In the Shadow of Renert

Few Luxembourgish authors are as closely associated with a single work as Michel Rodange (1827–1876). In both academic research and the collective memory, his Renert (1872) stands as a defining moment in the development of Luxembourgish as a literary language – while his other writings have largely been forgotten.

Among these, one overlooked verse composition deserves particular attention: a work that has never settled on a definitive title, known variously as D’Léierchen or Dem Léiweckerche säi Lidd. The first refers to the sole surviving manuscript by Rodange, the second to its initial publication in the Luxemburger Lehrer-Zeitung in 1926. The differing titles alone hint at the turbulent publication and reception history of the text.

In the summer of 1928, long after Rodange’s death, his daughters Elise and Margarethe discovered the original version of the poem in the attic of their family home, alongside the unfinished play Dem Grow Sigfrid seng Goldkuommer. They entrusted both manuscripts to the author and literary scholar Nikolaus Welter, who published Sigfrid in 1929. The well-preserved Léierchen manuscript, measuring 32 x 20 cm, comprises 60 pages, though only 28 contain writing. Clearly visible are the page margins and ruled lines drawn in pencil. Written in Kurrent script, the first 28 pages contain 191 four-line stanzas (764 verses). Numerous crossings-out, additions and pasted-in slips of paper with corrections reveal a restless, indecisive writing process, offering valuable insight into an early stage of the text’s creation.

Two decades before the discovery of the original, a second variant of the poem had already circulated. It was published first in fragments in 1903, and then in full in 1926 by Michel Molitor under the title Dem Lëwäckerche seï Lidd in the Luxemburger Lehrer-Zeitung. This version is 16 stanzas shorter but includes four entirely new sections. It is based primarily on a transcript in Antiqua script, which, according to research by the National Literature Centre, may have been produced by the author’s children. The presumed original manuscript they relied upon has since been lost.

Yet even the absence of a final, author-approved version only partially explains the poem’s muted reception. The text also unsettles through its ductus and thematic focus. Were the author not known by name, few would attribute it to Rodange, the sharp-tongued satirist. Here, the social criticism of Renert gives way to a pastoral, bucolic tone that places the idyll of a life closely connected to nature at its centre: as spring begins, father and son set out to plough. The song of a lark, interpreted by the father, evokes the joys of rural life and the beauty of nature in an instructive tone. These themes have repeatedly led interpreters to draw comparisons with Virgil’s didactic poem Georgics, though it remains unresolved how directly Rodange drew from this ancient model. The question of when the text was written has also sparked lively debate among scholars. Alain Atten, who reconstructed the work’s reception and genesis in the 1990 edition, identifies the years 1862 to 1866 – Rodange’s time in Koerich, just before he began working on Renert – as the most likely period of composition.

The original manuscript, acquired by the BnL in 1973, along with three other published variants of the Léierchen material, can be viewed online on eluxemburgensia.lu. Rodange’s poem was the first literary work ever to be digitised by the BnL as part of a pilot project.

This article was originally published in German. The English version was translated using AI and reviewed by the author.