{"id":7644,"date":"2016-12-21T08:35:09","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T08:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7644"},"modified":"2016-12-23T19:18:47","modified_gmt":"2016-12-23T19:18:47","slug":"solace-for-the-solstice-martin-opitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7644","title":{"rendered":"Solace for the solstice: Martin Opitz"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7648\" style=\"width: 190px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7648\" class=\"wp-image-7648\" src=\"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Martin_Opitz_Small_F\u00fcrst_excud.jpg\" alt=\"Martin_Opitz_Small_F\u00fcrst_excud\" width=\"180\" height=\"283\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7648\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Martin Opitz, by Paul F\u00fcrst. Copperplate print, 15.2 by 9.4 cm. (Source of image: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As an offering in this week of the solstice, EMLO has released metadata for a selection of <a href=\"http:\/\/emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk\/collections\/?catalogue=martin-opitz\" target=\"_blank\">Martin Opitz<\/a>\u2019s correspondence. One of the founding fathers of German literature, Opitz is a poet with words for\u00a0those in the throes of a\u00a0dark and troubled northern midwinter. Could this be the moment to read his <em><a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=iWk_AAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA62&amp;lpg=PA62&amp;dq=Trost-Gedichte+in+Widerwertigkeit+de%C3%9F+Krieges&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=SVjhzvchpt&amp;sig=IehL9-tTdJCCsR6Z_wiR_a4adDs&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiOzpPthIXRAhVBVxoKHaStDX8Q6AEIQDAG#v=onepage&amp;q=Trost-Gedichte%20in%20Widerwertigkeit%20de%C3%9F%20Krieges&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">Trost-Gedichte in Widerwertigkeit de\u00df Krieges<\/a><\/em>\u00a0[<em>Poems of consolation at the resumption of war<\/em>] of 1633, or, in the stillness of a long, dark night, listen to a reading of his poem\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=l6AqrjHjn_Q\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Jetzund k\u00f6mpt die Nacht herbei<\/em> <\/a>[<em>Now the night comes<\/em>], or to a recital of it set to music by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Johann_Nauwach\" target=\"_blank\">Johann Nauwach (1595\u20131630)<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=f8QLSvzU7G8\" target=\"_blank\">sung by the incomparable Andreas Scholl<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Opitz was caught up in the horror of the Thirty Years&#8217; War. Born\u00a0in Bunzlau [now Boles\u0142awiec, in Poland], he was one of the many scholars who traversed the face of Europe through these war-torn decades, studying in Frankfurt an der Oder, in Heidelberg, and in Leiden. From his letters, we are able to follow him to Breslau [Wroc\u0142aw] in 1626; Prague in 1628; Breslau again in 1628\u20139; and Paris in 1630, where he met <a href=\"http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/c8z8ey3\" target=\"_blank\">Grotius <\/a>and members of the Dupuy circle. Opitz ended\u00a0his days in Danzig [now Gda\u0144sk], dying there\u00a0of plague in 1639, nine years before the Peace of Westphalia brought to an end this episode of Europe&#8217;s misery. Opitz\u00a0was a witness to\u00a0troubled times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As an offering in this week of the solstice, EMLO has released metadata for a selection of Martin Opitz\u2019s correspondence. One of the founding fathers of German literature, Opitz is a poet with words for\u00a0those in the throes of a\u00a0dark and troubled northern midwinter. Could this be the moment to read his Trost-Gedichte in Widerwertigkeit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}