The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 05: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English
Philosophy
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 05: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English
German literature -- 19th century -- Translations into English; German literature -- 20th century -- Translations into English
The cycle _Love's Spring_ is an imperishable monument to his love for
Louisa Wiethaus. But too many of the poems are dedicated to her and
too many inconsequential moods relating to her are recorded. In spite
of this, Rückert has resolved the discord between every-day life and
poetry with the simplest poetic apparatus. Rückert has also enriched
the German language with a mass of gnomic poetry, to the writing of
which he was led by his Oriental studies. This gnomic poetry (_The
Wisdom of the Brahman_) has been aptly said to recall at times the
ripeness of the mature Goethe and at other times--Polonius. Rückert
was one of the first to introduce the Orient and its verse-forms
into German literature. Here the influence of Friedrich Schlegel
is unmistakable. He was also a master in the reproduction of the
complicated metres of the East and South. Though many of these
verse-forms have refused to become indigenous in Germany, a large
number of new words invented by Rückert have had poetical vogue, and
even where the new formations were too bold or too _recherché_, they
accustomed German ears to a new idea-presentation through sound.
Rückert, like the average Romanticist, lacked moderation in his
production, and was utterly without critical faculty in respect to
his own verse. Much that he has written has perished, but some of his
work--both original and translation--is a permanent part of the best
of German lyric verse.
More individual than Rückert is Adalbert von Chamisso (1781-1838).
Though he was born in the Champagne in France, and was therefore a
fellow-countryman of Joinville and La Fontaine, he became a German
by education and preference, and his name is inseparably linked with
German scholarship and letters. It is remarkable that Chamisso began
to write German only after 1801 and is reported never to have spoken
it perfectly; yet his verse ranks with the best products of Germany in
fluency and in form. Much of it, especially that with woman's love as
its theme, is extremely German in thought and feeling, though perhaps
French in its keenness of analysis. So German is Chamisso felt to be
that at his best he is ranked with Goethe and Heine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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