Those authors who, as Spielhagen, for instance, most frequently linger
over the conflicts of consciousness and of the will, and are fondest
of depicting great social and political conflicts, will as a matter
of course have better success in portraying men than women. Such a
male character as Leo, in the romance "In Reih und Glied" (In Rank and
File), would seek in vain for its equal, but a female character of
the same excellence Spielhagen has not drawn. Any one, on the other
hand, whose spirit seeks the nobility and grace of the absolutely
natural, of visible and spiritual beauty, will as a matter of course
give the preference to women, and draw them better than men. Herein
Heyse resembles his master, Goethe. In almost all of his productions
the female characters are placed in the foreground, and the male forms
serve mainly to render them prominent, or to develop them. As woman's
nature unfolds its secret being, and shoots forth its fairest bloom in
love, since in love, nature as nature, through a thousand illusions,
becomes ennobled and spiritualized, so Heyse glorifies in an eminent
way the love of woman. He renders homage to love, and he renders
homage to woman; nevertheless, it is his greatest delight to represent
these two great powers in conflict one with the other. For when love
gains the victory, when it appears as the power to whose mandates
the feminine heart may not bid defiance, it sparkles with radiance,
vanquishing resistance, as though possessed of omnipotent might, and
producing the effect that every woman under its influence, in defiance
against it, in conflict with it, animated by it, rouses in all the
pride of her sex, and is invested by love with that aristocratic
beauty, which no one represents better than Heyse.
Inherent maidenly pride is to Heyse the most beautiful thing in nature.
An entire group of his "novellen" might bear the title "Mädchenstolz"
(Maidenly Pride) Kierkegaard somewhere calls the essence of woman "a
surrender, whose form is resistance." This is an utterance as from
Heyse's own heart, and it is this resistance which, as a token of the
noble-born nature, interests and charms him. It is that eternally
impenetrable stronghold in the feminine disposition which captivates
him, the sphinx-like element of her nature, whose riddle he feels ever
impelled to solve. The sweet kernel is doubly sweet in its hard shell,
the fiery champagne doubly flaming in its surroundings of ice. The
feminine natures which Heyse depicts (from L'Arrabbiata to Julie and
Irene in his "Im Paradiese") are enveloped in a coat of ice-mail, which
conceals, repels, misleads, breaks, and melts away. Woman asserts her
nobility by refusing, as long as possible, to give her _ego_ out of her
own keeping,--by guarding and cherishing the treasure of her love.
She maintains her nobility by placing her _ego_ exclusively in the
hands of one single person, and offering resistance to all the rest of
the world. She is subject to no blind force. But once let her maidenly
pride be broken, and conquered, she finds herself again on the opposite
side of the gulf, and yields freely, I might almost say as freely as
nature. A seduction never occurs among Heyse's creations; if such a
thing be alluded to a single time, as a past event, as in "Mutter und
Kind" (Mother and Child), it only serves to place in the sharpest
possible light proud self-assertion and equally proud conscious
self-surrender.
This self-assertion, this power of resistance (Rabbia), is portrayed
by Heyse with manifold variations: Atalanta, in the drama "Meleager,"
possesses the entire untamed wildness of the Amazon type; she prefers
life and sport amid the freedom of nature--the race, feats of skill
with the lance, and the occupation of the wildwood--to effeminate
luxury and flattering caresses; she would rather wear the crown of
victory than the bridal wreath. In Syritha we see the first coyness,
which, roused by marriage, flees; in "L'Arrabbiata," maidenly pride,
which feels how close to the timid request, in the soul of man, lies
coarse desire; in the maiden of Treppi, we have the instinctive refusal
of maidenhood; in Marianne ("Mutter und Kind"), womanly pride which
increases twofold in the so-called fallen woman, under her sense
of unmerited shame; in Madeleine ("Die Reise nach dem Glück"), the
sense of duty opposed to the conceptions of morality inculcated from
childhood; in Lore ("Lorenz und Lore"), the feeling of shame of a young
girl, from whose lips a confession of her love has escaped in the
presence of death; in Lottka, the melancholy reserve caused by a sense
of inherited degradation; in fair Kätchen, the indignant despair of
a young girl at finding herself attractive to every one, which makes
her wish all her admirers and her own beauty far away; in Lea, the
aversion of a highly developed and reserved woman to allowing any one
to have a suspicion of her weakness; in Toinette, the abhorrence of an
ice-bound heart to feigning a passion it does not yet feel; in Irene,
the strict conventionality of a little princess; in Julie, the coldness
of a Cordelia nature--until the supreme moment arrives when all these
bonds are burst, when all these hearts are kindled, when the man-hatred
of the Amazon, and the coyness of the young maiden, and the modesty of
dawning womanhood, and the pride of the wife, and the sense of duty of
those who have been strictly brought up, and the melancholy of those
who have been humbled, and the mantle of the snow-queen, all, all flame
up, like wood on one mighty funeral pyre, and ascend in sweet incense
on the altar of the god of love.
For not in resistance, which is only the form and the cloak, but in
self-surrender, does Heyse see the essence of womanhood and woman's
true nature; and adorer of nature as he is, he does honor to Eros as
the irresistible one who breaks through all barriers. Woman never
regrets having subjected herself to his power, but she may repent her
defiance. Bettina, somewhere in her letters, makes about the following
remark, "The strawberries I plucked I have forgotten; but those I left
untouched are still branded on my soul." Heyse has made more than one
variation on this theme; after the maiden of Treppi has repented her
youthful coyness during seven long years, chance brings the object of
her affections once more to her native village, and she overcomes, by
virtue of an enthusiastic and superstitious conviction of the power
and justice of her love, all external and internal obstacles, even the
indifference and coldness of the returned wanderer himself. Madelina,
in the "Reise nach dem Glück," as before mentioned, has driven her
lover at night from her door, and having been compelled to ride away in
the dark, he had a fall from his horse which killed him on the spot.
Remorse for this defiance of love gives her no rest. "Of what avail
was my virtue?" said she; "it was sound and whole, and by no means
threadbare; and yet it chilled me to the innermost recesses of my
heart."[14] It is not enough, though, that she regrets having followed
the dictates of conventional morality: the image of the deceased haunts
her year after year; it seems to be jealously watching over her each
time in her life that she thinks it possible to forget the past, and
find happiness anew; she hears the finger of the dead man knocking at
the door, as he knocked that night she drove him from her. Severe are
the punishments of Eros for those who do not sacrifice on his altar.
And Heyse in other of his creations still further amplifies this idea.
Here the repulsed lover meets his death, simply as an accidental result
of the rigor shown him by the being for whose presence he yearned
so ardently. Let us suppose the case to be one where, instead of an
humble petitioner, one who threatens violence approaches, and that
the resistance of the proud woman be not based on a sense of duty
that conquers temptation, but is merely self-defence at the time of
a dreaded invasion, how then? Even then Eros bestows chastisement,
as a zealous god. The drama "Die Sabinerinnen" (The Sabine Women)
was evidently written by Heyse for the sake of one single character.
How, otherwise, could it have occurred to him to choose for tragic
treatment this purely burlesque material, so little adapted to tragedy.
This character is Tullia, the Sabine king's daughter. Carried off by
a Roman warrior, held captive in his house, she kills him, when, on
the bridal night, he dares approach her. If a tragic woe should now
befall the rash woman in order that the Roman might be avenged, no one
would be surprised; but the psychological point is in harmony with
Heyse's entire erotic system; for through the murder of her husband she
endeavored to kill the awakening impulse of her own heart, and thus
sacrilegiously rebelled against Eros.
"And stooping,
He bowed his face until it reached my brow;
His flutt'ring breath went rippling over me,
And stealthily, like streams of poison, ran
His low-toned voice through all my veins."
Now left alone with her shattered soul, she recoils with horror at a
deed which is so genuinely feminine, and in which she is so entirely
justified. The apparition of the dead man haunts her wherever she goes,
but still more than the aspect of his dead body, the remembrance of
his caresses. "Only a day and a night have passed since that deed was
accomplished," says she, "and yet it lies behind me as a thousand years
and a thousand deaths. One thing alone is, and ever will be, present
with me: his kiss upon my eyelids, his hand within my own." Toward the
end she expresses to her sister the fundamental idea in these words:--
"From Love, oh, do not flee!
She will o'ertake you if you do. Go humbly
And kneel before her shrine. For deadly anger
She heaps on those who dare defy her will,
And sucks their blood. And is not every maiden
In bondage stern to this grim god? O sister,
I only must atone for free resistance."[15]
Even the man that has approached her through violence, cannot be hated
by the young virgin. He broke the peace; but what else does Love? He
outwitted her; but is not Love crafty? He mocked; but does not Love
scoff even at the most powerful and most free? In other words: is not
Eros himself a worker of violence, without shyness or shame, a criminal
who overleaps all customary bounds.
All? That is saying too much. Heyse has indeed sometimes, as in the
instances cited, shown a tendency, reminding one of Kleist, for all
purely pathological erotic problems; but his nature is entirely too
harmonious, too mature, and by far too typically German, to admit of
his describing passion as bursting all the law and order of society.
He is developed enough to see clearly that the laws of passion and
the laws of society are two wholly dissimilar things, which have very
little in common; yet he pays the latter the respect it deserves,
that is, a conditional one. From his earliest youth it has interested
and pleased him to show how relative is the truth, and how limited
the worth of these laws; to bring forward in his poetic creations
instances where their boundaries are overstepped in such a way that
the exceptions to the rule seem right, and even the most hardened and
narrow-minded person would hesitate to condemn them. In his anxiety
to do full, incontestible justice to the exceptional cases, Heyse
has sometimes--as in his first drama, "Francesca von Rimini," which
is not included in his "Gesammelte Werke"--sought out extremely
quaint exceptions; but it is his universal endeavor so to enclose
the case with palisades, that no assault of usual morality can cause
the downfall of the barricade. When Goethe brings together Egmont
and Clärchen, he does not present the case as though it required an
apology; the beauty of the relationship is its defence. Heyse, the less
grand poet, whose caution is quite equal to his daring, has always
fixed an eye on conventional morality, and has continually endeavored
to conciliate it, either by ceding the point to it, so to say, in all
other cases but just this one where its infringement was unavoidable,
or by so atoning for the offence that the individual who is guilty of
it is allowed to purchase the forbidden happiness, with his eyes fully
open, and of his own free will, at so high a price that it appears too
costly to be alluring to any Philistine.
In "Francesca von Rimini" the circumstances are as follows: Lanciotto
is ugly, coarse, and corrupt; his brother, Paolo, noble and handsome.
Lanciotto is inflamed with passion for Francesca. Misguided by
brotherly love for the thoroughly unworthy Lanciotto, Paolo has allowed
himself to be deluded not only into playing the part of suitor, but
even disguised as bridegroom on the wedding day, to take the place of
his brother, who feared that with his hideous person he could never
obtain the maiden's consent. Not until shrouded by the darkness of
the bridal chamber, does Lanciotto dare approach his bride. Now Paolo
also loves Francesca, as she loves him in return. Therefore, it is no
wonder that the young wife, upon discovering this gross deception, the
victim of which she has become, feels dishonored by the caresses of her
husband, and far from viewing her love for Paolo as a sin, she regards
it as justified and sacred.
"The kiss thou gavest me the holy wafer was
Which my dishonored lips did purify from taint."
In order to make his intrenchment as solid as possible, it will thus be
seen that the poet, in this naïve work of his youth, has constructed
the most improbable, most far-fetched, case in the world; for what
can be more preposterous than for Paolo out of pure, simple-hearted
kindliness to a despicable brother, to expose the woman he loves to the
basest deception, which, moreover, annihilates his own life-happiness.
But in this exaggerated example will, nevertheless, be found the
type according to which, in Heyse's numerous later "novellen," with
their plentiful tact and exquisite delicacy, the moral collision
is constructed. Let me single out at random several examples. In
"Beatrice" it is legal marriage which breaks up the love romance, a
forced marriage, as unholy as the marriage of Francesca, although
stronger reasons are given for it. In "Cleopatra" the young German
resists the love of the fair Egyptian, as stubbornly as Kleist's Count
Wetter von Strahl resists the passion of Kätchen von Heilbronn. Not
until her yearning for him brings Cleopatra to the brink of the grave,
is the liaison between them formed. The proud Gabrielle in the work
"Im Grafenschlosse" does not allow herself to be persuaded into the
"conscience marriage" with the Count, until he has jeopardized his
life for her sake. The young wife in "Rafael" purchases a few hours of
companionship with her lover through a lifelong incarceration in the
cloister; the self-surrender of Garcinde and Lottka is ennobled by the
fact that the outwardly fettered but inwardly free _ego_ was unable to
conceive of a self-surrender, forbidden by circumstances, under any
other conditions than those whose consequences are death. The right to
the happiness of a fleeting moment is purchased by suicide.
The goblet of bliss, drained by these personages, has seasoned their
destiny with poison. Heyse, therefore, affirms for these _heroic_ souls
the right to solve the problem of a conflict of duties in a different
way than is customary for "the timid Philistine whose half-way measures
are circumscribed by petty customs and considerations," and in the
introduction to his "Beatrice"[16] he himself formulates his ethic
heresy in the following words: "Genial, self-dependent natures can
do much toward extending the boundary lines of the moral sphere, by
permitting the measure of their inner power and magnitude to shine
forth as an example, through their actions, just as genial artists can
burst through those barriers of their art that have been handed down to
them by tradition."
No less than through this intimately allied association with ruin
and death does Heyse ennoble love, legitimate or illegitimate, as
indicated above, through the nature of the self-surrender. It is always
conscious. These women whom he characterizes never allow themselves to
be carried away by their emotions; they give themselves up as a free
gift--when they yield at all. Thus it is in works dating from Heyse's
earliest youth, as "Der Kreisrichter"[17] (The Circuit Judge), thus in
"Rafael," in "Lottka," and in so many of the "novellen" in prose and in
verse. Everywhere the self-sufficiency and the right of spontaneity of
the individual is preserved. The woman gives herself as a free gift to
her lover, she goes freely forth to meet her own destruction, or with
her own hand inflicts death upon herself; and where the bliss of love
is not ennobled by the price it costs, it is at least exalted by the
pride with which it is bestowed and received. By virtue of this pride
the personality, itself governed by the strongest power of nature,
feels independent and regal in the assertion of its sovereign dignity.
In the romance "Im Paradiese" Heyse has for the first time treated as a
main problem the freedom of love in antithesis to the laws of society,
and maintained its justice. The fundamental idea of this romance is
none other than that the morality and dignity, of love between man and
woman is independent of the outward ratification of the marriage tie.
According to his wont, Heyse has provided the case here given with
the most forcible motives. Jansen cannot, without putting his friend
to shame, become free from his despicable wife, and without Julie all
his hopes as an artist and a man would perish. Yet when Julie in the
presence of the assembled friends, adorned with the myrtle-wreath,
freely weds Jansen, a decided attack is aimed at the purely exterior
morality of society, although the incident is not brought forward
as an example for imitation. The poet who in the "Kinder der Welt"
urgently impresses it upon the consciences of his contemporaries, that
the morality of the individual is not dependent on his metaphysical
convictions, in his "Im Paradiese," strives to teach that the purity
and dignity of a union of love must not be judged by the laws of
outward morality, but that love both without and within the marriage
relation may be true and false, moral and immoral. Everything depends,
according to Heyse's views, upon the true nobility of the heart.