page_title: Lenore (ballad)
section_title: Reception and impact
hierarchical_section_title: Lenore (ballad) / Reception and impact
context_page_description: "Lenore", sometimes translated as "Leonora", "Leonore" or "Ellenore", is a poem written by German author Gottfried August Bürger in 1773, and published in 1774 in the Göttinger Musenalmanach. "Lenore" is generally characterised as being part of the 18th-century Gothic ballads, and although the character that returns from its grave in the poem is not considered to be a vampire, the poem has been very influential on vampire literature. William Taylor, who published the first English translation of the ballad, would later claim that "no German poem has been so repeatedly translated into English as 'Ellenore'".
context_section_description: Lenore had a profound effect on the development of Romantic literature throughout Europe and a strong influence on the English ballad-writing revival of the 1790s. According to German language scholar John George Robertson,
  [Lenore] exerted a more widespread influence than perhaps any other short poem in the literature of the world. [...] like wildfire, this remarkable ballad swept across Europe, from Scotland to Poland and Russia, from Scandinavia to Italy. The eerie tramp of the ghostly horse which carries Lenore to her doom re-echoed in every literature, and to many a young sensitive soul was the revelation of a new world of poetry. No production of the German "Sturm und Drang"—not even Goethe's Werther, which appeared a few months later—had such far-reaching effects on other literatures as Bürger's Lenore; it helped materially to call the Romantic movement in Europe to life.
  In a similar tone, English literature scholar Marti Lee claims that:
  "Lenore" had tremendous influence on the literature of the late eighteenth- and early [n]ineteenth-centuries, and in fact, today's popular horror books and movies are still feeling the reverberations. [...] In short, Bürger’s achievement, while minor in itself, helped father an international movement that led directly to the massive popularity of Gothic works then and now. [...] As the Gothic novel borrowed many of its original conventions from the German ballads, as popularized by "Lenore," we can fairly say that Bürger is one of the most influential founding fathers of the Gothic and horror genres.
  "Lenore" was an immediate sensation in Germany and was widely translated into different languages, which brought it a great deal of popularity in many European countries and the United States, and also generated numerous "imitations, parodies, [and] adaptations". Its first English translation was published in March 1796, when William Taylor's rendering of the ballad, "Ellenore", appeared in the Monthly Magazine. The translation, however, was completed in 1790, and it had already been "declaimed, applauded and much discussed in Norwich literary circles".
  After Walter Scott heard how enthusiastically a crowd at Dugald Stewart's house had reacted to a reading of Taylor's version done by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, he attempted to acquire a manuscript of Bürger's original. In 1794, when he had finally received one, he was so impressed by it that he made his own rendering, William and Helen, in less than a day. Scott's version was passed from hand to hand, and was extremely well received. In 1796, three new English translations were published by William Robert Spencer, Henry James Pye and John Thomas Stanley. Translations by James Beresford and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were published in 1800 and 1844, respectively, and both have been hailed as the most faithful translations of Bürger's original work.
  Other notable translators of "Lenore" into English include Frederic Shoberl, Julia Margaret Cameron and John Oxenford. Sigmund Zois and France Prešeren translated the ballad into Slovenian, while Vasily Zhukovsky and Pavel Katenin published translations in Russian. A version in Italian was made by Giovanni Berchet and both Leopoldo Augusto de Cueto and Juan Valera made their own translations to Spanish. Gérard de Nerval, who was obsessed with the text, published five translations in French, two in prose and three in verse.
  Between 1797 and 1800, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Christabel, which according to some German critics was influenced by Bürger's "Lenore". Percy Bysshe Shelley was also impressed by "Lenore" and treasured a copy of the poem which he had handwritten himself. Shelley biographer Charles S. Middleton further suggests that "it is hinted, somewhat plausibly, that the Leonora of Bürgher first awakened his poetic faculty. A tale of such beauty and terror might well have kindled his lively imagination". Influences of Bürger's poem on "Monk" Lewis, John Keats and William Wordsworth have also been noted, and some of its verses have been used by other authors on their own works. The verse
caption: Gottfried August Bürger
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