Explicit Remarks Research Articles

Gunter Eich and the Birds

The vogellin occupied a prominent position in the minnesinger's array of images; in baroque lyrics, the fliigelreiche Scharen formed an indispensable element of the scenery; Ibycus' cranes were but some of the many fowl to be encountered in classical poetry; romantic literature was alive with the song of nightingales and larks, and Vogel-Herden populated the apocalyptic visions of the expressionists. The contemporary lyric poet and radio-play author Giinter Eich follows a well-established tradition when he assigns the birds an important place in his poetic idiom. Yet, his frequent use of this motif is anything but the facile application of a stereotype; on the contrary, he recreates the convention in his own terms, because it has certain inherent qualities which make it uniquely suitable for his poetic purpose. His use of this motif provides an interesting example of the way in which old topoi survive by adaptation to the concepts of successive generations of writers. Moreover, the treatment of the bird motif in Eich's work is very characteristic of this author and reveals salient features of his world-view and literary style. However, because, on the whole, Eich's images are highly symbolic in Goethe's sense, their full significance cannot be deduced from isolated instances. Only by studying the usage of a given metaphor in various contexts can its symbolic value be expressed in abstract terms. In the case of the bird motif, such an inquiry can best take as its starting point the radio-play Sabeth,l not only because it has a bird as its leading character and title figure, but also because this non-lyrical treatment of the topos contains some explicit remarks on the significance it has in this work.