Die Alpen

Alpen, Die, a descriptive poem by A. von Haller. It consists of 50 rhyming stanzas, each of ten alexandrines (see Alexandriner). It contrasts the rural peace and innocent virtue of the inhabitants of the Alps with the vices, misery, and corruption of civilized humanity. In its condemnation of sophistication and praise of simplicity, it anticipates Rousseau, and its description of the Alps opens up new poetic territory. Haller visited the Alps in 1728, when he was 19, wrote the poem in the following winter, and published it in 1732. The present first stanza was added in the second edition in 1734.

Lessing quoted two stanzas (40 and 41) in Laokoon, using them to condemn the principle of descriptive poetry, though he conceded that the passage is ‘ein Meisterstück in seiner Art’.