"Ein Maitag ist ein kategorischer Imperativ der Freude." Friedrich Hebbel's exuberant, poetic play on Kant's critical, ethical terms provides a delightful, lighthearted glide into May, a month for poetry and love. With his words let us devote this month's Kulturecke to the matter of springtime, poets and love.
The early master of love poetry was Walther von der Vogelweide. After 700 years he is still known as the poet of love. Should you visit his grave in the churchyard of the 11th century Neumuensterkirche in the center of Wuerzburg you will always find fresh flowers on the gravestone in any season of the year. The flowers have been placed there by hopeful lovers, for the legend has it that those who leave fresh flowers will soon have good fortune in love! When I take student groups to Wuerzburg we always visit Walther's grave where I tell the legend. When I return to check later, I always find the the students have brought new flowers. Thus I conclude that Walther's magic continues to work, even for visiting American students. Walther's poetry is a bit difficult for us to read in the original in that the German language has changed a good deal from its forms and structures of the Middle Ages, but with a bit of effort we can still enjoy the charms of his great expressions of medieval love (as well as his excellent poetry on other themes).
It was at the same time in history that Gottfried von Strassburg wrote of the tragic lovers, Tristan and Isolde. Their love was so intense and so driven by forces beyond their control that they lost all sense of caution or reason and in the end died tragically in each other's arms. So powerful and enduring was the story of their love that it lasted for centuries until Richard Wagner lifted it to even greater heights with his musical and theatrical treatment in the opera "Tristan und Isolde". Although we very seldom have an opportunity to see the live production of the opera locally, there are available some excellent video tape productions for those who might enjoy a venture this month into the darker, mysterious and consuming (Liebestod) forces of love as carried beyond space and time by the haunting music of Richard Wagner.
The great poet, Heinrich Heine, who was a contemporary of Wagner, wrote charming and sensitive love poetry but his critical and satiric love poems have been most remembered. Having been rejected by an early love he wrote a few lines which bring us along on his experience of love from the simplicity and youthful innocence of its beginnings through the rejection, pain and bitterness of the end of love:
Die blauen Veilchen der Aeugelein,
Die roten Rosen der Waengelein,
Die weissen Lilien der Haendchen klein,
Die bluehen und bluehen noch immerfort,
Und nur das Herzchen ist verdorrt.
Still smarting from the pains of love, Heine wrote the poem which internationally is perhaps the most widely known of all German poems, "Die Lorelei". Feel free to sing along the next time you are on a Rhine cruiser and pass the Lorelei cliff where so many sailors of olden times perished on the rocks, lured, no doubt, as in Heine's poem by the irresistible songs of the golden seductress high on the cliffs above the river.
But let us not leave Heine without pausing to remember one of his most sensitive and emotional love poems:
Du bist wie eine Blume,In praise of May itself, Friedrich von Logau wrote in the 17th century:
So hold und schoen und rein;
Ich schau dich an, und Wehmut
schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.Mir ist, als ob ich die Haende
Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt,
Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte So rein und schoen und hold.
Dieser Monat ist ein Kuss, den der Himmel gibt der Erde
Dass sie jetzund seine Braut, kuenftig eine Mutter werde.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the master poet of all times, wrote of the month of May in "Maifest":
Es dringen Blueten
Aus jedem Zweig
Und tausend Stimmen
Aus dem Gestraeuch
Und Freud und Wonne
Aus jeder Brust.
O Erd, o Sonne,
O Glueck, o Lust!
Return to Customs Page.