Hermann and Dorothea By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are few modern poems of any country so perfect in their
kind as the "Hermann and Dorothea" of Goethe. In clearness
of characterization, in unity of tone, in the adjustment of
background and foreground, in the conduct of the narrative,
it conforms admirably to the strict canons of art; yet it
preserves a freshness and spontaneity in its emotional appeal
that are rare in works of so classical a perfection in form.
The basis of the poem is a historical incident. In the year 1731
the Archbishop of Salzburg drove out of his diocese a thousand
Protestants, who took refuge in South Germany, and among whom
was a girl who became the bride of the son of a rich burgher.
The occasion of the girl's exile was changed by Goethe to more
recent times, and in the poem she is represented as a German from
the west bank of the Rhine fleeing from the turmoil caused by the
French Revolution. The political element is not a mere background,
but is woven into the plot with consummate skill, being used,
at one point, for example, in the characterization of Dorothea,
who before the time of her appearance in the poem has been
deprived of her first betrothed by the guillotine; and, at another,
in furnishing a telling contrast between the revolutionary uproar
in France and the settled peace of the German village.
The characters of the father and the minister Goethe took over
from the original incident, the mother he invented, and the
apothecary he made to stand for a group of friends. But all of
these persons, as well as the two lovers, are recreated, and this
so skillfully that while they are made notably familiar to us as
individuals, they are no less significant as permanent types of
human nature. The hexameter measure which he employed, and which
is retained in the present translation, he handled with such
charm that it has since seemed the natural verse for the domestic
idyl--witness the obvious imitation of this, as of other
features of the poem, in Longfellow's "Evangeline."
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Etext Translated by Ellen Frothingham
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