A sentiment of a very different nature penetrated the soul of Klopstock when his Messias was finished. He expresses it thus m his Ode to the Redeemer, which is at the end of his poem :' I hoped it for thee! and I have sung, O heavenly Redeemer, the new Covenant's song! "Begin the first harp-sound, O warm, winged, eternal gratitude! "I implore no reward; I am already rewarded, The whole soul's emotion E'en to the depths of its first power! "Commotion of the Inmost, the heaven And earth for me vanished! And no more were spread the wings of the Storm; with gentlest feeling, Like the Spring-time's morning, breathed the zephyr of life. 1 No approved metrical version of Klopstock's Hymn being at hand, we have undertaken a literal translation. We know how unsatisfactory such a rendering must be to those who are able to enjoy the original, yet it isor aims to be an exact translation of the sense. The good translations of poetry, those fulfilling all the requirements of a proper standard, are very few; they might all be counted on the fingers of one hand. In a poem are many things to be rendered,-sense, rhythm, measure, rhyme, and, above all, that inner spirit, which poets alone can give, which poetic minds alone can feel,-all of which must be reproduced in another tongue in order to make a perfect translation. A sense and a measure, usually but a distorted shadow, or a faint semblance, of the sense and the measure, are usually given, and we are urged to believe that we have a faithful image of the original. Sometimes we get the measure, sometimes the sense, but rarely indeed the two combined. If we can have but one thing, let us have the sense. And often something of the melody of the original clings to a literal version, especially when the translation is made into a cognate language: when sound and sense are really wedded in a poem, one cannot be faithfully transferred, without it retaining at least a shadowy recollecion," a platonic remembrance, of the other. In translating this piece of Klopstock, we have preserved to the eye, and in part to the ear, the lines of the original; we have followed as closely as possible the succession of words. but have interrupted the measure whenever the same required it.-Ed "He knows not all my gratitude, To whom 'tis but dimly revealed, That, when in its full feeling The soul o'erflows, speech can only stammer. "Rewarded am I, rewarded! I have seen The tears of Christ flowing, And dare yonder in the Future Look for tears divine! "E'en through terrestrial joy: In vain conceal I from thee My heart, of ambition full : In youth it beat loud and high; in manhood "If there be any praise, if there be any virtuc, On these things think! the flame divine chose I for my guide! High waved the flame before, and showed The ambitious a better path. This was the cause, that terrestrial joy This round me oft to return And seek angel-joys! "These roused me also, with loud penetrating silver-tone, With intoxicating remembrance of the hours of consecration,These same, these same angel-joys, With harp and trombone, with thunder-call ! "I am at the goal, at the goal! and feel, where I am, In my whole soul a trembling! so will it be (I speak Humanly of heavenly things) with us, in presence of Him, "Up to this goal hast thou, My Lord! and My God! Over more than one grave me, With mighty arm, safely brought! Recovery gavest thou me! gavest courage and resolution And saw I things terrible and unknown, That were to yield, since thou wast the shield? They fled therefrom! and I have sung, O heavenly Redeemer, the new Covenant's song! This mixture of poetic enthusiasm and religious confidence. inspires both admiration and tenderness. Men of talents formerly addressed themselves to fabulous deities. Klopstock has consecrated his talents to God himself; and, by the happy union of the Christian religion with poetry, he shows the Germans how possible it is to attain a property in the fine arts, which may belong peculiarly to themselves, without being derived, as servile imitations, from the ancients. Those who have known Klopstock, respect as much as they admire him. Religion, liberty, love, occupied all his thoughts. His religious profession was found in the performance of all his duties; he even gave up the cause of liberty when innocent blood would have defiled it; and fidelity consecrated all the attachments of his heart. Never had he recourse to his imagination to justify an error; it exalted his soul without leading it astray. It is said, that his conversation was full of wit and taste ; that he loved the society of women, particularly of French women, and that he was a good judge of that sort of charm and grace which pedantry reproves. I readily believe it; for there is always something of universality in genius, and perhaps it is connected by secret ties to grace, at least to that grace which is bestowed by nature. How far distant is such a man from envy, selfishness, excess of vanity, which many writers have excused in themselves in the name of the talents they possessed! If they had possessed more, none of these defects would have agitated them. We are proud, irritable, astonished at our own perfections, when a little dexterity is mixed with the mediocrity of our character; but true genius inspires gratitude and modesty; for we feel from whom we received it, and we are also sensible of the limit which he who bestowed has likewise assigned to it. We find, in the second part of the Messias, a very fine passage on the death of Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who is pointed out to us in the Gospel as the image of contemplative virtue. Lazarus, who has received life a second time from Jesus Christ, bids his sister farewell with a mixture of grief and of confidence which is deeply affecting. From the last moments of Mary, Klopstock has drawn a picture of the death-bed of the just. When in his turn he was also on his death-bed, he repeated his verses on Mary, with an expiring voice; he recollected them through the shades of the sepulchre, and in feeble accents he pronounced them as exhorting himself to die well: thus, the sentiments expressed in youth were sufficiently pure to form the consolation of his closing life. Ah! how noble a gift is genius, when it has never been profaned, when it has been employed only in revealing to mankind, under the attractive form of the fine arts, the generous sentiments and religious hopes which have before lain dormant in the human heart. This same passage of the death of Mary was read with the burial service at Klopstock's funeral. The poet was old when he ceased to live, but the virtuous man was already in possession of the immortal palms which renew existence and flourish beyond the grave. All the inhabitants of Hamburg' rendered to the patriarch of literature the honors which elsewhere are scarcely ever accorded, except to rank and power, and the manes of Klopstock received the reward which the excellence of his life had merited. CHAPTER VI. LESSING AND WINCKELMANN. PERHAPS the literature of Germany alone derived its source from criticism: in every other place criticism has followed the great productions of art; but in Germany it produced them The epoch at which literature appears in its greatest splendor "The house in which Klopstock the poet lived thirty years (1774-1803) and died, is No. 27 in the Königstrasse."(Murray's Hand-book of Northern Germany, p. 322.)—Ed is the cause of this difference. Various nations had for many ages become illustrious in the art of writing; the Germans acquired it at a much later period, and thought they could do no better than follow the path already marked out; it was necessary then that criticism should expel imitation, in order to make room for originality. Lessing wrote in prose with unexampled clearness and precision: depth of thought frequently embarrasses the style of the writers of the new school; Lessing, not less profound, had something severe in his character, which made him discover the most concise and striking modes of expression. Lessing was always animated in his writings by an emotion hostile to the opinions he attacked, and a sarcastic humor gives strength to his ideas. He occupied himself by turns with the theatre, with philosophy, antiquities, and theology, pursuing truth through all of them, like a huntsman, who feels more pleasure in the chase than in the attainment of his object. His style has, in some respects, the lively and brilliant conciseness of the French; and it conduced to render the German language classical. The writers of the new school embrace a greater number of thoughts at the same time, but Lessing deserves to be more generally admired; he possesses a new and bold genius, which meets nevertheless the common comprehensions of mankind. His modes of perception are German, his manner of expression. European. Although a dialectician, at once lively and close in his arguments, enthusiasm for the beautiful filled his whole soul; he possessed ardor without glare, and a philosophical vehemence which was always active, and which by repeated strokes produced effects the most durable. Lessing analyzed the French drama, which was then fashionable in his country, and asserted that the English drama was more intimately connected with the genius of his countrymen. In the judgment he passes on Mérope, Zaïre, Semiramis, and Rodogune, he notices no particular improbability; he attacks the sincerity of the sentiments and characters, and finds fault with the personages of those fictions, as if they were real bemngs; his criticism is a treatise on the human heart, as much VOL. I.-8 |