Whoever casts a glance on the long row of closely printed volumes
which form Paul Heyse's complete works, and remembers that the author
was born in the year 1830, will first of all be apt to exclaim,
"What industry!" Involuntarily he will trace back this astonishing
productiveness to a will power of rare endurance. None the less,
however, does it owe its origin to a singularly fortunate nature. This
nature possessed within itself so luxuriant a fruitfulness that it
has yielded its harvest without the least effort of the will, without
any undue exertion; it has yielded a harvest of such variety that we
might believe it to be fostered according to a defined plan and with a
painstaking will; nevertheless, it has obviously been permitted to act
with thorough independence. To allow nature to rule, to follow one's
own pleasure or bent (sich gehen zu lassen[1]), has been from the
outset, as we soon come to feel, Heyse's motto, and so it happens that
with qualities which usually lead to a wandering, scanty, fragmentary
productiveness, he has completed and perfected each undertaking, having
written lyric and epic poems, one grand epos (Thekla), a dozen dramas,
more than fifty "novellen," and two large romances. He began early;
while yet a student, he entered on his literary career. Free from care
as a pedestrian tourist who gayly whistles as he strolls along, never
hurrying, pausing to drink at every spring, lingering before the bushes
by the wayside, and plucking flowers as well as berries, resting in the
shade, and wandering along in the shade, he has gradually trodden a
pathway of such extent that we could only expect to see it traversed by
one who maintained a breathless march, with eyes fixed unwaveringly on
the goal.
The voice followed by Heyse as an author is unquestionably the voice
of instinct. North German though he is, nothing is farther removed
from him than cool deliberation and premeditation. Born in Berlin,
he nevertheless takes root in Munich, and finds in the ardent South
German race and in the throbbing South German life the surroundings
most congenial to his temperament; at home in South Germany, he yet
feels constantly drawn to Italy, as the land where the human plant has
attained a more beautiful and luxuriant growth than elsewhere, one
that is less disturbed by reflex action, and where the voice of the
blood speaks most distinctly, most powerfully. This voice is the siren
voice which allures Heyse. Nature! Nature! keeps ringing in his ear.
Germany has authors who appear almost wholly devoid of inspiration, and
who have only been made what they are by a vigorous North German will
(as Karl Gutzkow, for instance); others (as Fanny Lewald) whose works
bear the impress of an active North German intellect. Neither through
volition nor deliberation does Heyse create and fashion his works, but
simply by heeding the inner impulse.
Many an author is tempted to impart to his reader an idea of himself
differing somewhat from the correct one. He takes pleasure in
representing himself as that which he _would like_ to be,--in former
times, as being endowed either with keener sensibilities or deeper
melancholy than he ever possessed, in our day as being now more
experienced, now colder or harsher, than he really is. More than one
distinguished author, as Mérimée, or Lecomte de Lisle, has so shrunk
from manifesting his emotions that he has succeeded, on the other hand,
in exhibiting an appearance of lack of feeling by no means natural to
him. Such people make it a point of honor not to breathe freely and
easily until they have crossed the snow-line where the human element
in our natures ends, and their contempt for those who lay claim to the
sympathy of the multitude on the plane below leads them to yield to
the temptation to force their way up to a height whither pride, not
instinct, bids them ascend. For Heyse this temptation does not exist.
He has never for a moment been able or willing to write himself into
either greater warmth or coldness than he actually felt. He has never
professed to be writing with his heart's blood when he was fashioning
calmly as an artist, and he has patiently submitted when the critics
censured him for lack of warmth. On the other hand, he has never
been able to report, as so many of the most eminent French authors
have done, a horrible or revolting occurrence with the same stoic
tranquillity, and in the same tone that would be suitable in stating
where a man of the world purchases his cigars, or where the best
champagne could be obtained. He aims neither at the ardent style of
passionate temperaments, nor at the self-control of the worldling. In
comparison with Swinburne he seems rather cold, and in comparison with
Flaubert naïve. But the narrow path in which he wanders is precisely
that which is pointed out to him by the instinct of his innermost
being, by the purely individual and yet so complicated being which is
the result of his nature.