(1698-1783)
In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the political and
intellectual life of Germany showed no signs of its imminent awakening.
French supremacy was undisputed. French was spoken by polite society,
and only the middle and lower classes consented to use their mother
tongue. French literature was alone fashionable, and the few scientific
works that appeared were published in Latin. Life was hard and sordid.
Thought and imagination languished. Such writings as existed were empty,
pompous, and pedantic. Yet from this dreary waste-land was to spring
that rich harvest of literature which, in a brief half-century, made the
German nation famous.
[Illustration: Johann Jakob Bodmer]
Klopstock, Wieland, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller--those were
the great names that were soon to shine like stars in the literary
firmament. But the lesser men who broke the ground and opened paths for
their brilliant followers are almost forgotten.
Toward the middle of the century, there lived in Zürich a modest
professor of history, Johann Jakob Bodmer by name (born July 19th,
1698), who spoke the first word for a national literature, and who was
the first writer to attempt a scientific criticism of contemporary
authors. His efforts were rude beginnings of a style that culminated in
the polished essays of Lessing. It was Bodmer whose independence of
thought and feeling first revolted from the slavish imitation of French
culture that enchained the German mind. In his youth he had been sent to
Italy to study commerce. This visit aroused his poetic and artistic
nature. He forgot his business in listening to street singers, in
imitation of whom he wrote Italian lyrics. He read French works on art,
and wrote artificial French verses according to French models. With
equal versatility he composed German poetry, copying Opitz, whom he
esteemed a great poet. Nor did he hesitate to try his skill at Latin
hexameters.
By chance a copy of Addison's Spectator fell into his hands. He turned
at once from French and Italian culture to admire English classics. The
first German to appreciate Milton and Shakespeare (the latter he called
the English Sophocles), he never wavered in his devotion to the English
school. With his faithful friend, Johann Jakob Breitinger, a
conscientious scholar, he started in Zürich a critical weekly paper on
the plan of the Spectator. It was called Discoursen der Mahlern
(Discourses of the Painters), and its essays embody the first literary
effort of the Swiss as a nation. A little weekly coterie soon gathered
about Bodmer to discuss the conduct of the paper; but much of the spirit
and enthusiasm of these councils evaporated in print, the journal being
subjected to a rigid censorship. Not alone art and literature came under
discussion, but social subjects. All contributions were signed with the
names of famous painters, and dealt with mistakes in education, the
evils of card-playing, the duties of friendship, love and matrimony,
logic, morality, pedantry, imagination, self-consciousness, and the fear
of death. These discourses were chiefly written by Bodmer and his
colleague Breitinger. The earlier papers, awkwardly expressed, often in
Swiss dialect, masqueraded as the work of Holbein, Dürer, Raphael, or
Michael Angelo. Although intended at first for Swiss readers only, the
little weekly soon captured a German public. Its purpose was to kindle
the imagination, and to suggest a parallel between the art of painting
and the art of literature. Bodmer only dimly outlined what an infinitely
greater mind defined with unerring precision some twenty years later in
the 'Laocoon.' But the service of the older man to literature is not
therefore to be undervalued. Bodmer created the function of analytic and
psychological criticism in Germany. Hitherto no writer had been called
to account for any literary offense whatever. Bodmer maintained that the
man who demanded a hearing from the public must show good cause for
this demand.
After two years the Discourses were discontinued; but Bodmer had gained
great influence over the young writers of the time. He increased his
reputation by translating Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' which he considered
"a masterpiece of poetic genius, and the leading work of modern times."
He deplores, however, the low standard of public taste, which,
delighting in inferior poets, cannot at once rise to the greatest works.
Already there existed in Leipzig a sort of literary centre, where
Gottsched was regarded as a dictator in matters of taste. This literary
autocrat praised Bodmer's translation of 'Paradise Lost' more than the
original poem, in which he condemned the rhymeless metre. A sharp
controversy soon divided the literary world into two hostile parties,
known in German literature as the "conflict between Leipzig and Zürich."
Gottsched followed Voltaire in considering the English style rude and
barbarous; whereas Bodmer, with keener artistic perception and deeper
insight, defended Milton and Shakespeare. The quarrel, in which Zürich
prevailed, called the attention of Germany to the English literature, so
closely affiliated to the German mind and taste, and hastened its
liberation from the French yoke. Besides these services, Bodmer showed
untiring zeal in rescuing from oblivion the beautiful poems and epics of
the Middle Ages. In his essay 'The Excellent Conditions for Poetic
Production under the Rule of the Swabian Emperors,' he directs public
attention to the exquisite lyrics of the Minnesänger. It was he who
revealed that hidden treasure of German literature, the Nibelungenlied.
By his studies and translations of Middle High German, he opened the
vast and important field of Germanic philology. To the end of his
eighty-five years he was occupied with preparing selections from the
Minnesänger, and his joy was unbounded when his half-century of work was
crowned with success, and the first volume of these poems was placed in
his hands.
Notwithstanding his true appreciation of poetry, he could not write it.
He placed the religious above all other poetic productions, and valued
the fable highly.
His hospitable roof in Zürich had an ever cordial welcome for all
writers, and many were the poets who sojourned in the "Dichterherberge"
(poets' inn); among them Klopstock, Wieland, and Goethe. He held the
esteem of the nation long after his own writings had been crowded into
forgetfulness by the new men whose way he had prepared,--for the genius
of Herder and Lessing may be said to have completed the work that was so
courageously begun by Bodmer.