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To return to Bode’s preface. With emphatic protestations, disclaiming vanity in appealing to the authority of so distinguished a friend, Bode proceeds to relate more in detail Lessing’s connection with his endeavor. He does not say that Lessing suggested the translation to him, though his account has been interpreted to mean that, and this fact has been generally accepted by the historians of literature and the biographers of Lessing. The tone of Bode’s preface, however, rather implies the contrary, and no other proof of the supposition is available. What Bode does assert is merely that the name of the scholar whom he quotes as having expressed a willingness to give a part of his own life if Sterne’s literary activity might be continued, would create a favorable prepossession for his original (“ein günstiges Vorurtheil”), and that a translator is often fortunate enough if his selection of a book to translate is not censured. All this implies, on Lessing’s part, only an approval of Bode’s choice, a
Bode does not translate the word “Sentimental” in his published extracts, giving merely the English title; hence Lessing’s advice concerning the rendering of the word dates probably from the latter part of the summer. The translation in the September number of the Unterhaltungen also does not contain a rendering of the word.
Still Lessing’s name has not become European through his wit, and his charming comedy, Minna von Barnhelm, has won no place on a foreign stage. Of course we do not pretend to an exhaustive acquaintance with German literature; we not only admit—we are sure that it includes much comic writing of which we know nothing.
The addition of the word “Reisen” in Bode’s narrative is significant, for it shows that Lessing must have become acquainted with the Sentimental Journey before April 6, the date of the notice of Sterne’s death in the Hamburgische Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten; that is, almost immediately after its English publication, unless Bode, in his enthusiasm for the book which he was offering the public, inserted the word unwarrantably in Lessing’s statement.
The translator’s preface occupies twenty pages and is an important document in the story of Sterne’s popularity in Germany, since it represents the introductory battle-cry of the Sterne cult, and illustrates the attitude of cultured Germany toward the new star. Bode begins his foreword with Lessing’s well-known statement of his devotion to Sterne. Bode does not name Lessing; calls him “a
Much of the argument of Lessing’s elaborate essay on the “Laocoon” is aimed at this point, which is brought out in its completeness in his discussion of Timomachus’ treatment of the raving Ajax. “Ajax was not represented at the moment when, raging among the herds he captures and slays goats and oxen, mistaking them for men.
[Footnote 32: Kürschner edition of Lessing’s works, III,
It does not indicate necessarily an affection for Sterne and a regret at his loss, mathematically doubled in these seven or eight years between Sterne’s death and the time of Lessing’s conversation with Sara Meyer; it probably arises from a failure of memory on the part of the lady, for Bode’s narrative of the anecdote was printed but a few months after Sterne’s death, and Lessing made no effort to correct an inaccuracy of statement, if such were the case, though he lived to see four editions of Bode’s translation and consequently so many repetitions of his expressed but impossible desire.
Nearly thirty years later (March 20, 1797) Sara Wulf, whose maiden name was Meyer and who was later and better known as Frau von Grotthus, wrote from Dresden to Goethe of the consolation found in “Werther” after a disappointing youthful love affair, and of Lessing’s conversation with her then concerning Goethe. She reports Lessing’s words as follows: “You will feel sometime what a genius Goethe is, I
We are entirely dependent on Nicolai’s memory for our information relative to this sole endeavor on Lessing’s part to adopt completely the manner of Sterne. Nicolai asserts that this effort was a complete success in the realization of Yorick’s simplicity, his good-natured but acute philosophy, his kindly sympathy and tolerance, even his merry whimsicality.
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