Kenneth Fockele (Berkeley)

PERSPECTIVES ON THE SELF: HEINRICH VON VELDEKE AS AUTHOR

Through a survey of Heinrich von Veldeke's lyric, I show that the juxtaposition of distinct voices provides the audience with multiple perspectives on the speakers of the songs and thus projects an implied author who commands many domains of intellectual and aesthetic knowledge and skill. Rather than promulgating any one ethical or aesthetic ideology, he has mastered the possibilities of all. A comparison with Peter ofBlois sharpens the contours ofVeldeke's specific form of authorship, which remains removed from clerical preoccupations.

Minnesang scholarship has paid too little attention to Heinrich von Veldeke. He has often been considered a special case, tangential to the main body of the German tradition. 1 He gained this reputation in part because he came from near in , a region far from most poets of the Minnesang. Rather than representing the culture ofthe Low Countries or of Germany univocally, he straddled both over a varied career. His lyrics have been overshadowed by the reception ofhis majornarrative work, Eneit, translated from the Old French Roman d'Emias into . Less studied is his legend of St. Servatius, translated from the Latin into a Maaslandic dialect of Low German. His linguistic abilities, as well as the allusions in his works, suggest that Veldeke received some education at a cathedral or monastery school. 2 In part because Veldeke attributes the impe­ tus for his translations of the two narratives to several historically attested patrons, Countess Agnes of Loon, Sexton Hessel of the monastery of Serva­ tius in Maastricht, and Count Palatine Hermann (who became Landgrave Hermann I) in Thuringia, his career has been the subject ofmuch biographi­ cal interest and speculation.3 Yet despite the scholarly focus on his Eneit and

1 See Bemd Bastert, "Möglichkeiten der Minnelyrik. Das Beispiel Heinrich von Veldeke", in: Zeitschrift for deutsche Philologie 113 (1994), pp. 321-344, here pp. 321-326. 2 Renate Kistler has demonstrated how weil Ve1deke knew the Latin antecedents for his Eneit. Renate Kistler, Heinrich von Veldeke und Ovid, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993. 3 See The Life ofSaint Servatius. A Dual-Language Edition ofthe Middle Dutch Legend of Saint Servatius by Heinrich von Veldeke and the Anonymaus Upper German Life 242 Kenneth Fockeie

his life, Veldeke's lyric oeuvre is, in both its themes and genres, one ofthe most varied and sophisticated in all of Minnesang.

It is commonplace to see the lyric ofWalther von der Vogelweide as a project of self-fashioning that extends beyond the fictive roles within his songs to Walther himself.4 As I will argue, the fashioning of an authorial persona is not new in Walther's lyric: it can already be seen in the songs of Veldeke before him. The contrasts in tone, form, aesthetic tradition, philosophy of Iove, and the identity of the speaking voice that appears in his varied songs generate a productive tension in Veldeke's oeuvre. This tension gives the impression there is someone behind the scenes pulling the strings, a figure who has a privileged position of insight. Thus the poet casts hirnself in the role of a skilled and knowledgeable man who has mastered the aesthetic and moral possibilities inherent in courtly lyric: in other words, an author. 5 In particular, Veldeke demonstrates how a lyric poet can carve out an identity for hirnself as an author not through consistency, but through variety. Contrary to scholarly preoccupations, he does not simply transmit new

of Saint Servatius, trans., with Commentary and lntroduction by Kim Vivian et al., Lewiston, NY et al.: Edwin Meilen Press, 2006, pp. 229 f., lines 2927 f., 2943-2945; Heinrich von Veldeke, Eneasroman, Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch, ed. and trans. by Dieter Kartschoke, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986, lines 353,14-20. On the histo­ rical details that can be gleaned about Veldeke's life, see especially Joachim Bumke, Mäzene im Mittelalter. Die Gönner und Auftraggeber der höfischen Literatur in Deutschland. 1150-1300, München: Beck, 1979, pp. 113-118,356, n. 306. A thorough overview ofthe facts and the speculation may be found in John R. Sinnema, Hendrik van Veldeke, New York: Twayne, 1972, pp. 11-33. On Hermann's court as a literary center, see Ursula Peters, Fürstenhof und höfische Dichtung. Der Hof Hermanns von Thüringen als literarisches Zentrum, Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 1981. 4 See, for example, Horst Wenzel, "Typus und Individualität. Zur literarischen Selbstdeutung Walthers von der Vogelweide", in: Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 8 (1983), pp. 1-34, here pp. 28-34; Watther von der Vogelweide, The Single-Stanza Lyrics, ed. and trans., with Introduction and Commentary by Frederick Goldin, New York/London: Routledge, 2003, p. 2; Mary M. Paddock, "Speaking of Spectacle: Another Look at Walther's 'Lindenlied"', in: The German Quarterly 77 (2004), pp. 11-28, here pp. 12 f.; Peter Gilgen, "Singer of Himsetf', in: David E. Wellbery et al. (eds.), A New History of German Literature, Cambridge, MA et. al.: Betknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 102- 106, here p. 103; Lydia Miklautsch, "Das verstellte Ich. und Watther von der Vogelweide", in: Matthias Meyer I Alexander Sager (eds.), Verstellung und Betrug im Mittelalter und in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2015, pp. 157-174, here p. 167. 5 Wayne Booth has defined a similar concept for fiction, which he calls the "implied author", a version ofthe seifthat the author creates in his prose. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2 1983 [1961], pp. 67-77.