Eduard Mörike, The Idyll of Lake Constance
Edited by Ray Ockenden
Click cover to enlarge Booksellers & libraries: | Modern Humanities Research Association
ISBN: 978-1-839544-75-0 (hardback) • RRP £51.99, $69.99, €59.99 ISBN: 978-1-839544-76-7 (paperback) • RRP £18.99, $26.99, €22.99 ISBN: 978-1-839544-77-4 (JSTOR ebook) Eduard Mörike (1804–1875), German poet and fiction writer, is probably best-known in the English-speaking world for his beautiful late Romantic poems of love and nature, which many composers set to music. A large number of his poems were notably turned into Lieder by Hugo Wolf. With regard to his prose work, he is mostly remembered for his charming story about a (fictional) day in the life of Mozart, Mozart on the Way to Prague. In the 1840s, ten years before writing that novella, Mörike brought together his love of classical literature, his narrative skills, and his poetic gift in his Idyll of Lake Constance in seven cantos, written in classical hexameter verse. This delightful narrative poem concerns the life, loves, and mischief of young people living by Lake Constance (‘der Bodensee’ in German) at the end of the eighteenth century; it includes an extended glimpse of life there in the Middle Ages and of older folk in the same setting fifty years later. It combines descriptions of the Lake and its surroundings, ancient legends, entertaining tales of the retribution visited upon greedy people, sensitive character studies, and contains the most moving love scene Mörike ever penned. The setting of the poem reflects Mörike’s overwhelming enthusiasm for the scenery of Lake Constance, the result of a fortnight’s visit in September 1840, while the love episode was clearly prompted by the beginning of his relationship with his wife-to-be Margarethe. The variety and complexity of Mörike’s storytelling, the originality and humour with which it is spiced, and the subtlety of its emotional characterisation make it a richly rewarding work. This first translation of the Idyll into English retains the classical hexameters of the original and hence the sonorities and the playfulness of Mörike’s witty narrative. The edition will be of interest to students and lovers of German literature and of lyric poetry in general. Bibliography entry: Ockenden, Ray (ed.), Eduard Mörike, The Idyll of Lake Constance, New Translations, 10 (MHRA, 2028) First footnote reference: 35 Eduard Mörike, The Idyll of Lake Constance, ed. by Ray Ockenden, New Translations, 10 (MHRA, 2028), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Ockenden, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Ockenden, Ray (ed.). 2028. Eduard Mörike, The Idyll of Lake Constance, New Translations, 10 (MHRA) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Ockenden 2028: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Ockenden 2028: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Eduard-Mörike-Idyll-Lake-Constance www.mhra.org.uk/publications/nt-10 |
Spring 2028