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In connection with Wezel’s occupation with Sterne and Sterne products in Germany, it is interesting to consider his poem: “Die unvermuthete Nachbarschaft. Ein Gespräch,” which was the second in a volume of three poems entitled “Epistel an die deutschen Dichter,” the name of the first poem, and published in Leipzig in 1775.
The second and third volumes are reviewed with a brief word of continued approbation. A novel not dissimilar in general purpose, but less successful in accomplishment, is Wezel’s “Wilhelmine Arend, oder die Gefahren der Empfindsamkeit,” Dessau and Leipzig, 1782, two volumes. The book is more earnest in its conception.
One of Walter Shandy’s favorite contentions was the fortuitous dependence of great events upon insignificant details. In his philosophy, trifles were the determining factors of existence. The adoption of this theory in Germany, as a principle in developing events or character in fiction, is unquestionable in Wezel’s “Tobias Knaut,” and elsewhere.
Wezel’s satire on the craze for originality is exemplified in the account of the “Original” (Chap. XXII, Vol. II), who was cold when others were hot, complained of not liking his soup because the plate was not full, but who threw the contents of his coffee cup at the host because it was filled to the brim, and trembled at the approach of a woman. Selmann longs to meet such an original. Selmann also thinks he has found an original in the inn-keeper who answers everything with “Nein,” greatly to his own disadvantage, though it turns out later that this was only a device planned by another character to gain advantage over Selmann himself. So also, in the third volume, Selmann and Tobias ride off in pursuit of a sentimental adventure, but the latter proves to be merely a jest of the Captain at the expense of his sentimental friend. Satire on sentimentalism is further unmistakable in the two maidens, Adelheid and Kunigunde, who weep over a dead butterfly, and write a lament over its demise. In jest, too, it is said that the Captain made a “sentimental journey through the stables.” The author converses with Ermindus, who seems to be a kind of Eugenius, a
Probably the best known novel which adopts in considerable measure the style of Tristram Shandy is Wezel’s once famous “Tobias Knaut,” the “Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts des Weisen sonst Stammler genannt, aus Familiennachrichten gesammelt.” In this work the influence of Fielding is felt parallel to that of Sterne.
A precursor of “Wilhelmine Arend” from Wezel’s own hand was “Die unglückliche Schwäche,” which was published in the second volume of his “Satirische Erzählungen.” In this book we have a character with a heart like the sieve of the Danaids, and to Frau Laclerc is attributed “an exaggerated softness of heart which was unable to resist a single impression, and was carried away at any time, wherever the present impulse bore it.” The plot of the story, with the intrigues of Graf.
Other contemporary reviews deplored the imitation as obscuring and stultifying the undeniable and genuinely original talents of the author. A brief investigation of Wezel’s novel will easily demonstrate his indebtedness to Sterne. Yet Wezel in his preface, anticipating the charge of imitation, asserts that he had not read Shandy when “Tobias” was begun.
Wezel’s story begins, like Shandy, “ab ovo,” and, in resemblance to Sterne’s masterpiece, the connection between the condition of the child before its birth and its subsequent life and character is insisted upon. A
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