Two-line (verse theory)
In verse theory, a two -line is a stanza or poem form consisting of two verses .
If the two verses heterometrisch , thus have different meter , so such a couplet in particular in the ancient versification as couplet called. The best-known example is the elegiac distich , which in its epigrammatic form is also a poem form. An example from Goethe's Venetian Epigrams :
Poetry is a fun craft, only I find it expensive;
As this little book grows, the zecchins go away from me.
As a short poem form, the two-line line is particularly suitable for epigrams, proverbs and motto .
Two lines in German poetry
The two-line form is usually rhymed in pairs as a stanza form in German poetry and has become increasingly popular from 1850 onwards. Since the sentence usually ends with the stanza, the shorter meter measures force them to be very short, according to Else Lasker-Schüler :
As quiet as I am,
all blood is running down.
How soft around.
I don't know anything anymore.
Iambic two-line
Four lifters
A common form is the pair-rhymed two-line string from iambic four-stringers :
- ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡— a
- ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡— a
Its roots can be traced back to the Latin Ambrosian hymn stanza of late antiquity. The form then merges into the folk song via the older German hymn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Well-known examples here are “There was a lind in the deep valley”, “There was a margrave over the Rhine” and “A hunter probably blew his horn”. In art poetry, however, the two-line stanza remained seldom until Herder's collection of folk songs and the Romantic era, apart from exceptions such as Brockes' Die Welt ist als schön .
With the beginning of the Romantic period and the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection (examples: The Thief's Position , Knight St. Georg ), the folk song and ballad-like tone of the pair-rhymed iambic four-point strophe became increasingly popular. Heine's biblical ballad Belshazzar is well known :
Midnight was drawing nearer;
Babylon lay in quiet rest.
Only upstairs in the king's castle,
there it flickers, there the king's train roars. [...]
Numerous other examples can be found in Ludwig Uhland (Siegfried's sword) , Joseph von Eichendorff (The Robber Brothers) , Justinus Kerner (The Sad Wedding) , Gustav Schwab (The Rider and Lake Constance) and Eduard Mörike (Two Lovers) .
The simple pair rhyme and the proximity to the folk song were often used as an artistic device, but due to the scarcity and the pronounced iambic rhythm there was always the risk of tipping over into the involuntarily comical, as in Felix Dahn's loyalty to the god :
The king of the Goths, Theodemer, lay slain with his army .
The Huns shouted at the bloody whale,
The vultures came down to the valley. [...]
It was precisely this effect that the poets of the grotesque and the comic took advantage of. Numerous examples can be found at Christian Morgenstern : The Geierlamm , The Gingganz , The Holy Pardauz , The Picket Fence , The Twelve-Elf , The Restored Peace , to name just a few. The three-verse heaven and earth also belong here :
The night greyhound cries like a child
while its fur is running down with rain.
Now he is hunting wildly
the new moon woman , who flees there with a bowed body.
Goes deep down, a dark point,
across the field a Forstadjunkt.
Five lifters
The pair-rhymed iambic five-lifter was a relatively rare form until the end of the 19th century. It is used a few times for ballads ( Platen Der Pilgrim von St. Just ) and occasional poems ( Nikolaus Lenau spring greetings ; Theodor Storm of a bride on a hen night ) and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer chooses it for his verse telling Hutten's Last Days .
From the beginning of the 20th century, the simple shape became increasingly popular, for example with Hermann Hesse in Berggeist (1899) and Alpenpaß (1911)
Walking through many valleys I came here,
My desire is not directed towards any destination.
Looking at the distance, I see
Italy, the country of my youth, [...]
Further examples can be found in Oskar Loerke ( parable in the morning ; wind ), Josef Weinheber ( contemplating a hand ; I often think of it ; the sun without you has no meaning ), Ernst Jünger (bridal song) , Bertolt Brecht (Orges song) , Heinz Piontek (from a park) , Stephan Hermlin (epitaph for a German soldier) and Günther Kunert (will) .
The eleven-syllable hypercatalectic form with feminine rhyme according to the scheme
- ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ a
- ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ a
is used a lot by Stefan George , as in Ob den wolken-deuter lie to me :
Did the cloud-deuter lie to me
And I with fires and with eagle flights ?
That this bud chaste lip never sips
From the wind-guided seim of the girlfriend [...]
George's other poems in this form are Peace Evening (in The Book of Hanging Gardens ) and Flames (in The Seventh Ring ). The young Hessian also uses the form, as in I love women and He walked in the dark . Also to be mentioned here are Max Dauthendey ( One year ; Have the times been sadder ) and Karl Wolfskehl ( Vita in morte and I greet you who are approaching with dark pitchers ). Morgenstern once again proves with his pug life (in Palma Kunkel ) that the shape is not only suitable for gloomy, sultry observations, and Tucholsky makes it the bearer of evil satire:
[...] And no matter how wicked a general looks:
You never, ever put him in prison.
So to death? - But, child, with none!
World history will judge him one day -!
But world history does not judge anyone.
Dull, unmoved, she hears the mothers cry. [...]
Trochaic two-liner
Four lifters
Above, the suitability of the two-liner for a motto and proverb was mentioned. Of course, this also applies where individual stanzas become proverbial, according to the first stanza of Wilhelm Busch's Julchen :
Becoming a father is not difficult, but being a
father is very difficult .
Or a little later:
Its principle is generally:
whatever is popular is also allowed;
Because man as a creature
has no trace of consideration.
What has been said about the proximity of the iambic four-jack to the comic applies even more to (pair-rhymed) two-liner from Trochaic four-jacks:
- —◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ a
- —◡ — ◡ — ◡ — ◡ a
Best known is probably Busch's Max and Moritz :
Oh, what do you often
hear or read from bad children!
Like for example here of these,
which were called Max and Moritz [...]
There are also examples in Morgenstern ( ex-libris , To the North , St. Expeditus , West-East ). What is suitable for comedy cannot be unsuitable for satire and invective either. This is how Arno Holz uses the form for his abuse of the German poet :
The German poet is even more powerful than zinc and tin .
In front of the first yellow primrose,
she drags on her pelvis.
Lilies, heliotropes and roses
weigh them in scented anesthesia.
Hyacinths and azaleas
eat her verse like victuals.
Outside of comic and satirical poetry, this trochaic two-liner is of less importance. See, for example, the historical ballad The Duchess of Orlamünde from Des Knaben Wunderhorn :
Albert Graf von Nürnberg speaks:
“Duchess I do not love;
I am a child of eighteen
and inexperienced in love, [...] "
Finally, a rare example of the use of form in modern German poetry is the poem Selbdritt, self-rendered by Paul Celan from The No Man's Rose with the trochies that are almost overemphasized by the repetition of words:
Curled mint, mint, curled, in
front of the house here, in front of the house.
This hour, your hour,
their conversation with my mouth. [...]
Again in the area of the comic, Robert Gernhardt, inspired by the Hessian mountain lyric quoted above, wrote also in pair-rhymed trochaic four-pointer:
Steiner spoke to Hermann Hesse:
"Name seven Alpine passes!"
Then Hesse Steiner asked:
"Tell me Rudolf, isn't one enough?"
Five lifters
The pair-rhymed trochaic five-lifter also appears in Morgenstern, both in akatalectic form with feminine rhyme ( Der Aromat , The Balls ) and in catalectic form with masculine rhyme ( Das Bohemian Village , word art ).
On the other hand, outside of comic poetry, there are examples with an evening or nocturnal subject, predominantly catalactic: Will Vesper Trüber Abend , Gertrud Kolmar The beautiful evening , Moritz Jahn Aleen in the night , Franz Werfel Nocturnal homecoming and nocturnal boat trip and memory , Hermann Hesse Wanderer im Snow , Emil Barth Equinox . Following the falling rhythm of the trochee, the form is also used to address sinking and falling, for example in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's Inlaid Oars :
My inserted oars are dripping,
drops slowly falling into the depths.
Nothing to annoy me! Nothing to please me!
A painless today is flowing down! [...]
Further examples of Meyer 's trochaic five-pounder are New Year's bells and dialogue , a sinking and nocturnal dialogue between sun and sunset, with the dialogue partners changing stanzas:
Sun:
My rays are
broken spears, I sank into bloody heroic honor -
Evening redness:
Like fame, I want to
send greetings to the near darkness with light hands . [...]
Likewise directed downwards Franz Werfel in drops and abysmal in Isolde Kurz in Schlummerflocken :
The day sank.
Star-eyed dark gates are born into the night.
Without a tax, now pushed from the country,
the soul hovers over the bottomless. [...]
Elegant distich
The distich resulting from the pairing of a hexameter with a pentameter has been a common form in German poetry, especially since the Classical period, both as a poem form - see the example from Goethe's Venetian Epigrams in the introduction or the Xenia by Goethe and Schiller - and as a stanza form. The metric scheme indicates that, analogous to ancient usage, the dactyls can be shortened to trochees, except in the second part of the pentameter:
- —◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡◡ˌ — ◡
- —◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡ (◡) ˌ— ‖ —◡◡ˌ — ◡◡ˌ—
Examples of strophic use can be found in Klopstock ( Die Zukunft Geliebte , Winterfreuden ) and Schiller ( Der Genius , Die Geschlechts , Nänie ). Goethe uses it strophically in the Roman elegies and in his didactic poem The Metamorphosis of Plants . The works of Hölderlin ( Brod and Wein , Der Wanderer , Menon's Lamentations for Diotima ) then form a high point of elegance poetry .
In the Romantic period the form is still used in various ways, particularly in Novalis and Rückert , but it is seldom used in more modern poetry. So Josef Weinträger complains about the disappearance of the form from the poetry:
Pastoral verse, are you fading? And yet one day
lovers had longed for you, singers made you fertile!
Wistfulness touches us in the magic bucolic image,
but how long will it be possible for us to understand yours? [...]
Two lines in French poetry
In contrast to the very common use of the elegiac distich in German, the French form ( French distique ) is isometric and rhyming. Stanzas or parts of stanzas consisting of a pair of rhymes are also referred to as couplet ( English couplet ; French couplet de deux verse ).
The word is derived from the Latin copula ("connection"), from which the old French words cople or couple and the Spanish copla , which have been used since the end of the 12th century for the connection of pairs of rhymes to the verse of a poem or song. In troubadour lyrics, couplet is the term for “stanza” par excellence.
Two lines in non-European literatures
Examples of two-line stanza forms in non-European literatures are the Arabic-Persian Ghazel , the ancient Indian Shloka and the Tamil Kural-Venba (cf. Tirukkural ). The Germanic long line with its two parts can also be understood as a two-line.
See also: List of verse and poem forms
literature
- W. Theodor Elwert : French metric. Hueber, Munich 1961, ISBN 3-19-003021-9 , pp. 147f.
- Horst Joachim Frank : Handbook of the German strophic forms. 2nd Edition. Francke, Tübingen & Basel 1993, ISBN 3-7720-2221-9 , pp. 25-54.
- Otto Paul, Ingeborg Glier : German metrics. 9th edition Hueber, Munich 1974, p. 115.
- Fritz Schlawe: The German stanza forms. Systematic-chronological register of German poetry 1600–1950. Repertories on the history of German literature, Vol. 5. Metzler, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-476-00243-8 , pp. 288-297.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Goethe: Venetian Epigrams . No. 46.
- ↑ Else Lasker-Schüler: Small death song .
- ↑ There was a linden tree in the deep valley , volksliederarchiv.de
- ↑ It was a margrave over the Rhine , volksliederarchiv.de
- ↑ A hunter probably blew his horn , volksliederarchiv.de
- ↑ Barthold Heinrich Brockes: Excerpt from the most distinguished poems from the earthly pleasure in God. Stuttgart 1965, p. 532, online .
- ↑ Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Volume 1, Stuttgart a. a. 1979, pp. 71-72 online .
- ↑ Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Volume 1, Stuttgart a. a. 1979, pp. 142-147, online .
- ^ Heinrich Heine: Works and letters in ten volumes. Volume 1, Berlin and Weimar 2nd edition 1972, p. 52 f., Online .
- ^ Felix Dahn: Collected works. Volume 5: Poems and Ballads. Leipzig 1912, pp. 269-270, online .
- ^ Christian Morgenstern: Selected works. Leipzig 1975, p. 258, online .
- ↑ Hermann Hesse: Complete Works. Edited by Volker Michels. Volume 10: The Poems. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 203.
- ↑ In: Algabal. Paris et al. 1892, p. 36, online .
- ↑ Kaspar Hauser (= Kurt Tucholsky): Criminal Court? In: Die Weltbühne , August 14, 1919, No. 34, p. 200, online .
- ^ Wilhelm Busch: Works. Historical-critical complete edition. Volume 2, Hamburg 1959, pp. 148, 150, online .
- ^ Wilhelm Busch: Works. Historical-critical complete edition. Volume 1, Hamburg 1959, p. 34, online .
- ↑ Arno Holz: The poet. Fragment from the tinsmith's shop.
- ↑ Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Volume 2, Stuttgart a. a. 1979, p. 229, online .
- ↑ Quoted from: Tobias Eilers: Robert Gernhardt: Theory and Lyrik. Waxmann, 2011, p. 355.
- ^ Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete works in two volumes. Volume 2, Munich 1968, p. 39, online .
- ^ Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete works in two volumes. Volume 2, Munich 1968, p. 99, online .
- ↑ Josef Weinträger: The elegiac distich . In: Complete Works. Vol. 2, Müller 1954, p. 624 f.