Seven hundred years ago! What a long time it seems! Philip Augustus, King
of France; Henry II., King of England; Frederic I., the famous Barbarossa,
Emperor of Germany! When we read of their times, the times of the
Crusades, we feel as the Greeks felt when reading of the War of Troy. We
listen, we admire, but we do not compare the heroes of St. Jean d’Acre
with the great generals of the nineteenth century. They seem a different
race of men from those who are now living, and poetry and tradition have
lent to their royal frames such colossal proportions that we hardly dare
to criticise the legendary history of their chivalrous achievements. It
was a time of heroes, of saints, of martyrs, of miracles! Thomas à Becket
was murdered at Canterbury, but for more than three hundred years his name
lived on, and his bones were working miracles, and his soul seemed as it
were embodied and petrified in the lofty pillars that surround the spot of
his martyrdom. Abelard was persecuted and imprisoned, but his spirit
revived in the Reformers of the sixteenth century, and the shrine of
Abelard and Héloise in the Père La Chaise is still decorated every year
with garlands of _immortelles_. Barbarossa was drowned in the same river
in which Alexander the Great had bathed his royal limbs, but his fame
lived on in every cottage of Germany, and the peasant near the Kyffhäuser
still believes that some day the mighty Emperor will awake from his long
slumber, and rouse the people of Germany from their fatal dreams. We dare
not hold communion with such stately heroes as Frederick the Red-beard and
Richard the Lion-heart; they seem half to belong to the realm of fable. We
feel from our very school-days as if we could shake hands with a
Themistocles and sit down in the company of a Julius Cæsar, but we are
awed by the presence of those tall and silent knights, with their hands
folded and their legs crossed, as we see them reposing in full armor on
the tombs of our cathedrals.
And yet, however different in all other respects, these men, if they once
lift their steel beaver and unbuckle their rich armor, are wonderfully
like ourselves. Let us read the poetry which they either wrote themselves,
or to which they liked to listen in their castles on the Rhine or under
their tents in Palestine, and we find it is poetry which a Tennyson or a
Moore, a Goethe or Heine, might have written. Neither Julius Cæsar nor
Themistocles would know what was meant by such poetry. It is modern
poetry,—poetry unknown to the ancient world,—and who invented it nobody
can tell. It is sometimes called Romantic, but this is a strange misnomer.
Neither the Romans, nor the lineal descendants of the Romans, the
Italians, the Provençals, the Spaniards, can claim that poetry as their
own. It is Teutonic poetry,—purely Teutonic in its heart and soul, though
its utterance, its rhyme and metre, its grace and imagery, show the marks
of a warmer clime. It is called sentimental poetry, the poetry of the
heart rather than of the head, the picture of the inward rather than of
the outward world. It is subjective, as distinguished from objective
poetry, as the German critics, in their scholastic language, are fond of
expressing it. It is Gothic, as contrasted with classical poetry. The one,
it is said, sublimizes nature, the other bodies forth spirit; the one
deifies the human, the other humanizes the divine; the one is ethnic, the
other Christian. But all these are but names, and their true meaning must
be discovered in the works of art themselves, and in the history of the
times which produced the artists, the poets, and their ideals. We shall
perceive the difference between these two hemispheres of the Beautiful
better if we think of Homer’s “Helena” and Dante’s “Beatrice,” if we look
at the “Venus of Milo” and a “Madonna” of Francia, than in reading the
profoundest systems of æsthetics.
The work which has caused these reflections is a volume of German poetry,
just published by Lachmann and Haupt. It is called “Des Minnesangs
Frühling,”—“the Spring of the Songs of Love;” and it contains a collection
of the poems of twenty German poets, all of whom lived during the period
of the Crusades, under the Hohenstaufen Emperors, from about 1170 to 1230.
This period may well be called the spring of German poetry, though the
summer that followed was but of short duration, and the autumn was cheated
of the rich harvest which the spring had promised. Tieck, one of the first
who gathered the flowers of that forgotten spring, describes it in glowing
language. “At that time,” he says, “believers sang of faith, lovers of
love, knights described knightly actions and battles; and loving,
believing knights were their chief audience. The spring, beauty, gayety,
were objects that could never tire: great duels and deeds of arms carried
away every hearer, the more surely, the stronger they were painted; and as
the pillars and dome of the church encircle the flock, so did religion, as
the highest, encircle poetry and reality; and every heart, in equal love,
humbled itself before her.” Carlyle, too, has listened with delight to
those merry songs of spring. “Then truly,” he says, “was the time of
singing come; for princes and prelates, emperors and squires, the wise and
the simple, men, women, and children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in
hearing it done. It was a universal noise of song, as if the spring of
manhood had arrived, and warblings from every spray—not, indeed, without
infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music—were
bidding it welcome.” And yet it was not all gladness; and it is strange
that Carlyle, who has so keen an ear for the silent melancholy of the
human heart, should not have heard that tone of sorrow and fateful boding
which breaks, like a suppressed sigh, through the free and light music of
that Swabian era. The brightest sky of spring is not without its clouds in
Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Whether
we listen to a short ditty, or to the epic ballads of the “Nibelunge,” or
to Wolfram’s grand poems of the “Parcival” and the “Holy Grail,” it is the
same everywhere. There is always a mingling of light and shade,—in joy a
fear of sorrow, in sorrow a ray of hope, and throughout the whole, a
silent wondering at this strange world. Here is a specimen of an anonymous
poem; and anonymous poetry is an invention peculiarly Teutonic. It was
written before the twelfth century; its language is strangely simple, and
sometimes uncouth. But there is truth in it; and it is truth after all,
and not fiction, that is the secret of all poetry:—
“It has pained me in the heart,
Full many a time,
That I yearned after that
Which I may not have,
Nor ever shall win.
It is very grievous.
I do not mean gold or silver;
It is more like a human heart.
“I trained me a falcon,
More than a year.
When I had tamed him,
As I would have him,
And had well tied his feathers
With golden chains,
He soared up very high,
And flew into other lands.
“I saw the falcon since,
Flying happily;
He carried on his foot
Silken straps,
And his plumage was
All red of gold....
May God send them together,
Who would fain be loved.”
The key-note of the whole poem of the “Nibelunge,” such as it was written
down at the end of the twelfth, or the beginning of the thirteenth
century, is “Sorrow after Joy.” This is the fatal spell against which all
the heroes are fighting, and fighting in vain. And as Hagen dashes the
Chaplain into the waves, in order to belie the prophecy of the Mermaids,
but the Chaplain rises, and Hagen rushes headlong into destruction, so
Chriemhilt is bargaining and playing with the same inevitable fate,
cautiously guarding her young heart against the happiness of love, that
she may escape the sorrows of a broken heart. She, too, has been dreaming
“of a wild young falcon that she trained for many a day, till two fierce
eagles tore it.” And she rushes to her mother Ute, that she may read the
dream for her; and her mother tells her what it means. And then the coy
maiden answers:—
“No more, no more, dear mother, say,
From many a woman’s fortune this truth is clear as day,
That falsely smiling Pleasure with Pain requites us ever.
I from both will keep me, and thus will sorrow never.”
But Siegfried comes, and Chriemhilt’s heart does no longer cast up the
bright and the dark days of life. To Siegfried she belongs; for him she
lives, and for him, when “two fierce eagles tore him,” she dies. A still
wilder tragedy lies hidden in the songs of the “Edda,” the most ancient
fragments of truly Teutonic poetry. Wolfram’s poetry is of the same sombre
cast. He wrote his “Parcival” about the time when the songs of the
“Nibelunge” were written down. The subject was taken by him from a French
source. It belonged originally to the British cycle of Arthur and his
knights. But Wolfram took the story merely as a skeleton, to which he
himself gave a new body and soul. The glory and happiness which this world
can give is to him but a shadow,—the crown for which his hero fights is
that of the Holy Grail.
Faith, Love, and Honor are the chief subjects of the so-called
Minnesänger. They are not what we should call erotic poets. _Minne_ means
love in the old German language, but it means, originally, not so much
passion and desire, as thoughtfulness, reverence, and remembrance. In
English _Minne_ would be “Minding,” and it is different therefore from the
Greek _Eros_, the Roman Amor, and the French Amour. It is different also
from the German _Liebe_, which means originally desire, not love. Most of
the poems of the “Minnesänger” are sad rather than joyful,—joyful in
sorrow, sorrowful in joy. The same feelings have since been so often
repeated by poets in all the modern languages of Europe, that much of what
we read in the “Minnesänger” of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
sounds stale to our ears. Yet there is a simplicity about these old songs,
a want of effort, an entire absence of any attempt to please or to
surprise; and we listen to them as we listen to a friend who tells us his
sufferings in broken and homely words, and whose truthful prose appeals to
our heart more strongly than the most elaborate poetry of a Lamartine or a
Heine. It is extremely difficult to translate these poems from the
language in which they are written, the so-called Middle High-German, into
Modern German,—much more so to render them into English. But translation
is at the same time the best test of the true poetical value of any poem,
and we believe that many of the poems of the Minnesängers can bear that
test. Here is another poem, very much in the style of the one quoted
above, but written by a poet whose name is known,—Dietmar von Eist:—
“A lady stood alone,
And gazed across the heath,
And gazed for her love.
She saw a falcon flying.
“O happy falcon that thou art,
Thou fliest wherever thou likest;
Thou choosest in the forest
A tree that pleases thee.
Thus I too had done.
I chose myself a man:
Him my eyes selected.
Beautiful ladies envy me for it.
Alas! why will they not leave me my love?
I did not desire the beloved of any one of them.
Now woe to thee, joy of summer!
The song of birds is gone;
So are the leaves of the lime-tree:
Henceforth, my pretty eyes too
Will be overcast.
My love, thou shouldst take leave
Of other ladies;
Yes, my hero, thou shouldst avoid them.
When thou sawest me first,
I seemed to thee in truth
Right lovely made:
I remind thee of it, dear man!’ ”
These poems, simple and homely as they may seem to us, were loved and
admired by the people for whom they were written. They were copied and
preserved with the greatest care in the albums of kings and queens, and
some of them were translated into foreign languages. The poem which we
quoted first was translated as an Italian sonnet in the thirteenth
century, and has been published in Franc Trucchi’s “Poesie Italiane
Inedite:”—
“Tapina me, che amava uno sparviero;
amaval tanto ch’io me ne moria:
a lo richiamo ben m’era maniero
ed unque troppo pascer no’ l dovia.
or è montato e salito sì altero,
assai più altero che far non solia;
ed è assiso dentro a un verziero,
e un’altra donna l’averà in balìa.
isparvier mio, ch’io t’avea nodrito;
sonaglio d’oro ti facea portare,
perchè nell’uccellar fossi più ardito.
or sei salito siccome lo mare,
ed hai rotti li getti, e seì fuggito
quando eri fermo nel tuo uccellare.”
One of the most original and thoughtful of the “Minnesänger” is the old
Reinmar. His poems are given now for the first time in a correct and
readable text by Lachmann and Haupt, and many a difficult passage has been
elucidated by their notes. His poems, however, are not easy to read, and
we should have been thankful for some more help than the editors have
given us in their notes. The following is a specimen of Reinmar’s poetry:—
“High as the sun stands my heart;
That is because of a lady who can be without change
In her grace, wherever she be.
She makes me free from all sorrow.
“I have nothing to give her, but my own life,
That belongs to her: the beautiful woman gives me always
Joy, and a high mind,
If I think of it, what she does for me.
“Well is it for me that I found her so true!
Wherever she dwell, she alone makes every land dear to me;
If she went across the wild sea,
There I should go; I long so much for her.
“If I had the wisdom of a thousand men, it would be well
That I keep her, whom I should serve:
May she take care right well,
That nothing sad may ever befall me through her.
“I was never quite blessed, but through her:
Whatever I wish to her, may she allow it to me!
It was a blessed thing for me
That she, the Beautiful, received me into her grace.”
Carlyle, no doubt, is right when he says that, among all this warbling of
love, there are infinite twitterings which, except their gladness, have
little to charm us. Yet we like to read them as part of the bright history
of those by-gone days. One poet sings:—
“If the whole world was mine,
From the Sea to the Rhine,
I would gladly give it all,
That the Queen of England
Lay in my arms,” etc.
Who was the impertinent German that dared to fall in love with a Queen of
England? We do not know. But there can be no doubt that the Queen of
England whom he adored was the gay and beautiful Eleanor of Poitou, the
Queen of Henry II., who filled the heart of many a Crusader with unholy
thoughts. Her daughter, too, Mathilde, who was married to Henry the Lion
of Saxony, inspired many a poet of those days. Her beauty was celebrated
by the Provençal Troubadours; and at the court of her husband, she
encouraged several of her German vassals to follow the example of the
French and Norman knights, and sing the love of Tristan and Isolt, and the
adventures of the knights of Charlemagne. They must have been happy times,
those times of the Crusades! Nor have they passed away without leaving
their impress on the hearts and minds of the nations of Europe. The Holy
Sepulchre, it is true, is still in the hands of the Infidels, and the
bones of the Crusaders lie buried in unhallowed soil, and their deeds of
valor are well-nigh forgotten, and their chivalrous Tournaments and their
Courts of Love are smiled at by a wiser generation. But much that is noble
and heroic in the feelings of the nineteenth century has its hidden roots
in the thirteenth. Gothic architecture and Gothic poetry are the children
of the same mother; and if the true but unadorned language of the heart,
the aspirations of a real faith, the sorrow and joy of a true love, are
still listened to by the nations of Europe; and if what is called the
Romantic school is strong enough to hold its ground against the classical
taste and its royal patrons, such as Louis XIV., Charles II., and
Frederick the Great,—we owe it to those chivalrous poets who dared for the
first time to be what they were, and to say what they felt, and to whom
Faith, Love, and Honor were worthy subjects of poetry, though they lacked
the sanction of the Periclean and Augustan ages.
The new edition of the Poems of the “Minnesänger” is a masterpiece of
German scholarship. It was commenced by Lachmann, the greatest critic,
after Wolf, that Germany has produced. Lachmann died before the work was
finished, and Professor Haupt, his successor at Berlin, undertook to
finish it. His share in the edition, particularly in the notes, is greater
than that of Lachmann; and the accuracy with which the text has been
restored from more than twenty MSS., is worthy of the great pupil of that
great master.
1858.