Ulalume
Ulalume is a ballad by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe , which he probably wrote that summer after the death of his wife Virginia in January 1847. The poem was first published in the December 1847 issue of The American Review .
From today's literary or literary critical point of view, this ballad is one of Poe's outstanding poems. In terms of work history, it falls into his last lyrical creative phase, in which he again increasingly turned to verse art, after he had set a new beginning with the publication of The Raven in 1845 and specified his poetic theoretical ideas in The Philosophy of Composition in 1846.
As in The Raven or Ligeia and other lyrical or epic works by Poe, for example, Ulalume deals with the central theme of coping with the painful loss of the deceased beautiful lover of the narrator or speaker.
In this ballad, the grief-stricken lyrical narrator tries to find relief from his grief and pain on a lonely, ghostly dark autumn night after the death of his beloved wife on a midnight walk through the inspiration and evocation of a new love. While he is in communication with Psyche , his soul , he is unconsciously drawn back to the grave of the deceased.
The memory of the dead lover remains indelible for the narrator and cannot be suppressed by the imagination of a new sensual - erotic love relationship.
Interpretative approach
Already in the first stanza the speaker of the ballad leads the implicit listener into a fantastic, ghostly gloomy world that is far removed from his own actual reality.
The choice of words and sounds that the poet deliberately uses effectively serves to create a suggestive structure of an eerie atmosphere which, with the classic allegorical and theatrical components of a romantic horror story, cast a spell on the reader right from the start.
At the same time, the name of the place refers to an imaginary landscape in the poetic imagination of the lyrical narrator.
The name of the lake refers to Daniel-François-Esprit Auber , whose ballet Le Lac des Fées was successfully performed in New York at the time the poem was written. In designating the woodland, Poe uses the name of Robert Walter Weir, who was famous during Poe's lifetime as a painter of wildly romantic scenes and motifs of the Hudson landscape .
The process described in the following stanzas in this lonely, cloud-shrouded autumn night ( "The skies were ashen and sobre; [...] It was night in the lonesome Octobre" ) is carried out in the traditional form of a dialogue between the speaker and his soul ( psyche ) unfolds. In this inner dialogue the narrator tries to master his own agitated mood and excitement of his heart ( “My heart was volcanic” ).
The speaker (and with him the poet) is initially fascinated by Astarte , the moon and love goddess, who rises in the sky towards morning and seems to promise him peace ( “Lithean peace of the skies” ) and love. A comparison with the chaste, virgin goddess Diana in Roman mythology or Artemis in Greek mythology also emphasizes the lyrical ego's budding hope for consolation through a new erotic relationship ( “She is warmer than Dian” ).
In the dialogue with the soul, however, the soul mistrusts the star Astartes ( "Her pallor I strangely mistrust" ). In the form of a desperate question ( "Ah, what demon has tempted me here" ), the speaker must finally realize in the last stanza of the poem that this star, which initially seemed to herald release from its pain, was just a mirage that the Made corpse ghosts ( "This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir" ) appear in the sky in order to deceive him.
Astarte's promise to find consolation and forgetting in new sensual love ( "love in her luminous eyes" ) proves to be impossible to fulfill, as the speaker has to express again in agony at the end ( "Then my heart it grew ashen and sober" ). The painful memory of the deceased lover can neither be erased in reality nor in fantasy ( "" Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume [...] dread burden down here " )
The radiant appearance of Astartes thus remains against all hope ( “Its sybillic splendor is beaming With Hope and in Beauty to-night” ) at the end of the ballad anticlimactically in the far removed sphere of the constellations ( “miraculous crescent [..] has come past the stars of the Lion " ) and a distant planet that is said to" sparkle sinfully from the hell of the planetary souls "( " This sinfully scintillant planet From the hell of the planetary souls " ). This sinful sparkle points not only to the seduction to sensual love, but can also be related to the pretense of a fulfillment that cannot be realized in earthly life.
In such an interpretation, the reader “who has let himself into the fascination of the atmosphere” shows in the end “with the poet, as it were, not the illusory character of the world evoked in the poem as a whole, but the fulfillment promised in it.” The knowledge of the artificiality of the ( fantasy ) world evoked by the poem's speaker confirms, according to Link, the doubts about the validity of such a promise.
Meaning of the title
The name Ulalumes can be understood as an adaptation of the Latin verb “ululare” (dt. “Wail”) to the rhyming words “gloom” (dt. “Gloom, hopelessness”) and “tomb” (dt. “Grave, crypt”) . Ulalume expresses the poet's complaint, which he expressed in Israfel as early as 1831 , that “as an earthly man he cannot rise to the heights of heaven and sing as beautifully as the angel there.” Vowelically , ume also rhymes with that Poem with ghoul (German ghoul ). Occasionally, parallels to the Turkish word Ula for “dead” and the Latin lumen for light are pointed out in the interpretation; In this reading, Ulalume could be understood as the light of death .
Poetic design
Poe's ballad becomes a lamentation poem not only through the encounter with the grave of the deceased lover . Even in the first lines of Ulalume's opening stanza , the atmosphere appears gloomy and eerie. By repeating the same rhyming words in the third stanza, this atmospheric gloom and eeriness is further intensified. Likewise, dark rhyming words determine the sound pattern in the ninth stanza, in which the reawakening of the previously faded memory is reported. In this way, the eventual disappointment at the end of the ballad is anticipated.
Due to the constancy of the metrical scheme across all stanzas, the gloomy or horrible mood associated with it becomes the defining background, which predicts that hope cannot be fulfilled even during the temporary flare-up of hope.
With the help of the repetition in the tonal design, the individual stanzas and lines of the poem, the length of which varies between nine and thirteen lines, acquire a particular forcefulness: Usually there are only two rhymes, one strong and one weak; in addition, fixed syntactic patterns are repeated several times , mostly with the same lexical content. A further intensification is achieved by the fact that the repetition increases at the climax of the process and thus leads to a longer stanza length in stanzas five, seven and nine. Stanzas one, three and nine are connected by the rhymes on / ou / and / u /, while the two stanzas in which the lyrical narrator expresses his hope for salvation through the star are connected by the rhyme / ai /.
The doubt expressed by Psyche is accentuated in stanzas six and eight by the short rhyming sounds, just as the vowel / u / is used as a rhyming sound in connection with the finding of the tomb of Ulalume. The preferred use of a limited number of repeating long and short vowels also contributes to the tonal intensity of this ballad Poe, which is particularly suitable for recitation and thus followed Poe's suggestion to write a poem for an oral lecture.
Impact history
For a long time, Ulalume was mainly ignored by influential American literary scholars and literary critics, who ideologically mostly followed the tradition of Emerson and Whitman as well as the New Criticism approach and accordingly viewed Poe as a " minor poet " (English: "insignificant poet") or not taken seriously and critically criticized. So the poem was, for example, as "a flagrant Example of cheap mystification" ( "an obvious example cheaper dt. About mystification ") or as "prime Example of Poe's obscurantism" (dt. About "excellent example of obscurantism considered Poe's").
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren also adopted this assessment in their interpretation of Ulalume in their standard work “Understanding Poetry” (1943) that Poe's poem is mystifying ( “rather disorderly use of suggestion” ) and only solves the reader like in a romantic horror story “ a kind of shudder of supranatural mystery and horror " ( Eng . about" a kind of shudder over a supernatural mystery and horror "). According to their opinion, which - as later research showed - was based on a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of Poe's poetological utterances - Poe expects the reader to read his poems only cursory and superficial.
Aldous Huxley had previously subjected Poe's ballad to a devastating criticism and described it as a “mystifying” and “ vulgar ” text that “failed to do justice to a poem” ( “failed to measure up as a poem” ).
In the history of European as well as more recent American reception, however, the deeper symbolic meaning and reference character as well as the high aesthetic and artistic value of Ulalume were almost mutually emphasized and this ballad was counted among Poe's most important works.
Various elements in Ulalume also suggest a comparison with other poems of Poe. Individual lines in Ulalume are reminiscent of Al Aaraaf (1829) from his early creative phase. Here the comet Al Aaraaf appears as an area of the imagination in which souls "find peace in contemplation of beauty beyond good and evil". In Eulalie , Poe also creates a connection between Astarte and the vision of fulfillment in sensual love.
If the poem as such initially stands for the complaint about the death of a beloved woman, which makes hope for fulfillment in a new love relationship and for peace of mind in oblivion obsolete, then the ballad can also be more general in Poe's oeuvre as an expression of sorrow over the inaccessibility such a fulfillment in this worldly life or in this worldly reality can be read. As Link emphasizes in his interpretation, Ulalume only takes shape “in the lament of the poet, who conjures up the possibility of fulfillment in another world as a mirage.”
In literary history, this poem by Poe is characteristic of poetry between Romanticism and Modernism , insofar as it exemplarily shows how a world created by the power of imagination is incompatible with the reality of this world, since the poet can only create a world in his imagination, its artificiality or illusory character he is aware of.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, This Side of Paradise (English. This Side of Paradise , 1920), there are intertextual references to Poe's ballad. The protagonist Amory Blaine developed the habit in his wanderings through the countryside during a stay in Maryland Ulalume to recite . He meets Eleanor Savage, whose name in turn contains a further allusion to Poe's story Eleonora . During a thunderstorm, Eleanor offers him a new recitation of the poem to play the role of psyche from this ballad Poes.
Adaptations
Based on Poe's ballad, the symphonic score Ulalume, Op.35 by Joseph Holbrooke , published the following year, was probably composed in 1903 .
A recitation of Ulalume by the American singer Jeff Buckley appeared in December 1997 a few months after Buckley's death as a contribution to the collected recordings of poems and short stories on the double CD tribute album Closed on Account of Rabies , which was published by Hal Willner in collaboration with has been produced by various artists.
Text of the ballad
Ulalume - A Ballad (original text, 1847) | Transfer from Hedwig Lachmann (1891) |
---|---|
The skies they were ashen and sober; |
The clouds piled up mightily, |
Here once, through an alley Titantic, |
The area rugged and titanic, |
Our talk had been serious and sober, |
Our speech was serious and measured, |
And now, as the night was senescent |
And now that the night was |
And I said— "She is warmer than Dian: |
And I said: She is warmer and milder than |
But Psyche, uplifting her finger, |
Then I saw Psyche shudder. |
I replied— "This is nothing but dreaming: |
I said, you see ghosts, |
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, |
So I tried to appease her |
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober |
Then my heart became dull and passed out, |
Said we , then — the two, then— "Ah, can it |
Secondary literature
- Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , pp. 1-20.
- Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan PoeUlalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present. Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215-8, pp. 103-114.
Web links
- Ulalume - German translation . On: The German Poetry Library . Retrieved May 15, 2014 (comparatively literal translation)
- Ulalume - A Study Guide . On: Cummings Study Guides . Retrieved May 15, 2014. (English-language notes and interpretation)
- Ulalume - recitation by Joseph Finkberg on librivox
- Ulalume recitation by Jeff Buckley . On: vagalume.com . Retrieved May 15, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 107.
- ↑ See the explanations and evidence on the central theme of the poem in H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 108f. For the presentation of the central topic, see also: Cummings Study Guide (see web link below) and Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 10 f.
- ↑ See Brooks and Warren, who describe this atmosphere as “the kind of suggestiveness used in romantic ghost stories” . In: Cleanth Brooks et al. Robert Penn Warren : Understanding Poetry , New York 1943, pp. 359 f.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 109. Cf. also Eric W. Carlson in more detail on this approach to interpretation: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 6 f. and 12 f.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 109 f. See also Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 11 f.
- ↑ See in detail Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 14 ff.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 110 f.
- ↑ For more details on this interpretation, see Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 110 f. See also Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 10 f.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 110 f. See also the detailed interpretation of the last stanzas of the poem in Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 16 ff.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 112, and Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , pp. 12 and 17 ff. See also Cummings Study Guides (weblink below).
- ↑ See the analysis by Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 112.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 113. See also the analysis of Eric W. Carlson on the sound pattern of the poem: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , pp. 6 f.12 f.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 107.
- ↑ Quoted from Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 6 f. Cf. also the detailed critical examination of this tradition of reception by Ulalume and the misinterpretations and misunderstandings on which it is based. See also the presentation of the reception history by Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 107 f. and on the misinterpretation of Brooks and Warren ibid, p. 109.
- ↑ Quoted from Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 6.
- ↑ See in detail the explanations by Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 107 ff. See also Eric W. Carlson: Edgar Allan Poe: Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): The American poetry . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-534-04760-5 , p. 10 f. See also the detailed description of the symbolic meaning of the poem, ibid, pp. 11-20.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 110.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 113 f.
- ↑ See Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe · Ulalume - A Ballad . In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215 - 8, p. 113 f.
- ↑ See Two verse masterworks: The Raven and Ulalume . On: docstoc.com . Retrieved May 15, 2014.
- ↑ See Ulalume, Op.35 (Holbrooke, Joseph) on the International Music Score Library Project . Retrieved April 21, 2020.
- ↑ Cf. Edgar Allan Poe - Closed On Account Of Rabies: Poems And Tales Of Edgar Allan Poe on Discogs . Retrieved April 21, 2020.