Salomon Gessner:

The Modern Idyll and Sentimental Nature

The gradual transformation of the pastoral, as the cultural criticism of the German Enlightenment coalesces with the new feeling for nature, comes to a head in the wildly popular Idyllen (1756) of Gessner. So successfully does Gessner combine all the various strands into a coherent literary expression that the result is tantamount to “eine neue Gattung.” The astonishing appeal of Gessner to his age is today even less well remembered than that of Haller and his Die Alpen (1732). Yet Gessner was the first German writer to achieve literary renown beyond the borders of the German world and was only displaced by the success of Goethe's Werther. Rousseau, though seriously ill, read the French translation upon receiving it in one sitting, and Diderot politely asked permission to include two of his pieces in the French version of Gessner. The works of Gessner and, to a lesser extent, Haller mark the beginning of the modern French interest in German literary and cultural life.

Gessner's Idyllen also represent the continuation of many elements from the Rococo poetry of the preceding decades. In its mixture of themes and influences this poetry also had a Virgilian presence, which is very marked in such works as Haller's Die Alpen (1732). This poem not only exhibits a poetic technique, a structure, and particular passages taken from the Georgics but also strongly propels the pastoral Arcadia toward a Georgic world with its emphasis on work, family, and the community in nature.