Der Siebente Ring Analysis

“Kunfttag I” opens the cycle Maximin, the centrepiece of Der siebente Ring (The Seventh Ring), which was published in 1907. The number seven appears to be a primary structuring principle of the whole volume. Unlike previous poetry collections like Das Jahr der Seele, which consists of three parts, Der siebente Ring contains seven cycles, and the number of poems and pages of each cycle is a multiple of seven. According to Morwitz (1969), the title alludes to tree rings, the concentric circles in the cross section of a tree trunk whose number indicates the tree’s age.

In February 1902, George met Maximilian Kronberger, a handsome schoolboy and aspiring poet, who died of meningitis a little over two years later. “For George, Maximin would come

“Kunfttag I” is one of the three “advent” poems that describe his feelings before and after Maximin’s arrival in retrospect. It consists of twelve hexasyllabic, iambic verses without end rhymes. The simple form might convey his humbleness towards Maximin, to whom he ascribes divine power, or the creative crisis from which Maximin redeemed him. The word “Kunfttag” does not exist as such in the German language. The first part, “Kunft”, derives from “kommen” (to come). It is also part of the German word for future (“Zukunft”, literally “that which comes towards somebody”). Thus it is easy to mistranslate “Kunfttag” as “Future Day”. The poem title is, in fact, George’s translation of the term “advent” and underlines the messianic qualities he attributes to

The often-repeated initial letter “d” gives the poet’s words an adjuring quality. Because of the missing verb, the ninth verse is difficult to understand, but one can assume it means “You became known to me” or “You were revealed to me”. George employs two metaphors in the third stanza to convey the life-changing effect Maximin had on him, the first of which continues the idea of getting lost in the night from the second stanza. Maximin is celebrated as the bringer of light in the darkness (v. 10). The verb “floss” (flowed) seems to indicate that George mixes two images here as the noun “Strahl” can refer to both a beam of light and a jet of water. The choice of the second image is interesting as well. Although the metaphor of Maximin as the bringer of fertility is consistent with his divine powers, the idea that steps can cause seeds to blossom seems rather unusual. Following Martus ' (2007) line of thought, one might assume that both metaphors hint at terms of poetry. Maximin becomes the God of poetry for George. He is revealed as metrical foot and flow of