A native of Flanders, or the Low Countries in Europe.
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A native or inhabitant of Flanders.
Fleming
Encyclopedia Britannica
FLEMING, Paul (1609-1640), a German poet, was born at Hartenstein, a village in Saxony, on October 5, 1609. His father, a clergyman, was transferred while Paul was stilla child to a higher post at Wechselburg; and here, on the charming banks of the AIulda, Fleming grew to boyhood, being treated with great affection by a kind and intelligent stepmother. From about the age of fourteen he attended school in Leipsic, and five or six years later he became a student at the university of that town. He was a youth of manly and generous character, and soon gave evidence of poetical talent in the occasional verses he was already fond of writing. He had many friends among his fellow-students, and keenly enjoyed his life in Leipsic; but in 1633 he was driven away by the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War. It happened that about this time the duke of Holstein had resolved to send an embassy to Persia, with the view of opening for his subjects new channels of trade. Through Olearius, who was made secretary of the embassy, and afterwards wrote an interesting account of its proceedings, the young poet heard of the duke’s purpose. Fired by the prospect of foreign travel, and with a vague idea that great results might be achieved by bringing East and West into closer contact, he went to Holstein and offered the duke his services. The offer was accepted; and when, a few months later, the embassy started, Fleming accompanied it as a subordinate official. Difficulties arose at Moscow, and the chiefs of the expedition returned to Holstein for instructions, leaving the inferior members, among them Fleming, at Revel. Here they were detained for more than a year, but he had no reason to regret the fact, since there were in Revel many cultivated German families who received him with pleasure. ...In the spring of 1636 the embassy set off anew, and it was absent rather more than three years, reaching Ispahan in 1637, and passing through many stirring adventures on the way. The pleasure of the enterprise was marred by the tyrannical disposition of one of the leaders; but if we may judge from the buoyant tone of the poems written during the journey, Fleming must have had many happy hours amid the strange scenes he visited. In April 1G39 he found himself once more in Revel, and as a lady who had promised to become his wife had married during his absence, he now wooed a certain Fraulein Anna, who had been too young during his former visit to attract his notice. At Leipsic he had attended lectures in medicine, and after his betrothal it occurred to him to settle in Revel as a physician. He went to Leyden, and obtained a diploma; but the fatigues of travel had helped to undermine his constitution, and on his way back to Revel he died at Hamburg, April 2, 1640, when little more than thirty years of age.
His fame was not very great in his own day; but it has steadily increased ever since, and he is now universally admitted to have been the most brilliant German poet of the 17th century. After the Reformation, poetry almost died out in Germany; it could not make itself heard amid the noise of contending theological sects. Martin Opitz, the founder of the so-called First Silesian school, heralded the approach of a new literary epoch. Fleming began his career as a disciple of this author, whose methods of versification he adopted; and without being aware of it he speedily rose far above his master. The younger poet had genius, of which there is no trace in the correct but tedious compositions of Opitz. Some of the rudeness of his age still clung to Fleming; but his feeling is always intense, and he often gives it voice in lines of exquisite melody. Although he does not seem to have searched laboriously for appropriate epithets, he is justly famous for the wealth, aptness, and beauty of his phraseology. His genius was purely lyrical, and he never sought to pass beyond the limits which nature had imposed upon him. Within these limits, however, the range of his Geist und Weltliche Poemata is unusually wide. In his religious poetry—notably in the well-known hymn beginning “In allen meinen Thaten ”·— the sorrows of a generation tormented by a fearful war found pathetic utterance; but this did not hinder him from writing some of the gayest and most alluring love verses in the German language. His sonnets breathe a spirit of lofty independence, betokening a mind which has grappled seriously with the hardest problems of life, but which has lost none of the confidence, ardour, and charm of youth.
Fleming’s writings were admirably edited by the late T. Μ. Lappenberg. As, however, a large number of them relate to special events, and the poet did not always succeed in giving these events an ideal interest, most readers will be satisfied with the ample selection from his works in the second volume of the series entitled Deutsche Dichter des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, edited by K. Gödeke and J. Tittmann (Leipsic, 1870). A valuable study of the poet will be found in Varnhagen von Ense’s Biographischen Denkmalen, bd. iv. (Berlin, 1826).
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 9, p. 303
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[885 words — estimated reading time: 6 minutes]
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