The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862 by Various
page 72 of 298 (24%)
page 72 of 298 (24%)
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our fancy."
This is entirely correct, as a poetic characterization. Hebel, however, possesses the additional merit--no slight one, either--of giving faithful expression to the thoughts, emotions, and passions of the simple people among whom his childhood was passed. The hearty native kindness, the tenderness, hidden under a rough exterior, the lively, droll, unformed fancy, the timidity and the boldness of love, the tendency to yield to temptation, and the unfeigned piety of the inhabitants of the Black Forest, are all reproduced in his poems. To say that they teach, more or less directly, a wholesome morality, is but indifferent praise; for morality is the cheap veneering wherewith would-be poets attempt to conceal the lack of the true faculty. We prefer to let our readers judge for themselves concerning this feature of Hebel's poetry. The Alemannic dialect, we have said, is at first harsh to the ear. It requires, indeed, not a little practice, to perceive its especial beauties; since these consist in certain quaint, playful inflections and elisions, which, like the speech of children, have a fresh, natural, simple charm of their own. The changes of pronunciation, in German words, are curious. _K_ becomes a light guttural _ch_, and a great number of monosyllabic words--especially those ending in _ut_ and _üh_--receive a peculiar twist from the introduction of _e_ or _ei_: as _gut, früh_, which become _guet, früeih_. This seems to be a characteristic feature of the South-German dialects, though in none is it so pronounced as in the Alemannic. The change of _ist_ into _isch, hast_ into _hesch, ich_ into _i, dich_ into _de_, etc., is much more widely spread, among the peasantry, and is readily learned, even by the foreign reader. But a good German scholar would be somewhat puzzled by |
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