Epigrams by Goethe and Schiller
In the last years of Schiller's life, Goethe and Schiller shared the basic aesthetic questions of epic and dramatic poetry and probably also through passionate discussions mutually to great achievements animated. Your epigrams are well known.
This is what epigrams express
- The meaning of the term epigram can be derived from the Greek: Epigramma means the inscription. The original use of the word epigram is known as a designation for grave inscriptions. But later the word was also used to describe poems.
- Above all, the term epigram is used when the poet or writer has tried to use epigrams to point out certain human behavior. Epigrams were, so to speak, a poetic and reserved and yet, between the lines, thoroughly open and understandable, even clear, possibility of criticism. By means of epigrams the poet could accuse another person of certain behavior without being punished for it.
The construction of epigrams
- The poem is usually short and simple. First of all, for example, a certain character trait is determined in a certain person. The whole thing can also be kept general.
- So it doesn't always have to be a specific person. It is also possible that the poet wants to criticize a certain general social condition or the like or want to shake people up. This still happens without judgment. Then the poet comments on what has been written in order to end the poem with a punchline.
The epigrams of Goethe and Schiller
- Goethe and Schiller worked a lot together, although they were strangers for years and actually didn't really like each other. Schiller even once described Goethe as an egoist who makes people unhappy. Nevertheless, their subsequent collaboration was successful after their discussion in 1794. They were friends until Schiller's death in 1805.
- In the "Dignity of Man" from the collection of epigrams by the poets Goethe and Schiller, for example, it is about the fact that people in poverty do not only rely on food and home or Having to do without a home, but also lose your human dignity through all these privations.
- The poets believed that a person would automatically regain this dignity as soon as they were given food, shelter, and clothing. This is expressed in the final sentence "if you have covered your nakedness, the dignity gives itself out".
- Goethe and Schiller also made fun of revising existing epigrams. This is how, for example, the epigram "Guter Rath" came about, in which they exchanged words.
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