United States or Sierra Leone ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


To Johann Georg Jacobi, the author of theWinterreiseandSommerreise,” two well-known imitations of Sterne, the sentimental world was indebted for this practical manner of expressing adherence to a sentimental creed. In the Hamburgischer Correspondent he published an open letter to Gleim, dated April 4, 1769, about the time of the inception of theWinterreise,” in which letter he relates at considerable length the origin of the idea. A

Johann Christian Bock (1724-1785), who was in 1772 theater-poet of the Ackerman Company in Hamburg, soon after the publication of the Sentimental Journey, identified himself with the would-be Yoricks by the production ofDie Tagereise,” which was published at Leipzig in 1770. The work was re-issued in 1775 with the new titleDie Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages.” The only change in the new edition was the addition of a number of copperplate engravings. The book is inspired in part by Sterne directly, and in part indirectly through the intermediary Jacobi. Unlike the work of Schummel just treated, it betrays no Shandean influence, but is dependent solely on the Sentimental Journey. In outward form the book resembles Jacobi’sWinterreise,” since verse is introduced to vary the prose narrative. The attitude of the author toward his journey, undertaken with conscious purpose, is characteristic of the whole set of emotional sentiment-seekers, who found in their Yorick a challenge to go and do likewise: “Everybody is journeying, I

Longo was unable to settle definitely the date of Jacobi’s first acquaintance with Sterne. The first mention made of him is in the letter to Gleim of April 4, 1769, and a few days afterward, April 10, the intelligence is afforded that he himself is working on a “journey.” TheWinterreisewas published at Düsseldorf in the middle of June, 1769. Externally the work seems more under the influence of the French wanderer Chapelle, since prose and verse are used irregularly alternating, a

Among the works of sentiment which were acknowledged imitations of Yorick, along with Jacobi’sWinterreise,” probably the most typical and best known was theEmpfindsame Reisen durch Deutschlandby Johann Gottlieb Schummel. Its importance as a document in the history of sentimentalism is rather as an example of tendency than as a force contributing materially to the spread of the movement.

Who would not battle with the iciest blast of the north if out of storm and snow he could bring back to his chamber the germs of the 'Winterreise? Who would grudge the moisture of his eyes if he could render it immortal in the strains of Schubert's 'Lob der Thrâne?"