Legend of the origin of the book Taoteking on the path of Laotse into emigration
The legend of the creation of the book Taoteking on Laotse's Path into Emigration is a poem by Bertolt Brecht . It is part of the Svendborg Poems Collection .
The poem is considered "one of the most famous poems" ( Jan Knopf ) Brecht and is an important work of German exile literature . It describes a legendary episode in the life of the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi (older transcription: Laotse). The legend reflects Brecht's long-standing - beginning around 1920 - and formative occupation with Taoist ideas, which he got to know particularly in the form of Richard Wilhelm's translation of Taoteking (today: Daodejing ). In addition, Brecht portrayed himself in certain traits of Lao, especially in his role as an emigrant between impotence and hope for the victory of a good cause.
The poem was set to music in 1949 by Günter Kochan , an Eisler student.
Emergence
The legend of the creation of the book Taoteking on the Laotse's Path to Emigration was written in Denmark in 1938 during Brecht's emigration. The poem was first published in Moscow in 1939 in the journal Internationale Literatur (issue 1, p. 33 f.), After the exile journal Maß und Wert had refused to publish it. The anecdote described in the poem had already been the subject of a short prose piece by Brecht (The Polite Chinese) , which had appeared in 1925 in the Berlin stock exchange courier . The author also included the poem in his calendar stories in 1949 ; here the unworthy old woman is the complementary story.
content
The poem tells how the wise Lao Tzu leaves his home in old age because he does not agree with the conditions there.
- “When he was seventy and was frail
- The teacher wanted peace after all
- For once again the kindness in the country was weak
- And the wickedness increased once more in strength.
- And he girdled the shoe. "
He packs up his few possessions and, riding an ox led by a boy, leaves the country.
On the fourth day he is stopped by a customs officer who asks him first if he has something to declare. Lao Tzu, however, is poor, which the boy can explain: “He taught.” When asked what he “got out”, the boy replies:
- “That the soft water is in motion
- Over time, defeated the mighty stone.
- You understand that the hard is subject to. "
Whoever defeats whom arouses the curiosity of the tax collector and he asks the wise man to write down his teachings. Within seven days, during which the tax collector gave Laotse and the boy board and lodging, they wrote down 81 proverbs which the boy gave to the tax collector. In this way the book Daodejing is created , as it were as an inch. At the end, next to the wise man's praise, there is a thank you from the speaker to the tax collector:
- "That's why the customs officer should also be thanked:
- He demanded it [wisdom] from him. "
The main theme of the poem is already described in the prose piece The Polite Chinese of 1925:
- “Laotse had taught the Chinese the art of living from their youth and left the country as an old man because the growing irrationality of the people made life difficult for the wise man. [...] Then a customs guard met him at the border of the country and asked him to write down his teachings for him, the customs guard, and Laotse, for fear of appearing rude, consented. He wrote down the experiences of his life in a thin book for the polite customs officer and only left the country of his birth when it was written. "
shape
The stanzas of the legend consist of five verses, of which the first four usually have five-point trochaes and the final verse four -point trochaes. The trochaes give the poem - analogous to "soft water in motion" - a flowing impression. Brecht deviates from this scheme in individual characteristic places. For example in the fifth stanza, in which the flowing trochee breaks, as it were, on the hard dactyl of the mighty stone. The poem also develops its special charm through the rhyme scheme used [ababb]that builds a rhythm and then breaks through. The second and fourth verses each have a male cadence .
The notes from his estate prove that such formal schemes, including the deviations, were consciously and carefully used by Brecht. The deviations include the and structure of many lines and transitions. That and is the simplest form of connection, it has both childish and folk features. This deliberate lowliness in word usage is interspersed with relatively stiff expressions: “gird the shoe”, “lose the last daylight”, “supper”. The art of almost brash everyday speech can hardly be overlooked. It is particularly evident in the handling of the stanzas, the short, lingering, rhymed fifth lines often have an amazing effect.
Interpretations
The concept of wisdom
While the first ten stanzas only speak of a teacher or, far more often, of an old man , this changes suddenly with Laotse's decision to stop and write down his knowledge. From this decision on (and the wise man rose from his ox) there is only talk of a wise man . For Brecht, wisdom is thus shaped by two things: knowledge and the willingness to impart knowledge. However, wisdom must also be demanded; there is no answer without a question, which is what Brecht also lets Laotse say: "Those who ask something, they deserve an answer."
The ox symbolism
During his entire time in exile, Brecht carried a Chinese scroll painting with him depicting the philosopher Laozi riding an ox into emigration. This image is also indicated in the third stanza of this poem: "And his ox ...". In the symbolic interpretation of the image that is common in Chinese art , the ox stands for the instinctive and instinctive part of human nature, which requires the patient and clever guidance of the rider's intellect and wisdom in order to develop its great strength in a meaningful way.
The friendliness
In a commentary in 1939 , Walter Benjamin took the poem as an opportunity to emphasize the special role of friendliness to which Brecht attached great importance. He explains that it was only through kindness that the wise man's wisdom was torn from him. From the fact that it is not the wise man, but the boy who hands over the proverbs, it becomes clear that friendliness does not remove the distance between people, and it applies: as if it were a small one ”. Consequently, the verses of verse 5 ("... Over time the mighty stone is conquered. You understand that the hard is defeated") is interpreted as follows: "Whoever wants to subvert the hard should not let any opportunity for friendliness pass by".
The water
Gentleness, indulgence, and devotion are recommended to rulers, although these virtues are viewed as softness and weakness. In this poem it is shown that one can assert oneself with it. This relates to rinsing mountains, washing rocks, flooding buildings, dissolving ore and iron through oxidation , etc. ' Constant dripping wears away the stone', nothing else can take the place of water, which Brecht of 78. Section of the Tao Te Kings.
effect
Hannah Arendt reports in People in Dark Times of the effect the poem had on the Germans in exile in French captivity during the Second World War : The poem spread like wildfire in the camps, was passed from mouth to mouth like good news, the God knows nowhere was needed more urgently than on those straw sacks of hopelessness.
Irmgard Horlbeck-Kappler , a well-known GDR book designer and painter, drew a graphic for the legend in 1975, which served as a cover image for the Reclam editions between 1979 and 1985.
Richard Wilhelm's version of the Tao Te King
There are fundamentally different translations of the Tao Te King . In the translation of the Tao Te King by Richard Wilhelms, which Brecht used, there are references to the "soft" and "hard" in several places, namely in sections 37, 43, 76 and 78. The last section is the only one , in which, as with Brecht, the subject of "water" is taken up:
- "Around the world
- there is nothing softer and weaker than water.
- And yet in the way it affects the hard,
- nothing equals him.
- Nothing can change it.
- That weak conquers the strong
- and soft conquers hard,
- everyone on earth knows
- but nobody can act accordingly. "
The story with the border officer can also be found in the foreword by Richard Wilhelms:
- “When the public situation worsened so much that there was no longer any prospect of order being restored, Lao Tzu is said to have withdrawn. When he came to the Han Gu border pass, according to later tradition, riding a black ox, the border officer Yin Hi asked him to leave him something in writing. Then he wrote down the Tao Te King, consisting of more than 5000 Chinese characters, and gave it to him. Then he went west, nobody knows where to go. "
literature
- Heinrich Detering : Bertolt Brecht and Laotse . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0266-2 .
- Karl Moritz: German ballads. Analyzes for German lessons . Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1972, ISBN 978-3-506-72814-2 .
- V. v. Strauss: Lao Tse - The Tao Te King . Published by Friedrich Fleischer, Leipzig 1870
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kindlers Neues Literatur-Lexikon, Munich 1989, Volume 3, p. 108.
- ^ Heinrich Detering: Bertolt Brecht and Laotse. Göttingen 2008, p. 64 ff.
- ^ Bertolt Brecht: Selected works in 6 volumes . Suhrkamp 1997, vol. 3, p. 474 f.
- ↑ Brecht: The Polite Chinese, GW 11, 100
- ↑ Heinrich Detering, Bertolt Brecht and Laotse, Göttingen 2008, p. 82 ff.
- ↑ Jan Knopf (Ed.): Brecht-Handbuch . JB Metzler Stuttgart 2001, Volume 2, p. 299
- ^ Walter Benjamin: Experiments on Brecht , Frankfurt / M. 1971, edition suhrkamp 172, p. 92 ff.
- ^ HA: People in Dark Times, Piper, Munich 1989, 2001 ISBN 3-492-23355-4 p. 277 f.
- ↑ Reclams Universalbibliothek , Verlagsort Leipzig, # 397. In earlier editions she only designed the typography of the cover, which was the same for the entire series (RUB).