GBSSNEU AND THE CULMINATION OF TIIK PASTORAL IIIVL, HO 



to earn his living by his literary labors, he took up painting as 

 his calling. After the death of his father he assumed control of 

 the book-shop. Meanwhile his works had made him famous, so 

 that he was honored by his townsmen with many positions of 

 trust until his death in 1787. 



Before he came to write the idyls upon which his fame chiefly 

 rests, he tried his apprentice hand upon other works. His first 

 poems were anacreontic,' in imitation of flagedorn and Gleim. 

 The next step towards the idyl was the pastoral romance Daphnis 

 (1754), suggested to him by a chance reading of a translation of 

 Daphnis and Cbloe by Longos, which has been the great model 

 for so many works of this nature. Gessner's Daphnis lacks ac- 

 tion and reality as compared with the original. The story is full 

 of tenderness and delicacy, but these qualities do not make up for 

 what it lacks in strength and variety. 



In the short sketch of Genrebild Gessner found the literary 

 form for which his talent best fitted him. His first idyls, twerity 

 in number, were published in 1756, followed by his Neue Idyllen, 

 twenty-two in niimber, in 1772. The later idyls are to a great 

 extent a reflection of the best parts of the iirst collection. Yet 

 though they lack the freshness of the first idyls, the style and lan- 

 guage show an advance in being less diffuse. 



These idyls, especially the first edition, suited as no other had 

 done, the "sweetish" sentimentality of the time, and were hailed 

 with joy. In what did this feeling consist? 



The tendency of German poetry to turn to a visionary world 

 of imaginary innocence and happiness, away from the conditions 

 of surrounding distress, is one of the most marked characteristics 

 of the time." The peasants and shepherds were almost without 



1 See Frey's Gessner, Introduction, p. 10. 

 Frey in liis indroduction to Gessner's works, page 18, says: "Hallers 

 prophetische Strafrede, Gessner's liebliche Idylle, Lessing's Emilia Galotti, 

 Goethe'aGotzundScliiller's Jugenddramen— sie liegen hier alle in einer Linie; die 

 Sehnsucht der Idylle wendet sich seufzend von ihrer Zeit ab, der Zorn der stiir- 

 mischen Dramen stoszt diese um." 



