Paul Fleming

Fleming, Paul 

Born Oct. 5, 1609, in Hartenstein; died Apr. 2, 1640, in Hamburg. German writer. An outstanding lyric poet of the German baroque.

Fleming’s works included odes, epistles, and occasional verses. Moving beyond the conventional forms of academic poetry, he developed a style distinguished by rhythmic flexibility and clarity of image. Between 1633 and 1639, Fleming and A. Olearius visited Russia and Persia as members of the Schleswig-Holstein embassy. In Novgorod, Fleming composed an idyll, in which, alluding to the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, he glorified the peace-loving Russian peasant. Three of his sonnets, devoted to Moscow, were translated and published by A. P. Su-marokov in his journal Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia (1755).

WORKS

Lateinische und deutsche Gedichte, vols. 1–3. Edited by J. M. Lappenberg. Stuttgart, 1863–65 (new ed., 1965).
In Russian translation:
[“Stikhi.”] In the collection Astrakhan’, 1958.
In Slovo skorbi i utesheniia. Moscow, 1963.

REFERENCES

Istoriia nemetskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1962.
Pyritz, H. P. Flemings deutsche Liebeslyrik. Leipzig, 1932.