PASTOHAL LITEHATUKIC F]!0.\r OI'lTZ TO (iKSSXKIi. 29 



Gottselied and his followers, but yet Gessnei- owes this descriptive 

 literature much of what is best in his idyls. 



The first great opponent of the turgid style was Christian 

 Weise. He wrote but one pastoral: Die betriibte und getrostete 

 Galatbea, 1674, which shows unmistakable signs of dramatic 

 ability. Wernicke, in whose style we trace Weise's influence, cele- 

 brates in his four idyls two deaths, one birth, and one betrothal 

 in the conventional, allegorical manner. ' The most realistic 

 poet of his time was Christian Giinther- (1695-1723), whose re- 

 alism, however, often degenerates into coarseness. He also wrote 

 a pastoral for a wedding, commemorates his old friends in a shep- 

 herd-poem, and ui a conventional manner desires to have his epi- 

 taph cut in a tree. 



Compared with those of Wernicke and Giinther, the eclognies of 

 B. A'eukirch' (166-5-1729) show a retrogression towards the m- 

 flated style of Lohenstein. Yet Gottsched, in his Critische Dicht- 

 kunst (1730), calls A^eukirch Der deutscbe Tbeokrit, and in the 3d 

 edition of Crit. Dichtk. (1712) he replaces his o^^ti model idyls by 

 four of Neukirch's.* 



1 First printed 1701. See N. Wernikens poetische Versucbe in Ueber- 

 scbritten. wie aucb in Helden und Scbafergedicliten edited by J. J. Bodmer, 

 Zurich 1749. This work was probably known to Gessner As a sample may be 

 given the synopsis of the 1st eclogue: Menalcas meeting Thyrsis, aft^r some 

 preliminary conversation, informs him of the death of Daphnis. Thyrsis exclaims: 

 "1st uneer Daphnis todt? Denn gute Nacht Ihr Walder," etc. (cf. Daphnis's fare- 

 well in Theocritus I). — They recall incidents of Daphnis's life, and decide to gather 

 flowers for his grave. The influence of Vergil may be traced. 



~ "Der letzte Schlesier". — With him closes the long hne of poets that began 

 with Opitz. — Goethe thought highly of his songs and odes. See Tittman's Intro- 

 duction to the works of J. C. Giinther (1871). Cf. also O.Netoliczka: Scbaterdich- 

 tung V. Poetik im 18:ten Jabrbundert, in Viertel-Jabrscbrift fiir Litt.-Gescb 

 II. 2, 1889, p. 5. 



3 The following shows to what extremes of absurdity he could go; in one of 

 his poems we are told: "Die um Sylviens Busen spielende Hand wird vor Liebes- 

 brand schwarz, Sylvia aber will ihr eine Gunst missgonnen, die sie den Flohen 

 nicht versagt." (Ehrich Schmidt in Allg. Deut. Biog.) In Neukirch"s Grosse 

 Antbologie (p. .577) a wedding pastoral oddly compares the bride to the sheep, 

 the bridegroom to the shepherd, who loves not her wool, the golden fleece, but 

 her heart. NetoUczka, p. 7. 



■• In the edition of 1751 , p. .593, Gottsched says; "Hier kann ich also keinen 



