John M. MCMAHON De Christiano Wedstedio poeta Latino carminibusque eius

The classically inspired Latin poetry of the Dane Christian Wedsted (1720-57) forms an important part of a manuscript collection of his Latin and German writings. Produced first in Europe and later inColonial America, Wedsted's exclusively Latin work consists of thirty-eight poems of varying length, meter, and content as well as two short pieces of epistolary prose. The author's life and the personal and public circumstances leading to the production of individual poems may be traced chiefly from the verses themselves, from a few isolated pieces of personal poetry and prose correspondence addressed to him by others, and from the records of the Pennsylvania German community in which he lived during his last years. Concentrating chiefly on Wedsted's poetry, this paper describes the present state of my efforts to locate, organize, transcribe, and translate this truly unique and almost unknown verse collection.

Wedsted had considerable training in classical languages during his school days in Denmark, as evidenced in a manuscript composition book, his Liber Stilorum (1737), where his talent for writing Latin prose and poetry is clear. Of the extant poems produced in subsequent years, sixteen were written in Europe and date from after 1749; five are undated; and the remaining seventeen are placed with certainty in Pennsylvania after the author's arrival there in 1753. For the most part, the poems are in two meters, the Sapphic strophe and the elegiac couplet, and they display a wide range of theme and subject matter. Some pieces are of a purely personal nature, including simple birthday wishes brimming with honest expressions of affection toward familiars, while others celebrate both festive occasions and common, everyday pleasures. Another type of poem represents a much more religiously oriented composition, frequently adorned with the Latin equivalent of the highly expressive and emotional language typical of contemporary German Pietism. The addressees of these pieces are often the leaders of Wedsted's community or influential Europeans sympathetic to its religious ideals. In every instance, these poems afford valuable insights both into the Classical Tradition in contemporary Europe and Colonial America and into the significant social, religious, and historical issues of the day.

This paper will be presented in Latin and will feature excerpts from representative poems read aloud and analyzed in their historical, cultural, and literary contexts. In addition, overhead transparencies and color slides of the manuscript material itself will accompany the presentation.