Showing a limited preview of this publication:
Abstract
Gaiety, heroism, sentimentality: Nietzsche’s Idyllen aus Messina and his poetological conception of the idyll. Based on a short explanation of the lyric cycle’s genesis, the article examines Nietzsche’s aesthetical conception(s) of the idyll in the light of the genre’s tradition. Then, after a brief consideration of the relation between the Idyllen aus Messina and German folk song (as Nietzsche recognized it), the eight poems are finally interpreted within their cyclical coherence. Thus, the speaker’s heterogeneous attitudes (gaiety, heroism, sentimentality), which, in his ‘middle’ period, Nietzsche links to the idyll’s notion in other ways as well, prove to be basic elements of the cycle’s setting.
