Geoffrey Atherton. The Decline and Fall of Virgil in Eighteenth-Century Germany: The Repressed Muse. Rochester: Camden House, 2006. xx + 312 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57113-306-9.

Reviewed by Edward T. Potter (Department of Foreign Languages, Mississippi State University)
Published on H-German (November, 2007)

Vergil, the Forgotten Inspiration

When considering the reception of antiquity in the world of eighteenth-century German letters, scholars have generally focused their attention on the increased importance placed upon ancient Greek literature and culture in the wake of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's influential treatise Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755). According to the dominant narrative, Homer and the Greeks became, at mid-century, a model for simplicity and authenticity, for "edle Einfalt und stille Größe" in Winckelmann's famous phrase, whereas Vergil and the Romans became examples of artificiality and epigonism, models to be avoided. In his book-length study of Vergil's reception by and influence on eighteenth-century German writers, Geoffrey Atherton focuses on the fate of the Romans in the aforementioned paradigm shift. He states the two major aims of his monograph on the very first page of the text. On the one hand, Atherton sets out to examine the reversal of fortune that Vergil underwent in the eighteenth century. Once considered the quintessential poet, Vergil became, in the second half of the eighteenth century, "the object ... of embarrassment, silence, and even outright scorn" (p. xi). On the other hand, Atherton undertakes an investigation of the traces left by Vergil in the German poetry of this period. In the genres of epic and idyll, Vergil's influence could still be found, although it was generally not acknowledged. Atherton demonstrates that in the late eighteenth century schoolboys read Vergil in order to learn Latin and the influence of his works could still be found in poetry. Atherton's text will be valuable for scholars who are interested in the intersections of the classics and eighteenth-century German literature, and represents an important contribution to the scholarship of pastoral literature.

In the first chapter of the book, Atherton examines the reception of Vergil in the eighteenth century. Up until the mid-eighteenth century, Vergil's work had been enormously influential and well respected: "Before the middle of the eighteenth century almost every German poet of note either admitted directly that Virgil was integral to his creative work or did so indirectly through the sincerest form of flattery" (p. 16). In the latter part of the century, Vergil came to be viewed as a failed imitation of Homer; Vergil was thought "the least of poets, and ... the Aeneid, the greatest of failures" (p. 19). Whereas Winckelmann did not consider Roman art to be original at all but instead an imitation of Greek and Etruscan art, so, too, did critics such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schlegel consider the poetry of Vergil to be an unsuccessful imitation of the Greeks, and thus, not poetry. For Atherton, the motivations for this shift are rooted not only in the rediscovery of the Greeks but also in an effort on the part of German writers to set themselves apart from their French counterparts, who had identified themselves with Augustan Rome and claimed to have surpassed their model. German writers compared themselves to the Greeks, who were seen as the more authentic, more original "half" of Greco-Roman antiquity, and relegated French writers to the role of the pale Roman imitation. Atherton points out that Winckelmann, Herder, and Schlegel's objections to Roman culture can thus be read as attempts to deflate French cultural capital.

In chapter 2, Atherton begins by examining Winckelmann's important treatise. It introduced the period of German "Grecomania" (p. 63) and of increasing distaste for Latin literature and culture. Winckelmann considered the statue of the Laocoon group as an example of beauty exhibiting itself as "edle Einfalt und stille Größe," and used the description of Laocoon's death in Vergil's Aeneid as an example of beauty's opposite. Although Winckelmann's treatise marked the point at which German culture began to favor Greece over Rome, it was nonetheless Rome that bore greater similarity to the eighteenth-century German lands, as Atherton points out: "[Augustan Rome] was a civilization acutely aware of its belated position not merely in the literary and intellectual world but also in the historical world.... Germany of the eighteenth century ... likewise faced the difficulty of absorbing a tradition while staking out its own place within it" (p. 64). Rome also influenced Winckelmann in his study of the Greeks. Atherton points out the discrepancy between the contorted physique of Laocoon and the famous phrase that it evoked, and he traces Winckelmann's reaction to the sculptural group back to Winckelmann's prerequisite knowledge of Vergil's text. Therefore, it was his knowledge of Vergil that led Winckelmann to his Grecophile epiphany.

Of course, the privileged position of Latin at schools and universities guaranteed that German writers were familiar with the works of Vergil in the original, yet students often had great difficulties working through Latin authors' works. Christian Gottlob Heyne brought out a new edition of Vergil's works (1767-75), an undertaking that greatly influenced subsequent editions of Vergil. Heyne was motivated by reformatory ambitions; the works of Vergil were to be read as literature rather than merely as sources for concrete examples of rhetorical devices. Heyne's edition, with its more accessible annotations, made Vergil's works more readily available to new generations of students, yet even this renowned editor of the Roman poet's works was unable to refrain from disparaging Vergil and comparing him unfavorably to Homer.

Chapter 3 deals with the genre of the epic and the influence of the Aeneid on eighteenth-century German attempts at reviving the epic. As a genre, the epic enjoyed pride of place within eighteenth-century poetics, yet for many reasons, eighteenth-century writers had trouble adapting the genre to contemporary needs, mainly due to the different role played by military engagements and by religion in contemporary society: "Kings and their 'Kabinettskriege' can lay claim to no special reverence; their wars are not the reflection of disturbances in heaven" (p. 99). In this chapter, Atherton turns his attention first to Immanuel Jakob Pyra's Der Tempel der wahren Dichtkunst (1737). Pyra had read and translated Vergil, and Atherton traces Pyra's indebtedness to Vergil at the level of language and of technique. The author then turns to an examination of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's influential Christian epic Der Messias (1748-73). The author points out that critics, who have tended to emphasize Klopstock's indebtedness to Homer and Milton (even though Klopstock was initially only familiar with Milton via Johann Jakob Bodmer's German prose translation), have largely ignored the connections between Klopstock and Vergil. Atherton points out, by means of a detailed rhetorical analysis of Klopstock's poem, that the work does owe much to Vergil's Aeneid. The author even goes so far as to recommend reading Der Messias in preparation for the rhetorical complexities of the Aeneid. Atherton then treats Christoph Martin Wieland's mock-heroic epic Oberon (1780), detailing similarities and differences between the Dido and Aeneas episode in Vergil and the relationship between Hüon and Amanda in Wieland's poem. The author finds both thematic and rhetorical similarities between Vergil and Wieland; most notably, Wieland's work represents "a mood of idyllic or more innocent love, a transposition from the tragic to the comic register ... and ... a refined, parodic play with literary convention" (p. 128).

Chapter 4 concerns itself with classical pastoral poetry and eighteenth-century theorizations of the pastoral. The author begins with a close reading of two of Theocritus's idylls, foundational texts in bucolic poetry, and demonstrates that these poems were highly ironic constructions filled with literary allusions, designed to appeal to the tastes of an educated audience. Eighteenth-century German writers, however, received ancient pastoral poetry in a completely different vein. They viewed Theocritus's works as realistic depictions of idyllic nature. Vergil, who, with his Eclogues, became the first Latin poet to turn to the pastoral, adapted and refashioned many themes in Theocritus, most notably by creating his own conception of Arcadia as an imaginary pastoral locus separate from, yet dependent on, the city. Vergil innovatively used the bucolic as a masking device in order to introduce contemporary personages and social and political issues. Eighteenth-century critics took issue with the artificiality of the eclogues, for these writers were more interested in depicting nature as existing in an authentic, dynamic relationship with the sentimental, feeling subject. In addition to a reevaluation of the role of nature in pastoral poetry, the eighteenth-century pastoral featured a reworking of the concepts of love and the role of the individual in society. Whereas love in the classical pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Vergil generally remained unrequited and was often seen as a destructive passion, love became, in eighteenth-century pastoral, a chaste emotion that led to marriage and also to the integration of the individual into the community at large. The ancient shepherd, tending his flocks alone, became a modern member of the sentimental community. In this chapter, Atherton discusses theoretical treatises on the pastoral by the seventeenth-century French critics René Rapin and Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle as well as critical evaluations by Johann Christoph Gottsched, Johann Adolf Schlegel, Wieland, and Heyne in order to illustrate the shift in the reception of classical pastoral poetry that was taking place.

Chapter 5 contains an evaluation of the works of Salomon Gessner, Maler Müller, Johann Heinrich Voß, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Novalis. Gessner's Idyllen (1756) exhibited a pronounced Vergilian influence, yet this work represented a sentimental reformulation of the genre, one that found great favor among contemporary readers and influenced later writers. Maler Müller's ancient, biblical, and Palatinate idylls (1775-1811) represented a shift from the work of Gessner in their preoccupation with the present, be that in terms of language, themes, or settings. The idylls of Maler Müller shared with the work of Vergil an emphasis on history, on literature, and on literary artifice or self-reflexivity. Voß's idylls, on the other hand, emphasized political considerations, concerns which were absent in Maler Müller but which were of great importance to Vergil; even though Voß disparaged Vergil as an artist, it is the work of Vergil that provided Voß with a model for "political and social comment within the bucolic" (p. 229).

Atherton then performs close readings of Goethe's "Der Wandrer" (1774), Römische Elegien (1795), and "Alexis und Dora" (1797); the author finds that Goethe evinced a great similarity to Vergil in connecting an idealized rustic, timeless past with contemporary concerns. This tendency becomes clear in the example of "Alexis und Dora": "[Goethe] puts his character in a distant classical place yet also in a situation recognizably modern, just as Virgil put figures from his present into the imaginary Arcadia. As Virgil used the Roman martial present to give contours to his Arcadia, Goethe uses his bourgeois, capitalist present to lend shape to Alexis's naive condition" (p. 252). Novalis, in contrast to his contemporaries, had an admitted admiration for and interest in Vergil, an interest that demonstrated itself in the language and themes of his poem Orpheus (c. 1790) and also in the "Atlantis-Märchen" in Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802): "[Novalis's] knowledge of Virgil is not merely a part of his general culture that recedes along with the memories of schoolboy drudgery, but something of which he makes creative use throughout his brief career" (p. 271).

In his conclusion, Atherton finds a rediscovery of Vergil by the Romantics, and he details how Friedrich Schlegel wrestled with the Vergilian legacy in his own unpublished writing. Schlegel's admiration for Vergil did not, however, find expression in his published work. Atherton sees a reintegration of Vergil's poetic legacy in the twentieth century in the works of East German writers Heiner Müller and Christa Wolf.

In general, Atherton's text presents a fruitful, insightful argument that provides the reader with a great deal of information. The author presents his audience with close readings of both well-known and obscure works as well as theoretical texts and works of literature. He creates a strong network of connections between classical Greco-Roman literature and German literary works of the Enlightenment, Sensibility, Storm and Stress, Classical, and Romantic periods. The many illustrative quotations are presented in the original as well as in English translation, with the exception of German quotations, which are given only in the original.

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Citation: Edward T. Potter. Review of Atherton, Geoffrey, The Decline and Fall of Virgil in Eighteenth-Century Germany: The Repressed Muse. H-German, H-Net Reviews. November, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13899

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