The Author to the Reader!

Bodmer, Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698–1783) was a highly influential Swiss-German critic and poet. He is best known for challenging the strict rationalism of his time and advocating for the importance of "the wonderful" and the imagination in literature. the most brilliant and profound critic that Germany has ever been able to produce, tells us in the eighth Canto of his Noachid Der Noahide (1750) was Bodmer’s most famous epic poem, which retold the story of Noah and the Great Flood in a grand, Miltonic style.

“that Deborah, the wife of Shem, In the biblical tradition, Shem is one of the sons of Noah. Bodmer’s poem gives his wife, Deborah, a role in preserving antediluvian (pre-flood) culture. rescued the songs of Elihu Elihu is the youngest of the speakers in the biblical Book of Job. Here, he is reimagined as the "first poet" whose work predates the Flood.—the first poet, and one whom even the Patriarchs honored with the name 'The Divine'—from the universal Great Flood Great Flood (Sündflut) and preserved them within the Ark. But as these songs soon became too exalted for the descendants of Noah, they were taken from the Earth by angels to serve them in their songs of praise to the Creator.”