Morning sonnet
The morning sonnet is a sonnet by Andreas Gryphius . It opens his sonnet collection Das Ander Buch , which was published in Frankfurt am Main in 1650 , and is there the first of the four sonnets of the “ daily time cycle ”. During Gryphius' lifetime it was reprinted with the “Ander Buch” in 1657 in the first authorized complete edition and in 1663 in a final edition with changes.
The 1650 version was reprinted in 1963 in Volume 1 of a complete edition of the German-language works for which Marian Szyrocki and Hugh Powell were responsible, the 1663 version in 2012 by Thomas Borgstedt.
text
The text comes from Szyrocki's reprint. The reprints during Gryphius' lifetime show only minimal orthographical changes (for example verse 1 "Shar" 1650, "Schaar" 1663.)
Tomorrow Sonnet.
The eternally bright crowd will now wear out its light /
Diane stands pale; the dawn laughs
The grawen sky / the gentle wind awakens /
Vnd urges the feathers to say hello / the new day.
The life of this world / is already rushing to kiss the world /
And sticks his head up / one sees the splendor of the beach
Now blink on the sea: O three times supreme power
Illuminate the one who is now bowing at your feet.
Drive away the thick night / that gives my soul /
The pain, darkness, sweetness, the heart and spirit sad
Refresh my mood and strengthen my trust.
Give / that I may dine this day / in your alone
Feeder; and when my end and that day falls
That I may give you my sun / my light forever.
interpretation
Like most of Gryphius' sonnets, the poem is written in Alexandrians . The rhyme scheme is “abba abba” for the quartets and “ccd eed” for the trios . The verses with the “a” and “d” rhymes have thirteen syllables, the rhymes are feminine , the verses with the “b”, “c” and “e” rhymes are twelve syllable, hence the Szyrocki edition indented, the rhymes masculine .
A division into two almost equal parts is clear. First, 6½ verses describe the morning nature. “An I speaks that sees and describes the dawn of day.” The stars close their light, the moon pales. The gray sky is reddening. The birds begin to sing in the morning wind. None. Its rays shimmer on the sea. All this is said essentially, without emotional involvement, refer to the impersonal "one siht" in verse 6. The nouns, though sometimes metaphorically , realities . The language is precious. Diana , the goddess of the moon, stands for the moon , the “feathers” for the birds, and the “life of this world” for the sun. In the middle of the second quartet, in the middle of the seventh verse, 7½ verses of a very personal request of the viewer to the Triune God for enlightenment in the sense of Christian truths begin . The nouns designate abstracts and objects of belief, heart, spirit, mind, trust, the “three times highest power”, the “thick night” that surrounds the soul. May God drive away the “thick night” and “dark sweetness” of sin, finally with an eschatological outlook: he may, “when my end and that day breaks”, individually the day of death, universally the end of the world , the self to lead eternal salvation.
The poem creates an old motif from the Christian interpretation of nature. The sun is a symbol for God, especially for Christ, of whom the Gospel of John says ( Jn 1.9 EU ): “The true light that illuminates every person came into the world.” The world was illuminated by the rising sun is an allegory of the enlightenment of the soul by God. The morning, which precedes full daylight, is a symbol for the earthly intermediate state of man before he participates in the eschatological fulfillment of the full light of God. The allegorical interpretation can be continued:
<...> the dawn laughs
The grawen sky / the gentle wind awakens /
Vnd urges the feathers to say hello / the new day.
“The meaning would then be: as the dawn awakens creation to a happy life, the wind lures the birds to greet the new day with singing, so the spiritual light should refresh the soul and the new earthly day trustingly in the service of God, his symbol yes, the light of the sun is to be spent. ”The word“ light ”, the most widely used metaphor in Gryphius' religious poetry, braces the poem in the first and last verse.
The Lutheran theologian Johann Arndt addresses God in the fourth of his “ Four Books of True Christianity ” in 1610 : “In nature, the heavenly light gradually wraps itself out of the earthly darkness, throws it away from itself through a natural separation, and delights your hidden friends with its wonderful shine. "Then follows the request:" Oh, read what I see in nature happened in me spiritually. Let your spirit awaken in me the gift of God, which is in all believers, let him separate everything unclean from me, renew me to a better life through the mortification of my sinful flesh, unite with you, and finally glorify it, through Jesus Christ yours Son. "" The scheme of Gryph's 'Morning' sonnet is pre-established here. "
Gryphius' allegory is an important aspect of his works. It has been noted, however, that it “can block the view of the essential and at the same time the elementary”. Something essential and elementary in the “Morning Sonnet” is the representation of a movement, regardless of any religious accentuation. The sonnet represents the transition from relaxed contemplation of nature to emotion, an intensified experience of existence. Already in the quartets , this movement is indicated by the rhythm of the Alexandrians, varied with rich nuances and repeatedly driven by enjambements . Then, in the middle of the seventh verse, the image of the rising sun turns into the invocation of the Trinity with the almost enthusiastic request for enlightenment, strengthening and consolation, culminating in “That I mean you my sun / my light may shaw forever”. The poem opens the view of nature to another dimension, a dimension that elevates the poem to the rank of a prayer without losing the reference to the real starting point. “What touches this sonnet over the centuries is its intriguing inner agitation, in the true sense of the word: from the view of the morning nature to the view of God; from morning prayer to 'prayer of life'. And one is not rhetorically and pedantically followed and developed from the other; rather, rhetoric and imagery give the poem movement its seamlessness and drive. "
literature
- Thomas Borgstedt (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Poems. Reclam-Verlag , Stuttgart 2012. ISBN 978-3-15-018561-2 .
- AG de Capua: Two Quartets: Sonnet Cycles by Andreas Gryphius . In: monthly books for German teaching . 59, No. 4, 1967, pp. 325-328.
- Heinz Drügh: Allegory. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (Ed.): Gryphius-Handbuch, pp. 604–614. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 .
- Gerhard Fricke The imagery in the poetry of Andreas Gryphius. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft , Darmstadt 1967. Unchanged reprint of the 1933 edition.
- Reinhold Grimm: Image and Imagery in the Baroque. To some recent work . In: Germanic-Romance monthly . 19, 1969, pp. 379-412.
- Dietrich Walter Jöns: The "sensory image". Studies on allegorical imagery with Andreas Gryphius. JB Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Stuttgart 1966.
- Nikolaus Lohse: “Diss life seems like a race track to me”. Poetological remarks on a sonnet cycle by Andreas Gryphius . In: Journal for German Philology . 110, No. 2, 1991, pp. 161-180.
- Marian Szyrocki (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Sonnets. Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1963.
- Marian Szyrocki: Andreas Gryphius. His life and work. Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1964.
- Ruprecht Wimmer : This world and God. Interpretation of Gryphius' "Morning Sonnet". In: Frankfurter Anthologie Volume 22, 1999, pp. 24-26.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963.
- ↑ Borgstedt 2012.
- ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 65.
- ↑ Borgstedt 2012, p. 36.
- ↑ Jöns 1966; de Capua 1967; Grimm 1969, p. 388.
- ↑ Jöns 1966, p. 100.
- ↑ Fricke 1967/1933, p. 37.
- ↑ Jöns 1966, p. 102.
- ↑ Fricke 1967/1933, p. 35.
- ↑ Quoted in Jöns 1966, p. 98.
- ↑ Quoted in Jöns 1966, p. 98.
- ↑ Drügh 2016.
- ↑ Lohse 1991, pp. 163-164.
- ↑ Wimmer.