ABSTRACT
From about 1770 at the latest, hardly any poets of note continued to write in the Arcadian strain except very occasionally, in a spirit of play. This Schäferpoesie was now regarded as a mere literary exercise, something divorced from reality (fit only to be stored away in museums for the benefit of ‘childish scholars’, says Bürger scornfully). Goethe illustrates the transition to a new style of poetry very well; a handful of his youthful works still linger in the graceful but artificial world of Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses, but from quite early in the 1770s his short lyrics show increasing affinity with folksongs and folk ballads. Bürger, whose ‘outpourings of the heart’ on the subject of folk poetry we have already encountered, was also inspired both by the folk ballad and by the style and form of shorter folksongs. His ‘Schwanenlied’, quoted above in Schulz’s setting, provides an example. Here is the complete first stanza, clearly related to the innumerable German folksongs which treat of blighted or abandoned love:
Mir tuts so weh im Herzen!
Ich bin so matt und krank!
Ich schlafe nicht vor Schmerzen;
Mag Speise nicht und Trank;
Seh alles sich entfärben,
Was schönes mir geblüht.
Ach, Liebchen, will nur sterben!
Dies ist mein Schwanenlied.
Compare:
Mein Herzlein tut mir gar so weh!
Das macht, weil ich in Trauren steh
or:
Mei Mutter mag mi net,
Und kei Schatz han i net,
Ei, warum stirb i net,
Was tu i do?
