Transience of beauty
The transience of beauty is a sonnet by Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau that remained unpublished during his lifetime. It is a love poem that can be read in context, but also as a parody of the vanitas theme that was common in the Baroque era . It was first published by Benjamin Neukirch under the title “Sonnet. Transience of Beauty ” published in Leipzig in 1695.
content
In time the pale death
will stroke your breasts with his cold hand /
The lovely coral of the lips will fade;
The shoulders of warm snow will become cold sand /
the eyes sweet lightning / the forces of your hand /
for those who fall like this / they will give way in time /
the hair / the itz and can of gold reach /
finally eradicate day and year as a common bond.
The well-set foot / the lovely gestures / they
will partly turn to dust / partly become nothing and void /
For nobody sacrifices anymore to the divinity of your splendor.
This and even more than this must finally perish /
Your heart can stand alone at all times /
Because nature made it of diamond.
Formal structure and stylistic devices
The sonnet consists of two quartets with an embracing rhyme (abba) and two thirds with a tail rhyme (ccd, eed). All four stanzas are made up of iambic six-crescents with a middle caesura , i.e. H. the poem is written in Alexandrians . The first as well as the last verse of the quartets always end bluntly (masculine), the intervening verses have sounding verses (feminine). In the two thirds, two female cadences are followed by a male one.
The stylistic devices used are, for example, the oxymora "warm snow" and "cold sand" (verse 4), the alliterations "Goldes Glantz" (verse 7), the Hendiadyoin "nothing and nothing" (verse 10) and the linguistic climax ("Diß and even more than this ”(verse 12)).
interpretation
The poem allows for different interpretations. The main focus is on the antithesis in the last three verses.
The thesis of the poem is about the transience of beauty and life in general and thus picks up on the vanitas motif that predominated in the Baroque , but Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau only describes the fading of external properties.
According to the first interpretation, the "Hertze" (line 13) here stands for the soul, which also persists through beauty. The sonnet is intended to indicate the transience of the exterior and thus its nullity; it is an incentive to think about death and superficiality.
According to the second interpretation, the antithesis refers to the fact that the addressed woman is beautiful, but eludes any love, so her heart remains hard as a diamond, despite the attempts at advertising by the lyrical self. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the theme of unheard-of love occurs frequently at Hofmannswaldau, as well as the fact that the “heart made of diamond” as a heart that cannot be softened is a common image in Petrarch . Petrarkism is a frequent source of German baroque poetry, so the picture of Hofmannswaldau was probably taken from it. In other texts from Germany and other countries, the same image is often found in a clearer form, so that this image can also be accepted as a common metaphor of Hofmanswaldau's time. The diamond itself is a vanitas motif, so that the last line can be interpreted as a warning in the sense of Carpe diem .
expenditure
- Benjamin Neukirch (Ed.): Mr. von Hoffmannswaldau and other Germans selected and bit unprinted poems. Fritsch, Leipzig 1695, p. 13 .
- Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau: Poems. Reclam, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-008889-5 , p. 95.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hanspeter Brode (Ed.): Deutsche Lyrik . 14th edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-518-38107-6 , pp. 52-53 .
- ↑ a b Stöcklein, Paul (1956): "Hofmannswaldau and Goethe: 'Vergänlichkeit' im Liebesgedicht", in: Hirschenauer / Weber (ed.) 1956, pp. 77-98
- ↑ a b c Trunz, Erich (1993): "Das Herz aus Diamant", in: Hartmut Laufhütte (ed.) "Literary history as a profession: Festschrift for Dietrich Jöns", pp. 119–126.