Rudolf Tombo

“ He saw something in Ossian that he seized upon even more eagerly—too eagerly, in fact—namely, he regarded Ossian as a German. By this time Klopstock’s activity in the patriotic field had begun; religion no longer engrossed his entire attention. Barring Frederick the Great, there were no glorious figures upon the political stage, and Frederick’s fondness for the literature of France was not calculated to attract Klopstock, who hated the rationalistic poetry of the French. Nor was the empire of the 18th century a political organism to inspire the poet to patriotic effusions. ”

“ Klopstock regarded Ossian as a German, and Herder based many a theory of the folk–song upon the lays of the Gaelic bard. The influence, then, that Ossian had in this respect was rather an indirect one. When we regard his direct influence in the matter of imitation, the outlook is not so encouraging. Ossian’s world is encompassed by narrow bounds, the field of his images and descriptions is small, the emotions and sentiments expressed by his actors are confined to a limited sphere; and all this, coupled with the continual repetitions, greatly simplifies the process of direct imitation. ”

“ And these grand characteristics of true poetry, as laid down by Weisse, Ossian certainly possessed. The form in which the poems came out approached closely to what was then regarded as constituting the language of nature. His sentiments were surely ennobling. His descriptions, while their monotony would soon tire a reader of to–day, interested and charmed by reason of their novelty, and while sufficient play was left for the imagination, no one could complain of failure to touch the heart ”

“ It cannot be denied that he failed to reproduce the spirit as given to the original by Macpherson, yet when all is said, Denis’s translation is facile princeps among the complete German translations. The hexameters lend an air of stateliness and dignity to the poems and give them more the air of a classic. What is more, the novel introduction of hexameters evoked a lively discussion and so stimulated the popular interest in Ossian. The translation became a model for the school of the bards, most of whom derived their knowledge primarily from the version of their revered confrère. ”

“ Ferven patriots, who did not hesitate to adopt Ossian as a countryman, could scarcely be expected to distinguish between Old Norse mythology and the mythology of the ancient Cherusci and Catti. Now Ossian having once been stamped as of German descent, it required no great stretch of imagination to make Fingal and his warriors forswear their allegiance to the Spirit of Loda and pray to Wodan and his band, and vice versa to make Norse bards—skalds—assume various characteristics of Ossian’s heroes. ”

“ If the poems of Ossian were genuine—and it took a very long time to convince the Germans of the fact that they were not—here they had certainly to deal with a poet who was a genius born not made—an undeniable original. Dr. Blair had in his “Critical Dissertation” undertaken to make a comparison of the characteristics of the work of Ossian and Homer, and nowhere did his conclusion fall upon more willing ears than in Germany. ”

“ OSSIAN’S INFLUENCE UPON KLOPSTOCK AND THE SO–CALLED BARDS. §1. Klopstock.
“Klopstock verliert alles, wenn man ihn in der Nähe und im Einzelnen betrachtet. Man muss ihn in einer gewissen Ferne und im Ganzen erfassen. Wenn man ihn liest, scheint er pedantisch und langweilig; wenn man ihn aber gelesen hat, und sich wieder an ihn erinnert, wird er gross und majestätisch. Dann glauben wir einen riesenhaften Geist Ossians zu sehen.”—W. Menzel. ”

“ Just as Klopstock had sacrificed the lyre for the telyn, so his followers. The harp of the bards replaced the Zionitic harp. The poet, or rather bard, [117] was no longer crowned with the laurel–wreath but with the leaf of the oak. To–day we smile at these vagaries, but these men were very earnest in their play. Kretschmann, and not Klopstock, is responsible for most of the nonsense. The most pleasing phase of the movement is its patriotic character, and we must give the bards credit for the earnestness with which they strove to inculcate a feeling for national unity. ”

“ Since Talvj’s days the Celtic scholars of Germany have sought to make good the errors into which their predecessors of the previous century had fallen, and to them we owe much of the light that has been shed upon the long–mooted question in comparatively recent years. At the present day Ossian is read but little in Germany, and where he is known attention has generally been called to him by Goethe’s famous [75] translation of “The Songs of Selma.” He still attracts the average reader if read in snatches, but few will be found who can derive pleasure from the reading of his entire works. ”

“ Thus long before Ossian’s influence in Germany had ceased, bardic poetry was a thing of the past. Much of the machinery of Ossian’s bards was borrowed by the German bardic poets and even the druids were transferred to German soil. The old Norse mythology, which found such ready acceptance by Klopstock and Gerstenberg, is not so important in the poetry of Denis, Kretschmann, and the numerous minor bards. What the bards copied then from Ossian were the general paraphernalia, the characteristic motifs, the tone of the harp, the echoing grove, the ghosts of the departed, [118] and the like. ”

“ Equally interesting is the impression made upon the critic by the ‘spark of genius,’ the ‘power of expression,’ the ‘boldness of metaphor’; in other words, the Gaelic bard was considered fairly well endowed with those qualities that constitute the ideal poet of the Storm and Stress, and he might well be placed by the side of Shakspere as a natural poet. We note further that the pathos and tenderness exhibited in the poems of Ossian attracted attention from the beginning, and this very pathos and sentimentality and melancholy did [76] much to establish Ossian in the popular favor. ”

“ To a people professedly longing for a return to the delights of savage life, nothing could have been more opportune than the practical illustration of Rousseau’s theories in the account of the crude civilization depicted by Macpherson, whose characters, while leading a life of freedom in the wild fastnesses of the mountains, far from the haunts of civilized man, had been supplied by Macpherson with a veneer of nobility and refinement that would have better befitted a powdered and perfumed gallant of the 18th century. ”

“ This was no small admission to make in regard to a poet greater even than Homer, and so in the second review a reason for this defect is given in palliation. “Ossian lived,” we read, “in a different clime, where nature does not possess half the beauty of the Greek.... It is therefore easy to see that Ossian, whose wealth of comparison is altogether too great, is forced to become monotonous as far as these and his descriptions of scenery are concerned.” ”

“ This prose, however, was to be a poetic prose, poetic and at the same time natural; for prose was regarded as the most natural expression of the soul. Surely the sensation that Ossian made in Germany would not have been so prodigious had his poems appeared in meter. An indignant protest arose on all sides when Denis introduced an innovation by publishing a translation in hexameters. [70] [21] Had the poems of Ossian appeared originally in the measures of the so–called Gaelic originals, they might have found readier acceptance with scholars, but scarcely with the reading public. ”

“ Engelbrecht, the translator of the Fragments, was a merchant and by way of avocation a literary dilettante. He began to translate the fragments partly in prose and partly in verses without rime, but business interfered with the continuation of the work and when he again took it up, he cast aside the poetic portion and translated in rhythmic prose from the first edition of Fingal (1761) . He intended originally to publish a translation of the epic Fingal as well, but abstained, because Wittenberg anticipated him. ”

“ And thus it came about that Ossian was in more cases than one translated into German by men who absolutely lacked poetic talent. The earliest translations were in rhythmic prose, a fact that did much to increase the popularity of this style of writing in Germany at that time. About the time of Klopstock’s entrance upon the literary stage, and for some time afterwards, the theory widely prevailed, that the poet enters into more direct contact with nature by clothing his thoughts in prose. ”

“ The poems of Ossian were assigned to a ‘natural genius,’ whom men of unquestioned literary sagacity placed next to and even above Homer. Now they are almost forgotten, and their interest lies mainly in the influence they exerted upon some of the greatest minds of the 18th century.
It was in the year 1760 [15] that James Macpherson, a Scotch youth of twenty–four, [16] published in Edinburgh some Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Gallic or Erse Language. ”

“ During the perusal of the drama we are continually reminded that the author has made a thorough study of his Ossian. Selma is the name of the royal residence in Morven, just as it is in Ossian. Minona is a typical Celtic maiden as described by Ossian, just as Ryno is the Ossianic bard comme il faut. Just as Ossian’s Minona was possessed of the gift of song, [167] so Gerstenberg’s Minona has the reputation of being the “gesangreichste der Harfen Selma’s.” ”

“ We still meet with an occasional translation and imitation, to be sure, but they are of little weight when compared with the hold the Ossianic craze once had on the German people. Ossian came generally to have more interest for the philologist than for the man of letters. More than one critic no longer concealed his doubts of the authenticity, until finally Mrs. Robinson’s (Talvj’s) work upon the non–genuineness of the poems was published (1840) , which treatise marks the turning–point in German Ossian criticism. ”

“ We see first that not a single imitation of Ossian exists before the advent of Denis’s translation, and secondly, that most of the early publications hailed from Bremen and Hamburg, the cities in which the originals were soonest accessible. That the periodicals of Hannover and Göttingen should be among the first to pay tribute to the newly discovered genius is easily explained by a reference to the dynastic connections between Hannover and England. ”

“ Everything is mixed together, and of course anachronisms abound: Norse gods, skalds, druids, bards, Ossianic spirits, all are thrown together in one multi–colored complex. The spirit of the play is Ossianic throughout, and external as well as internal characters of Ossian’s influence are not lacking. Several of the characters are taken directly from Ossian, others only in name, e. g., Trenmor, King of Morven; Minona, his sister; Ryno, a bard of Ossian; Swaran, Lord of Lochlin. Edelstan, the hero, lord of Inisthona, is a son of Frothal and a grandson of Bosmina. ”

“ Themselves artificial, by a strange paradox they helped to dispel artificiality, and we really owe to Macpherson a debt of gratitude for making us acquainted with those ‘deeds of the days of other years’ when ‘Fingal fought and Ossian sung.’ The controversy that arose over the genuineness of the songs was instrumental in calling general attention to them. A fight usually attracts a crowd, and it did not fail to do so in this instance. ”

“ Neither Macpherson nor his friends anticipated the tremendous sensation these fragments were destined to make, not only in Scotland and England, but on the whole continent of Europe. But Macpherson was not the man to underestimate the position which he had suddenly attained, and accordingly, emboldened by his initial success, he published in 1761 Fingal, an epic poem in six books, and in 1763 Temora [17] in eight books. With the dispute over the authenticity of the poems we are not here concerned. The researches of modern Celtic scholars have cast much light upon the long–disputed question. ”

“ Denis quotes Kretschmann’s reply, in which the latter addresses him as “Sined, treuster Freund von Fingals Sohne!” and exclaims: “Hätt’ ich Ullins Lieder, böth ich dir sie an.” [261] —The succeeding poem, “An einen Jüngling,” enjoins a youth to conduct himself so that his fame may go down in the songs of the bards, that darkness may not dwell around his grave, that his name may not die like the thunder echoed by the hills, and gives him much similar advice such as Ossian was accustomed to extend to his Celtic heroes. ”

“ Denis had given Ossian, the Gaelic bard, the ‘rough, sublime Scotchman’ in the measure of a Greek rhapsodist. “Vielleicht aber wird er dadurch verschönert, und gleichsam classisch? Er mag es werden: nur er verliert mehr, als er gewinnt, den Bardenton seines Gesangs.” [207] The translation makes an epic, a heroic impression, but does not reproduce its natural Scotch heroic impression. Herder proceeds to show how Ossian and Homer are antitheses in almost every respect, and holds that in consequence the difference in expression should be emphasized by the choice of different meters. ”

“ Gerstenberg no doubt derived from Ossian the idea of having the ghost of Thorlaug (Himintung) arise from his grave. There is nothing in old Norse mythology corresponding to the ghost–world [107] of Ossian, and the only thing that distinguishes the appearance of Thorlaug’s ghost from that of one in Ossian is that Gerstenberg has breathed a Christian spirit into his resurrection, in contradistinction to the dismal and sometimes terrible apparitions of Ossian. We are reminded of Ossian’s ghosts when Gerstenberg sings:
(1. Canto.) ”

“ In Karl Mastalier’s (1731–95) “Ode auf den Freyherrn von Laudon,” we have Ossian’s ‘trembling harp’ several times. [332] “Das Nationaltheater” shows traces of Ossian’s influence in the bardic paraphernalia and the imagery. The moon is termed the ‘daughter of the silent night.’ [333] On the whole, Mastalier’s poems were but little influenced by Ossian, and there is nothing that distinguishes his poetry particularly from the usual run of bardic productions. ”