Poetry
The Messiah
Der Messias
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock · 1748
Opening lines
Sing', unsterbliche Seele, der sündigen Menschen Erlösung,
Die der Messias auf Erden in seiner Menschheit vollendet,
Und durch die er Adam's Geschlecht zu der Liebe der Gottheit,
Leidend, getödtet und verherrlichet, wieder erhöht hat.
Sing, immortal soul, the redemption of sinful men,
Which the Messiah accomplished on earth in his humanity,
And by which he raised again the race of Adam to the love of the Godhead,
Suffering, slain and glorified.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from zeno.org
Synopsis
In twenty cantos the poem sings the redemption of mankind through the Passion of Christ. Heaven and hell deliberate in it: an archangel crosses the universe to carry Jesus's prayer to God, while Satan gathers his demons to obtain his death. Angels and demons contend for souls, a repentant fallen angel tries to approach Christ, and on earth the disciples are followed by their guardian angels.
Context
The first three cantos appeared without the author's name in 1748 in the Bremer Beiträge, after a first draft in prose; the others followed in groups until 1773, nearly twenty thousand hexameters in all. The King of Denmark granted the poet a pension so that he could finish it. The abandonment of the rhymed alexandrine earned the author the sarcasm of Gottsched's school and the support of Bodmer's. The fame of the work rests on its first ten cantos; interest had fallen away by the time the last ones appeared. In English, Mary and Joseph Collyer produced a prose version as early as 1763; the first French translation remained partial.
Who it is for
A very long poem, in hexameters; the available French translation stops at the tenth canto.
Prizes and reception
An unprecedented success on its publication, and the work through which German poetry freed itself from French models.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.