Kanteletar
The Kanteletar is a collection of Finnish folk poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot in 1840 . It is considered a lyrical "sister work" to the Finnish national epic Kalevala . The Kanteletar comprises 652 songs and ballads with a total of 22,201 verses . The name means " kantele player" and refers to the traditional Finnish plucked instrument with which the folk songs were accompanied.
content
The Kanteletar is divided into three books. The first two contain 592 lyrical songs, the third 60 lyrical- epic ballads . There are also 24 “newer songs” published as part of the preface and an appendix with ten additional ballads.
In the first book "common songs" are collected, which are arranged according to topics - wedding, shepherd and children's songs. The songs in the second book are structured according to the presenter - girls, women, boys and men - and the occasion. The third book includes longer ballads. These include myths and legends as well as historical reports. Myths include, for example, the Christian ballad of the Virgin Mary (3: 6). In The Death of Bishop Heinrich (3: 7) the martyr's death of Saint Henry of Uppsala is depicted.
Language and style
The Kanteletar is part of the so-called "Kalevalischen Poetry". This means that her meter , a trochaic four-lever meter , and her stylistic devices, alliteration and parallelism , correspond to those of Kalevala . For a more detailed description, see the Language and Style section in the Kalevala article .
Text example
Kanteletar 2: 297. German adaptation after Herrman Paul (1882).
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Work history
The history of the Kanteletar is closely linked to that of its sister plant Kalevala . Both works were published by the philologist and doctor Elias Lönnrot , who recorded the orally traditional folk songs on several trips to Karelia . As they are based on the same sources, Kalevala and Kanteletar partially overlap . The lyric sections that Elias Lönnrot included in the Kalevala can also be found in the Kanteletar .
While the epic poetry, so the heroic legends that the Kalevala is based, and the ballads of Kanteletar , mainly in the Russian East Karelia were collected, probably lyrical songs largely from the Finnish part of Karelia . Lönnrot himself names the places Lieksa , Ilomantsi , Kitee , Tohmajärvi , Sortavala , Jaakkima and Kurkijoki in his preface to the Kanteletar .
Between 1829 and 1831, Elias Lönnrot published a first collection of lyrical poems entitled Kantele taikka Suomen Kansan sekä Wanhoja että Nykysempiä Runoja ja Lauluja ("Kantele or both old and newer runes and songs of the Finnish people") as the product of his collecting trips . In 1840 the Kanteletar was finally published in three issues.
Even if the Kanteletar is to a lesser extent than the Kalevala , the composition of which into an epic with a coherent plot can be entirely attributed to Elias Lönnrot, it was also edited to a not inconsiderable extent by its editor. Lönnrot cleared all songs of dialectal influences. Apart from this linguistic standardization, only a few tens of songs in the first two books have remained unprocessed and reproduce the recorded source true to the original. The majority of the songs were created by combining different versions of the same song or several thematically related songs. Some songs such as Eriskummallinen kantele (“The strange kantele”), an allegory of the essence of poetry, have no equivalent in the original source material, but are composed of disjointed individual verses and additions from Lönnrot's pen. The ballads of the third book are less arranged than the lyrical songs.
reception
The tremendous influence that folk poetry exerted on Finnish culture in the age of national romanticism manifested itself mainly in the reception of the Kalevala . The artists mostly dealt only marginally with the Kanteletar ; For example, in addition to his famous Kalevala illustrations , Akseli Gallen-Kallela created the painting The Fratricide , which is based on a Kanteletar song, in 1897 . The songs of the Kanteletar have been set to music many times, both by well-known composers such as Jean Sibelius ( Rakastava , 1893) or Aulis Sallinen ( Lauluja mereltä , 1974) and by folk music interpreters. Even the Finnish metal band Amorphis set texts from the Kanteletar to music on their album Elegy (1996) .
The Kanteletar has been translated in excerpts into at least nine languages, including German. Even before the publication of Kalevala and Kanteletar , Finnish folk poetry attracted attention abroad, even if only sporadically. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem Finnisches Lied is based on a translation of a Finnish folk song that was later published in Kanteletar (2:43).
References
- ↑ Kaukonen, p. 42
literature
- Trudelies Hofmann (Ed.): Kanteletar - Old Finnish folk poetry. Eugen Diederichs, Munich 1997 (German partial edition). ISBN 3-424-01363-3
- Väinö Kaukonen: Lönnrot yes Kanteletar. Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. Helsinki 1989. ISBN 951-717-572-8