Laurence Sterne in Germany Part 13

[Footnote 69: II, pp. 230-233. May 15, 1831.]

[Footnote 70: Goedeke gives Vol. XXIII, A. l. H. as 1829.]

[Footnote 71: Hempel, XIX, "Spruche in Prosa," edited by G. von Loeper, Maximen und Reflexionen; pp. 106-111 and 113-117.]

[Footnote 72: Letters, I, p. 54.]

[Footnote 73: This seems very odd in view of the fact that in Loeper's edition of "Dichtung und Wahrheit" (Hempel, XXII, p. 264) Gellius is referred to as "the translator of Lillo and Sterne." It must be that Loeper did not know that Gellius's "Yorick's Nachgela.s.sene Werke" was a translation of the Koran.]

[Footnote 74: The problem involved in the story of Count Gleichen was especially sympathetic to the feeling of the eighteenth century. See a series of articles by Fr. Heibig in _Magazin fur Litteratur des In- und Auslandes_, Vol. 60, pp. 102-5; 120-2; 136-9. "Zur Geschichte des Problems des Grafen von Gleichen."]

[Footnote 75: Weimar edition, Vol. XLI, 2, pp. 252-253.]

[Footnote 76: Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart, 1839, IV, pp.

272-3.]

[Footnote 77: Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1775. See _Gothaische Gel.

Zeitungen_, 1776, I, pp. 208-9, and _Allg. deutsche Bibl._, x.x.xII, 1, p. 139. _Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen_, September 27, 1776. This does not imply that Sterne was in this respect an innovator; such books were printed before Sterne's influence was felt, _e.g._, _Magazin von Einfallen_, Breslau, 1763 (?), reviewed in _Leipziger Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen_, February 20, 1764. See also "Reisen im Vaterlande,--Kein Roman aber ziemlich theatralisch-politisch und satyrischen Inhalts," two volumes; Konigsberg and Leipzig, 1793-4, reviewed in _Allg. Litt.

Zeitung_, 1795, III, p. 30. "Der Tandler, oder Streifereyen in die Wildnisse der Einbildungskraft, in die Werke der Natur und menschlichen Sitten," Leipzig, 1778 (?), (_Almanach der deutschen Musen_, 1779, p. 48). "Meine Geschichte oder Begebenheiten des Herrn Thomas: ein narkotisches Werk des Doktor Pifpuf," Munster und Leipzig, 1772, pp. 231, 8vo. A strange episodical conglomerate; see _Magazin der deutschen Critik_, II, p. 135.]

[Footnote 78: Leipzig, 1785 or 1786. See _Allg. Litt. Zeitung_, 1786, III, p. 259.]

[Footnote 79: Altenburg, 1772, by von Schirach (?).]

[Footnote 80: See _Auserlesene Bibl. der neuesten deutschen Litteratur_, IV, pp. 320-325, and VII, pp. 227-234. _Allg.

deutsche Bibl._, XXIII, 1, p. 258; XXVI, 1, p. 209.]

[Footnote 81: Riedel uses it, for example, in his "Launen an meinen Satyr," speaking of "mein swiftisch Steckenthier" in "Vermischte Aufsatze," reviewed in _Frankfurter Gel. Anz._, 1772, pp. 358-9. _Magazin der deutschen Critik_, I, pp. 290-293.]

[Footnote 82: "Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Marianne Willemer (Suleika)." Edited by Th. Creizenach, 2d edition; Stuttgart, 1878, p. 290.]

[Footnote 83: "K. L. von Knebel's literarischer Nachla.s.s und Briefwechsel;" edited by Varnhagen von Ense and Th. Mundt, Leipzig, 1835, p. 147.]

[Footnote 84: See Mendelssohn's Schriften; edited by G. B.

Mendelssohn, Leipzig, 1844, V, p. 202. See also letter of Mendelssohn to Lessing, February 18, 1780.]

[Footnote 85: Third edition, Berlin and Stettin, 1788, p. 14.]

[Footnote 86: II, pp. 218 ff.]

[Footnote 87: II, 2, p. 127.]

[Footnote 88: These two cases are mentioned also by Riemann in "Goethe's Romantechnik."]

[Footnote 89: See _Frankfurter Gel. Anz._, May 8, 1772, p. 296.]

[Footnote 90: III, pp. 276 ff.]

CHAPTER VI

IMITATORS OF STERNE

Among the disciples of Sterne in Germany whose literary imitation may be regarded as typical of their master's influence, Johann Georg Jacobi is perhaps the best known. His relation to the famous "Lorenzodosen"

conceit is sufficient to link his name with that of Yorick. Martin[1]

a.s.serts that he was called "Uncle Toby" in Gleim's circle because of his enthusiasm for Sterne. The indebtedness of Jacobi to Sterne is the subject of a special study by Dr. Joseph Longo, "Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi;" and the period of Jacobi's literary work which falls under the spell of Yorick has also been treated in an inaugural dissertation, "Ueber Johann Georg Jacobi's Jugendwerke," by Georg Ransohoff. The detail of Jacobi's indebtedness to Sterne is to be found in these two works.

Longo was unable to settle definitely the date of Jacobi's first acquaintance with Sterne. The first mention made of him is in the letter to Gleim of April 4, 1769, and a few days afterward,--April 10,--the intelligence is afforded that he himself is working on a "journey." The "Winterreise" was published at Dusseldorf in the middle of June, 1769.

Externally the work seems more under the influence of the French wanderer Chapelle, since prose and verse are used irregularly alternating, a style quite different from the English model. There are short and unnumbered chapters, as in the Sentimental Journey, but, unlike Sterne, Jacobi, with one exception, names no places and makes no attempt at description of place or people, other than the sentimental individuals encountered on the way. He makes no a.n.a.lysis of national, or even local characteristics: the journey, in short, is almost completely without place-influence. There is in the volume much more exuberance of fancy, grotesque at times, a more conscious exercise of the picturing imagination than we find in Sterne. There is use, too, of mythological figures quite foreign to Sterne, an obvious reminiscence of Jacobi's Anacreontic experience. He exaggerates Yorick's sentimentalism, is more weepy, more tender, more sympathizing; yet, as Longo does not sufficiently emphasize, he does not touch the whimsical side of Yorick's work. Jacobi, unlike his model, but in common with other German imitators, is insistent in instruction and serious in contention for pet theories, as is exemplified by the discussion of the doctrine of immortality. There are opinions to be maintained, there is a message to be delivered. Jacobi in this does not give the lie to his nationality.

Like other German imitators, too, he took up with especial feeling the relations between man and the animal world, an att.i.tude to be connected with several familiar episodes in Sterne.[2] The two chapters, "Der Heerd" and "Der Taubenschlag," tell of a sentimental farmer who mourns over the fact that his son has cut down a tree in which the nightingale was wont to nest. A similar sentimental regard is cherished in this family for the doves, which no one killed, because no one could eat them. Even as Yorick meets a Franciscan, Jacobi encounters a Jesuit whose heart leaps to meet his own, and later, after the real journey is done, a visit to a lonely cloister gives opportunity for converse with a monk, like Pater Lorenzo,--tender, simple and humane.

The "Sommerreise," according to Longo, appeared in the latter part of September, 1769, a less important work, which, in the edition of 1807, Jacobi considered unworthy of preservation. Imitation of Sterne is marked: following a criticism by Wieland the author attempts to be humorous, but with dubious success; he introduces a Sterne-like sentimental character which had not been used in the "Winterreise,"

a beggar-soldier, and he repeats the motif of human sympathy for animals in the story of the lamb. Sympathy with erring womanhood is expressed in the incidents related in "Die Fischerhutte" and "Der Geistliche." These two books were confessedly inspired by Yorick, and contemporary criticism treated them as Yorick products. The _Deutsche Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften_, published by Jacobi's friend Klotz, would naturally favor the volumes. Its review of the "Winterreise" is non-critical and chiefly remarkable for the denial of foreign imitation.

The _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_,[3] in reviewing the same work pays a significant tribute to Sterne, praising his power of disclosing the good and beautiful in the seemingly commonplace. In direct criticism of the book, the reviewer calls it a journey of fancy, the work of a youthful poet rather than that of a sensitive philosopher. Wieland is credited with the astounding opinion that he prefers the "Sommerreise"

to Yorick's journey.[4] Longo's characterization of Sterne is in the main satisfactory, yet there is distinctly traceable the tendency to ignore or minimize the whimsical elements of Sterne's work: this is the natural result of his approach to Sterne, through Jacobi, who understood only the sentimentalism of the English master.[5]

Among the works of sentiment which were acknowledged imitations of Yorick, along with Jacobi's "Winterreise," probably the most typical and best known was the "Empfindsame Reisen durch Deutschland" by Johann Gottlieb Schummel. Its importance as a doc.u.ment in the history of sentimentalism is rather as an example of tendency than as a force contributing materially to the spread of the movement. Its influence was probably not great, though one reviewer does hint at a following.[6] Yet the book has been remembered more persistently than any other work of its genre, except Jacobi's works, undoubtedly in part because it was superior to many of its kind, partly, also, because its author won later and maintained a position of some eminence, as a writer and a pedagogue; but largely because Goethe's well-known review of it in the _Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen_ has been cited as a remarkably acute contribution to the discriminating criticism of the genuine and the affected in the eighteenth-century literature of feeling, and has drawn attention from the very fact of its source to the object of its criticism.

Schummel was born in May, 1748, and hence was but twenty years of age when Germany began to thrill in response to Yorick's sentiments. It is probable that the first volume was written while Schummel was still a university student in 1768-1770. He a.s.sumed a position as teacher in 1771, but the first volume came out at Easter of that year; this would probably throw its composition back into the year before. The second volume appeared at Michaelmas of the same year. His publisher was Zimmermann at Wittenberg and Zerbst, and the first volume at any rate was issued in a new edition. The third volume came out in the spring of 1772.[7] Schummel's t.i.tle, "Empfindsame Reisen," is, of course, taken from the newly coined word in Bode's t.i.tle, but in face of this fact it is rather remarkable to find that several quotations from Sterne's Journey, given in the course of the work, are from the Mittelstedt translation. On two occasions, indeed, Schummel uses the t.i.tle of the Mittelstedt rendering as first published, "Versuch uber die menschliche Natur."[8]

These facts lead one to believe that Schummel drew his inspiration from the reading of this translation. This is interesting in connection with Bottiger's claim that the whole cavalcade of sentimental travelers who trotted along after Yorick with all sorts of animals and vehicles was a proof of the excellence and power of Bode's translation. As one would naturally infer from the t.i.tle of Schummel's fiction, the Sentimental Journey is more constantly drawn upon as a source of ideas, motifs, expression, and method, than Tristram Shandy, but the allusions to Sterne's earlier book, and the direct adaptations from it are both numerous and generous. This fact has not been recognized by the critics, and is not an easy inference from the contemporary reviews.

The book is the result of an immediate impulse to imitation felt irresistibly on the reading of Sterne's narrative. That the critics and readers of that day treated with serious consideration the efforts of a callow youth of twenty or twenty-one in this direction is indicative either of comparative vigor of execution, or of prepossession of the critical world in favor of the literary genre,--doubtless of both.

Schummel confesses that the desire to write came directly after the book had been read. "I had just finished reading it," he says, "and Heaven knows with what pleasure, every word from 'as far as this matter is concerned' on to 'I seized the hand of the lady's maid,' were imprinted in my soul with small invisible letters." The characters of the Journey stood "life-size in his very soul." Involuntarily his inventive powers had sketched several plans for a continuation, releasing Yorick from the hand of the _fille de chambre_. But what he attempts is not a continuation but a German parallel.

In the outward events of his story, in the general trend of its argument, Schummel does not depend upon either Shandy or the Journey: the hero's circ.u.mstances are in general not traceable to the English model, but, spasmodically, the manner of narration and the nature of the incidents are quite slavishly copied. A complete summary of the thread of incident on which the various sentimental adventures, whimsical speculations and digressions are hung, can be dispensed with: it is only necessary to note instances where connection with Sterne as a model can be established. Schummel's narrative is often for many successive pages absolutely straightforward and simple, unbroken by any attempt at Shandean buoyancy, and unblemished by overwrought sentiment. At the pausing places he generally indulges in Sternesque quibbling.

A brief a.n.a.lysis of the first volume, with especial reference to the appropriation of Yorick features, will serve to show the extent of imitation, and the nature of the method. In outward form the Sentimental Journey is copied. The volume is not divided into chapters, but there are named divisions: there is also Yorick-like repet.i.tion of section-headings. Naturally the author attempts at the very beginning to strike a note distinctly suggesting Sterne: "Is he dead, the old cousin?" are the first words of the volume, uttered by the hero on receipt of the news, and in Yorick fashion he calls for guesses concerning the mien with which the words were said. The conversation of the various human pa.s.sions with Yorick concerning the advisability of offering the lady in Calais a seat in his chaise is here directly imitated in the questions put by avarice, vanity, etc., concerning the cousin's death. The actual journey does not begin until page 97, a brief autobiography of the hero occupying the first part of the book; this inconsequence is confessedly intended to be a Tristram Shandy whim.[9]

The author's relation to his parents is adapted directly from Shandy, since he here possesses an incapable, unpractical, philosophizing father, who determines upon methods for the superior education of his son; and a simple, silly mockery of a mother.

Left, however, an orphan, he begins his sentimental adventures: thrust on the world he falls in with a kindly baker's wife whose conduct toward him brings tears to the eyes of the ten-year old lad, this showing his early appet.i.te for sentimental journeying. A large part of this first section relating to his early life and youthful struggles, his kindly benefactor, his adventure with Potiphar's wife, is simple and direct, with only an occasional hint of Yorick's influence in word or phrase, as if the author, now and then, recalled the purpose and the inspiration.

For example, not until near the bottom of page 30 does it occur to him to be abrupt and indulge in Shandean eccentricities, and then again, after a few lines, he resumes the natural order of discourse. And again, on page 83, he breaks off into attempted frivolity and Yorick whimsicality of narration. In starting out upon his journey the author says: "I will tread in Yorick's foot-prints, what matters it if I do not fill them out? My heart is not so broad as his, the sooner can it be filled; my head is not so sound; my brain not so regularly formed. My eyes are not so clear, but for that he was born in England and I in Germany; he is a man and I am but a youth, in short, he is Yorick and I am not Yorick." He determines to journey where it is most sentimental and pa.s.ses the various lands in review in making his decision. Having fastened upon Germany, he questions himself similarly with reference to the cities. Yorick's love of lists, of mock-serious discrimination, of inconsequential reasonings is here copied. The call upon epic, tragic, lyric poets, musicians, etc., which follows here is a further imitation of Yorick's list-making and pseudo-scientific method.

On his way to Leipzig, in the post-chaise, the author falls in with a clergyman: the manner of this meeting is intended to be Sterne-like: Schummel sighs, the companion remarks, "You too are an unhappy one," and they join hands while the human heart beams in the traveler's eyes. They weep too at parting. But, apart from these external incidents of their meeting, the matter of their converse is in no way inspired by Sterne.

It joins itself with the narrative of the author's visit to a church in a village by the wayside, and deals in general with the nature of the clergyman's relation to his people and the general mediocrity and inept.i.tude of the average homiletical discourse, the failure of clergymen to relate their pulpit utterance to the life of the common Christian,--all of which is genuine, sane and original, undoubtedly a real protest on the part of Schummel, the pedagogue, against a prevailing abuse of his time and other times. This section represents unquestionably the earnest convictions of its author, and is written with professional zeal. This division is followed by an evidently purposeful return to Sterne's eccentricity of manner. The author begins a division of his narrative, "Der zerbrochene Postwagen," which is probably meant to coincide with the post-chaise accident in Shandy's travels, writes a few lines in it, then begins the section again, something like the interrupted story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles. Then follows an abrupt discursive study of his apt.i.tudes and proclivities, interspersed with Latin exclamations, interrogation points and dashes. "What a parenthesis is that!" he cries, and a few lines further on, "I burn with longing to begin a parenthesis again." On his arrival in Leipzig, Schummel imitates closely Sterne's satirical guide-book description of Calais[10] in his brief account of the city, breaking off abruptly like Sterne, and roundly berating all "Reisebeschreiber." Here in fitting contrast with this superficial enumeration of facts stands his brief traveler's creed, an interest in people rather than in places, all of which is derived from Sterne's chapter, "In the Street, Calais," in which the master discloses the sentimental possibilities of traveling and typifies the superficial, unemotional wanderer in the persons of Smelfungus and Mundungus, and from the familiar pa.s.sage in "The Pa.s.sport, Versailles," beginning, "But I could wish to spy out the nakedness, etc." No sooner is he arrived in Leipzig, than he accomplishes a sentimental rescue of an unfortunate woman on the street. In the expression of her immediate needs, Schummel indulges for the first time in a row of stars, with the obvious intention of raising a low suggestion, which he contradicts with mock-innocent questionings a few lines later, thereby fastening the attention on the possibility of vulgar interpretation. Sterne is guilty of this device in numerous instances in both his works, and the English continuation of the Sentimental Journey relies upon it in greater and more revolting measure.

Once established in his hotel, the author betakes himself to the theater: this very act he feels will bring upon him the censure of the critics, for Yorick went to the theater too. "A merchant's boy went along before me," he says in nave defense, "was he also an imitator of Yorick?" On the way he meets a fair maid-in-waiting, and the relation between her and the traveler, developed here and later, is inspired directly by Yorick's connection with the fair _fille de chambre_.

Schummel imitates Sterne's excessive detail of description, devoting a whole paragraph to his manner of removing his hat before a lady whom he encounters on this walk to the theater. This was another phase of Sterne's pseudo-scientific method: he describes the trivial with the att.i.tude of the trained observer, registering minutely the detail of phenomena, a mock-parade of scholarship ill.u.s.trated by his description of Trim's att.i.tude while reading his sermon, or the dropping of the hat in the kitchen during the memorable scene when the news of Bobby's death is brought.

In Schummel's narration of his adventures in the house of ill-repute there are numerous sentimental excrescences in his conduct with the poor prisoner there, due largely to Yorick's pattern, such as their weeping on one another's breast, and his wiping away her tears and his, drawn from Yorick's amiable service for Maria of Moulines, an act seemingly expressing the most refined human sympathy. The remaining events of this first volume include an unexpected meeting with the kind baker's wife, which takes place at Gellert's grave. Yorick's imitators were especially fond of re-introducing a sentimental relationship. Yorick led the way in his renewed acquaintance with the _fille de chambre_; Stevenson in his continuation went to extremes in exploiting this cheap device.

Other motifs derived from Sterne, less integral, may be briefly summarized. From the Sentimental Journey is taken the motif that valuable or interesting papers be used to wrap ordinary articles of trade: here herring are wrapped in fragments of the father's philosophy; in the Sentimental Journey we find a similar degrading use for the "Fragment." Schummel breaks off the chapter "La Nave,"[11] under the Sternesque subterfuge of having to deliver ma.n.u.script to an insistent publisher. Yorick writes his preface to the Journey in the "Desobligeant," that is, in the midst of the narrative itself. Schummel modifies the eccentricity merely by placing his foreword at the end of the volume. The value of it, he says, will repay the reader for waiting so long,--a statement which finds little justification in the preface itself. It begins, "Auweh! Auweh! Ouais, Helas! . . . Diable, mein Rucken, mein Fuss!" and so on for half a page,--a pitiful effort to follow the English master's wilful and skilful incoherence. The following pages, however, once this outbreak is at an end, contain a modic.u.m of sense, the feeble, apologetic explanation of his desire in imitating Yorick, given in forethought of the critics' condemnation.

Similarly the position of the dedication is unusual, in the midst of the volume, even as the dedication of Shandy was roguishly delayed. The dedication itself, however, is not an imitation of Sterne's clever satire, but, addressed to Yorick himself, is a striking example of burning personal devotion and over-wrought praise. Schummel hopes[12] in Sterne fashion to write a chapter on "Vorubergeben," or in the chapter "Das Komodienhaus" (pp. 185-210) to write a digression on "Walking behind a maid." Like Sterne, he writes in praise of digressions.[13] In imitation of Sterne is conceived the digressive speculation concerning the door through which at the beginning of the book he is cast into the rude world. Among further expressions savoring of Sterne, may be mentioned a "Centner of curses" (p. 39), a "Quentchen of curses," and the a.n.a.lytical description of a tone of voice as one-fourth questioning, five-eighths entreating and one-eighth commanding (p. 229).