Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey

[This page by Madeleine Brook]

Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey; Book of German Poetics (1624)

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/opitz/poeterey/poeterey.html

Through his studies in the Netherlands, Opitz had come into contact with the potential that vernacular language had for conveying the artistic, scientific and philosophical ideas which had previously only been expressed in Latin, the language of the privileged highly educated elites. This reinforced ideas he had maintained from an early age: while still at school he had defended the use of German in writing literary prose and poetry, arguing that it could stand alongside Italian and French, the languages whose cultures epitomised Renaissance thought in Europe.

Opitz’s Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (Book of German Poetics) is an important theoretical treatise for German poetics in the early 17th century because it revolutionised German poetic composition, effectively bringing the literary renaissance that the rest of Europe had already experienced to the German literary scene. It is divided into sections describing:

• the purpose of poetry and its historical and cultural context

• a typology of poetry, giving the genres and their most appropriate application (satire, tragedy, comedy, etc.)

• poetic style

• rhyme and meter, with examples of the sonnet and ode verse forms

Opitz prescribed a number of rules, including:

• use of alexandrines as opposed to the ‘low’ form of the ‘Knittelvers’ (a type of rhyming verse, typically of lines with 4 iambic feet, that was common in 15th and 16th-century composition)

• strict adherence to meter measured by the natural stress in the word

• the use of pure rhyme only

• absolute exclusion of foreign words

Opitz is sometimes criticised for being overly prescriptive, but his opening words in Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey show that he was aware of the limits of rules and regulations in the composition of good poetry:

‘WIewol ich mir von der Deutschen Poeterey / auff ersuchung vornemer Leute / vnd dann zue beßerer fortpflantzung vnserer sprachen / etwas auff zue setzen vorgenommen; bin ich doch solcher gedancken keines weges / das ich vermeine / man könne iemanden durch gewisse regeln vnd gesetze zu einem Poeten machen.’

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/opitz/poeterey/poet04.html

Although I have taken it upon myself, at the request of other noble-minded people, to say something about German poetics and through that to better propagate our language, yet I in no way agree with that opinion that says somebody may be turned into a poet through [the application of] certain rules and regulations.

Further Reading

Richard D. Hacken, The religious thought of Martin Opitz as the determinant of his poetic theory and practice (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Heinz, 1976)

Nicola Kaminski, Ex bello ars, oder, Ursprung der “Deutschen Poeterey” (Heidelberg: Winter, 2004)