Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4Menzel, Wolfgang
History
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4
Menzel, Wolfgang
Germany -- History
This was in a manner also the finale of the German notes that so
strangely resounded in that Gallic time; the restoration suppressed
every further outburst of patriotism, and the patriotic spirit that
had begun to breathe forth in verse once more gave place to
cosmopolitism and Gallicism. The lyric school, founded by Ludwig
Uhland, alone preserved a German spirit and a connection with the
ancient _Minnelieder_ of Swabia.
The new cosmopolitic tendency of the poetry of these times is chiefly
due to the influence exercised by Goethe. The quick comprehension and
ready adoption of every novelty is a faculty of, not a fault in, the
German character, and alone becomes reprehensible when the German,
forgetful of himself and of his own peculiar characteristics, adopts a
medley of foreign incongruities and falsifies whatever ought to be
preserved special and true. Goethe and his school, however, not
content with imitating singly the style of every nation and of every
period, have interwoven the most diverse strains, antique and
romantic, old German and modern French, Grecian and Chinese, in one
and the same poem. This unnatural style, itself destructive of the
very peculiarity at which it aims, has infected both modern poetry and
modern art; the architect intermixes the Grecian and the Gothic in his
creations, while the painter seeks to unite the styles of the Flemish
and Italian schools in his productions, and the poet those of Persia,
Scandinavia, and Spain, in his strains.--Those are indeed deserving of
gratitude who have comprehended and preserved the character peculiar
to the productions of foreign art, in which the brothers Friedrich and
August Wilhelm Schlegel have been so eminently successful. Hammer and,
after him, Ruckert have also opened the Eastern world to our view.
Count Platen, on the other hand, hung fluctuating between the antique
Persian and German.--Cosmopolitism was greatly strengthened by the
historical romances in vogue in England, descriptive of olden time,
and which found innumerable imitators in Germany. They were, at all
events, thus far beneficial; they led us from the parlor into the
world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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