ゲーテの「湖上」について : Versuch einer Interpretation

Abstract

The poem " Auf dem See" is one of the young Goethe's finest lyrics. I believe that many striking characteristics of this poem fully show the essential nature of the new German poetry of the 18th century. In " Auf clem See " all the verbs are in the present tense. As Goethe sailed on the Ziiriches See, he sang of his immediate vivid impressions of the scenes that passed before his eyes. The fleeting moment, given eternal life, becomes the poem. The poet does not sing of past experiences as ended. The process of present life itself is Goethe's poem. For Goethe, the interval between experience and composition had almost vanished. (I have compared Goethe's " Auf dem See " with a sonnet by Petrarch written in the past tense.) Every word of Goethe's vividly and dynamically expresses the transitory present moment in its actual existence. Thus, we can see Goethe's original and bold attempt particularly in his adjectival use of present participles and his coinage of compound verbs expressing change and motion. In verbal expression, Goethe learned much from Shakespeare, and further developed what he learned by his own individual methods. The object of the young Goethe's poetry is to sing the life of the moment itself, and to put into words, not what has already ' become' (das gewordene) or ' being' (das Sein), but constantly changing life and ' becoming' (das Werden) itself. Gundolf calls Goethe's poem ' Klangleib'. I have shown that the spirit of the Deutsche Bewegung since the latter half of the 18th century (or of German Romanticism in the broad sense) has already achieved its purest lyrical form of expression in Goethe's " Auf dem See ".