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What Is The Meaning Of Trauer I

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“Trauer I” is like the previous poem taken from Maximin in Der siebente Ring. It is the seventh of the twenty-one poems in the cycle, and the first of three with the title “Trauer” (Mourning). It consists of three stanzas of four lines in amphibrachic trimeter. After Maximin’s death, the speaker begs him to answer his call and expresses the wish to have died in his place. Maximin tells him to continue his life on earth and to praise the miracle of Maximin’s existence. The poem starts with the speaker’s plea to Maximin to wait, so he could confess to him something he did not manage to tell him when he was still alive. The request to wait suggests that Maximin has the divine power to grant the speaker’s wish and listen to him even though he is dead. …show more content…

Because of the prefix “er-”, the verb “erbeten” carries the connotation of creation besides meaning to beg or to pray for something. The speaker, who was the only one capable of perceiving Maximin as a God in “Kunfttag I”, does not just ask for Maximin, but appears almost to try to conjure his spirit. The verb “begehre” (desire), on the other hand, adds an erotic quality to his declaration. The third and fourth verse state the speaker's reasons for wanting to join Maximin in death: Living without him is a sin; dying for or instead of him would be an honour. The parallelism of the two verses, the alliteration “Der tag […]/Der tod” and the contrast of “sünde” (sin) and “ehre” (honour) highlight the speaker’s sentiment that life without Maximin would be meaningless. The comparison to sin seems to imply guilt. The speaker would be sinning if he did continue with his normal life. According to Morwitz (1969), “sünde” refers here to uselessly spent time, whereas “ehre” means elevation in the context of this poem. The suddenly heavy metre in the fourth verse adds to the sombre atmosphere of the stanza as it underlines the word “tod”

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