By the year 1200, at the
height of the Middle Ages, a genuine, hearty enjoyment of the external
world was again in existence, and found lively expres- sion in the
minstrelsy of different nations, which gives evidence of the sympathy
felt with all the simple phenomena of nature --spring with its flowers,
the green fields and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground
without perspective. Even the crusaders, who travelled so far and saw
so much, are not recognizable as such in their poems. The epic poetry,
which describes amour and costumes so fully, does not attempt more than
a sketch of outward nature; and even the great Wolfram von Eschenbach
scarcely anywhere gives us an adequate picture of the scene on which
his heroes move. From these poems it would never be guessed that their
noble authors in all countries inhabited or visited lofty castles,
commanding distant prospects. Even in the Latin poems of the wandering
clerks, we find no traces of a distant view--of landscape properly so
called-- but what lies near is sometimes described with a glory and
splendor which none of the knightly minstrels can surpass. What picture
of the Grove of Love can equal that of the Italian poet -- for such we
take him to be--of the twelfth century?
'Immortalis fieret Ibi manens homo; Arbor ibi quaelibet Suo gaudet
pomo; Viae myrrha, cinnamo Fragrant, et amomo-- Conjectari poterat
Dominus ex domo' etc.
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