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According to this review both the second and fourth parts are characterized by a humorous fashion in writing, and the last is praised as being the best of the four. It seems probable that Schummel’s enthusiasm for Sterne played its part in the composition of this work.
[Footnote 19: Another review of Schummel’s book is found in the Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1773, p.
The second volume is even more incoherent in narration, and contains less genuine occurrence and more ill-considered attempts at whimsicality, yet throughout this volume there are indications that the author is awakening to the vulnerability of his position, and this is in no other particular more easily discernible than in the half-hearted defiance of the critics and his anticipation of their censure. The change, so extraordinary in the third volume, is foreshadowed in the second. Purely sentimental, effusive, and abundantly teary is the story of the rescued baker’s wife. In this excess of sentiment, Schummel shows his intellectual appreciation of Sterne’s individual treatment of the humane and pathetic, for near the end of the poor woman’s narrative the author seems to recollect a fundamental sentence of Sterne’s creed, the inevitable admixture of the whimsical, and here he introduces into the sentimental relation a Shandean idiosyncrasy: from page 43 the narrative leaps back to the beginning of the volume, and Schummel advises the reader to turn back and re-read, referring incidentally to his confused fashion of narration. The awkwardness with which this is done proves Schummel’s inability to follow Yorick, though its use shows his appreciation of Sterne’s peculiar genius. The visit of the author, the baker’s wife and her daughter (the former lady’s maid) to the graveyard is Yorickian in flavor, and the plucking of nettles from the grave of the dead epileptic is a direct borrowing. Attempts to be immorally, sensuously suggestive in the manner of Sterne are found in the so-called chapter on “Button-holes,” here cast in a more Shandean vein, and in the adventure “die ängstliche Nacht,” in the latter case resembling more the less frank, more insinuating method of the Sentimental Journey. The sentimental attitude toward man’s dumb companions is imitated in his adventure with the house-dog; the author fears the barking of this animal may disturb the sleep of the poor baker’s wife: he beats the dog into silence, then grows remorseful and wishes “that I had given him no blow,” or that the dog might at least give him back the blows. His thought that the dog might be pretending its pain, he designates a subtle subterfuge of his troubled conscience, and Goethe, in the review mentioned above, exclaims, “A
As one would naturally infer from the title of Schummel’s fiction, the Sentimental Journey is more constantly drawn upon as a source of ideas, motifs, expression, and method, than Tristram Shandy, but the allusions to Sterne’s earlier book, and the direct adaptations from it are both numerous and generous.
Schummel’s title, “Empfindsame Reisen,” is, of course, taken from the newly coined word in Bode’s title, but in face of this fact it is rather remarkable to find that several quotations from Sterne’s Journey, given in the course of the work, are from the Mittelstedt translation.
[Footnote 27: Many of the anonymous books, even those popular in their day, are not given by Goedeke; and Baker, judging only by one external, naturally misses Sterne products which have no distinctively imitative title, and includes others which have no connection with Sterne. For example, he gives Gellius’s “Yoricks Nachgelassene Werke,” which is but a translation of the Koran, and hence in no way an example of German imitation; he gives also Schummel’s “Fritzens Reise nach Dessau” and “Reise nach Schlesien” , Nonne’s “Amors Reisen nach Fockzana zum Friedenscongress” , none of which has anything to do with Sterne. “Trim oder der Sieg der Liebe über die Philosophie” (Leipzig, 1776), by Ludw. Ferd. v. Hopffgarten, also cited by Baker, undoubtedly owes its name only to Sterne. See Jenaische Zeitungen von gel. Sachen, 1777, p.
After Schummel’s remarkable self-chastisement, one could hardly expect to find in his subsequent works evidence of Sterne’s influence, save as unconsciously a dimmed admiration might exert a certain force.
In Schummel’s narration of his adventures in the house of ill-repute there are numerous sentimental excrescences in his conduct with the poor prisoner there, due largely to Yorick’s pattern, such as their weeping on one another’s breast, and his wiping away her tears and his, drawn from Yorick’s amiable service for Maria of Moulines, an act seemingly expressing the most refined human sympathy.
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