Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4 — John Shaqi
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4Menzel, Wolfgang
History
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4
Menzel, Wolfgang
Germany -- History
In Klopstock, Anglo and Graecomania were combined. The latter had,
however, also its particular school, in which each of the Greek and
Roman poets found his imitator. Voss, for instance, took Homer for his
model, Ramler, Horace, Gleim, Anacreon, Gessner, Theocritus, Cramer,
Pindar, Lichtwer, Æsop, etc. The Germans, in the ridiculous attempt to
set themselves up as Greeks, were, in truth, barbarians. But all was
forced, unnatural, and perverted in this aping age. Wieland alone was
deeply sensible of this want of nature, and hence arose his
predilection for the best poets of Greece and France. The German muse,
led by his genius, lost her ancient stiffness and acquired a pliant
grace, to which the sternest critic of his too lax morality is not
insensible. Some lyric poets, connected with the Graecomanists by the
_Göttingen Hainbund_, preserved a noble simplicity, more particularly
Salis and Hòlty, and also Count Stolberg, wherever he has not been led
astray by Voss's stilted manner. Matthison is, on the other hand, most
tediously affected.
The German, never more at home than when abroad, boasted of being the
cosmopolite he had become, made a virtue of necessity, and termed his
want of patriotism, justice to others, humanity, philanthropy.
Fortunately for him, there were, besides the French, other nations on
which he could model himself, the ancient Greeks and the English, from
each of whom he gathered something until he had converted himself into
a sort of universal abstract. The great poets, who shortly before and
after the seven years' war, put an end to mere partial imitations,
were not actuated by a reaction of nationality, but by a sentiment of
universality. Their object was, not to oppose the German to the
foreign, but simply the human to the single national element, and,
although Germany gave them birth, they regarded the whole world
equally as their country.
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