The portion of Shandy which is virtually a part of the Sentimental Journey,[3] which Sterne, possibly to satisfy the demands of the publisher, thrust in to fill out volumes contracted for, was not long enough, nor distinctive enough in its use of sentiment, was too effectually concealed in its volume of Shandean quibbles, to win readers for the whole of Shandy, or to direct wavering attention through the mazes of Shandyism up to the point where the sentimental Yorick really takes up the pen and introduces the reader to the sad fate of Maria of Moulines. One can imagine eager Germany aroused to sentimental frenzy over the Maria incident in the Sentimental Journey, turning with throbbing contrition to the forgotten, neglected, or unknown passage in Tristram Shandy.[4]
It is difficult to trace sources for Sterne in English letters, that is, for the strange combination of whimsicality, genuine sentiment and knavish smiles, which is the real Sterne. He is individual, exotic, not demonstrable from preceding literary conditions, and his meteoric, or rather rocket-like career in Britain is in its decline a proof of the insensibility of the English people to a large portion of his gospel. The creature of fancy which, by a process of elimination, the Germans made out of Yorick is more easily explicable from existing and preceding literary and emotional conditions in Germany.[5] Brockes had prepared the way for a sentimental view of nature, Klopstock’s poetry had fostered the display of emotion, the analysis of human feeling. Gellert had spread his own sort of religious and ethical sentimentalism among the multitudes of his devotees. Stirred by, and contemporaneous with Gallic feeling, Germany was turning with longing toward the natural man, that is, man unhampered by convention and free to follow the dictates of the primal emotions. The exercise of human sympathy was a goal of this movement. In this vague, uncertain awakening, this dangerous freeing of human feelings, Yorick’s practical illustration of the sentimental life could not but prove an incentive, an organizer, a relief for pent-up emotion.[6]
Johann Joachim Christoph Bode has already been mentioned in relation to the early review of Zückert’s translation of Shandy. His connection with the rapid growth of the Yorick cult after the publication of the Sentimental Journey demands a more extended account of this German apostle of Yorick. In the sixth volume of Bode’s translation of Montaigne[7] was printed first the life of the translator by C. A. Böttiger. This was published the following year by the same house in a separate volume entitled “J. J. C. Bodes literarisches Leben, nebst dessen Bildnis von Lips.” All other sources of information regarding Bode, such as the accounts in Jördens and in Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog,”[8] are derivations or abstracts from this biography. Bode was born in Braunschweig in 1730; reared in lowly circumstances and suffering various vicissitudes of fortune, he came to Hamburg in 1756–7. Gifted with a talent for languages, which he had cultivated assiduously, he was regarded at the time of his arrival, even in Hamburg, as one especially conversant with the English language and literature. His nature must have borne something akin to Yorick, for his biographer describes his position in Hamburg society as not dissimilar to that once occupied for a brief space in the London world by the clever fêted Sterne. Yet the enthusiasm of the friend as biographer doubtless colors the case, forcing a parallel with Yorick by sheer necessity. Before 1768 Bode had published several translations from the English with rather dubious success, and the adaptability of the Sentimental Journey to German uses must have occurred to him, or have been suggested to him directly upon its very importation into Germany. He undoubtedly set himself to the task of translation as soon as the book reached his hands, for, in the issue of the Hamburgische Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten for April 20, is found Bode’s translation of a section from the Sentimental Journey. “Die Bettler” he names the extract; it is really the fifth of the sections which Sterne labels “Montriul.”[9] In the numbers of the same paper for June 11 and 15, Bode translates in two parts the story of the “Monk;” thus, in but little over three months after its English publication, the story of the poor Franciscan Lorenzo and his fateful snuff-box was transferred to Germany and began its heart-touching career. These excerpts were included by Bode later in the year when he published his translation of the whole Sentimental Journey. The first extract was evidently received with favor and interest, for, in the foreword to the translation of the “Monk,” in the issue of June 11, Bode assigns this as his reason for making his readers better acquainted with this worthy book. He further says that the reader of taste and insight will not fail to distinguish the difference when so fine a connoisseur of the human heart as Sterne depicts sentiments, and when a shallow wit prattles of his emotions. Bode’s last words are a covert assumption of his rôle as prophet and priest of Yorick in Germany: “The reader may himself judge from the following passage, whether we have spoken of our Briton in terms of too high praise.”
In the July number of the Unterhaltungen, another Hamburg periodical, is printed another translation from the Sentimental Journey entitled: “Eine Begebenheit aus Yoricks Reise fürs Herz übersetzt.” The episode is that of the fille de chambre[10] who is seeking Crébillon’s “Les Egarements du Coeur et de l’Esprit.” The translator omits the first part of the section and introduces us to the story with a few unacknowledged words of his own. In the September number of the same periodical the rest of the fille de chambre story[11] is narrated. Here also the translator alters the beginning of the account to make it less abrupt in the rendering. The author of this translation has not been determined. Bode does not translate the word “Sentimental” in his published extracts, giving merely the English title; hence Lessing’s advice[12] concerning the rendering of the word dates probably from the latter part of the summer. The translation in the September number of the Unterhaltungen also does not contain a rendering of the word. Bode’s complete translation was issued probably in October,[13] possibly late in September, 1768, and bore the imprint of the publisher Cramer in Hamburg and Bremen, but the volumes were printed at Bode’s own press and were entitled “Yoricks Empfindsame Reise durch Frankreich und Italien, aus dem Englischen übersetzt.”[14]
The translator’s preface occupies twenty pages and is an important document in the story of Sterne’s popularity in Germany, since it represents the introductory battle-cry of the Sterne cult, and illustrates the attitude of cultured Germany toward the new star. Bode begins his foreword with Lessing’s well-known statement of his devotion to Sterne. Bode does not name Lessing; calls him “a well-known German scholar.” The statement referred to was made when Bode brought to his friend the news of Sterne’s death. It is worth repeating:
“I would gladly have resigned to him five years of my own life, if such a thing were possible, though I had known with certainty that I had only ten, or even eight left. . . . but under the condition that he must keep on writing, no matter what, life and opinions, or sermons, or journeys.” On July 5, 1768, Lessing wrote to Nicolai, commenting on Winckelmann’s death as follows: “He is the second author within a short time, to whom I would have gladly given some years of my own life.”[15]
Nearly thirty years later (March 20, 1797) Sara Wulf, whose maiden name was Meyer and who was later and better known as Frau von Grotthus, wrote from Dresden to Goethe of the consolation found in “Werther” after a disappointing youthful love affair, and of Lessing’s conversation with her then concerning Goethe. She reports Lessing’s words as follows: “You will feel sometime what a genius Goethe is, I am sure of this. I have always said I would give ten years of my own life if I had been able to lengthen Sterne’s by one year, but Goethe consoles me in some measure for his loss.”[16]
It would be absurd to attach any importance to this variation of statement. It does not indicate necessarily an affection for Sterne and a regret at his loss, mathematically doubled in these seven or eight years between Sterne’s death and the time of Lessing’s conversation with Sara Meyer; it probably arises from a failure of memory on the part of the lady, for Bode’s narrative of the anecdote was printed but a few months after Sterne’s death, and Lessing made no effort to correct an inaccuracy of statement, if such were the case, though he lived to see four editions of Bode’s translation and consequently so many repetitions of his expressed but impossible desire. Erich Schmidt[17] reduces this willingness on Lessing’s part to one year,—an unwarranted liberty.
These two testimonies of Lessing’s devotion are of importance in defining his attitude toward Yorick. They attest the fact that this was no passing fancy, no impulsive thought uttered on the moment when the news of Sterne’s death was brought to him, and when the Sentimental Journey could have been but a few weeks in his hands, but a deep-seated desire, born of reflection and continued admiration.[18] The addition of the word “Reisen” in Bode’s narrative is significant, for it shows that Lessing must have become acquainted with the Sentimental Journey before April 6, the date of the notice of Sterne’s death in the Hamburgische Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten;[19] that is, almost immediately after its English publication, unless Bode, in his enthusiasm for the book which he was offering the public, inserted the word unwarrantably in Lessing’s statement.
To return to Bode’s preface. With emphatic protestations, disclaiming vanity in appealing to the authority of so distinguished a friend, Bode proceeds to relate more in detail Lessing’s connection with his endeavor. He does not say that Lessing suggested the translation to him, though his account has been interpreted to mean that, and this fact has been generally accepted by the historians of literature and the biographers of Lessing.[20] The tone of Bode’s preface, however, rather implies the contrary, and no other proof of the supposition is available. What Bode does assert is merely that the name of the scholar whom he quotes as having expressed a willingness to give a part of his own life if Sterne’s literary activity might be continued, would create a favorable prepossession for his original (“ein günstiges Vorurtheil”), and that a translator is often fortunate enough if his selection of a book to translate is not censured. All this implies, on Lessing’s part, only an approval of Bode’s choice, a fact which would naturally follow from the remarkable statement of esteem in the preceding sentence. Bode says further that out of friendship for him and regard for the reader of taste, this author (Lessing), had taken the trouble to go through the whole translation, and then he adds the conventional request in such circumstances, that the errors remaining may be attributed to the translator and not to the friend.