Gottfried Keller (1819–1890). The Banner of the Upright Seven.
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917.
Biographical Note
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But at last fortune favored him when, in 1861, he was appointed Clerk of the Canton of Zurich, a position he filled efficiently for fifteen years. In 1872 appeared his “Seven Legends,” the whimsical humor and mock realism of which brought general recognition. Five years later came the historical stories called “Zurich Novels”; in 1881 “The Epigram”; in 1883 “Collected Poems,” establishing his place as a lyric poet of high rank; and in 1886 “Martin Salander,” a novel of contemporary Switzerland. His genius was now generally recognized both at home and abroad; and when he died on July 15, 1890, he stood at the head of German letters. He was never married.
Keller was a writer of great independence, and cannot be classed with any of the schools. The closeness of his observation and his fidelity in rendering both the good and the bad sides of life ally him with the realists; but his imagination was too much alive to allow of his being properly described by their label. He knew the Swiss of his own time intimately, and he has portrayed them in their homely provincialism as well as in their sturdy self-respect and love of freedom.
“The Banner of the Upright Seven,” one of the stories from “The People of Seldwyla,” is an excellent example of the faculty which made him the greatest of German humorists. The story has genuine sentiment, but sentiment restrained as always in his books; it has sympathy for youthful ambition and youthful love, as well as for the political enthusiasm of the delightful old fellows whose name it bears; but both sentiment and sympathy are overshadowed by the rich humor which pervades the whole. Pure Swiss it no doubt is, but its appeal is to all hearts open to wholesome human affection and aspirations.