which have become:
Wie aus der hohen Drüden Versammlungen,
Nach Braga’s Telyn, nieder vom Opferfels,
Ins lange tiefe Thal der Waldschlacht,
Satzungenlos sich der Barden Lied stürzt!
Klopstock notes with reference to the word Telyn: “Die Leyer der Barden. Sie heisset noch jetzt in der neueren celtischen Sprache so, die am Meisten von der älteren behalten hat.” The term has replaced Leier also in the odes “Thuiskon,” l. 13, “Die Barden,” l. 2; it occurs in ll. 62 and 123 of the ode “Der Hügel, und der Hain,” l. 14 of “Die Barden,” in the Hermannsschlacht, in Hermann und die Fürsten, etc. The introduction of this Celtic word goes back directly to the study of Celtic to which Klopstock was incited by the poems of Ossian. Moreover, it is not the only word he borrowed in this way. In “Die Barden,” l. 14, he speaks of the Telyn of our Filea, and explains the latter term in a note as “Die vortrefflichsten unter den Barden, welche die jüngeren unterrichteten.”[72] Another Celtic word that he introduced is Bardale, which he defines as follows: “Von Barde. So hiess in unsrer älteren Sprache die Lerche. Die Nachtigall verdient’s noch mehr, so zu heissen.” Klopstock applied the word also to the nightingale, but in the ode “Die Lerche und die Nachtigall” he uses it for the lark, a symbol of the song of nature, in contradistinction to the nightingale, whose song is more artificial. The ode “Bardale,” written in 1748, was originally entitled “Aëdone”; it was first published under the simple title “Ode” in the Vermischte Schriften von den Verfassern der Bremischen Beiträge, i, p. 378 (1749). Although these terms are employed occasionally by Klopstock’s imitators and others,[73] they never became popular and soon died out altogether.
Klopstock was an earnest student of versification and nothing could have given him more pleasure at one time of his career than the discovery of the poetical measures of the ancient Germani. The appearance of Macpherson’s Ossian in a prose garb, welcome as it was to some, must have come as a cruel disappointment to one who was so anxious to be enlightened as to the nature and structure of the meter of the Ur–Germanic bardic songs. This disappointment finds expression in the ode “Der Bach,” where he sings:
Der grosse Sänger Ossian folgt
Der Musik des vollen Baches nicht stets.
If Klopstock had only lived to see Ahlwardt’s translation from the so–called Celtic originals, he would have had at least a partial recompense. As it was, all he had to go by was the original (?) of the sixth book of “Temora” and that did not give him much information as to the exact structure of the verse he sought. He therefore entered into correspondence with Macpherson, as we saw above[74] in the letter to Gleim. The intensity of his interest is well illustrated by a few epistolary passages. He writes to Denis under date of July 22, 1768: “In dem Celtischen war ich auch schon ziemlich weit, aber es erklärt uns nichts; und da liess ichs. Ihnen ins Ohr. Macpherson (mit dem ich correspondire), versteht entweder Ossians Quantität, oder das Sylbenmass überhaupt nicht genug. Wenn Sie mir wahrscheinlich machen können, dass die illyrischen Barden wenigstens halbe Deutsche waren, so bekömmt der Uebersetzer einen schweren Stand mit mir, wenn er falsch, nur ein wenig falsch übersetzt.”[75] Again, he writes to Ebert on May 5, 1769: “Wenn mir Macpherson Wort hält; so bekomme ich einige alte Melodien nach Ossian, in unsre Noten gesezt; und so kann ich auch vielleicht etwas nicht unwahrscheinliches von dem Rhythmus der Barden sagen.”[76] It appears, however, that he got but little help from the material that Macpherson sent him, and so he takes his request to Angelica Kauffmann,[77] who resided in London at the time. He writes to Gleim from Bernstorff, Sept. 2, 1769: “Ich bin seit Kurzem in eine deutsche Malerin in London, Angelika Kaufmann, beinahe verliebt. Sie hat einen Briefwechsel mit mir angefangen, und will mir schicken: einen Kopf Ossians nach ihrer Phantasie, ihr Portrait und ein Gemälde aus dem Messias.”[78] Their common admiration for Ossian was no small factor in cementing the friendship between the poet and the artist. Unfortunately nothing came of the portrait of Ossian,[79] and hence we are left in the dark as to the artist’s conception of the Voice of Cona and as to how her conception would have coincided with Klopstock’s. On March 3, 1770, Klopstock wrote to Angelica from Copenhagen: “Könnten Sie nicht in Edingburgh, oder auch weiter hinauf gegen Norden, durch Hülfe Ihrer Freunde, einen Musikus auftreiben, der mir die Melodien solcher Stellen im Ossian, die vorzüglich lyrisch sind, in unsere Noten setzte,” etc.[80] Nothing could better illustrate Klopstock’s profound interest in the subject than the passages just quoted. After this we hear nothing further of the matter, and must conclude that Klopstock’s hoped–for assistance from this quarter proved illusory. What were Klopstock’s conclusions with reference to Ossian’s meter, we are told in one of his essays on the German hexameter, viz., he thought that Ossian’s meter consisted of a mixture of narrative verses of his own invention and other lyrical verses answering to the sense.[81] Of course Ossian’s value for Klopstock lay in the fact that he supposedly sang in natural melodies and was not hampered by artificial measures.
At the height of his enthusiasm for Ossian, Klopstock deemed it no sacrilege to place the Celtic bard alongside of Homer, in accordance with the popular practice of the day.[82] In a letter to Denis, Klopstock writes from Copenhagen under date of August 4, 1767: “Ich liebe Ossian so sehr, dass ich seine Werke über einige Griechische der besten Zeit setze.”[83] In the first edition of the Gelehrtenrepublik (1774) appeared the following epigram, which is a striking illustration of Klopstock’s quondam supreme admiration for Ossian:
Du gingst der Schönheit Bahn,
Sohn Fingals, Ossian;
Sie ging Mäonides Homer:
Wer that der Schritte mehr?[84]
Similarly he sings in the ode “Unsre Sprache” (ll. 53–60):
Die Vergessenheit umhüllt’, o Ossian, auch dich!
Dich huben sie hervor, und du stehest nun da!
Gleichest dich dem Griechen! trotzest ihm!
Und fragst, ob wie du er entflamme den Gesang?