Moonlit night (Eichendorff)

Ralph Albert Blakelock : Moonlight (1885)

Mondnacht is a poem by the poet Joseph von Eichendorff , which was written in late German Romanticism around 1835 and was first published in 1837. It belongs to the genre of natural poetry .

text

Moon night

It was as if heaven had
kissed the earth quietly,
That in the shimmer of
flowers it must now dream of him.

The air passed through the fields,
the ears of corn waved gently,
rustled faintly 'the woods,
so starry clear was the night.

And my soul spread
its wings wide,
Flew through the quiet lands,
As if it was flying home.

shape

The poem consists of three stanzas, each with four verses in cross rhyme . It is written in alternating meter with prelude, three iambic accentuations and alternating cadence , with the first and third verse ending in a sounding cadence, the second and fourth in a blunt one. It is a so-called Hildebrand's strophe or, more precisely, half a Hildebrand's strophe.

reception

Robert Schumann set this important poem of the transition from Romanticism to Late Romanticism to music in 1840 and placed it at the center of his Liederkreis op. 39. Another well-known setting was created in 1853 by Johannes Brahms . At the end of the 19th century there were already over 40 settings.

The poem was particularly well received: Thomas Mann called it “the pearl of pearls”, and Theodor W. Adorno felt “as if it had been played with the bow”. The poet Ulla Hahn said: "Inner and outer landscape merge with one another". Peter Paul Schwarz spoke of “a transformation or enchantment of reality”, and Wolfgang Frühwald of the “Orphic melody of the night”.

History of origin

After numerous detours, the manuscript for this poem is now in the Berlin State Library . It is a sheet on which Eichendorff wrote down his ideas for the poems "To my brother" and "The soldier of fortune" between 1835 and 1840. Eichendorff was living in Berlin at the time and looked back with longing at his Upper Silesian homeland. An employee of the library, Martin Hollender, examined the sheet and was able to reconstruct the literary work of the poet.

literature

• Wolfgang Frühwald: Interpretation: Eichendorff, Mondnacht. Reclam 2003, ISBN 3-15-008230-7 .
• Ulla Hahn: Gedichte fürs Gedächtnis - To learn and say by heart , selected and commented by Ulla Hahn, Stuttgart (DVA) 11th edition 2001, ISBN 3-421-05147-X .
• Wolfgang Nehring : late romantic. Eichendorff and ETA Hoffmann. Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-01219-5 .
• Oskar Seidlin: Experiments on Eichendorff. 3. Edition. Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, Göttingen 1985, ISBN 3-525-20723-9 .
• Harry Fröhlich (ed.): Complete works of Baron Joseph von Eichendorff. Historical-critical edition, W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-170-12873-6 .

Web links

Wikisource: Mondnacht  - Sources and full texts

• Mondnacht (Eichendorff) in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Audio file
• Linear analysis and interpretation of moonlit night
• Poetry in the picture: Mondnacht - picture panel and interpretation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mönnighoff, Burkhard (2010): Basic course poetry. Stuttgart: Klett, p. 47.
2. ↑ Setting Robert Schumann: Liederkreis, op. 39  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. as mp3  
3. ↑ Mondnacht by Johannes Brahms at Klassika-Info . Retrieved March 18, 2018
4. ↑ It was like heaven at Lieder.net
5. ↑ Facsimile reprint of "Mondnacht" in the series of publications of the Berlin State Library, series of publications "Berliner Faksimilie" 2015