I remarked that the faculty of preserving and idealizing forms
constituted _one_ of the starting-points of this poet's imagination.
It has, however, another. Quite as inherent as his capacity for
delineating character is his fondness for experiencing and inventing
"adventures." By adventures, I understand events of a peculiar
and unusual nature, which--as is scarcely ever the case in real
adventures--have a sure outline, and so clearly defined a beginning,
middle, and end, that they appear to the imagination like a work
of art enclosed in a frame. From any chance, outward or inward,
observation--the fragment of a dream, an encounter on the street, the
sight of a tower dating from the Middle Ages, in some ancient city,
in the glow of the setting sun--there springs up for him, through the
most rapid association of ideas, a history, a chain of events; and
as he is by nature an artist, this series of events ever assumes a
rhythmic form. Like the beings he creates, it has clear, firm outlines
and inner equilibrium. It has its skeleton, its filling up of flesh;
above all, its well-defined and slender shape. The faculty of relating
a story in brief, concise form, of imparting to it, so to say, a
harmonious rhythm, has its origin directly in Heyse's thoroughly
harmonious nature.[20] The "novellen" form, as he has carved it out
and engraved it, is an entirely original and independent creation, his
actual property. Therefore he has become especially popular through
his prose "novelle." The "novelle" with him always has extremely few
and simple factors, the number of the personages introduced is small,
the action is concise and may be surveyed with a single glance. But
his fiction does not exist for the sake of the personages alone, as
in the modern French novels, which only satisfy a psychological or a
physiological interest; it has its own peculiar mode of development and
its independent interest. A novel like Christian Winter's "Aftenscene"
(Evening Scene), whose quaint, old-fashioned grace of style renders it
so fascinating, possesses the fault of having no incident. With Heyse
the "novelle" is not a picture of the times, or a _genre_ painting;
something always _does happen_ with him, and it is always something
unexpected. The plot, as a rule, is so arranged that at a certain point
an unforeseen change takes place; a surprise which, when the reader
looks back, always proves to have had a firm and carefully prepared
foundation in what went before. At this point the action sharpens; here
the threads unite to form a knot from which they are spun around in an
opposite direction. The enjoyment of the reader is based upon the art
with which the purpose of the action is gradually more and more veiled
and hidden from view, until suddenly the covering falls. His surprise
is caused by the skill with which Heyse apparently strays farther and
farther away from the goal which rose beyond the starting-point, until
he finally discovers that he has been led through a winding path and
finds himself exactly above the point where the story began.
Heyse himself, in his introduction to his "Deutscher Novellenschatz,"
has expressed his views on the principle to which he does homage in
his "novellen" compositions. Here, as in the introduction to the
"Stickerin von Treviso" (The Embroidery Woman of Treviso), he calls the
attention of those who would place the entire importance on style and
diction, to the fact that the narrative as a narrative, what children
call the story, is unquestionably the essential foundation of the
"novelle" and possesses its own peculiar beauty. He lays stress on the
statement that according to his æsthetic taste, he would give the
preference to _that_ "novelle" whose main motive is most distinctly
finished, and--with more or less intrinsic worth--betrays something
peculiar, specific, in the original design. _"A strong silhouette_,"
he continues, "should not be lacking in what is called a 'novelle' in
the proper sense of the word."[21] By the term "silhouette" Heyse means
the outlines of the story, as shown by a brief summary of the contents;
and he illustrates his idea with a striking example and a striking
description. He gives the synopsis of one of the novels of Boccaccio,
as follows:--
"Frederigo degli Alberighi loves, without meeting with any return;
roving in knightly fashion, he squanders all his substance, and has
nothing left but one single falcon; this, when the lady whom he loves
is led by chance to his house, and he has nothing else with which to
prepare a meal for her, he places on the table before her. She learns
what he has done, suddenly changes her resolution, and rewards his love
by making him the lord of her hand and her fortune."
Heyse calls attention to the fact that in these few lines lie all
the elements of a touching and delightful "novelle," in which the
fate of two human beings is accomplished in the most charming manner,
through an accidental turn of affairs, which, however, serves to
give deeper development to the characters; and he therefore invites
modern story-tellers, even when engaged on the most touching and rich
materials, to ask themselves where "the falcon" is, the specific object
that distinguishes this story from a thousand others.
In the demand he makes on the "novelle," he has especially
characterized the task he has imposed on himself and faithfully
fulfilled. He prefers eccentric to typical everyday instances. As
a rule, we are quite as sure of finding "the falcon" in his prose
narratives, as a certain judge was of finding a woman at the bottom
of every crime. In "L' Arrabbiata," the biting of a hand is "the
falcon"; in the "Bild der Mutter" (The Mother's Portrait) it is the
elopement; in "Vetter [Cousin] Gabriel," it is the letter copied from
the "lover's letter-writer." If the reader will himself search for the
aforesaid wild bird, he will gain an insight into the poet's method of
composition. It is not always so easily captured as in the cases just
cited. With a power of investigation, a nimble grace, which is rare
in a man who is not of Roman race, Heyse has understood how to tie
the knots of events and disentangle them again, to present and solve
the psychologic problem which he has _isolated_ in the "novelle." He
has the faculty of singling out exceptional, unusual cases from the
general state of culture, and the condition of the society of which
he is a member, and presenting them purely and sharply in the form of
a "novelle," without permitting the action to play into the unreal
and fabulous, as is the wont of romantic novelists, and without ever
allowing it to run into a merely epigrammatic point. His "novellen"
are neither brief romances nor long anecdotes. They have at the same
time fulness and strictly-defined form. And circumscribed as this form
may be, it has yet proved itself sufficiently flexible to be able to
embrace within its limits the most diverse materials. The "novellen"
of Heyse play on many strings; most abundantly on the tender and
the _spirituelle_, but also on the comic (as in the amusing tale,
"Die Wittwe von Pisa"--The Widow of Pisa), the fantastic (as in the
Hoffman-like "Cleopatra"); indeed, in a single instance, the awful (in
the painful nocturne, "Der Kinder Sünde der Väter Fluch"--The Sins of
the Children the Curse of the Fathers). The "novelle" as it is treated
by Heyse borders on the provinces of Alfred de Musset, Mérimée, Hoffman
and Tieck; but has, however, its own special domain, as well as its
very individual profile.