Laurence Sterne in Germany Part 2

Tellheim recognizes the value of Just's service, and honors his subordinate for his unusual faithfulness; yet there exists here no such cordial comrades.h.i.+p as marked the relation between Sterne's originals.

But one may discern the occasion of this in the character of Tellheim, who has no resemblance to Uncle Toby, rather than in any dissimilarity between the characters of the servants. The use of the relation between master and man as a subject for literary treatment was probably first brought into fas.h.i.+on by Don Quixote, and it is well-nigh certain that Sterne took his cue from Cervantes.

According to Erich Schmidt, the episode of Just's dog, as the servant relates it in the 8th scene of the 1st act, could have adorned the Sentimental Journey, but the similarity of motif here in the treatment of animal fidelity is pure coincidence. Certainly the method of using the episode is not reminiscent of any similar scene in Sterne. Just's dog is not introduced for its own sake, nor like the a.s.s at Nampont to afford opportunity for exciting humanitarian impulses, and for throwing human character into relief by confronting it with sentimental possibilities, but for the sake of a forceful, telling and immediate comparison. Lessing was too original a mind, and at the time when "Minna" was written, too complete and mature an artist to follow another slavishly or obviously, except avowedly under certain conditions and with particular purpose. He himself is said to have remarked, "That must be a pitiful author who does not borrow something once in a while,"[35]

and it does not seem improbable that the figure of Trim was hovering in his memory while he was creating his Just. Especially does this seem plausible when we remember that Lessing wrote his drama during the years when Shandy was appearing, when he must have been occupied with it, and at the first flush of his admiration.

This supposition, however undemonstrable, is given some support by our knowledge of a minor work of Lessing, which has been lost. On December 28, 1769, Lessing writes to Ebert from Hamburg: "Alberti is well; and what pleases me about him, as much as his health, is that the news of his reconciliation with Goeze was a false report. So Yorick will probably preach and send his sermon soon."[36] And Ebert replies in a letter dated at Braunschweig, January 7, 1770, expressing a desire that Lessing should fulfil his promise, and cause Yorick to preach not once but many times.[37] The circ.u.mstance herein involved was first explained by Friedrich Nicolai in an article in the _Berlinische Monatsschrift_, 1791.[38] As a trick upon his friend Alberti, who was then in controversy with Goeze, Lessing wrote a sermon in Yorick's manner; the t.i.tle and part of the introduction to it were privately printed by Bode and pa.s.sed about among the circle of friends, as if the whole were in press. We are entirely dependent on Nicolai's memory for our information relative to this sole endeavor on Lessing's part to adopt completely the manner of Sterne. Nicolai a.s.serts that this effort was a complete success in the realization of Yorick's simplicity, his good-natured but acute philosophy, his kindly sympathy and tolerance, even his merry whimsicality.

This introduction, which Nicolai claims to have recalled essentially as Lessing wrote it, relates the occasion of Yorick's writing the sermon.

Uncle Toby and Trim meet a cripple in a ragged French uniform; Capt.

Shandy gives the unfortunate man several s.h.i.+llings, and Trim draws out a penny and in giving it says, "French Dog!" The narrative continues:

"The Captain[39] was silent for some seconds and then said, turning to Trim, 'It is a man, Trim, and not a dog!' The French veteran had hobbled after them: at the Captain's words Trim gave him another penny, saying again 'French Dog!' 'And, Trim, the man is a soldier.' Trim stared him in the face, gave him a penny again and said, 'French Dog!' 'And, Trim, he is a brave soldier; you see he has fought for his fatherland and has been sorely wounded.' Trim pressed his hand, while he gave him another penny, and said 'French Dog!' 'And, Trim, this soldier is a good but unfortunate husband, and has a wife and four little children.' Trim, with a tear in his eye, gave all he had left and said, rather softly, 'French Dog!'"

This scene recalls vividly the encounter between Just and the landlord in the first act of "Minna," the pa.s.sage in which Just continues to a.s.sert that the landlord is a "Grobian." There are the same tactics, the same persistence, the same contrasts. The pa.s.sage quoted was, of course, written after "Minna," but from it we gather evidence that Corporal Trim and his own Just were similar creations, that to him Corporal Trim, when he had occasion to picture him, must needs hark back to the figure of Just, a character which may well originally have been suggested by Capt.

Shandy's faithful servant.

Among German literati, Herder is another representative of acquaintance with Sterne and appreciation of his masterpiece. Haym[40] implies that Sterne and Swift are mentioned more often than any other foreign authors in Herder's writings of the Riga period (November, 1764, to May, 1769).

This would, of course, include the first fervor of enthusiasm concerning the Sentimental Journey, and would be a statement decidedly doubtful, if applied exclusively to the previous years. In a note-book, possibly reaching back before his arrival in Riga to his student days in Konigsberg, Herder made quotations from Shandy and Don Quixote, possibly preparatory notes for his study of the ridiculous in the Fourth Waldchen.[41] In May, 1766, Herder went to Mitau to visit Hamann, and he designates the account of the events since leaving there as "ein Capitel meines Shandyschen Romans"[42] and sends it as such to "my uncle, Tobias Shandy." Later a letter, written 27-16, August, 1766, is begun with the heading, "Herder to Hamann and no more Yorick to Tobias Shandy," in which he says: "I am now in a condition where I can play the part of Yorick as little as Panza that of Governor."[43] The same letter contains another reference and the following familiar allusion to Sterne: "Grusen Sie Trim, wenn ich gegen keinen den beleidigenden Karakter Yoriks oder leider! das Schicksal wider Willen zu beleidigen, habe, so ist's doch gegen ihn und Hartknoch." These last quotations are significant as giving proof that Shandy had so far forced its claims upon a little set of book-lovers in the remote east, Herder, Hamann and a few others, that they gave one another in play names from the English novel. A letter from Hamann to Herder, dated Konigsberg, June 10, 1767, indicates that the former shared also the devotion to Sterne.[44]

In the first collection of "Fragmente uber die neuere deutsche Litteratur," 1767, the sixth section treats of the "Idiotismen" of a language. British "Laune" is cited as such an untranslatable "Idiotism"

and the lack of German humorists is noted, and Swift is noted particularly as an English example. In the second and revised edition Herder adds material containing allusion to Hudibras and Tristram.[45]

The first and second "Kritische Waldchen" contain several references to Sterne and Shandy.[46] Herder, curiously enough, did not read the Sentimental Journey until the autumn of 1768, as is disclosed in a letter to Hamann written in November,[47] which also shows his appreciation of Sterne. "An Sterne's Laune," he says, "kann ich mich nicht satt lesen. Eben den Augenblick, da ich an ihn denke, bekomme ich seine Sentimental Journey zum Durchlesen, und wenn nicht meine Englische Sprachwissenschaft scheitert, wie angenehm werde ich mit ihm reisen.

Ich bin an seine Sentiments zum Theil schon so gewohnt, sie bis in das weiche innere Mark seiner Menschheit in ihren zarten Faden zu verfolgen: da.s.s ich glaube seinen Tristram etwas mehr zu verstehn als the common people. Nur um so mehr argern mich auch seine verfluchten Sauereien und Zweideutigkeiten, die das Buch wenigerer Empfehlung fahig machen als es verdient." We learn from the same letter that Herder possessed the sermons of Yorick in the Zurich translation. Herder's own homiletical style during this period, as evinced by the sermons preserved to us, betrays no trace of Sterne's influence.

Riedel, in his "Theorie der schonen Kunste und Wissenschaften,"[48]

shows appreciation of Shandy complete and discriminating, previous to the publication of the Sentimental Journey. This book is a sort of compendium, a series of rather disconnected chapters, woven together out of quotations from aesthetic critics, examples and comment. In the chapter on Similarity and Contrast he contends that a satirist only may transgress the rule he has just enunciated: "When a perfect similarity fails of its effect, a too far-fetched, a too ingenious one, is even less effective," and in this connection he quotes from Tristram Shandy a pa.s.sage describing the accident to Dr. Slop and Obadiah.[49] Riedel translates the pa.s.sage himself. The chapter "Ueber die Laune"[50]

contains two more references to Shandy. In a volume dated 1768 and ent.i.tled "Ueber das Publik.u.m: Briefe an einige Glieder desselben,"

written evidently without knowledge of the Journey, Riedel indicates the position which Shandy had in these years won for itself among a select cla.s.s. Riedel calls it a contribution to the "Register" of the human heart and states that he knows people who claim to have learned more psychology from this novel than from many thick volumes in which the authors had first killed sentiment in order then to dissect it at leisure.[51]

Early in 1763, one finds an appreciative knowledge of Shandy as a possession of a group of Swiss literati, but probably confined to a coterie of intellectual aristocrats and novelty-seekers. Julie von Bondeli[52] writes to Usteri from Koenitz on March 10, 1763, that Kirchberger[53] will be able to get him the opportunity to read Tristram Shandy as a whole, that she herself has read two volumes with surprise, emotion and almost constant bursts of laughter; she goes on to say: "Il voudrait la peine d'apprendre l'anglais ne fut-ce que pour lire cet impayable livre, dont la verite et le genie se fait sentir a chaque ligne au travers de la plus originelle plaisanterie." Zimmermann was a resident of Brugg, 1754-1768, and was an intimate friend of Fraulein von Bondeli. It may be that this later enthusiastic admirer of Sterne became acquainted with Shandy at this time through Fraulein von Bondeli, but their correspondence, covering the years 1761-1775, does not disclose it.

Dr. Carl Behmer, who has devoted an entire monograph to the study of Wieland's connection with Sterne, is of the opinion, and his proofs seem conclusive, that Wieland did not know Shandy before the autumn of 1767,[54] that is, only a few months before the publication of the Journey. But his enthusiasm was immediate. The first evidence of acquaintance with Sterne, a letter to Zimmermann (November 13, 1767),[55] is full of extravagant terms of admiration and devotion.

One is naturally reminded of his similar extravagant expressions with reference to the undying worth of Richardson's novels. Sterne's life philosophy fitted in with Wieland's second literary period, the frivolous, sensuous, epicurean, even as the moral meanderings of Richardson agreed with his former serious, religious att.i.tude. Probably soon after or while reading Shandy, Wieland conceived the idea of translating it. The letter which contains this very first mention of Sterne also records Wieland's regret that the Germans can read this incomparable original only in so wretched a translation, which implies a contemporary acquaintance with Dr. Zuckert's rendering. This regret may well have been the foundation of his own purpose of translating the book; and knowledge of this seems to have been pretty general among German men of letters at the time. Though the account of this purpose would bring us into a time when the Sentimental Journey was in every hand, it may be as well to complete what we have to say of it here.

His reason for abandoning the idea, and the amount of work done, the length of time he spent upon the project, cannot be determined from his correspondence and must, as Behmer implies, be left in doubt. But several facts, which Behmer does not note, remarks of his own and of his contemporaries, point to more than an undefined general purpose on his part; it is not improbable that considerable work was done. Wieland says incidentally in his _Teutscher Merkur_,[56] in a review of the new edition of Zuckert's translation: "Vor drei Jahren, da er (Lange) mich bat, ihm die Uebersetzung des Tristram mit der ich damals umgieng, in Verlag zu geben." Herder asks Nicolai in a letter dated Paris, November 30, 1769, "What is Wieland doing, is he far along with his Shandy?" And in August, 1769, in a letter to Hartknoch, he mentions Wieland's Tristram among German books which he longs to read.[57]

The _Jenaische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen_[58] for December 18, 1769, in mentioning this new edition of Zuckert's translation, states that Wieland has now given up his intention, but adds: "Perhaps he will, however, write essays which may fill the place of a philosophical commentary upon the whole book." That Wieland had any such secondary purpose is not elsewhere stated, but it does not seem as if the journal would have published such a rumor without some foundation in fact.

It may be possibly a resurrection of his former idea of a defense of Tristram as a part of the "Litteraturbriefe" scheme which Riedel had proposed.[59] This general project having failed, Wieland may have cherished the purpose of defending Tristram independently of the plan.

Or this may be a reviewer's vague memory of a former rumor of plan.

It is worth noting incidentally that Gellert does not seem to have known Sterne at all. His letters, for example, to Demoiselle Lucius, which begin October 22, 1760, and continue to December 4, 1769, contain frequent references to other English celebrities, but none to Sterne.

The first notice of Sterne's death is probably that in the _Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten_ of Hamburg in the issue of April 6, 1768, not three weeks after the event itself. The brief announcement is a comparison with Cervantes. The _Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen_ chronicles the death of Yorick, August 29, 1768.[60]

Though published in England from 1759-67, Tristram Shandy seems not to have been reprinted in Germany till the 1772 edition of Richter in Altenburg, a year later indeed than Richter's reprint of the Sentimental Journey. The colorless and inaccurate Zuckert translation, as has already been suggested, achieved no real popular success and won no learned recognition. The reviews were largely silent or indifferent to it, and, apart from the comparatively few notices already cited, it was not mentioned by any important literary periodical until after its republication by Lange, when the Sentimental Journey had set all tongues awag with reference to the late lamented Yorick. None of the journals indicate any appreciation of Sterne's especial claim to recognition, nor see in the fatherland any peculiar receptiveness to his appeal. In short, the foregoing acc.u.mulation of particulars resolves itself into the general statement, easily derived from the facts stated: Sterne's position in the German world of letters is due primarily to the Sentimental Journey. Without its added impulse Shandy would have hardly stirred the surface of German life and thought. The enthusiasm even of a few scholars whose learning and appreciation of literature is international, the occasional message of uncertain understanding, of doubtful approbation, or of rumored popularity in another land, are not sufficient to secure a general interest and attentiveness, much less a literary following. The striking contrast between the essential characteristics of the two books is a sufficient and wholly reasonable occasion for Germany's temporary indifference to the one and her immediate welcome for the other. Shandy is whimsicality touched with sentiment. The Sentimental Journey is the record of a sentimental experience, guided by the caprice of a whimsical will. Whimsicality is a flower that defies transplanting; when once rooted in other soil it shoots up into obscurity, masquerading as profundity, or pure silliness without reason or a smile. The whimsies of one language become amazing contortions in another. The humor of Shandy, though deep-dyed in Sterne's own eccentricity, is still essentially British and demands for its appreciation a more extensive knowledge of British life in its narrowest, most individual phases, a more intensive sympathy with British att.i.tudes of mind than the German of the eighteenth century, save in rare instances, possessed. Bode a.s.serts in the preface to his translation of the Sentimental Journey that Shandy had been read by a good many Germans, but follows this remark with the query, "How many have understood it?" "One finds people," he says, "who despise it as the most nonsensical twaddle, and cannot comprehend how others, whom they must credit with a good deal of understanding, wit, and learning, think quite otherwise of it," and he closes by noting the necessity that one be acquainted with the follies of the world, and especially of the British world, to appreciate the novel. He refers unquestionably to his own circle of literati in Hamburg, who knew Tristram and cared for it, and to others of his acquaintance less favored with a knowledge of things English. The Sentimental Journey presented no inscrutable mystery of purposeful eccentricity and perplexing personality, but was written large in great human characters which he who ran might read. And Germany was ready to give it a welcome.[61]

[Footnote 1: A reviewer in the _Frankfurter Gel. Anz._, as early as 1774, a.s.serts that Sterne had inspired more droll and sentimental imitations in Germany than even in England. (Apr. 5, 1774.)]

[Footnote 2: See Bibliography for list of books giving more or less extended accounts of Sterne's influence.]

[Footnote 3: Sterne did, to be sure, a.s.sert in a letter (Letters, I, p. 34) that he wrote "not to be fed but to be famous." Yet this was after this desire had been fulfilled, and, as the expression agrees with the tone and purpose of the letter in which it is found, it does not seem necessary to place too much weight upon it. It is very probable in view of evidence collected later that Sterne _began_ at least to write Tristram as a pastime in domestic misfortune. The thirst for fame may have developed in the progress of the composition.]

[Footnote 4: Fitzgerald says "end of December," Vol. I, p. 116, and the volumes were reviewed in the December number of the _Monthly Review_, 1759 (Vol. XXI, pp. 561-571), though without any mention of the author's name. This review mentions no other publisher than Cooper.]

[Footnote 5: Quoted by Fitzgerald, Vol. I, p. 126.]

[Footnote 6: The full t.i.tle of this paper was _Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten_.]

[Footnote 7: Meusel: Lexicon der vom Jahr 1750 bis 1800 vers...o...b..nen teutschen Schriftsteller. Bd. XV. (Leipzig bey Fleischer) 1816, pp, 472-474.]

[Footnote 8: Berlin, bei August Mylius. 1764.]

[Footnote 9: Behmer (L. Sterne und C. M. Wieland, p. 15) seems to be unaware of the translations of the following parts, and of the authors.h.i.+p.]

[Footnote 10: This attempt to supply a ninth volume of Tristram Shandy seems to have been overlooked. A spurious third volume is mentioned in the Natl. Dict. of Biography and is attributed to John Carr. This ninth volume is however noticed in the _London Magazine_, 1766, p. 691, with accompanying statement that it is "not by the author of the eight volumes." The genuine ninth volume is mentioned and quoted in this magazine in later issues, 1767, p. 78, 206.]

[Footnote 11: This edition is reviewed also in _Almanach der deutschen Musen_, 1774, p. 97.]

[Footnote 12: "Kein Deutscher, welcher das Uebersetzen aus fremden Sprachen als ein Handwerk ansieht."]

[Footnote 13: I, p. 111.]

[Footnote 14: "Lexicon der Hamburgischen Schriftsteller," Hamburg, 1851-1883.]

[Footnote 15: Tristram Shandy, I, p. 107, and Zuckert's translation, I, p. 141.]

[Footnote 16: In this review and in the announcement of Sterne's death, this periodical refers to him as the Dean of York, a distinction which Sterne never enjoyed.]

[Footnote 17: 1767, p. 691. The reference is given in the Register to 1753-1782 erroneously as p. 791.]

[Footnote 18: "Predigten von Laurenz Sterne oder Yorick." Zurich, bey Fuesslin & Comp, 1766-69. 3 vols.]

[Footnote 19: The _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_ was founded in 1765.]

[Footnote 20: XII, 1, pp. 210-211 and 2, p. 202.]

[Footnote 21: For full t.i.tle see Bibliography.]

[Footnote 22: Vol. I, p. 460.]

[Footnote 23: Edited by Klotz and founded in 1767, published at Halle by J. J. Gebauer. Vol. I, Part 2, p. 183.]

[Footnote 24: Vol. II, p. 500.]

[Footnote 25: The former says merely "the last parts", the latter designates "the last three."]

[Footnote 26: III, 1, pp. 1 ff.]