An Anthology of German Literature — Calvin Thomas
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : An anthology of German literature Author : Calvin Thomas Release date : April 13, 2007 [eBook #21053] Most recently updated: June 22, 2021 Language : German, English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21053 Credits : Louise Hope, Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team *** START OF Lines within each selection, both prose and verse, were numbered continuously. These numbers are not used for anything else in the text, such as footnotes or cross-references. In this e-text, prose passages have been rewrapped, discarding the original line breaks. Where the line numbers of the source text are given, verse passages have been renumbered accordingly. Line counts will not always match the stated numbers. Heath’s Modern Language Series AN ANTHOLOGY OF GERMAN LITERATURE BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL. D. Late Professor in Columbia University D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO Copyright, 1906 and 1909, By D. C. Heath & Co 419 Printed in U.S.A. PREFACE This book is designed to accompany an introductory study of the history of German literature. It is assumed that the history itself will be learned, so far as necessary, either from lectures or from some other book devoted to the subject. As the selections were made, for the most part, while I was writing my own short history of German literature for the series published under the general editorship of Mr. Edmund Gosse and known as “Literatures of the World,” it was natural that the Anthology should take on, to some extent, the character of a companion book to the History. At the same time I did not desire that either book should necessarily involve the use of the other. Hence the absence of cross references; and hence also, in the Anthology, the brief introductory notes, giving important dates and summary characterizations. These are meant to enable the student to read the selections intelligently without constant recourse to some other book. In preparing Part First, I have had in mind the student who has learned to read the language of Goethe and Schiller with some facility, and would like to know something of the earlier periods, but has not studied, and may not care to study, Old and Middle German. On this account the selections are given in modern German translations. The original texts are omitted because space was very precious, and because the book was intended as an aid to literary rather than linguistic study. In making the selections, my first principle was to give a good deal of the best rather than a little of everything. I wished to make friends for medieval German poetry, and it seemed to me that this could best be done by showing it in its strength and its beauty. So I have ignored much that might have had a historical or linguistic interest for the scholar, and have steadily applied the criterion of literary worth. My second principle was to give preference to that which is truly German, in contradistinction from that which is Latin, or European, or merely Christian. The Latinists of every epoch are in general disregarded, as not being of German literature in the strict sense; yet I have devoted eight pages to Waltharius and three to Rudlieb , on the ground that the matter of these poems is essentially German, albeit their form is Latin. On the other hand, Hrotswith is not represented at all, because, while an interesting personage in her way, she belongs to German literature neither by her form nor by her matter. The religious poetry of the twelfth century receives rather scant attention, partly because it is mostly pretty poor stuff—there is not much else like the beautiful Arnstein hymn to the Virgin, No. XIII—and partly because it embodies ideas and feelings that belonged to medieval Christianity everywhere. For each selection I have given the best translation that I could find, and where nothing satisfactory could be found in print I have made a translation myself. Where nothing is said as to the authorship of a translation, it is to be understood as my own. In this part of my work I have tried to preserve the form and savor of the originals, and at the same time to keep as close to the exact sense as the constraints of rime and meter would allow. In Nos. XI to XVII a somewhat perplexing problem was presented. The originals frequently have assonance instead of rime and the verse is sometimes crude in other ways. An attempt to imitate the assonances and crudities in modern German would simply have given the effect of bad verse-making. On the other hand, to translate into smooth tetrameters, with perfect rime everywhere, would have given an illusory appearance of regularity and have made the translation zu schön . (I fear that No. VII, the selections from Otfried, for the translation of which I am not responsible, is open to this charge.) So I adopted the expedient of a line-for-line prose version, dropping into rime only where the modern equivalent of the Middle German took the form of rime naturally. After regular rime becomes established—with Heinrich von Veldeke—I have employed it in all my translations. For my shortcomings as a German versifier I hope to be regarded with a measure of indulgence. The question of inclusion or exclusion could not be made to turn on the preëxistence of a good translation, because too much that is important and interesting would have had to be omitted. I should have been glad to take the advice of Mephisto, Associiert euch mit einem Poeten, but I was unable to effect a partnership of that kind. Beginning with No. XL, the selections are given in their original form without modernization. While Part Second, no less than Part First, looks to literary rather t