Much of this sentiment of anti-monarchism has crept into his first great work, the "Gruener Heinrich." This, a sort of autobiography in guise of a big novel, alive with adventure as well as thoughts on men and things, he first published from 1854 to 1855, but it was afterward recast in characteristic fashion, 1879-1881. In a manner of speaking, his "Gruener Heinrich" is also a confession of faith. There are many didactic passages in it; the whole book, in fact, breathes the convictions of its author. This is still more the case with the last great work from Keller's pen, "Martin Salander," where the frequent political and social precepts interwoven into the text of the story form, from the purely artistic viewpoint, a serious blemish.
It is generally conceded that Keller's masterpiece is "Seldwyla Folks" ("Die Leute von Seldwyla"), which appeared in two sections, the first of these in 1856, the second in 1874. From this group of weird, fantastic tales the three forming the contents of this book are taken. About the origin of the title Keller himself has written in his inimitably oracular and whimsical style. The name and the town itself are wholly fictitious. They represent a sort of collective traits of a number of ancient, unprogressive Swiss towns, left head over heels in medievalism, in outworn customs, with some peculiar features exclusively their own. Each tale is a jewel cut and polished, a distinctive literary entity, something that may not be duplicated elsewhere in the whole realm of letters, with a full flavor of its own. Where, for instance, in the literature of any tongue, is to be found a humorous-sarcastic story of the raciness of "The Three Decent Combmakers"?
From 1861 to 1878 Keller filled, to the eminent satisfaction of his countrymen, the important and remunerative office of "Staatsschreiber," one that combined the duties of secretary of state with those of custodian of documents and librarian for his native canton, which was offered him in direct recognition of his literary merits. As such he utilized for a cycle of semi-historical tales some of the most curious records in his keeping, which are embalmed in his "Zurich Stories" (Zuericher Novellen), 1877. In the year after that he retired from office, and in 1882 appeared "The Epigram" (Das Sinngedicht), in 1883 his "Seven Legends," based on some of the Lives of the Saints, singularly humanized and modernized, and in 1886 finally "Martin Salander," an intensely patriotic and peculiarly Helvetian novel. He was also a master of the short story, a sadly neglected field in Teutonic literature.
Meanwhile, wherever German was understood or spoken the writings of Gottfried Keller had found intense appreciation, at first slowly, then more rapidly, and eminent German critics and authors, such as Theodore Storm, Berthold Auerbach, F. Th. Vischer and others, had pronounced themselves ardent admirers of his. But in 1890 he died, after a lingering illness.
The question may well be asked how it is that the literary lifework of such a man as Gottfried Keller has for so many years been denied the most sincere form of homage, that of translation, by the whole non-German-speaking world. There may be additional reasons for this seeming neglect, but I believe the chief one lies in the fact of the unusual difficulty of the task. To cast the thoughts and conceits of an individualistic writer into another vehicle of speech is in itself no easy matter. But in the case of Gottfried Keller it is especially so. For the man, as I took pains to point out, was a Swiss, not by any manner of means a German. And not only is the subject matter of his lyrical and epical output strongly tinged with Helvetism, but his very language as well. The Swiss-German vernacular is more than a mere dialect; it is almost a tongue of its own. On all but on the few solemn and formal occasions of life the Swiss expresses himself in what he terms "Schwyzer-Dütsch," which is indeed scarcely understood by persons habituated to German proper, and even when the Swiss author perforce drops into the latter he uses so many peculiarly Helvetian terms and modes of speech, so many archaic saws, his whole method of handling the language is so different that to reshape what he says into another tongue without doing violence to the spirit, the soul, the flavor and thus marring the translation irretrievably and doing gross injustice to the original becomes doubly hard.
I can only say that I have done in this respect what was humanly possible. What the final result has turned out to be is for the court of last resort, for the final arbiter, the reader, to say.
W. V. S.