Mignon (poem)
Mignon ( do you know the land where the lemons bloom? ) Is the title of a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , which was first printed in Wilhelm Meister's theatrical broadcast and later during his apprenticeship years . It is one of the most famous poems in the German language and celebrates the longing for Italy that is widespread among Germans . The catchy and beautiful verses stimulated Goethe's repetitions , allusions and parodies during his lifetime and were often set to music.
Form and content
The rhythm of the first four lines of each stanza is characterized by the even iambic five-lifter . The structure of the rhyme scheme , which begins with two pair of rhymes , appears clear. This synchronization is interrupted in the two following lines with the sudden question "Do you know it?" And the call "Dahin !, Dahin" and swings out in a final, likewise five-point verse, Mignon's wish with her "lover", To move “protector” and “father” to the longed-for land.
The poem reads:
Do you know the land where the lemons bloom,
The golden oranges glow in the dark foliage,
A gentle wind blows from the blue sky,
The myrtle stands still and high the laurel,
Do you know it?
There! There
I would like to go with you, my beloved!
Do you know the house Its roof rests on pillars,
The hall shines, the room shimmers,
And marble pictures stand and look at me:
What has been done to you, you poor child?
Do you know it?
There! There
I would like to go with you, my protector.
Do you know the mountain and its cloud bridge?
The mule looks for its way in the fog,
The dragon lives old brood in caves
, The rock falls and the flood falls over it:
Do you know it well?
There! There
Go our way; oh father, let's go!
Creation and publication
The song opens the third book of the apprenticeship years , but already appeared in Wilhelm Meister's theatrical broadcast . In Mignon's memory, it will be heard again during the years of wandering in which the protagonist makes a pilgrimage to her home on Lake Maggiore , which is presented as the realm of art and poetry.
It was written before Goethe's trip to Italy and belongs to the first working phases of the novel. Since Goethe worked on the fourth book of the Theatrical Send for about a year from November 1782 , the poem was probably composed during this time. Compared to the later text entry, there are deviations with the phrases “in the green foliage” in the second line and “... and happy the laurel” in the fourth line. Goethe also replaced three “master” in the refrain with “beloved”, “protector” and “father”, alluding to the complex relationship between Wilhelm and the girl.
In addition to Do you know the country ... Goethe wrote three more Mignon songs, each of which appeared without titles during Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship . Because the verses were very popular, he included them in the 1815 edition, but chose a different order. While he included the three songs Hot me not speak (autumn 1782), Only who knows the longing (June 20, 1785) and So let me seem (1795/96) in addition to those of the harpist in the chapter From Wilhelm Meister , he opened with Do you know the country ... under the title Mignon the ballads department , which shows transitions between the forms and genre definitions. Since So let me appear is missing in the theatrical broadcast , it probably only came into being when Goethe wrote the eighth book of the teaching years . Stylistically it is reminiscent of the poems after the Italian trip and not those of the first years in Weimar .
Background and reception
According to Wilhelm, Mignon sings the song in Italian , so that he cannot understand all the words. He first hears it outside his door and ascribes it to the harpist until he hears the tones of a zither and Mignon's voice. He lets her into his room, where she recites him the song again, repeats the verses and explained so that he write them down and into German translate can, which, however, the "originality of turns" and "childlike innocence of the expression" lost.
Mignon is considered the epitome of German poetry and is one of Goethe's most frequently set poems. If one counts more than 200 settings for Above all summits and more than 150 settings for Who you from the sky are , there are about 100 compositions for Mignon . The number of composers ranges from Ludwig van Beethoven , Franz Schubert , Carl Friedrich Zelter , Robert Schumann , Franz Liszt , Louis Spohr , Peter Tchaikovsky , Hugo Wolf to Anton Rubinstein and Johann Strauss , who spoke about the title of his waltz Wo die Zitronen bloom recognizable related to the poem.
The popular verses encouraged numerous changes, allusions and parodies, which were often time-bound and paraphrased the political desire for alternative conditions. They run from Joseph von Eichendorff's “Italy, where the bitter oranges grow” ( From the life of a good-for-nothing ) to Erich Kästner's Do you know the country where the cannons bloom? up to the present, in which the lines are still standard phrases of the longing for Italy.
Interpretations
The four Mignon songs also owe their popularity to the enigmatic and androgynous nature of the young singer Mignon, who was bought by Wilhelm. Singing longingly about love and home, hinting at death and fate, they deepen the level of meaning of the epic lecture.
First, the images of the longed-for land pass by with its fruits and colors, its light and gentle wind, then illuminate typical elements of architecture and finally show the dangers and eerie threats of the misty mountain in the third verse. The columns and marble pictures echoed in the second verse were sung by Goethe a little later in the Roman elegies ; the third stanza points to the difficulties of crossing the Alps , which Goethe was able to tell from his own experience , having looked twice at Italy from the Gotthard Pass , but then turned back again.
The second stanza surprises with a personal note that mixes with the motifs and images and suggests a mysterious connection: "And marble pictures stand and look at me: / What has been done to you, you poor child?" Goethe used this nuance several times in the course of the novel to reflect Mignon's short life and suffering, for example when Wilhelm remembers the “compassionate marble pictures in Mignon's song”, the Marchese speaks or is reported about the “columns and statues” after Mignon's death, how the child, after a long absence, used to sit "under the pillars of the portal in front of a country house", rest on the steps or look at the statues in the hall.
To Peter von Matt , the song seems more orderly than it actually is and characterized by a superficial regularity that soon turns into threatening ambivalence. With the parallels and repetitions, the threefold increase in the number of questions that remain unanswered and which are only followed by blank spaces on paper, as well as the precisely planned end, it could be in every textbook of rhetoric . The bewitchingly beautiful landscape of the first stanza is a vision of Mignon's future of herself as a grown woman who is sure of her lover. The ancient meaning of the pictures in the fourth line can be seen with a look at Greek mythology : The myrtle stands opposite the male laurel ; as the plant of Aphrodite , it was hated by the chaste Artemis and indicated the end of virginity. A dramatic reference to this can be seen in the third stanza, which, with its images, indicates dangerous rituals and initiations that were associated with legal ascent into the adult world in archaic societies. While young people had to pass dangerous tests there, immersed in water , exposed in the wilderness or symbolically devoured by a monster , here the path over the Gotthard reveals itself as a second birth: Mignon seeks the transition from her suffering into a new and perfect existence.
As the fruit of the harper's incestuous relationship with his sister Sperata, the girl is, in Bernd Hamacher's opinion, morally stigmatized and, like his father, embodies poetry , which has no functional value in the gears of modern society.
literature
- Jin-Tae Ahn: Mignons Lied in Goethe's «Wilhelm Meister». Bern: Peter Lang 1993. (Europäische Hochschulschriften. 1432.) ISBN 978-3-63146786-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters apprenticeship years . In: Goethe's Works, Volume VII, Novels and Novellas II, Hamburg Edition, Beck, Munich 1998, p. 145
- ↑ Bernd Hamacher: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Blueprints of a life. Scientific Book Society , Darmstadt 2010, p. 146
- ↑ Erich Trunz : Notes. In: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Novels and Novellas II. (= Goethe's works, Hamburg edition. Volume 7). Beck, Munich 1998, p. 734
- ^ Gero von Wilpert : Mignon songs. In: ders: Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 , p. 706
- ^ Regine Otto: The collections of poems in the authorized editions of Goethe's works 1789 - 1827. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 26
- ↑ Erich Trunz: Notes. In: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Novels and Novellas II. (= Goethe's works, Hamburg edition. Volume 7). Beck, Munich 1998, p. 797
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters apprenticeship years . In: Goethe's works, Volume VII, Novels and Novellas II, Hamburg edition, Beck, Munich 1998, p. 146
- ↑ Peter von Matt : Dangerous Perfection. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.), 1000 German poems and their interpretations, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 1994, p. 159
- ^ Terence James Reed : Poetry of the first Weimar decade. 1776 - 1786. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Goethe-Handbuch. Volume 1: Poems. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, p. 194
- ^ Gero von Wilpert: Mignon. In: ders: Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 , p. 706
- ^ So Gero von Wilpert: Mignon-Lieder. In: ders: Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 , p. 706
- ↑ Bernd Hamacher: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Blueprints of a life. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2010, p. 146
- ↑ Erich Trunz: Wilhelm Meisters apprenticeship years. Remarks. In: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Novels and Novellas II. (= Goethe's works, Hamburg edition. Volume VII). CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 734
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters apprenticeship years. In: ders: Romane und Novellen II. (= Goethe's works, Hamburg edition. Volume VII). Beck, Munich 1998, p. 519
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters apprenticeship years. In: ders: Romane und Novellen II. (= Goethe's works, Hamburg edition. Volume VII). Beck, Munich 1998, p. 579
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters apprenticeship years. In: ders: Romane und Novellen II. (= Goethe's works, Hamburg edition. Volume VII). Beck, Munich 1998, p. 597
- ↑ Peter von Matt: Dangerous Perfection. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.), 1000 German poems and their interpretations, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig 1994, p. 159
- ^ So Peter von Matt: Dangerous Perfection. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.), 1000 German poems and their interpretations, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig 1994, p. 159
- ↑ Peter von Matt: Dangerous Perfection. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.), 1000 German poems and their interpretations, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig 1994, pp. 159–160
- ^ So Bernd Hamacher: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Blueprints of a life. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2010, p. 145