Only in his charming fairy-tale, _Undine_ (1811), does Fouque rise
above his _milieu. Undine_, the source of which, according to Fouque
himself, is to be found in a work of Paracelsus on supernatural
beings, remains one of the best creations of the Romantic school and,
like Eichendorff's novel, has become international, not only in
its original form but in the opera by Lortzing (first performance,
Hamburg, 1845). The value of the story lies in the author's power
to make the reader believe in Undine, the water sprite, and in
the presentation of a new nature-mythology. All Romanticists have
consciously or unconsciously attempted to satisfy Friedrich Schlegel's
demand for anew mythology: Fouque's earth, air, and water spirits
people the elements with graceful forms from the world of nature; the
nymph Undine in the form of a flowing stream embraces even in death
the grave of her lover.
Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862) was not fundamentally a Romantic
personality. He is called "the classicist of Romanticism," and
with justice. The term shows that he is felt to have something of
completion, of inner perfection, of harmony of form and content which
was lacking in the truer Romanticists. Uhland was without their early
cosmopolitanism. Political life as manifested in him was, first of
all, Suabian--for Uhland was a Suabian and most intimately associated
with that section of Germany.
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