Kanteletar
The Kanteletar is a 1840 compiled by Elias Lönnrot collection of Finnish folk poetry. It is regarded as a lyrical " sister plant " of the Finnish national epic Kalevala. The Kanteletar includes 652 songs and ballads with a total of 22 201 verses. The name means " kantele - player," and refers to the traditional Finnish plucked string instrument with which the folk songs were accompanied.
Content
The Kanteletar is divided into three books. The first two contain 592 lyric songs, lyric- epic, the third 60 ballads. Additionally, 24 in the context of the Preface published "newer songs " and an appendix with ten ballads.
In the first book are " common songs " collected, by Theme - Wedding, pastors and children's songs - are ordered. The songs of the second book are by the presenters - and divided the event - girls, women, boys and men. The third book includes long ballads. Among them are both myths and legends as historical reports. Among the myths as part of the Christian ballad of the Virgin Mary ( 3:6 ). In The Death of the Bishop Heinrich ( 3:7 ) of the martyrdom of St. Henry of Uppsala is described.
Language and style
The Kanteletar is counted for so-called " kalevalischen seal ". This means that their meter, a trochaic tetrameter, and their stylistic devices, alliteration and parallelism, which correspond to the Kalevala. A more detailed description can be found in the section language and style in the article Kalevala.
Text example
Kanteletar 2:297. German paraphrase by Paul Herrman (1882).
Work history
The history of Kanteletar is closely linked with that of her sister work Kalevala. Both works were the philologist and physician Elias Lönnrot, who had recorded on several trips to Karelia orally transmitted folk songs, issued. Since they are based on the same sources, to Kalevala and Kanteletar overlap to some extent. The lyrical sections that involved Elias Lönnrot in the Kalevala, are also found in the Kanteletar.
While the epic poetry, so the heroic sagas, which are based on the Kalevala, and the ballads of Kanteletar were collected mainly in the Russian East Karelia, the lyrical songs are largely from the Finnish part of Karelia. Lönnrot himself refers in his preface to the places Kanteletar Lieksa Ilomantsi, Kitee, Tohmajärvi, Sortavala Jaakkima and Kurkijoki.
Published between 1829 and 1831 Elias Lönnrot as a product of his collecting trips a first collection of lyric poems, entitled Kantele taikka Suomen Kansan sekä Wanhoja että Nykysempiä Runoja yes Lauluja ( " Kantele or both old and newer runes and songs of the Finnish people "). 1840 finally appeared in the Kanteletar three issues.
Even if the Kanteletar, is to be regarded as an art product, to a lesser extent than the Kalevala, the composition of which is entirely Elias Lönnrot attributable to an epic with a cohesive plot, she was also edited in a considerable degree by its publisher. Complete Songs adjusted Lönnrot of dialectal influences. In the first two books a few tens of songs have remained apart from this linguistic unification unprocessed and enter the recorded source faithfully restored. The majority of the songs was one and the same song or several thematically related songs by the combination of different versions. Some songs like Eriskummallinen kantele ( " The Odd Kantele " ), an allegory on the nature of poetry, have no equivalent in the original source material, but are composed of disjointed individual verses and additives from Lonnrot spring. The ballads of the third book are edited to a lesser extent than the lyrical songs.
Reception
The tremendous influence that the popular poetry exercised in the era of National Romanticism to the Finnish culture, manifested mainly in the reception of the Kalevala. With the Kanteletar the artists employed mostly just on the edge; for example, created Akseli Gallen-Kallela in addition to his famous Kalevala illustrations 1897 Painting The fratricide, which is based on a Kanteletar song. The songs of the Kanteletar have often been set to music by both well-known composers such as Jean Sibelius ( Rakastava, 1893) or Aulis Sallinen ( Lauluja mereltä, 1974) than of folk music performers. Even the Finnish metal band Amorphis set to music in their album Elegy (1996 ) texts from the Kanteletar.
The Kanteletar has been translated in part in at least nine languages, including German. Even before publication of the Kalevala and Kanteletar came the Finnish folk poetry, even if only occasionally, abroad attention to. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem Finnish song is based on a translation of a Finnish folk song, which was later published in the Kanteletar ( 2:43 ).