Half of life

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The paperback poem for 1805 .

Half of Life is one of the most famous poems by Friedrich Hölderlin . It first appeared in Friedrich Wilman's 1805 paperback in 1804 .

content

Hölderlin's poem has the following wording:

Half of life

With yellow pears hanging
and full of wild roses
The land in the lake,
you lovely swans,
And drunk with kisses,
dipping your head
into holy water.

Woe to me, where do I take
the flowers when it is winter, and where do I take
the sunshine
and the shade of the earth?
The walls stand
speechless and cold,
the flags clink in the wind .

shape

The stanzas have 42 or 41 syllables, ie the poem is structured symmetrically with the fraction exactly in the middle. The symbols used: pear tree - roses - water - walls - clinking flags could indicate the shape of a parabola in their sequence , the apex of which is in the middle of the poem. The break between the two verses, is so clearly pointed out the, is, according to some authors for Hölderlin a symbol of the sublime . The interlocking between the two verses arises from W ater and subsequent W eh questions, finally ending with W inde, the exhale of life.

Release history

Hölderlin sent nine poems that he himself called “ Night Songs ”, including Half of Life , at the end of 1803 / beginning of 1804 from Nürtingen to the publisher Friedrich Wilmans . In terms of textual genetics, 11 segments are put together in the poem that arose in other contexts. The poems appeared in paperback for 1805 at the end of August 1804 .

Christoph Theodor Schwab and Ludwig Uhland , who published a first volume of Hölderlin poems in 1826, ignored the night songs, that is, half of life , because they considered them to be the product of mental illness. The poem only appeared again in the Hölderlin Complete Edition, which Schwab had obtained in 1846, but in this version “pears” was replaced by “flowers”; this version is also presented in the work edition from 1906 under the heading “From the time of madness”.

reception

Even the admirers of Holderlin in the 19th century could not classify this poem. In 2016, however, the literary scholar Rüdiger Görner stated that half of life is “probably the most intensely interpreted fourteen lines of German-language poetry”. The poem was set to music many times and translated into numerous languages.

Others

The title of the poem is also the title of the DEFA feature film " Half of Life " by Herrmann Zschoche from 1984, which depicts Hölderlin's life between 1796 and 1806.

The poem, engraved on a glass plate, hangs on a tree (a silver poplar ) in the Count's Park in Bad Driburg , near the stone Hölderlin monument.

literature

  • Theo Buck : Friedrich Hölderlin: "Half of Life" . In: Ders .: Forays through poetry. From Klopstock to Celan . Poems and interpretations . Böhlau, Cologne-Weimar-Wien 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20533-1 , pp. 76-88.
  • Gerhard Kaiser : History of German poetry from Goethe to the present. A ground plan in interpretations , volume 1. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1996, ISBN 3-458-16823-0 , pp. 281-291.
  • Winfried Menninghaus : "Half of Life". Attempt on Hölderlin's poetics . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-41717-7 .
  • Jochen Schmidt : Sobria ebrietas. Holderlin's “Half of Life” . In: Hölderlin Jahrbuch 23 (1982–1983), Tübingen 1983, pp. 182–190. ( The article is also printed in: Wulf Segebrecht (Hrsg.): Gedichte und Interpretationen. Volume 3: Klassik und Romantik . Reclam, Stuttgart 1984 (= Universal Library No. 7892), pp. 257–267, and Karl Hotz ( Ed.): Poems from seven centuries. Interpretations . CC Buchner, Bamberg 1993, ISBN 3-7661-4311-5 , pp. 74–79. )
  • Friedrich Hölderlin, "Half of Life" . With an essay by Jochen Schmidt. Verlag der Buchhandlung Zimmermann, Nürtingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-922625-32-2 . ( This publication with facsimile manuscripts brings J. Schmidt's new interpretation of "half of life" in comparison with the hymn "Wie Wenn am Ferien ...". )
  • Ludwig Strauss : Friedrich Hölderlin: "Half of Life". In: Jost Schillemeit (ed.): Interpretations , Volume 1: German poetry from Weckherlin to Benn . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1965, pp. 113-134.

swell

  1. ↑ Stuttgart edition, ed. by Friedrich Beißner , (StA), vol. 2, p. 117. The Bremen edition, unlike the StA, has the following version of the 8th line: "Weh mir !, where do I take when". Friedrich Hölderlin: Complete works, letters and documents in chronological order, ed. by DE Sattler , Munich 2004, vol. 10, p. 237.
  2. ↑ Jørn Erslev Andersen, Poetics & Fragment: Hölderlin Studies, p. 112f.
  3. ↑ FHA Vol. 8, II / Hölderlin Handbuch , ISBN 3-476-01704-4
  4. ↑ Jørn Erslev Andersen: Poetics & Fragment: Hölderlin Studies , Würzburg 1997, ISBN 3-8260-1394-8 , p. 105
  5. ^ Rüdiger Görner : Hölderlin and the consequences . JB Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-02651-4 , p. 112
  6. ↑ Lists of translations and settings can be found, with further information, under the record of the work in the International Hölderlin Biography

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