Pyramus and Thisbe
The legend of Pyramus and Thisbe was well known in antiquity and is mentioned several times in the surviving works. The earliest and most detailed description can be found in Ovid's epic about metamorphoses with the title Metamorphoses . In line with the intention of this work, his portrayal culminates in a transformation: the fruits of the mulberry tree are no longer white, but blood red. A shorter version of the story has Servius in his commentary on the Eclogues of Virgil .
content
Pyramus and Thisbe are a Babylonian pair of lovers who are not allowed to see each other due to their parents' enmity. The only way to communicate with each other is through a gap in a wall that forms the center of the houses in which Pyramus lives with his parents on one side and Thisbe with her parents on the other.
After a long time, Pyramus and Thisbe agree to meet at night under a snow-white fruit-bearing mulberry tree in order to leave Babylon behind them forever. Thisbe arrives there earlier than Pyramus and flees from a lioness who drinks at a spring and who still has a bloody mouth from eating torn cattle. The girl loses her veil, which is torn by the lioness and smeared with blood. Pyramus then finds this, assumes that Thisbe has been killed by the lioness, so throws himself under the mulberry tree into his sword "and the root soaked in blood colors (e) the hanging berries with purple black." When Thisbe returns and finds the dying lover, she realizes the situation and, overwhelmed by pain and love, throws herself into his sword, still warm with his blood. Her request that the tree keep the dark color of its fruits in memory of their two deaths is answered by the gods, and her parents also grant her the wish to bury the ashes of the unfortunate couple in the same urn so that they can both be forever be united.
reception
Motifs of the story, which was already popular in ancient times, or the whole story can also be found in other works:
- William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Andreas Gryphius : Absurda Comica or Mr. Peter Sequence
- John Gower : Confessio Amantis
- Giovanni Boccaccio : Il Decamerone
- Geoffrey Chaucer : The Legend of Good Women
- Giovannino Guareschi : Don Camillo and Peppone
- Johann Adolf Hasse : Intermezzo tragico with the title Piramo e Tisbe based on a libretto by Marco Coltellini , which was performed for the first time in Vienna in 1768.
literature
- Otto Immisch : Pyramos and Thisbe 3) . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 3.2, Leipzig 1909, Col. 3338-3340 ( digitized version ).
- Franz Schmitt-von Mühlenfels: Pyramus and Thisbe. Types of reception of an Ovidian material in literature, art and music. Winter, Heidelberg 1972, ISBN 3-533-02244-7 .
- Rudolf Hüls: Pyramus and Thisbe. Staging of a "veiled" danger. Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5119-X .
- Marion Oswald: Pyramos and Thisbe. In: Maria Moog-Grünewald (Ed.): Mythenrezeption. The ancient mythology in literature, music and art from the beginnings to the present (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 5). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02032-1 , pp. 641-646.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 4,55–166
- ^ Servius to Virgil, Ecloge 6,22; to explain the expression "with blood-red mulberries".
- ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.89
- ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 4,126 f. Translation: Erich Rösch, Publius Ovidius Naso […] transferred and edited by Erich Rösch . Munich 1992.
- ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.162 to 166
- ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library.