Harz trip in winter

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
portrait by Georg Oswald May, 1779, copy

Journey in the Harz Winter is the title of the last epoch of the Sturm und Drang belonging anthem Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , which was created in December 1777 to 1,789 in the eighth volume of his writings was published for the first time.

The poem collects the impressions of the first trip to the Harz Mountains , which Goethe undertook from November 29 to December 14, 1777. It stands at the end of a series of large free rhythmic hymns by the young poet beginning with Wandrer's Sturmlied and already shows a certain distance from the creative genius and reference to the first person of the previous works. It is pervaded by a religious sound and, in addition to references to Roman mythology, reveals a biblical background, which, however, is pantheistic.

Form and content

The work, consisting of 88 two to four-part verses , is free-rhythmic, without rhymes and divided into eleven stanzas of different lengths, which corresponds to the free form of the hymn or ode in the 18th century.

From the many impressions of his journey, Goethe selected only a few and placed them in an existential context. These include the circling bird of prey , the play of colors in the light in the morning, the thicket , the paths in the dark “on desolate fields”, the snow-covered peaks and the storm .

The hymn begins with a stanza in which the lyrical self, wishingly, compares its song with a hovering vulture looking for prey from above:

Like the vulture, who, resting
on heavy morning clouds
with a gentle wing,
looks for prey,
floating my song.

Already in the second stanza the floating song separates the fulfilled life of the happy from the misery of the unhappy, who in vain revolted against his fate .

In the further course of the path, in the fifth stanza, an isolated person is noticeable, away in the bushes, who is devoured by desolation. Now the poet's gaze passes from the outside into the inner perspective, illuminates the plight of the selfish and asks who heals the pain of "the balm turned into poison" and


Who drank human hatred from the abundance of love.

In the following verse, the song calls on the “father of love”, who may refresh the heart of the sufferer and open the “clouded view” so that the “thirsty person / In the desert” the “thousand springs” may be revealed. This request is extended in stanza eight to include the “brothers of the hunt”, who in turn are to be blessed . In the tenth stanza the song then pleads for a lonely person - the poet himself - who is to be wrapped in "gold clouds" and surrounded by "winter green". After an illuminated and sheltered ascent through “the fords of the night”, the poet reaches the “dreaded summit” and looks in gratitude at the overwhelming nature .

Creation and publication

Memorial stone for Goethe's presence on the Brocken

Since the original of the work has not survived , the transcript of Philipp Seidel , attached to a letter to Johann Heinrich Merck on August 5, 1778 , represents the oldest text tradition. Goethe did not include the work in his handwritten collection, which he wrote in 1777 for Charlotte von Stone put together. He edited his early poem for the print, which was only published in volume eight of his writings in 1789 ; so he changed the original turn of the final stanza "unexplored the wreaths" to "with unexplored bosom".

Goethe wrote the poem during his first trip to the Harz Mountains, on which he passed himself off as "Johann Wilhelm Weber from Darmstadt" in foreign books . On November 16, he had already entrusted his diary with the “Secret Journey Projects”, an undertaking that he described as a “pilgrimage” in a letter to Ms. von Stein on December 7th. On December 1st, many days before the ascent, he already recorded the first words of the hymn: “Equal to Geyer”, the work began without knowing the further course and the climax to which it would later move. The highlight was the ascent of the Brocken itself, which at that time was still unsafe due to the weather conditions and was considered dangerous and which he finally managed on December 10th.

Many years later, in his autobiographical work Campaign in France , he declared that he had seen a vulture on the Ettersberg "in the gloomy snow clouds rolling in from the north" and that he had already started the poem on that day.

background

Roman augurs observing birds

While Friedrich Schiller, with his later dramas Die Räuber und Kabale und Liebe, was still to write works that can be assigned to Sturm und Drang , Goethe was already striving for new shores after his trip to the Harz Mountains in winter . Later, when he was repulsed by the wild and disordered and he sought measure and order, he distanced himself from many works and looked back extremely critically on the epoch in which he became famous as Werther's poet . With their exaggerated concept of genius declaring themselves limitless, the rules were simply overturned at the time; The fact that worried people opposed this hustle and bustle can only be welcomed.

In Goethe's time it was also possible to call birds of prey such as falcons or buzzards “vultures”. Goethe was well aware that the vulture was also a bird of prophecy among the Romans , with which the augurs investigated the will of the gods . In this context, the lines of the second stanza have their special meaning: "For a god / each has his path / outlined ..." While the happy seems to reach his goal, the unfortunate struggles in vain against the "barriers of the iron thread".

Goethe referred to Friedrich Victor Leberecht Plessing, who was ill with mental health and who had returned to his father's parsonage after studying theology and law , and who in 1776 was desperate for Goethe with the unhappy, bitterness-consuming person "who became balm to poison" Weimar had turned. Goethe visited him on December 3rd in Wernigerode on his trip to the Harz Mountains , but could not help him.

In addition to Plessing, there were other people seeking help whom Goethe stood by. In his writing Campaign in France , for example, he described that he had "burdened himself" with other young men whom he wanted to accompany on their way. He explained Plessing's melancholy in connection with his Werther novel, which fell into a troubled epoch. Werther did not "cause illness [...], but only uncovered the evil that was hidden in young minds." Plessing's long letter was "almost the most wonderful thing" that "came before his eyes" in that self-tormenting way. "Many people seeking help had each other not moved, however, to “approach him on his way to a purer higher education”, whereby they would have hindered him and not developed himself.

Details and interpretation

View from the Goetheweg to the Brocken

The hymn is less descriptive than reflective, in that the reference to the landscape mentioned in the title can only be seen in places and rather forms the framework for an existential experience and crisis management. The symbolic meaning of the ascent and the ascent of the summit is shown in the course of the poem in an increasingly pontifical language with clear references to the Old and New Testament . Against the background of his diary entries and letters, the religious references of the hymn appear in a clear light. After the eagerly desired ascent of the Brocken, he wrote: “A happy, glorious moment, the whole world in clouds and fog and above everything is cheerful” and added the sentence: “What is the man that you are thinking”, which is found in the eighth psalm and which he had already written down on the anniversary of his arrival in Weimar.

In a letter to Charlotte he mentioned his symbolic existence. "God treats me as he did with his old holy ones [...] and the moment to moment devotion that I have and the fullest fulfillment of my hopes."

Like the prophesying vulture, the song is supposed to herald the hoped-for prophecy , with which the transition to the second stanza (“For a God has ...”) is made clear, in which the life paths of people appear to be mapped out. In this way the solemn words of the last two stanzas acquire their own meaning. Entirely in the momentum of the Sturm und Drang to divine nature, there is an encounter with the divine itself, and the ascent and the successful ascent of the summit acquire their symbolic meaning. For Karl Otto Conrady, however, the fact that in the closing verses the summit remains in the “opposite one” shows a distance from the exuberant jubilation (“Extensive embrace! / Upward to your bosom / Alliebender Vater!”) Of the older hymn Ganymede .

In 1973 Heinrich Henel reported some concerns about Goethe's self-comments, which for a long time determined the interpretation of the poem. He did not reject the biographical approach, but assessed it differently, focusing primarily on the travel correspondence with Charlotte von Stein. Against this background, the poem allows the voice of the wanderer to be heard - a frequently recurring motif in Goethe's poetry - who, driven by inner distress, wants to consult an oracle . The eagerly desired sign is then shown to the hiker in the divine escort on his way to the summit.

Taking up this interpretation, Albrecht Schöne linked the oracle questioning in the vulture invocation of the first stanza with Goethe's government activity, which at that time he still had very mixed feelings about. In Jochen Schmidt's view , the bird of prey is, unlike in Albrecht Schöne's interpretation, associated with the eagle that can be found in Pindar's work. For him, the first stanza goes back in detail to the third Nemean ode and tells of Goethe's self-assurance and the complicated relationship between poetry and life practice.

If the image of the “thirsty man / In the desert” of the seventh stanza is connected to the book of Isaiah , for Bernd Leistner the words “mysteriously-evident” and “riches and glory” of the last stanza determine the pontifical level of the lyrical language, but dissolve from the theological- exegetical reference to the Epistles to the Romans and Colossians as well as from the motif of seduction to evil in the temptation of Jesus according to Mt 4,8  LUT .

Alternative interpretations that differ to varying degrees from the aforementioned biographical readings of the poem and the various fictional instances of the poem - the poet's lyrical self and his floating song - differ from the empirical author Goethe, include Klaus Weimar (1984); Michael Mandelartz (2006) and Sebastian Kaufmann (2010/11).

Call in the fog from Ernst Barlach

In 1924 Ernst Barlach created a series of lithographs to illustrate Goethe's hymn.

Settings

Johann Friedrich Reichardt set the hymn to music in 1792. His work is entitled Rhapsody (From the Harz Travel) . In 1869 the Goethe poem was also set to music by Johannes Brahms . His - much better known - setting was set for alto voice, male choir and orchestra and is commonly known as alto rhapsody . It bears the opus number 53.Brahms used essentially the same text passages as Reichardt, but the older colleague only set 16 lines to music, Brahms however 22.

literature

  • Karl Otto Conrady : Harz trip in winter. In: Goethe, life and work. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-491-69136-2 , pp. 348-353.
  • Bernd Leistner : Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01443-6 , pp. 159-163.
  • Gisela Lindemann : About dealing with the evil shadow while writing. To Goethe's trip to the Harz Mountains in winter. One try. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Munich 1982, pp. 43–55.
  • Michael Mandelartz: Harz trip in winter. Goethe's answer to Petrarch and the natural history of culture. In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 123 (2006), pp. 86–99.
  • Sebastian Kaufmann: The poet on top of the world. Goethe's Harzreise in winter as a poetological poem. In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 127 (2010), pp. 25–38 [more detailed version in: Sebastian Kaufmann: "Schöpft des Dichters pure hand ..." Studies on Goethe's poetological poetry, Heidelberg 2011, pp. 105–168].
  • Jochen Schmidt : Goethe's determination of poetic existence in the transition to classical music: Harzreise in winter. In: DVjs . 57 1983, pp. 613-635.
  • Klaus Weimar: Goethe's Harz journey in winter . For the interpretation of linguistic images. In: KW and DE Wellbery: Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Harz trip in winter. An interpretive controversy. Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich 1984, pp. 15-44 and pp. 87-92.

Web links

Wikisource: Harzreise im Winter  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. Erich Trunz . In: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's works, notes, Hamburg edition, Volume I, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 491.
  2. ^ So Bernd Leistner : Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 160.
  3. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poems and epics I. Goethe's works, Hamburg edition, Volume IX, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 50.
  4. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 160.
  5. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poems and epics I. Goethe's works, Hamburg edition, Volume IX, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 51.
  6. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poems and epics I. Goethe's works, Hamburg edition, Volume IX, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 50.
  7. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 160.
  8. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, pp. 159-160.
  9. Quoted from: Karl Otto Conrady: Goethe, Leben und Werk, Harzreise im Winter Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 348.
  10. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 162.
  11. ^ Karl Otto Conrady: Goethe. Life and work. End of a period of life. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 273.
  12. ^ Karl Otto Conrady: End of a phase of life. In: Goethe. Life and work. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 276.
  13. ^ Karl Otto Conrady: Harzreise in winter. In: Goethe, Leben und Werk, Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 350.
  14. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poems and epics I. Goethe's works, Hamburg edition, Volume IX, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 50.
  15. ^ Karl Otto Conrady: Goethe, life and work, Wertherzeit in Wetzlar. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 351.
  16. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Campaign in France. In: Goethe's works, Hamburg edition, Volume X, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 321.
  17. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Campaign in France. In: Goethes Werke, Hamburg edition, Volume X, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 324.
  18. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 160.
  19. Quoted from: Karl Otto Conrady: Harzreise im Winter. In: Goethe, life and work. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 349.
  20. Quoted from: Bernd Leistner: Harzreise im Winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 161.
  21. ^ So Karl Otto Conrady: Harzreise im Winter. In: Goethe, life and work. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 350.
  22. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poems and epics I. Goethe's works, Hamburg edition, Volume IX, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 47.
  23. ^ Karl Otto Conrady: Harzreise in winter. In: Goethe, life and work. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 350.
  24. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, pp. 161-162.
  25. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 162.
  26. Bernd Leistner: Harz trip in winter. In: Bernd Witte et al. (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 161.
  27. Ernst Barlach in focus . Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag GmbH. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
  28. ^ C Reynolds, DC Johns: Brahms rhapsodizing: The Alto Rhapsody and its expressive double . In: Journal of Musicology . 29, No. 2, 2012. doi : 10.1525 / jm.2012.29.2.191 . Accessed June 27, 2020.