Prose poem
A prose poem ( French poème en prose ) is a poem in prose , without the for -bound speech constitutive form elements like verses or rhymes . Nevertheless, it shows features of the poem such as strong compression and rhythmization of the language and lyrical subjectivity .
The prose poem flourished in France in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In German literature the form was popular around the turn of the century, in Dadaism and Expressionism , and then again increasingly from the middle of the 20th century. Historically, the roots of the prose poem can be seen in German Romanticism.
The German term was adopted from French in the 1960s and remains controversial in literary studies. Dieter Lamping completely rejects the term, since for him the structure in verses is constitutive for the poem. On the other hand, the objection is that everyday language that is merely broken up into lines of verse is not recognized as a poem, so that the line fall cannot make up the poem.
history
Gaspard de la nuit (1842) by Aloysius Bertrand is considered the first French prose poem . In the German Romantic era, however, there were already important models, including Jean Paul with his “Polymetern” and “Streckversen”, Novalis with his “ Hymnen an die Nacht ” (second version), Hölderlin and Heine . However, the name given and decisive for the development of the form were the Petits poèmes en prose (also known as Le Spleen de Paris ), a collection of 51 prose poems by Charles Baudelaire , published in 1869 . In the preface Baudelaire writes:
“Who is there among us who has not, in his ambitious hours, dreamed of the miracle of poetic prose, which would be musically without rhythm and without rhyme, flexible and idiosyncratic enough to absorb the lyrical movements of the soul, the undulations of dreaming to adapt to the tremors of consciousness? It is mainly life in the big cities, the jumble of their innumerable relationships, that gives rise to this tormenting ideal. "
Another important work in the history of prose poetry, which became a source of inspiration for the surrealists in the 20th century , was the Chants de Maldoror des Comte de Lautréamont , published in 1869 .
In Germany, the form was taken up by Detlev von Liliencron , who was well acquainted with Baudelaire's work and who published prose poems in Adjutantenritt and other poems in 1883 . Numerous fin de siècle poets published prose poems, such as Stéphane Mallarmé , Arthur Rimbaud , and Paul Valéry in France . Maurice Maeterlinck and Stefan George also worked there as mediators of German romanticism. In the Anglo-Saxon region Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman should be mentioned, in Germany and Austria Peter Altenberg , Hermann Hesse , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Christian Morgenstern , Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Walser . In Russia, the genus was introduced by Ivan Turgenev . Even Aleksandr Blok and Andrei Bely wrote prose poems.
More recent examples of German prose poetry come from Hans Magnus Enzensberger , Erich Fried , Günter Bruno Fuchs , Günter Grass , Peter Handke and Sarah Kirsch .
literature
- Els Andringa: prose poem. In: Harald Fricke, Klaus Grubmüller, Jan-Dirk Müller (eds.): Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin, New York 2003, Vol. 3, pp. 172-174.
- Ivo Braak : Poetics in a nutshell. 8th edition, Bornträger, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-443-03109-9 , p. 79.
- Wolfgang Bunzel: The German-language prose poem. Theory and history of a genre of literary modernism. Munich 2005.
- Wilhelm Füger : The English prose poem. Basics - prehistory - main phases. Winter, Heidelberg 1973, ISBN 3-533-02230-7 .
- Ulrich Fülleborn (Ed.): German prose poems from the 18th century to the last turn of the century. A collection of texts. Fink, Munich 1985.
- Dieter Ingeschay: The modernity of the “Poème en prose”. Bochum 1986.
- Otto Knörrich: Lexicon of lyrical forms (= Kröner's pocket edition. Volume 479). 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-47902-8 , pp. 171-173.
- Max Jacob : Advice for a Young Poet. Translated from French and with a comment by Friedhelm Kemp . Alexander, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-923854-16-1 .
- Burkhard Moennighoff: prose poem . In: Günther Schweikle, Dieter Burdorf (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexikon Literatur. Terms and definitions. Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-476-01612-6 , p. 614.
- Tzvetan Todorov : Poetry without Verse. In: Marry Anne Caws, Hermine Riffaterre: Theory and Practice. New York 1983, pp. 60-78.