Friederike Lohmann

“ Hence it has happened—if our information is correct—that with all the extraordinary talents to which that country has of late given birth, there is scarcely a single work in its literature which has been able to establish itself as a ‘standard book,’ in our sense of the term,—a κτημα ες αιει as Thucydides styles his immortal history,—or, as Milton in young anticipation speaks of his ‘adventurous song,’ “a work which posterity will not willingly suffer to die.” The idolizing enthusiasm of one generation survives not to another. ”

“ What too must be the character of a people’s traditions whose earliest festivals were celebrated by deeds of violence and the immolation of human victims,—whose history throughout a long series of ages was but the record of outrages and oppressions mutually inflicted,—whose living generation yet remembers to have heard, in the tales of its grandsires, of wolves and bears entering into the houses of men and tearing the babe from its nurse’s arms, or of the marauding exploits of robbers more savage than the beasts of the field? ”

“ Amidst thick gloomy forests, impervious to the light of heaven,—upon solitary heaths and cheerless marshes, whose overhanging vapours obscure the bright sky and cast their gloom alike over the eye and spirit of men, need we wonder to find the fancy dwelling upon the stern and mournful? ”

“ The most striking circumstance of the former description—which is proved by the character of all traditionary lore whatever, and not least by that of the Northern nations—is the power which the marvellous, simply as such, possesses over the inexperienced mind. To such a mind, whether in a nation or the individual, the interest which wonder inspires is found to be the most powerful of all spells for arresting the attention and exciting the feelings. ”

“ They are lifted entirely out of ordinary nature. In this respect they are curiosities in themselves, and possess considerable value as affording the purest illustration of the effect which the wonderful, as such, produces on the human mind, in different stages of cultivation. The gloomy fantastic form, too, which the wonderful so generally assumes in the Teutonic traditions, is an illustration not less striking than that afforded by more elaborate works of the general spirit and character of German imagination. ”

“ We have been informed by a learned and intelligent native of that country, that this fact is to be attributed to a certain vivacity of taste, which, in the joy and pride of emancipation from long bondage, distinguishes its reading population to a degree elsewhere unknown. ‘My Public’ in Germany is a book-devouring animal, and does not ruminate. ”

“ The truth is, that the association of contrast will be found to operate as strongly among all nations of a powerful imagination, as that of resemblance. In the case of German fiction, in particular, the splendid is frequently introduced in order to heighten and support the effect of the gloomy ”