Silvae

Silvae (Latin, 'forests') is used by Latin poets and their successors as a title for collections of poetry or as a description of a form of publication of casual literature .

This name is derived from the Greek  ὕλη , hylē , d. H. 'Wood', in the broader sense: 'fabric', 'material'. What is meant is not primarily a “forest” of verses, but “raw material”, “ impromptu ”: poems that follow the inspiration of the moment and are not worked out down to the last detail. Quintilian, for example, speaks of poets who “want to hurry through their material as quickly as possible and who, following the inspiration of the moment, write off the cuff: they call this silva ” ( Institutionis Oratoriae Liber X 3.17).

However, this meaning should not be taken too literally. In some cases, they should be viewed as a topos of modesty or an expression of a certain nonchalance.

The five books Silvae by the important Roman poet Publius Papinius Statius (1st century) have survived ; Neo-Latin poets also like to take up the title, e. B. by Vincentius Fabricius (1612-1667). In loan translation, the 'Silven' found their way into German literature during the Baroque period, for example with the poetic and musical pleasure forest by the hymn writer Georg Neumark (1652). Even Johann Gottfried Herder Critical forests (1769, terms for their individual parts: wood ) refer to these concepts.

literature

• Wolfgang Adam: Poetic and Critical Forests. Investigations into the history and forms of writing “on occasion” (= supplements to Euphorion. 22). Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1988, ISBN 3-533-04036-4 (also: Wuppertal, comprehensive university, habilitation paper, 1985/1986).
• Meike Rühl: Moment turned into literature. The Silven of Statius in the context of literary and social conditions of poetry (= studies of ancient literature and history. Vol. 81). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2006, ISBN 3-11-019112-1 (At the same time: Gießen, Universität, dissertation, 2004).