Waiting away. Songs given to the people
Die Wegwarten was an attempt by Rainer Maria Rilke to publish a free periodical during his early phase in Prague in 1896, which was discontinued after a short time.
History of origin
The specialty of the Wegwarten is that Rilke published his periodical under his birth name René Maria Rilke. He attempted a periodical , which he in the self-published published and distributed free of charge to public institutions and in public places among the people. Rilke was committed to the common people during this early creative period in Prague . His proximity to the poorer classes of the population was part of a naturalism that Rilke considered to be a new aesthetic direction of the 1890s. In an attempt to reach a mass audience, Rilke simplified his language and made it more melodic. That is why he is still accused by critics today that his verses are too alliterative and “represent a relapse into the early music box lyrics”. But there are also other voices that certify Rilke “quite successful impressionistic sketches”. The model for Rilke was Karl Henckell's Sunflowers . It was a portfolio that he had brought out as a periodical in Zurich. Rilke knew this work because it was he who had discussed it in the Prager Abendblatt . Rilke shares Henckell's enthusiasm for the common people, but not their socialist intentions.
Rilke financed his idealistic project with part of the money he received from relatives on his father's side. He called his periodical Wegwarten , referring to a legend attributed to Paracelsus , the famous doctor from the 16th century: every centuries, according to the legend, the chicory transforms into a living being. Like the plant, the poems of his work were supposed to "awaken to higher life in the soul of the people".
Yet the wayfarers were only granted a short life. Despite the help of third parties, including the writer Richard Zoozmann , who was supposed to finance Rilke's next book, he did not believe that literary success for the Wegwarten would arise because he believed that he could not reach the poorer sections of the population. After Rilke had published two more volumes of his small series, he discontinued his project, which he had initially pursued with great commitment. Part of the reason for this was that the majority of Prague's population consisted not of Germans but of Czechs, who were hardly interested in German poetry. As a result, Rilke could only reach a small part of the population. On the other hand, Rilke addressed himself less to the poorer sections of the population than to his peers, in that in his foreword to the first volume he urged his fellow writers to give away their writings as well.
The individual volumes
- Volume 1: Songs given to the people (1896)
- Volume 2: Now and in the hour of our death (1896)
- Volume 3: German Modern Seals (1896)
Description of the print
The periodical Wegwarten is printed on cheap paper, which was common at this time. The ribbons each consist of eight sheets of paper, which were originally stapled together in the middle with metal clips, like those used with a "spider monkey". The volumes thus consist of 16 pages each, which are slightly yellowed at the margins.
Publisher / printer
Rilke tried himself as a publisher on this project. He used the apartment of a friend in Prague's Wassergasse as an office and financed the printing by the Stiepel brothers' printing works with the money of his relatives on his father's side.
Poems of the first volume
| title | First verse | comment | Emergence |
|---|---|---|---|
| The folk song | It lays on the guy's forehead | After a cardboard sketch by Mr. Liebscher | probably: Prague, late autumn 1895 |
| tomorrow | The early wind is coming. - The bill | probably 1895 | |
| Moth and rose | A butterfly that coveted | Prague, 1894 | |
| The ghost tower | There is a tower there, a small one | ||
| Artist lot | The tent rolls quickly! | ||
| Noon | How difficult over the blue forest lake | Prague, summer 1894 | |
| The Rose | The rose here, the yellow one | Prague, around May 1, 1894 | |
| An old story | An old story grieves | Prague, May 17, 1895 | |
| Consolation | In the high heaven | Prague, 1893 | |
| Evening in the village | See how far away in the gloomy twilight | Lautschin, end of July 1894 | |
| Evening clouds | Evening ... silence the distant. - I look | Prague, 1894 | |
| Will-o'-the-wisp | You saw a little light shimmer | Prague, late 1894 | |
| Queen Lake | When long the red day flames | probably: Miedzyzdroje, August 1895 | |
| Stars | Blessed multitudes of shimmering stars | probably: Prague, end of 1894 | |
| Night thoughts | World-wide wanderer | Prague, spring 1894 | |
| In the dark | When it's dark in the room | Prague, spring 1895 | |
| Through a forest of hardship ... | Through a forest of hardship | ||
| nostalgia | An aare that nobody stopped | first printed: March 1894 | |
| It happened to me ... (song) | It happened to me as it did to the child | ||
| future | Eh, the canvas of life is gray to me | ||
| To the light | Just not in the dark | probably: Prague, end of 1894 |
See also
literature
- Ralph Freedman: Rainer Maria Rilke: The young poet 1875 to 1906. Frankfurt am Main [u. a.]: Insel-Verlag, 1996. 434 pp.
- Wolfgang Leppmann: Rilke: His life, his world, his work. Bern [u. a.]: Scherz, 1993. 483 pp.
- Manfred Engel , Dorothea Lauterbach (ed.): Rilke manual: Life - work - effect . Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004. 570 pp.
- Horst Nalewski (ed.): Rilke - life, work and time in texts and pictures . Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1992. 256 pp.