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Herder, Percy, and the Song of Songs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In view of the long-recognized influence of Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry upon Johann Gottfried Herder's literary theory, especially upon his “Sturm und Drang” essays and Volkslieder, it comes as a surprise to note that Herder's Lieder der Liebe (1778), containing his German translation of the Biblical Song of Songs as well as his commentary thereon, omits all reference to Percy's earlier English translation and commentary, The Song of Solomon, Newly Translated from the Original Hebrew (1764). To be sure, Percy's work (like Herder's own) appeared anonymously. But in the eighteenth century there were ways of discovering the identity of anonymous writers, as both Percy and Herder knew to their chagrin. Yet in none of Herder's works is there any reference to Percy's Song of Solomon, and in none of his published letters is there any mention of the little book. When one considers Herder's usual scholarly habit of documentation and his willingness to acknowledge sources, one must conclude that he was ignorant of Percy's work. One can speak, naturally, of a permeating influence of the Reliques on this work of Herder's, as one can speak of such an influence on any of his writings. In fact, the thesis of the following pages is that this very influence, fused with a few others having the common denominator of folk-poetry, led Herder to a conception of the Song of Songs quite different from that reached by Percy himself and strikingly similar to Percy's theory in one point only: a negative attitude toward the theory of J. D. Michaelis, which was known to both. The contrast between Herder's and Percy's views of the supposedly Solomonic Song of Songs throws an interesting light upon the critical approach of Herder to a document that could fit perfectly into his definition of poetry as “eine Welt- und Völkergabe” and illustrates the peculiar use he made of the Reliques (along with some other, later works) in the support of his original theory of poetry, which differed so remarkably from that of Percy.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946
References
1 Cf. Hans Hecht, T. Percy, R. Wood und J. D. Michaelis (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1933), pp. 6, 18, et passim.
2 Herzogs Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche (Stuttgart and Hamburg, 1856), vi, s.v. “Hohes Lied.”
3 Cf. the introduction to Bernard de Clairvaux, Cantica Canticomm: Eighty-six Sermons on the Song of Solomon, edited and translated by Samuel J. Eales (London: E. Stock, 1895), pp. x-xiii.
4 R. P. Dom Remy Ceillier, Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclésiastiques, 2nd ed. (Paris: Vivès, 1859), ii, 158-159.
5 S. Aurelii Augustini episcopi Hipponensis de Civitate Dei contra paganos Libri XXII, ed. J. E. C. Welldon (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1924), ii, 300.
6 Nathaniel Schmidt, The Messages of the Poets (New York: Scribners, 1911), pp. 217-218.
7 The (Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, it should be noted, was less concerned with Theodore's interpretation of the Song of Songs than with his involvement in the Nestorian heresy. The anathematization of his beliefs was preceded by a long controversy between the Emperor and Pope Vigilius. Cf. Carl Joseph von Hefele, Bishop of Rottenburg, Conciliengeschichte, 2nd ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1857), ii, 871-893.
8 Cf. James Fitzmaurice-Kelley, Historia de la literatura española, tr. Bonilla y San Martín, 3rd ed. (Madrid, 1921), pp. 180-181.
9 The Abbé Augustin Calmet (1672-1757) in his Dictionnaire historique, critique etc: (Paris, 1720) and in his Dissertations qui peuvent servir de prolégomènes à l'Ecriture Sainte (Paris, 1720), was the most notable. Cf. Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (Paris: Letouzey, 1937), iii, s.v. “Cantique de Cantiques.” Calmet had been preceded in this view by Caspar Sanctius (Commentarium in C.C., 1616) and by Laurentius Petræus, whose metrical translation, C. C. Salomonis paraphrasi etc. (1640) not only arranged the work in dramatic form but also provided a musical setting. Cf. Nathaniel Schmidt, op. cit., 2220 ff., also Schmidt's extensive bibliography.
10 G. E. Lessing, Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Lachmann-Muncker (Leipzig: Göschen, 1907), xviii, 122.
11 Cf. The Jewish Encyclopædia (New York, 1905), xi, s.v. “Song of Songs”: “The date of the song is indicated by its literary form: the idyll is foreign to the Hebrew genius and points to the time when the Jews imitated Greek models (Theocritus and Bion).” Also, Morris Jastrow, The Song of Songs, Being a Collection of Love Lyrics of Ancient Palestine (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1921), 10 ff.: “The starting point in the case of the Song of Songs must, therefore, be to take the book for what it clearly is, a continuous ecstasy on the theme of sexual love.” One Protestant view is given in Herman Gunkel and Leopold Zscharnack, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1928), ii, s.v. “Hohes Lied”: “Aus diesen Gründen können wir die hohe sittliche Wertschätzung des Hohenliedes nicht teilen, die es bei Herder und Goethe, als ein Strauß unschuldiger Liebeslieder gefunden hat.” Meanwhile, The Catholic Encyclopedia, iii, s.v. “Canticle of Canticles,” adheres to the allegorical view and adds: “At the present time most non-Catholics are strongly opposed to such an exposition; on the other hand, most Catholics accept the allegorical interpretation of the book.” But at least one Protestant (Baptist) commentator, Charles Walker Ray, in his The Song of Songs of the King and Bis Bride (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1913) retains the Catholic view, which probably has much wider acceptance in orthodox Protestantism than the sources listed above would admit.
12 Hecht, op. cit., 2, 71.
13 Ibid., 5-6.
14 Ibid., 10-12.
15 (Thomas Percy), The Song of Solomon, Newly Translated from the Original Hebrew, with a Commentary and Annotations (London: Dodsley, 1764), pp. 99.
16 Ibid., 103.
17 Cf. Wolfgang Nufer, Herders Ideen zur Verbindung von Poesie, Musik und Tanz (Berlin: E. Ebering, 1929) = Germanische Studien, Heft 74.
18 J. G. Herder, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913), viii, 543.
19 Ibid., 547.
20 Ibid., 552.
21 Ibid., 556.
22 Ibid., 535.
23 Ibid., 532.
24 Ibid., 533.
25 Ibid., 591.
26 This striking fact has been completely established by Alexander Gillies' Herder und Ossian (Berlin: Juncker und Dünnhaupt, 1933), pp. 9-36.
27 Ibid., 101 et passim.
28 Rudolf Haym, Herder, nach Seinem Leben und seinen Werken dargestellt (Berlin: Gaertner, 1877-1885), ii, 85.
29 Schmidt, op. cit.; Jastrow, op. cit.; Gunkel and Zscharnack, op. cit.; and W. G. Jordan, in Arthur S. Peake, ed., A Commentary on the Bible (London: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1929), pp. 418-419, are among those who accept Herder's theory with reservations as to the theological value of the Song. One can say that practically all non-allegorical theories now held are forms of Herder's main contention.
30 Goethe, Werke, Weimar ed., vii, 7-8.