German Baroque Poetry
by Hector A. Piccoli
In the Serpent's Don Luis de Góngora, José Lezama Lima writes: "Perhaps no nation has taken the approach of his poetry as concentrated as at that time spoke English in the metaphorical Góngora needs and cry ... "In a general sense, however, may not be over-allocated that predicate" Etruscan times, "if not" our " poetry, our culture, the entire poetic production of baroque understood, the historical baroque. All too often, and, most often, too easily, is spoken today of "Baroque" Baroque of this or that author contemporary, neo-baroque (s). These judgments are generally based on external traits of similarity, is the procedure of accumulation is a specific lexical processing (use of archaic words or terms more or less away from colloquial speech), is the mere appearance of certain tropes, to attribute to a text baroque quality. Almost always contented with the simple proliferation, forget the second time, the moment in the poetry of the baroque architecture: that of the subject, the strict constraint of the variety deployed to a unit, in order that no element can be detached or constellation, a systematic economy, in short, which, marked by the overdetermination and the obliquity, founded precisely because of that antithesis between plural and singular, including the deployment of multiple and referral to all, his gesture of infinite and represents the most perfect way the idea of \u200b\u200btext. Despite the extreme torque, even the syntax superestructuración (Latin / English, in the case of Góngora), never exceeds the limits of historical baroque grammaticality. Multiple readings, yes, but on the edge hyperbaton, provided a possible articulation. Semantics glittering surfaces, a slip of tectonic plates, where the radical appropriation contained imagine: the metaphor embodies the object, but the filament does not deprive the metaphorical meaning of his vocation of order, is both subsumption hierarchy, cosmonomía systematic. Tedious reading, listening to the poem's structuring mechanisms can be shown, for example, what profound differences separate the words' Baroque "Lezama of a Gongora, or outside the scope of our language, to what extent can close in Baroque really talk about a Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
During the reign of the "poetry in extremis': Was it really our most polished facet of the stone? If all the Romance languages \u200b\u200bEnglish culminated in the "maturity heliotropic test": already lost them and beyond them the east pearl, pale? The truth is that reading of the German Baroque opera, it is difficult to evade the impression of a certain sobriety. But perhaps it is only a matter of degree: at the base of the Baroque a magnetization of the word, something that has to do mainly with sensuality: how can Góngora would have been intolerable to Borges? "We really can surprise his view on the 'obscenity Góngora"? The assumption baroque sense involves a kind of insolence essential, though not consciously perceived, determines the rejection, the adverse reaction of the reader not biased, that the lives and aggression.
differently Cimbria With élan, tends no more unstable bridge, the German Baroque, bow high tide over the water on the run, yielding only neat. In the series of texts published on this site, we recognize immediately that tension between Weltsucht Weltflucht and between the flight from the world and passion for the world, that will as abandoned as ecstasy and away from the earthly, which is the constitutive opposition Baroque world view. The names, some of the most significant in this period that German art history traditionally located between 1600 and 1730/50: Paul Fleming, a farmer from the poetry of Opitz, whom he met in Leipzig through a circle young Silesian, one of the greatest poets "Personal" this time he does not know yet the idea of \u200b\u200bcreation as a free production of I isolated, collected poems appeared, the "Teutsche poematic" only posthumously: 1641/42. He surprises us here with a sonnet that hardly find a parallel in universal history of the epitaph autograph. Notice how perfect, serene harmony tumular registration closes its own form, sonnet, and how deeply human gesture sealed both the baroque man, between the here and the hereafter, the fullness of the encounter with him: "An mir minder ist nichts, das lebet, als mein Leben. "Gryphius Andreas, more lyrical playwright of the period, made contact at Leyden with the unique tradition and popular Dutch Baroque theater. In his work is, as nowhere else, the imprint of that experience factor for the Weltanschauung of the period, which was the war of 30 years. Of the sonnets, however, with those who are here represented, we offer the first, and more precisely his quartets, the vitality of a landscape that seems to speak to the pair from a later period of German literature: the dual opposition light / shadow and light / glare of day, come the triplets to restore to the "depth" of the "mundus symbolicus." And it is the articulation of that "mundus significativus" as they used to say then, that shows like no other, the second sonnet, A stars: they recognize its allegorical character, hint, indicate only the order of Health, in this order, I inserted. Devout contemplation of the stars on earth; series of prayers and pictures, referring exclusively to the object. In the first quatrain are images that celebrate the beauty: there is part of the order of nature. In the second quatrain and first triplet, however, it is the divine order (images revealing the essence: custody, guarantors, heralds). At the end lies the hope of personal salvation. This was observed rightly E. Trunz in his article "Barock Lyrik - Drei Sonett Gryphius des Andreas" and adds: "the three Christian virtues, faith, love and hope to participate in the poem." The divergence between vanitas and dintorna carpe diem is clearly a Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau, prominent in the second school of Silesia. In his description of the perfect beauty synecdoches constructed with the typical movement of descent and ascent, the topology of a body. In these poems is what makes Eros exceptionally in the Baroque, from and to public areas (in the rhetorical sense) of poetry. Polyphony of the splendor and expiration: read these sonnets along with 228 of Góngora ("As for competing with your hair ...") and 145 of Sor Juana ("This you see, colorful deceit ..."). The greatest religious poet of this period is Silesius Angelus, who was called "the last of the German mystics." While studying law and medicine in Strassburg, Leyden and Padua, making the first contact with the ancient mystical thought, which was consolidated in the environment after Abraham von Frankenberg. Converted to Catholicism in 1653, received in 1661 ordained a priest. In this key figure in the Silesian counter reaches its peak the epigram genre of rich tradition at the time, whose most important and immediate antecedent is in Monodisticha Sexcenta Czepko Daniel von Reigersfeld, belonging, as the same Silesius, the circle of Frankenberg. On the way to the unio mystica performed seraph perfect love (Heilige Seelen-Lust / Oder Geistliche Hirten-Lieder), the cherubim the high knowledge (Cherubinischer Wandersmann-reiche Sinn oder Geist-und Schluss-Reimer zur Göttlichen beschauligkeit anleitende). The second of the works mentioned, by far the most important Silesius opens up a privileged space for the landmark-embedding another operation that is so characteristic of baroque and formal perfection leads to a literary genre, speaking of God and the antithesis paradox precisely where thinking fails.
The translation of poetry is a craft fiery. All artisans have a homeland: Heliopolis, where Phoenix has been reborn (and not necessarily that of their native language).
When I translate a poem, I ask first: what do I do?, Secondly, what I can do? At the moment I can not, this last question, especially in poems subject to a metrical pattern and built-in rhythm-instantly transforms in the following disjunction: I can not, or is it really can not? The institution, devotion, despair calculated to erect a dwelling on harshness and who should not ever be more than a guest in his house, that year of burning, in order, which is ultimately the impact of the text in another language, it reminds me of something the tactics of chess players .
The sonnet form, and by the same strain as it is based, the opposition between the odd and even, among the false symmetry and symmetry, are pleased with the spirit of the Baroque: four stanzas (two quartets and two triplets), a virtual school only between the seventh and the eighth line and the "center of articulation between quartets and trios, five pairs built-in rhythm (in the canonical form, arrangement and quartets speculate on Combinatorial variability in the triplets). Thus, rigorous, clear, concise, is particularly suitable for treating certain dynamic "content." The Baroque exciting, however, is not the simple fact that it appropriates the form and assiduously cultivated, but the way the overwrite, the extent to which the hiperelabora. The shortest review intends to follow the movements, the work of baroque writing in action, widely exceed the limits of these notes, but I can not point to at least the role of a constitutive factor of all poetry, all written poem as text-in the treatment of inherited models Baroque: I mean Registration of alliteration, and I think in the Stabreim (not least in the curious way that it considers the mandatory over German literature). Verses of the sonnets reproduced with the exception of the Mittag, who have a less-are verses of six clauses (Sechstakter): they are actually defined as a "Alexandrian" and not the total number syllables, which can be variable. The Alexandrian marks more often a pause or caesura after the third rhythmic accent (6th syllable).
is easy to see what is at stake here in the challenge of translation: keep meter and rhyme is to keep the time means fundamental cohesion of the poem. But "metro" does not mean of course only one measure, but rather a rhythmic structure, ie a certain accentual scheme supports: for that reason alone not all verse, say, 14 syllables is an Alexandrian, just not every phrase of 11 syllables is a "pentameter" (as paradoxical as it sounds in English nomenclature). According
naturally to the demands made by each type of poetic composition, yet each poem, I would say that the media should try to stay cohesive in translation, if only partially, because if they are partial Always achievements, part is also the measure of loss: even without rhyme, rhythm gives the correct composition and some architecture. But where are impossible perfect rhymes, consonants, why before finally giving up the first try does not rhyme with assonance, which multiplies the choice and contributes in no small scale, unity of the poem? In this sense it represents a limit almost impossible to circumvent, at least, it has been for these versions, the repetition of the rhymes in the quatrains, which corresponds to the canonical form of Baroque sonnet mentioned above. In the epigrams, the problem of translation is much more serious, precisely because of the peculiar way in which the concept is articulated in poetry, and because it is paired. The epigram composed of two rhymed Alexandrine, a strongly enhanced by the structure caesuras materializes, said E. Brock 'the mystical dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis (God, man and his unit) with an accuracy with which few poetic forms correspond to the object. The various possibilities to place the permit caesuras also reflect on how appropriate multiple variations of this step triadic. "
The" dedication "and played Silesius epigrams ultimately belong to my version" Cherubic Pilgrim or spiritual Rhymes: gnomic and epigrammatic which lead to divine contemplation, "to my knowledge, the first complete, translated directly into English Wandersmann Cherubinischer, consisting of prologue and six books with a total of 1,675 epigrams, plus an appendix of ten sonnets the fifth book. For its implementation, the work, although unpublished, has almost ten years as a source took editing Georg Ellinger in Neudrücke of Braune, No. 136-138, Niemeyer, Halle, 18951, as the cloned H. Plard in its "Pèlerin Chérubinique", Paris, Aubier, 1940. The only version of Pilgrim circulating in the world English language, published by an editorial in Palma de Mallorca in 1985 without indication of sources, is evidently taken from the French version of the author. The transcript of the German text of the other poets from the name of Edgar Heder, Deutsche Dichtung des Barock, Carl Hanser Verlag, München, 1957.
