Poems for the Consideration of Our Age

also fleeting, like a ray of sunlight: the lightest garment is always what his ethereal figures love most. Just as explaining and paraphrasing are not his way, he allows them just as little to his translator. This translator must strive to match Andreä's artistry, making an ingenious little poem—conceived in the sharpest outlines—as vivid for the present day as it perhaps was (and was intended to be) for only a few people in Andreä's own time.

Moreover, Andreä lived in times that were not free from Gothic taste original: "gothischen Geschmack"; here referring to the ornate, complex, and highly decorative literary style of the 17th century; indeed, it was a time in which this taste showed itself in the most seductive manner. The modern languages whose literature he especially loved were Italian and Spanish; but it was precisely the most famous writers of these lan-