SOURCE: An introduction to Romantic Affinities: German Authors and Carlyle; A Study in the History of Ideas, University of Toronto Press, 1993, pp. 3-8.

In the following essay, Vida surveys the influence of German literature and Romanticism on the views of Carlyle.

In affirming that any vestige, however feeble, of this divine spirit, is discernible in German poetry, we are aware that we place it above the existing poetry of any other nation. (Carlyle, 'State of German Literature')

To ascertain Carlyle's approach to his German Romantic sources must be the starting-point for their revaluation. Did Carlyle have a unified view of the essence of German Romanticism, and, if so, what were the tendencies that struck him as new and most noteworthy?

Carlyle saw continuity rather than opposition in the relationship between the German Classics Goethe and Schiller and the evolving Romantic movement.¹ In the preface to his translations from...