484 GERMANIC LITERATURE 



Paul. He emulates Tieck and other Romanticists in his descriptions of 

 the forest loneliness. Lenau's wood-pictures were well known to the 

 Austrian writer. The meadow-lark's song is heard simultaneously in 

 Annette's "Heath-pictures." The splendid descriptions of wood 

 and heath in Charles Sealsfield's novels can scarcely have been 

 unknown to Stifter. He could not indeed have known that the great 

 anonymous writer was an Austrian, a son of the Sudetic country, 

 and thus his closest compatriot. Many points of agreement in their 

 diction can be explained from their community of origin; for instance 

 the Czech influence, which is seen in both, though more pronounced 

 in Sealsfield than in Stifter. 



Lenau and Sealsfield received the inspiration for their descriptions 

 of nature in North America; Lenau during his unlucky visit, which 

 afforded him so little satisfaction, Sealsfield during a long residence, 

 which made him an American citizen and a spirited adherent and 

 admirer both of the scenery and of the politics of North America. 

 The longing for distant lands and for the New World was felt also by 

 Stifter, and transferred by him to the characters of his tales for youth. 

 In youthful excess the pupil of Klopstock cries out in one of his 

 letters: he would fain, arm in arm with his future lover, throw 

 himself into Niagara Falls (1837). The artist in the Condor sails 

 across the Atlantic Ocean. In Field Flowers America is not simply 

 the land of the hero's dreams; the action of the prologue is partly 

 on American soil; Emil passed two years in America, and relates 

 how in a forest he had nursed back to health a strange dog. The 

 poetically gifted "Heath Boy" travels to Palestine, Egypt, and into 

 the Desert. Ronald, the Swedish prince, is lured on by a glittering 

 city, by the limitless wilderness of the new land. The North American 

 literature of that time cannot therefore have been unknown to 

 Stifter. 



With Washington Irving (1783-1859), his brother-in-law, James 

 Kirke Paulding (1779-1860), and James Eenimore Cooper (1789- 

 1851). the native literature of North American .soil made a triumphal 

 entry, in the third decade of the nineteenth century, into the world's 

 literature. A new domain of literary material was discovered, a new 

 world opened to view; Chateaubriand had only partially raised the 

 curtain before it. The applause of the European reading public was 

 unexampled. In 1823 translations of Irving began to appear, in 1824 

 those of Cooper; in the same year W. Alexis translated Paulding's 

 novel. Kotiinf/sr/ifirk the Long Finn. The esteemed publishers Saner- 

 land in Frankfort-on-the-Main produced Cooper's and Irving's 

 complete works in many volumes, and combined the American fiction 

 of Paulding and of Dr. Bird into a Library of the Classic Authors of 

 North America, (ioethe read Cooper's novels with interest and 



