I concetti di vanitas e memento mori nella lirica barocca tedesca

The essay aims to investigate the concepts of vanitas, understood as the caducity and insubstantiality of the human condition, and memento mori in German Baroque poetry through the analysis of three exemplary lyrics, whose authors are considered to be among the greatest exponents of German Baroque lyricism. The analysis focuses in particular on a lyric by Martin Opitz and two sonnets by Andreas Gryphius and Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau. The concepts of vanitas and memento mori, often inextricably linked to that of carpe diem, permeate the literary and cultural life of the time and are largely echoed in what has been defined in retrospect as German Baroque. The analysis of the lyrics reveals an awareness of the transitory and chaotic nature of all phenomena, in an obsessive contradiction between the hymn to life and the awareness of its transience, in a universe that on the one hand is conceived as created and governed by a God, and on the other perceived as chaotic and unstable by human beings. The concept of vanitas, associated with those of carpe diem and memento mori, takes on an epistemological value, ideal for thematizing the illusory, changeable and fragile nature of the world. Although older and of biblical ancestry, it takes on a new and concrete meaning, through which it gives a sense to everyday life, the post-Reformation religious wars, plagues and famines that marked central Europe in the seventeenth century.