Der Wilde Alexander

(late 13th century)

   Not much is known about this south German GOLIARDIC poet who flourished in the late 13th century. The epithet “wild” might signify that he lacked, as a dependent poet, a stable social status and moved, like many contemporary singers, from court to court to seek support for his art. The innovative elements in some of his didactic and erotic songs could have been another reason for the label “wild.” The Jena song manuscript J, which also offers the music for the songs, identifies him as “meister” (master), so he was not of aristocratic background, though in his poetry he maintained the traditional ideals that characterized 12th-century courtly poetry. He composed seven songs with didactic, erotic, and political content. The last one belongs to the category of the Leich (lay), a song with a highly complex rhyming scheme, whereas the other songs follow more traditional types. His first song is a Christmas song. In the following, mostly didactic, songs, Alexander discusses many different religious, moral, and ethical aspects. He also addresses material problems of wandering singers (II, 16), refers to the Arthurian tradition (II, 24), sings a song of praise of his beloved lady (III), criticizes selfish and vicious behavior displayed by courtiers (II, 14–15), returns to the topic of COURTLY LOVE and the ensuing pain because the lovers cannot meet (IV), and explores the role of letter writing to reach out to his beloved (VI). In his Leich (VII) Alexander identifies himself as an armored knight fighting on the side of Lady Love and describes the process of wooing for love using the imagery of a knightly battle, evoking the Homeric account of the defeat of Troy at the hands of the Greeks.

   Alexander’s most important and innovative poem is his “Strawberry Song,” “Hie vor dô wir kinder wâren” (V; “Erstwhile when we were children”). The song describes the innocence of children who are playing in a meadow, until a forester calls them and warns them of snakes. One of the children is bitten, and they all lament that the wound will never heal. The man admonishes them to leave the forest, otherwise they would suffer the same destiny as the five foolish virgins in the New Testament. The intricate combination of erotic with religious themes, the symbolic employment of the strawberry motif, the obviously biblical reference to the forester, and the image of the children playing on the meadow, which in the poet’s presence has been transformed into a pasture, makes this text one of the most charming and enigmatic 13th-century German courtly songs.

   Bibliography

   ■ Kraus, Carl von, ed. Deutsche Liederdichter des 13. Jahrhunderts. 2nd ed. Revised by Gisela Kornrumpf. Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer, 1978.

   ■ McDonald, William C. “A Pauline Reading of Der Wilde Alexander’s ‘Kindheitslied,’ ”Monatshefte 76, no. 2 (1984): 156–175.

   Albrecht Classen