(Email, University of Virginia)
Variations on a Theme of Romance – Sarah Kirsch’s “Don Juan kommt am Vormittag” und Walther von der Vogelweide’s “Unter der Linden”
Sarah Kirsch’s poem “Don Juan kommt am Vormittag” is a variation on an old theme, the meeting of two lovers. Kirsch herself references the musical form, Theme and Variations, highlighting her own poem’s status specifically as a variation, a reiteration of a series of old tropes. The tropes which shape her narrator’s expectations share much with the German medieval genre of the Mädchenlied, and by glossing Kirsch’s piece with Walther von der Vogelweide’s “Unter der Linden,” I hope to illuminate a point of origination for these tropes. Moreover, I hope to show that the narrator’s disappointment in Kirsch’s poem is due to the fact that she is trying to recreate a preconceived notion of romance. Her dissatisfaction is rooted in the fact that her rendezvous is a merely a variation on a theme. This is apparent not only in the fact that she is meeting Don Juan, indicating that she is one of many of his lovers, but primarily in that her expectations for romance, such as that described by Walther, are never more than partially realized. Still, as a variation on this theme, Kirsch’s poem becomes part of the larger piece, both relating to old ideas of romance and influencing them in the future.
