[ CHAPTER VII]
OPPOSITION TO STERNE AND HIS TYPE
OF SENTIMENTALISM
Sterne’s influence in Germany lived its own life, and gradually and imperceptibly died out of letters, as an actuating principle. Yet its dominion was not achieved without some measure of opposition. 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. He was to the end of the chapter a recognized prophet, an uplifter and leader. The far-seeing, clear-minded critics, as Lessing, Goethe and Herder, expressed themselves quite unequivocally in this regard, and there was later no withdrawal of former appreciation. Indeed, Goethe’s significant words already quoted came from the last years of his life, when the new century had learned to smile almost incredulously at the relation of a bygone folly.
In the very heyday of Sterne’s popularity, 1772, a critic of Wieland’s “Diogenes” in the Auserlesene Bibliothek der neuesten deutschen Litteratur[1] bewails Wieland’s imitation of Yorick, whom the critic deems a far inferior writer, “Sterne, whose works will disappear, while Wieland’s masterpieces are still the pleasure of latest posterity.” This review of “Diogenes” is, perhaps, rather more an exaggerated compliment to Wieland than a studied blow at Sterne, and this thought is recognized by the reviewer in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen,[2] who designates the compliment as “dubious” and “insulting,” especially in view of Wieland’s own personal esteem for Sterne. Yet these words, even as a relative depreciation of Sterne during the period of his most universal popularity, are not insignificant. Heinrich Leopold Wagner, a tutor at Saarbrücken, in 1770, records that one member of a reading club which he had founded “regarded his taste as insulted because I sent him “Yorick’s Empfindsame Reise.”[3] But Wagner regarded this instance as a proof of Saarbrücken ignorance, stupidity and lack of taste; hence the incident is but a wavering testimony when one seeks to determine the amount and nature of opposition to Yorick.
We find another derogatory fling at Sterne himself and a regret at the extent of his influence in an anonymous book entitled “Betrachtungen über die englischen Dichter,”[4] published at the end of the great Yorick decade. The author compares Sterne most unfavorably with Addison: “If the humor of the Spectator and Tatler be set off against the digressive whimsicality of Sterne,” he says, “it is, as if one of the Graces stood beside a Bacchante. And yet the pampered taste of the present day takes more pleasure in a Yorick than in an Addison.” But a reviewer in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek[5] discounts this author’s criticisms of men of established fame, such as Shakespeare, Swift, Yorick, and suggests youth, or brief acquaintance with English literature, as occasion for his inadequate judgments. 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 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. This defense is vehemently seconded in the same magazine by Joseph von Retzer.
The one great opponent of the whole sentimental tendency, whose censure of Sterne’s disciples involved also a denunciation of the master himself, was the Göttingen professor, Georg Christopher Lichtenberg.[7] In his inner nature Lichtenberg had much in common with Sterne and Sterne’s imitators in Germany, with the whole ecstatic, eccentric movement of the time. Julian Schmidt[8] says: “So much is sure, at any rate, that the greatest adversary of the new literature was of one flesh and blood with it.”[9] But his period of residence in England shortly after Sterne’s death and his association then and afterwards with Englishmen of eminence render his attitude toward Sterne in large measure an English one, and make an idealization either of the man or of his work impossible for him.
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. Sterne’s simplicity, his warm heart, over-flowing with feeling, his soul, sympathizing with everything good and noble, and all the other expressions, whatever they may be; and the sigh ‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ which expresses everything at once—have become proverbial among us Germans. . . . Yorick was a crawling parasite, a flatterer of the great, an unendurable burr on the clothing of those upon whom he had determined to sponge!”[10]
In “Timorus” he calls Sterne “ein scandalum Ecclesiae”;[11] he doubts the reality of Sterne’s nobler emotions and condemns him as a clever juggler with words, who by artful manipulation of certain devices aroused in us sympathy, and he snatches away the mask of loving, hearty sympathy and discloses the grinning mountebank. With keen insight into Sterne’s mind and method, he lays down a law by which, he says, it is always possible to discover whether the author of a touching passage has really been moved himself, or has merely with astute knowledge of the human heart drawn our tears by a sly choice of touching features.[12]
Akin to this is the following passage in which the author is unquestionably thinking of Sterne, although he does not mention him: “A heart ever full of kindly feeling is the greatest gift which Heaven can bestow; on the other hand, the itching to keep scribbling about it, and to fancy oneself great in this scribbling is one of the greatest punishments which can be inflicted upon one who writes.”[13] He exposes the heartlessness of Sterne’s pretended sympathy: “A three groschen piece is ever better than a tear,”[14] and “sympathy is a poor kind of alms-giving,”[15] are obviously thoughts suggested by Yorick’s sentimentalism.[16]
The folly of the “Lorenzodosen” is several times mentioned with open or covert ridicule[17] and the imitators of Sterne are repeatedly told the fruitlessness of their endeavor and the absurdity of their accomplishment.[18] His “Vorschlag zu einem Orbis Pictus für deutsche dramatische Schriftsteller, Romanendichter und Schauspieler”[19] is a satire on the lack of originality among those who boasted of it, and sought to win attention through pure eccentricities.
The Fragments[20] are concerned, as the editors say, with an evil of the literature in those days, the period of the Sentimentalists and the “Kraftgenies.” Among the seven fragments may be noted: “Lorenzo Eschenheimers empfindsame Reise nach Laputa,” a clever satirical sketch in the manner of Swift, bitterly castigating that of which the English people claim to be the discoverers (sentimental journeying) and the Germans think themselves the improvers. In “Bittschrift der Wahnsinnigen” and “Parakletor” the unwholesome literary tendencies of the age are further satirized. His brief essay, “Ueber die Vornamen,”[21] is confessedly suggested by Sterne and the sketch “Dass du auf dem Blockberg wärst,”[22] with its mention of the green book entitled “Echte deutsche Flüche und Verwünschungen für alle Stände,” is manifestly to be connected in its genesis with Sterne’s famous collection of oaths.[23] Lichtenberg’s comparison of Sterne and Fielding is familiar and significant.[24] “Aus Lichtenbergs Nachlass: Aufsätze, Gedichte, Tagebuchblätter, Briefe,” edited by Albert Leitzmann,[25] contains additional mention of Sterne.