by Coleridge · Cluster: Dreams · Moon
Abstract
A witty Wernicke-derived epigram on the gendering of sun and moon in English vs German, ending in a bawdy joke about cuckolded husbands; satire of marriage and gender.
Connections
Motifs: Sun, Moon Themes & Concepts: Satire of Society, Marriage and Fidelity Forms & Genres: Epigram
Testo integrale / Full text
THAT IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE THE SUN IS FEMININE, AND THE MOON IS MASCULINE
Our English poets, bad and good, agree
To make the Sun a male, the Moon a she.
He drives HIS dazzling diligence on high,
In verse, as constantly as in the sky;
And cheap as blackberries our sonnets shew
The Moon, Heaven’s huntress, with HER silver bow;
By which they’d teach us, if I guess aright,
Man rules the day, and woman rules the night.
In Germany, they just reverse the thing;
The Sun becomes a queen, the Moon a king.
Now, that the Sun should represent the women,
The Moon the men, to me seem’d mighty humming;
And when I first read German, made me stare.
Surely it is not that the wives are there
As common as the Sun, to lord and loon,
And all their husbands hornéd as the Moon.
First published in Morning Post, Oct. 11, 1802. Adapted from
Wernicke’s Epigrams (Bk. VII, No. 15), Die Sonne und der Mond.
‘Die Sonn’ heisst die, der Mond heisst der
In unsrer Sprach’, und kommt daher,
Weil meist die Fraun wie die gemein,
Wie der gehörnt wir Männer sein.’