Sestine

The sestine is a form of poetry that consists of six six-line stanzas , followed by a three-line final stanza; the rhyming words of the first stanza are resumed in the following stanzas. In sestina there is the Italian word sei "six" / sesta "the sixth", which refers to the structuring principle of this form of poetry .

shape

The sestine is characterized by a complex repetitive structure. The rhyming words of the first stanza are retained through all six stanzas in a fixed order. From the previous stanza, the rhyming word of the last line of verse is taken up again, then the first, the penultimate, the second, the third from the last and finally the third line of verse. If the rhyming words of a stanza are numbered 1-6, then they appear in the following stanza in the following order: 6 1 5 2 4 3; the next but one stanza contains these rhyming words in the sequence 3 6 4 1 2 5 etc. This scheme is called Retrogradatio cruciata . The six stanzas are followed by a three-line coda in which all rhyming words are repeated in the original order of the first stanza (two per line): three of the six rhyming words are at the end of the three verses, the other three within the verse. In Italian poetry, the meter of the endecasil is common for the sestine ; in German-language poetry, the iambic five- key is mostly used instead .

example

Friedrich Rückert : Sestine (from the Italian poems)

1	When the snow drifts through the air,	A.	snow	1
2	And a loud kick through the hallway the frost	B.	frost	2
3	Walk on the mirror path of ice;	C.	ice	3
4th	Then it's nice, shielded from the winter storm,	D.	Storm	4th
5	And not driven away by the lovely glow	E.	Embers	5
6th	Your own hearth to sit quietly at home.	F.	home	6th
7th	Oh, may I sit at home now	F.	home	6th
8th	The pure snow does not need to envy,	A.	snow	1
9	The one with the glowing glow of the sun	E.	Embers	5
10	Even sparks know how to lure them out of the frost!	B.	frost	2
11	She should conjure up the storm in me,	D.	Storm	4th
12	And should thaw my bosom's ice.	C.	ice	3
13	First the ice has to be seen in the spring	C.	ice	3
	[...] etc. up to line 36
	Coda:
37	With flowers snow , the bare adorns Frost ,	FROM	frost	2
38	The ice becomes a crystal of light and a melodious storm ,	CD	Storm	4th
39	Where I fervently think of you home .	E, F	home	6th

Literary historical development

The origins of this form of poetry can be found in the troubadour poetry of the 12th century. The author is Arnaut Daniel , who established the Sestine in his Kanzone Lo ferm voler . As a result, other troubadours adopted this rhyme scheme. Later the Sestine was especially in the medieval resp. early humanist Italy used as a poem form. For example by Dante Alighieri ( Al poco giorno ) and Francesco Petrarca , who used the Sestine in his Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta .

This form, which was strongly influenced by Petrarch, can be traced back into the 16th century, before it was suppressed in the course of the literary development of the following centuries, which brought with it a certain distrust of complex, artificial forms of stanzas. To this day, the sestine has only been used selectively, as was the case with Giuseppe Ungaretti or Giovanni Raboni.

German representatives

Martin Opitz added a sestine to his Schäffery von der Nimfen Hercine , but instead of the scheme 1 2 3 4 5 6, 6 1 5 2 4 3… ( Retrogradatio cruciata ), the scheme 1 2 3 4 5 6, 6 1 2 3 4 5… used, which became binding for the sestines of the German Baroque ; it can be found among others with Andreas Gryphius ( What do I ask about the world? It will be on fire, ... ) and Hans Assmann Freiherr von Abschatz ("Every animal that lives on this wide earth ..."). Georg Rodolf Weckherlin , however, did not follow Opitz's example in his double sestine About my myrtle death . In German romanticism , sestines can also be found in dramatic references. Wilhelm von Schütz used three sestines in his play Lacrimas . When Sophie Bernhardi there is one each in Sestine The brothers and Frühlingszauber , two in Egidio and Isabella ; Zacharias Werner uses the form in Martin Luther . At this time, Friedrich Rückert and Joseph von Eichendorff ( Sestine , “From mountain heights, evening rays flow ...”) tried their hand at the Sestine in the lyrical context . Rudolf Borchardt wrote a Sestine of Longing . Contemporary German-language examples of the Sestine can be found in Jan Wagner ( die tassen ) or Clemens J. Setz ( Sestine from the harmful structures ).

Other poets: Luís de Camões , Ezra Pound , Rudyard Kipling , WH Auden , Joan Brossa , John Ashbery .

literature

• János Riesz: The Sestine. Its position in literary criticism and its history as a lyrical genus, Fink, Munich 1971.
• Dieter Burdorf: Introduction to poetry analysis. 2nd revised edition. Stuttgart 1997, p. 117 f.
• Bendikt Ledebur: Sestine I. In: Jürgen Engler (Hrsg.): New German Literature , Volume 51 (Readings). 2003, pp. 148-152.
• Pia-Elisabeth Leuscher: Sestine . In: Jan-Dirk Müller u. a. (Ed.): Reallexikon der Deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Revision of the Real Lexicon of German Literary Studies. Volume 3. Berlin / New York 2003, pp. 435-437.
• Fritz Schlawe: New German Metrics. Stuttgart 1972, p. 83 (= Metzler Collection 112).
• Christian Wagenknecht: German metric. A historical introduction. Munich 1981, p. 72f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Friedrich Rückert: Sestine, When the snow drifts through the air . pinselpark.org , accessed October 17, 2016.
2. ↑ Jan Wagner: Self-portrait with a swarm of bees. Selected poems 2001–2015 , Hanser Berlin 2016, p. 233.
3. ↑ Clemens J. Setz: Die Vogelstraußtrompete, Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014, p. 17.