Enoch Arden

Enoch Arden is a ballad by Alfred Tennyson, published in 1864.

Action

After an accident, the former fisherman Enoch Arden leaves his wife Annie and three children to feed in the merchant navy his family. He is shipwrecked and stranded with two companions on a deserted island. The other two die. Only after ten years versa Arden back. His wife, who thought him dead, now has a child of his old friend Philip, whom she also married. Enoch decides not to reveal neither his wife, his children, and dies of a broken heart.

Reception

The epic poem was rapid spread and was a tremendous success. This is shown, inter alia, the twelve different translations into German, which appeared by 1914, extensive adaptations in the early silent film era ( inter alia with Lillian Gish ), processing an initially highly successful opera, a setting known as melodrama and extensive lecture tours, on which Ernst von Possart reciting the work on this very music of Richard Strauss. After the First World War, the ballad was gradually forgotten and is now also the study of literature as a barely significant work of the author, which do not belong despite initial public success to the enduring works of world literature. 1984 still reading in the German speaking again Gert Westphal the story for a little successful recording session a Swiss record company a.