Heinrich von Ofterdingen

Japanese: オフターディンゲン（英語表記）Heinrich von Ofterdingen

A legendary medieval German poet. The oldest work in which he appears is the first part of the medieval German polemic poem "Wartburg Song Contest," "Praise of the Prince," in which he is introduced at the beginning as the creator of this verse form. There is no objective biographical material, but the same is true for many other medieval German poets, so there is no reason to consider him a fictional character in this case alone. Rather, it is more natural to consider him the first author of this work, and he has been referred to as a real poet, at least in the Middle Ages. Because the fictional "singing contest" in the work was passed down in the Thuringian chronicles and the biography of St. Elisabeth, he became widely known as the protagonist of the singing contest legend. In particular, since the ideal image of the poet was created by Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen (translated as The Blue Flowers in Japanese) in the early 19th century, Romantic writers including Hoffmann have loved to use this legend as material for their own material. This has inspired literary historians to speculate about the poet's background, but there is still no consensus.

Source: Heibonsha World Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition Information

Japanese:

中世ドイツの伝説的詩人。この人物の登場する最古の作品は中世ドイツ語の論争詩《ワルトブルクの歌合戦》の前編〈君主賛美〉で，その冒頭に本作品の詩形の創案者として紹介されている。客観的伝記資料は皆無であるが，それは他の多くの中世ドイツ詩人の場合も同様であるから，この場合に限って架空人物と見なす理由はない。むしろ本作品の最初の作者と考える方が自然であり，少なくとも中世では実在詩人として言及されてきた。作中に虚構された〈歌合戦〉がチューリンゲンの年代記，聖エリーザベト伝等のなかで語りつがれたため，歌合戦伝説の主人公として人口に膾炙し，とくに19世紀初頭ノバーリスの《ハインリヒ･フォン･オフターディンゲン》(邦訳，青い花)によって理想的詩人像が創造されて以来，ホフマンをはじめロマン派の作家たちは好んでこの詩人伝説を題材にとりあげ，それに刺激されて文学史家もこの詩人の素姓について種々の憶説をたてたが，いまだに定説がない。

出典　株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典第２版について　情報

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