This study presents a comparative analysis of two major figures in German-language literature: the Swiss poet Gottfried Keller (1819–1890) and the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). While the influence of Goethe on Keller is well recognized in literary history, no systematic comparative study of their poetics of nature, the lyric self, and the relation between the local and the universal has yet been undertaken. Focusing on the central motifs of the garden and the world, the research explores how both poets responded to the challenge of representing the particular and the universal in poetry. Keller's garden is the Swiss countryside, a space of simplicity and natural beauty; Goethe's world is the horizon of human experience, a space of classical harmony and expansive vision. Through close reading of Keller's Gedichte (Poems) and Der grüne Heinrich (Green Henry), alongside Goethe's West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan) and Italienische Reise (Italian Journey), the study reveals how both poets developed a poetics that balances the local with the universal, the personal with the cosmic. The study argues that Keller's poetry, often seen as merely regional, participates in the same universalizing project as Goethe's, but from a different perspective: the grounded perspective of the Swiss poet, rooted in the particularities of landscape and community. By bringing these two poets into sustained dialogue, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of German-language literature as a field of multiple, parallel developments, and offers a new framework for reading Swiss poetry in its relation to the German tradition. Email: bo.xia@posteo.de
Bo Xia (Sat,) studied this question.
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