Search

Lyric poetry, often regarded as the epitome of subjectivity in the realm of artistic expression, emerges from the depths of the poet's personal emotions. Hence, in the aesthetic landscape of the nineteenth-century Germany, it was excluded from the inventory of genuine art forms, all of which were deemed to be objective and disinterested. Associating lyric poetry with music in its origin and essence, Nietzsche extends his Schopenhauerian metaphysics of music to the lyric, making it a highly objective art reverberating from the abyss of existence, the Ur-Eine, expressing its intrinsic self-contradictory and agonizing nature. A similar understanding of the creative process of poetic composition in the lyric, which this article aims to elucidate, can also be found in some of Rūmī's ghazals and observations. These include a metaphysics of the unseen, a reunion through ecstasy and rapture, and a reflection and mirroring, initially through music and then through the lyric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the significance of German philosopher Rosa Luxemburg on German lyric poetry. It states that the philosopher's corpse was found in Berlin Landwehrkanal, five months after her assassination, by which time a poem by Nicolas Born was famed. It says that the poem "Ode an Berlin, 1918," by Iwan Goll used roses to symbolize Luxemburg. It adds that the poem "Weh Euch," by Johannes R. Becher depicts the impact of the incidents of killing.

On the occasion of Friedrich Schiller's 250th birthday, the author gives a comparative overview on the reception of Schiller's lyrics in music and popular tradition. In German literary scholarship, Schiller is well known as a dramatist and poet. His lyrics, on the other hand, which have been set to music by a huge number of composers, are nearly forgotten today - with the exception of Beethoven's "Ode of Joy." The popularity of his songs during the 19th and early 20th centuries differs significantly from the numerous musical versions shown in many song collections and song broadsheets as well as manuscripts and oral recordings from the popular singing culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the best known compositions from Robert Schumann's "song year" of 1840 is the ballad "Die beiden Grenadiere," op. 49, no. 1, to a poem by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). Any work about Napoleon, in any genre, was inevitably politically charged, both at the time Heine wrote his poem (perhaps in 1821, after hearing the news of the former emperor's death on 5 May 1821) and the date of its most famous musical setting (at the beginning of the decade when Germany was edging towards revolutionary outbreak). What impelled this 21st- century investigation of the song was curiosity about its confusing initial gesture in the piano, a tonic six-four chord as an anacrusis, leading to unharmonized tonic pitches on the downbeat of measure 1. Speculation about Schumann's intention led to an investigation of both men's attitudes towards Napoleon, especially the aftermath of his downfall. That Heine venerated Napoleon (who emancipated the Jews) cannot be doubted, but Heine, given to paradox and hagiographer. His poem is as much literary as it is political, with its borrowings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Herder's translation of the Scottish ballad "Edward." The First Empire, like all empires, is not merely historical fact but a confabulation of poetic legends. Heine's underlying concern, I would argue, was not Bonapartism per se but rising German nationalism of the sort he found ominous and that Schumann, to some as yet ill-defined degree, supported. But composer and poet both associated Napoleon with the ideals of the French Revolution in the days before it and the emperor succumbed to what is darkest in human nature. In my opinion, Schumann understood Heine's delineation of nationalistic fanaticism and found apt musical gestures for that understanding. Here, I trace the composer's lifelong sense of identification with Napoleon and the compositional decisions that tell of a political point of view in "Die beiden Grenadiere." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on conservative fantasy and traumatic awakening in romanticism reflected in German literature. Works of authors that portray such fantasies; Folk culture in the country reflecting romanticism of its characters.