Die Leute von Seldwyla (Complete)

This book was written with the firm belief that neither history nor poetry will lose anything, by forming a close alliance, and uniting their strength by working together. For the last thirty years or so, the bequest of our ancestors has been the subject of universal investigation. A swarm of busy moles have undermined the ground of the middle-ages in all directions, and produced by their untiring industry such a quantity of old material, as to surprise even the collectors themselves. A whole literature, beautiful and perfect in itself; an abundance of monuments of the plastic art; a well organized political and social life, lies extended before our eyes. And yet all the labour and goodwill spent on this subject, has hardly succeeded in spreading to wider circles, pleasure and interest in this newly won historical knowledge. The numberless volumes stand quietly on the shelves of our libraries. Here and there, well-to-do spiders have begun to spin their cobwebs, and the pitiless, all-covering dust has come too, so that the thought is hardly improbable, that all this old German splendour, but just conjured back into life, may one morning at cockcrow fade away and be buried in the dust and mouldering rubbish of the Past,--like to that weird cloister by the lake, the existence of which is only betrayed by the faint low tinkle of the bell, deep, deep under the waters. This is not the place to examine how far this result is attributable to the ways and methods of our scientific men

Dettagli