Sparrowhawk fight
Sparrowhawk fight describes a knight fight in which the winner received a living sparrowhawk as a prize , with which he honored his girlfriend as the most beautiful woman. The sparrowhawk fight found its most important literary expression in three stories that are set in the legendary circle about King Arthur .
- " Erec et Enide " by Chrétien de Troyes , an old French verse tale that was written around 1170.
- " Erec " by Hartmann von Aue , a Middle High German verse tale that was written between 1180 and 1190. "Erec" is a German adaptation of Chrétien's novel.
- " Gereint fab Erbin " (Gereint, heir's son), a Welsh prose story in Middle Cymrian , based on Chrétien's story and written down for the first time at the end of the 13th century at the latest.
General
The sections overview and plot are based on the stories by Chrétien and Hartmann, which largely coincide in the Sparrowhawk fight episode. The names from Hartmann's "Erec" are used as personal names: Erec, Enite and Iders (Chrétien: Erec, Enide, Yder, in "Gereint": Gereint, Enit, Edern). The Gereint story differs from the other two stories mainly in that the winner of the deer hunt does not kiss the most beautiful lady, but that she receives the head of the stag that has been shot.
The stories begin with a prelude in which Erec's future wife Enite is awarded the prize of the most beautiful woman in a double beauty freestyle, a deer hunt and a sparrowhawk fight. Chrétien and Hartmann's prelude is contained in verses 1–1796, in “Gereint” on pages 177–203.
Overview
While King Arthur is hunting for the white stag, the Queen rides out in the company of the knight Erec. On the way, the two meet the knight Iders. Erec insults his dwarf by being held hostage. Since Erec is without armor, he postpones his revenge and rides after Iders. You get to a place where the sparrowhawk fight is to take place the next day. Iders is received as a guest by the lord of the castle, while Erec is staying with an impoverished aristocratic family in the village. He learns that Iders wants to get the sparrowhawk for the third time as the prize of the most beautiful woman for his girlfriend the next day. Erec decides to take revenge for the hostage shame on Iders and to fight with Iders over the sparrowhawk. Since only knights accompanied by their friend are allowed to take part in the sparrowhawk fight, he asks his host for the hand of his daughter Enite and borrows the necessary weapons from him. The next day he defeats Iders in battle and gives the sparrowhawk as a beauty prize to his friend Enite. They ride together to King Arthur's court. Since King Arthur killed the white stag, according to old law he is allowed to mark the most beautiful of women with a kiss. He selects Erec's girlfriend, Enite, a choice which is acclaimed by the entire court.
action
Deer hunting
On Easter day, King Arthur holds court in his castle, "never before had one seen such a splendid gathering" of daring knights and noble ladies. Before the society dissolves, the king announces that he wants to revive his father's legal practice: the hunt for the white stag. Whoever kills the stag must, according to law, kiss the most beautiful of the court virgins. One of his knights advises the king against the hunt, because since there are five hundred young women of high birth and each of them has a brave boyfriend, everyone would say that his girlfriend is the most beautiful, and that great disaster could result from these quarrels. The king says: “I know that; but that's not why I do without it. "
Hostage shame
The next day, King Arthur and his knights set out to hunt. Later the queen goes for a ride in the company of her court ladies. She follows Erec, a famous knight of the Round Table who does not take part in the hunt. On the way they meet an armed knight who rides towards them with his lady and a dwarf. The queen sends her lady-in-waiting to the knight because she wants to get to know him and his lady. The dwarf answers the polite question of the lady-in-waiting with scorn and a hostage blow. Thereupon Erec rides up and confronts the dwarf, but he refuses to give him the information and also hits him with the whip.
Erec rides back to the queen. She is deeply shocked by the humiliation she suffered in the person of her lady-in-waiting and knight Erecs. Erec deliberately refrains from blindly furious, immediate revenge, which would have been equivalent to suicide, since he only carries a sword with him, but the foreign knight is fully armed. He asks the Queen to release him so that he can follow the knight until an opportunity for revenge arises.
Enite
Erec follows the knight unobtrusively until they reach a castle, where the knight is received as a very welcome guest. Erec looks for shelter in the village, but the place is overcrowded and he has to be content with the modest shelter given to him by an impoverished noble family. The elderly parents and their daughter Enite welcome the guest with great friendliness. In conversation, Erec learns that the sparrowhawk fight will take place tomorrow. The participating knights must come with their friend and fight for the prize. The victorious knight receives a living sparrowhawk, which he wins for his girlfriend as the most beautiful of the women. The knight that Erec saw riding into the castle is called Iders and has come to win the Sparrowhawk Prize for three years. So far, Iders received the award without a fight, as none of the other knights dared to fight him.
Erec explains to Enite's father that Iders has insulted him badly and that he wants to take up the sparrowhawk fight with him. He asks for his daughter's hand so that he can take part in the sparrowhawk fight with her. When the father learns that Erec is the son of a king he knows, he happily gives his consent. He also likes to lend Erec the missing armor, and so the next day he goes to the sparrowhawk fight with Enite in her poor clothes.
Sparrowhawk fight
On the tournament ground where the knights and their ladies have gathered, there is a silver pole with a sparrowhawk. Erec rides to the sparrowhawk pole and asks Enite to take the sparrowhawk as a beauty prize:
- "Mistress, loosen the tapes and take the sparrowhawk in your hand, because that is undisputed, nobody is more beautiful than you here."
When Iders hears this, he angrily reviles Ms. Enite:
- “Leave the sparrowhawk. It is not made that easy for you, Ms. Have nothing, where have you left your mind? ... This is my friend here, and in all fairness it should belong to him. "
The fight between the knights can only be decided by the fight. Fearful and tearful, Enite watches her friend's fight. A bitter lance piercing ends with Erec knocking Iders off his horse. They continue to fight with swords on foot until Erec wounds his opponent and he asks him for mercy. Erec reminds Iders of the hostage disgrace that his dwarf had inflicted on him and the queen's lady-in-waiting, but gives him his life on the condition that he asks the queen's forgiveness and submits to her violence. Iders immediately rides to Artus Court. He announces Erec and Enite's arrival the next day and submits to the Queen, who forgives him: "I want you to stay here and belong to us." Erec's victory is celebrated by the whole company until late at night with his future father-in-law.
Arthur's kiss
The next day, Erec rides, all alone with Enite, as he had stipulated, to Artus Court:
- “When the two came to the open country, Erec looked at his girl. Again and again she looked shyly over at her friend. They kept exchanging amorous looks. Their hearts were filled with love. They liked each other very much, and more and more. "
The couple is given a brilliant reception at Artus Court. Enite, who is still in her poor clothes, is splendidly dressed by the queen. King Arthur, who had killed the white stag, is now exercising his right to get his kiss from the most beautiful maiden, whom he recognized Erec's girlfriend - and the whole court with him.
Aftermath
The sparrowhawk fight appears as a literary motif for the first time in Chrétien's “Erec and Enide” and in the work “ De amore ” by Andreas Capellanus , who like Chrétien lived temporarily at the court of Countess Marie de Champagne in Troyes, see De amore .
The works of Chrétien and Hartmann as well as the Gereint story largely coincide in the Sparrowhawk fight episode. Wolfram von Eschenbach expressly mentions Hartmann von Aue in his “Parzival”, as does Erec and Enite, and cites the motif of the Sparrowhawk fight, see Parzival . In addition, the sparrow-hawk fight motif is used in many other works.
De amore
Between 1174 and 1186 Andreas Capellanus wrote his three-volume Latin treatise “De amore libri tres” (Three Books of Love). In Chapter VIII of the second book, “De regulis amoris” (Of the rules of love), he tells the story of a knight who can only win the love of a lady if he brings her “a victorious sparrowhawk”, “the one at court Arthur should sit on a golden pole ”. On his trip to King Arthur, a fairy gave him good advice:
- "You cannot obtain the sparrowhawk you are looking for unless you first prove in battle in Arthur's palace that you enjoy the love of a more beautiful lady than any of those who are at Arthur's court."
The knight goes through some dangerous adventures and succeeds in obtaining the sparrowhawk's glove, which he uses to open the door to King Arthur's palace. When he arrives at Artus Court, he has to prove the beauty of his lady in a fight with another knight. He defeats the knight and takes the sparrowhawk. On the sparrowhawk pole, he discovers a document with the rules of love, which the King of Love wrote himself and which contains the request to proclaim these rules everywhere. The story ends with the knight returning to his beloved lady, who welcomes him with open arms:
- “Since she had recognized his complete loyalty and clearly experienced his determined daring, she also repaid his efforts with her love, published the mentioned rules of love at a court meeting convened by many ladies and knights and carried the individual lovers under threat of punishment of the king of love to keep them strictly. "
Andreas Capellanus lived at the court of Countess Marie de Champagne in Troyes, who was also a sponsor of Chrétien de Troyes. Both poets were probably the first to use the motif of the sparrowhawk fight in literature. Perhaps they were inspired by a poetry competition in which the best poet received a sparrowhawk prize in the 12th century in Le Puy-en-Velay in southern France .
Parzival
In the verse novel “ Parzival ” by Wolfram von Eschenbach , which was written between 1200 and 1210, a sparrow hawk fight is mentioned, in which Duke Orilus won the sparrow hawk prize in a fight against eight competitors.
On his journey to the Artus Court, the young, foolish Parzival comes to a magnificent tent in which he finds the beautiful sleeping Jeschute , the wife of Duke Orilus. Literally following his mother's advice ("Don't hesitate long before kissing and hug her tightly"), he hugs and kisses the lady. Although she fights back, he also snatches her ring and a clasp from her before he leaves her. Shortly afterwards, Jeschute's husband comes and notices that someone was with his wife. He suspects her of infidelity and reminds her of his exploits:
- “They absolutely hated me, those from the round table. I stabbed her eighth where many a virgin saw it, with the sparrowhawk there in Venice. I kept you prize and me the victory. "
Sparrowhawk as a female bird
Dorothea Heinig describes in her dissertation "The hunt in PARZIVAL Wolframs von Eschenbach " the meaning of the sparrow as a female bird :
- “The sparrowhawk is generally regarded as a lady bird because it is smaller and easier to handle than the larger falcon. But the men also pickle with sparrows, and so this type of pickling is particularly pleasant and enjoyable, as women and men pickle together. The presence of the ladies means a moral enhancement. The scavenger hunt is the right and proper pleasure for a lady who cares about her reputation and honor. Accordingly, the sparrowhawk (or, more precisely, the larger female sparrowhawk, because it was mainly used in hunting) has a very special role as a messenger, as a gift from a lady or as a symbol of peace; Sparrowhawks are the property of the ladies and are given away by them, sometimes the lady is compared to a sparrowhawk. "
literature
- Helmut Birkhan : The story of Gereint, the son of heiress. In: Celtic tales from the Emperor Arthur. Translated from Middle Cymrian, with an introduction, explanations and notes, Volume 1. Kettwig: Phaidon, 1989.
- Albert Gier (editor); Chrétien de Troyes: Erec et Enide: old French / German = Erec and Enide. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1987.
- Volker Mertens (editor) ¸ Hartmann von Aue: Hartmann von Aue. Erec. Middle High German / New High German. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2008.
- Dorothea Heinig: The hunt in PARZIVAL Wolframs von Eschenbach. Job comment and investigations. Marburg 2009, pages 58-59, online .
- Fritz Peter Knapp (editor); Andreas Cappellanus: De regulis amoris / On the rules of love. In: De amore: libri tres; [Text and translation]; Text based on the edition by E. Trojel = Von der Liebe / Andreas aulae regiae capellanus, royal court orchestra leader. Translated and annotated and an afterword. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006, pages 472-505.
- Paule Le Rider: L'épisode de l'épervier dans Erec et Enide. In: Romania , Volume 116, 1998, Number 463, Pages 368–393, especially 378–385, online .
- Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival and Titurel: Rittergedichte, Volume 1. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1842, online .
Footnotes
- ↑ # Chrétien 1987 .
- ↑ #Hartmann 2008 .
- ↑ #Birkhan 1989.1 , pp. 177-244.
- ↑ Middle Cymrian: the Welsh language of the 12-14th centuries. Century.
- ↑ #Birkhan 1989.1 , pp. 37-39, 57-59.
- ↑ Chrétien, verses 26-30.
- ↑ Chrétien, verses 59-62.
- ↑ Hartmann, verses 686-689.
- ↑ Hartmann, verses 692-699.
- ↑ Hartmann, verses 1281-1282.
- ↑ Hartmann, verses 1484–1494.
- ↑ See: Sparrowhawk Tournament (Sperberturnier).
- ↑ #Knapp 2006 , page 475.
- ↑ #Knapp 2006 , page 505.
- ↑ # Le Rider 1998 . - See also: Cour de l'Épervier (French Wikipedia).
- ↑ #Heinig 2009 .
- ↑ #Wolfram 1842.1 , verses 135: 7-12.
- ↑ #Heinig 2009 . - Omissions are not marked.