Ganymed (Goethe)

"Ganymed" is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in which the character of the mythic youth Ganymede is seduced by God (or Zeus) through the beauty of Spring.

In early editions of the Collected Works it appeared in Volume II of Goethe's poems in a section of Vermischte Gedichte (assorted poems), shortly following the "Gesang der Geister über den Wassern", and the Harzreise im Winter. It immediately follows "Prometheus", and the two poems together should be understood as a pair, one expressing the sentiment of divine love, the other misotheism. Both belong to the period 1770 to 1775. Prometheus is the creative and rebellious spirit which, rejected by God, angrily defies him and asserts itself; Ganymede is the boyish self which is adored and seduced by God. One is the lone defiant, the other the yielding acolyte. As the humanist poet, Goethe presents both identities as aspects or forms of the human condition.

The poem was set to music, among others, by Franz Schubert (D. 544, 1817), Carl Loewe (Op. 81, No. 5, for SATB, 1836–1837), and by Hugo Wolf (1891).