On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
of its style . Neither does it corrupt the understanding . It proves nothing , and is meant to prove nothing , but the power of the poet in imagining and in exhibiting the human heart in all possible situations . Schiller worked up the same theme , in his usual rhetorical style , in his ' Goiter Griechenlands / which excited a loud outcry when it first appeared ; and in consequence of it his poems were prohibited for a season . And certainly it seemed as if the young poet seriously meant to argue the case ; but no one thinks so now , and the ballad passes unnoticed among Schiller ' s Poems . Herder once exclaimed , with great warmth , referring to these two poems , * Das sind zwei scheussliche producte . ' { "Those are
two horrible things . ] The other— ' The God and the Bajadere , ' was , in Herder ' s eyes , a profane parody of the most momentous miracle of our religion . Others may deem it but a poetical variety , borrowed from the Indian mythology , exhibiting in a form appropriate to that very sensual system , the most consolatory Christian doctrine . Whether an invention , or really found among the legends of India , the author of Kehama could , perhaps , tell us .
The incident is simply this : —That Mahadoh , descending to the earth , for the sixth time , to try men ' s hearts , visits a dancing girl , and having excited a pure passion , dies . When his body is borne to the funeral pyre , she claims to be burnt with him ; and being repelled by the priests , she rushes on the funeral pyre , when the youthful god rises and bears her away with him to heaven . On this , also , the poet has lavished all the power of his fancy , and
peculiar charms of style . Next follow two series of Elegies ,, —both of which are excluded from popularity by the classical form , the hexameter and pentameter distich , —and , the first of them , by the matter , from unqualified approbation ; though such critics as the Schlegels consider them as among the most perfect works of art . These are the
celebrated Roman Elegies , twenty in number . The scholar or traveller , who should seek for local allusions or descriptions , would be grievously disappointed . They are purely amatory ; and the author avows that his desire was not to rest behind Propertius . We shall be excused enlarging on the contents . Though the
theme is common to all climes , yet there is a local colouring , after all , which , like a Claude-glass , throws a peculiar tinge over every object . The state of morals and manners in that profligate and priest-ridden city at the close of the eighteenth century is pourtrayed very faithfully ; and the identity of the ancient and modern world is not overlooked . The fifth Elegy ends with , ' Amor schuret die Lamp indess , und denket der Ze ' iten Da er den n ' amlichen Dienst seinen Triumvirn gethan . ' Amor , in the meanwhile , trims the lamp , and thinks of the times when he rendered the same service to his Triumviri * . * The reader who may chance to visit the Eternal City , and may be curious to
Untitled Article
366 Goethe ' s Works .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 366, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/6/
-