Walther yon der Vogelweide
Remy, Arthur F. J.
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE By ARTHUR F. J. REMY THE RECENT announcement of Professor Delbrueck that the world's greatest poet is Walther von der Vogelweide, made quite a stir in this prosy...
...to be its greatest epic poet as well would be little short of a miracle...
...Even in his lifetime, Walther's preeminence in his art was freely acknowledged...
...I do not mean the lands or the gold of lords...
...Rival candidates contended for the imperial dignity, and were alternately supported and opposed by the Pope...
...It is hardly surprising that the greatest of mediaeval lyric poets is not better known, and that the announcement of Professor Delbrueck should have startled the literary world...
...So the poet answers those critics who reproach him for tuning his song so low...
...in an English translation it becomes usually hopelessly prosaic...
...Moreover, she is married to some one else, and all this wooing turns to art for art's sake...
...But there is no justification whatsoever for this...
...These alone constitute a literary legacy which deserves to be better known in the English-speaking world than it is today...
...Walther's range covers both the love-lyric as well as the spriich or saying, which includes the political poem—and in both fields he is equally the master...
...but he will not abide by these conventions, and addresses, a real love song to a maiden of low degree— "Those were never touched by love who only love for wealth and beauty...
...But, like much of the poet's work, they are too manifestly the expression of partisan bias to pass uncritically for historic evidence...
...The religious spirit of the poet, always strong, deepens as the shadows of life lengthen...
...To obtain a proper appreciation of mediaeval poetry, is at best a difficult task for a modern reader —especially, when, as in the case of the lyric, so much depends on form...
...They were no doubt inspired by patriotic motives—but patriotic fervor is often apt to cloud the judgment...
...the Italian aspect of the controversy he does not consider at all...
...We have referred to the testimony of Gottfried von Strassburg, who in a well known passage of his Tristan raises the question as to who is to lead the chorus of nightingales after Reinmar's death, and unhesitatingly assigns this leadership to the meisterinne von der Vogelweide...
...The lover is always patient and submissive, and the lady is generally cruel...
...As one of the most eminent of German scholars, Konrad Burdach, admits in this case—"Prudence and moderation were then not on the side of Walther...
...Heine called him the greatest of German lyrists...
...The dogma of the Virgin Birth was particularly dear to him, as is evident from the frequent allusion to it...
...If there be courtly conventions here, they are no fetter to the poet's genius...
...their German silver makes its way into my foreign shrine...
...Even when his theme is the conventional praise of a noble lady, it is treated with a charm and a vividness totally unknown to the average minnesong...
...shortly after this he must have composed his swan-song—that noble and pathetic elegy in which he laments the joys of his vanished youth, and exhorts the knights to expiate their sins by taking the cross in the service of God...
...Here we get a glimpse of the strong antipathy between German and Italian, already existing in the thirteenth century, and destined to bear such bitter fruit 300 years later...
...What tremendous effect such lines had at the time may be seen from a passage in the work of a contemporary poet, Thomasin of Zirclaria, who blames Walther for having led thousands astray so that they flouted the Pope's command...
...Ye priests, just eat your fowl and drink your wine, and let the silly Germans fast...
...There are troubadours whose work possesses individuality and interest—we need but recall Pierre Vidal and Bertran de Born—but this is due not so much to their love songs, as to their political verses...
...The famous lines in which Walther gives expression to this suspicion are some of the most powerful ever penned by a political pamphleteer in their appeal to national passion...
...By fusing the art of the troubadour with the directness and simplicity of the folk-song, he becomes the precursor of the lyric art of Goethe and of Heine...
...its last words shape themselves into prayer...
...The situations depicted are vague and seldom have reality...
...He may know that a minnesinger of this name lived in the middle-ages, and he may call to mind the legend which tells us how the minstrel left a legacy to feed the birds on his tomb—which legacy was then diverted by an unsentimental abbot to the use of himself and his monks...
...The character of Pope Innocent III is woefully misrepresented when he calls him false and deceitful...
...It was an art for a class...
...The answer is ready...
...If Walther is really the author of the Nibelungenlied, as Professor Delbrueck claims, he may well be assigned the very first place among the world's poets...
...It is a charming one, but it gives a very one-sided idea of Walther, who was by no means a mere "bard of love," warbling tunes in birdlike fashion, but a most virile and undaunted fighter in all the struggles of the turbulent thirteenth century...
...Sir May, for all I care, you may be March before my lady I would lose...
...Soon after the poet's death, legend took possession of his figure...
...In the minnesong he soon breaks through the narrow bounds of courtly convention, and makes this poetic form the expression of a sincere and genuine love...
...Moreover, it must be remembered that the musical element was an essential factor in producing an effect upon the audience...
...This esteem would be more universal if adequate translations would make him better known...
...Walther's appeal is particularly through his consummate artistry, and this is the very thing that is sacrificed in translation...
...The poet flung himself passionately into the strife and, though he changed sides repeatedly, supporting in succession Philip, Otto, and Frederick, he was at all times an opponent of the papal policy...
...What joy, the poet asks, can equal that of a perfect day in May when the flowers peep from the grass as if they were laughing at the bright sun, and the little birds are singing their sweetest strain...
...Alas, how can they love...
...The German people suffered all the horrors of civil war, and as successive rulers fell under the ban of the Church, confusion reigned in the religious realm and consciences were sorely troubled...
...but such translations do not now exist, nor are they likely to be forthcoming...
...The militant Protestant theologians of the sixteenth century who ransacked the older German literature for their Catalogue of Witnesses of the Truth, and who managed to put in Otfried—the pious old monk of Weissenburg, who versified the story of the Gospels in the ninth century—would surely have included Walther had they but known him...
...In such poems we find the language of the heart and their appeal is to all time...
...Walther certainly does scant justice to the Pope's position...
...Still more unjust is the insinuation that the motive in ordering the collection for a crusade in 1212 was avarice...
...and his devotion to the Mother of God finds fervent expression in more than one passage—particularly in the famous leich or ode, which begins with an invocation to the Trinity, and arranges the whole Catholic creed practically in the form of a prayer...
...Longfellow has made the story familiar to English readers...
...I, poor man, would merit rich again...
...their goods shall all be mine...
...The Pope is represented chuckling gleefully as he exclaims to his foreign cardinals— "I have brought two Almans (the foreign term for Germans) under one crown that they may disturb and waste the realm...
...The marvels of his art will reveal themselves only to those who can read the middle-high German originals...
...In 1874, a monument was erected to the poet at Botzen, in the Tyrol—now Italianized as Bolzano...
...In a special song composed for the crusade of 1228, he gives vent to his joy at the sight of the Holy Places...
...but until this claim is substantiated by critical scholarship, which seems unlikely, his fame will rest on his minnesongs, and spriiche or poetic sayings...
...whate'er they say, I love thee and would hold thy glass ring above the gold of a queen...
...in fact it is as a musician that Walther wins the well known tribute of praise from his contemporary and fellow-poet, Gottfried, the illustrious author of Tristan and Iseult...
...To be the greatest lyrist of such an era might seem to be glory enough...
...Could I but undertake the blessed journey over sea, then I would sing for joy and never more cry woe...
...Roguishly the poet pretends for a moment to waver in order to make his decision with all the more emphasis— "Alas, if one should bid me choose that I must leave the one for the other, how right quickly my choice would be made...
...Here there is color, movement, and animation, and the pretended question at the end gives the whole a dramatic touch...
...Above all, the poet's piety is manifest in his crusading songs, in which he urges princes and knights to do battle for the Lord and to win back His Holy Land...
...Its closing words express the very essence of the crusading spirit at its noblest— "Would to God I were worthy of the victory...
...He continued to live in the traditions of the mastersingers, who claimed him as one of the founders of their craft...
...He lived in a turbulent age, when the long drawn-out struggle between papal and imperial power was approaching its climax...
...If Walther had been no more than a minnesinger he would have small claim on the attention of the modern public...
...When a lovely, noble woman, well robed and well adorned, goes walking in modest dignity in the midst of other women, then all the glories of May will go unheeded...
...But the poet's interest was not confined to courtly love...
...Then came the centuries when all things mediaeval were forgotten, and Walther shared the general oblivion...
...WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE By ARTHUR F. J. REMY THE RECENT announcement of Professor Delbrueck that the world's greatest poet is Walther von der Vogelweide, made quite a stir in this prosy world of ours, and many a reader has no doubt tried to refresh his memory on the subject of this poet...
...this crown the soldier might win with his spear...
...A minnesong loses much of its witchery in a modern German version...
...But we do know that this was one of his last poems...
...his last song breathes a spirit of melancholy resignation...
...its spirit was narrow, its phraseology stereotyped, its form artificial...
...Like other mediaeval poets, Walther assails papal policies and personages, but never the Papacy itself...
...The ordinary courtly love poem, September 2, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL whether French or German, is a very conventional affair, in the production of which the brain had a greater share than the heart...
...It is easy to understand why these lines have often been cited by Protestant historians as proof of the iniquity of Rome...
...His fulminating invectives against the Pope and the clergy have been likened to our modern editorials in the press, and the comparison is very apt...
...The poet's anti-papal diatribes have also been adduced as proof of his reforming tendencies, and on the strength of them he has been called a precursor of Luther...
...Nowhere does he show the least disposition to question the authority of the Church or its dogmas...
...And to the maiden he declares— "Thou art beautiful and hast enough...
...I myself would want to wear the crown eternally...
...before the end of the thirteenth century, the unknown poet of the Wartburg Minstrel Contest introduces Walther as one of the participants in that mythical event...
...Wagner in his Meistersinger gives to his romantic hero the poet's name Walther, and makes him proclaim himself the pupil of the old German master, whose heaven-inspired song triumphs over the pedantic rules of the poetic craftsmen...
...Modern German versions are still the best means for becoming acquainted with him...
...If this has not settled the moot question of his birthplace, it is at any rate solid evidence of the esteem in which he is held by his compatriots...
...But since the re-discovery of the middle-ages, the poet's fame among his countrymen has steadily grown...
...Did he participate in this crusade ? We do not know for certain...
...I have urged them to my stoc (the contribution box...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 17
