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On Rereading Klopstock
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
No poet was ever more fortunate in his initial celebrity, more unfortunate in his ultimate fame, than Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. He burst like a meteor upon the ken of the mid-eighteenth century, but his light paled rapidly before the rising suns of German Classicism and Romanticism. The nineteenth century, of which he saw the beginning, rendered him a distant “official” homage but read him less and less; and the twentieth century, despite sporadic evidences of interest, seems likewise minded to verify Lessing's early prophecy that Klopstock would be more often praised than perused.
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References
1 See the first of Lessing's Sinngedichte: “Wer wird nicht einen Klopstock loben?” etc.
2 2. Aufl. (Berlin-Spandau: Wichern-Verlag, 1948), 564 pages.
3 “Oden,” as Klopstock used the term, meant all his lyrics except the outright “Kirchenlieder.”
4 Eckermann, Gespräche, end of conversation of 18 Feb. 1829.
5 See his letter of 27 Sept. 1748 to Bodmer, in Sämmtliche Werke (Leipzig: Göschen, 1854-55), x, 367. This edition will henceforth be cited as “Sämmtl. Wke.” See also Klopstock's letter of 1748 to Johann Elias Schlegel, in Briefe von und an Klopstock, ed. J. M. Lappenberg (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1867), p. 7.
6 Since Klopstock's odes are usually arranged chronologically in the various editions, I give the year after each title to facilitate verification.
7 This deeply sincere conviction of the poet's dignity motivated Klopstock's famous “reproof” of Goethe's early Weimar boisterousness. Klopstock was at fault for writing on the basis of exaggerated reports; but, believing what he heard, he could not consistently have refrained from writing. It was not simply, as has so often been asserted, a senile repetition of Bodmer's censure of young Klopstock in Zürich, for there a quite different divergence was involved.
8 He also proved himself a master of pungent prose; in the Denkmäle der Deutschen of the Gelehrtenrepublik he wrote at times with Tacitean terseness.
9 Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie, in Sömmtl. Wke., x, 217.
10 Cf. the “Reimwut” which Goethe confesses having “caught” in his boyhood from contemporary German rimesters: Dichtung u. Wahrheit, 1. Teil, 1. Buch; Jubil-Ausg. v. 22, p. 36.
11 Klopstock's earliest ode in “free rhythms” is Die Genesung, written in the summer of 1754. The article “Freie Rhythmen” in the Merker-Stammler Reallexikon (Berlin, 1925-31), i, 378, erroneously cites Dem Allgegenwärtigen (1758) as the earliest instance.
12 Klopstock, Oden, ed. Franz Muncker and Jaro Pawel (Stuttgart: Göschen, 1888), i, iv.
13 “Tyrannenhaß” became, beyond Schubart and the young Schiller, a favorite theme of the Sturm und Drang. The “Freundschaftskult,” also, spreads beyond the “Hain” to the Sturm und Drang generation in general, and on to Jean Paul, Schiller, Hölderlin, and the notoriously “gregarious” Romanticists.
14 Aus dem goldnen ABC der Dichter, in Sämmtl. Wke., viii, 116.
15 Letter of 10 June 1774, to G. F. E. Schönborn, in Goeihes Werke, Sophien-Ausg. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1887 ff.), iv. Abtlg., 2. Bd., 174-175.
16 “Rosenband” is another of Klopstock's new coinages. See Wolfgang Kayser, Das sprachliche Kunstwerk (Bern: Francke, 1948), p. 42.
17 See Klopstock's prefatory note to Die Frühlingsfeier, in Oden, ed. Muncker and Pawel, i, 133.
18 See my interpretation of it, in Studies in Honor of J. A. Walz (Lancaster, 1941), pp. 41-48.
19 Die Frühlingsfeier and Der Spasiergang, e.g., have the same basic structure of a promenade into Nature that stirs great feelings and reflections; Schiller, of course, is clearer in thought and outline.
20 Friedrich Gundolf, Buiten, Klopstock, Arndt: Drei Reden (Heidelberg: Weiss, 1924), p. 39.
21 Hölderlins gesammelte Dichtungen, ed. Berthold Litzmann (Stuttgart: Cotta, [1895]), i, 281.
22 Ibid., ii, 124 “Inseln des Himmels,” “Inseln des Lichts,” ibid., 179, 183.
23 Grillparzers sämtliche Werke, ed. Sauer (Stuttgart: Cotta, n. d.), xix, 70.
24 Grillparzer's Kaiser Rudolf echoes this sentiment: “Der Krieg, ich hass' ihn, als der Menschheit Brandmal” (Bruderswist, Act iii; Grillparzers sämtl. Wke., ed. Sauer, ix, 64).
25 The letter, dated 25 June 1790 and written in Latin, is reprinted in Briefe, ed. Lappenberg, pp. 331-334.
26 See Mein Irrtum (1793), Der Erobrungskrieg (1793), Das Versprechen (1795), Mein Gram (1796), Die zweite Höhe (1797). As late as 1800, in Die Sieger und die Besiegten: “Ist der Eroberungskrieg der Menschheit äußerste Schande, ...”
21 He also valued his French citizenship as making him the fellow-citizen of Washington. His reasons, including the consideration that it is ludicrous for an individual to declare himself against a whole nation, could well be pondered by those who in our days have returned honorary diplomas. See Das nicht zurückgeschickle Diplom (1796), in Sämmtl. Wke., x, 348-356.
28 One of Klopstock's “sublime” words echoes still in Kleist's last play: “Nun, o Unsterblichkeit, bist du ganz mein!” (Prinz F. v. Homburg, l. 1829) is surely a reminiscence of An Fanny (1748), ll. 37-38: “Dann, o Unsterblichkeit, / Gehörst du ganz uns!”
29 Jacques Barzun, Romanticism and the Modem Ego (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943), p. 24, sees Romanticism conceiving its mission in the light of the great contradiction concerning man: the contrast between man's greatness and his wretchedness.
30 For the Romantic attitude toward verbal and musical utterance, see my Early German Romanticism (Cambridge: Harvard, 1929), pp. 194-203.
31 Von der Darstellung, 1779, in Sämmtl. Wke., x, 199-200.—The classical tenor of this remark serves to remind us that the tradition of the Greeks and Romans was alive in Klopstock throughout his life. His classical studies extend from his school days at Schulpforta to his very last months. The conventional assumption in the literature on Klopstock seems to be that the classical element disappeared from his work with his turn to the “Nordic” in the 1760's. But anyone who will examine the Odes will find them, early and late, fairly studded with classical allusions. And after all, Klopstock chose the antique hexameter to clothe his Christian matter in the Messias and he never ceased to use the Graeco-Roman strophes. That the Greeks did not have rime doubtless strengthened his aversion to it. Horace was and remained his supreme canon of odic poetry (see Sämmtl. Wke., x, 219). In fact, Klopstock's entire career was a poetic competition with the ancients. Here, he and Romanticism diverge: Romanticism, too, has its classical roots, and Friedrich Schlegel's Romantic theory stems from his classical studies; but then Romanticism turns to the “Mittelalter,” which hardly attracted Klopstock: he studied the Homeric epics, but never the native Nibelungenlied!
32 Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literalur, in Sämtl. Wke., ed. Bocking (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1846-47), v, 16.
53 Die Romantische Schule, in Heinrich Heines sämtl. Wke., ed. Elster (Leipzig: Bibl. Inst. [1887-90]), v, 217.
34 Über das Romantische, in Uhlands Werke, ed. Fränkel (Leipzig u. Wien: Bibl. Inst., n. d.), ii, 350.
35 See An Young (1752). Klopstock writes to Gleirn, 9 Apr. 1752, from Copenhagen, that he has recently begun to learn English by reading Young, in one of his friend Bernstorff's fine editions of the English poets. See Sämmtl. Wke., x, 411.
36 The lines which Litzmann erroneously ascribed to Hölderlin, “Es erschreckt uns unser Retter, der Tod ...” (see above, note 21), could with equal plausibility have been ascribed to Novalis; cf., e.g., the 5th Hymne an die Nacht: “Im Tode ward das ewge Leben kund, / Du [Christus] bist der Tod und machst uns erst gesund.” Novalis. Schriften, ed. Kluckhohn (Leipzig: Bibl. Inst., n.d., i, 62). It is to a large extent a common Pietistic heritage that speaks here in both poets.
37 E.g., Oskar F. Walzel, “Barockstil bei Klopstock,” in Festschrift für M. ff. Jellinek (Wien, 1928), p. 190, saw the Messias as “das größte Kunstwerk des deutschen Barocks.” Kindt, op. cit., pp. 367 ff., follows Walzel in this opinion. There is doubtless a Barock quality in Klopstock (which Kindt overstates); but, to my thinking, he stands much closer to Romanticism.
38 See An Giseke (1748), An Ebert (1748), Der Zürchersee (1750), Weihtrunk an die toten Freunde (1751).
89 See the able article by Isaac Bacon, “Pietistische und rationalistische Elemente in Klopstocks Sprache,” in JEGP, xlix (1950), 49-59.
40 Herein, again, Novalis is comparable to Klopstock. Cf., of various similar observations in Novalis' Fragmente, the following: “Der Zusammenhang zwischen Denken und Fühlen muß immer sein—wir mussen ihn im Bewußtsein überall finden können,” etc., in Novalis. Schriften, ed. Kluckhohn, ii, 228.
41 There is a large element of rationality beside that of emotionality in Klopstock's makeup, and the two interpenetrate to some extent. He is the offspring of both “Aufklärung” and “Pietismus.” Religion for him is thought as well as feeling; it submits, he says, astounding truths to Reason, but the poet must make them appeal to the heart as much as to the intellect (Sämmtl. Wke., x, 237). Even Love's rapture is based on thought: “Wenn sie [the soul], daß sie geliebt wird, / Trunken von Liebe, sich's denkt!” (An Sie, 1752). Emotion has always been attributed to Klopstock's poetry, but the element of reflection in it has been generally overlooked; yet “denken” and “Gedanke” are among his favorite words, sprinkled all through the Odes (my lengthy list is available on request!). When the two elements are balanced, Klopstock is at his best. But he also wrote much inferior stuff, made inferior by overweight of reasoning and argument. There was a thinker and theorizer in him who spoke not only in his various prose disquisitions but often also in verses that have no right to be called poetry.
42 See Paul Böckmann in Gedicht und Gedanke, ed. H. O. Burger (Halle: Niemeyer, [1942]), 89 ff.—An excellent recent appreciation of Klopstock's poetic language is Böckmann, Formgeschichte der deutschen Dichtung (Hamburg; Hoffmann & Campe, 1949), i, 578-598.
43 Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie, in Sämmtl. Wke., x, 215-216.
44 Klopstocks Werke, 3. Teil, ed. Hamel, Kürschners DNL, xlvii, 268, No. 94.
45 Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, in Sämmtl. Wke., Säkularausg., xii, 209-210.
46 On closer view, one finds a considerable number of concrete objects in Klopstock's poems: things of nature, like the fruit-laden branch in Die Wiederkehr (1794); personal possessions, such as ribbons (Das Rosenband, 1753) or rusty skates (Winterfreuden, 1797). An eloquent object occurs with marked effect at the end of a poem: the scales in Warnung (1772), the rainbow in Die Frühlingsfeier (1759), the hand over the mouth in Die deutsche Bibel (1784), the girls dancing around the nursing mother in Kennet euch selbst! (1789). The most touching instance is the luminous blue winter sky which deeply moved the skater as he was on the point of drowning (Winterfreuden, ll. 29-30). One of his earliest odes, and his very last one, end with the beautiful image of a bright constellation (Wingolf, 1747; Die höheren Stufen, 1802). Stars and planets and other heavenly bodies are, to be sure, Klopstock's favorite “objects” all through his poetry.
47 E.g., in Dent Allgegenwärtigen (1758), and in brief, tender songs in which Klopstock approaches the Volkslied, such as Das Rosenband (1753), Furcht der Geliebten (1753), Die frühen Gräber (1764), Edone (1771). Alliteration especially in Wink (1778), Mein Wäldchen (1778), An Freund und Feind (1781).
48 Charakteristiken, 1. Reihe, 2. Aufl. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1902), p. 140.
49 Klopstock's musical “meaning” is in addition to, never instead of, verbal meaning. He does not, like some poets, use nonsense-words merely for their sound-value.
50 Die Wiederkehr (1794), addressed to his saddle-horse, is a genre-picture of charming humor and vividness.
51 The idea of transplantation to another star is found in various odes, e.g., Die Verwandellen (1782), An die nachkommenden Freunde (1796), Das Wiedersehn (1797). Interstellar communication and movement occur already in the earliest cantos of the Messias. Heinrich von Kleist, in his letter of 22 March 1801 to Wilhelmine, credits his youthful faith in migration to another star somewhat tentatively to Wieland; and Minde-Pouet, the editor of Kleist's Briefe in the Bibl. Inst. edition, thought that a 1752 treatise of Wieland's was meant. But the idea of successive reincarnations rising toward perfection occurs also in Agathon, 16. Buch, 3. Kap.; or, for that matter, Kleist could have got it from Klopstock. The age-old notion of reincarnation is found also in Lessing (Erziehung d. Menschengescklechts) and in Herder, and is more or less common property of the age. In Die Genesung (1754), Klopstock reflects that, had his recent illness proved fatal, he would have gone to another star, perhaps entered the orbit of a comet. Such transplantation bringing vast increase in knowledge—this is quite in the vein of young Kleist and of Rationalism—he would there have asked bold youthful questions and got abundant answers, learning more in hours than long centuries of earthly speculation could unriddle.