In his _Letters on Lucinde_, Schleiermacher, the high-minded and
honourable, brought all his intelligence to bear upon the task of
finding something complete, something sensible, in the book. He read
his personal opinions into it. But his position was a false one. He
was trying, by means of the discussion of an unreal book, to settle a
real question, trying to base a freer, higher moral code upon a work
which, instead of doing what it professed to do, namely, proving the
possibility of transforming life into poetry, simply retailed the
fantastic performances of a few talented individuals, interspersing
reflections on the poetry in a wild, extravagant reality.
_Lucinde_ was hollow at the core. And this hollow, empty idealism is a
feature common to all the many ramifications of Romanticism. Goethe's
Prometheus cries to Zeus: "Didst thou imagine that I would loathe life,
that I would flee into the wilderness, because all my dream-blossoms
did not mature?" Thus speaks a Prometheus, thus a Goethe. But it was
only natural that this emotional, inactive young generation should
produce a group of authors who, just because "all their dream-blossoms
did not mature," in desperate dissatisfaction with reality grasped at
empty air and pursued shadows, which they obstinately persisted in
trying to endow with corporeal existence, maintaining that art and
poetry and their element and organ, imagination, are alone essential
and living, but that all else (in other words, real life) is, as vulgar
prose, meaningless, nay evil, in the eyes of genius.[1]
And yet the earliest preachers of this new doctrine were far from
being wild or defiant. The first countenance which meets our gaze is,
on the contrary, peculiarly gentle, one of the purest and mildest in
all modern literature--the pale, noble face of Wackenroder.
The Romantic enthusiasm for art first found expression in a delicate
little work from the pen of an ardent youth, whose life was shortened
by the conflict between his burning desire to live for art, and the
obligation laid upon him by his father to pursue a practical calling.
He died, his powers entirely exhausted, in his twenty-fifth year. His
life was like the mild, gentle breeze, which on a day in the early
spring warms the air, and tempts forth the first flowers. His letters
to Tieck, who was his intimate friend, and for whom he had an unbounded
admiration, reveal an almost girlish affection for that more virile and
notable man.
In every library of any importance one is sure to find a small,
beautifully printed and bound book, published in 1797, entitled
_Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders_ ("Heart
Outpourings of an Art-Loving Friar"). The author's name is not given.
As vignette there is a head of Raphael, who, with the great eyes,
full lips, and slender neck given him in this portrait, looks like
some highly intellectual Christian devotee of Venus, far advanced in
consumption. The inscription below the picture is not simply Raphael,
but "the divine Raphael," i.e. the Raphael of the Romanticists. This
dainty little book is, as it were, the primary cell of the whole
Romantic structure; round it the later productions group themselves.
Though not the offspring of a vigorous creative power, its germinative
force proved wonderfully great. It is a book which contains nothing
but ivy-like, twining ideas, nothing but passive impressions; but
the wax upon which these impressions are stamped is so pure that the
impressions are firm and clear. The title does not mislead; the author
pours out his heart in a stream of fervent and religious enthusiasm for
art, giving expression to a few simple ideas in a simple, untheoretical
manner. The book is not the product of a great or epoch-making mind;
but it has one great virtue, it is original. To the Friar the only
allowable attitude towards art is that of devotion; great artists are
in his eyes blessed, holy saints. His admiration for them is that of an
adoring child.
More than once in the course of the book Tieck has collaborated with
Wackenroder; but the simple autobiography of the young musician, Joseph
Berglinger, is entirely Wackenroder's work. The delicate refinement of
Berglinger's character reminds us of Joseph Delorme, the fictitious
personage in whom the young, Romantic, Sainte-Beuve described
himself. Berglinger is Wackenroder. Like Wackenroder he opposes the
determination of his father that he is not to become an artist, and
simultaneously carries on an even harder struggle with himself in the
matter of his position towards art. What troubles him is a fear, which
curiously enough meets young Romanticism here on the very threshold,
like the shadow of its fate, the fear of being incapacitated for real
life by too entire absorption in art. Rückert has given masterly
expression to the idea in the following lines:--
"Die Kinder, lieber Sohn, der Gaukelschwertverschlucker
In Madras üben sich nicht an Confekt und Zucker,
Von Bambus lernen sie die Spitzen zu verschlingen,
Um wachsend in der Kunst es his zum Schwert zu bringen.
Willst Du als Mann das Schwert der Wissenschaft verdaun,
Musst Du als Jüngling nicht Kunstzuckerbrödchen kaun."[2]
Joseph expresses it thus: Art is a tempting, forbidden fruit; he who
has once tasted its sweet, innermost juice is irrevocably lost to the
acting, living world. The soul which art has enervated is perplexed and
helpless face to face with reality. Joseph himself is only delivered
from this distressing mental condition when glorious music raises him
high above the troubles of this earth. But he is at the mercy of his
moods, and fittingly likens his soul to the "Æolian harp, whose strings
vibrate to a breath that comes one knows not whence, and on which the
changing breezes play at will." Music was the art Wackenroder loved
and understood best; in his posthumous _Fancies on the Subject of Art_
he places it above all the others.
Wackenroder resembled Novalis in constitution, but had even less
capacity for resistance to the storms of life. He was good-natured
and credulous to a degree, with a genuine Romantic credulity, which
saw mysteries and miracles everywhere. This inclination of his led
to practical jokes being played upon him by his comrades--though
they too were all more or less liable to hallucinations and disposed
to put faith in miracles. An account of one such trick has been
preserved, such an anecdote as only the biography of a Romanticist
could supply. Indeed, to understand the theories of the Romanticists,
it is necessary to see the men themselves in their everyday life
and at their desks.--Wackenroder was a diligent student, and never
willingly missed a lecture. Two of his less conscientious friends went
to his room during the hour of a certain lecture, knowing that he
would be absent, and tied a dog, in a sitting posture, to the chair
in front of the writing-table. Both paws were carefully placed on a
huge folio which lay open on the table. The clever animal, accustomed
to such performances, sat quietly in this ludicrous position while
the two friends hid in an adjoining room to watch the development of
their plot. Returning earlier than usual to fetch some papers he had
forgotten, Wackenroder stood motionless with astonishment, gazing at
the dog and its learned occupation. Fearful of neglecting his duty,
and unwilling to put an end to the marvellous apparition, he gently
lifted his papers from the table and left the room. In the evening,
no one else seeming inclined to talk, he suddenly broke the silence
by saying impressively: "Friends, I must tell you a most marvellous
thing. Our Stallmeister (the dog) can read."[3] Does not this read
like a scene from Tieck's _Puss in Boots_ or Hoffmann's story of the
dog Berganza? Do not these books, grotesquely unreal as they are, seem
actual transcripts from the private lives of the Romanticists? In
_Kater Murr_, the cat says: "Nothing in my master's room attracted me
more than the writing-table, which was strewn with books, manuscripts,
and all manner of remarkable instruments. I might call this table
the magic circle into which I was irresistibly drawn, all the time
feeling a kind of holy awe, which prevented me from at once yielding
to my inclination. At last, one day, when my master was absent, I
overcame my fear and sprang upon the table. What joy to sit in the
midst of the papers and books and rummage about amongst them!" Then
the cat dexterously opens a large book with its paws and endeavours
to comprehend the printed signs. At the very moment, however, when
it seems to feel a wonderful spirit taking possession of it, it is
surprised by its master who, with the cry: "Confounded animal!" rushes
at it with uplifted stick. But he immediately starts back, exclaiming:
"Cat! cat! you are reading! Nay, that I may not and will not forbid.
What a marvellous desire for knowledge you have been born with!"
Such a scene cannot strike us as unnatural in a purely fanciful tale,
when we have learned what could happen in real life. We seem to see
the rainbow of fantastic imagination stretching its arch over the
whole Romantic movement, from its first mild, though earnest, herald
to its last weird, mannered exponent, from Wackenroder to Hoffmann.
When, in the Life of Tieck, we find innumerable records of similar
hallucinations, we begin to suspect that there is nothing, however
fantastic, to be found in the Romanticists' writings which their
fevered vision did not persuade them that they saw in real life.
It is exceedingly interesting to observe, not only the influence which
Wackenroder's moods and emotions exercise upon Tieck, but also the part
which the latter, thus influenced, takes in Wackenroder's work. The
first thing which strikes one is, that Tieck, hitherto able only during
the emancipating moments of production to rouse himself out of dark,
William Lovell-like moods and give his rich talent free play, learns
from Wackenroder to believe in imagination and art as mighty powers in
human life, thereby arriving at the only firm basis for a philosophy
of life to which he ever attained. The second is, that he, the less
independent spirit of the two, following in Wackenroder's footsteps,
accentuates all his tendencies, carrying them to wildly fantastic, yet
natural conclusions.
It is in those portions of the _Herzensergiessungen_ in which Tieck
collaborated, that the Roman Catholic tendency appears undisguisedly.
It was Tieck who made the painter Antonio worship, not art alone, but
also "the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Apostles"; and Tieck's is the
dictum, that true love of art must be a "religious love or a beloved
religion." But most remarkable of all as a biographical document is a
letter, which, though repudiated by Tieck, was certainly written by
him, the letter in which a young man, a disciple of Albert Dürer, who
has come to Rome to study art, describes his conversion to Catholicism.
It takes place in St. Peter's. "The sonorous Latin chants, which,
rising and falling, penetrated the swelling waves of music like ships
making their way through the waves of the sea, raised my soul higher
and ever higher. When the music had pervaded my entire being and was
flowing through all my veins, I roused myself from inward contemplation
and looked around me, and the whole temple seemed to me to be alive, so
intoxicated was I with the music. At this moment it ceased; a priest
advanced to the high-altar, and with impressive gesture lifted high the
Host in view of the assembled multitude. All sank upon their knees, and
trumpets and I know not what mighty instruments crashed and boomed the
spirit of adoration into my very soul. Then all at once it seemed to me
as though that whole kneeling multitude were praying for the salvation
of my soul, and I mingled my prayer with theirs."
This passage is of peculiar importance because it contains a conclusive
proof (one overlooked by that most thorough of observers and critics,
Hettner) that the tendency to Catholicism had its root in the very
first principle of the Romantic movement. Both Hettner and Julian
Schmidt attach too much importance to the fact that Schlegel, as an old
man, in his well-known letter to a French lady, ascribes this Catholic
tendency simply to a _prédilection d'artiste_. For the reason, the
origin, of the artistic predilection is to be found in the original
revulsion from the rational.
But the tendency in the direction of Catholicism was not the only one
of Wackenroder's tendencies which was immediately seized upon and
exaggerated by Tieck and his school. In the _Fantasien über die Kunst_
Wackenroder praises music as the art of arts, the art which above all
others is capable of condensing and preserving the emotions of the
human heart, of teaching us "to feel feeling." What else, what more,
did the Romanticists feel? This exactly suited Tieck. Wackenroder
proclaims the superiority of music over poetry, and affirms that the
language of music is the richer of the two. To whom could this appeal
as much as to the man whose poems are rather an expression of the moods
in which poetry is written than poetry itself, rather moods of art than
works of art?
Tieck goes further than Wackenroder, and from music selects
instrumental music as that in which alone art is really free,
emancipated from all the restraints of the outer world. Hoffman too,
musician as well as poet, calls instrumental music the most romantic
of all the arts; and it may be mentioned as a striking instance of
the coherence which invariably exists between the great intellectual
phenomena of an age, as a proof of the fact that the Romanticists, with
all their supposed and all their real independence and spontaneity,
were unconsciously yielding to and following an inevitable general
tendency, that it is just at this time that Beethoven emancipates
instrumental music, and raises it to its highest development.
Enthusiasm for musical intensity and fervour having thus found its
way into literature, Tieck soon arrives at the point of regarding
emotional, melodious sound as the only true, the only pure poetry. His
_Love Story of Fair Magelone_ is a good example of this. Even in the
prose portions of the tale everything rings and resounds--the hero's
emotions and the landscape which serves as a background for them. The
Count hears none of the sounds around him; for "the music within him
drowned the rustling of the trees and the splashing of the fountains."
But this inward music in its turn is drowned by the sweet strains of
real instruments. "The music flowed like a murmuring brook, and he saw
the charm of the Princess come floating upon the silver stream, saw its
waves kiss the hem of her garment.... Music was now the only movement,
the only life in nature." Then the music dies away. "Like a stream
of blue light" it disappears into the void; and forthwith the knight
himself begins to sing.
In the "Garden of Poesy," of which we read in _Zerbino_, roses and
tulips, birds and the azure of the skies, fountains and storms, streams
and spirits, all sing. We read in _Bluebeard_ that "the flowers
kissed each other melodiously." In this literature everything has its
music--the moonlight, scents, painting; and then on the other hand we
read of the beams, the fragrance, and the shapes of music: "They sang
with melodious throats, keeping time with the music of the moonbeams."
The Romanticists had turned their backs upon material reality.
Definite, corporeal form, nay, even a distinct representation of mental
conditions was impossible to them. This was not what they aimed at. In
their eyes tangibility was coarse and vulgar. Every distinct feature
melts away in a sort of dissolving view. They are afraid of losing in
profundity and infinity what they might possibly gain in restraint and
plastic power.
All the masters of the school agree on this point. First and foremost
we have Novalis. His _Hymns to Night_, and indeed all his lyrics, are
night and twilight poetry, in the dusk of which no distinct outlines
are possible. His psychological aim was, as he himself says, to fathom
the nameless, unconscious powers of the soul. Therefore his æsthetic
theory is, that language ought to become musical, to become song again;
and he also maintains that in a poetical work there need be no unity
except that of spirit, that unity of idea or action is unnecessary.
"One can imagine," he says, "tales without more coherence than the
different stages of a dream, poems which are melodious and full of
beautiful words, but destitute of meaning or connection; at most,
comprehensible stanzas here and there, like fragments of perfectly
unrelated things. This true poetry can of course only have a general
allegorical significance and an indirect effect, like music."
How entirely this harmonises with the theories of Friedrich Schlegel!
Schlegel, whose nature was a series of moods, who had not strength of
will to carry out any plan, whose own career resembles an arabesque
beginning with a thyrsus and ending with a cross composed of a knife
and fork, says: "The arabesque, the simple musical swaying of the line
itself, is the oldest, the original form in which human imagination
takes shape. Its contours are no more definite than those of the clouds
in the evening sky."
The saying is apt when applied, not to imagination in general, but to
the imagination of the Romanticists. Tieck's lyrics resemble Goethe's
as the clouds on the horizon resemble snow-clad mountains. Our attitude
to the lyric poetry of the Romanticists resembles that of Polonius
to the cloud: "Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a
camel?--By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.--Methinks it is
like a weasel.--It is backed like a weasel.--Or like a whale?--Very
like a whale." In Novalis, in the poems at any rate, we have still
tangible, distinct artistic form, in Tieck's writings everything floats
in a sort of mist or vapour of form supposed to correspond to the
mysterious, expectant fervour of the theme. The work of art is stayed
and fixed in its first, embryonic, vapour-ball stage. This elementary
product of the imagination is designated primitive poetry. In order
to reduce clearly defined poetic art once more to primeval poetry,
all definite forms must be dissolved and kneaded together. Tieck
preferred those works of the great poets which they wrote before their
style was developed, or which they chose to leave tolerably formless
(he confesses that not one of Shakespeare's plays produced such an
impression on him as _Pericles_, only part of which is genuine), and
he himself, following in the track of _Pericles_, produced such works
as _Genoveva_ and _Octavian_, in which the epic, lyric, and dramatic
styles are all minced up together.
This medley of styles was adopted in Denmark. It was well suited to the
subject of Oehlenschläger's _St. Hans Aßen Spil_ and fairly so to that
of his _Aladdin_; sometimes it produced very unsuccessful results, as
in the case of Hauch's _Hamadryaden_.
So great is Tieck's formlessness, so impossible is it to him (in his
Romantic period) to condense, that he is inefficient even in pure
lyric poetry. He may talk much of music and of the music of words, but
he is wanting in the gift of rhythm; he does not seem to have had a
correct ear. A. W. Schlegel was infinitely Tieck's superior in this
respect, as is proved by his admirable translations of the songs in
_As You Like It_. But of Tieck and most of the Romanticists it is true
that, in spite of all their talk of melodious style, they themselves
were only melodious when they reverted to those southern measures, to
the exact rules of which they were obliged to conform. They filled
in the framework of sonnet and canzonet as ladies fill in with
embroidery an outline designed upon canvas, crowding in rhymes in such
superabundance that the meaning was often swamped by them. Tieck writes
in _Magelone_:--
"Errungen,
Bezwungen
Von Lieb ist das Glück,
Verschwunden
Die Stunden,
Sie fliehen zurück;
Und selige Lust
Sie stillet,
Erfüllet
Die trunkene, wonneklopfende Brust."
In Baggesen's _Faust_ we find the following rather overdone parody of
this Romantic jingle:--
"Mit Ahnsinn Wahnsinn, lächelndweinend,
Einend--
Mit Schiefe, Tiefe, dunkelmeinend,
Scheinend--
Der Enge Läng' entflammt in weiten Breiten,
Muss licht der Dichter durch die Zeiten gleiten."
And it was not only metres that the Romanticists borrowed from the
Spaniards and Italians, but all kinds of technical tricks. They
naively set to work to produce a lyrical picture with the assistance
of assonances and tragic vowel sounds. Every vowel and consonant in
the alphabet was pressed into the service in turn. Forty sonorous
as in succession are supposed to induce a cheerful frame of mind in
the reader, and a score or so of sombre, mournful us make his flesh
creep. Take as an example Tieck's melancholy U-Romance of old Sir
Wulf, who is carried off by the devil. In it he goes the length of
using _begunnte_ instead of _begann_ for the sake of tragic effect.
When the reader's nerves have been narcotised for half-an-hour by
such terminations as Unke--Sturme--hinunter--begunnte--verdunkeln
--verschlungen--Wulfen--Münze gulden--grossen Kluften-rucke,
Drucke--thuen, Zünften--lugen--bedunken--tiefen Brünsten--vielen
Unken, die heulten und wunken--zu dem Requiem des todten Wulfen, den
der dunkle Satan mit vielen Wunden--erschlüge--when nothing but u-tu-tu
is sounding in his ears, he has reached the climax, language has become
music, and he floats off on the stream of an emotional mood. It is in
drama that this vowel-music is most comical. In Friedrich Schlegel's
_Alarkos_, that arsenal of assonances and alliterations, the hero
sometimes for two or three pages in succession ends every line with the
same vowel:--
"Ihr Männer all', Pilaster dieser alten Burg,
Genossen, Tapfre! die umkränzt mein Ritterthum,
Dess Glorie wir oft neu gefärbt mit hoher Lust
In unsres kühnen Herzens eignem heissen Blut--
Die alte Ehr' in tiefer Brust, der lichte Ruhm,
Dem festen Aug' in Nacht der einzig helle Punkt,
So folgten Einem Stern wir all' vereint im Bund;
Der Bund ist nun zerschlagen durch den herben Fluch,
Der mich im Strudel fortreisst fremd' und eigner Schuld.--
Mich zwingt, von hier zu eilen, ein geheimer Ruf,
Nach fernen Orten muss ich in drei Tagen, muss
Ein gross Geschäft vollenden, und die Frist ist kurz."
And on it goes--Burg, Lust, Muth, Schutz, Kund, Brust, Furcht, und,
Ruhms, thun, Bund, uns, &c., &c. One derives quite as much satisfaction
from the assonances alone as from the complete lines. When _Alarkos_
was performed in Weimar and the audience burst into uproarious
laughter, Goethe rose from his place in the stalls, cried in a voice of
thunder: "Man lache nicht!" and signalled to the police that all who
continued to laugh were to be turned out. We who read _Alarkos_ now,
are thankful that no one has the right to turn us out.
The reason why the Romanticists subjected themselves to all this
metrical restraint is not far to seek. These compulsory, cold metres
exactly suit writers in whom metrical skill is combined with a complete
lack of inventive power. But _terza rima, ottava rima_, and sonnets are
an insufficient disguise for the formlessness of their matter. When the
mist is so thick that it can be cut with a knife, the Romanticists cut
it into fourteen pieces and call it a sonnet.
In the unrestricted metres, formlessness and prosiness reach a climax.
What, for instance, can be said for such lines as the following, from
Tieck's _Römische Reise_?--
"Weit hinter uns liegt Rom,
Auch mein Freund ist ernst,
Der mit mir nach Deutschland kehrt,
Der mit allen Lebens Kräften
Sich in alte und neue Kunst gesenkt,
Der edle Rumohr,
Dess Freundschaft ich in mancher kranken Stunde
Trost und Erheiterung danke."[4]
That well-known drastic critic of the Romanticists, Arnold
Ruge, supplied an appendix to this, which runs:--
"Hochgeehrter Herr Hofrath!
Dieser unmittelbaren Lyrik,
Das verzeihn Sie gütigst, weiss ich
Mit dem besten Willen,
Sowohl in alter als in neuer Poesie,
Nichts zur Seite zu stellen,
Als etwa diesen
Schwachen Versuch einer freien Nachbildung."[5]
But the attempt to make away with language in favour of music reaches
a climax when Tieck goes so far as to endow music itself, or musical
instruments, with the power of speech. Occasionally the result is
comical, as in _Sternbald_ (first edition), where the instruments all
talk, the flute saying:--
"Unser Geist ist himmelblau,
Führt Dich in die blaue Ferne.
Zarte Klänge locken Dich,
Ein Gemisch von andern Tönen.
Lieblich sprechen wir hinein,
Wenn die ändern munter singen,
Deuten blaue Berge, Wolken,
Lieben Himmel sänftlich an,
Wie der letzte leise Grund
Hinter grünen frischen Baümen."[6]
This train of thought received its most classic expression in the poem
with which _Phantasus_ ends, the theme of which is, in the manner of
Calderon, repeated with innumerable variations:--
"Liebe denkt in süssen Tönen,
Denn Gedanken stehn zu fern,
Nur in Tönen mag sie gern
Alles, was sie will, verschönen.
Drum ist ewig uns zugegen,
Wenn Musik mit Klängen spricht,
Ihr die sprache nicht gebricht,
Holde Lieb' auf allen Wegen;
Liebe kann sich nicht bewegen,
Leihet sie den Odem nicht."[7]
This superhuman love, which differs from ordinary human love in being
unable to employ language as an organ, finds absolutely appropriate
expression in music; language is only employed to condemn itself and to
declare that it cedes its place to music. To such a degree of subtlety
and ultrarefinement does the Romantic spirit gradually lead.
The next step is that which Tieck takes in his comedy, _Die verkehrte
Welt_ ("The Topsy-Turvy World"), namely, the employing of language
exclusively on account of its musical qualities. To this comedy there
is prefixed as overture a symphony, which, in its essentially musical
vagueness, displays really classic originality. Music had never been
paraphrased into words in this manner before; hence the experiment is
to this day regarded as distinctly typical. The man who has the courage
to carry his madness to its final consequence, by doing so endows this
madness, in which there is method, with living vigour.