Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Undergraduate Honors Theses 2019-08-09 Nature and the Poet: A Comparision of the Poetry of Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff nda Kobayashi Issa Jane Cox Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub_uht BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Cox, Jane, "Nature and the Poet: A Comparision of the Poetry of Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff nda Kobayashi Issa" (2019). Undergraduate Honors Theses. 91. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub_uht/91 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Honors Thesis NATURE AND THE POET: A COMPARISON OF THE POETRY OF JOSEPH FREIHERR VON EICHENDORFF AND KOBAYASHI ISSA Submitted to Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of graduation requirements for University Honors by Jane Margaret Cox German Department Brigham Young University August 2019 Advisor: Thomas Spencer Honors Coordinator: Mark Purves i ii ABSTRACT NATURE AND THE POET: A COMPARISON OF THE POETRY OF JOSEPH FREIHERR VON EICHENDORFF AND KOBAYASHI ISSA Jane Margaret Cox German Department Bachelor of Arts; Bachelor of Science This thesis examines the bearing that metaphysical philosophy about nature has on two late 18th century and early 19th century poets. Although living in different hemispheres and cultures, the works of Romantic poet Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff and haikai Kobayashi Issa both used interactions with nature to illustrate their own personal experiences. However, their differing metaphysical beliefs concerning nature impacted their presentation of their experiences as well as their experiences themselves. Eichendorff viewed nature as a medium through which the divine can choose to communicate. Nature’s purpose is to act as a vehicle for the divine. His descriptions of nature often focused on landscapes, portraying the sum of nature to be greater than any individual plant, animal, or geological feature that is part of the whole. In contrast, for Kobayashi Issa, nature has no underlying purpose. Instead, he focused solely on the individual components on nature, viewing himself as a fellow traveler through a transitory world with other creatures found in nature. In addition to affecting what natural phenomena the poems discuss, the differing metaphysical beliefs of the poets affected iii how they reacted to nature. Eichendorff always experienced the underlying tension of another presence in nature, whether it manifests itself or not. This often caused him to experience metaphysical grief and uncertainty. Issa did not experience this. Rather, he experienced human grief in his life and turned to nature to contextualize his own suffering. I consider the lives of both poets as well as their works that deal specifically with grief. iv v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Marc Yamada, Dr. Paul Cox, and Dr. Masayuki Kishimoto for their encouragement and assistance. I would also like to thank Eichendorff and Issa, for their beautiful poetry. vi vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page ............................................................................................................................. i Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ vi Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. viii I. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 II. Historical and Cultural Background ............................................................................... 4 III. Formal and Linguistic Aspects of the Poems ............................................................. 12 IV. Poetry Analysis ........................................................................................................... 14 Der Abend ..................................................................................................................... 15 The nature of man ......................................................................................................... 17 Midsummer, visiting my daughters grave ..................................................................... 19 Wehmut ......................................................................................................................... 24 Dichterlos ...................................................................................................................... 28 Spring rises .................................................................................................................... 30 Bamboo shoots .............................................................................................................. 33 Vom Berge .................................................................................................................... 35 The dew of the night...................................................................................................... 38 V. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 39 VI. Works Cited ................................................................................................................ 41 viii ix Introduction Written between 1790 and 1831, the poetry of the German Romantic poet Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff and the Japanese haikai poet (a poet who specializes in haiku), Kobayashi Issa both employ nature imagery to communicate internal experience. Both do so using economical poetic forms: The song-form (Liedstrophe) of the German romantic lyric or the rigorously sparse Japanese tradition of haiku and tanka. Both poets were deeply spiritual, although their religious traditions differed greatly. Eichendorff was a devout Catholic, while Issa became a monk in the Pure Land sect of Buddhism. Their socioeconomic backgrounds also permit no comparison. Eichendorff descended from Germanic nobility on his mother’s side and was a moderately successful civil servant before devoting himself to poetry. Issa came from a poor farming family, which he left at the age of fourteen due to conflict and his parent’s inability to support him. Eichendorff came from Prussian aristocracy, while Issa lived and died in a Japan completely closed to the outside world1. Given these differences in background, one might doubt the fruitfulness of a comparative reading of these men’s poetry, yet certain aspects of their work clearly call for it. Issa and Eichendorff were contemporaries. Both lived during a transitional phase for their respective countries. Eichendorff wrote during the late romantic period, when industrialism, capitalism, and liberalism were stamping out the feudal Christian order in the area known as Germany today, changing everyday life 2. Issa wrote as the preparations to open Japan to a wider world were beginning, exposing the country to the technological and cultural impacts of a broader global community3. In Japan, Portuguese, 1 Morton 119-131 2 Zmora 165 3 Morton 135 1 Dutch, and occasionally German scientists and traders began to share their knowledge under strict supervision from the Tokugawa regime. Issa’s and Eichendorff’s rural imagery acquire poignancy against this backdrop of modernization. While both poets wrote lyrical poems focused on nature imagery, Eichendorff and Issa are divided by their dramatically different understandings of nature, which can largely be explained by their respective religious and metaphysical beliefs. For Eichendorff, nature is vehicle for a divine subject or monotheistic God. For Issa, nature is a community of fellow beings to which he himself belongs, beings who can to some degree identify with and sympathize with each other. Nature itself has no underlying purpose for Issa; it simply is. Thus Eichendorff seeks to connect with a deeper, divine essence in nature, a process that is fraught with uneasiness and tension, while Issa seeks merely to achieve unity with his fellow travelers on the path to enlightenment. To illustrate this difference, I will analyze poetic works from both poets that deal with grief, as this emotion has a special relation to metaphysics. Both poets present intense personal instances of grief in their works, yet their griefs differ. Eichendorff’s anguish is a consequence of metaphysical experience. As he encounters the heart of nature he also becomes more aware of its alterity, causing him to feel acute uncertainty and unease. As such, what grief Eichendorff’s work describes is directly linked to his joy at encountering the divine through nature, forming a cycle. Eichendorff turns to nature in an attempt to connect with the divine, and the strangeness, fleetingness, or complete lack of such a connection generates and perpetuates grief. In contrast to this, Issa’s grief does not stem from a metaphysical encounter out in the countryside. The grief found in Issa’s work is the kind that comes from daily life. 2 Given this human, almost animal grief, Issa turns to nature to recognize the ephemeral nature of his feelings and contextualize them within a Buddhist