Erzäh lungen, 1746, 1748. praktischen Abhandlung von dem guten Geschmacke in Briefen) which remained recognised models of epistolary style for more than twenty years. His reputation now rests mainly upon his popular Fabeln Fabeln und und Erzählungen (1746, 1748),1 in which the verses, although wanting in the higher qualities of poetic writing, charm by their simplicity. The naïve manner in which Gellert tells his stories, cloaks the mediocrity of his poetic talent; indeed, he succeeds by his very artlessness where a greater poet might have failed. The sources of his fables are extremely varied, Hagedorn and Lafontaine being obviously the models. But Gellert must at least be given credit for originality; even in well - worn anecdotes he has an eye for didactic possibilities which escaped his predecessors, and his point of view is invariably his own. Hardly less popular in their day than the Fabeln und Erzählungen were the Geistlichen Oden und Lieder (1757), but the absence of real poetic inspiration naturally makes itself more felt in verses of this nature. The Fables remain Gellert's chief work, and, together with Rabener's satires, they may be said to have been the most genuinely "home-grown" products of the Saxon school. The eighteenth century was the golden age of the fable in European literature, and Gellert at once became the model for his contemporaries and successors. His chief follower was M. G. Lichtwer (1719-83), whose Esopische Fabeln appeared in 1748, and are hardly inferior to those of his master. Independently of Gellert, a Swiss writer, J. L. Meyer von Knonau (1705-85), published in 1744 a collection of Neue Fabeln, which show a close observation of nature; while in the Fabeln (1783) of the Alsatian G. K. Pfeffel (1736-1809), this literary genre begins to show traces of decay.2 The contributors to the Bremer Beiträge were not reformers; they only put into practice the better elements in Gottsched's reforms, avoiding his extremes. They sought their models, with preference, in French literature, and success meant to them a close imitation of those models, or, as in the case of Rabener and Gellert, it was won in byways which 1 F. Muncker, l.c., 1; also ed. by K. Biedermann in the Bibl. d. deutschen Nationallitt. des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 30, Leipzig, 1871. 2 Cp. J. Minor, Fabeldichter (D.N.L., 73 [1884]); K. Goedeke, Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 2nd ed., 4, 44 ff. were of little consequence for the future development of German literature. Their poetry was, in general, inspired by reason rather than imagination; they knew nothing of that fervid enthusiasm for nature which breathes from Haller's Swiss poems. Under these circumstances it is not difficult to see that the publication of an epic such as the Messias, the first three cantos of which appeared in the Bremer Beyträge in the spring of 1748, must necessarily have been disastrous to the journal. With Klopstock's appearance German literature took a sudden leap forward, and the Bremer Beiträger" seemed overnight to have been left behind. 256 I. J. Pyra, 1715-44, and S. G. Lange, 1711-81. CHAPTER III. THE PRUSSIAN POETS; KLOPSTOCK. DURING the first half of the eighteenth century, the University of Halle was the centre from which emanated almost every new movement in German thought. At its foundation in 1694, it was the fountain-head of German Pietism; in 1707, Christian von Wolff made it the focus of German rationalism, and again, between 1735 and 1740, A. G. Baumgarten (1714-62), Wolff's disciple, taught in Halle, and, under the stimulus of Breitinger's poetic theories, laid the foundation of a new philosophic science, æsthetics. His work on this subject, Esthetica, did not, it is true, begin to appear until 1750, when Baumgarten had exchanged his chair in Halle for one in Frankfort-on-the-Oder; but in his lectures at Halle he naturally favoured the Swiss party rather than Gottsched. It is thus not surprising that the younger literary talents of the university should also have been partisans of Bodmer and Breitinger. I. J. Pyra (1715-44) and S. G. Lange (1711-81), who were both students in Halle in 1737, came forward with Freundschaftliche Lieder,1 which they wrote together, as champions of a rhymeless poetry in antique metres, and were thus direct forerunners of Klopstock. A year or two later, it was again three students of Halle, Gleim, Uz, and Götz, who laid the foundations of the Anacreontic or Prussian school of poetry. Anacreontic poetry is a specifically eighteenth-century type of literature, and appeals as little as the fable to modern tastes. Hagedorn had been the first to naturalise it in Germany, and in the hands of the Prussian school it became for a time the most characteristic form of the lyric. As 1 Ed. A. Sauer (Litteraturdenkmale, 22), Heilbronn, 1885. long as the German lyric was restricted to imitations of Anacreon, there was naturally little room for the poetry of feeling which Günther had awakened to new life; moreover, the main source of poetic inspiration in this age was neither sentiment nor nature, but the majestic figure of Frederick the Great. 1719-1803. J. W. L. Gleim,1 born in 1719, was a native of Thuringia. J. W. L. After a few years, first as a student in Halle and then in Gleim, Berlin, he settled in Halberstadt as secretary to the cathedral chapter, later on becoming canon, and here he remained until the close of his long life in 1803. As a poet, Gleim did not rise above mediocrity, but he stood on an intimate footing with the entire literary world, from Ewald von Kleist to Heinrich von Kleist, and thus his reputation was assured, irrespective of his talents. "Vater Gleim " was always ready with assistance for all who turned to him, and no one weighed too carefully his uninspired verses. His first publication, Versuch in scherzhaften Liedern (1744), was the beginning of endless Anacreontic imitations, and the famous Preussischen Kriegslieder von einem Grenadier (1758) made his reputation once and for all. The best thing about these war-songs, which nowadays give an impression of monotony, was their patriotic enthusiasm; and this enthusiasm commended them to a public which had no thoughts for their merits as poetry. Gleim was virtually the poet of the Preussischen Kriegslieder and nothing else; his Fabeln (1756) could not compare with Gellert's, and his oriental epic, Halladat, oder das rothe Buch (1774), was hardly more successful than were his imitations of the Minnesingers. A sincerer and more gifted poet than Gleim was Johann J. P. Uz, Peter Uz (1720-96),2 born in Ansbach, the second of 1720-96. the group of Anacreontic poets. In Uz's Lyrische Gedichte (1749) the German Anacreontic is to be seen at its best. Like Hagedorn, Uz had studied the lyric of other lands industriously; he had learned not only from Horace, but from the French poets. There is thus a Latin polish on his verses, which balances the inevitable triviality of his 1 Anakreontiker und preussisch-patriotische Lyriker, ed. F. Muncker, I (D.N.L., 45, I (1894]), 177 ff.; the Preussischen Kriegslieder are edited by A. Sauer in the Litteraturdenkm., 4, Heilbronn, 1882. 2 Samtliche Poetische Werke, ed. A. Sauer (Litteraturdenkm., 33-38), Stuttgart, 1890. Cp. F. Muncker, .c., 2, 3 ff. R J. N. Götz, 1721-81. E. C. von Kleist, 1715-59. Der 1749. themes. In his philosophic poems, of which Theodicée (1755) is, on the whole, the most characteristic, Uz might be claimed as a direct predecessor of Schiller. Der Sieg des Liebesgottes (1755), on the other hand, is a comic epic in which the poet follows, not unsuccessfully, in Zacharia's footsteps. J. N. Götz (1721-81), a native of Worms, was the least gifted of the circle and essentially a writer of “occasional" verses. His familiarity with Latin and French literature was no less extensive than that of his friend Uz, but he wrote easily and brought the frivolous and insincere side of the Anacreontic into prominence. It seems almost incongruous to include the unhappy Prussian officer, Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715-59),1 in the group of Anacreontic singers; Kleist's heartfelt poetry is no less strange in such surroundings than was the poet himself in the military society of Potsdam. It was, however, through Gleim's influence and friendship that Kleist became a poet, Gleim being thus the link between the literary movement, which originated in Halle, and the poets of the Prussian capital. Ewald von Kleist is the most modern poet of the Frederician age; he is filled with a passionate love for nature, and a melancholy lies upon his poetry which was alien to the spirit of the "Aufklärung." Der Frühling, the fragment of a descriptive poem suggested by Thomson's Seasons—which Brockes had translated four years earlier appeared in 1749, and laid the foundation of Kleist's fame. The charm of his poetry lies in the warmth with which nature's beauties are described; spring appears to the poet as a new revelation. "Empfang mich, schattichter Hain, voll hoher grüner Gewölbe! These are the opening lines of a poem which may be re- 1 Werke, ed. A. Sauer, 3 vols., Berlin [1881-82]. Cp. F. Muncker, l.c., 2, 103 ff. 2 From the edition of 1756 (A. Sauer, 1, 206 f.) |