We have run through the circle of ideas and forms in which this poetic
soul has found its expression. We have seen how Heyse, at last, in the
romance accommodated himself to the thought agitating modern times,
and to which the "novellen" form was not able to give adequate space.
Moreover, I pointed out one "novelle" which was not less distinguished
by its fundamental thought than "Der Salamander" was by its style.
Each time that Heyse has attempted to gain a modern interest for
ancient myths, he has been fortunate. The charming little youthful
poem, "Die Furie" (The Fury), is among the best that he has written.
In a little drama, "Perseus" (not included in his collected works), he
has given a new interpretation of the Medusa myth; he has felt pity for
poor, beautiful Medusa, to whom was allotted the cruel fate of turning
every one into stone, and he informs us that the envy of the goddesses
who were jealous of her love for Perseus is alone to blame for this.
Her head falls by the hand of her own lover, while she, in order not
to harm him through her pernicious gaze, buries her face in the sand.
Heyse has transformed the ancient myth into an original and sorrowful
Mährchen. The story of the "Centaur" is bright, and full of profound
thought. We are not astonished when "Im Paradiese" informs us that this
story inspired the favorite fresco of the painter Kohle. The pilgrimage
"unserer lieben Frau von Milo," which as a picture we almost think we
see before our eyes, so vividly is the fresco described, is intimately
related as a poem to "Der letzte Centaur" (The last Centaur)! That
sounds almost like the last of the Mohikans! What does Heyse know of
the last Centaur? How could he possibly introduce him into a regular
"novelle"? It is done with consummate art, and yet in the most natural
way in the world. He first, so to speak, brings together two circles,
then a third circle, and in the latter he conjures up the Centaur.
The first circle is the world of the living, the second the world of
the dead, the third easily and naturally comprises the world of the
supernatural. The story begins, contrary to Heyse's custom, in a purely
autobiographical way, therefore with the strongest possible elements
of reality. The author, late one evening, approaches a wine-house,
where, in his youth, he was in the habit of meeting every week his
dearest friends and comrades, all of whom are now dead, and lets them
pass in review before his mind's eye. Finally he enters the wine-house,
feels weary, and--suddenly it seems to him as though he were summoned
to join the old circle, and as the door is opened, lo! his friends
all sit together. But not one of them extends a hand to him who is
entering, and their faces wear an expression of formality, seriousness,
and sorrow. Every now and then they drink long draughts from their
wineglasses, while their pale cheeks and dim eyes sparkle and glow for
a moment, but directly afterward they sit rigid and silent once more,
staring into their glasses. One of them alone is not bowed down by the
destiny that has overtaken them, and of which, from a mute agreement,
not a word is spoken in the society. It is Genelli, the distinguished
painter, whose "Centaur" in the "Schackschen Sammlung" at Munich is
the admiration of all travellers. One of the company remarks that such
a Genelli creation looks so life-like that one is almost inclined to
believe that the artist himself was a participator in the scene. And as
the master calmly replies "And so he was," we glide imperceptibly from
the realm of the dead to the world of fiction. He has seen the Centaur
with his own eyes, one beautiful summer afternoon, as it came trotting,
without thought of evil, into a little Tyrolese village, where Genelli
sat over his wineglass. In olden times, the Centaur was a country
physician by profession, had grown weary during a professional tour
across the mountains, had laid himself down to sleep in a glacier-cave,
was then frozen in--and now, after the lapse of centuries, the ice had
melted about him, and he could freely gaze on the changed world with
his wondering eyes. It is Sunday, and just church time, when, with his
mighty body,--a Farnese Hercules above, a superb, heroic battle-charger
below,--with floating mane and long, trailing horse tail, with a spray
of roses behind one ear in his thick hair, he trots through the empty
streets, only now and then terrifying some old woman, who flees, with
shrieks of alarm, from the strange apparition. He sees the church door
open, the building full of people, and a marvellously beautiful woman
with a child on her arm, painted over the altar. Filled with curiosity,
meaning no harm, he trots through the portal, over the stone flags,
and approaches the altar. It can easily be comprehended what a hubbub
is caused by this monster, newly arisen from hell. The parson shrieks
aloud, waves toward the beast whatever consecrated thing he may happen
to hold in his hand, and cries "Apage! apage!" (which the Centaur
understands because it is Greek). The congregation makes the sign of
the cross over and over again; and filled with astonishment, this beast
of ancient story then trots out of the door again, and accompanied
by all the old women and all the children of the village, who are
naturally very much shocked to see "the lofty traveller so lightly
clad," presses onward to the village inn, where Genelli is sitting on
the balcony. The master then informs the Centaur that he has awakened
to life either a couple of hundred years too late or too early. At the
time of the Renaissance he would doubtless have been well received.
"But at the present day, among this narrow-chested, broad-browed,
enervated, unmanned, worn-out race that is called the modern world!"
Genelli could not venture to make out a very cheering horoscope for
him. "Wherever you may show yourself, in cities or in villages, the
street-urchins will run after you and pelt you with rotten apples,
the old women will cry murder, and the priest will report you to be
the foul fiend himself, etc." And it comes to pass as Genelli has
prophesied. While the worthy Centaur, with the good nature that belongs
to the strong, allows the public to stare at him, to feel his soft,
velvety hide, while he, in genial mood, drains glass after glass of
wine, and hands back his empty glass over the railing of the arbor to
the pretty bar-maid, to whom he at once gave his rose, hatred and envy
are lying in ambush to work his destruction. A complete conspiracy has
been formed against him. "At the head stood, of course, the reverend
clergy, who deemed it detrimental to the spiritual welfare of their
parishioners to come into closer contact with a certainly unchristian,
wholly naked, and no doubt, very immoral beast-man." Equally incensed
was an Italian who had been exhibiting on the market-place a stuffed
calf with two heads and five legs. The horse-man could be seen gratis,
he was alive and drank and talked, and who knew whether he might
not even be moved to treat the by-standers to some skilful feats of
horsemanship. The calf, on the other hand, was a peaceful genius, and
gave no signs of any such extravagant undertakings. The Italian cannot
enter into competition. "There is a difference," he explains to the
parson, "between a legalized, natural sport, that is carried on with
the full approval of the police, and a monster that is wholly beyond
the limits of probability, such a one as has never been known to exist
before, who, travelling without passport or license, makes the country
unsafe and steals the bread from the mouths of honest five-legged
calves." But the most passionate opponent of the Centaur is the little
bow-legged village tailor, the bridegroom elect of the pretty bar-maid.
The tailor, too, discloses his mind to the parson, and expresses his
anxiety lest the new fashion introduced by the unknown should ruin
the whole tailor's trade, and, moreover, overthrow all conceptions
of decency and good morals. So, while the Centaur, in his cheerful
mood, is just engaged in carrying the fair Nanni on his back round
the court-yard of the inn, and, at the same time, entertaining the
by-standers with an exceedingly graceful and peculiar dance, all the
conspirators appear with a company of mounted gens-d'armes to capture
him. Without honoring them with the slightest attention, he continues
his dance, and softly pressing the maiden's hands on his breast, he
makes a magnificent leap over the heads of the peasants and away he
goes. Pistol-balls follow him, with sharp reports, without hitting him,
and soon he stands free on the next mountain slope. There, moved by the
piteous entreaties of the maiden, he allows her to glide gently down to
the ground. "Greatly as she had been flattered by the chivalrous homage
of the stranger, and pitiful as was the figure her own sweetheart
displayed beside him, she could not expect a solid support from this
mounted foreigner." Her practical nature triumphs, and like a hunted
chamois she springs from stone to stone into her tailor's arms. An
expression of divine scorn glides over the countenance of the Centaur;
he is seen to move away, and shortly afterward he has vanished from the
eager gaze of those who are staring after him.
Here Genelli's voice is hushed, the little circle breaks up, and the
poet awakens in the ante-room of the inn.
All the qualities which make a poetic work an enjoyment to the reader
are combined in this "Märchen"; an exalted humor, which casts a gentle
glow over all the details, the tenderest semi-tone and the finest
clair-obscure, that permits the action of the piece to glide gently
from the light of day into a dream of a circle of the dead, and then
again allows the twilight of the shadow-world to be illumined by a
sunbeam from old Hellas. Add to this a profound thought, which is
entirely original to its poet. For this sportive tale is in reality
a hymn to freedom in art as well as in life, and to freedom as Heyse
has conceived it. In his eyes freedom does not consist in a struggle
for freedom (as, for instance, in the case of the Norwegian author
Henrik Ibsen), but it is the protest of nature against dogmas in the
religious sphere, of nature against conventionality in the social and
moral sphere. Through nature to freedom! that is his path and that his
watchword. Thus the Centaur as half human being, half divinity, is to
his fancy a beloved symbol. How beautiful is the Centaur in his proud
strength gained from the remnant of old Grecian blood he has preserved
in his veins! What must he not have suffered, the poor Centaur, for the
remnant of heathenism, that has arisen in him, and that, after having
been frozen in a few thousand years, has ventured out into the light of
day in our age when all the glaciers are beginning to melt away! How
much more instructive, how much more sedate and moral, does the whole
civilized world about him find his interesting rival, the stuffed calf,
with two tongues and five legs, which are by no means intended for
progress, but are conservative legs that with all due propriety keep
the place ascribed to them. Such curiosities never exceed the limits
of any civil custom, never exhibit themselves without permission from
the public authorities and the clergy, and are therefore none the less
unusual. They will always remain rivals of the Centaur, considered by
some as his equal and by others as far outshining him.
And is not the poet himself, on his Pegasus in this petty modern social
world of ours, the living representative of "the last Centaur"?