SOURCE: de Capua, A. G. “Two Quartets: Sonnet Cycles by Andreas Gryphius.” Monatshefte: Fur Deutschen Unterricht, Deutsche Sprache und Literature 59, no. 4 (winter 1967): 325-29.

In the following essay, de Capua examines how the two sequences of four sonnets that open and close Gryphius's Teutsche Reim-Gedichte Darein enthalten complement each other in theme, imagery, and poetic form.

It is by now common knowledge that the first complete German works by Andreas Gryphius, the Teutsche Reimgedichte (C),¹ had been prepared for publication as early as 1646 when the poet was in Strassburg. But the book did not appear until 1650 when Johann Hüttner of Frankfurt am Main published part of it together with a few odd sonnets by others and a longer poem by Opitz.² This work contained, as well as other new materials (e.g. Gryphius's first drama, Leo Arminius), a book of fifty previously unpublished sonnets (Das ander Buch), written...