of victory. Hardly had the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King
of Prussia entered Frankfort, when the seven years' rule of Prince
Dalberg came to an end. The Grand Duchy of Frankfort was blotted from
the list of States, and the old constitution came into force again. The
citizenship which the Jews had acquired at such a high price was simply
taken from them again, of course without the return of the money. "It
was," writes Karl Gutzkow, "as if the couriers who rushed back and
forwards between Vienna, where the Peace Congress was sitting, and
the other German towns where reactionary congresses were being held,
tore furrows in the blood-manured soil of Germany, in which the ruling
powers dared to sow the seed of the old prejudices and privileges."
The fall of the French power deprived Börne of his appointment, and his
brothers in misfortune of their rights as men; he was impersonal enough
in his way of looking at things to consider the foreign rule a disgrace
from first to last.
It is not surprising that Goethe's indifference to this, as to other
results of the great reaction, strengthened Börne's hatred for a
personality that appeared great upon no side accessible to him. In
his notice of Bettina's book, _Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde_
("Goethe's Correspondence with a Child")--perhaps the most misleading
criticism he ever wrote--Börne says: "What made Goethe, that greatest
of poets, the smallest of men? What entwined hops and parsley in his
wreath of laurel? What set a night-cap on his lofty brow? What made him
a slave of circumstances, a cowardly Philistine, a mere provincial?
He was a Protestant, and his family belonged to the ruling class in
Frankfort, from among whom its senators were chosen. At the age of
sixty, at the zenith of his fame, with the incense-clouds under his
feet separating and sheltering him from the base passions of the
valley-dweller, it angered him to hear that the Frankfort Jews demanded
the rights of citizens, and he foamed with rage at the 'humanitarian
twaddlers' who championed their cause."
It was his relations with the great ones of the earth that Börne could
least of all forgive Goethe.
He overlooked the fact that the generation that lay between him and
Goethe meant a complete change in the position of the author towards
men of rank and the public generally. In Germany in the eighteenth
century authors did not live on their works, but on their dedications.
Poets were obliged to seek the favour of a high-born patron, to educate
young noblemen, or accompany young princes on their educational tours.
Wieland accepted money in return for his dedications; Schiller gladly
accepted the assistance which the Duke of Augustenburg procured for him
from Denmark. In the end of the eighteenth century, kings, princes,
and the aristocracy generally, took a true and keen interest in
philosophy and poetry, in all the new truth and beauty; they sought the
acquaintance of authors, and associated with them as with their equals.
With the French Revolution these admirable relations came to an end,
but Goethe's position dated from before the Revolution.
Börne blinded himself with gazing at disconnected expressions of
Goethe's veneration for rank. Somewhere or other he copies this passage
from Goethe's diary: "I afterwards had the unexpected happiness of
being permitted to pay my homage to their Imperial Highnesses the
Grand Duke Nicholas and his consort, in my own house and garden. The
Grand Duchess graciously allowed me to write some lines of poetry
in her elegantly splendid album." Börne adds: "This he wrote in his
seventy-first year. What youthful power!" The older Börne grew, and
the more he developed, by his own conscious volition, into a simple
incarnation of political conviction, into a being of whose feelings,
talents, and wit political conviction had taken possession, to whom it
had become a religion, with all the outward expressions of religion,
faith, worship, fanaticism--the more unworthy and contemptible did
Goethe's rôle of spectator of the political struggles of the day
appear to him. Elsewhere he writes: "I have finished Goethe's journal.
No drier or more lifeless soul exists in the wide world, and nothing
can be more comical than the simplicity with which he lays bare his
own callousness.... And these are the consuls chosen by the German
people--Goethe, who, more timid than a mouse, burrows in the ground,
and gladly dispenses with light, air, liberty, everything, so long
as he is left in peace in his hole gnawing at his stolen bacon; and
Schiller, more noble, but equally faint-hearted, who seeks refuge
from tyranny above the clouds, where he vainly cries to the gods for
aid, and, dazzled by the sun, loses sight of the earth, and forgets
the human beings whom he intended to help. And meanwhile the unhappy
country, without leaders, without guardians, without advisers, without
protectors, falls a prey to its kings, and the nation becomes a byeword
among nations."
From the summer of 1818 onwards, Börne, who till then had only
published an occasional pamphlet, appears as an independent journalist,
publisher of the _Die Wage_ ("The Balance"), most of the articles in
which he wrote himself. He was the first German journalist in the
grand style, and first to make the periodical press of Germany a
power. The possessors of the now rare numbers of that old epoch-making
magazine "of politics, science, and art," look on them as treasures.
Its success is to be ascribed to its publisher and chief contributor's
lively style and apt wit. It treated of politics, literature, and the
drama, and had on its staff men like Görres (before his conversion) and
Willemer, Goethe's rationalistic, liberal-minded friend ("Suleika's"
husband); but whatever the subject under treatment might be, it took
a political colouring from the manner in which it was approached. For
three months of the four years during which Börne continued to publish
_Die Wage_, he was also editor of the daily newspaper, _Zeitung der
freien Stadt Frankfurt_, a position he had to give up because of the
constant annoyance to which he was subjected by the censorship. He
afterwards edited another daily paper, _Die Zeitschwingen_; but this
was suppressed, and its editor sentenced to a short imprisonment. Börne
now paid his first visit to Paris, whence he for a time wrote letters
for Cotta's various periodical publications; but by 1822 he was again
in Germany, where a long and dangerous illness soon swallowed up all
his savings, and compelled him to apply to his father for assistance.
His father was exceedingly dissatisfied with him. All his other
children did him credit, he said; but this son, now unable to support
himself, had had a most expensive education, and what was there to show
for it? He could do nothing but write articles with a tendency highly
disapproved of by his (the father's) patron, Prince Metternich, in
Vienna. What was the good of making enemies for himself? of attacking
the great? Was it becoming in his position of life? What position,
indeed, did he suppose himself to occupy, seeing he allowed himself
such liberty of speech? By this time he might have been a doctor in
good practice, or a barrister, and counsel for Rothschild; instead of
which he elected to be a hack writer for periodicals, spending the
trifle he got for his articles on travelling, and closing every avenue
to success by his impious attacks on those in authority.
And Börne's father had sufficient political sagacity to be aware
that it was quite unnecessary for his son to be either a doctor or
an advocate in order to find lucrative employment. He knew very well
where Herr von Gentz's and Herr Friedrich von Schlegel's bank-drafts
came from. And besides, had not his son Maria Theresa's promise to fall
back on?[13]
From the very commencement of Börne's career as a journalist, his
talent had attracted the attention of the great reactionaries. On the
18th of May 1819, Rahel writes that Gentz has recommended _Die Wage_ to
her, as containing the cleverest, wittiest writing of the day, the best
of its kind since Lessing's time. Börne's father was perfectly aware
that Herr von Gentz praised his son's style, and Prince Metternich
his grasp of politics.[14] So he privately set to work to secure an
advantageous sphere of operation for him on the sunny side of society.
Before young Börne was told anything about it, Metternich had eagerly
come forward with the most liberal proposals: The young man was to
live in Vienna with the title, position, and emoluments of an Imperial
Councillor (kaiserlicher Rath), and with no claim made on him for any
service in return. Everything he chose to write was to be entirely
exempt from censorship; he should be his own censor. And if, in the
course of a few months, he should elect to give up his appointment, he
was to be free to do so. In such a position he would have the very best
opportunity of working for the cause of progress and humanity.
His father wrote: "Dear Louis! I beg of you to read this letter as
carefully as I have read it. Believe me, the independence you prize so
highly is an uncertain possession; will you, can you retain it? Why
should not you, too, at last think of making a settled position for
yourself?... On what is your present bliss founded? Surely not on the 500
francs (Cotta's monthly payment)? Make up your mind, for the sake of
your future, to take a journey to Vienna at my expense; I beseech of
you not to throw away this chance of success...."
Börne refused everything point blank, refused to hold any communication
with those in power.[15] Goethe might allow himself to be appointed
Privy Councillor at a court, but he, Börne, would not. And yet the
temptation must have been greater in the case of the born plebeian,
who had had to take off his hat at the bidding of every passer-by,
than it was in the case of the great patrician. In reading the hard,
contemptuous, and unjust words which Börne wrote of Goethe, we must not
forget that behind these words there was a man who would not do what
Goethe did.
Börne was devoid of artistic sense in the strict acceptation of the
term. He frankly confessed the fact himself, and, moreover, betrays it
in his intolerance of those to whom it is a matter of indifference what
the artist represents, but all-important how he represents it. Artists
and connoisseurs of this type are utterly repugnant to him. It disgusts
him that any man can prefer a painting of still life to a painting of a
Madonna. His natural bias towards the lofty, the sublime, the divine,
leads him to demand these qualities in art, and to declare frankly
that all works of art in which these qualities are wanting, are to him
simply daubs or monstrosities.[16]
We cannot agree with Steinthal when he says that Börne was at home in
every domain of culture, every sphere of artistic production; for that
very branch of art to which the name art is more specially applied, was
a sealed book to him. This naturally did not prevent his writing much
that is sensible and instructive about works of art; but what he wrote
is not art criticism.
Börne has been often and much praised for his energetic condemnation
of the German fatalistic tragedies (_Schicksalstragödien_) which
began in his day to take possession of the stage and to confuse men's
minds. But it is to be observed that it is not as æsthetically
reprehensible that he objects to them; he looks at the matter from
the moral or religious point of view. The belief that a certain date,
say the 24th of February, is peculiarly fraught with fate for any
family, is stupid and futile. It has no connection whatever either
with the belief of the ancients in an inevitable, pre-ordained fate,
or with the Christian belief in an omniscient Providence, or with the
modern determinist theory of cause and effect, which has undermined
the earlier belief in so-called freewill. But to Börne the belief in
question is an unreasonable one only because it is a confusion of two
theological systems. His chain of reasoning is this: death is either
a loving father, who takes his child home, in which case fate is not
tragic, or a Kronos, who devours his own children, in which case it is
unchristian.[17] As if that were any objection! It might still be
extremely poetical.
Börne is so clever and clear-headed that his opinion as to the worth
or worthlessness of the many dramas it falls to his lot to criticise
is almost always correct. He thoroughly enters into the spirit of
Oehlenschläger's _Correggio_, and is full of indulgence for the
weaknesses of the play, but quite oblivious to its scenic effect. He
shows thorough appreciation of dramatists like Kleist and Immermann
and young Grillparzer. But when he begins to give his reasons for
blame or praise, the inartistic temperament invariably betrays itself,
and he frequently displays all the many prejudices of the idealist.
He is undoubtedly justified in his unfavourable opinion of Inland's
_Die Spieler_ ("The Gamblers"), for instance. But the justification he
offers is most peculiar: "What has gambling to do on the stage?" he
cries; "one might as well dramatise consumption in all its different
stages." There is only this difference, one would imagine, that
consumption is a physical ailment, gambling a vice. His position is one
that is characteristic of idealism, namely, that there is no need to
go to the theatre to see what we can see at home. He gives as examples
poverty, debt, a faithful wife's patient endurance of hardships; and
instead of remarking on the dull, inartistic spirit in which such
things are represented, he exclaims: "Are these such rare sights that
we should pay money to see them? On the stage, humanity ought to be
raised a step above its common level." And he goes on to explain that
it was for this reason the Greek and Roman tragedians had recourse
to mythic fable, and to maintain that the modern dramatist ought to
represent the real characters of ancient days; or, if nothing will
serve him but to grapple with the present, that he must only venture
to reproduce its passions. We perceive that Börne is possessed by the
naïve belief that the "classic" characters of olden times stood on a
higher level than the human beings of to-day; and that he does not
understand how every-day reality, properly treated, can be refined into
art.
A still stronger proof than these academic utterances of Börne's
inability to appreciate simple, primitive poetry, is his indifference
to the Old Testament. In a letter to Henriette Herz, written in
his nineteenth year, we come upon a passage of absolutely alarming
sterility, dry and senile as a joke on the Pentateuch by Voltaire--
and this after Goethe: "It has always appeared to me as if it had been
the intention of the old Jews, from Abraham down to Solomon the Wise,
to parody the history of the world. Read Joshua or the Book of Kings,
and you will at once be struck by their resemblance to Blumau."[18] A
comparison between these venerable compilations of memorable legends
and historical events and a clumsy German parody of Virgil's _Æneid_
could only be instituted by a critic who, devoid of all appreciation
of antique literary form, set himself to find in every work some
modern sentimental, religious, or political moral. It is quite of a
piece with this that Börne should end by blindly admiring the vague,
half Biblical, half modern unctuous pathos of Lamennais' _Paroles d'un
Croyant._
[1] Hermann Grimm: _Goethe_.
[2] Gutzkow: _Börne's Leben_.--M. Holzmann: _Ludwig Börne. Sein Leben
und Wirken_.
[3] Steinthal: _Ludwig Börne. Illustrirte deutsche Monatshefte_, Juni
1881.
[4] L. Börne: _Gesammelte Schriften_. Reclam. Leipzig, III. 112, 129,
167, 173, 209, 244, 259, 313.
[5] See _Main Currents_, iii. chap. xiii.
[6] "Was jeder Morgen brachte, was jeder Tag beschien, was jede Nacht
bedeckte, dieses zu besprechen hatte ich Lust und Muth."
What each morning brought, each day's sun shone on, each night
covered--that was what I had the desire and the courage to discuss.
[7] "Im Centrum seines Geistes trafen unzählige Strahlen zusammen, nur
dass dieselben durch keine Peripherie verbunden waren."
Countless rays were focussed in the central point of his mind, but no
periphery united these rays.
[8] So I said: Yes, my Lord, with God's help I can do it, can bring us
all safe to land. Then I was unloosed, and took the helm and _steered
honourably onward_.
[9] Karl Hillebrand: "La société de Berlin," in _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
[10] Fürst: _Henriette Herz_, p. 185.
[11] _Briefe des jungen Börne an Henriette Herz_, 164, 167. "O, wenn
ich dies bedenke, wie ein Sturm braust es in meinem Innersten, es
möchte die Seele aus ihrem Wohnhaus stürzen, und sich den Leib eines
Löwen suchen, dass sie den Frechen begegnen könnte mit Klauen und
Gebiss." _Translation:_Oh, when I think of this, a storm rages within
me; the soul struggles to burst from its lodging, that it may find for
itself the body of a lion, and rush upon the shameless ones with claws
and teeth.
[12] "Aber lasst uns nicht, männernde Jünglinge, unsere Kraft
vergeuden, sondern die Lust in keuscher Ehe umarmen, damit sie
fruchtbar und unsterblich werde ... Es ziemt uns nicht, uns keck in den
Rath der Fürsten einzudringen; sie sind besser als wir." _Translation:_
But let us not squander our strength, O youths who are becoming men;
let us embrace joy in chaste wedlock, that she may become fruitful and
immortal.... It becomes us not audaciously to thrust ourselves into the
counsels of princes; they are better than we.
[13] Karl Gutzkow: Birne's Leben, Ges. Werke, xii. 328, 329.
[14] Metternich was even acquainted with the later, quite revolutionary
letters from Paris. On the 26th of January 1834, Princess Melanie
Metternich writes in her diary: "I spent the early hours of the evening
with Clemens, to whom I read Börne's _Letters from Paris_. They are
of course as malicious as possible, but the style, with its dæmonic
extravagance, is remarkably clever." (Metternich's _Posthumous Papers_,
v. 545, quoted by Holzmann.)
[15] He writes to his father: "Gentz, too, was doubtless a Liberal
to begin with, but he could give securities for a sincere conversion
which I cannot give. He had been sold to England for many years before
he took service with Austria. He is sensual, extravagant, the most
dissolute man in the country."
[16] "A frog, a cucumber, a leg of mutton, a Wilhelm Meister, a
Christ--it is all the same to them; they actually forgive a Madonna her
holiness, if she is well painted. So am not I, and never was. In nature
I have always sought God, God only, and in art the divine; and where I
did not find God, I saw nothing but miserable botch-work. History, men,
and books I have judged in like manner--unfortunately!"
[17] "I have never been able to understand their conception of fate,
their confusion of the antique with the Romantic idea, their Christian
paganism. Death is either a loving father, who comes to fetch his child
home from the school of life, in which case fate is not tragic; or he
is the cannibal Kronos, who swallows his own children, in which case it
is unchristian. Your fate is a hermaphrodite, unable either to beget or
to bring forth."
[18] _Briefe des jungen Börne,_ p. 143.
VIII
BÖRNE
But for this lack of poetic-artistic understanding, it would be
difficult to explain how Börne came to take the share he did in the
reaction against Goethe which was set on foot by some of the leading
men of the day. For, though he had a quite individual, spontaneous
animosity to Goethe, Börne was certainly not the originator of the
reaction, which was in full swing before he took any part in it. About
the time when the Pietists were gloating over Pastor Pustkuchen's
parody of the _Wanderjahre_, with its attack on the impiety of Goethe,
the pagan, progressive, youthful politicians were beginning to
approve of investigations into Goethe's political convictions, which
measured them by the very latest standard and made him out to be an
"aristocrat," with no feeling for the people, and in reality with no
genius.
The first writer of any note who perseveringly and fanatically devoted
himself to the systematic disparagement of Goethe was Wolfgang Menzel
(born in 1798), a man who before the age of thirty had made his name
famous and feared by the help of a certain coarse literary ability,
tremendous self-assurance, and the severity of his creed as a Liberal,
Nationalist, and moralist. Like Börne, he was originally a disciple of
Jean Paul. But his _Streckverse_ (1823), which were much admired in
their day, and which are unmistakable imitations of that master, carry
Jean Paul's peculiar kind of humour to the verge of caricature. Things
that have no natural connection whatever with each other are forced
into juxtaposition to produce an aphorism, in much the same manner as
totally unconnected ideas are coupled together in a pun. He writes:
"All Saints' Day comes before All Souls'; the prophets reach heaven
before the people." "The religion of antiquity was the crystal-matrix
of many resplendent gods; the Christian religion is the mother-of-pearl
that encloses one god only, but one beyond all price." "This mortal
life is a bastinado." "Every church bell is a diving-bell, beneath
which the pearl of religion is found."[1]
In his periodical, _Deutsche Litteratur_, he began, in 1819, an attack
upon Goethe, which he carried on with insane conceit and immovable
faith in the justice of his cause. He first tried to undermine the
admiration of the reading world for Goethe's originality, examined
his works with the aim of discovering imitations or plagiarisms, and
demonstrated the existence of foreign influence everywhere throughout
them.
In his first connected work on the history of literature, _Die deutsche
Litteratur_, which was published in 1828, in two parts, he calmly
accuses Goethe of having flattered all the prejudices and vanities of
his time. He declares him to be possessed of nothing more than great
descriptive ability, great "talent," which is a thing unattended by
inward conviction, "a hetaira, who is at every one's beck and call."
Goethe has always, he declares, swum with the stream, and on its
surface, like a cork; he has ministered to every weakness and folly
that happened to be in fashion; under the fair mask of his works a
refinement of sensuality lies concealed; these works are the blossom
of that materialism which prevails in the modern world. Goethe has no
genius, but a very high degree of "the talent for making his readers
his accomplices," &c, &c.[2] Heine, who was uncritical enough in his
review of the book to praise both it and its author--praise which he
was soon to regret--would have nothing to say to Menzel's doctrine that
Goethe's gift was not genius, only talent. He expresses the opinion
that this doctrine will be accepted by few, "and even these few will
confess that Goethe at times had the talent to be a genius."[3]