Solomon Gessner

Solomon Gessner , born on April 1st 1730 with Zurich where he died the March 2nd 1788, is a Poète Suisse.

The literary promoter of idyllic Switzerland

Who knows Solomon Gessner today? Its descendants and a handle of academics at most… However in it with so dull poetry, Solomon Gessner sees himself carrying well in spite of him to the rank of chief of school. He is then new the Théocrite, renovating of an idyllic kind by too used by the insipid galanteries of a Fontenelle. We will not enter in detail of this “pastoral crisis of the kind” but note that the work of the Zurich ois appears at one convenient period. Indeed, criticism starts to weary these idylles emphatic and if little impassioned. Asserted simplicity and passion: we find cement of work here Haller and they are extremely many to ask a less traditional eclogue. Let us quote for example Remond of Saint-Marc who would put up himself more readily “with the rusticity of the countryside than of the subtlety of the city” and which would like to meet in the idylles shepherds who “stripped coarseness of the countryside, do not have the smoothness which shines in the cities”. More surprising, the economist Turgot mixes with the debate: how much the feelings honesty and virtue is not they preferable with mystical refinements and puerile delicacies that the Italian and French poets put in the mouth of their shepherds and their shepherdesses. The message is clear: in fact qualities of the heart, the tenderness and the sincerity must henceforth distinguish the rustic heroes and heroins.

With the truth, it is not this modest poet inhabitant of Zurich alone who renewed the pastoral idylle. The work of Gessner must be replaced in the cultural environment of Zurich. This town of rather liberal spirit shelters in particular the young painter Füssli or the literary circle of Bodmer, cantor of a new sentimentalism. It is with their contact that Solomon Gessner, modest bookseller, tests himself with poetry. In 1754, it must work over again its first work, Daphnis , at the request of Bodmer which does not find it sentimental enough… Closely the Death of Abel and of course the Idylles follow. The translations of those have a considerable success in all the Europe, and, once again, particularly in France. But if Gessner does not deserve such an amount of opprobrium today, it undoubtedly did not deserve so many praises yesterday. Its work especially was used as literary response to Gottsched and its twenty-eight pastoral dramas considered to be too traditional by the Zurich ois. It became universal grace the will of dedicated translators - such Turgot in France - but Idylles, and Gessner itself claims it, are tinted of a particularly sharp local color.

Swiss virtuous and pious ones

The historiettes mignardes of Gessner are always held in the same universe: the paradise on ground. Some snake tries well to compromise happy innocence of it; it even arrives that some spoilsport can come to force the doors of the Eden. Such shepherd, temporarily criminal, will be always recalled to the order by the affectionate councils overflowing old men of oiling and leniency. And always the lesson bears its fruits… In this paradise gessnérien all the young shepherdesses are beautiful, virtuous and sensitive. As for their alter ego masculines, they are shown always honest and infinitely respectful towards their promised. It is understood that the young significant hearts of time were let allure. Thus, at twenty-five years, it takes the desire with the Italian Monti for becoming shepherd. Léonard tests these same shivers in only eighteen springs. In 1789, Chênedollé enivre of the Idylles at nineteen years and spends two hours at the edge of a ditch to read them: “I seldom tested such a sharp pleasure, a similar enthusiasm with that one… I have the feeling of poetry, with the more high degree”.

The characters gessnériens are quite as pious as virtuous. In the event of fault, the God of justice sanctions at once. Containing very little dogmas, the Idylles are finally rather acceptable contrary later by all the beliefs in the work of Rousseau considered by too tinted deism. The Swede Gjörwell finds that Gessner finds its source in the pietism and sees an effective school of morals there. The academician Florian, in his Test on pastoral the , almost recommends to the pastors to make mass books of them: “If I were cleaned of village, I will read with my preaches the works of Gessner”. The painter François confers even a strong pacifist virtue to him: “If Catherine de Médicis had read Gessner, never the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre would not have taken place”.

The person even of Gessner sees herself idealized. A true legend is based around him and it is set up as an apostle of the innocent existence and the virtue. Thus André Chénier calls it “wise Gessner”.

The sublimated shepherd

It is little to say that Gessner contributed to change the popular perception of the shepherd. Throughout the the Middle Ages, it is often represented as a somewhat worrying wizard, and whose malignity intrigues to the Lord. Before the poet Zurich ois, Fontenelle had already returned to Pasteur some to be able of seduction, without to deprive it of its intelligence. The shepherd with the Fontenelle wanted to be also extremely pleasant and little carried on the physical-activities. According to its theory, the eclogue was indeed to awake at the reader his leaning for his two stronger passions: the Idleness and the Love. These idylles was quite as unrealistic as the ancient idylles but the rural life was much idealized there and the less naive shepherds. This philosophy was taste of the neo-classic school - in particular of Gottsched - but of aucuns, like Chénier, find them “purely conventional”.

It is not thus oiseux to allot to Gessner the paternity of this new representation of the shepherd. The shepherd gessnérien seems to refer some of resemblance to the primitive man of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The intelligence of made him express its concept by the demonstration of systems, the heart impassioned of the other made him reveal to it his by the writing of these eclogues.

An asserted helvetism

As opposed to what one could believe, this question does not miss relevance. The debate existed on the share of “helveticity” of this modern Arcadie and its shepherds in the large heart. When Ramler - writer of the circle of Zurich - request with Gessner to write these Idylles, it is made well in the idea represent the Suisse. The German theorists tore on this question. Sulzer thinks that the idylles can be written only in idyllic situations and thus correspond to a Swiss reality. For the disciples of Gottsched, the idyllic poem can be only the expression of a nostalgia of the golden age and can shape only in one imaginary decoration.

A forgotten precursor of Rousseau

Solomon Gessner, completely today displaced, thus announces idyllic Switzerland preached by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Nouvelle Héloïse . And of works like Paul and Virginia of Bernardin of Saint-Pierre owe him much…

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