_A Lecture on German Literature, being a Sketch of its history from
its origin to the present day, delivered by request, before the
Athenæum Society of Baltimore, on the 11th of February 1836, by GEORGE
H. CALVERT, Translator of Schiller's Don Carlos: now first published._
A nation's literature is the embodied expression of its mind. That in
a people, there be impulse, depth, individuality enough to give clear
utterance to its thoughts, passions, and aspirations, and that these
have the distinctness and consistency necessary to mould them into
definite forms, denotes a degree of mental endowment and cultivation
traceable in but few of the nations of whose history we have record.
But few have attained to the creation and enjoyment of a literature.
Regions of the globe there are, whole continents indeed of its
surface, hitherto inhabited by races of men, who, like the
cotemporaneous generations of brute animals, have only lived and died,
leaving behind them nought but a tradition of their
existence,--communities, in which the essentially human was too feebly
developed to erect the brain-built structures, which, while they
preserve and refine the spirit whence they arise, from it derive the
indestructible character that perpetuates them, as honorable monuments
of the past, and for the present ever-open temples whither the wise
resort for worship and inspiration.
Out of the darkness that envelops all else of the primeval ages, the
words of the Jewish writers shine upon the minds of every successive
generation as brightly and fixedly as do the stars from the mysterious
heavens upon the shifting appearances of our shallow earth; and the
books of the Old Testament stand, the sole human relics of eldest
time, as lofty objects of admiration to the literary as they are of
wonder to the religious. Of the architectural and sculptural creations
of the gifted Greeks, embodied in perishable marble, but a few
fragments have been saved from the consuming breath of time; but in
the poet's lines, fresh and perfect, lives the spirit which produced
them. As audible and musical as is to-day the murmur upon the Chian
shore of the same waves to which Homer listened, is still the sound of
Grecian song, imparting through our ears as deep and new a pleasure as
it did to those who fought at Salamis. The conquests Cæsar made with
his sword, a few centuries wiped from the face of the earth, but time
has not touched and cannot touch those of his pen; and, though the
language wherein the imperial chiefs of Rome gave orders to the
prostrate world, has passed from the mouths of men, so long as they
shall value beauty and wisdom, will the cherished lines of Tacitus and
of Virgil be reproduced for their enjoyment.
Of the many nations of antiquity, these three are the only ones that
possessed enough of mind to have each a distinct literature.
Within a much shorter space of time than elapsed between the birth of
Moses and the birth of Seneca, have grown up to the maturity needed
for the cultivation of letters, double the number of modern nations,
separately formed out of the deposites of northern hordes, who,
overrunning central and southern Europe, settled upon the mouldering
strata of the Roman Empire, infusing apparently by their mixture with
the conquered people, a new vigor into the inhabitants of these
regions. As the states of modern Europe date their origin from the
confused period of this conquest, so does the literature of each trace
its birth to the same, presenting in its history a bright and
elaborate picture, standing forth on a rude and dark back ground.
Notable among them, for the depth and nature of its foundations, for
the character of the influences which affected its progress, for the
richness and fullness of its late development, and for its present
power upon the general mind of the human race, is the literature of
Germany. Little more than a sketch of its history is all that I can on
this occasion undertake.
In order to present to your minds an outline whereby will be rendered
easier the following of its course from its rise to the present day, I
will, in the first place, label three great epochs in its progress,
with the names which made them epochs. Of the first, however, can be
given but the name of the work, that of its author being unknown. I
allude to the _Nibelungenlied_, the Song of the Nibelungen, the great
Epic of the Germans, written about the beginning of the thirteenth
century, more than a hundred years before the birth of Chaucer. Luther
makes the second epoch, and Goethe represents the third. We have here
a period embracing six hundred years. But long before the production
of the _Nibelungenlied_, and the cotemporaneous lyrical poetry,
letters were cultivated in Germany and books written, which, though
containing nothing worthy of preservation, deserve to be considered
and respected as bold forerunners, that fitted the Germans to value
the singers of the Nibelungen period, while for these they cultivated
{374} the language into the degree of flexibility and fullness
required for the medium of poetry. Charlemagne, who in the eighth
century, conquered and converted Germany to Christianity, established
schools in the monasteries, caused to be collected the ancient songs
and laws, ordered the preaching to be in German, and had translations
made from Latin. As the immediate result of this beginning, chronicles
and translations in verse of the Bible, were written by the inmates of
monasteries during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.
The first period of German literature, I have named after the
_Nibelungenlied_, a work which is not only the greatest of its age,
but stands alone and unapproached as a national epic in the literature
of all modern Europe. This period is commonly called the Swabian, from
the influence of the Swabian line of emperors, who commenced to reign
as emperors of Germany in the twelfth century, and who, by their
zealous and judicious encouragement of letters, made the Swabian
dialect prevail over the Franconian, which had hitherto been
predominant. In the Swabian dialect is written the Song of the
Nibelungen, which, like the Iliad--according to the well supported
theory of the great German philologist Wolff--is wrought into a
compact whole out of the traditions, songs and ballads, current at the
time of its composition. The name Nibelungen, is that of a powerful
Burgundian tribe, whose tragic fate is the subject of the poem.
Nibelungen is obviously a name derived from the northern mythology,
and is transferred to the Burgundians, when these get possession of
the fatal Nibelungen hoard of treasure. The time is in the fifth
century, and the scene is on the Rhine and afterwards on the frontier
of Hungary and Austria.
Chriemhild, a beautiful daughter of a king of the Burgundians, is
wooed and won by Siegfried, a prince of Netherlands, who possesses an
invisible cloak, a sword of magic power, the inexhaustible hoard of
the Nibelungen, and, like Achilles, is invulnerable except in one
spot. Brunhild, a princess, endowed, too, with supernatural qualities,
weds at the same time king Gunther, Chriemhild's brother; having been
won by force by Gunther, aided by Siegfried. Jealousy and discord grow
up between the two princesses, and reach such a pitch, that Brunhild
plots against the life of Siegfried, and has him treacherously
assassinated by the brothers of his wife, who wound him through the
vulnerable spot between his shoulders. After years of grief, during
which she harbors designs of vengeance, Chriemhild accepts, as a means
of avenging her wrongs, the offer of the hand of Etzel, king of the
Huns, the Attila of history, and leaving Gunther's court, accompanies
Etzel to Hungary. Hither, after a time, she invites with his
champions, Gunther, who in the face of dark forebodings, accepts the
invitation, and with a chosen army of Nibelungen, comes to Etzel's
court, where by Chriemhild's contrivance, he and all his band are
enclosed in an immense Minster and therein slain.
Such is the outline of the story of this poem, which consists of
thirty-nine books, or _Adventures_, as they are called, extending to
nearly ten thousand lines. Over the whole hangs the dark northern
mythology, under whose mysterious influences the action proceeds. The
narrative is full of life and picturesque beauty. The story is
developed with life-like truth and sequence, and with a unity of
design unsurpassed in any poetic work. Naif simplicity and tragic
grandeur unite to give it attraction.
At the time when the song of the Nibelungen was written, Germany was
richer than any European country in poetic literature. Besides this
great Epic, many poems of an epic character were written, relating, in
addition to national themes, to Charlemagne and his knights, King
Arthur and his round table, and others noted in the times of chivalry.
There too flourished the _Minnesinger_, that is, love-singers, numbers
of them knights and gentlemen, who, in imitation of the Troubadours of
southern France, cultivated poetry and sang of love and war. The
characteristics of the _Minnelieder_, or love songs, are simplicity,
truth, and earnestness of feeling, joined with beautiful descriptions
of nature. The golden age of German romantic poetry, was in the
beginning of the thirteenth century. After the fall of the
Hohenshauffen family from the imperial throne in the middle of this
century, anarchy and civil war prevailed for a time in Germany. The
nobility, given up to petty warfare, soon fell back from the state of
comparative culture to which, by devotion to poetry, they had
ascended, into rudeness and grossness.
Meanwhile the towns, particularly the imperial cities, which were
directly under the emperor, were growing into importance. In these the
civilization of the age centered. To them too, Poetry fled for
preservation, and, deserted by nobles, took refuge with mechanics. And
in a spirit that cannot be too warmly praised, was she welcomed.
Zealously and earnestly did the worthy shoemakers, and carpenters of
Nüenberg, Augsburg, Strasburg, and other towns betake themselves to
reading poetry, and writing verse,--for with all their good will and
zeal and laborious endeavors, they could produce only a mechanical
imitation of their predecessors. Nevertheless, much good did they do.
For carrying on the business of verse-making, they formed themselves
into guilds or associations, on the principle of those established by
the different trades: hence their name of master-singers, an
apprenticeship being required for admission into the guild. So
respectable and so much respected were these associations, that
knights and priests did not disdain to belong to them. Thus did the
master-singers, though ungifted with the soul of poetry which animated
the Minnesingers, keep alive the love of literature and preserve as it
were its body. Their most prosperous period was in the 15th century,
when several of their number laid the foundation of the German Drama,
and by their writings, particularly the satirical, contributed to
prepare the German mind for the influence of Luther. Especially
distinguished were men with the unmusical names of Hans Folks, Hans
Rosenplüt, and Hans Sacks. The last,--an industrious shoemaker who
still found time to write numberless dramas, not without wit, spirit
and invention,--still holds an honorable place in German Literature.
During the same period, the result of the tendency to intellectual
developement then manifested throughout Europe,--were first founded in
Germanic Universities. The oldest is that of Prague, established by
Charles IV in 1345. In imitation of it, that of Heidelberg was founded
in 1386; and in the following century they multiplied all over
Germany. Their effects were for a time injurious. By introducing
Latin, they brought {375} contempt upon the native language, and as a
consequence, contempt also upon native poetry. This influence lasted
until within less than a century of the present time. It is only
indeed fifty years since the practice, for a long while universal, of
lecturing in Latin, was entirely disused in the universities of
Germany. As the universities rose, literature sank. Latin usurped the
place of German: scholastic philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and
medicine with its kindred studies,--for, as yet there was no science,
engrossed these seats of mental labor. But even in the early stage of
their existence, while delving blindly at veins, many of them not
destined ever to yield a precious metal, they have a claim to be
regarded with honor and thankfulness, not only as the sources of so
much after-fertility, but that within their walls was disciplined and
instructed, and stored with the manifold learning which made more
fearful its gigantic powers, that mind whose startling flashes fixed,
in the opening of the 16th century, the gaze of the world it was about
to overspread with a purifying conflagration. In 1503 was first heard
in public, lecturing in the university of Erfurt, on the physics and
ethics of Aristotle, the voice of Martin Luther.
On the long undulating line of human progression, here and there
appear, at wide distances apart, men, in whom seem to centre,
condensed into tenfold force, the faculties and spirit of humanity,
apparently for the purpose of furthering by almost superhuman effort,
its great interests,--men who, through the union of deep insight with
wisest action, utter words and do deeds, which so touch, as with the
hand of inspiration, the chords of the human heart, that their fellow
men start up as though a new spring were moved in their souls, and,
shaking off the clogging trammels of custom, bound forward on their
career with freer motion and wider aim. High among these gifted few,
stands Luther,--the successful assertor, in the face of deeply founded
and strongly fortified authority, of mental independence. This is not
the occasion to dwell on the keen sagacity, the wise counsel, the
hardy acts, the stern perseverance, the broad labors, wherewith this
mighty German made good his bold position, and, partly the
trumpet-tongued spokesman, and partly the creator of the spirit of his
age, so powerfully affected the world's destiny. I have here to speak
of his influence upon the literature of Germany. That influence was
twofold. First, by the mental enfranchisement--whereof he was the
agent and instrument--of a large mass of the German people, he gave an
impetus to thought and a scope to intellectual activity, and thereby
opened up the deep springs of the German mind; and secondly, by one
great and unsurpassed literary effort, he fixed the language of his
country. The bold spirit of inquiry, of which he set the example with
such immense consequences--and with such immense consequences because
it was congenial to his countrymen,--has been the chief agent in
working out the results that in our age have given to German
literature its elevated rank: while upon the dialect which, two
hundred years after his death, was the pliant medium for the thoughts
of Kant and the creations of Goethe, he exerted such a power, that it
is called Luther's German.
When Luther began to preach and to write, Latin was the language of
the learned. Towards the end of the 15th century, that is, about the
period of his birth, unsuccessful attempts were made to circulate
translations of the ancient classics. The translations found few
readers and made no impression. Cotemporaneous with Luther, and a
forerunner of the great Reformer in attacking with boldness and skill
the usurpations of the Roman hierarchy, was Ulrich von Hutten, a name
much honored in Germany. But he wrote excellent Latin and wretched
German. The union in one man of the power to fix upon himself, and
hold as by a spell, the minds of his countrymen, with the power of a
language-genius over his native tongue--a union consummated in
Luther--was required, to raise the German language from its degraded,
enfeebled condition, to its due place, as the universal medium of
intercommunication among Germans of all classes.
About this time, two dialects contended for supremacy--if in a period
of such literary stagnation their rivalry can be termed a contest.
These were, the Low German, prevalent in Westphalia and Lower Saxony,
and the High German, spoken in Upper Saxony. The latter had just
obtained the ascendancy over the former in the Diet and the Courts of
Justice. The High German, therefore, modifying it however, in his use
of it, Luther adopted in his great work; and by the adoption for ever
determined the conflict. This great work was the translation of the
Bible.
While by speech and deed, writing, preaching, and acting, he fomented
and directed the mighty struggle for liberty, whereto his bold
words--called by his countryman Jean Paul "half-battles"--had roused
the civilized world, Luther took time to labor at the task whose
accomplishment was to forward so immensely his triumph, and which,
executed as it was by him, is an unparalleled literary achievement. At
the end of thirteen years, he finished his translation. "Alone he did
it;" and alone it stands, pre-eminent in the world among
cotemporaneous performances for its spiritual agency, and in Germany
for its influence upon literature. Before him, there scarcely existed
a written German prose. He presented to his country a complete
language. With such a compelling and genial power did he mould into a
compact, fully equipt whole, the crude and fluctuating elements of the
German language of the 15th century, that it may be said, his mother
tongue came from him suddenly perfected. And not only did he, in
vigor, flexibility, precision, and copiousness, vastly excel all who
had written before him, but not even could those who came after him
follow in his footsteps in command over the new language, for a
century. The time when the pliant, well-proportioned body he created
was to indue the spirit of the German people, was postponed to a
distant period: and of this very postponement, was he too the cause;
for the religious and civil wars, the disputes and jealousies,
consequent upon the great schism he produced, so engrossed during a
long period the German mind, that literature languished. In the latter
half of the 16th century, it was poor. In the 17th, through the
impulse given to thought by the Reformation, it would have revived,
but for the outbreaking of the terrible _thirty years' war_, which,
remotely caused by the division between Catholics and Protestants,
commenced in 1618 and lasted till 1648, and which not only during its
continuance desolated and brutalized Germany, but left it
impoverished, disorganized, and, by the protracted internal strife and
foreign {376} participation therein, in spirit to a great degree
denationalized.
Here in our rapid survey of German literature, it will be well for a
moment to pause, and before entering upon the period in which it
attained its full multiform development, cast a look back upon the
stages through which we have traced its progress.
We have seen, that in the 12th and 13th centuries, the mind of the
German people manifested its native depth and beauty in the fresh rich
bloom of a poetry, characterised in a rude age by tenderness and
grandeur. Before this, it had evinced its ready capability, in the
production of chronicles and translations in verse from the Bible, the
moment opportunity was given it in the monasteries early founded by
the enlightened spirit of Charlemagne. Afterwards, in the 14th and
15th centuries, in the wars and contests incident to the political
development of Germany, the nobles--to whom, and the clergy, the
knowledge of letters was at first confined--were drawn off by grosser
excitements from the culture and encouragement of poetry. With the
fine instinct that knows, and the aspiring spirit that strives after
the highest, which denote a people of the noblest endowments,
poetry--thrown aside as the plaything of idle hours by warrior
knights--was cherished by peaceful artizans, whose zealous devotion
vindicated their worthiness of the great gift about to be bestowed; by
whose wondrous potency, not only were the hitherto barred portals of
all pre-existing literature thrown down, but a highway was opened to
all who should seek access by letters to the temples of wisdom or
fame.
The invention of printing preceded the birth of Luther about half a
century. This great event--infinitely the greatest of a most eventful
age--facilitated vastly his labors and made effective his efforts. It
showered over Germany the new language and the new ideas embodied in
his translation of the Bible and his other writings. Thus, through its
means chiefly, the German mind was progressive, notwithstanding the
long period, extending through a century, of internal convulsion,
ending in physical exhaustion, which followed Luther's death. The
language, nervous, copious, homogeneous, as it came from Luther, was
fixedly established,--a standard by which the corruptions and ungerman
words, introduced through the long and intimate intercourse with
foreigners during the _thirty years' war_, could be cast out.
In the beginning of the 17th century, in the midst of the civil war,
an attempt was made to revive literature by Martin Opitz, a Silesian.
Silesia was then not included in the German empire. The language of
the peasantry was bad Polish; but German had been introduced into the
towns. Silesia suffered little from the _thirty years' war_. Here,
therefore, was made the beginning of the endeavors which, after
various fluctuations, resulted in the rich literary produce of the
18th century. Opitz was a scholar, versed in ancient literature as
well as in that of France and of Holland, which latter had in the age
of Hugo Grotius higher literary pretensions than at present. He
endeavored to introduce a classical spirit into German poetry, and to
create a new poetical language; but he was not a man of high genius,
and therefore, though entitled to praise for his zeal and for having
given to the German mind an impulse towards the path, so long
deserted, neither he nor his feebler followers are now read but by the
literary antiquarian or historian. Through the 17th and first part of
the 18th centuries, writers were not wanting; but their productions
were without force or originality. Though heartily devoted to letters,
they were powerless to revive literature. Their efforts betoken a
craving for that which they could not supply. Vile imitations of
French taste, extravagant romances, exaggerated sentiment, are the
characteristics of the works wherewith it was attempted to supply the
national want of a literature. The authors of these were, however, the
precursors of a class, who, themselves shining luminaries compared to
those who preceded them, were made pale by the brilliant light of the
mighty spirits in whom and through whom the literature of Germany now
stands the object of admiration and of study to the most cultivated
scholars of all nations, and, by general acknowledgment, unsurpassed
by that of any other people for richness, for depth and truth of
thought and sentiment, for beauty in its forms and solidity of
substance, for, in short, multifarious excellence.
Gottsched, Bodmer, Haller, Gellert, Rabener, Gleim, Kleist, Gessner,
Hagedorn, are names worthy of honor, though their volumes are now
seldom disturbed in their repose on the shelves of public libraries.
They broke the long darkness with a promising streak of light, which
expanded into day in the works of Klopstock, Winkelman, Lessing,
Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, Richter.
The two first named of the first class, Gottsched and Bodmer, are
noted in German literature as the chiefs of two rival schools, in the
merging of which into more enlarged views,--whereto their lively
conflict greatly contributed,--appeared the second class. Gottsched
aimed to create a German literature by imitating French models and
introducing the French spirit. Bodmer warmly opposed Gottsched, and by
translations from English authors,--far more congenial to the German
people than French,--endeavored to produce good by English influence.
This was in the first half of the 18th century. They both did service.
Their keen rivalry excited the German mind. The fertile soil was
stirred, and from its depths burst forth in thronging profusion a
mighty progeny, as though the land of Herman and of Luther had been
slow in bringing forth the children that were to make her illustrious,
because they were a brood of giants, whose first cries startled even
the mother that bore them. In one grand symphony ascended their
matured voices, lifting up the minds of their countrymen to loftiest
aspirations, and sounding in the uttermost parts of the earth,
wherever there were ears that could embrace their artful music.
Accustomed to spiritless imitations, the souls of the deep-minded
Germans were moved with unwonted agitation by the _Messiah_ of
Klopstock, of which the first books were published in the middle of
the 18th century. A voice, free and vigorous, such as since Luther
none had been heard, was eagerly heeded, and with warm acclaim all
over Germany responded to. To literature a new impulse was given, to
swell the which rose other voices, similar in strength and
originality--especially those of Kant in philosophy, and Lessing in
criticism. 'Mid this heaving and healthy excitement, came with
maddening power the first wild outpourings of the master-spirit, not
of Germany only, but of the {377} age. Twenty years after the
_Messiah_, appeared the first works of the then youthful Goethe, whom
in our day, but four years back, we have seen at the age of four score
descend gently to the tomb, having reached the natural end of a life
that was only less productive than that of Shakspeare. Ten years
later, another mighty genius announced himself, the only one who has
been honored with the title of Goethe's rival, and Schiller burst upon
Germany and the world in the _Robbers_. Poets, philosophers, critics,
historians--of highest endowment, genial, profound, of many-sided
culture, world-famous, illustrate this brilliant epoch.
A brief description of the career and best productions of the most
noted among them, will enable you to understand why, in the latter
half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, German
literature suddenly reached so high a stage of perfection.
Klopstock has the high merit of being the leader of the glorious band,
through whose teeming minds the want of a national literature was so
suddenly and fully satisfied. Klopstock was the first who by example
taught the Germans the lesson they were most apt at learning, that the
French rules of taste are not needed for the production of excellence.
Therefore is he called by Frederick Schlegel the founder of a new
epoch, and the father of the present German literature. Born at
Quedlinburg, a small town of North Germany, he was sent to school to
the Schulpforte, then and now one of the most famous schools in
Germany. As a boy, he was noted for warmth of feeling and patriotic
enthusiasm. A youth under age, he conceived the idea of writing a
national epic, taking for a subject the exploits of Henry I, Emperor
of Germany. This design he however abandoned for that of a religious
epic, and at twenty-one planned and commenced, before he knew of
Milton's poems, his _Messiah_. In his own deep meditative mind,
wrought upon by religious and patriotic zeal, originated and was
matured the bold conception. Klopstock was in his twenty-fourth year
when the first three books of the _Messiah_ appeared. His countrymen,
ever susceptible to religious appeals, and prepared at that period for
the literary revolution, or, more properly, creation, of which the
_Messiah_ was the first great act, received it with an enthusiasm to
which they had long been unused. The people beheld the young poet with
veneration, and princes multiplied upon him honors and pensions. The
remaining books were published gradually, and in the execution of his
lofty work, the German bard felt, as was natural, the influence of the
genius and precedent verse of Milton and of Dante. Like Paradise Lost,
the _Messiah_ has won for its author a reputation with thousands, even
of his countrymen, where it has been read by one. Klopstock also
attempted tragedy; but in this department he failed signally. Indeed,
he had no clear notion of the essential nature of the drama, as may be
inferred from the fact of his choosing as the subject for a tragedy,
the death of Adam. But, as a lyrical poet, he is even greater than as
an epic, and for the excellence of his odes justly has he been styled
the modern Pindar. In these,--distinguished for condensation of
thought, vigor of language, and poetic inspiration,--the Germans first
learned the full capacity of their language in diction and rhythm.
As to Klopstock is due the praise of being the first to teach the
Germans by great examples, that reliance upon native resources, and
independence of the contracting sway of meager French conventional
rules, were the only paths to the production of original, enduring
literature; to Lessing belongs that of enforcing the wholesome lesson
by precept. Lessing is the father of modern criticism. Born in
Kaments, a small town of Lusatia, in 1729, five years later than
Klopstock, he wrote at the age of twenty-two a criticism of the
_Messiah_. Later, in his maturity, he produced his _Dramaturgie_, or,
theatrical and dramatic criticism, and his _Laocoon_, or, the limits
of poetry and the plastic arts. He sought always for first principles;
and in the search he was guided by a rare philosophic acuteness,
co-operating with strong common sense. His fancy--whereof a good
endowment is indispensable to a critic--is ever subordinate to his
reason; his fine sensibility to the beautiful, supplying materials for
the deduction of principles of taste and composition by his subtle
understanding. Though greater as a critic than as a poet or creator,
he has nevertheless left three different works in the dramatic form,
that are classics in German literature;--_Minna von Barnkelm_, a
comedy; _Amelia Galotti_, a domestic tragedy; and _Nathan the Wise_, a
didactic poem of unique excellence. He himself regarded as his best
work his _Fables_, remarkable for sententiousness, simplicity of
language, and pithy significance. His prose style, concise,
transparent, forcible without dryness, is a model for the literary
student. Not the least of his great services is, that he was the first
to draw attention in Germany to Shakspeare, whose supremacy over all
poets has since been no where more broadly acknowledged, and the
causes of it no where more lucidly developed.
Cotemporary with Klopstock and Lessing, and, from his works and
influence, deserving of being mentioned next to them, was Wieland,
born in 1733 in Biborach, a town of Swabia. Wieland commenced writing
at the age of seventeen, and finished at that of eighty, during which
extended period he addicted himself to almost every department of
authorship. He is the first German who translated Shakspeare. As the
author of _Oberon_, his name is familiar to English readers. This is
much the best work of Wieland, more remarkable for grace and
sprightliness than force or originality. He drew largely from the
Greeks, Italians, English and French, and though a poet and writer of
high and various merit, but a small portion of the much he has written
is now read.
Following chronological order in this fertile period, we come after
Wieland to Herder, born at Mohrungen, a small town of Eastern Prussia,
in 1744. Like Wieland, Goethe, and Schiller, Herder was drawn to
Weimar by the munificient spirit of the Duchess Amalia, and her son,
the grand Duke Augustus, illustrious and ever memorable, as
enlightened fosterers of genius--shining examples to sovereigns,
kingly or popular. Herder was appointed in his thirty-second year,
court preacher at Weimar, and there passed the remainder of his life,
in diversified usefulness, simultaneously inspecting schools and
elaborating philosophical essays, learnedly elucidating the Old
Testament, and at the same time reviving and awakening a taste for
national songs. His greatest work, entitled _Ideas for the Philosophy
of History_, is esteemed one of the noblest productions of modern
times. Herder is called by Richter, a Christian Plato.
And here, next to Herder, and a congenial and profounder spirit, we
will speak of Richter himself, born in {378} 1763. Richter, better
known by his Christian names, Jean Paul, is a fine sample of the
German character. The truthfulness of the Germans, their deep
religious feeling, their earnestness and their playfulness, (far
removed from frivolity) their enthusiasm and their tendency to the
mystical, their warm affections and aptness to sympathy, are all not
only traceable in his works, but prominent in the broad vivid lines of
his erratic pen. In the union of learning with genius, Richter
surpasses Coleridge. His wonderful fictions are out of the reach of
common readers, not more by their learned illustrations and their
subtleties, than by their wild irregularity of form and arbitrary
structure, whereby the world generally is deprived of the enjoyment of
a fund of the most tender pathos, gorgeous description, bold, keen wit
and satire, and the richest humor in modern literature. His two
greatest works are on education, and on the philosophy of criticism.
He was several years in writing each; and storehouses they are of deep
and just thought, of searching analysis, and of great truths, evolved
by the reason of one of the world's profoundest thinkers, and
illuminated by flashes of genius of almost painful intensity. They are
works, each of them, to be studied page by page. Nothing similar to or
approaching them exists in English literature.
Of the writers who in this remarkable epoch belong to the first class
in the highest department of letters, the poetical or creative, we
have spoken--in the cursory manner necessary in a general sketch--of
all, save the two greatest, Schiller and Goethe.
Frederick Schiller was born in 1759, at Marbach, a small town of
Wurtemberg. In his mind seem to have been blended, and there
strengthened, elevated, and refined, the qualities of his parents--the
one, a man of clear upright mind; the other, a woman of more than
common intelligence and taste, who both enjoyed the fortune of living
to witness the greatness of their son. Schiller had the benefit of
good early instruction. At the age of fourteen he was placed in a high
school, just founded by the reigning Duke of Wurtemberg, and conducted
with military discipline. Here, while his daily teachers were tasking
him with irksome lessons, first of jurisprudence and afterwards of
medicine, the chained genius, chafing like the lion in his cage, was
brooding over the thoughts, and by stealth feeding with a translation
of Shakspeare the cravings, which nature had implanted in him to
produce one of her noblest works--a great poet. At eighteen he began,
within the walls of the Duke's military school, _The Robbers_, often
feigning sickness, that he might have a light in his room at night to
transfer to paper his daring conception and burning thoughts. He
postponed its publication until after he had finished his college
course and had obtained the post of surgeon in the army, in his
twenty-first year. The appearance of _The Robbers_, as a consequence
of the formal drilling of the self-complacent pedagogues of the Duke
of Wurtemberg, I have elsewhere[1] likened to the explosion of a mass
of gunpowder under the noses of ignorant boys drying it before a fire
to be used as common sand. Schiller himself, in after life, described
it as "a monster, for which by good fortune the world has no original,
and which I would not wish to be immortal, except to perpetuate an
example of the offspring which genius, in its unnatural union with
thraldom, may give to the world." Never did a literary work produce a
stronger impression. With enthusiastic admiration, the world hailed in
it the advent of a mighty poet.
[Footnote 1: North American Review, for July 1834.]
That which roused enthusiasm throughout Germany, roused anger in the
sovereign of Wurtemberg; and while all eyes were turned towards the
land whence this piercing voice had been heard, he from whose bosom it
issued was fleeing from his home to avoid a dungeon. For having gone
secretly to Manheim, in a neighboring state, to witness the
performance of _The Robbers_, the Duke had the young poet put under
arrest for a week, and Schiller, learning that for repeating the
transgression a severer punishment awaited him, fled in disguise,
choosing rather to face the appalling reality of sudden
self-dependence than brook the tyranny of mind, which to the soaring
poet was even more grievous than to the high-souled man. He quickly
found friends. Baron Dalberg supplied him with money, while he lived,
for a short time, under the name of Schmidt in a small town of
Franconia, until Madam von Wollzogen invited him to her estate near
Meinungen. Under this lady's roof he gave free scope to his genius,
and produced two more dramas--_Fiesco_, and _Kabal und Liebe_ (Court
Intrigue and Love.) These, with the _Robbers_, constitute the first or
untutored era of Schiller's literary life. With faults as glaring as
their beauties are brilliant, they are now chiefly valued as the broad
first evidence of that power, whose full exertion afterwards gave to
the world _Don Carlos_, _Wallenstein_, and _Tell_, and to Schiller
immortality. Their reputation obtained for him the post of poet to the
Manheim theatre. Thence, after a brief period he went to Leipsic and
to Dresden, developing his noble faculties by study and exercise. In
1789, at the age of thirty, he was appointed by the Grand Duke of
Weimar, at the instigation of Goethe, professor of History in the
university of Jena. Here and at Weimar he passed, in constant literary
labor, the remainder of his too short life.
Schiller's great reputation rests, and will ever rest, unshaken, on
his dramas. Regarding his first three, which we have named, as
preparatory studies to his dramatic career, he has left six finished
tragedies, viz.--_Don Carlos_, _The Maid of Orleans_, _Wallenstein_
(in three parts,) _Mary Stuart_, _The Bride of Messina_, and _William
Tell_--works, in whose conception and execution the highest principles
of art control with plastic power the glowing materials of a rich,
deep, fervent mind, ordering and disposing them with such commanding
skill, as to produce dramas, which are not merely effective in
theatrical representation, and soul-stirring to the reader as pictures
of passion, but which, by the rare combination of refined art with
mental fertility and poetic genius, exhibit, each one of them, that
highest result of the exertion of the human faculties--a great poem.
Possessing, in common with other gifted writers, the various
endowments needed in a dramatist and poet of the highest order, the
individual characteristic of Schiller is elevation. The predominant
tendency of his mind is ever upwards. Open his volumes any where, and
in a few moments the reader feels himself lifted up into an ideal
region. The leading characters in his plays, though true to humanity,
have an ideal loftiness. You figure them to yourself as of heroic
stature, such grandeur and nobleness is there in their strain of
sentiment {379} and expression. The same characteristic pervades his
prose and lyrical poetry. Had he never written a drama, his two
volumes of lyrical poetry would suffice to enthrone him among the
first class of poets, so beautiful is it and at the same time of such
depth of meaning, so musical and so thought-pregnant. No where is the
dignity of human nature more nobly asserted than in the works of
Schiller; as pure, and simple, and noble, as a man, as he is powerful
and beautiful as a poet. In the full vigor of his faculties, his mind
matured by experience and severe culture, and teeming with poetic
plans, he died in 1805, having reached only his forty-sixth year.
Of Schiller's great rival and friend, Goethe, as of Schiller himself,
I can, in the limited space allowed in such a lecture as this, only
give you a rapid sketch.
John Wolfgang Goethe was born at Frankfort on the Maine in 1749, ten
years before Schiller. "Selectest influences" leagued with nature to
produce this wonderful man. To give its complete development to a
mighty inward power, outward circumstances were most happily
propitious. Upon faculties of the quickest sensibility, and yet of
infinitely elastic power, wide convulsions and world-disturbing
incidents bore with tempestuous force, dilating the congenial energies
of the young genius, who suddenly threw out his fiery voice to swell
the tumult round him, and announce the master spirit of the age. For a
while, the thrilling melody of that voice mingled in concert with the
deep tones of the passionate period whence it drew so much of its
power. Soon, however, was it heard, uttering with calmer inspiration
the words of wisdom, drawn from a source deeper than passion--passion
subdued by the will, and tempered by culture. "It is not the ocean
ruffled," says Jean Paul, "that can mirror the heavens, but the ocean
becalmed."
Goethe's father was a prosperous honored citizen of Frankfort,
improved by travel and study--a man of sound heart and sharp temper;
his mother, a woman of superior mind and of genial character, to whom
in her old age Madam de Stael paid a visit of homage, and who enjoyed
the pleasure of introducing herself to her distinguished visiter with
the words,--"I am the mother of Goethe." Under the guidance of such
parents was Goethe's boyhood passed in the old free city of Frankfort,
ever a place of various activity, where he witnessed when a child the
coronation of an emperor of Germany, and the stir of a battle, fought
in the neighborhood between Frederick the Great and the French--events
of rare interest to any boy, and of deep import to one in whose
unfolding a great poet was to become manifest. In due season he was
sent to the university of Leipsic, famous then by the lectures of
Gottsched, Gellert, Ernesti, and others. To the young Frankfort
student the admired discourses of these sages of the time were but
lessons in skepticism; their magisterial dicta and hollow dogmas being
quickly dissolved in the fire of a mind, already in its youth
competent to self-defence against error, though with vision too
untried yet to pierce to the truth. From Leipsic he went to Strasburg,
to complete his studies in the law, his father having destined him for
a lawyer. A more imperious parent, however, had laid other commands on
him, and while the words of law-professors were falling upon his
outward ear, the inward mind was revolving the deeds of _Goetz von
Berlichingen_, and shaping the vast fragments of which in after years
was built the wondrous world of _Faust_.
In his twenty-third year appeared _Goetz von Berlichingen_, the
firstling of a pen, which, in the following sixty years, filled as
many volumes with works of almost every form wherein literature
embodies itself, a series of boundless wealth and unequalled
excellence, to gain access to which, a year were well spent in daily
labor to master the fine language it enriches. Two years later,
appeared _Werter_, an agonizing picture of passion, which, like the
first crude outburst of Schiller's genius, shot a thrill through the
then agitated mind of Germany, and which Goethe afterwards, in the
tranquillity of his purified faculties, looked back upon as a curious
literary phenomenon. This work has never been directly translated into
English (and a good translation of it were no easy achievement,) the
book called "The Sorrows of Werter" being a translation of a French
version, that does not give even the title of the original, which is,
"The Sufferings of the Young Werther." And yet, by this doubly
distorted image of a youthful ebullition, was the Protean giant for a
long while measured in England, and through England, in America.
Soon after the publication of Werter, Goethe was invited to Weimar,
where, honored and conferring honor, he lived the rest of his long and
fruitful life. Appointed at once a member, he in a few years became
president of the Council of State; and finally, after his return from
Italy, at about the age of forty he was made one of the Grand Duke's
Ministers, a post he for many years held. Directing the establishment
and arrangement of museums, libraries, art-exhibitions, and theatrical
representations, he contributed directly by practical labors, as well
as by the brilliancy which the products of his pen shed upon his place
of abode, to the fame and prosperity of Weimar.
In the poems of Shakspeare, is disclosed a mind, wherein capaciousness
and subtlety, vigor and grace, clearness and depth, versatility and
justness, combine and co-operate with such shifting ease and
impressive effect, that ordinary human faculties are vainly tasked to
embrace its perfectness and its immensity. Contemplating it, the
keenest intelligence exhausts itself in analysis, and the most refined
admiration ends in wonder. Inferior only to this consummation of human
capabilities is the mind of Goethe, akin to Shakspeare's in the
breadth and variety and subtlety of its powers. In comprehensiveness
of grasp and ideal harmony in conceiving a poetic whole, the German
approaches the mighty Englishman, and displays also in the
delineation, or, more properly, the creation of characters, that
instinctive insight and startling revelation of the human heart, which
in Shakspeare almost at times make us think he were privy to the
mystery of its structure. The same calmness and serene
self-possession--a sign of supreme mental power--are characteristic of
both. Like Shakspeare, Goethe never intrudes his personal
individuality to mar the proportions of a work of art.
To pour out the wealth of a mind, which ranges over every province of
human thought and action, Goethe adopts all the various forms in which
poetry, according to its mood and object, moulds itself. In his
epigrams, elegies, songs and ballads, he embodies the highest
excellences of the _lyrical_. In _Egmont_, you have a bold {380}
specimen of the romantic _tragedy_; in _Iphygenia_, a beautiful
reproduction of the classical Greek; while _Torquato Tasso_, a drama
of the most exquisite grace and refinement, occupies a middle ground
between the two. To pass from this to _Faust_, is to be suddenly borne
away from a quiet scene of rural beauty to a rugged mountain peak,
whence, through a tempest, you catch glimpses of the distant sunny
earth, and mid the elemental strife, beautiful in its terrors, hear
sounds as though a heaven-strung æolian harp snatched music from the
blast. In _Herman and Dorothea_, executed with matchless felicity,
reigns the pure _epic_ spirit. This one poem were enough to make a
reputation. But the highest exhibition of Goethe's manifold powers is
_Wilhelm Meister_, in which a mixed assemblage of fictitious
personages, each one possessing the vital individuality and yet
generic breadth of Falstaff and of Juliet, bound together in a vast
circle of the most natural and complex relations, presents so truthful
and significant and art-beautified a picture of the struggles and
attainments, the joys and griefs, the labors and recreations, the
capacities and failings of mortal men, that from its study we rise
with strength freshened and feelings purified, and our vision of all
earthly things brightened. Unhesitatingly characterizing this work as
the greatest prose fiction ever produced, I close this brief notice of
its wonderful author.
The writers I have named are they who have given existence and
character to modern German literature. Yet, to omit all mention of a
number of others, would be not only unjust to them, but an
imperfection even in so rapid a sketch as this.
By the side of Lessing, I should have placed Winkelman, born in the
beginning of the last century, whose history of ancient art is
esteemed the best of all works in this department of criticism. It had
great influence upon German literature. Among the poets who, next to
the brilliant series already described, hold high places, are, Bürger,
Koerner, (both known to English readers through translations),
Voss--to whom, and to their own copious, flexible language, the
Germans are indebted for the most perfect translations of Homer
possessed by any people--Tieck, Novalis, Grilpazer. Besides these may
be mentioned the Stolbergs, Hoelty, Tidge, Leisewits, Mülner, Collin,
Mathison, Uland. Among a crowd of novelists, distinguished are the
names of Engel, Fouquet, Lafontaine, and Hoffman, and Thummel, whose
satirical novels have a high reputation. Of miscellaneous writers
there is a host, among whom should be particularized, Mendelsohn,
Jacobi, Lichtenberg. In historians Germany is especially rich. Johan
von Müller, Heeren, Niebuhr, Raumer, O. Müller, are writers whose
merits are acknowledged throughout Europe, and acquaintance with whose
works is indispensable to the scholar who would have wide views and
accurate knowledge of the spirit of history. In criticism the two
Schlegels have a European reputation. The "Lectures on the Drama" of
Augustus William Schlegel constitute the finest critical work extant.
Of the well known learning, profoundness, and acuteness of the German
philologists, theologians and metaphysicians, it were superfluous here
to speak. In short, to conclude, the Germans, endowed by nature with
mental capabilities inferior to those of no people of the earth, and
enjoying for the last half century a more general as well as a higher
degree of education than any other, and thus combining talent and
genius with wide learning and laborious culture, possess a vast and
various accumulation of productions, wherein are to be found in every
province of letters works of highest excellence, which to the literary
or scientific student, whatever be his native tongue, are
inexhaustible sources of mental enjoyment and improvement.