The task of giving a connected account of the German Romantic School
is, for a Dane, an arduous and disheartening one. In the first
place, the subject is overwhelmingly vast; in the second, it has
been treated again and again by German writers; and, lastly, these
writers, in their division of labour, have entered so learnedly into
every detail, that it is impossible for a foreigner, one, moreover,
to whom the sources are not always accessible, to compete with
them in exhaustive knowledge. From their childhood they have been
familiar with a literature with which he first makes acquaintance at
an age when assimilation, in any quantity, has become a much more
difficult process. What the foreigner must rely on is, partly the
decision with which he takes up and maintains his personal standpoint,
partly the possibility that he may display qualities which are not
characteristic of the native author. Such a quality in the case in
point is the artistic faculty, the faculty, I mean, of representation,
of externalisation. The German nature is so intense and profound that
this faculty is comparatively rare. The foreigner has, moreover, this
advantage over the native, that it is easier for him to detect the mark
of race--that in the German author which stamps him as a German. The
German critic is too apt to consider "German" synonymous with "human
being," for the reason that the human beings he deals with are almost
always Germans. The foreigner is struck by characteristics which are
overlooked by the native, sometimes because he is so accustomed to
them, more frequently because he himself possesses them.
There are many works to be criticised and classified, many
personalities to describe. My aim will be to present these
personalities and works in as firm and sharp outline as possible,
and, without giving undue attention to detail, to throw light upon
the whole in such a manner that its principal features will stand out
and arrest the eye. I shall endeavour, on the one hand, to treat the
history of literature as humanly as possible, to go as deep down as
I can, to seize upon the remotest, innermost psychological movements
which prepared for and produced the various literary phenomena; and
on the other hand, I shall try to present the result in as plastic
and tangible a form as possible. If I can succeed in giving shape,
clear and accurate, to the hidden feeling, the idea, which everywhere
underlies the literary phenomenon, my task will be accomplished. By
preference, I shall always, when possible, embody the abstract in the
personal.
First and foremost, therefore, I everywhere trace the connection
between literature and life. This is at once proved by the fact that,
whereas earlier Danish literary controversies (that between Heiberg
and Hauch, for example, or even the famous one between Baggesen and
Oehlenschläger) were kept entirely within the domain of literature and
dealt exclusively with literary principles, the controversy aroused
by the first volume of this work has entailed, quite as much from the
nature of the work as from the irrationality of its opponents, the
discussion of a multitude of moral, social, and religious questions.
The Danish reaction, feeling itself to be akin to the one I am about
to depict and unmask, has attempted to suppress the movement which
it recognised to be antagonistic to itself--but so far with little
prospect of success. A French proverb says: _Nul prince n'a tué son
successeur._
When, however, the connection between literature and life is thus
emphasised, the delineations and interpretations of men and their
books by no means produce what we may call drawing-room history of
literature. I go down to the foundations of real life, and show how
the emotions which find their expression in literature arise in the
human heart. And this same human heart is no still pool, no idyllic
mountain lake. It is an ocean, with submarine vegetation and terrible
inhabitants. Drawing-room history of literature, like drawing-room
poetry, sees in human life a drawing-room, a decorated ball-room--the
furniture and the people alike polished, the brilliant illumination
excluding all possibility of dark corners. Let those who choose to
do so look at things thus; it is not my point of view. Just as the
botanist must handle nettles as well as roses, so the student of
literature must accustom himself to look, with the unflinching gaze
of the naturalist or the physician, upon all the forms taken by human
nature, in their diversity and their inward affinity. It makes the
plant neither more nor less interesting that it smells sweet or stings;
but the dispassionate interest of the botanist is often accompanied by
the purely human pleasure in the beauty of the flower.
As I follow the more important literary movements from country to
country, studying their psychology, I attempt to condense the fluid
material by showing how, from time to time, it crystallises into one
or other definite and intelligible type. The attempt is attended
with extraordinary difficulty in this particular period of German
literature, from the fact that the chief characteristic of the period
is an absence of distinctly typical forms. This literature is not
plastic; it is musical. French Romanticism produces clearly defined
figures; the ideal of German Romanticism is not a figure, but a melody,
not definite form, but infinite aspiration. Is it obliged to name the
object of its longing? It designates it by such terms as "ein geheimes
Wort," "eine blaue Blume," "der Zauber der Waldeinsamkeit" (a mystic
word--a blue flower--the magic of the lonely woods). These expressions
are, however, definitions of moods, and each mood has a corresponding
psychological condition, my task is to trace back each mood, emotion,
or longing to the group of psychological conditions to which it
belongs. This group in combination constitutes a soul; and such a
soul, with strongly marked individuality, represents in literature the
many who were unable to depict their own character, but who recognised
it when thus placed before them. I may possibly succeed in proving
that the type does not escape us because the author may have chosen to
paint landscape after landscape in place of delineating characteristic
personalities, or because he confounds literature with music to the
extent of at last entitling his poems simply _Allegro_ or _Rondo_;
but that, on the contrary, the distinctly peculiar qualities of these
landscapes and the character of this word-music are symptomatic of
a psychological condition which may be determined with considerable
accuracy.
In the general introduction to this work I have sketched the plan which
I have proposed to myself. It is my intention to describe the first
great literary movement of the century, the germinating and growing
reaction, first elucidating its nature, then following it to its
climax. Afterwards I shall show how this reaction was met by a breeze
of liberalism blowing from the eighteenth century, which swells into a
gale and sweeps away all opposition. Not that the liberal views of the
nineteenth century are ever identical with those of the eighteenth, or
that its literary forms or scientific ideas ever bear the eighteenth
century stamp. Neither Voltaire, nor Rousseau, nor Diderot, neither
Lessing nor Schiller, neither Hume nor Godwin, rise from the dead; but
they are one and all avenged upon their enemies.
Regarded as a whole, German Romanticism is reaction. Nevertheless,
as an intellectual, poetico-philosophical reaction, it contains many
germs of new development, unmistakable productions of that spirit of
progress which, by remoulding the old, creates the new, and by altering
boundaries gains territory.
The older Romanticists begin, without exception, as the apostles of
"enlightenment." They introduce a new tone into German poetry, give
their works a new colour, and, in addition to this, revive both the
spirit and the substance of the old fairy-tale, Volkslied, and legend.
They exercise at first a fertilising influence upon German science;
research in the domains of history, ethnography, and jurisprudence,
the study of German antiquity, Indian and Greek-Latin philology, and
the systems and dreams of the _Naturphilosophie_ all receive their
first impulse from Romanticism. They widened the emotional range of
German poetry, though the emotions to which they gave expression were
more frequently morbid than healthy. As critics, they originally,
and with success, aimed at enlarging the spiritual horizon. In their
social capacity they vowed undying hatred to all dead conventionality
in the relations between the sexes. The best among them in their youth
laboured ardently for the intensification of that spiritual life which
is based upon a belief in the supernatural. In politics, when not
indifferent, they generally began as very theoretical republicans;
who, however, in spite of their cosmopolitanism, strove to elevate and
strengthen German patriotism.
Unfortunately, their pursuit of all these worthy aims ended in
comparative failure. Of all that the German Romanticists produced,
little will endure--some masterly translations by A. W. Schlegel, a
few of Tieck's productions, a handful of Hardenberg's and another of
Eichendorff's lyrics, some of Friedrich Schlegel's essays, a few of
Arnim's and Brentano's smaller works, a select number of Hoffmann's
tales, and some very remarkable dramas and tales from the pen of
that eccentric but real genius, Heinrich von Kleist. The rest of the
life-work of the Romanticists has disappeared from the memory of
the present generation. Looking back on it from this distance, most
of their endeavour seems to have ended in smoke. In the matter of
language, with their intangible imagery, their misuse of words in
expressing the strange, weird, and mysterious, their archaisms, and
their determination to be unintelligible to the ordinary reader, they
rather diminished than enriched the poetic vocabulary, rather corrupted
than improved literary style. In the domain of poetry, Romanticism
ended in hysterical piety and vapouring. In the social domain it
occupied itself with only one question, that of the relations between
the sexes; and its ideas on this subject were, for the most part, so
abnormal and morbidly unhealthy, that most of its passionate blows
were dealt in the air. In dealing them, it was not humanity at large
that the Romanticists had in view, but a few favoured, aristocratic,
artistic natures. In religious matters, these men, whose moral and
poetical theories were at first so revolutionary, bowed their necks
to the yoke the moment they saw it. And in politics it was they who
directed the proceedings of the Congress of Vienna and prepared its
manifestoes, abolishing liberty of thought in the interval between a
religious festival in St. Stephen's and an oyster supper with Fanny
Elsler.
I shall touch but seldom and briefly upon Danish literature, only now
and again piercing in the canvas of the panorama I am unrolling a hole
through which the situation in Denmark may be seen. Not that I forget
or lose sight of Danish literature. On the contrary, it is ever present
with me. Whilst trying to present to my readers the inner history of
a foreign literature, I am all the time making indirect contributions
to the history of our own. I am painting the background which is
required to throw its characteristics into relief. I am working at
the foundation upon which, according to my conviction, the history of
modern Danish literature rests. My method may be indirect, but it is
the more thorough for that. I should like, however, in a few words, to
indicate the general conclusion to which a comparison between Danish
and foreign literature at this period has led me.
The relative positions of Germany and Denmark may be defined as
follows: German literature is at this period comparatively original in
its aims and its productions; Danish literature either continues the
working out of a peculiarly Scandinavian vein, or builds upon German
foundations. The Danish authors have, as a rule, read and assimilated
the German; the German authors have neither read nor been in any way
influenced by the Danes. Steffens, through whom we receive the impetus
from Germany, is the devoted disciple of Schelling. Witness the
following passage from one of his letters to that philosopher: "I am
your pupil, absolutely and entirely your pupil. All that I produce was
originally yours. This is no passing feeling; it is my firm conviction
that such is the case, and I do not think the less of myself for it.
Therefore, when once I have produced a really great work which I should
gladly call mine, I shall, as soon as it has been recognised, publicly,
enthusiastically, proclaim you to be my teacher, and hand over to you
my laurel wreath."[1]
In German literature there is more life, in the corresponding Danish
literature more art. It is Germany which produces, which unearths,
the material. That literature of which Romanticism is the first
development, lives and moves and revels in intense emotions, struggles
with problems, creates forms which it dashes to pieces again. Danish
literature takes German material and ideas, instinct with life, and
often succeeds in moulding them more artistically, giving them clearer
expression than their German producers do. (Note, for example, the case
of Tieck and Heiberg.) The Danes apply and remodel, or they embody
kindred ideas in more favourable and more plastic material, such, or
instance, as that provided by the Scandinavian mythology and legends.
The result, as I have elsewhere shown, is that Romanticism acquired
more lucidity and clearer contours on Danish soil. It became less a
thing of the night; it ventured, veiled, into the light of the sun.
It felt that it had come to a sedate, sober-minded people, a people
who were not yet quite sure that moonlight was not unnatural and
sentimental. It came up from the deep mine shafts from which Novalis
had been the first to conjure it, and, with Oehlenschläger's Vaulundur,
hammered on the mountain-side till the mountain burst open and laid
all its treasures bare to the light of day. It felt that it had come
to another, a more serene and idyllic clime; it shook off all its
weirdness; its thick, shapeless mists condensed into slender river
nymphs; it forgot the Harz and the Blocksberg, and took up its abode
one beautiful Midsummer Eve in the Deer Park near Copenhagen.[2]
_Aladdin_ is a finer and more intelligible literary work than Tieck's
_Kaiser Oktavianus_, but Oehlenschläger could not deny that _Aladdin_
would never have been written if _Oktavianus_ had not been in
existence. Heiberg's _Julespög og Nytaarslöjer_ is to the full as witty
as Tieck's Aristophanic satires, but the whole idea--the play within
the play, the literary satire, and the blending of the sentimental
with the ironical--is borrowed from Tieck, and, what is worse, is
only comprehensible from Tieck's standpoint. In short, there is in
Oehlenschläger, Hauch, and Heiberg more form than in Novalis, Tieck,
and Fr. Schlegel, but less substance--that is to say, less direct
connection with real life. German literature has too often formed the
connecting link. We Danes have too often refused to occupy ourselves,
in literature, with the great problems of life, have simply dismissed
them when we could not succeed in giving them correct literary form.
Looked at from the psychological point of view, the position may be
described as follows. The Danish Romantic authors have, generally
speaking, been the superiors of the Germans as regards art, their
inferiors as regards intellect. As a rule, every production of the
German author, however small, though it be formless, weak, nay,
actually a failure, yet expresses a whole philosophy of life, and
that no fanciful philosophy, but one evolved and matured by personal
experience, and stamped with the whole astonishingly many-sided
culture which distinguishes the educated German. A poem by Novalis,
a tale by Tieck or Hoffmann, or a play by Kleist, contains a
poetico-philosophical theory of life; and it is the theory not only of
a poet, but of a man. A tragedy by Oehlenschläger again, or a fairy
tale by Andersen, or a vaudeville by Hostrup, will almost invariably
be distinguished by such distinctly poetical qualities as fancy,
feeling, whimsicality, gaiety, youthful freshness and aplomb, but the
philosophy is too often as primitive as a child's. Heiberg is almost
the only writer in whose works there is any sign of a philosophy based
upon science, and acquiring ever more profundity from the experiences
of life. Of real development there are often only faint traces.
The youthful works of such authors as Oehlenschläger, Winther, and
Andersen are as perfect as those of their maturity. Sometimes, as in
the case of Oehlenschläger, advancing years produce in the talent a
suspicion of corpulence, of unctuousness. Sometimes, as in the case of
Paludan-Müller, the ideal grows more and more attenuated. When a change
does take place, it rarely signifies that the author has gradually
evolved for himself a new philosophy of life; no--after treading the
narrow path of poetry for a time, he strikes into one of the two great
highroads, either the road of middle-class respectability or the road
of orthodox piety. The dressing-gown or the cassock--one or other of
these garments almost inevitably supersedes the Spanish cloak of poetic
youth.
It may, then, generally speaking, be asserted that, in those cases
where it is possible to compare the German Romanticists with the
Danish, the former have the more original philosophy of life, and are
greater as personalities, whatever they may be as poets.
Let us look at the subject from a third point of view. To the Danish
authors, as a body, may be attributed the merit of avoiding the
fantastic, tasteless extravagances of which the Germans are frequently
guilty. The Danes stop in time; they avoid paradox or do not carry it
to its logical conclusion; they have the steadiness due to naturally
well-balanced minds and naturally phlegmatic dispositions; they
are hardly ever indecent, audacious, blasphemous, revolutionary,
wildly fantastic, utterly sentimental, utterly unreal, or utterly
sensual; they seldom run amuck, they never tilt at the clouds, and
they never fall into a well. This is what makes them so popular
with their own countrymen. Unerring taste and elegance, such as
distinguish Heiberg's poetry and Gade's music, vigorous, healthy
originality, such as characterises Oehlenschläger's and Hartmann's
best works, will always be prized by Danes as the expression of
noble and self-controlled art. What a contrast is presented by the
overstrained, extravagant personalities peopling the Romantic hospital
of Germany! A phthisical Moravian Brother with the consumptive's
sensuality and the consumptive's mystic yearnings--Novalis. A
satirical hypochondriac, subject to hallucinations and with morbid
leanings to Catholicism--Tieck. A genius, impotent to produce, but
with the propensity of genius to revolt and the imperative craving
of impotence to subject itself to outward authority--Friedrich
Schlegel. A dissipated fantast with the half-insane imagination of the
drunkard--Hoffmann. A foolish mystic like Werner, and a genius like
the suicide Kleist. Think of Hoffmann, and his pupil, Hans Andersen,
and observe how sane, but also how sober and subdued, Andersen appears
compared with his first master.
It is, then, certain that there is more of the quality of harmony among
the Danes. And it is easy to understand that those who regard harmony,
even when meagre, as the highest quality of art, will inevitably rank
the Danish literature of the first decades of this century above the
German. It has, however, to a great extent attained to this harmony by
means of caution, by lack of artistic courage. The Danish poets never
fell, because they never mounted to a height from which there was
any danger of falling. They left it to others to ascend Mont Blanc.
They escaped breaking their necks, but they never gathered the Alpine
flowers which only bloom on the giddy heights or on the brink of
precipices. The quality in literature which, it seems to me, we Danes
have never sufficiently prized, is boldness, that quality in the author
which incites him, regardless of consequences, to give expression
to his artistic ideal. The daring development of what is typical in
his literary tendency, often constitutes the beauty of his work; or,
to put it more plainly, when a literary tendency like Romanticism
develops in the direction of pure fancy, that author seems to me the
most interesting, who rises to the most daring heights of fantastic
extravagance--as, for instance, Hoffmann. The more madly fantastic he
is, the finer he is, just as the poplar is finer the taller it is,
and the beech finer the more stately and wide-spreading it is. The
fineness lies in the daring and vigour with which that which is typical
is expressed. He who discovers a new country may, in the course of his
explorations, be stranded on a reef. It is an easy matter to avoid the
reef and leave the country undiscovered. The Danish Romanticists are
never insane like Hoffmann, but neither are they ever dæmonic like him.
They lose in thrilling, overpowering life and energy what they gain
in lucidity and readableness. They appeal to a greater number and a
more varied class of readers, but they do not enthral them. The more
vigorous originality alarms the many, but fascinates the few. In Danish
Romanticism there is none of Friedrich Schlegel's audacious immorality,
but neither is there anything like that spirit of opposition which in
him amounts to genius; his ardour melts, and his daring moulds into
new and strange shapes, much that we accept as unalterable. Nor do
the Danes become Catholic mystics. Protestant orthodoxy in its most
petrified form flourishes with us: so do supernaturalism and pietism;
and in Grundtvigianism we slide down the inclined plane which leads
to Catholicism; but in this matter, as in every other, we never take
the final step; we shrink back from the last consequences. The result
is that the Danish reaction is far more insidious and covert than
the German. Veiling itself as vice does, it clings to the altars
of the Church, which have always been a sanctuary for criminals of
every species. It is never possible to lay hold of it, to convince
it then and there that its principles logically lead to intolerance,
inquisition, and despotism. Kierkegaard, for example, is in religion
orthodox, in politics a believer in absolutism, towards the close of
his career a fanatic. Yet--and this is a genuinely Romantic trait--he
all his life long avoids drawing any practical conclusions from his
doctrines; one only catches an occasional glimpse of such a feeling as
admiration for the Inquisition, or hatred of natural science.
Let us take, by way of contrast, another supporter of orthodoxy and
absolutism, Joseph de Maistre, as high-minded and sincere a believer
as Kierkegaard, and equally philanthropic. De Maistre pursues all his
theories to their clear conclusions, shirking nothing which must be
regarded as a direct consequence of his beliefs. Like Kierkegaard, he
is a man of brilliant parts and solid culture, but whereas Kierkegaard,
when it comes to practical applications, is as afraid of "public
scandal" as any old maid, De Maistre boldly accepts all necessary
consequences. The famous passage in praise of the executioner in the
sixth conversation of the _Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg_, leaves
nothing to be desired in the matter of plain speaking. The executioner
is a "sublime being," "the corner-stone of society;" along with him
"all social order disappears." According to De Maistre's theory,
two powers are required to quell the rebellious spirits--the spirit
of unbelief and the spirit of disobedience--let loose by the French
Revolution, and these two are the Pope and the executioner. The
Pope and the executioner are the two main props of society; the one
crushes the revolutionary thought with his bull, the other cuts off
the revolutionary head with his axe. It is a pleasure to read such
argument. Here we have vigour and determination, effectual expression
of a clear thought, energetic and undisguised reaction. And De Maistre
is the same in everything. He is not, like Danish reactionaries who
call themselves Liberals, reactionary in social matters and religion,
and liberal or half-liberal in politics. He loathes political liberty;
he jeers (in his letters) at the emancipation of women; in a special
essay he deliberately and warmly defends the Spanish Inquisition;
and in all trueheartedness and manly seriousness he desires the
reinstitution of the _auto-da-fé_, and is not ashamed to say it,
seeing that he thinks it. Look well at such a man as this--gifted and
eminent, great as a statesman, great as an author, who sacrifices his
whole fortune sooner than make the least concession to the Revolution,
which he abhors, or to Napoleon, whom he detests; who frankly adores
the executioner as the indispensable upholder of order; who gives the
gallows the most important place in his statute-book, and counsels
the Church to have recourse to the axe and the faggot--there is a
figure worthy of note; a proud, bold countenance, which expresses an
unmistakable mental bent, and which one does not forget. This is a
type one takes pleasure in, as the naturalist takes pleasure in a fine
specimen of a species of which he has hitherto only met with imperfect
and unsatisfactory examples. Looking at the matter from a practical
point of view, it may be considered fortunate that such personalities
are not to be found in Danish literature, but their absence gives a
less plastic character to its history.
It is all very well to say that we Danes only assimilated the good and
healthy elements of German Romanticism. When we see how the German
Romanticists end, we comprehend that from the very beginning there was
concealed in Romanticism a reactionary principle which prescribed the
course--the curve--of their careers.
Friedrich Schlegel, the author of _Lucinde_, the free-thinking admirer
of Fichte, who, in his _Versuch über den Begriff des Republikanismus_
(Essay on the Idea of Republicanism), called the democratic republic,
with female suffrage, the only reasonable form of government, is
converted to Catholicism, becomes a mystic and a faithful servant
of the Church, and in his later writings endeavours to promote the
cause of reactionary absolutism. Novalis and Schleiermacher, who in
their early writings display a mixture of pantheism and pietism, of
Spinoza and Zinzendorf, steadily drift away from Spinoza and approach
orthodoxy. In his later life Schleiermacher recants those _Letters
on Lucinde_ which he had written in a spirit of the purest youthful
enthusiasm. Novalis, who in his youthful letters declares himself
"prepared for any sort of enlightenment," and hopes that he may live
to see "a new massacre of St. Bartholemew, a wholesale destruction of
despotisms and prisons," who desires a republic, and who, at the time
when Fichte is prosecuted for atheism, remarks, "Brave Fichte is really
fighting for us all,"--this same Novalis ends by looking on the king
in the light of an earthly Providence, condemning Protestantism as
revolutionary, defending the temporal power of the Pope, and extolling
the spirit of Jesuitism. Fouqué, the knight without fear and without
reproach, becomes in the end a pietist Don Quixote, whose great desire
is a return to the conditions of feudalism. Clemens Brentano, in his
youth the most mettlesome of poets, who both in life and literature
made war upon every species of convention, becomes the credulous
secretary of a nun, a hysterical visionary; does nothing for the space
of five years but fill volume after volume with the sayings of Anna
Katharina Emmerich. Zacharias Werner is a variant of the same Romantic
type. He starts in his career as a friend of "enlightenment"; but soon
a process of moral dissolution begins; he first extols Luther, then
turns Roman Catholic and recants his eulogy; in the end he becomes a
priest, and as such displays, both in his life and in his sentimentally
gross writings and sermons, a combination of coarse sensuality and
priestly unction.
And Steffens--he who stormed the heaven of German Romanticism, carried
the sacred fire to Denmark, and set men's minds in such violent uproar
that he was compelled to leave his country--what of him? what was
he? An upright, weak character, with a brain charged with confused
enthusiasms; all feeling and imitative fancy; no lucidity of thought
or pregnant concision of style. It is literally impossible to read the
so-called scientific writings of his later period; one runs the risk of
being drowned in watery sentimentality or smothered by ennui. "When,"
says Julian Schmidt, "he expounded the _Naturphilosophie_ in his broken
German from the professorial chair, his mathematical calculations came
out wrong and his experiments failed, but his audience was carried
away by his earnestness, his almost religious solemnity, his naïve,
child-like enthusiasm." Naïveté was a quality that the Northerner of
those days seldom lacked. In his best days, Steffens, captivated by
the theories of the _Naturphilosophie_, took an innocent pleasure in
tracing the attributes of the human mind in minerals, in humanising
geology and botany. But the Revolution of July turned his head.
Inflamed by pietism, that elderly lady who for the last thirteen
years had been the object of his affections, and for whose sake he
had already more than once entered the lists, he closed his literary
career with a series of feeble attacks upon the young writers of
post-revolutionary Germany.
In this he was only following in the footsteps of his master,
Schelling. Schelling, who, in marked contrast to Fichte with his clear
doctrine of the Ego, dwells upon the mysterious nature of the mind,
and bases not only philosophy, but also art and religion, upon the
perception of genius, the so-called "intellectual intuition," displays
both in his doctrine and in his want of method the arbitrariness, the
lawlessness, which is the kernel of Romanticism. As early as 1802, in
his _Bruno_, he used the significant expression and future catchword,
"Christian philosophy," though he still maintained that, in genuine
religious value, the Bible is not to be compared with the sacred books
of India--a theory which even Görres champions in the early stage of
his literary career. Having, like Novalis, at Tieck's instigation,
made a close study of Jakob Böhme and the other mystics, Schelling
began to philosophise mystically on the subject of "Nature in God," an
expression appropriated by Martensen in his _Spekulative Dogmatik_. But
when, shortly afterwards, a patent of nobility was conferred on him
(as professor at the University of Munich), and he was made President
of the Academy of Science in Catholic and clerical Bavaria, the
famous "Philosophy of Revelation" (Offenbarungsphilosophie) commenced
to germinate in his mind. Soon the transformation was complete; the
fiery enthusiast had become a courtier, the prophet a charlatan. With
his mysteries, his announcements of a marvellous science, "which
had hitherto been considered impossible," his refusal to print his
wisdom, to do anything but communicate it verbally, and even then not
in its entirety, he qualified himself for being called, after Hegel's
death, to Berlin, to lend a helping hand to State religion in the
"Christian-Germanic" police-governed Prussia of the day, and to teach a
State philosophy, for which, as he himself said, the only suitable name
is Christology. Here it was that the young generation, the Hegelians
of the Left, fell upon him and tore his mystic cobweb into a thousand
pieces.
Yet Schelling is the least irrational of the Romantic philosophers. He
is vehemently accused of heresy by Franz Baader, the reincarnated Jakob
Böhme, the object of Kierkegaard's admiration, who reproaches him with
setting the Trinity upon a logical balance-pole, and, still worse, with
daring to deny the existence of a personal devil. The utterances of
the others are in keeping with this. Schubert writes _The Symbolism of
Dreams_--was not the dream the ideal of Romanticism?--occupies himself
in all seriousness with interpreting them, happy in his persuasion
that clairvoyance and visions are the highest sources of knowledge.
The vision-seer of Prevorst, whom Strauss, characteristically enough,
begins his public career by exposing, plays an important part in those
days. Then there is Görres, who at the time of the great Revolution was
"inspired to triumphal song by the fall of Rome and the dissolution
of the Holy Roman Empire," and who afterwards took an active and
honourable part in rousing German patriotic spirit during the struggle
against Napoleon; this same Görres becomes the author of _Christian
Mysticism_ (a book which Kierkegaard read with shudders of awe),
revels in the blood of martyrs, gloats over the agonies and ecstasies
of the saints, enumerates the different aureoles, nail-prints, and
wounds in the side by which they are distinguished, and prostrates
himself in the dust, he, the old Jacobin, before the one true Catholic
Church, chanting the praises of the Holy Alliance. To these add the
politicians: Adam Müller, who, as Gotschall has aptly said, pursues
in politics the quest of Novalis's "blue flower," who would fain fuse
State, Science, Church, and Stage into one marvellous unit; Haller,
who concealed his conversion to Catholicism in order to retain his
appointments, and who, in his _Restauration der Staatswissenschaften_
(Revival of the Science of Statesmanship), bases this science upon
theocracy; Leo (scathingly criticised by Ruge), who, in the same
spirit, inveighs against the humanity of the age and its reluctance
to shed the blood of Radicals; and Stahl, who, in his _Philosophy of
Law_, compares marriage to the relation between Christ and the Church,
the family to the Trinity, and the earthly right of succession to
man's right to the heavenly inheritance. Taking all this together, one
feels as if Romanticism ended in a sort of witches' Sabbath, in which
the philosophers play the part of the old crones, amidst the thunders
of the obscurantists, the insane yells of the mystics, and the shouts
of the politicians for temporal and ecclesiastical despotism, while
theology and theosophy fall upon the sciences and suffocate them with
their caresses.
[1] G. L. Plitt: _Aus Schelling's Leben_, i. 309.
[2] G. Brandes: _Samlede Skrifter_, i. 464.
I