/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19041360]

Anyone have the quote by Goethe saying the Nibelungenlied is equally a classic as Homer?

[Anonymous No.19041392]

god I hate g*rmans

[Anonymous No.19041397]

>>19041360
nigga what kind of name is "Nibelungenlied"

[Anonymous No.19041406]

>>19041360
I remember him saying the opposite

[Anonymous No.19041416]

Holy cope.

[Anonymous No.19041469]

>>19041406
>Goethe also received a copy of Myller’s work, but it was unbound, and he did not read it; only the warning of the mermaidens to Hagen, which happened to lie on top of one of the loose signatures, attracted his attention for a moment. In after years, however, when in conversation with Eckermann he defined the classic as health and the romantic as disease, he added: “For that reason the Nibelungenlied is classic like Homer, for both are healthy and strong.” In another place he wrote: “The acquaintance with this poem marks a new stage in the history of the nation’s culture.”

[Anonymous No.19041541]

eckermann convos 2. April 1829
>We then came to the newest French poets, and the meaning of the terms “classic” and “romantic.”
>“A new expression occurs to me,” said Goethe, “which does not ill define the state of the case. I call the classic healthy, the romantic sickly. In this sense, the ‘Nibelungenlied’ is as classic as the ‘Illiad,’ for both are vigorous and healthy. Most modern productions are romantic, not because they are new, but because they are weak, morbid, and sickly; and the antique is classic, not because it is old, but because it is strong, fresh, joyous, and healthy. If we distinguish ‘classic’ and ‘romantic’ by these qualities, it will be easy to see our way clearly.”

garbled versions make it sound way more general than he meant it.

also interesting: 21. march 1830:
>The idea of the distinction between classical and romantic poetry, which is now spread over the whole world, and occasions so many quarrels and divisions, came originally from Schiller and myself. I laid down the maxim of objective treatment in poetry, and would allow no other; but Schiller, who worked quite in the subjective way, deemed his own fashion the right one, and to defend himself against me, wrote the treatise upon ‘Naïve and Sentimental Poetry.’ He proved to me that I myself, against my will, was romantic, and that my ‘Iphigenia,’ through the predominance of sentiment, was by no means so classical and so much in the antique spirit as some people supposed.
>“The Schlegels took up this idea, and carried it further, so that it has now been diffused over the whole world; and every one talks about classicism and romanticism—of which nobody thought fifty years ago.

[Anonymous No.19041590]

>>19041360
In Werther he says Ossian is better than Homer

[Anonymous No.19041891]

Relevant
> After having been forgotten for two hundred years, the Nibelungenlied manuscript C was rediscovered by Jacob Hermann Obereit in 1755.[77] That same year, Johann Jacob Bodmer publicized the discovery, publishing excerpts and his own reworkings of the poem. Bodmer dubbed the Nibelungenlied the "German Iliad" ("deutsche Ilias"), a comparison that skewed the reception of the poem by comparing it to the poetics of classical epic. Bodmer attempted to make the Nibelungenlied conform more closely to these principles in his own reworkings of the poem, leaving off the first part in his edition, titled Chriemhilden Rache, in order to imitate the in medias res technique of Homer. He later rewrote the second part in dactylic hexameter under the title Die Rache der Schwester (1767).[78] Bodmer's placement of the Nibelungenlied in the tradition of classical epic had a detrimental effect on its early reception: when presented with a full edition of the medieval poem by Christoph Heinrich Myller, King Frederick II famously called the Nibelungenlied "not worth a shot of powder" ("nicht einen Schuß Pulver werth").[79] Goethe was similarly unimpressed, and Hegel compared the epic unfavorably to Homer.[80] The epic nevertheless had its supporters, such as August Wilhelm Schlegel, who called it a "great tragedy" ("große Tragödie") in a series of lectures from 1802/3.[81] Many early supporters sought to distance German literature from French Classicism and belonged to artistic movements such as Sturm und Drang.[82]

[Anonymous No.19042572]

>>19041891
Do you know when an authentic edition was first published?

[Anonymous No.19042919]

>>19041360
After hundreds of years of Euros larping as Greeks, Goethe wanted a bit of change and decided to larp as a German instead