Even the wisest often fail to realize that one cannot escape one’s
shadow. Albert Zorn imagined that ennui was in Berlin but it was only in
his own soul.
He found Goettingen as depressing as before. The college town was
covered with snow, the students seemed grim and serious, the professors
cold, and he found but few of his old friends. He arrived here as a
prodigal son, misgivings in his heart. He recalled the _Abschiedskarten_
he had sent to the members of the faculty a few years before, after his
suspension. He now realized that the mockery, witty as it might have
been, that those _Abschiedskarten_ contained had not endeared him to his
old instructors. And the students seemed so sulky. Prussian tyranny had
conquered and killed every manifestation of free speech. The
_Burschenschaft_ and the _Turngemeinde_—the two most significant
fraternities—were but names. The students not only feared their own
utterances but even the unguarded speech of their friends. And they had
not forgotten Albert’s unguarded tongue.
But while the dullness of the place depressed him he welcomed the quiet
of his lodging house on the Rothenstrasse. He gave himself to the study
of the law, and “corpus juris” was his “pillow”. He had no difficulty in
hushing the muse’s voice, for the muse sang not. For a time he passed a
prosaic existence, and while he frequently shuddered at the thought he
again wondered if his light had not burned out. His verses scarcely
stirred in him more than memories. And when he made attempts at writing
he was conscious of the effort, of the lack of spontaneity, and dropped
it. Was he a Samson with his locks shorn? He stirred and often went to
the Rathskeller to drown his sorrow, but unable to bear drink he turned
to the library.
Soon March drew to an end, the winter was gone, the thawing season
began. Everything within him was thawing, too. His blood suddenly began
to course warmer; there was agitation in his breast; his nerves seemed
on fire. A chance acquaintanceship had inspired him to write a few lyric
stanzas. He laughed like a mocking satan. Indeed his light had not yet
burned out! It had just commenced to burn and would soon redden the sky
with its rising flames. Let his enemies in Berlin and Hamburg sneer!
What did he care? He had nothing but contempt for the multitude anyhow.
They should see! He flung the law books aside and took up an unfinished
poem. Byron’s recent death stimulated his energies. Byron was the only
man to whom he felt a close kinship, and the poet’s death affected him
deeply. He must take Byron’s place; he would be Germany’s Byron.
Spurred by these thoughts and feelings his dullness fled; his
imagination was again volatile; his tongue was once more caustic. He was
again seen in the beer cellars, arguing, jesting, making sport in his
whimsical manner. The students again gathered around him and goaded him
on to saying bitter things about their professors, their pedantic
colleagues, the Prussian officials. He had the gift of caricature in
words. He became his old self again. He was the very life of all student
affairs, and at their frequent duels he was either a second or umpire.
He was a Byron with a vengeance. He once more took up fencing and fought
a duel or two.
Ah! they should see—his enemies at Berlin and Hamburg. They might call
him a Jew, but what of that? He became heroic. Race pride swelled in his
breast. He was of the race “of which Gods are kneaded”, of the race that
needed no apologies, even in his day. Who was there in Germany to take
the place of the great who had passed? The Teuton gods were dead!
Lessing was gone, so was Schiller, and Goethe, like King David in his
old age, “got no heat”; this old Jupiter was no more hurling
thunderbolts; his arm was even too feeble to fling pebbles. Who were to
take the places of these gods? A number of _Schmetterlinge_—mere
butterflies—waving their colorful wings in the sunshine and hovering
around the blossoming shrubs, with an old bumble bee here and there,
without sting, without honey, buzzing around a rosebush. Yes, who were
to take the place of the dead heroes? Who was to take Goethe’s place?
His blood warmed at the thought. The mantle of this great bard must fall
on his own shoulders. Nay more, he would undo many of the things the
great Romanticist had done. He would be to his generation what Goethe
had been to his. Indeed, he would even go farther than Goethe. Goethe
was self-centered, content with his own pleasure, playing with the
beautiful thoughts as a juggler plays with balls, but he would give his
life and genius to Germany. Goethe never loved the Germans, he mused,
but he would liberate the Teutonic mind from its self-imposed
imprisonment. Ay, indeed, he would wield a weapon mightier than the
sword in the cause of liberty! Let his enemies rave——
But with Albert Zorn there was even less than a step from the sublime to
the ridiculous. The next moment he laughed at his own heroics. He
understood the heroics of those that smarted under the whips of
injustice. The irony of his own situation struck him forcibly. He was
humorous and great enough to laugh at himself. Did he not feel a secret
pride when his admirers told him that there was not a trace of the
Semite in his face; that his nose, though longish, was Grecian? No,
Albert could not deceive himself. He saw the tragi-comedy of it all. To
be heroic in one’s thoughts was one thing and to be heroic in one’s
actions quite a different matter.
But here at Goettingen his fellow-students never reminded him of his
birth, and even the professors had accepted the prodigal son rather
graciously. And he had a circle of admirers among the literary guild. To
be sure, there was petty jealousy among them, but they did not disturb
him. Talent must expect jealousy, he reflected soothingly; only the
feeble and the dead arouse no jealousy.
Indeed, Albert was now his true self. He pursued his studies regularly,
read much, and, as a diversion, made love to a pretty damsel or argued
heatedly with a few of his fellow-students. The problems that occupied
his mind while at Berlin troubled him no longer. When summer vacation
came, instead of spending it with his parents, he took journeys on foot,
with a knapsack on his back, through the Hartz Mountains, visiting Halle
and Jena and Gotha and Eisenach, and making mental notes of the
beautiful scenery around him and of the people with whom he came in
contact. He also paid a visit to Goethe, and found, to his astonishment,
that this Jupiter “understood German”—though he was prompted to address
the god in Greek—so in his confusion he told him that the plums on the
way from Jena to Weimar were very, very delicious . . .