Divining rod (Eichendorff)

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Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff found a new metaphor for the achievement of poetry in his poem Dowsing Rod from 1835 . It comes from the German late romantic period and appeared in the German Musenalmanach in 1838 . The title Wünschelruthe was placed over the poem by Adelbert von Chamisso when it was published.

content

It tells in a quatrain about hidden poetry of the world:

"If a song sleeps in all things that
dream on and on,
And the world begins to sing,
you only meet the magic word."

interpretation

The poet's word frees the outer world from its dreamy state to its true essence, to sing. But the metaphor recursively reverts to itself. Because song and song are also names for poetry.

The poem does not only live from the metaphor of the word as a magical divining rod , but also condenses other romantic notions: the song "sleeps" in the things that in turn dream. The idea of sleep is first concentrated on the song, but then immediately transferred to the thing that dreams in turn. When the thing is awakened, the song is awakened too, but sing neither thing nor song, but the whole world. In this way the poetic magic word immediately gains cosmic meaning, it breaks all boundaries, opens space to infinity .

However, delimitation is already the characteristic of the dream insofar as it dissolves the boundaries between reality , fantasy and the unconscious . On the other hand, in a romantic imagination, things are in turn capable of enchanting people, just as here they are changing things through magic.

To the text history

A draft of the poem kept in the Freie Deutsche Hochstift reads:

"A song (or wonderful melody) sleeps in all things for
many centuries,
And they
begin to sing, Like the whisper of wings,
you find the right sound."

The word "enchanted" is noted above the entrance "Es" and the note next to the five-liner: "The poet should solve the magic - make sure you hit the right note."

Literary classification

The image of the sleeping song can already be found in Theodor Körner's poem After the performance of Handel's Alexander Festival in Vienna in 1812. The idea that the essence of the world can be grasped by liberating things is much older and can be assigned to pantheism . The poem as a whole has long been part of the literary canon .

Biographical classification

Paul Stöcklein sees this poem as "the birth of Eichendorff's personality". It occupies a relatively late position within his literary work, after the novels, after his plays and after the master story from the life of a good-for-nothing . So it can be seen as a successful quintessence of his poetic work.

effect

It is obvious that the central image “A song asleep in all things” was taken up frequently. Examples of this are settings (e.g. by Karl Marx or Felicitas Kukuck ) and the use as book titles (e.g. Günter Bauch: Sleeps a song in all things. Youth memories with Konstantin, Bremen 2001) and countless events under this motto as well a large number of variations on the initial words.

literature

  • Hinck, Walter (editor): A song sleeps in all things. Poetic manifestos from Walther von der Vogelweide to the present. Frankfurt am Main 1985
  • Divining rod . P. 328 and P. 1038 in Hartwig Schultz (Ed.): Gedichte. Versepen. in Wolfgang Frühwald (Hrsg.), Brigitte Schillbach (Hrsg.), Hartwig Schultz (Hrsg.): Joseph von Eichendorff. Works in six volumes. Volume 1. 1292 pages. Linen. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1987 (1st edition), ISBN 3-618-60110-7
  • Hotz, Karl: Three sayings. P. 12–14 in: Poems from seven centuries. Interpretations. 311 pages. CC Buchner, Bamberg 1990 (2nd edition), ISBN 3-7661-4311-5
  • Otto Eberhardt: Eichendorff's conception of a poem as a challenge when setting his poems to music . In: Wirkendes Wort 54, 2004, pp. 47–74, especially pp. 47–55.

Music & settings

Web links

Wikisource: Divining Rod  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence