Klopstock’s characterization of the songs of the bards given in ll. 33–40 and 77–84 of the ode “Der Hügel, und der Hain” is based largely upon his knowledge of the poems of Ossian which were supposedly further removed from the limitations of art and closer to nature than the poems of the Greeks.
The description of natural scenery and the comparison at the beginning of the ode “Aganippe und Phiala” (1764) reminds us strongly of Ossian, who was very fond of permitting several as’s and so’s to follow one another in his comparisons, a trick that was widely copied later in the imitations of Ossian and carried to excess.
Ll. 1–10:
Wie der Rhein im höheren Thal fern herkommt,
Rauschend, als käm’ Wald und Felsen mit ihm,
Hochwogig erhebt sich sein Strom,
Wie das Weltmeer die Gestade
Mit gehobner Woge bestürmt! Als donnr’ er,
Rauschet der Strom, schäumt, fliegt, stürzt sich herab
Ins Blumengefild, und im Fall
Wird er Silber, das emporstäubt.
So ertönt, so strömt der Gesang, Thuiskon,
Deines Geschlechts ...
Compare, e. g., “Fingal,” Book i, p. 221, ll. 4–10:
“As rushes a stream of foam from the dark shady deep of Cromla, when the thunder is travelling above, and dark–brown night sits on half the hill; through the breaches of the tempest look forth the dim faces of ghosts: So fierce, so vast, so terrible rushed on the sons of Erin. The chief, like a whale of ocean, whom all his billows pursue, poured valour forth as a stream, rolling his might along the shore.”
Ossian is full of long comparisons, with several dependent clauses,[97] and loves to heap up adjectives. Although the comparison of song to a stream frequently occurs in Ossian, we have seen[98] that it would be unsafe to attribute Klopstock’s use of the comparison to Ossian, in fact, we find comparisons of the voice to a storm pouring down from the hills in the early books of the Messiah, and of course in classical poetry.
Another example of the nature of Ossian’s influence upon Klopstock, its power to strengthen existing conceptions, is offered by his use of the oak in comparisons. Köster[99] remarks, that Klopstock’s numerous comparisons to the oak are all found in his later dramas, none in the Messiah. The oak, which Klopstock was so fond of regarding as the national tree—die deutsche Eiche—was as much at home in the highlands of Scotland as in the primeval forests of Germany, and according to Ossian occupied just as high a place in the minds of the Caledonians as in those of the Germani. The grove of oaks, the Hain, came to bear the same relation to bardic poetry that Helicon, the Hügel, bore to Greek poetry. It must have pleased Klopstock to find these groves of oaks so frequently mentioned in Ossian, in “The Songs of Selma,” e. g.,[100] and without a doubt Ossian’s numerous comparisons to the oak had an influence upon Klopstock. In the Hermannsschlacht, Sc. 6, e. g., he says: “... so stürzt’ er in sein Blut, wie die junge, schlanke Eiche der Donnersturm bricht.” Compare “Temora,” Bk. iii, p. 328, ll. 25–6: “Like a young oak falls Tur–lathon;” “Carthon,” p. 163, l. 20: “There he lies, a goodly oak, which sudden blasts overturned!” etc., etc.
Klopstock borrowed a name from Ossian and employed it freely in his odes, Selma, the name of the royal residence[101] of Fingal. He grew quite fond of the euphonious name, used it to apply to a girl, coined a corresponding masculine form Selmar, and out of the two made a pair of ideal lovers. Vetterlein[102] many years ago suggested that the names might have been taken from Selim and Selima, names given by Prevod to a pair of tender lovers in the Memoires d’un homme de qualité;[103] but no one of the present day would subscribe to that opinion. Had he kept the name of the maid in “The Songs of Selma,” Colma, he would have been induced to call her lover, whose real name is Salgar, Colmar, and that would have led to confusion with the Ossianic hero of that name. The ode “Selmar und Selma,” written in 1748, was originally entitled “Daphnis und Daphne.” About the same time that the change of names took place, another ode was written with the title “Selma und Selmar” (1766), in which the lovers promise that the first to die will appear to the other. This is a fancy that we frequently meet in the latter half of the 18th century, and it found nourishment in Ossian. The name Selma occurs furthermore in the ode “Die Erscheinung” (1777), and Selma and Selmar are the two ideal lovers in the ode “Das Bündniss,” as late as 1789. The combination grew to be quite a popular one, and so we find “Elegien von Selma und Selmar” in Kosegarten’s Thränen und Wonnen (Stralsund, 1778), a poem “Selmar und Selma” by Friedrich Stolberg[104] that shows the influence of Ossian, another Ossianic poem of the same title dedicated to Christian Stolberg,[105] and many more. The popularity of the name Selma was still further increased by the translation of “The Songs of Selma” that appeared in Werthers Leiden.
The Hermannsschlacht and the larger part of Hermann und die Fürsten were written at the height of Klopstock’s enthusiasm for Ossian and we shall not search in vain for signs of the bard’s influence in these dramas, particularly in the former. One of the most important and striking constituents of these dramas are the songs of the bards, interspersed throughout, which are thoroughly Ossianic in tone and spirit. Klopstock’s bards, like those of Ossian, encourage the warriors to battle, proclaim the fame of the mighty; they tell of the deeds of the past, and when they sing: “Höret Thaten der vorigen Zeit,” we recall Ossian’s “tales of the times of old,” or his “deeds of other times.” The three choruses in Sc. 3 of the Hermannsschlacht beginning with this exhortation are all decidedly Ossianic, e. g.: