|
Dromo's Den
|
|
[Up] [Dromo's Den] Martin Opitz Biography OPITZ, Martin (1597–1639). A German poet and literary reformer, born at Bunzlau, Silesia, Dec. 23, 1597. He studied at Frankfort-on-the-Oder and at Heidelberg; visited with his friend Hamilton, a Dane, the Netherlands, where he became acquainted with Daniel Heinsius, and Jutland (1620); in 1621 accepted the call of Prince Bethlen Gabor to Transylvania as teacher of philosophy and belles-lettres at Weissenburg; returned to Silesia (1623); occupied various subordinate confidential posts at small German courts; was knighted by the Emperor Ferdinand II (1628); and died of the plague in Danzig, Aug. 20, 1639. For a century after his death he passed for the Father of German Poetry, less for his mediocre verses than for his critical Aristarchus, seu de Contemptu Linguœ Teutonioœ (or Contempt of the German Tongue) (1618), which asserted the equality of the German language with the French, Dutch, and Italian and laid the blame for the decadence of German poetry to authors of German blood who nevertheless neglected their native tongue for the Latin. His Buch von der deutschen Poeterei, a book of poetics, although quite brief, is so important that the year of its publication (1624) marks the beginning of a new era of German poetry. Opitz borrowed his poetical theories mostly from Scaliger, Heinsius, and Ronsard. Opitz recognized accent instead of quantity in his prosody, and accepted only iambic and trochaic measures. His poetical works, intended as models, are for the most part merely metrical prose. The Alexandrine, a measure of French origin, which had come to be the standard French verse in the sixteenth century, he made the ideal for German poets. The influence of Opitz did much to secure the acceptance of the literary German of Luther in the Catholic states and so to make a common German literature possible. In 1627 he wrote the verses of the oldest German opera, Dafne, after Rinuccini, music by Heinrich Schütz. Incomplete editions of Opitz's works were published (Danzig, 1641; Breslau, 1690; Frankfort, 1746; also reprints by Braune, Halle, 1876, and by G. Witkowski, ib., 1902). There are Lives by Strehlke (Leipzig, 1856), Hoffman von Fallersleben (ib., 1858), Weinhold (Berlin, 1862), and Palm (Breslau, 1862). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 489. |