real axiom is: Everything else is nothing measured with me; everything
serves my purposes. By means of prayers and miracles, with God as
intermediary, I have everything at my disposal. God is the creation
of man's desire. The main desire of Christianity being unlimited
happiness, bliss, God is the means whereby bliss is attained, or, more
correctly, bliss and God are one.
In a word; theology is anthropology, the theological problem is a
psychological problem--which Feuerbach has solved in all essentials for
all time.
Viewed thus, his life-work is seen in its unity. Though it is not
possible to express the whole in a few words, yet it is easy to feel
that it is one single great thought, for which humanity is his debtor.
When a young man stands in the Pantheon in Rome, lost in admiration of
its dome, the most beautiful in the world, his most natural thought
is: O, like the builder of this temple, to have, were it but once in
one's life, an idea, simple and great as that which produced this
cupola--to conceive some single fundamental principle, some simple
and yet composite formula, capable of expansion to a whole scheme, of
dimensions as grand as this firmament in miniature! One such thought,
simple in its beginning, stupendous in its development, would give
greatness enough to any human life.
Feuerbach's was one of these fundamental thoughts.
[1] Sound the trumpet, herald of war! To arms! To arms! War to the
death with the wicked horde of stupid, hypocritical priests!
[2] Fifty years ago our parents declared war against the fat and flabby
priest; we, their children and grandchildren, have, like them, taken
up arms against the cloth; but our cry is: Death to the lean and lanky
priestlings!
[3] 'Tis the lark, not the nightingale, that sings so clear; the great
sun-ball is rising fast, borne by the winds of the morning. It is day!
it is day! The night will end in blood. Awake, all ye who believe in
the light eternal! Tear the rose-wreaths of love from your heads, and
gird yourselves with swords of flame!
[4]
'Tis not the fault of the Kings--_they_ are all lovers of freedom;
But their misfortune is this: Freedom has no love for them.
[5] His youthful writings are collected in _Gedichte und kritische
Aufsätze_, 1845, 2 vols.
[6] Would you desecrate the temple for the sake of a woman, dance with
her before golden idols, &c.
[7] Prosaic vulgar-mindedness cannot, will not, understand that thy
name, a mind like thine, is a security for integrity of purpose; it is
ready to believe only what is bad, &c.
[8] No longer, damned Liberty, shalt thou disturb my peace of mind.
Lisette! another glass of beer! For the future I'm a respectable
citizen.
[9] A respectable citizen! You an ordinary respectable citizen! Shame
on you, my friend I Was this your aim in life? Is this the end of
all your passionate song? Take back the offensive word, I pray; just
imagine displaying such vulgar-mindedness! Mine is a nobler ambition: I
am determined to be a Privy Councillor!
[10] My advice to you is to drop the cards and look out for yourself,
O minister! Remember that you have to do with four stallions, not four
citizens!
[11] You ask me why he lies sleepless? why in his rage he tears the
lace from his pillow? A good conscience sleeps well everywhere, a bad
conscience nowhere. He has sucked the blood of his country, gorged
himself with its substance; during a whole long life he has stolen and
lied and deceived.
[12]
If heart and style remain still true,
I'll not object, whatever you do.
My friend, I never will mistake you,
E'en though a Councillor they make you.
(BOWRING.)
[13] They lie, they squabble, they hate one another with a deadly
hatred; it is only want of courage that keeps them from robbing and
murdering. They dare not do the things they long to do, and so they
talk much about right and duty. Those that think keep their thoughts to
themselves; most of them do not think.
[14] We clung to each other-was it to pass the time, or was it in
despair? she a lost, new-born woman, I a lost, new-born man.
[15] _Briefwechsel zwischen Feuerbach und Christian Kapp_, 1876, p, 176.
[16] _Wesen der Religion_, p. vii.
XXVII
REVOLUTIONARY POETRY
The profoundest characteristic of that literature which in the Forties
still continued to be known by the name of _Bewegungslitteratur_, is
its utter want of connection with official Germany. It is the absence
of any such connection that gives it its strength and its freshness.
Official Germany is not to be taken here in the narrow sense of
German officialdom; it means all that part of the people--German or
any other--which in normal circumstances appears to be the whole
people, and as such sets the stamp of nationality on all that is
produced by that people, the same stamp which it has set on all that
has emanated from it in the past. With what a later period has called
_Bildungsphilisterei_ (cultured philistinism), the most eminent
literary men of the period in question have no connection whatever.
There is no corresponding group of personalities and writings in
Scandinavian literature. Even the Radical poetry of the Scandinavian
students became official in the course of a very few years. The
most gifted of the German poets of the day are independent, or make
themselves independent, of official Germany, and bear like men the
consequences of the position they take up.
Among those who declare their independence, the most interesting figure
is Freiligrath, born in Detmold in 1810. Fair, blue-eyed, massively
built, and shaggy-maned, he is the true son of Westphalia. His father,
a schoolmaster, educated him against his will as a merchant, and to his
commercial education and pursuits are to be ascribed his freedom from
classical reminiscences, his exclusively modern literary culture, his
understanding of the foreign climes and countries with which commerce
brings us into communication, and his distinctly modern turn of thought.
Freiligrath is not, like Hoffmann von Fallersleben, his predecessor
in the field of political poetry, only a prolific song writer; he is
a genuine, inspired poet. Hoffmann, who had made a study of the old
German songs and ballads, and was himself a man of simple, popular
tastes, poured forth an inexhaustible stream of polemical verse,
directed against the squirearchy and bureaucracy, but he repeated
himself with the monotony of the popular poet. Freiligrath wrote
comparatively little, but every one of his poems has its distinct
individuality. He is influenced by that modern French and English
poetry of which he has given us so many admirable translations, and
makes his debut as a descriptive poet of the Victor Hugo school, but
soon develops a distinct literary individuality. He possesses in a very
high degree two qualities which are seldom found united, the faculty
of picturesque description and intensity of feeling. The former leads
him to depict themes from foreign lands, full of glowing colour, the
latter displays itself when he sings of home and fatherland. In his
revolutionary period his warm feeling became powerful pathos, and his
gift of graphic delineation was exclusively devoted to the service of
hostility and ire.
In his youth, in Amsterdam (1831), the sea and the shipping made a
deep impression on him. In his dreams he followed all the vessels that
glided out of the harbour bound for Africa, for India, for Turkey, for
America. He was seized by the desire to describe these foreign climes
as they appeared in his imagination, and Hugo's _Les Orientales_ not
only suggested the colours to be employed in the treatment of such
themes, but also the metrical form. Freiligrath alone among German
poets tried to master the alexandrines beloved of Frenchmen, despised
in Germany, and to vindicate their beauty. Strangely enough, in
spite of his usually correct ear, he so entirely misapprehended the
peculiarity of this metre that he always writes it in pure iambics, a
practice which Germans have continued.
He was possessed by the longing to roam--out into the wide world,
across the great ocean. Instead of German "garret poetry," he wrote,
in his garret, scenes laid in the deserts of Africa and the primeval
forests of America. He attempted tropical local colouring, which was
at times successful, at times unnatural; his linguistic specialty was
new and remarkable rhymes, produced with the assistance of resonant
foreign words like "Sykomore," "Tricolore," &c. His good verses were
like living, his bad, in their lifeless splendour, like stuffed
humming-birds.
But this African Freiligrath is not the best Freiligrath. Freiligrath,
the Liberal patriot, is greatly his superior. After Herwegh's political
challenge had roused him, he took himself to task, tested with
simple-minded fairness those sympathies and tendencies of his nature
as to which he himself was not yet absolutely clear, and discovered
in the depths of his being an unquenchable desire for liberty and
a sympathy with the oppressed which on occasion could develop into
burning indignation and hatred. His genius chose the revolutionary
path, pursued it at full speed, and finally spread its wings and
flew. _Marseillaise_ after _Marseillaise_ came from the poet's pen.
O these hymns of 1848! they are enthusiasm itself, the enthusiasm that
begets enthusiasm. In the earlier ones we have fierceness, faith,
revolutionary piety, fiery sarcasm, the intoxicated jubilation of
victory; in the later, noble despair, sublime in its expression.
But the poems which anticipate the Revolution and incite to it are
also worth reading. Take, for instance, the volume entitled _Ça
ira_, published in 1846. In each of the poems of which it consists a
symbolical picture is graphically elaborated. In the first, a ship
is setting sail; her name is Revolution, she is the black fire-ship
that sends her rockets aboard that hypocritical craft, the Church,
and then points her guns at the silver fleet of Wealth. In another
we have a symbolical idea borrowed from Thomas Moore: the ice-palace
of despotism, which will crack, and break up, and melt away as soon
as spring comes. In _Wie man's macht_ ("How the Thing is Done") the
poet describes the storming of the arsenal of a capital with such
infectious ardour, so dramatically and vividly, that we see it all,
are ourselves in the thick of the fray. As the Revolution which he
foresees draws nearer and nearer, his poetry becomes more and more up
to date. He describes a Rhine steamer, which has the King and Queen
of Prussia on board. The steamer is a picture of German society. The
company on deck are enjoying the fresh air, the bright sunshine, the
beautiful scenery of the Rhine; but down below in the engine-room stand
the proletariat, in the shape of engineer and stoker, masters of the
volcano that drives the ship onwards. One push, one blow from them, and
the whole edifice of which the king is the crown, collapses; the deck
is blown to fragments, the flames mount to the clouds--but not yet,
thou angry element, not to-day! In such a poem as _Freie Presse_ the
course of events is anticipated: the insurrection is on the point of
breaking out; one day more, and there will be fighting in the streets.
Ammunition being short, the owner of the printing works orders his
workmen to melt down all the alphabets. And presently the hissing,
glowing mass is flowing into the bullet moulds. The times are such that
only in the form of bullets can the types emancipate humanity.
The days of Young Germany were over, but now it seemed as if Germany
herself had grown young.
Robert Prutz (born in 1816 at Stettin) received that classical
education which had been denied to Freiligrath. A critical student
of philosophy and history, he wrote upon many subjects, but it is
only as a political poet that he has any abiding significance. He was
one of the young men who ardently vented their opinions in Ruge's
_Hallische Jahrbücher_, the result in his case being banishment. He
is the Feuerbachian as poet. His political poetry, from the absolute
directness with which it follows its aim, is apt to be somewhat dry and
unimaginative, but his sober and yet warm love of liberty attracts us.
If you once learn to like him, it will be a thorough liking; you will
even highly prize his latest collection of poems, _Aus der Heimath_, a
book which has been foolishly condemned as sensual; it cannot be denied
that he showed bad taste in dedicating it to his wife.
In his best work, a little Aristophanic masterpiece entitled _Die
politische Wochenstube_ ("The Political Lying-in Room"), Zürich,
1843, Prutz, Holberg's warmest German admirer,[1] has succeeded in
epitomising the wit, the irony, the endeavour, and the hopes of the
younger generation.
It was only natural that a poet with Prutz's classical training
should adopt the Aristophanic method, the pity was that he followed
it too closely. His play became in consequence a jewel of price for
a select circle of readers instead of food for the multitude. It is
the production of a young, hopeful dreamer, whose faith in a glorious
future for Germany was quite as lively and as strong as the pleasure he
felt in demolishing with his sarcasm what was decrepit and decayed; the
burlesque figures and conceits stand out against an idealistic golden
background because the poet sees the sun of the future rising and
shining behind them.
The action passes partly in, partly outside of the house of a doctor
who keeps a kind of private lying-in hospital, where young ladies of
the upper classes at times take refuge. Of late his business has not
thriven. It had flourished when Pietism flourished in Königsberg; much
pious embracing had gone on then, which, with God's blessing, had
borne fruit; but now that the State Church has set itself to suppress
Pietism, his wards stand empty. He will soon be driven to apply for a
post on the staff of the Prussian official newspaper; those who are
fit for nothing else can always earn their bread in its service. The
Doctor's servant, Kilian, who is famishing, asks for food. The Doctor
advises him to have his stomach removed, takes out his knife to do the
operation, tells him that he will never feel hungry again, and that he
will confer an inestimable benefit on humanity if he can show himself
as a living proof that the operation is possible. For what is the rock
on which virtue splits nowadays? Why did Freiligrath take a pension?
Why did Dingelstedt allow himself to be branded. The stomach, and
nothing but the stomach is to blame for everything.
In the meantime Herr Schlaukopf (Mr. Sly) has come on the scene,
disguised as a beggar. He declaims some patriotic sentiment, in the
style of the Niebelungenlied, on the subject of Hermann the Cheruscan,
and then asks for a contribution for the statue of that national hero.
The Doctor is incautious enough to call the statue a scarecrow, a
hideous sentry brandishing a spit, on which Schlaukopf declares that he
shall pay for these words by at least twelve years' imprisonment with
hard labour. They fight, the Doctor pulls off Schlaukopfs false nose,
and thereupon recognises in him the friend of his youth, the quondam
socialist, singer of liberty, republican, and regicide, now advanced to
the post of "Wirklicher-geheimer-königlicher Leibspion" (Real Private
Royal Body-spy). They fall into each other's arms, and Schlaukopf tells
his errand, but not till he has assured himself that the Doctor holds
no awkward or seditious political beliefs. The Doctor, recognising the
importance of the man with whom he has to do, falls on his knees and
swears that he believes nothing except that crown-pieces are round.
Then Schlaukopf divulges the secret: "Germany, our mother-country, the
Germany of Frederick and of Luther, the fair-haired queen, is with
child."
The Doctor is at first incredulous. Is it not dropsy, the result
of all the water-drinking introduced by these new total abstinence
associations? No, she is pregnant, and the only surprising thing about
it is that the fact has not been announced in the newspapers, which
usually inform the public when queens and princesses are in that
condition. And now Schlaukopf communicates the joyful intelligence that
the Doctor, as an experienced accoucheur, has been chosen to attend
Germania; he, and no other, is to deliver her. The Doctor dances for
joy, demands that he shall be rewarded with perquisites and an order,
requests Schlaukopf to bring the lady--but see, she comes!
Slaves, who represent the enthralled people, bear her in in a golden
chair. She is fair, with a fat, amiable face, a wide mouth, and eyes
of watery blue. All salute and do homage to her as Germania. But from
a confidential conversation between her and Schlaukopf we learn that
she is not the person she gives herself out to be. He asks her if she
is really pregnant; she replies that he ought to know best, he and the
others whom he has introduced to her. It seems that he has taken her
from the street and trained her to play her part. She is the official
Germania--and she has done everything that her artful masters have
ordered her to do, has bowed, and knelt, and pattered prayers at
command. And now, at command, she is pregnant. Schlaukopf abuses her,
and threatens to beat her; she taunts him and threatens in return to
run away and leave him to find another Germania where he best can.
Meanwhile in the darkness of night a stranger has appeared in the
street in front of the house, a woman with a harassed, hunted look,
who declares that she knows not where to lay her outlawed head. "I,"
she says, "the legitimate queen, must, like a common vagrant, hide my
royal head in the darkness of night, whilst she who has been exalted in
my stead and impudently allows herself to be called by my name, sleeps
voluptuously on silken pillows. Ye stones, be my pillow! For my people,
like their queen, have to lie on stone."
Through the night comes a cry, "Germania!" The woman in the house
and the woman on the street answer at the same moment. Wrangling and
confusion ensue, the gendarmes arrive, and an attempt is made to
discover which of the two has taken a name that does not belong to
her. "Not I!" cries the stranger to Schlaukopf. She maintains that he
has stolen her name and decked his brazen-faced paramour with it, and
concludes: "Shame on you both! I alone am the real, the true Germania!"
Kilian finds it impossible to believe that any one so slender and
emaciated can be Germania, but the serfs are thrilled to the heart by
the sweet sound of her voice. The diplomatic Schlaukopf alone keeps his
countenance:
"Allein, so thut ein wenig nur die Augen auf,
Zu sehen braucht Ihr diese da und jene nur,
So ist's ja klärlicb, welche hier die Rechte sei:
In Lumpen jene, diese jedoch im seidnen Rock;
Die abgemagert, hungerbleich, ein Schattenbild,
Verbannt zu Bettlern, selber eine Bettlerin;
Höchst stattlich diese, wohlgenährt, anmuthiglich,
In hoher Herren ehrender Festgenossenschaft,
Ja selbst gesegneten Leibes ist, wie Ihr seht."[2]
To this comparison between her rival's magnificence and her own poverty
the stranger answers with dignity:
"Wohl spotte mein! In meine Wunde lege du
Die blutbefleckten, diebsgewandten Finger mir!
Auf meine Lumpen speie du, und rühme dich
Weil ich ein armes, heimathlos vertriebnes Weib;
Du weisst am besten, wessen Hand mein Blut vergoss,
Und wer vom Haupt die Krone mir gerissen hat.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ihr bautest du Paläste, mir Gefängnisse.
Ihr schmeichelten deine Schergen, mich verfolgten sie--
Dir aber sag ich, Schattenkönigin, o du,
Die du mit Zittern meines Namens dich erfrechst:
Hinweg! verbirg dich! Räume du den Platz, der mir
Allein gebührt! Denn eure Herrscherin bin ich."[3]
And the serfs bend low in homage to the woman who comes, not in regal
purple, but in rags like their own, saying to each other: "May not this
be the long-looked-for redresser of our wrongs, she who is to break our
yoke asunder and awaken the sleeping world with the lightning flash of
liberty?"
But now the two women are called upon to prove their respective claims.
Schlaukopf exclaims: "It is the legitimist principle we are called on
to defend!" and proceeds to prompt official Germania. That fat, fair
lady, who boasts that she bears the future of Germany in her womb and
claims in consequence to be treated with consideration and reverence,
repeats a long rigmarole, supposed to be the story of her life: In the
gray of eld she lay on bear-skins in the forest, drinking foaming mead
and eating beech-nuts and acorns. "Beech-nuts and acorns!" cry the
Doctor, Kilian, and Schlaukopf. "It is she." Then she tells how she
was sent to school to the priests, had her nose flattened against the
crucifix, became _christlich-germanisch_, endowed monasteries, built
churches, kissed the Pope's toe, &c, &c., and once more the Doctor,
Kilian, and Schlaukopf cry: "It is she!" She tells what a peaceable,
governable disposition she developed, how she allowed any one that
liked to box her ears, how her loyalty has now reached such a pitch
that if her master but whistle, she comes, stands on her hind legs,
fetches the stick--"In a word, I am a well-trained poodle." And again
we hear the jubilant chorus: "It is she!" She concludes: "God and the
king willing, I shall be in the future what I have been in the past. By
government order I am now, as you see, with child. O gendarmes, take
my part! Recognise me as the one, true, Germania, as the thoroughbred
German, and be assured that in return I will bring up my son as a
gendarme!"
The gendarmes are of opinion that she has made out a good case, and
Schlaukopf is beginning to boast that the vagrant has been silenced,
when she in turn lifts up her voice. She does not understand the art
of self-praise, she says, nor has she much to praise herself for; the
future will show what she is. "I cannot deny," she continues, "that she
who stands there is a Germania; she is official Germany, the Germany
of the Government, of the Federal Diet; but the Germany of the German
people she is not; they do not know her, they do not care a straw for
her rotten genealogical tree. If you would know which is the true
Germania, ask these fettered serfs!" At this moment the other Germania
is seized with violent pains. She suddenly explodes with a loud report
and disappears in a cloud of smoke, which, as it gradually disperses,
takes the shape of pilgrim monks, of romantic poets who sing the
praises of the holy Middle Ages, of geese who lament that the Order
of the Swan is not yet instituted, of moderate Liberals singing the
chorus:
"Immer langsam voran, immer langsam voran!
Dass der preussische Fortschritt nachkommen kann!"[4]
Then the serfs break their chains, cast themselves on the ground before
the poor stranger, and do homage to her as the true Germania, who is
still a virgin, but who one day will give birth to the ruler of the
future....
The emblematical picture is a very fine, powerful one, and moreover
it is true. The German Empire of to-day is not the offspring of the
oppressed, divided Germany that was then extolled as pregnant with
future greatness; it is the outcome of the much-despised, the harshly
suppressed endeavours after liberty and unity. It is a mistake,
however, to have represented the true Germania with no past, with all
her power and glory in the future; though such a break of historical
continuity did not in those days seem the impossibility that it does in
ours.