chapter in the history of the German lyric; the first Göttinger Almanach was the forerunner of many others, which, until well into the next century, formed the favourite receptacle for original poetry. The consecration of the "Göttinger Bund," which originated in the meetings of several gifted young students, to whom Boie acted as mentor, took place on the 12th of September, 1772. Voss, Hölty, the brothers Miller, and two others, had gone out in the evening to a village in the neighbourhood of Göttingen, probably Weende. "Der Abend war ausserordentlich heiter," wrote Voss to a friend, "und der Mond voll. Wir überliessen uns ganz den Empfindungen der schönen Natur. Wir assen in einer Bauerhütte eine Milch, und begaben uns darauf ins freie Feld. Hier fanden wir einen kleinen Eichengrund, und sogleich fiel uns allen ein; den Bund der Freundschaft unter diesen heiligen Bäumen zu schwören. Wir umkränzten die Hüte mit Eichenlaub, legten sie unter den Baum, fassten uns alle bei den Händen, tanzten so um den eingeschlossenen Stamm herum,—riefen den Mond und die Sterne zu Zeugen unseres Bundes an, und versprachen uns eine ewige Freundschaft." 1 2 Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826) was not the most J. H. Voss, inspired of this little group, but he was the representative poet 1751-1826. and the chief of the "Bund." After a youth of extreme privation—he was a native of Mecklenburg-he attracted Boie's attention by some verses sent to the Almanach, and the latter made it possible for him to study at the University of Göttingen. Here Voss devoted himself zealously to classical philology and to poetry. In 1776, he retired to Wandsbeck, where he lived a couple of years on the scanty income brought in by literary work. From 1782 to 1802, he was a schoolmaster in Eutin; in 1802, we find him in Jena, and in 1805, he was appointed professor in Heidelberg, where he died in 1826. Voss's literary work does not cover a wide range, and the bulk of it rarely rises above a certain homely mediocrity. Voss had, in fact, too much commonsense to be a great poet; he never lost touch with the prosaic realities of daily life. In later years, this essentially unpoetic side of his nature, combined with a boorishness of manner which he never lost, brought him into dis 1 Briefe von J. H. Voss, edited by A. Voss, Leipzig, 1840, 1, 91 f. Der Göttinger Dichterbund, herausg. von A. Sauer, 1 (D.N.L., 49 [1887]). Cp. W. Herbst, J. H. Voss, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1872-76. Voss's Homer, 1781-93. His agreeable conflict with the younger Heidelberg Romanticists. Apart from his leadership of the "Göttinger Dichterbund," Voss owes his place in German literature to his translations from the Greek and Latin, and to his Idylls-above all, to the finest of them, Luise, which served Goethe as a model for Hermann und Dorothea. The version of Homers Odüssee, which Voss published in 1781,1 is one of the masterpieces of German translation; although unequal, and occasionally disfigured by harsh and un-German constructions, it remains, in essentials, the most perfect rendering of Homer into a modern tongue. It is, indeed, surprising that this Mecklenburg peasant, with his homely ideas of poetry and life, should have been able to convey, not merely the meaning, but the spirit, the primitive harmony and almost the music, of the Homeric epic in his translation. In Voss's translation, Homer became almost as complete a possession of the German people as Shakespeare in that of Schlegel. The version of the Iliad did not appear for twelve years after that of the Odyssey (1793), and, owing to the translator's striving after philological accuracy, is deficient in the freshness that characterised the latter. The same fault disfigures more or less all Voss's later classic translations, as well as the second edition of the Odyssey (1793). His final work was a version of Shakespeare, in which he was assisted by his sons (9 vols., 1818-39). When we turn to Voss's Idyllen 2 (first collected edition in the Gedichte, 1785), it is difficult to realise that little over twenty years had elapsed since Gessner's last volume of Neue Idyllen found admiring readers. Between the sentimental and artificial shepherds and shepherdesses of Gessner and the intensely realistic figures of Voss, at least a century would seem to have intervened. In the idylls of the two poets, it is not the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which touch, but the seventeenth and nineteenth. In less than a generation, the word "Idyll" had undergone a complete change of meaning; a new spirit was abroad, a spirit that sought to base literature once more upon the realities of life, and, instead of the conventional figures of the Renaissance pastoral, Voss, whose 1 Cp. the edition by M. Bernays, Stuttgart, 1881. 2 Edited by K. Goedeke (Bibl. der deutschen Nationallitt., 26), Leipzig, model was the Idylls of Theocritus, gives us villagers, country schoolmasters, and pastors. The homely world of the German social novel is here embellished by a poetry that is hardly less homely. Luise, ein ländliches Gedicht in drey Idyllen (1784), Luise, is Voss's most popular work. The subject of the poem is the 1784. courtship and wedding of Luise and a young pastor, but this forms only the thread which holds the various scenes together. These scenes are painted with both truth and humour, and give a faithful picture of life in a country parsonage, at a time when rationalism was still a dominant force in religious thought. But one misses here, as in all Voss's writings, poetic tact; his striving after realistic simplicity and his love of detail often lead him into absurdities, and even his humour is not always in good taste. None the less, by associating the idyll with the Greek epic, he became the creator of a new genre in German poetry; as Schiller said,1 he not only enriched the literature, but also widened it. His other idylls have been unduly overshadowed by Luise, but one, at least, Der siebzigste Geburtstag, which appeared in the Almanach for 1781, is worthy of a place beside it. 1748-76. The most gifted lyric poet of the Göttingen circle was undoubtedly Ludwig H. C. Hölty (1748-76), whose unhappy L. H. C. life was cut short by consumption at the age of twenty-eight. Hölty, In the simple elegiac songs and odes which Hölty wrote after his association with the Bund (Gedichte, first collected, 1782-83), there is lyric inspiration of the highest order. it is poetry which suggests a comparison with Uz rather than with Goethe. In verses, such as the following, from the poem Lebenspflichten (1776): "Rosen auf den Weg gestreut, Und des Harms vergessen! Eine kleine Spanne Zeit Ward uns zugemessen. Heute hüpft im Frühlingstanz 1 Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (Werke, 10), 489.. But 2 Cp. A. Sauer, I.c., 2 (D.N.L., 50, I [1894]). Hölty's Gedichte have also been edited by K. Halm (Bibl. der deutschen Nationallitt., 29), Leipzig, 1870. 3 A. Sauer's edition, 2, 112. J. M. Miller, 1750-1814. an unmistakable echo is to be heard of the classic Anacreontic. At the same time, Hölty obviously belonged to a generation which stood on a more intimate footing with nature than did the Halle school. His lyrics were not always as polished as Uz's, but the tragic melancholy that pervades them was, at least, sincere. Only one other member of the little group of poets who danced round the oak-tree in September, 1772, has a claim upon our attention here-namely, the Swabian, J. M. Miller (1750-1814), who had come to Göttingen to study theology. Many of the songs which Miller contributed to the Almanachs-his Gedichte did not appear in a collected edition until 1783-became veritable Volkslieder, but he is now best remembered as the author of Siegwart, a characteristic novel of the "Sturm und Drang," to which we shall return. In December, 1772, three months after the foundC. zu Stol- ing of the "Hain," two new members, the brothers Christian berg, 1748- and Friedrich Leopold, Grafen zu Stolberg (1748 - 1821 and 1750-1819),2 joined the circle, and infused new life into it by bringing it into closer relations with Klopstock. 1750-1819. Neither had much genius, but, caught up and carried along by the revolutionary spirit of the time, they wrote rhetorical odes against tyrants, and sang pæons in honour of their fatherland. A volume of Gedichte by both brothers appeared in 1779. Their talents, however, show to most advantage in their translations from the Greek. Amongst other things, Christian made a German version of Sofokles (1787), while Friedrich, whose literary work is the more voluminous and important, translated the Ilias (1778), Auserlesene Gespräche des Platon (1796-97), and—as late as 1806 -Die Gedichte von Ossian. 1821. F. L. zu Stolberg, Besides these poets of the Göttingen "Hain," a few other writers have to be considered, who, although not actually members of the Bund, belonged to the same group; they are Claudius, Göckingk, and, most famous of all, Bürger. Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), a native of Holstein, was the dius, 1740- oldest of the three; simple, unassuming, and pious, he is an excellent example of the literary man as produced by the homely provincialism of German life in the eighteenth century. M. Clau 1815. 1 Cp. A. Sauer, .c., 2 (D.N.L., 50, 1 [1894]), 117 ff. For more than four years, under the pseudonym "Asmus," Claudius edited Der Wandsbecker Bothe (1771-75), and, in the literary criticism which he contributed to it, revealed a good, if somewhat unimaginative, common-sense, tempered always by a genial humour; he was fond of posing as the champion of the people against both philosopher and scholar. The "Wandsbeck Messenger," as he called himself after his paper, is one of the lovable personalities of German literature. He was not an inspired poet, but he contributed to the store of German "Volkslieder" a number of hearty, popular songs, such as the Rheinweinlied (“Bekränzt mit Laub den lieben vollen Becher"), and the familiar Abendlied: "Der Mond ist aufgegangen, Am Himmel hell und klar; Der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget, Der weisse Nebel wunderbar."1 His writings-embracing, besides poems, a miscellaneous collection of sketches and anecdotes-were published under the fantastic title, Asmus omnia sua secum portans, oder Sämmtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Bothen (1775, 1790-1812).2 The intimate personal relation in which Leopold F. G. von Göckingk (1748-1828) 3 stood to the Göttingen circle has made it difficult to measure his poetry by the proper standard. As a matter of fact, his verses ought rather to be compared with those of Wieland and the older Anacreontic rhymers, to whom he is in many respects akin, than with the poetry of his friends in Göttingen; on the other hand, he is in closer touch with life and reality than the generation which had not come under Klopstock's influence. Göckingk's reputation rests on his Lieder zweier Liebenden (1777) and his Episteln (first collected in the Gedichte, 1780-82). The passionate earnestness of the new literature is not to be found in these poems, but they show a remarkable command of verse and a clever satirical talent. It may at least be said of Göckingk that no other German writer has handled the "Epistle," as a literary form, so dexterously as he. 1 A. Sauer's edition, 284 f., 293 f. 2 Edited by C. Redlich, 12th ed., Gotha, 1882. Cp. W. Herbst, M. Claudius, Gotha, 1878, and A. Sauer, Z.c., 3, 193 ff. 3 A selection of his poetry, edited by J. Minor, in D.N.L., 73 [1884], 115 ff. L. F. G. von Göck ingk, 17481828. |