Harvey W. Hewett-Thayer

“ Left, however, an orphan, he begins his sentimental adventures: thrust on the world he falls in with a kindly baker’s wife whose conduct toward him brings tears to the eyes of the ten-year old lad, this showing his early appetite for sentimental journeying. A large part of this first section relating to his early life and youthful struggles, his kindly benefactor, his adventure with Potiphar’s wife, is simple and direct, with only an occasional hint of Yorick’s influence in word or phrase, as if the author, now and then, recalled the purpose and the inspiration. ”

“ The whimsies of one language become amazing contortions in another. The 34 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 attitudes of mind than the German of the eighteenth century, save in rare instances, possessed. ”

“ Naturally Sterne’s influence in the world of letters may be traced most obviously in the slavish imitation of his style, his sentiment, his whims,—this phase represented in general by now forgotten triflers; but it also enters into the thought of the great minds in the fatherland and becomes interwoven with their culture. Their own expressions of indebtedness are here often available in assigning a measure of relationship. And finally along certain general lines the German Yorick exercised an influence over the way men thought and wanted to think. ”

“ Timme, as a clear-sighted contemporary, certainly confined the danger of Sterne’s literary influence entirely to the sentimental side, and saw no occasion to censure an importation of Sterne’s whimsies. Pank’s ode on the death of Riepel, written partly in dashes and partly in exclamation points, is not a disproof of this assertion. Timme is not satirizing Sterne’s whimsical use of typographical signs, but rather the Germans who misunderstood Sterne and tried to read a very peculiar and precious meaning into these vagaries. The sentimental is, however, always burlesqued and ridiculed ”

“ A complete summary of the thread of incident on which the various sentimental adventures, whimsical speculations and digressions are hung, can be dispensed with: it is only necessary to note instances where connection with Sterne as a model can be established. Schummel’s narrative is often for many successive pages absolutely straightforward and simple, unbroken by any attempt at Shandean buoyancy, and unblemished by overwrought sentiment. At the pausing places he generally indulges in Sternesque quibbling. ”

“ After the children have opened the barrier, he debates with himself to which child to give his little coin, concludes, as a “sentimental traveler,” to give it to the other sex, then there is nothing left to do but to follow his instinct. He reflects long with himself whether he was right in so doing,—all of which is a deliberate jest at the hesitation with reference to trivial acts, the self-examination with regard to the minutiae of past conduct, which was copied by Sterne’s imitators from numerous instances in the works of Yorick. ”

“ An appreciation of the absorbing, vital interest of everyday existence is the accomplishment of reflective training, and betokens the spiritualized nature. Yet it must be observed in passing that the crude interest of unschooled ignorance, and undeveloped taste in the grotesque, the monstrous, the unreal, is not the same as the intellectual man’s appreciation of the unreal in imagination and fancy. The German novel had passed its time of service under the wild, extraordinary and grotesque. ”

“ The sweeping condemnation which the soberer critics heaped upon the incapacities of his imitators has been exemplified in the accounts already given of Schummel, Bock and others. It would be interesting to follow a little more closely this current of antagonism. The tone of protest was largely directed, the edge of satire was chiefly whetted, against the misunderstanding adaptation of Yorick’s ways of thinking and writing, and only here and there were voices raised to detract in any way from the genius of Sterne. He never suffered in Germany such an eclipse of fame as was his fate in England. ”

“ There is use, too, of mythological figures quite foreign to Sterne, an obvious reminiscence of Jacobi’s Anacreontic experience. He exaggerates Yorick’s sentimentalism, is more weepy, more tender, more sympathizing; yet, as Longo does not sufficiently emphasize, he does not touch the whimsical side of Yorick’s work. Jacobi, unlike his model, but in common with other German imitators, is insistent in instruction and serious in contention for pet theories, as is exemplified by the discussion of the doctrine of immortality. There are opinions to be maintained, there is a message to be delivered. ”

“ Bode asserts 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. ”

“ This academic guide of youth speaks of Sterne in the following words: “Wie tief dringt dieser Philosoph in die verborgensten Gänge des menschlichen Herzens, wie richtig entdeckt er die geheimsten Federn der Handlungen, wie entlarvt, wie verabscheuungsvoll steht vor ihm das Laster, wie liebenswürdig die Tugend! wie interessant sind seine Schilderungen, wie eindringend seine Lehren! und woher diese grosse Kenntniss des Menschen, woher diese getreue Bezeichnung der Natur, diese sanften Empfindungen, die seine geistvolle Sprache hervorbringt? ”

“ Goethe’s opinion of Sterne as expressed in the sentiments which accompany the quotations from the Koran is significant. “Yorick Sterne,” he says, “war der schönste Geist, der je gewirkt hat; wer ihn liest, fühlet sich sogleich frei und schön; sein Humor ist unnachahmlich, und nicht jeder Humor befreit die Seele” (490) . “Sagacität und Penetration sind bei ihm grenzenlos” (528) . Goethe asserts here that every person of culture should at that very time read Sterne’s works, so that the nineteenth century might learn “what we owed him and perceive what we might owe him.” ”

“ England’s leadership in narrative fiction, the superiority of the English novel, especially the humorous novel, which was tacitly acknowledged by these successive periods of imitation, when not actually declared by the acclaim of the critic and the preference of the reading public, has been attributed quite generally to the freedom of life in England and the comparative thraldom in Germany. ”

“ The contradiction between the greatness of heart evinced in Sterne’s novels and the narrow selfishness of the author himself is repeatedly noted by Lichtenberg. His knowledge of Sterne’s character was derived from acquaintance with many of Yorick’s intimate friends in London. In “Beobachtungen über den Menschen,” he says: “I can’t help smiling when the good souls who read Sterne with tears of rapture in their eyes fancy that he is mirroring himself in his book. ”

“ There are short and unnumbered chapters, as in the Sentimental Journey, but, unlike Sterne, Jacobi, with one exception, names no places and makes no attempt at description of place or people, other than the sentimental individuals encountered on the way. He makes no analysis of national, or even local characteristics: the journey, in short, is almost completely without place-influence. 113 There is in the volume much more exuberance of fancy, grotesque at times, a more conscious exercise of the picturing imagination than we find in Sterne. ”

“ While instructing some children at Moulines, he meets a peasant girl, and love is born between them. An avaricious brother opposes Jacques’s passion and ultimately confines him in secret, spreading the report in Moulines of his faithlessness to his love. After a tragedy has released Jacques from his unnatural bondage, he learns of his loved one’s death and loses his mental balance through grief. Such an addition to the brief pathos of Maria’s story, as narrated by Sterne, such a forced explanation of the circumstances, is peculiarly commonplace and inartistic. ”

“ That the English sleep in separate apartments, with big chimneys in their bedchambers, that they have comfortable post-chaises with seats facing one another, where all sorts of things may happen, and merry inns for the accommodation of the traveler,—these features of British life are represented as affording a grateful material to the novelist, compared with which German life offers no corresponding opportunity. ”

“ The sentimental attitude toward man’s dumb companions is imitated in his adventure with the house-dog; the author fears the barking of this animal may disturb the sleep of the poor baker’s wife: he beats the dog into silence, then grows remorseful and wishes “that I had given him no blow,” or that the dog might at least give him back the blows. His thought that the dog might be pretending its pain, he designates a subtle subterfuge of his troubled conscience, and Goethe, in the review mentioned above, exclaims, “A fine pendant to Yorick’s scene with the Monk.” ”

“ Indeed, Yorick disciples were quick to resent any shadow cast upon his name. Thus the remark in a letter printed in the Deutsches Museum that Asmus was the German Yorick “only a better moral character,” called forth a long article in the same periodical for September, 1779, by 158 L. H. N.,6 vigorously defending Sterne as a man and a writer. The greatness of his human heart and the breadth and depth of his sympathies are given as the unanswerable proofs of his moral worth. ”

“ The crudities of such tales of adventure were softened and eliminated by the culturing influence of formal classicism and by a newly won admiration for the everyday element in life, contemporaneous with and dependent upon the gradual appreciation of middle-class worth. At this point the English novel stepped in as a guide, and the gradual shaping of the German novel in the direction of an art-form is due primarily to the prevailing admiration of English models. ”

“ At the very end of the book Schummel drops his narrative altogether and discourses upon his own work. It would be difficult to find in any literature so complete a condemnation of one’s own serious and extensive endeavor, so candid a criticism of one’s own work, so frank an acknowledgment of the pettiness of one’s achievement. He says his work, as an imitation of Sterne’s two novels, has “few or absolutely no beauties of the original, and many faults 125 of its own.” He states that his enthusiasm for Tristram has been somewhat dampened by Sonnenfels and Riedel ”

“ 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 call upon epic, tragic, lyric poets, musicians, etc., which follows here is a further imitation of Yorick’s list-making and pseudo-scientific method.
On his way to Leipzig, in the post-chaise, the author falls in with a clergyman: the manner of this meeting is intended to be Sterne-like: Schummel sighs, the companion remarks, “You too are an unhappy one,” and they join hands while the human heart beams in the traveler’s eyes. They weep too at parting. But, apart from these external incidents of their meeting, the matter of their converse is in no way inspired by Sterne. ”

“ Humor, as a characteristic element of the English novel, has been felt to be peculiarly dependent upon the fashion of life in Britain. Blankenburg, another eighteenth-century student of German literary conditions, in his treatise on the novel7, has similar theories concerning the sterility of German life as compared with English, especially in the production of humorous characters8. He asserts theoretically that humor (Laune) should never be employed in a novel of German life, because “Germany’s political institutions and laws, and our nice Frenchified customs would not permit this humor.” ”

“ Its dependence on Sterne is confessed and obvious, sometimes apologetically and hesitatingly, sometimes defiantly. The imitation of Sterne is strongest at the beginning, both in outward form and subject-matter, and this measure of indebtedness dwindles away steadily as the book advances. Göchhausen, as other imitators, used at the outset a modish form, returned to it consciously now and then when once under way, but when he actually had something to say, a message of his own, found it impracticable or else forgot to follow his model. ”

“ Moritz August von Thümmel in his famous “Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen von Frankreich” adopted Sterne’s general idea of sentimental journeying, shorn largely of the capriciousness and whimsicality which marked Sterne’s pilgrimage. He followed Sterne also in driving the sensuous to the borderland of the sensual.
Hippel’s novels, “Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie” and “Kreuz und Querzüge des Ritters A. bis Z.” were purely Shandean products in which a humor unmistakably imitated from Sterne struggles rather unsuccessfully with pedagogical seriousness. ”