约瑟夫·弗赖赫尔·冯·艾兴多尔夫

生平

(1788-03-10)1788年3月10日，约瑟夫·冯·艾兴多夫在普鲁士王国上西里西亚拉齐布日出生。他的父亲是阿道夫·冯·艾兴多夫男爵（Adolf Freiherr von Eichendorff ），一名普鲁士军官。他的母亲是卡罗利妮（Karoline，出生名Freiin von Kloche），来自天主教会贵族家庭。自1805年起，约瑟夫分别在哈雷和海德堡学习法律。1808年，他走遍欧洲，访问巴黎与维也纳。1810年，他回到家乡帮助父亲经营家族地产。同年，他在柏林结识了海因里希·冯·克莱斯特与约翰·戈特利布·费希特等。1813年到1815年，他参加拿破仑战争，在吕措陆战队中当志愿军。

从1816年起，约瑟夫在普鲁士担任行政工作。起初他在弗罗茨瓦夫的司法机关里工作。1821年，他在格但斯克担任学校检察员，1824年在柯尼斯堡担任此职。1831年，他举家迁往柏林，在那里为几个部门工作后，于1844年退休。1857年11月26日（1857-11-26），约瑟夫在上西里西亚尼斯逝世。

Joseph Karl Benedikt Freiherr von Eichendorff (German: [fɔn ˈaɪçn̩dɔʁf]; 10 March 1788 – 26 November 1857) was a German poet, novelist, playwright, literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Eichendorff was one of the major writers and critics of Romanticism. Ever since their publication and up to the present day, some of his works have been very popular in German-speaking Europe.

Eichendorff first became famous for his 1826 novella Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (freely translated: Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing) and his poems. The Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing is a typical Romantic novella whose main themes are wanderlust and love. The protagonist, the son of a miller, rejects his father's trade and becomes a gardener at a Viennese palace where he subsequently falls in love with the local duke's daughter. As, with his lowly status, she is unattainable for him, he escapes to Italy – only to return and learn that she is the duke's adopted daughter, and thus within his social reach. With its combination of dream world and realism, Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing is considered to be a high point of Romantic fiction. One critic stated that Eichendorff's Good-for-Nothing is the "personification of love of nature and an obsession with hiking." Thomas Mann called Eichendorff's Good-for-Nothing a combination of "the purity of the folk song and the fairy tale."

Many of Eichendorff's poems were first published as integral parts of his novellas and stories, where they are often performed in song by one of the protagonists. The novella Good-for-Nothing alone contains 54 poems.

Biography

Origin and early youth

Eichendorff, a descendant of an old noble family, was born in 1788 at Lubowitz Castle in Lubowitz near Ratibor in Upper Silesia, at that time part of the Kingdom of Prussia (now Łubowice near Racibórz, Poland).……

College days

Together with his brother Wilhelm, Joseph studied law and the humanities in Halle an der Saale (1805–1806), a city near Jena, which was a focal point of the Frühromantik (Early Romantics).……

Growth of a Romanticist

Artistic influences

The two writers who had the greatest early influence on Eichendorff's artistic development were Friedrich Schlegel, who established the term romantisch (romantic) in German literature, and Joseph Görres.……

Eichendorff's poetical style

Range

Although Eichendorffs poetry includes many metric forms ranging from very simple elegiac couplets and stanzas to sonnets, his main artistic focus was on poems imitating folk songs.

A comparison of forms shows that Eichendorff's lyricism is "directly influenced by Brentano and Arnim".

Naturalness and artificiality

Following the model of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Eichendorff uses simple words ('naturalness'), adding more meaning ('artificiality') than dictionary definitions would indicate.……

Religiosity

For a long time it had been argued that Eichendorff's view of Romanticism had been subordinate to religious beliefs. More recently, however, Christoph Hollender has noted that Eichendorff's late religious and political writings were commissioned works, while his poetry represents a highly personal perspective.

Eichendorff's own résumé

Eichendorff summed up the Romantic epoch stating that it "soared like a magnificent rocket sparkling up into the sky, and after shortly and wonderfully lighting up the night, it exploded overhead into a thousand colorful stars."

Works

Volumes of poetry

First publication of some Poems in Ast's Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Kunst, under the pseudonym «Florens»; Heidelberg, (1808),

Gedichte von Joseph Freiherrn von Eichendorff, Verlag Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, (1837)

Julian, story in verses, (1853)

Robert und Guiscard, epic poem, (1855)

Lucius, epic poem, (1855)

Narrative texts

Novels

Ahnung und Gegenwart.……

Novellas

Die Zauberei im Herbste, (1808/09), published posthumously in 1906,