"Viel hunderttausend ohne Zahl,
Ihr sinket durch der Sense Strahl;
Weh' Rosen, weh' Lilien,
Weh' krause Basilien!
Selbst euch Kaiserkronen
Wird er nicht verschonen.
Ihr müsst zum Erntekranz hinein.
Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"
He spins out the six verses of the old song to fourteen by the aid of
a long list of flowers and plants; we are out of breath before we get
to the end of them. The volume of poems entitled _Die Romanzen vom
Rosenkranz_ ("Romances of the Rosary") is a romantic variation of the
Faust legend, showing the evil of thirst for knowledge and pride of it.
Faust himself is transformed into the Mephistophelian evil principle.
In this work, as well as in "Loreley," Brentano prepares the way for
Heinrich Heine. The romances are written in four-footed trochees, which
in their cadence and whole character anticipate Heine's trochaic verse,
especially in the droll juxtaposition of light, graceful lines and
lines consisting of learned names, obscure legal matter, and scraps of
mediæval mystic jargon.
As a prose writer, Brentano began, with his _Godwi_, in the style
of _Lucinde_. The first part of the book assumes that true morality
consists in allowing the sensual instincts free play, and immorality
in repressing or ignoring them. With bacchantic wildness the heroine
preaches the gospel of free love, and denounces marriage and every
species of compulsory virtue. The second part, in genuine Romantic
fashion, satirises the first part and the characters delineated in it.
Godwi, the hero of the first volume, retires into the background, and
the author himself, under the pseudonym Maria, takes his place. We
learn that it was simply with the view of obtaining the hand of the
daughter of one of the personages in the first part of the book, that
the author managed to gain possession of the correspondence of which
that first part consists. He had hoped by publishing it to attain
this end. But, as the first volume is not approved of, he takes it to
Godwi, the principal character, and begs him to tell what other love
adventures he has had. The astounded Godwi reads his own story. Book
in hand, he conducts the author round his garden, and says, pointing
to a pond: "This is the pond into which I fall on page 266 of the
first volume." Thus in _Godwi_ we have Romantic sensual licence in
combination with Romantic irony and selfduplication.
The revulsion from revolutionary ardour and passion was even more
complete in Brentano's case than in Fr. Schlegel's; it became positive
renunciation of reason. And his conversion, like Zacharias Werner's,
was of the species accompanied by a tearful conviction of sin. In his
_Sketch of the Life of Anna Catharina Emmerich_ he tells, without
giving a thought to any possible physiological explanation of the fact,
that her longing for the Holy Sacrament was so great, that often at
night, feeling herself irresistibly drawn to it, she left her cell,
and was found in the morning kneeling with outstretched arms outside
the locked church door. It never occurred to him that her condition
might be a morbid one, not even when she told him all the particulars
of the appearance of the stigmata on her body as if the whole thing had
happened to another nun of the neighbourhood.
But during the middle period of his literary career, Brentano produced
some prose works which are of more than merely historical literary
interest; for example, the fairy-tale, _Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia_,
which he first wrote in a pithy, condensed form, but at a later period
diluted with holy water and greatly expanded. This tale gives us an
idea of the inexhaustible supply of amusing and grotesque conceits to
which his conversation doubtless owed its great charm. In it Brentano
reveals himself as a master of the prose which, while playing with
words and ideas and connecting things which have not the remotest
connection, nevertheless dexterously refrains from mixing metaphors,
and never breaks the link in the chain of ideas. It may be a perfect
trifle, some accidental reminiscence (Brentano's remembering, for
instance, that in his childhood he had heard Goethe's mother say: "Dies
ist keine Puppe, sondern nur eine schöne Kunstfigur"), which sets him
weaving the chain. But with the inexorable artistic severity of a
contrapuntist, he holds to his fugitive motive throughout the whole
length of his composition, varying and enriching it. As a specimen
of this style, take the following paragraph from _Gockel, Hinkelund
Gackeleia_, that tale in which, throughout several hundred pages, words
and ideas undergo a transformation which fits them for their place in
the hen-world:--
"Die Franzosen haben das Schloss so übel mitgenommen, dass sie es
recht abscheulich zurückliessen. Ihr König Hahnri hatte gesagt, jeder
Franzose solle Sonntags ein Huhn, und wenn keins zu haben sei, ein
Hinkel in den Topf stecken und sich eine Suppe kochen. Darauf hielten
sie streng, und sahen sich überall um, wie jeder zu seinem Huhn kommen
könne. Als sie nun zu Haus mit den Hühnern fertig waren, machten sie
nicht viel Federlesens und hatten bald mit diesem, bald mit jenem
Nachbarn ein Hühnchen zu pflücken. Sie sahen die Landkarte wie einen
Speisezettel an; we etwas von Henne, Huhn oder Hahn stand, das strichen
sie mit rother Tinte an und giengen mit Küchenmesser und Bratspiess
darauf los. So giengen sie über den Hanebach, steckten Gross- und
Kleinhüningen in den Topf, und dann kamen his in das Hanauer Land. Als
sie nun Gockelsruh, das herrliche Schloss der Raugrafen von Hanau, im
Walde fanden, statuirten sie ein Exempel, schnitten allen Hühnern die
Hälse ab, steckten sie in den Topf und den rothen Hahn auf das Dach,
das heisst, sie machten ein so gutes Feuerchen unter den Topf, dass die
lichte Lohe zum Dach herausschlug und Gockelsruh darüber verbrannte.
Dann giengen sie weiter nach Hünefeld und Hunhaun."
This fairy-tale style, with its perpetual farcical play upon words,
almost reminds one of the manner in which the young men in some of
Shakespeare's plays give vent to their overflowing humour.
Much graver, if not less mannered, is the style of Brentano's most
famous story, _Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl_
("The Story of Brave Kasperl and Fair Annerl").
The subject is taken from _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_. In the second volume
of the collection, p. 204, is to be found a short ballad, _Weltlich
Recht_ ("Earthly Justice"), which tells the tale of the execution of
Fair Nanerl, who is glad to die and go to her child:--
"Der Fähndrich kam geritten und schwenket seine Fahn:
'Halt still mit der schönen Nanerl, ich bringe Pardon.'
'Fähndrich, lieber Fähndrich, sie ist ja schon todt.
'Gute nacht, meine schöne Nanerl, deine Seel ist bei Gott.'"[5]
In Brentano's version the whole story is told in the street, on
a long summer evening, by a poor old woman of eighty-eight, the
beautiful Annerl or Nanerl's grandmother. He has been so successful in
reproducing this aged, pious, and very superstitious woman's language,
that we seem to see her before us all the time. With consummate art, he
manages to keep the reader in constant suspense by the erratic manner
in which she tells her story, hurrying onward and then turning back to
catch up the thread she has let fall. We are never told enough during
the course of the narration to give us a clear understanding of the
whole position of affairs, but always enough to keep up our interest
and make us anxious to know the answer of the riddle, to get at the
explanation of the story-teller's mysterious hints. Seldom have the
veils concealing a series of incidents from the reader been raised so
skilfully, one by one.
Another of the merits of the tale is the vigour with which its main
idea, honour (the true and the false sense of honour, the shame of
wounded pride and the real shame and infamy to which ambition may
lead), is presented to us and developed in the actions and experiences
of the two principal characters. Kasperl, the brave Uhlan, whose sense
of honour is so keen that it amounts to sentimental weakness, is driven
to despair by the dishonourable conduct of his father and stepbrother.
He commits suicide, and is thereby saved the anguish of knowing the
fate of his sweetheart, fair Annerl. Annerl's whole life has been
controlled by a cruel fate. The poet, in his gloomy superstition, has
taken real pleasure in driving her onwards to calamity and death with
the irresistible, mysterious power of predestination. Annerl's mother
in her day had loved a huntsman. This huntsman is to be executed for
murder. When the child comes near the executioner, his sword trembles
in its scabbard--an unmistakable sign that it thirsts for her blood.
The huntsman's head, when it is cut off, flies towards her, and the
teeth grip her frock. Of the power that draws her on to wrong-doing and
misfortune we are constantly told: "It drew her with its teeth" ("Es
hat sie mit den Zähnen dazu gerissen"). Ambition leads to disgrace;
Annerl is seduced by a young officer under a false promise of marriage;
in her anguish and madness she strangles her new-born child, then gives
herself up to justice and pays the penalty of her crime with her young
life--her seducer, the ensign, arriving too late with a pardon.
This epitome of the tale shows to what extent Brentano, in this
particular case, has done homage to the doctrines of Romanticism.
Supernatural warnings play an important part. The career of the heroine
is regarded from the standpoint of Oriental fatalism; but at the same
time, and without any attempt to smooth away the contradiction, we
have the genuinely Catholic persuasion that a sin is being punished,
the sin committed by the chief character in setting the purely human
principle of honour above the Church's doctrine of heavenly grace.
Nevertheless, the little tale has both artistic style and a genuine
popular ring. The spirit of the popular ballad from which its theme is
borrowed hovers over it. And, what is still more worthy of note, it is
in so far an epoch-making work in German literature, that, long before
the appearance of Immermann's _Der Oberhof_ it heralds the age of the
peasant-story, striking in its naïve if somewhat artificial style the
chord of which we hear the echo so long afterwards in Auerbach and
others.
[1] "Yes, despise reason and science, the highest possessions of
man, let yourself be persuaded by the spirit of lies to believe in
hallucinations and magic, and you are mine without fail."
[2] "What beautiful image is this that the artist has created? Under
what genial sky was this man born? Is there no inscription to tell me
his name, since these dead lips are dumb for ever? The eye glows with
noble desire; enthusiasm shines from that fair brow, surmounted only
by clustering curls, not yet by the laurel wreath. He is a poet. The
wondrous smile of love, of life, is on his lips; romance dwells in
these thoughtful eyes, drollery in the cheeks' roguish curves. Fame
will ere long proclaim his name, and set the crown of laurel on his
brow."
[3] Gödeke: _Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung_, iii.,
Erste Abth., 31.
[4] "Long years ago the nightingale sang as she sings now. How sweet
it sounded! We were together then. I sit alone and spin and sing, and
cannot weep; clean and strong I spin my thread, as long as the moon
shines. The nightingale sang when we were together; now she but reminds
me that you have gone from me. It is of you alone that I think in the
moonlight; my heart is clean and strong as the thread I spin; may God
unite us again."
[5]
"The ensign came riding, his white flag he waved;
'Stop! here is the pardon--fair Nanerl is saved.'
'O ensign, good ensign, fair Nanerl is dead.'
'Thy soul is with God! Good night, Nanerl!' he said."