in the beautiful month of May

In the wonderful month of May, there is a short poem by Heinrich Heine from the Lyrisches Intermezzo cycle of his first volume of poetry, Buch der Lieder . It brings up the feeling of being in love.

text

In the beautiful month of May

In the beautiful month of May,
When all the buds burst, Love rose
in my heart
.

In the beautiful month of May,
When all the birds were singing,
I confessed to
my longings and desires.

Emergence

After Sonja Gesse-Harm the poem served constraint in the spring of Friedrich Rassman as a template. The repetitive prelude at the beginning of both stanzas is a direct quotation. The poem was written in 1821. Beate Perrey also mentions the French triolet Le premier jour du mois de Mai, translated into German as The first day in May , as a further template.

shape

The poem consists of two stanzas with four verses each. The parallelization at the beginning of the stanza is gradually continued in the poem. While the beginning of love is metaphorically described as the beginning of spring in the first stanza, the proclamation of love is compared to the song of birds. The inner sensation corresponds to the outer perception, which is expressed through a hyberbolic choice of words ("beautiful", "all buds" and "all birds"). The poem concludes with the variation seeing and desire . The poem is in the iambus. The half rhyme of the cross (verses 2 and 4) is reminiscent of a folk song.

interpretation

Sonja Gesse-Harm judges the poem: "In terms of style, form and content everything is just right [...], and the overall impression does not have to be pondered for long: the poem reflects romantic-poetic depth of feeling in perfection." She sees them Flawlessness strategically motivated in order to deconstruct the purified harmony with dissonant poems in the further course of the volume. According to Beate Perrey, not only the feelings of the lyrical self are mentioned in the final verse, but the main motive of romanticism.

reception

Robert Schumann set the poem to music in his Dichterliebe song cycle . The simple folk tune contributed to the immense popularity, which was increased by Schumann's setting. A lesser-known setting is by Robert Franz (Op. 25, no. 5). The song was satirically imitated early on. The composer Richard Wagner wrote a parody in 1840/1841 on the occasion of his failure in Paris.

In the wonderful month of May
, Richard Wagner crawled out of the egg,
wishing him, most of the people who love him,
he would have been better off.

literature

Text output

Heinrich Heine: book of songs . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1827, p. 112.

Web links

Wikisource: In the wonderful month of May - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Sonja Gesse-Harm: Between irony and sentiment. Heinrich Heine in the 19th century art song . Metzler, Stuttgart 2006, p. 331.
↑ ^a ^b Beate Perrey: Rationalization of Sensuality in Heine's Lyrical Intermezzo, The Song of Songs as a poetic model in the distorting mirror of small malicious songs , in: Enlightenment and Skepticism (= International Heine Congress 1997), ed. by Joseph A. Kruse u. a. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1997, ISBN 978-3-476-01621-8 , p. 848.
^ Friedrich Umlauft: The book of parodies and travesties from old and new times. With a literature-historical appendix . Daberkow, Vienna 1894, p. 57.
^ Theodor Fontane and Werner Hahn: No. 56, Theodor and Werner Hahn to Lepel, letter of December 13, 1848 , in: Theodor Fontane and Bernhard von Lepel. The Correspondence, Vol. 1, ed. by Gabriele Radecke. Gruyter, Berlin 2006, p. 113.

[harm_331-1] Sonja Gesse-Harm: Between irony and sentiment. Heinrich Heine in the 19th century art song . Metzler, Stuttgart 2006, p. 331.

[perrey-2] Beate Perrey: Rationalization of Sensuality in Heine's Lyrical Intermezzo, The Song of Songs as a poetic model in the distorting mirror of small malicious songs , in: Enlightenment and Skepticism (= International Heine Congress 1997), ed. by Joseph A. Kruse u. a. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1997, ISBN 978-3-476-01621-8 , p. 848.

[3] Friedrich Umlauft: The book of parodies and travesties from old and new times. With a literature-historical appendix . Daberkow, Vienna 1894, p. 57.

[4] Theodor Fontane and Werner Hahn: No. 56, Theodor and Werner Hahn to Lepel, letter of December 13, 1848 , in: Theodor Fontane and Bernhard von Lepel. The Correspondence, Vol. 1, ed. by Gabriele Radecke. Gruyter, Berlin 2006, p. 113.