(A baroque play about forsaken lovers and their attempts a...)
A baroque play about forsaken lovers and their attempts at revenge, until finally rejecting worldly ambition for piety. Cardenio has fallen in love with Olympia, but she chooses another man. Celinde has become smitten with Cardenio, but he only wants Olympia.
Andreas Gryphius, the critically-acclaimed, German poet and dramatist, tells the tragedy of a hedonist and seductress who are willing to disgrace, bribe, murder, consult witches and exhume the dead to achieve their ends. In this first translation of the seventeenth-century classic, Henry Whittlesey has recreated the lyric structure, mostly iambic hexameter, of the original play.
German and English Edition.
Andreas Gryphius was a German poet, dramatist and playwright, with his eloquent sonnets, which include "the Suffering, frailty of life and the world", he is considered one of the most important poets of the German baroque. He was one of the first improvers of German language and poetry.
Background
Andreas Gryphius was born on October 11, 1616 in Głogów, Poland. He was the son of Paullus Gryphius, an respected clergyman and a Lutheran archdeacon of Glogau, originally from Uthleben and Paullu's third wife, Anna (née Eberhardin), who was 32 years younger than her husband, the daughter of an businessman from Fraustadt, the councilor Jonas Deutschländer the Elder (died in 1661) and Anna Sachse.
The family name was originally "Greif" and had been Latinized to "Gryphius" by Andreas's paternal great-grandfather (Peter Greif of Heringen).
Education
Left early an orphan and driven from his native town by the troubles of the Thirty Years' War, Andreas Gryphius received his schooling in various places, but notably at Freistadt (Polish: Wschowa), where he enjoyed an excellent classical education.
Career
In 1634 Andreas Gryphius went to Danzig (Polish: Gdańsk) where he met professors Peter Crüger and Johann Mochinger at the Danzig Gymnasium, who introduced Andreas Gryphius to the new German language poetry. Crüger had for years close contacts to Martin Opitz, who became known as 'father of German poetry'. Greatly influenced by Crüger, he is the only one Gryphius dedicated poems to. Gryphius wrote Latin language poetry as well as German poems and a number of Sonetten.
The same year that Andreas Gryphius arrived, the printer Andreas Hünefeld published Martin Opitz's Buch von der deutschen Poeterey (Book of German Poetry). The same publisher printed Opitz's translation Tetrastichen des Pibrac and Antigone. Among Gryphius' benefactors was the city's secretary Michael Borck, who wrote a German version of the life of Jesus Christ. Coming from war riddled Silesia, taking refuge at the big international harbor and a Polish city, greatly stimulated Andreas Gryphius. In 1635 he published his second epos of Herodes, Dei Vindicis Impetus et Herodis Interitus. He dedicated this to the city state council.
In 1636, while still in Danzig, Andreas Gryphius published the Parnassus renovatus in praise of his mentor and patron, the eminent jurist Georg Schönborner. Later the same year he became the tutor of Schönborner's two sons, on Schönborner's estate near Freystadt, in Silesia (today, Kożuchów, Poland). On 30 November 1637, Schönborner recognized Gryphius's poetic talent by bestowing upon him the title of poeta laureatus and master of philosophy, as well as a patent of nobility (of which Gryphius, however, never made use). Schönborner died less than a month later, on 23 December 1637.
While staying with Schönborner, Andreas Gryphius completed his first collection of poems, Sonnete ("Sonnets"), which was published in 1637 by Wigand Funck in Lissa (today Leszno, Poland), and is also known as the Lissaer Sonettbuch, after the town.
In 1632, Andreas Gryphius had witnessed the pillaging and burning of the Silesian town of Freystadt by Swedish troops, and immortalized the event in his poem Fewrige Freystadt. Also in 1637 he went to continue his studies at Leiden, where he remained for six years, both hearing and delivering lectures.
In 1635 with the Prager Frieden (Peace of Prague), the Habsburgs took control over in Silesia again and persecuted Protestants and closed their churches. In 1638 Paul Gryphius, the brother of Andreas, received a position as Superindendant at Crossen an der Oder (Krosno Odrzańskie) in Brandenburg from the Elector Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg. Paul was for several years banned from Silesia for of being a Protestant, and Andreas dedicated and sent him several poems for the start of his new position.
After travelling in France, Italy and South Germany, Gryphius settled in 1647 at Fraustadt, where Andreas Gryphius began his dramatic work, and in 1650 was appointed syndic of Glogau, a post he held until his death.
Achievements
Andreas Gryphius was one of the first improvers of German language and poetry.
At the age of 33, Andreas Gryphius married Rosina Deutschländer, with whom he had seven children, Konstantin, Theodor, Maria, Elisabeth, Christian, Anna Rosina and Daniel.
