Clemens Brentano
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Clemens Brentano, or Klemens Brentano (September 8, 1778 – July 28, 1842) was a German poet and novelist, an early German Romantic. He is best-known for The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
He was born at Ehrenbreitstein, near Koblenz, Germany. His sister was Bettina von Arnim, Goethe's correspondent. His father's family was of Italian descent. He studied in Halle and Jena, afterwards residing at Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin. He was close to Wieland, Herder, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Fichte and Tieck.
From 1798 to 1800 Brentano lived in Jena, the first center of the romantic movement in Germany, where he got contact to Sophie Mereau (marriage 1803). In 1801, he moved to Göttingen, and became a friend of Achim von Arnim. In 1804, he moved to Heidelberg and worked with Arnim on Zeitungen für Einsiedler and Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In the years between 1808 and 1818, he lived mostly in Berlin, and from 1819 to 1824 in Dülmen, Westphalia.
In 1818, weary of his somewhat restless and unsettled life, he returned to the practice of the Catholic faith and withdrew to the monastery of Dülmen, where he lived for some years in strict seclusion. He took on there the position of secretary to the Catholic visionary nun, the Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, copying her dictation without from 1818-1824. When she died, he prepared an index of the visions and revelations from her journal, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, first published in 1833.
The latter part of his life he spent in Regensburg, Frankfurt and Munich, actively engaged in Catholic propaganda. Brentano assisted Ludwig Achim von Arnim, his brother-in-law, in the collection of folk-songs forming Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805-1808), which Gustav Mahler drew upon for his song cycle. He died at Aschaffenburg.
Brentano, whose early writings were published under the pseudonym Maria, belonged to the Heidelberg group of German romantic writers, and his works are marked by excess of fantastic imagery and by abrupt, bizarre modes of expression. His first published writings were Satiren und poetische Spiele (1800), and a romance Godwi oder Das steinerne Bild der Mutter (1801); of his dramas the best are Ponce de Leon (1804), Victoria (1817) and Die Grundung Prags (1815).
On the whole his finest work is the collection of Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (published posthumously in 1852); his short stories, and more especially the charming Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1838), which has been translated into English, were very popular. Brentano also assisted Ludwig Achim von Arnim, his brother-in-law, in the collection of folk-songs forming Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806-1808).
Brentano's collected works, edited by his brother Christian, appeared at Frankfurt in 9 vols. (1851-1855). Selections have been edited by JB Diel (1873), M Koch (1892), and J Dohmke (1893). See JB Diel and W Kreiten, Klemens Brentano (2 vols, 1877-1878), the introduction to Koch's edition, and R Steig, A. von Arnim und K. Brentano (1894).
Poems:
- Eingang
- Frühlingsschrei eines Knechtes
- Abendständchen
- Lore Lay
- Auf dem Rhein
- Wiegenlied
- An Sophie Mereau
- Ich wollt ein Sträusslein binden
- Der Spinnerin Lied
- Aus einem kranken Herzen
- Hast du nicht mein Glück gesehen?
- Frühes Lied
- Schwanenlied
- Nachklänge Beethovenscher Musik
- Romanzen vom Rosenkranz
- Einsam will ich untergehn
- Rückblick
