{"id":565,"date":"2016-02-04T11:44:37","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T10:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/?page_id=565"},"modified":"2016-08-09T14:01:54","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T12:01:54","slug":"classical-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/the-art-of-understanding\/the-art-of-song-writing\/classical-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"classical tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

While you check Goethe\u2019s\u00a0Erlk\u00f6nig<\/i>\u00a0for clues, there are some points of interest\u00a0to discuss. The first is the presence of an external narrator. A woman who\u00a0tells a story in which she is not personally involved. And that in consequence is\u00a0told from an outsider\u2019s point of view. We haven\u2019t seen that before. And\u00a0because a poem in this class does not contain a syllable more than necessary,\u00a0her two stanzas make her a vital part of her own words.<\/p>\n

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The more because Dorchen leaves seven syllables out, that feature in the 1815 Schubert song, which took its text from the newly published Goethe-edition. This difference accounts for seven of eight ‘e’s between brackets. The one from the printed editions that is ignored by both Schr\u00f6ter and Schubert, is the one in ‘d\u00fcster(en) Ort’. This one happens to devide the text roughly on its golden section in both numbers of words (‘Vater’) and numbers of lines (‘wiegen und tanzen’). This golden section line is placed exactly on the golden section of the eight deleted ‘e’s. And if deleted itself, it rather amazingly places ‘Vater’ on the golden section between soll(en) and\u00a0<\/span><\/em>d\u00fcster(en) as well. From which follows that the actual golden section of this sequence is on ‘singen’.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Which makes sense in a ballad.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We therefore have to take into account that Dorchen lives in a society where elves are as real as country life. As a result her opening line is not quite the neutral observation that it seems to be : what fool dares to brave the wild by night? A question of which the immediate answer spells disaster even before the story gets on its way : if the realm of elves is by night no place for adults, it is certainly no place for children. The second couplet of the opening stanza indeed points at some clear and present danger. As it should, because the night is a metaphor of death. Late autumn is another strong metaphor along the same line, because it announces the end to be near. A message that Goethe\u2019s ballad audibly communicates in the gale induced whispers of fallen leaves. Meaning that the son\u2019s fate is sealed by the time Dorchen has got halfway her narrative.<\/p>\n

Unavoidable fate is a basic feature of classical tragedy.\u00a0And when combined with dialogue, classical tragedy\u00a0is staged as classical drama.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Classical tragedy traditionally is a story of a hero (or heroine) who experiences a reversal of fortune set in motion by the gods\u00a0as a result of hubris.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We\u00a0therefore check for the three unities, while checking for hero,\u00a0hubris,\u00a0and\u00a0the hero\u2019s classification.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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Hubris is excess of self-esteem. Pride in most cases, but this time self-confidence is more likely.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Icarus class \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 : the hero(ine) whose hubris brings him-\/herself down .\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
\nDaedalus class \u00a0 : the hero(ine) whose hubris brings somebody else down.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And in consequence decide that this ballad has by definition to end\u00a0with a non-metaphorical demise. This, of course, does not allow the presence of\u00a0\u2018Oh\u2019s, but, on the other hand, the presence of supernatural beings is now\u00a0recognized as obligate to provide for some punishing force to bring death. And when night\u00a0and nature conspire to lay the boy low together, night\u2019s and nature\u2019s hidden\u00a0people (i.e. elves) have their part to play. The boy therefore can\u2019t be\u00a0hallucinating. In consequence the ballad has to rule out that he does, if only to\u00a0tell a consistent story. When it comes to that, Goethe is a craftsman who may\u00a0cleverly suggest a fever in order to keep things ambiguous, but who never uses\u00a0this fever to explain the Appearance away. Rather to the contrary, as those\u00a0amongst you who did not skip the basic wordsubstitution, must have noticed.\u00a0Like you must have noticed the perfect playing with rhythm, and the equally\u00a0perfect positioning of dialogue lines.<\/p>\n

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No, this does not mean that the rhythm itself is perfect. The setting by Loewe, for instance, moves at one point audibly out of step. And in order to preserve balance Dorchen has to adjust :<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
Der<\/span>\u00a0Vater dem\u00a0<\/span>grauset\u2019s, er reitet geschwind,<\/span>
\n<\/span>Er h\u00e4lt in den Armen das \u00e4chzend’ Kind.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
Confronted with the same problem, Schubert corrects Goethe’s slip-up by a later, and better considered, reaction :<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
Dem Vater\u00a0<\/span>grauset\u2019s, er reitet geschwind,
\nEr h\u00e4lt in\u00a0Armen das \u00e4chzende Kind.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you have noticed the anomaly as\u00a0well, you even may decide that the ballad\u2019s context as a prelude to Dorchen’s scheme proves significant after all. And elves are indeed rather ambiguous in the threat they constitute to mortals.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Goethe’s clever wordplay, the ballad apparently features a boy who is not exactly in danger of life. Yet,\u00a0the same boy falls at the same time victim to a classical tragedy. Which\u00a0definitely rules out physical survival. The result of this survey may therefore be perceived as somewhat confusing. Yet, this is what an author\u00a0refers to when talking about \u2018writing in layers\u2019 : the art of telling different\u00a0stories by a single text. We already have noticed the feature in\u00a0Come away,<\/i>\u00a0Death<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Let down the Bars.<\/i>\u00a0 Which makes a score of three out of four poems\u00a0that are linked by the word \u2018death\u2019. When it comes to writing in layers, this\u00a0looks like a random selection. And seems to indicate a fairly common practise. The more because\u00a0Dido’s lament, as the exception,<\/span>\u00a0is rather suggestive as well on the exact nature of her dying scene. At which observation the five discussed samples of poetry have prepared you\u00a0sufficiently to deal with the nemesis of literary criticism :<\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

the turn of the screw<\/b><\/p>\n

this link will be placed in the near future<\/p>\n

write a comment<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While you check Goethe\u2019s\u00a0Erlk\u00f6nig\u00a0for clues, there are some points of interest\u00a0to discuss. The first is the presence of an external narrator. A woman who\u00a0tells a story in which she is not personally involved. And that in consequence is\u00a0told from an … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":679,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/565\/revisions\/1196"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}