Occasional poetry

The term occasional poetry ( poetry casual and parallel word formations on - poetry ) referred to in the literature seal that is written in a special occasion out mostly from a commercial point (time signature ). Goethe used in poetry and truth, and in the conversations with Eckermann the term " occasional poem " in a less pejorative sense of poems which owe their existence to the inspiration of the moment, which is now being held in the poem.

History

The area dates back to the ancient tradition that already Herrscherlob Poems in battles and works on political events offered. Unclear are the limits to the seal under patronage. Skald compacted for their Gefolgsherren, medieval poets wrote for farms that they talked and offered in return political propaganda.

For commercial bourgeois business opportunity seal with the advent of the print was The tradition goes back here to the Latin poetry of the humanists. From the 16th to the 18th century you could get to any opportunities poems, " Carmina " the non-specific term of time to submit, in most major cities in Germany. The most important occasions offered weddings, christenings, funerals, PhD graduations, urban or courtly festivities.

The produced on the occasion towards goods mostly appreciated only in the secondary aspects sung or the occasions of individual and personal nature standards and stereotypes dominated the occasional poetry. Ordered works had to be ready to print within a few hours and have a uniform quality standard to create that all standards fulfilling the object of prestige customers - they were useless therefore ( so the criticism in the later 18th century ) for self-expression of the poet. The business was profitable. Benjamin Wedel, Christian Friedrich Hunold publisher, noted in 1731 that Hunold could be regularly pay for commissioned works with a ducat ( 2 2/3 Reichstaler ) (for comparison: Two Reichstaler received the excellent paid novelist for a printed sheet of eight pages novel). It was printed the work, depending on the price range. Either cheap smaller quart or more expensive folio format Runs of 50 or 100 copies were distributed at the end of the memory among the guests. The notes Simon badger do not give deeper insight into the business practices and production conditions. Even more revealing and important as a source are the diaries of the Nuremberg poet Sigmund von Birken.

High higher than the actual mission work, the production was located, the poet without being asked, but usually published on major policy events (Throne ascents, Throne anniversaries, victories in battles ) in anticipation of a monetary gift or lucrative patronage.

The production of occasional poetry was greatly criticized by the late 17th century. " Rags stuff" Hunold called the product - and sold them in order not to endanger his own reputation, in Hamburg on straw men. Johann Christoph Gottsched criticized the practice of occasional poetry in more detail. You contributed nothing to the area of poetry, just literature. Goethe rehabilitation of the genus was already embossed with the turn into the 19th century nostalgia. Here a genre was lost, which was not yet committed to the rules of high art: " The occasional poem, the first and ächteste all kinds of poetry, was contemptible to a degree that the nation can even now do not reach it to a concept of high valency " ( my Life 10). A reorientation of the concept of Goethe aspired to at the same moment: "All my poems are occasional poems, they are excited by the reality and have it land. Gripped by poems from the air, I do not believe. " ( Eckermann 1, 38)

Occasional poetry was first cultivated in Latin, and later also in German. In the 1630s occasional poems came into dialects. For the Low German, this marks the transition from Middle Low German standardized to an oriented at the local pronunciation spelling, which is why the occasional poetry has high value as sources for historical dialectology.

The end of the genre came in civil life with the turn of the 19th century. The occasional poem was a private matter, and exists today to private parties as mostly witty poem reciting a gifted this usually in the form of a speech in verse. In the political arena one end of the production is in sight, the word is no longer used for political propaganda in poetry.