Seldom has a poet in a short life of thirty years engraven his name so
deeply on the memorial tablets of the history of German poetry as Wilhelm
Müller. Although the youthful efforts of a poet may be appreciated by
those few who are able to admire what is good and beautiful, even though
it has never before been admired by others, yet in order permanently to
win the ear and heart of his people, a poet must live with the people, and
take part in the movements and struggles of his age. Thus only can he hope
to stir and mould the thoughts of his contemporaries, and to remain a
permanent living power in the recollections of his countrymen. Wilhelm
Müller died at the very moment when the rich blossoms of his poetic genius
were forming fruit; and after he had warmed and quickened the hearts of
the youth of Germany with the lyric songs of his own youth, only a short
span of time was granted him to show the world, as he did more especially
in his “Greek Songs” and “Epigrams,” the higher goal toward which he
aspired. In these his last works one readily perceives that his poetry
would not have reflected the happy dreams of youth only, but that he could
perceive the poetry of life in its sorrows as clearly as in its joys, and
depict it in true and vivid colors.
One may, I think, divide the friends and admirers of Wilhelm Müller into
two classes: those who rejoice and delight in his fresh and joyous songs,
and those who admire the nobleness and force of his character as shown in
the poems celebrating the war of Greek independence, and in his epigrams.
All poetry is not for every one, nor for every one at all times. There are
critics and historians of literature who cannot tolerate songs of youth,
of love, and of wine; they always ask “why?” and “wherefore?” and they
demand in all poetry, before anything else, high or deep thoughts. No
doubt there can be no poetry without thought, but there are thoughts which
are poetical without being drawn from the deepest depths of the heart and
brain, nay, which are poetical just because they are as simple and true
and natural as the flowers of the field or the stars of heaven. There is a
poetry for the old, but there is also a poetry for the young. The young
demand in poetry an interpretation of their own youthful feelings, and
first learn truly to understand themselves through those poets who speak
for them as they would speak for themselves, had nature endowed them with
melody of thought and harmony of diction. Youth is and will remain the
majority of the world, and will let no gloomy brow rob it of its poetic
enthusiasm for young love and old wine. True, youth is not over-critical;
true, it does not know how to speak or write in learned phrases of the
merits of its favorite poets. But for all that, where is the poet who
would not rather live in the warm recollection of the never-dying youth of
his nation than in voluminous encyclopædias, or even in the marble
Walhallas of Germany? The story and the songs of a miller’s man who loves
his master’s daughter, and of a miller’s daughter who loves a huntsman
better, may seem very trivial, commonplace, and unpoetical to many a man
of forty or fifty. But there are men of forty and fifty who have never
lost sight of the bright but now far-off days of their own youth, who can
still rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep, and
love with those that love,—aye, who can still fill their glasses with old
and young, and in whose eyes every-day life has not destroyed the poetic
bloom that rests everywhere on life so long as it is lived with warm and
natural feelings. Songs which, like the “Beautiful Miller’s Daughter” and
the “Winter Journey,” could so penetrate and again spring forth from the
soul of Franz Schubert, may well stir the very depths of our own hearts,
without the need of fearing the wise looks of those who possess the art of
saying nothing in many words. Why should poetry be less free than painting
to seek for what is beautiful wherever a human eye can discover, wherever
human art can imitate it? No one blames the painter if, instead of giddy
peaks or towering waves, he delineates on his canvas a quiet narrow
valley, filled with a green mist, and enlivened only by a gray mill and a
dark brown mill-wheel, from which the spray rises like silver dust, and
then floats away, and vanishes in the rays of the sun. Is what is not too
common for the painter, too common for the poet? Is an idyl in the truest,
warmest, softest colors of the soul, like the “Beautiful Miller’s
Daughter,” less a work of art than a landscape by Ruysdael? And observe in
these songs how the execution suits the subject; their tone is thoroughly
popular, and reminds many of us, perhaps too much, of the popular songs
collected by Arnim and Brentano in “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” But this could
not be helped. Theocritus could not write his idyls in grand Attic Greek;
he needed the homeliness of the Bœotian dialect. It was the same with
Wilhelm Müller, who must not be blamed for expressions which now perhaps,
more than formerly, may sound, to fastidious ears, too homely or
commonplace.
His simple and natural conception of nature is shown most beautifully in
the “Wanderer’s Songs,” and in the “Spring Wreath from the Plauen Valley.”
Nowhere do we find a labored thought or a labored word. The lovely spring
world is depicted exactly as it is, but over all is thrown the life and
inspiration of a poet’s eye and a poet’s mind, which perceives and gives
utterance to what others fail to see, and silent nature cannot utter. It
is this recognition of the beautiful in what is insignificant, of
greatness in what is small, of the marvelous in ordinary life,—yes, this
perception of the divine in every earthly enjoyment,—which gives its own
charm to each of Wilhelm Müller’s smallest poems, and endears them so
truly to those who, amidst the hurry of life, have not forgotten the
delight of absorption in nature, who have never lost their faith in the
mystery of the divine presence in all that is beautiful, good, and true on
earth. We need only read the “Frühlingsmahl,” or “Pfingsten” to see how a
whole world, aye, a whole heaven, may be mirrored in the tiniest drop of
dew.
And as enjoyment of nature finds so clear an echo in the poetry of Wilhelm
Müller, so also does the delight which man should have in man. Drinking
songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but
if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the
brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be
beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking
songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one
imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell
us of his Bordeaux, or even of his Burgundy? The reason that the poetry of
wine is unknown in England and France is, that in these countries people
know nothing of what lends its poetry to wine, namely, the joyous
consciousness of mutual pleasure, the outpouring of hearts, the feeling of
common brotherhood, which makes learned professors and divines, generals
and ministers, men once more at the sound of the ringing glasses. This
purely human delight in the enjoyment of life, in the flavor of the German
wine, and in the yet higher flavor of the German Symposium, finds it
happiest expression in the drinking songs of Wilhelm Müller. They have
often been set to music by the best masters, and have long been sung by
the happy and joyous. The name of the poet is often forgotten, whilst many
of his songs have become popular songs, just because they were sung from
the heart and soul of the German people, as the people were fifty years
ago, and as the best of them still are, in spite of many changes in the
Fatherland.
It is easy to see that a serious tone is not wanting even in the drinking
songs. The wine was good, but the times were bad. Those who, like Wilhelm
Müller, had shared in the great sufferings and the great hopes of the
German people, and who then saw that after all the sacrifices that had
been made, all was in vain, all was again as bad or even worse than
before, could with difficulty conceal their disaffection, however helpless
they felt themselves against the brutalities of those in power. Many, who
like Wilhelm Müller had labored to reanimate German popular feeling; who
like him had left the university to sacrifice as common soldiers their
life and life’s happiness to the freedom of the Fatherland, and who then
saw how the terror felt by the scarcely rescued princes of their
deliverers, and the fear of foreign nations of a united and strong
Germany, joined hand in hand to destroy the precious seed sown in blood
and tears,—could not always suppress their gloomy anger at such
faint-hearted, weak-minded policy. On the first of January, 1820, Wilhelm
Müller wrote thus, in the dedication of the second part of his “Letters
from Rome” to his friend Atterbom, the Swedish poet, with whom he had but
a short time before passed the Carnival time in Italy joyously and
carelessly: “And thus I greet you in your old sacred Fatherland, not
jokingly and merrily, like the book, whose writer seems to have become a
stranger to me, but earnestly and briefly; for the great fast of the
European world, expecting the passion, and waiting for deliverance, can
endure no indifferent shrug of the shoulders and no hollow compromises and
excuses. He who cannot act at this time, can yet rest and mourn.” For such
words, veiled as they were, resigned as they were, the fortress of Mayence
was at that time the usual answer.
“Deutsch und frei und stark und lauter
In dem deutschen Land
Ist der Wein allein geblieben
An der Rheines Strand.
Ist _der_ nicht ein Demagoge,
Wer soll einer sein?
Mainz, du stolze Bundesfeste,
Sperr ihn nur nicht ein.”(14)
That Wilhelm Müller escaped the petty and annoying persecutions of the
then police system, he owed partly to the retired life he led in his
little native country, partly to his own good spirits, which prevented him
from entirely sinking the man in the politician. He had some enemies in
the little court, whose Duke and Duchess were personally so attached to
him. A prosperous life such as his could not fail to attract envy, and his
frank, guileless character gave plenty of occasion for suspicion. But the
only answer which he vouchsafed to his detractors was:—
“Und lasst mir doch mein volles Glass,
Und lasst mir meinen guten Spass,
Mit unsrer schlechten Zeit!
Wer bei dem Weine singt und lacht,
Den thut, ihr Herrn, nicht in die Acht!
Ein Kind ist Fröhligkeit.”(15)
Wilhelm Müller evidently felt that when words are not deeds, or do not
lead to deeds, silence is more worthy of a man than speech. He never
became a political poet, at least never in his own country. But when the
rising of the Greeks appealed to those human sympathies of Christian
nations which can never be quite extinguished, and when here, too, the
faint-hearted policy of the great powers played and bargained over the
great events in the east of Europe instead of trusting to those principles
which alone can secure the true and lasting well-being of states, as well
as of individuals, then the long accumulated wrath of the poet and of the
man burst forth and found utterance in the songs on the Greek war of
independence. Human, Christian, political, and classical sympathies
stirred his heart, and breathed that life into his poems, which most of
them still possess. It is astonishing how a young man in a small isolated
town like Dessau, almost shut out from intercourse with the great world,
could have followed step by step the events of the Greek revolution,
seizing on all the right, the beauty, the grandeur of the struggle, making
himself intimately acquainted with the dominant characters, whilst he at
the same time mastered the peculiar local coloring of the passing events.
Wilhelm Müller was not only a poet, but he was intimately acquainted with
classic antiquity. He _knew_ the Greeks and the Romans. And just as during
his stay in Rome he recognized at all points the old in what was new, and
everywhere sought to find what was eternal in the eternal city, so now
with him the modern Greeks were inseparably joined with the ancient. A
knowledge of the modern Greek language appeared to him the natural
completion of the study of old Greek; and it was his acquaintance with the
popular songs of modern as well as of ancient Hellas that gave the color
which imparted such a vivid expression of truth and naturalness to his own
Greek songs. It was thus that the “Griechen Lieder” arose, which appeared
in separate but rapid numbers, and found great favor with the people. But
even these “Griechen Lieder” caused anxiety to the paternal governments of
those days:—
“Ruh und Friede will Europa—warum hast du sie gestört?
Warum mit dem Wahn der Freiheit eigenmächtig dich bethört?
Hoff’ auf keines Herren Hülfe gegen eines Herren Frohn:
Auch des Türkenkaisers Polster nennt Europa einen Thron.”(16)
His last poems were suppressed by the Censor, as well as his “Hymn on the
Death of Raphael Riego.” Some of these were first published long after his
death; others must have been lost whilst in the Censor’s hands.
Two of the Greek songs, “Mark Bozzaris,” and “Song before Battle,” may
help the English reader to form his own opinion both of the poetical
genius and of the character of Wilhelm Müller:—