DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE OR WORK.
DATE.
SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Fiction:
(_a_) Moral Tales
Don Juan MANUEL (_Count Lucanor_)
Early fourteenth century
Passed into stock of _fabliaux_ and _novelle_, and thence
occasionally reappear, _e.g._, in _Taming of the Shrew_.
CERVANTES (_Novelas Exemplares_)
1613
Utilized by later Elizabethan playwrights, _e.g._, Middleton’s
_Spanish Gipsy_, Fletcher’s _Fair Maid of the Inn_.
(_b_) Chivalric Romances (Libros de Caballerias)
_Amadis of Gaul_
Fourteenth century
_Palmerin_, _Palmerin of England_, etc.
Fifteenth century
The chivalric romances, combined with the pastoral, led (through
D’Urfé) to the French “heroic romances” of La Calprenède and
Scudéry. For their effect on English work, _see_ French
Literature.
(_c_) Pastoral Romance (part prose, part verse)
MONTEMAYOR (_Diana_)
1520-1562
CERVANTES (Galatea)
1585
The _Arcadia_ of Sidney and Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_
owe some influence to Montemayor. _Diana_ was Englished at
the end of the sixteenth century.
(_d_) Romance of Common Life
_Celestina_ (_Calisto and Meliboea_)
Fifteenth century
Picaroon Novels (Novelas de Picaros)
_Lazarillo de Tormes_, _Guzman de Alfarache_
1554, 1599
QUEVEDO (_Life of Buscon_)
1626
The original source of the picaroon (or picaresque) novel, first
seen in England in, _e.g._, Nash’s _Jack Wilton_. In
France passed through Scarron to Lesage. Taken up by Defoe
(_Moll Flanders_, etc.), Fielding (_Joseph Andrews_),
Smollett (_Roderick Random_, etc.). Revived by Dumas and his
followers.
(_e_) Satirical
CERVANTES (_Don Quixote_)
1547-1616 (_D.Q._ 1605)
Greatly read and quoted in England at all times. Imitated in
Butler’s _Hudibras_.
Poetry:
(_a_) Early Romance
_Poem of the Cid_
Twelfth and thirteenth centuries
(_b_) Learned Poetry (lyric)
GARCILASO DE LA VEGA
1530-1568
GONGORA
1561-1627
The _estilo culto_ joins with Italian influence to create
artificiality of style.
Ethical Writing
Early Collection of Proverbs
Utilized in Caxton’s _Dictes and Sayings_, _etc._
GUEVARA (_Golden Book_ and _Golden Letters_)
1474-1546
Much effect on Tudor England in encouraging apophthegmatic and
sententious style.
Drama
LOPE DE VEGA
1562-1635
CALDERON
1601-1681
The “cloak and sword” dramas of situation and intrigue influence
plays of Jonson and Fletcher. French comedy sought material in
Lope, and England was thence indirectly affected after the
Restoration.
(_b_) GERMAN LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
For our purpose, which is that of surveying the influence exerted by
other literatures upon both the form and contents of our own, the
writings of Germany are of less prominence than those of the countries
with which we have hitherto dealt. To Latin our debt has been great and
continuous; to Greek it has been less continuous, but essentially much
more important; to Italian it was a debt of considerable dimensions for
some three centuries; to French it has been an extensive obligation
at two different and well marked epochs of some duration and potency.
But to German we owed but an inconsiderable debt until the end of the
eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth, and, even since
that time, the influence has been rather philosophical and scientific
than literary—one affecting general currents of thought and methods of
thinking rather than one affecting range of literary subject or manner of
literary expression.
German “literature” at its best covers some half-century. The years from
about 1770 to about 1820 were its golden period, the age of Lessing,
Schiller, and Goethe. Since the latter date Heine alone stands forth as
one of those names in pure literature which have a cosmopolitan, and not
merely a German, significance. In speaking thus we are not forgetting
minor poets like Uhland, or philosophers like Schopenhauer, or historians
like Mommsen. But, in a literary inquiry of the present scope, we must
not, on the one hand, confound science, even the science of philosophy,
with literature; and, on the other, we must not lose our truth of
perspective by magnifying the relatively small.
* * * * *
It is at first sight one of the most amazing facts in literary history
that Germany should have been so late in arriving at a stage of creative
genius which was reached five centuries earlier in Italy, a hundred and
fifty years earlier in France, and nearly two hundred years earlier in
England; for by so much time does the flourishing of Dante, of Corneille,
and of Shakespeare, respectively precede the flourishing of Goethe. When
we recognize what a capacity the German mind possesses for deep and
sustained reflection, for tender sentiment, for rhythmic expression, we
are struck with wonder that, before the days of Lessing in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, German literature appears like a huge
sand-waste, with here and there a poor oasis yielding for the most part
but stony fruits and almost destitute of verdant beauty, except—and the
exception is considerable—those simple and earnest _Volkslieder_ in which
the Teutonic feeling finds such touching outlet.
The _Lay of the Nibelungen_ is properly an antique. The Minnesänger are
to us little more than a tradition. Of the Meistersänger perhaps Hans
Sachs is the only name which readily recalls itself. Luther we know full
well, but, except for his hymn, _Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott_, he is
remembered as a figure of theological controversy and a translator of
the Bible rather than as a man of letters in the proper sense. We are
familiar with the almost omniscient Leibnitz in the realms of science and
philosophy; but it is not till towards the end of the eighteenth century,
just before our own Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, that we meet with a
fully matured and artistic literature, graced with numerous rememberable
names—with Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, and, in a minor rank, Klopstock,
Wieland, Bürger, Jean Paul Richter.
For this long sterility and slow development of German literature various
reasons are assigned. We need not here pretend to estimate how far they
are severally true. We cannot refer all literary outbursts to causes
independent of genius. Nor is it necessary always to demand an extensive
national life as a condition of literary fertility. Looking at the
golden-age literatures of Athens and Florence, we should rather hold that
it is a free-spirited and cultured life pervading a community, small or
great, which stimulates to literary productiveness and excellence. It is,
in fact, the prevailing ideals in a community which determine whether
it shall create a splendid literature or not. In Germany there were
for centuries no communities pervaded with this spirited and cultured
life; the prevailing ideals were not in the direction of any consummate
artistic production. Till 1802 there existed, in name at least, as
many as two hundred and fifty petty princedoms and paltry republics in
Germany, for the most part little better than narrow feudal domains,
struggling, ignoble, and selfish, as such disintegrated political atoms
are wont to be. So long as these were really separate there was no
grandeur of spirit, no high level of culture, in Germany. Nevertheless,
for a generation before the end of the eighteenth century there had been
growing up a wider and more national German sentiment and a considerable
measure of union, political and social. It was not till this generation
that Goethe and Schiller appeared. The wars which devastated Germany
after the Reformation were of most hideous ferocity and unparalleled
continuance, and had necessarily caused a dearth of literature as of
other arts. What literature is to be found in Germany for two hundred
years, from the time of our own Henry VIII down to the time of our George
III—all those generations which include our Spenser, Bacon, Shakespeare,
Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray—is almost entirely a literature of
controversy, religion, hymns, criticism, and learning. Then at length,
with the growing feeling of a general Germanic nationality and a general
Germanic spirit and culture, with religious freedom established and
controversy worn out, with the ideals of learning homogeneously spread,
the time has come when literary genius finds its apt environment, and the
thought and feeling of Germany take shape in dramas, ballads, lyrics,
novels, and all other wonted forms. And then, for a generation, German
literature is the dominant literature of Europe.
* * * * *
With the literary work—if we may call it such—of the monastic period, and
with the religious poems of the learned German monks, we have nothing
to do. German literature at all worthy of the name begins with the
various _Lieder_, or romantic lays and lyrics of the twelfth century.
The impulse to the Romances of Alexander and of the Table Round came
from the trouvères of Northern France; the impulse to the lyrics of
chivalrous minstrelsy came from the troubadours of Languedoc. During
the Crusades the German barons were prominent, and that great motley
pilgrimage of Frenchmen, Germans, Provençals, and Italians to the Holy
Land was the means of spreading the legends and literary manners of the
one to the knowledge and imitation of the rest. It was probably in this
way, it was certainly at this time, that arose the Minne-Gesang and the
army of Minnesänger, who were its poets. Minne means “love,” and love
is the special theme of those who copied the troubadours. The lyrics of
the Minnesänger are primarily love-ditties of the kind which have been
already described as current in Provence. Not that all their _Lieder_
were lyric songs. There were also legends and romances, satires and
fables.
Most famous among all the creations of mediaeval Germany stands forth the
_Nibelungen Lied_, the “Lay of the Nibelungen.” Properly speaking the
title is _The Calamity of the Nibelungen_—_Der Nibelungen Noth_. The work
is an epic, the one epic of Germany. It records how Siegfried, a hero of
the fifth century, was done to treacherous death through the jealousy of
the Amazon Queen Brünhild, and how his murder was ruthlessly avenged by
his wife Kriemhild. The Nibelungen are properly fabulous giants of the
Land of Fog, but when a vast treasure, which Siegfried has taken from
them, comes into the hands of the Burgundians at Worms, these Burgundians
become in turn the Nibelungen. And since it is upon the lords of these
hapless Burgundian Nibelungen that Kriemhild’s vengeance falls, the poem
is rightly styled _Der Nibelungen Noth_. Such is the plot of this “Iliad
of Germany,” of which the collecting or formulation dates from about the
year 1200, and which is full of great exploits and great passions, of
witchcraft and murder and grimness. From a literary point of view the
composition is one of great vigour but of no less great uncouthness.
One other product of the time deserves some mention. It is the beast
story, or satirical fable, of _Reineke Fuchs_—“Reynard the Fox”—wherein
the cunning of the fox is contrasted with the qualities of the other
animals, who each bear a special sobriquet, and wherein human practices
are all the time playfully satirized. That the French borrowed this
beast-epic in their _Roman de Renart_ from the Germans, and not the
Germans from the French, is clear from the names borne by the various
animals, such as the French _renard_, the fox, and _baudet_, the donkey,
which are but the old German nicknames, Reynhart and Baldwin, in slight
disguise.
* * * * *
Following the Minnesänger came the Meister-Gesang and the Meistersänger.
This was the age of trade guilds, when artisans met as in a club, and
when each guild contained its poet or its poetaster. The shoemaker or
weaver had often a fancy to be rhymester for his mates; thereupon were
formed special guilds of poets of this sort, poetic artisans or artisan
poets, and these were called the Schools of Meistersänger. Naturally
enough the verse of men like these concerned itself, not with chivalry
and troubadour lyrics, but with themes of common life, with wedding and
christening songs, with songs of drink, of labour, and of domesticity.
In this age begin those special German _Volkslieder_, or “people’s
songs,” of which some touchingly sweet and musical specimens are
still read and heard to-day. The most prolific and best known of the
Meistersänger is Hans Sachs, “the cobbler bard,” who flourished about the
year 1550.
Of more importance to ourselves, perhaps, at this time was Sebastian
Brandt. He is scarcely one of the Meistersänger, since he was no artisan,
but a lawyer. Though of the same time and style he stands quite apart.
Us he concerns because his work, the _Narrenschiff_, or “Ship of Fools,”
was imitated in the sixteenth century by our English Barclay, and was
the parent of a considerable satirical progeny during that century.
It suggested, for instance, both the conception and the title of such
productions as the _Ship of Drunkards_. The “Ship” was chosen by Brandt
to convey the fools he satirizes—fops, misers, drunkards, and the
like—because no other conveyance was large enough. The captain was a
book-fool, and his name was Sebastian Brandt. About 1550 there was also
translated by Copland, under the name of the _Owl-glass_, the famous
_Eulenspiegel_, a series of amusing trickeries which are reflected in the
English Robin Goodfellow.
The age of the Meistersänger is followed by the age of Luther, the
Reformation, and the Thirty Years’ War. It is an era of the founding of
universities, of the spread of learning, of religious dispute carried on
in pedantic language, an era when the popular speech was disregarded in
favour of Latin or French. To speak broadly, there is no literature worth
the name from the time of Luther, who died in 1546, down to Lessing, who
wrote in 1760. Nor is Luther himself a figure of literature proper. As a
translator of the Bible into the Upper-Saxon dialect, and as having thus
fixed the modern German language, he is of the greatest importance to
Germany itself. To us his value is that of a thinker or moral force.
Yet there is one product of this long period which must count for
something in virtue of its subject. It is the legend of Dr. Faustus,
which was first printed in 1587, was utilized by Marlowe for his most
celebrated play, gave the hint for Green’s _Friar Bacon_, and was revived
by Goethe in his most famous and most influential work, the drama of
_Faust_. It is reported that there actually was a person named Faust in
Swabia in 1560, who rejoiced in a reputation for sorcery, and in the
companionship of the devil.
* * * * *
With a long leap over an irrelevant and wearisome interspace we arrive
at the “Classic Period” of German literature. It seems better to call
this the “classic” than the “classical” period, since the former word
signifies the best and golden age, the age of the classic works, not
the age in which literature followed the rules and canons of classicism
after the manner of the French in the “classical” period of Louis XIV,
or of the English in the “classical” period after the days of Dryden. It
is a superlative merit of the great German writers that they, like our
Elizabethans, and like our poets of the early nineteenth century, for the
most part refused to be fettered by artificial rules.
Now was the time of a splendid crop of genius, a time when Frederick
the Great had made North Germany more compact and peaceful, a time when
princely patronage deigned to take note of literature. It was the time
of a revolt against pedantry, of a reaction in favour of the national
language, and of romantic and spontaneous literary creation.
The period of creation had been preceded in the early eighteenth century
by a period of criticism, in which the German Swiss school of Bodmer,
affecting the literary freedom of England, came into collision with the
Leipzig school of Gottsched, which favoured the regulated literature of
France. The latter faction, however, soon passed away, and Klopstock’s
_Messias_, inspired by Milton, though a work poor in action and
character, showed how Germany was minded to abandon the mundane tone and
interests which had satisfied the school of Voltaire and his Teutonic
followers, and to adopt the cult of feeling and the ideal. For a time,
it is true, the rising poet Wieland set himself in deliberate opposition
to this cult, and proclaimed himself a pupil of the French; but, when
settled at Weimar in 1772, his French predilections did not prevent him
from at least devoting his abilities to the reconstruction of old romance.
The attack on the old formalism and its rules, in favour of free and
untrammelled genius, was deliberate and organized. It consisted on the
one hand of the fresh and searching criticism of Lessing and Herder,
and, on the other, of the efforts of German poetic youth. The name
given to the young spirits of the literary revolt and regeneration, the
clamourers for free play of spontaneity and imagination, was that of
_Stürmer und Dränger_. They were so called from the words _Sturm und
Drang_, often translated “Storm and Stress,” but in reality meaning
“Vigorous Assault,” which formed the title of a drama published by a
certain Klinger in 1774, although their appropriateness is not now easy
to discern. This particular drama supplied, however, in its wild and
extravagant structure, imagery and figures, a kind of manifesto of the
new school. Those who sided with the movement were therefore called the
“Storm-and-Stress men,” just as the “Impressionists” in painting have
been so named from the picture called _Impressions_, in which Monet first
publicly exemplified their methods. Most of the poets who were afterwards
to become famous belonged in their youth to this new school, went through
its extravagances, and came out all the better for it in their maturity.
Goethe with his juvenile drama of _Götz_, Schiller with his of _The
Robbers_, had their “Sturm und Drang” stage, the stage when they allowed
their imaginations and their language to run riot in wild extravagance.
The first great writer of the classic period in point of date is Lessing.
He had nothing to do with the violent ardours of “Sturm und Drang.” None
the less he is a regenerator, a more powerful regenerator, and, in a
sense, the founder of German literature. His dramas, with their central
idea of depicting a hero whose character and conduct point a general
moral, fixed the manner of German drama for Goethe and Schiller, and
therefore for all German literature. His _Minna von Barnhelm_, and his
_Nathan the Wise_, are moral lessons in military duty, or in religious
toleration. They are the precursors and direct progenitors of Goethe’s
_Faust_ and Schiller’s _Wallenstein_. But, perhaps, of all Lessing’s
works that which is best known abroad, and which has been most powerful
and far-reaching in its influence, is his _Laocoon_. Despite its errors
and shortcomings, this famous treatise on the “Boundaries of Poetry and
Painting,” a work of criticism in the philosophy of the beautiful, has
perhaps influenced more minds than any other work on aesthetics ever
written except those of Aristotle and Longinus. To countless others
besides Macaulay it has been their first illumination of the everlasting
principles of beauty.
Side by side with Lessing, younger than he, but more ardent, went the
_Dichterbund_, the “Poets’ League,” of Göttingen, whose object it was
to make the poetry of Germans truly German, by composing natural lyrics
and ballads of that sort in which modern German poetry perhaps abounds
more richly, more musically, than any poetry of any other land. They,
too, greatly influenced Goethe and Schiller, and from them Heine derives
the impulse to his exquisite music and simplicity. Chief among them was
Bürger, the ballad-writer and author of _Lenore_, who, perhaps, deserves
additional mention as the reputed author of the famous adventures
of Baron Münchhausen, perhaps the most perfectly ridiculous set of
impossible lies ever invented.
To speak of Goethe, Schiller, and Heine, would require volumes. Perhaps
nothing more perfect in their kind can be found than the lyrics of these
three superlative artists, superlative in their simplicity of language,
in their music, and in their clear-cut thought. Schiller’s _Song of the
Bell_ is thought converted into, identified with, melody. Goethe’s _Heath
Rose_, his _Serenade_, his songs in _Egmont_; the gems scattered through
Heine’s _Buch der Lieder_; these show every possible virtue of poems in
their kind. For what is the supreme merit of such a poem, unless that
it should give expression to a worthy thought or emotion in exquisite
language, which shall communicate it wholly, clearly, and movingly, by
means of sounds and cadences acting like music on the emotions, and
tuning the mind to a state of perfect receptiveness? This is precisely
what the great German triad did, and, if German were only more closely
regarded on its literary, as opposed to its utilitarian side, a study
of German lyrics, odes, ballads, and songs might serve as the best of
trainings for any who would learn to write them as poets should. Herein,
perhaps, the literary influence of Germany has yet to work with ample
scope and unmixed benefit.
But, though their lyrics alone are more than enough to make Goethe,
Schiller, and Heine immortal, it is not by these that Goethe and Schiller
are best known to the world outside of Germany. It is by dramas like
_Wallenstein_ and _Wilhelm Tell_ that Schiller holds his place, while
Goethe’s fame is mostly identified with _Faust_, with _Iphigenie_, and
with _Egmont_.
For German literature Goethe is the consummate name. He is the apex of
the pyramid, and that in virtue of one sublime quality—originality,
a word which perhaps means, after all, independence of observation
combined with a keen capacity for its exercise. After passing through his
Sturm-und-Drangship, his morbid stage of _The Sorrows of Werther_, and
his intermediate stage of classical proportion, Goethe wrote as one who
saw, and saw clearly. He saw facts, he dissected passions and motives.
He could analyse the complex, and build up the elements again into a
sound complexity. He has no narrowness. He displays a broad Hellenic
tolerance, and a clear Hellenic way of seeing things in their reality.
The influence of such a man must be vast. Byron and Shelley owned it and
showed it. Carlyle, as stern a critic as ever played the pedagogue, is
unmixed in his admiration for the man Goethe, who is to him divine. In
his own country his _Werther_, despite its frequent morbidness and its
_longueurs_, determined the feeling of every sentimentalist. Outside that
country his _Faust_ has become almost a textbook in poetical philosophy.
He is translated, commented on, consulted like an oracle. In the reality
and width of sway which he exercises, he stands next to Shakespeare among
the poets.
* * * * *
“The genius of Germany,” says Lamartine, “is deep and austere.” The
characteristics of German literature bear the impress of that national
genius. The German mind is one which inquires and ponders. The German is,
above all things, a deep and earnest thinker. Philosophy and learning,
investigation in history, language, physical science, these belong to
the Germans more than to any other people. We shall expect, therefore,
to find German literature full of reflection and original thought, more
concerned with the pursuit of the truth of that thought and reflection
than with the form of expression. Heine, indeed, cannot be classed with
the other great writers in this respect. Humour, wit, grace, music,
all these he has in abundance. But he is apt to be reckless in his
brilliancy; he is the incarnation of cleverness, but scarcely of sober
and sincere thought. But Heine, though a German, was not a Teuton. He was
a Jew. He wrote in German words in a German atmosphere, but hardly from a
Teutonic mind.
Truth and earnestness are essentials of German writing. And therefore
it is difficult to find in German literature mere writing for writing’s
sake. Its prose is the prose of discussion, argument, reflection,
criticism, philosophy, analysis: its poetry is poetry of earnest
meditation, real pathos, and real sentiment. Above all things German
poetry is lyrical, and its lyric note rings true.
* * * * *
For German “literary” influence on ourselves we cannot point to much
that is very definite. The influence of German philosophy in Leibnitz,
Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Schopenhauer, is one of thought in the
scientific, not in the literary, aspect. We cannot say how great that
philosophic influence has been. Nor are we under any obligation here to
attempt the task. Neither are we concerned with the immense theological
influence—which is also one of philosophy—that came to us from Luther.
We are only concerned with the literary subject matter, the forms, and
the principles which we may owe to Germany. Our conception of how history
should be written owes much to Niebuhr, Ranke, and Mommsen; our aesthetic
criticism to Lessing and Winckelmann; and our literary criticism to
the brothers Schlegel. So long as there is intercommunication between
countries by reading and by travel we necessarily expect ideas to pass in
some shape and measure from one to the other. But it is only when great
writers look abroad for formative influences that we can perceive and
demonstrate a positive literary debt. English literature, and especially
Shakespeare, has, in this respect, exercised much more influence on
Germany than German literature upon ours.
In the sixteenth century we may find German legends like those concerning
Bishop Hatto or the Piper of Hamelin transferred to England; we may
find the story of Dr. Faustus producing Marlowe’s _Dr. Faustus_ and
Greene’s _Friar Bacon_; we may see Brandt’s _Narrenschiff_ translated
as Barclay’s _Ship of Fools_, and producing other satirical “Ships” of
a similar kind. We may trace the thoughts of Pope’s _Essay on Man_ back
through Bolingbroke’s prose to the philosophic writings of Leibnitz. Yet
instances like these are but scattered, and are intrinsically not of
the first importance. A really large and steady influence begins for us
with the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth
century, with Lessing and Goethe in Germany, and thence with Coleridge,
Byron, and Shelley in England. Coleridge and De Quincey were much read in
German literature and philosophy; Byron and Goethe were mutual admirers;
Shelley read Goethe along with the ancient classics; Scott practically
commenced writing by translating Goethe’s _Götz_ into _Goetz of the Iron
Hand_. Carlyle admired Goethe with an entirety which he refuses to any
but the greatest; English thinkers and essayists are constantly quoting
him. In our own day, when the knowledge of German is increasing, we all
absorb more or less of the thought of Germany. Yet the influence is one
of thought. It has not yet developed into an influence which can be seen
to determine the form and tone of poetry or prose, as was the case with
French and with Italian. The fact seems to be that German literature is
naturally too much like our own to exert such clear and palpable effect.