(1747-1794)
The ballad of 'Lenore,' upon which Buerger's fame chiefly rests, was
published in 1773. It constituted one of the articles in that
declaration of independence which the young poets of the time were
formulating, and it was more than a mere coincidence that in the same
year Herder wrote his essay on 'Ossian' and the 'Songs of Ancient
Peoples,' and Goethe unfurled the banner of a new time in 'Goetz von
Berlichingen.' The artificial and sentimental trivialities of the
pigtail age were superseded almost at a stroke, and the petty formalism
under which the literature of Germany was languishing fell about the
powdered wigs of its professional representatives. The new impulse came
from England. As in France, Rousseau, preaching the gospel of a return
to nature, found his texts in English writers, so in Germany the poets
who inaugurated the classic age derived their chief inspiration from the
wholesome heart of England. It was Shakespeare that inspired Goethe's
'Goetz'; Ossian and the old English and Scotch folk-songs were Herder's
theme; and Percy's 'Reliques' stimulated and saved the genius of Buerger.
This was the movement which, for lack of a better term, has been called
the naturalistic. Literature once more took possession of the whole
range of human life and experience, descending from her artificial
throne to live with peasant and people. These ardent innovators spurned
all ancient rules and conventions, and in the first ecstasy of their
new-found freedom and unchastened strength it is no wonder that they
went too far. Goethe and Schiller learned betimes the salutary lesson of
artistic restraint. Buerger never learned it.
[Illustration: GOTTFRIED A. BUeRGER]
Buerger was wholly a child of his time. At the age of twenty-six he wrote
'Lenore,' and his genius never again attained that height. Much may be
accomplished in the first outburst of youthful energy; but without the
self-control which experience should teach, and without the moral
character which is the condition of great achievement, genius rots ere
it is ripe; and this was the case with Buerger. We are reminded of Burns.
Goethe in his seventy-eighth year said to Eckermann:--"What songs Buerger
and Voss have written! Who would say that they are less valuable or
less redolent of their native soil than the exquisite songs of Burns?"
Like Burns, Buerger was of humble origin; like Burns, he gave passion and
impulse the reins and drove to his own destruction; like Burns, he left
behind him a body of truly national and popular poetry which is still
alive in the mouths of the people.
Buerger was born in the last hour of the year 1747 at Molmerswende. His
father was a country clergyman, and he himself was sent to Halle at the
age of seventeen to study theology. His wild life there led to his
removal to Goettingen, where he took up the study of law. He became a
member and afterwards the leader of the famous "Goettinger Dichterbund,"
and was carried away and for a time rescued from his evil courses by his
enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Percy's 'Reliques.' He contributed to the
newly established Musenalmanach, and from 1779 until his death in 1794
he was its editor. In 1787 the university conferred an honorary degree
upon him, and he was soon afterward made a professor without salary,
lecturing on Kantian philosophy and aesthetics. Three times he was
married; his days were full of financial struggles and self-wrought
misery; there is little in his private life that is creditable to
record: a dissolute youth was followed by a misguided manhood, and he
died in his forty-seventh year.
It fell to the lot of the young Goethe, then an unknown reviewer, to
write for the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen in November, 1772, a notice
of some of Buerger's early poems. "The 'Minnelied' of Mr. Buerger," he
says, "is worthy of a better age; and if he has more such happy moments,
these efforts of his will be among the most potent influences to render
our sentimental poetasters, with their gold-paper Amors and Graces and
their elysium of benevolence and philanthropy, utterly forgotten." With
such clear vision could Goethe see at the age of twenty-three. But he
soon saw also the danger that lay in unbridled freedom. For the best
that was in Buerger Goethe retained his admiration to the last, but
before he was thirty he felt that their ways had parted. Among the
'Maxims and Reflections' we find this note:--"It is sad to see how an
extraordinary man may struggle with his time, with his circumstances,
often even with himself, and never prosper. Sad example, Buerger!"
Doubtless German literature owes less to Buerger than English owes to
Burns, but it owes much. Buerger revived the ballad form in which so much
of the finest German poetry has since been cast. With his lyric gifts
and his dramatic power, he infused a life into these splendid poems that
has made them a part of the folk-lore of his native land. 'Lenardo und
Blandine,' his own favorite, 'Des Pfarrers Tochter von Taubenhain' (The
Pastor's Daughter of Taubenhain), 'Das Lied vom braven Mann' (The Song
of the Brave Man), 'Die Weiber von Weinsberg' (The Women of Weinsberg),
'Der Kaiser und der Abt' (The Emperor and the Abbot), 'Der Wilde Jaeger'
(The Wild Huntsman), all belong, like 'Lenore,' to the literary
inheritance of the German people. Buerger attempted a translation of the
Iliad in iambic blank verse, and a prose translation of 'Macbeth.' To
him belongs also the credit of having restored to German literature the
long-disused sonnet. His sonnets are among the best in the language, and
elicited warm praise from Schiller as "models of their kind." Schiller
had written a severe criticism of Buerger's poems, which had inflamed
party strife and embittered the last years of Buerger himself; but even
Schiller admits that Buerger is as much superior to all his rivals as he
is inferior to the ideal he should have striven to attain.
The debt which Buerger owed to English letters was amply repaid. In
'Lenore' he showed Percy's 'Reliques' the compliment of quoting from the
ballad of 'Sweet William,' which had supplied him with his theme, the
lines:--"Is there any room at your head, Willie, or any room at your
feet?" The first literary work of Walter Scott was the translation which
he made in 1775 of 'Lenore,' under the title of 'William and Helen';
this was quickly followed by a translation of 'The Wild Huntsman.'
Scott's romantic mind received in Buerger's ballads and in Goethe's
'Goetz,' which he translated four years later, just the nourishment it
craved. It is a curious coincidence that another great romantic writer,
Alexandre Dumas, should also have begun his literary career with a
translation of 'Lenore.' Buerger was not, however, a man of one poem. He
filled two goodly volumes, but the oft-quoted words of his friend
Schlegel contain the essential truth:--"'Lenore' will always be Buerger's
jewel, the precious ring with which, like the Doge of Venice espousing
the sea, he married himself to the folk-song forever."