Solomon Gessner

Solomon Gessner (April 1, 1730 - March 2, 1788), Swiss painter and poet, was born at Zürich.

With the exception of some time (1749-1750) spent in Berlin and Hamburg, where he came under the influence of Ramler and Hagedorn, he passed the whole of his life in his native town, where he carried on the business of a bookseller. The first of his writings that attracted attention was his "Lied eines Schweizers an sein bewaffnetes Madchen" (1751). Then followed "Daphnis" (1754), Idyllen (1756 and 1772), "Inkel" and "Yariko" (1756), a version of a story borrowed from "The Spectator" (No. 11, March 13 1711) and already worked out by Gellert and Bodmer, and "Der Tod Abels" (1758), a sort of idyllic pastoral.

It is somewhat difficult for us now to understand the reason for Gessner's universal popularity, unless it was the taste of the period for the conventional pastoral. His writings are marked by sweetness and melody, qualities which were warmly appreciated by Lessing, Herder and Goethe. As a painter Gessner represented the conventional classical landscape.

Collected editions of Gessner's works were repeatedly published (2 vols, 1777-1778, finally 2 vols, 1841, both at Zürich). They were translated into French (3 vols, Paris, 1786-1793), and versions of the "Idyllen" appeared in English, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Czech. In 1780 Gessner founded the Zürcher Zeitung (renamed Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821). Gessner's life was written by Hottinger (Zürich, 1796), and by Heinrich Wölfflin (Frauenfeld, 1889); see also his "Briefwechsel mit seinem Sohn" (Bern and Zürich, 1801).

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