Explikat 

Über den pastoralen Bezug hinaus lässt sich die (moderne) Villanelle nach Fry als Gesicht für Sonderlinge und AußenseiterInnen festschreiben: 

It is a form that certainly seems to appeal to outsiders, or those who might have cause to consider themselves such. Among the poets we have looked at as authors of villanelles we find an African American lesbian, a Jewish lesbian, a lesbian whose father died when she was four and whose mother was committed into a mental institution four years later, two gay men, two alcoholics who drank themselves to death and a deeply unstable and unhappy neurotic who committed suicide. (Fry 2010, S. 227) 

Hinter den im Zitat beschriebenen DichterInnen verbirgt sich zum einen Dylan Thomas, dessen Do not go gentle into that good night eine Villanelle darstellt: 

Quelle: Reading of "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas.

Die Beschreibung der unglückliche Neurotikerin (vgl. Fry 2010, S. 227) im Zitat verbirgt hingegen Sylvia Plath, deren Mad Girl's Love Song ebenfalls in Form der Villanelle verfasst ist: 

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.) 

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.) 

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.) 

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

(Plath 1951)

Für Fry ist es insbesondere die normierte Struktur der Villanelle, welche die Gedichtform für NeurotikerInnen und AußenseiterInnen so begehrt macht: "The more marginalised, chaotic, alienated and psychically damaged a life, the greater the impulse to find structure and certainty, surely?" (Fry 2010, S. 228)

Bibliografie

Primärliteratur 

Sekundärliteratur 

  • Fry, Stephen: The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. Calgary: Cornerstone Digital, 2010.