George, Stefan (EN)

George Stefan Anton, *12 July 1868 Büdesheim (near Bingen), †4 December 1933 Minusio (near Locarno), German poet. After completing secondary school in Darmstadt (1888), George began a life of wandering, devoting himself entirely to his vocation. He stayed longest in Berlin, Munich, Heidelberg and Basel. From his travels across Europe he gained numerous literary contacts, including acquaintance with the circle of Mallarmé, friendship with W. Rolicz-Lieder and collaboration with H. von Hofmannsthal, undertaken with a view to his own journal “Blätter für die Kunst” (1892–1919). Besides poems, he published there his translations from French (Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Verlaine) and Polish (31 poems by Rolicz-Lieder). In time a circle of pupils, friends and followers formed around George (George-Kreis), drawn from the German intellectual elite (Ernst Bertram, Friedrich Gundolf, Ludwig Klages and others). After the victory of the National Socialist movement, which vulgarized and appropriated the ideas contained in his last volume of poems Das neue Reich (1928), George emigrated to Switzerland and there (in Locarno), according to his wishes, was buried.

The figure of the wandering solitary, which George embodied, became a frequent motif of his poems, described by György Lukács as “Wanderlieder”. They were inspired not only by reminiscences of travel but also by imagined journeys through cultures – Hellenic, Oriental and Rhineland-Roman – which, combined with the heritage of German thought (Hölderlin, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche) as well as the influence of French Symbolists and the Pre-Raphaelites, shaped George’s aesthetics and poetics. He was guided by the idea of pure, sovereign and prophetic poetry, linked with the concept of the rebirth of Germany in the spirit of “eternal Hellas”. In this program, derived from extreme aestheticism, George found no place for music, sharing Hölderlin’s view that “what remains, however, the poets provide”. He regarded opera as the “most vulgar” genre and called work on a libretto “profanation”. In instrumental music he saw only a model of rhythmic and sonic organization, which – in application to his own work – accounted for the melodic quality of phrasing, clarity of rhythm and the exceptionally sonorous instrumentation of the verse. The musicality of George’s lyric poetry was also manifested in genre terms such as “song”, “hymn”, “chorus”, appearing in the titles of poems and collections (Hymnen 1890, Das Buch der Sagen und Sänge 1895, Die Lieder von Traum und Tod 1900, a series of Lieder in Der siebente Ring 1907 and in Das neue Reich, Schlusschor in Der Stern des Bundes 1914). Despite the musicalization of poetic language (Sprachmusik) and his friendships with composers whose settings of his texts he accepted (C. v. Franckenstein, C. M. Scott), George’s attitude to music as a cultural factor remained negative. Nevertheless, he played an inspiring role in the development of 20th-century music. George’s lyric poetry became, in 1908–09, an object of particular interest for composers of the Vienna School. Settings of his texts from this period include Lieder by A. Webern (Opp. 2, 3 and 4) and works by A. Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2 Op. 10, with vocal movements 3 (Litanei) and 4 (Entrückung), and 15 Gedichte aus „Das Buch der hängenden Gärten” Op. 15, with which “all modern music enters a new phase of development” (H. Stuckenschmidt). Echoes of this sudden poetic fascination were later songs by Schoenberg (Seraphita Op. 22) and by A. Berg (Der Wein) to German translations by George from E. Dowson and Baudelaire, as well as works by their pupils – George-Lieder by E. Wellesz (Op. 22) and T. W. Adorno (Opp. 1 and 7). Thanks to Goethe’s poetry, Schoenberg was able “to approach the ideal of expression and form that had pursued [him] for several years” and to “break the boundaries of all past aesthetics” (program note from the performance of George-Lieder, 1909). On the other hand, George’s poems were for him “an element creating inner connections” (Gesinnung oder Erkenntnis 1926), suggesting solutions to compositional problems and the search for a new system. The influence of George cannot be limited solely to the artistic structure of his poems, disregarding the aesthetic idea contained in them. This idea is the mythologization of elements of reality, that is, the “petrification” of life and the isolation of things as signs, “deliberate alienation as the fundamental formula for creating an inner, magical world” (H. Pongs Das Bild in der Dichtung, I). A reflection of this idea may be seen in the contemporary evolution of the Vienna School – from the dynamism of traditional musical thinking to the hermetic systematicity of the twelve-tone technique.

Literature: F. Gundolf George, Berlin 1920, 31930; J. Iwaszkiewicz Stefan George i Wacław Rolicz-Lieder, “Skamander” 1933 no. 64; E. Morwitz Die Dichtung Stefan Georges, Berlin 1934; H. Stuckenschmidt Arnold Schönberg, Zurich 1951, Polish ed. Krakow 1965; T. W. Adorno Zu den Georgeliedern, in: Arnold Schönberg 15 Gedichte aus „Das Buch der hängenden Gärten” von Stefan George, Wiesbaden 1959; G. P. Landmann Stefan George und sein Kreis, eine Bibliographie, Hamburg 1960; G. R. Urban Kinesis and Stasis, a Study in the Attitude of Stefan George and his Circle to the Musical Arts, The Hague 1962; K. H. Ehrenforth Ausdruck und Form, Schönbergs Durchbruch zur Atonalität in den George-Liedern op. 15, Bonn 1963; D. Venus Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur melischen Struktur der Singstimmen in den Liedern von A. Schönberg, A. Berg, A. Webern und P. Hindemith, Getynga 1965; R. Brinkmann Schönberg und George, Interpretation eines Liedes, “Archiv für Musikwissenschaft” XXVI, 1969; A. Rogalski Trzy portrety niemieckie – F. Hölderlin, J. Paul, S. George, Poznań 1980.