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Analysis Of Waller Im Schnee

Decent Essays
The eighth part of Waller im Schnee describes the separation of the two companions from the previous poems through the image of the destruction of a flower that is dying despite the speaker’s good care. He prefers to break it rather than to watch it wither slowly and be constantly reminded of better days. The poem consists of three stanzas with alternate rhymes. Like the surrounding poems, it is written in regular iambic pentameter. The first stanza sets the scene and describes the relationship between the speaker and the flower. The good care the flower receives is brought out in several ways. Two of the rhyme words, “hege” (to tend) and “pflege” (care, nurture), the latter even with the preceding adjective “guten” (good), mention it directly. The flower has the best place in the room, namely the window. It grows in a grey piece of porcelain or ceramic where it is kept safe from frost. The alliteration “Verwahrt vorm froste” (v. 2) emphasises the protection its container offers. Oddly, the flower grows in a shard, whose broken state and grey colour suggest the care it receives is not as good as the speaker claims. Perhaps, he has nothing else to put the flower…show more content…
The assonance “frühern blühenden” (v. 5) conveys its former beauty. The speaker seems to be profoundly affected by the change in the flower and wants to eradicate (“merzen”, v. 6) all traces of it from his memory. Hence, he takes a sharp tool, probably a knife, to break it. The exaggeration “scharfe waffen” (sharp-edged weapons) makes his sudden action seem even more dramatic. According to Lentz, he wants the ugliness to superimpose the memory of the flower’s beauty. Thus, the speaker tries to take control and prevail over his object of desire. Lentz elaborates further that this act of desperation is also a subtle kind of suicide of the speaker and the poet respectively, as the flower is also a symbol for
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