The GOF design patterns are influential as boilerplate templates in certain language communities precisely because they solutions to commonly-encountered problems that are not easily reducible to generic, reusable components in those languages.

Design patterns — in the boilerplate template sense, though not the underlying concept — are a language smell, not a language-independent feature of the software industry.

Underrated comment. In C++/Java, one must turn to GoF patterns to accomplish much of what's supported using basic syntax in many other languages (e.g. first-class functions, extensible objects, coroutines, prototypes, flexible parameter types, functional composition).

When it was published, Design Patterns must have seemed sad (or perhaps vindicating) from the perspective of a seasoned Lisp developer.

C++-style indirection, I'd argue, is the invention of Bjarne Stroustrop. He's a very smart guy, but for C++ I think that's an unfortunate thing, because he didn't come to programming language design with a desire for elegance or simplicity.

Smalltalk probably best embodies true OO principles, and it has a profound elegance and simplicity about it. (And yes, many GoF patterns are easy to use without even realizing one is using them -- first-class functions and message passing/late binding make sure of that.)

I don't think so; there are OO languages where many of the GoF patterns can be implemented in libraries, or are trivial given language builtins.