Die Götter Griechenlandes

The gods Graecia is a poem by Friedrich Schiller from 1788; it was first published in Wieland " Teutscher Mercury "; a second - shorter and content " defused " - version Schiller published in 1800.

Content

The poem describes the life and natural view of the characterized as happy and harmonious era antiquity and describes the Christian era in return as a state of loss, sadness, alienation and estrangement. The reason for this is Schiller for the replacement of the diversity of the ancient world of gods that had permeated nature and human life world by a single, relatively abstract and distant Christian God. Since the gods were still human / people were divine (V 191f. ). Only in poetry live the ideal of the ancient world continues further: What immortal in song shall live, / need in life to perish (last verses of the second version). The poem is considered an important example of the Ancient enthusiasm in the German intellectual history.

Form

The poems consists of 25 stanzas of eight verses à with five or vierhebigen ( closing lines ) trochees. Exactly half of the poem is considered the description of the idyllic antiquity, which breaks off in the middle of the 13th verse. Where do I step? This sad silence / she announces to me to my Creator? (V. 101 f )

Reception

Shortly after the publication of the poem was criticized as an attack on Christianity, particularly vehemently by Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg. He thus set off a debate about art, antiquity and religion in poetry, in which Georg Forster, Theodor Körner and August Wilhelm Schlegel participate.