersed in bitter suffering alone.

In "Loneliness" as in "Like a wanderer, there is the gloomy night", the contemplation of the desolate nature gives space to a spiritual enlightenment, there the spiritual contemplation "All this / without a spirit / which God himself holds / must shake", here , in the second quartet, the consolation through a letter from the distant lover: "Whom ye write me ewrer favor vndt worthy eight" 1643, "Now the new consolation from your letter laughs at me" from 1650. A letter from the lover also mentions this first Eugenien sonnet known from the estate

To the same. (1698)
You / my light / it will be constant /
Whether the time changes and the sun hides /
And the desert fields mourn / and the field is covered with snow /
She nevertheless (as she writes) does not enter into any change.

Dieter Arendt, who emphasizes the role of Gryphius' life fate in his works, thinks of real letters from "Eugenie", probably Elisabeth Schönborner's. However, Thomas Borgstedt points out that it could be a fiction, a baroque topos . A letter as a sign of love is not Petrark - "the original Petrark lady never condescended to such a dedication" - but it was common for Gryphius' time, for example with Paul Fleming .

If Gryphius took over the two quartets from 1643 little changed in the 1650 edition, he has rewritten the terzets. In 1643 he called the "wol noble Jungfraw" his "leader star"; you can feel respect and affection, even if not an advertising love. According to Andreas Solbach, he makes them, who “light / inside honesty vnd virtue indulges”, the moral leader, but at the same time paradoxically asserts itself as amator and dux , lovers and leaders in secular and religious questions. In the 1650 version, Gryphius made a gallant game out of the terzettas, as Victor Manheimer wrote in his fundamental book on Gryphius' poetry: “In 1643 he still apostrophized the beloved 'Woledle Jungfrau' [...], while the amorous concetti fireworks , that in the reworking the somewhat stiff trio of the same poem has to replace, rather proves that love has evaporated. "Arendt sees a similar game with gifts and compliments in two Eugenia epigrams from 1643:

35. To Eugenia. (1643)
I give you the mirror / ô mirror of the highest order /
In which you may shaw what I have been looking for up tonow.
Can someone give you something more noble Jungfraw
than what you see yourself in and you stand and live.
But you can give who you want to give what I wiell adore
/ my lust / I still do so much.

38. To Eugenia. (1643)
Eugenie gives me a
strange tulipan,Vndt noble lilies, vndt beautiful marjoram
, narcissus, Kayserkron and all sorts of violets,
Oh, I'd like to get a flower for so many flowers.

The poems to the "woll noble Jungfraw" are harmless, artificial. Her seriousness is "hard to guess under the dandy form". According to Borgstedt, the beloved's letter becomes the subject of a twofold astute and significant figure who jokingly and gallantly reinforces the affective ties between the speaker and his beloved. “The coupling of the gallant accessory sonnet with the inwardness of the loneliness motif generates a thoroughly unusual inner-Petrarkistic game. Even in the field of gallant-erotic love poetry, which is atypical for Gryphius, he thus creates a melancholy accentuation that challenges the jocular main motif, if not overlaying it. "

literature

  • Dieter Arendt: Andreas Gryphius' Eugenien-Gedichte . In: Journal for German Philology . tape 87 , no. 2 , 1968, p. 161–179 ( [1] - Online in Licensed Libraries).
  • Ralf Georg Bogner: Life. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (ed.): Gryphius manual. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 , pp. 1–18.
  • Thomas Borgstedt: Topic of the sonnet. Generic theory and history. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-484-36638-1 .
  • Thomas Borgstedt (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Poems (= Reclams Universal Library . No. 18561). Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-018561-2 .
  • Thomas Borgstedt: Sonnets. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (ed.): Gryphius manual. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 , pp. 90-112.
  • Victor Manheimer: The poetry of Andreas Gryphius . Studies and materials. Weidmann, Berlin 1904, OCLC 457998751 ( archive.org ).
  • Andreas Solbach: Gryphius and love. The poeta as amator and dux in the Eugenia sonnets. In: Marie-Thérèse Mourey (ed.): La Poésie d'Andreas Gryphius. Actes de la journée tenue à la Maison Heine de Paris le 4 février 2012. Center d'études germaniques interculturelles de Lorraine (CEGIL), Nancy 2012, OCLC 931023067 , pp. 35-46.
  • Marian Szyrocki (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Sonnets (= Andreas Gryphius: Complete Edition of the German Language Works. Vol. 1; Reprints of German Literature Works . N. F., Vol. 9). Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1963, DNB 456834893 .
  • Marian Szyrocki (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Odes and epigrams (= Andreas Gryphius: Complete edition of the German language works. Vol. 1; Reprints of German literary works. N. F., Vol. 10). Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1964, DNB 456834907 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

References and comments

  1. ↑ Arendt 1968, p. 166.
  2. ↑ Bogner 2016, pp. 10–11.
  3. ↑ The picture comes from a 1658 title edition of the 1657 edition.
  4. ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 57 ( scan; improved reprint of the 1643 edition in the Google book search).
  5. ↑ Borgstedt 2012, p. 31.
  6. ↑ Quoted in Borgstedt 2009, p. 345.
  7. ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 68 ( scan; improved reprint of the 1643 edition in the Google book search).
  8. ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 128 ( scan; improved reprint of the 1643 edition in the Google book search).
  9. ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 129 ( scan; improved reprint of the 1643 edition in the Google book search).
  10. ↑ Dieter Arendt (1922–2015) was Professor of German Literature at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen . Internet source.
  11. ↑ Thomas Borgstedt is a Germanist and has been President of the International Andreas Gryphius Society since 2002 .
  12. ↑ Borgstedt 2016, p. 111.
  13. ↑ Arendt 1968, p. 172.
  14. ↑ Andreas Solbach has been Professor of Modern German Literature at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz since 1999 . Internet source .
  15. ↑ Solbach 2012, pp. 42 and 44.
  16. ^ Victor Manheimer: The lyric of Andreas Gryphius. 1904, p. 181 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  17. ↑ Szyrocki 1964, p. 156.
  18. ↑ Szyrocki 1964, p. 157.
  19. ↑ Arendt 1968, p. 173.
  20. ↑ Borgstedt 2016, p. 111.