THE WIENERWALD—A DIGRESSION.
I shall never forget the shock to my feelings when, shortly after
leaving Transylvania, I went to spend the summer months in the
much-famed Wienerwald near Vienna. In former years I had often
visited this neighborhood, and had even retained of it very pleasant
recollections; but now, fresh from the wild charm of undefiled and
undesecrated nature, the Wienerwald and everything about it appeared
in the light of a pitiable farce. In fact, I do not think I had ever
rightly appreciated the Transylvanian mountain scenery till forced to
compare it with another landscape.
The country about Vienna—of which its natives are so proud—is
beautiful, it is true, or rather it has been beautiful once; but,
alas! how much of its charm has been destroyed by that terrible
_Verschönerungs Verein_ (Beautifying Association), as those noisome
institutions are called, loathsome abortions of a diseased German
brain, which have the object of teaching unfortunate mankind to
appreciate the beauties of nature in the only correct fashion
authorized by science.
Viewed in the abstract, an ignorant stranger unacquainted with the
habits of the country might be prone to imagine taking a walk up any
of those beautiful wooded hills to be a comparatively simple matter,
provided his lungs and his _chaussure_ be in adequate walking trim.
Ridiculous error! to be speedily rectified by painful experience before
you have spent many days in the neighborhood of the Austrian capital.
It is here not a question of boots, but of books; of science, not of
soles; your lungs are useless unless your mind be rightly adjusted;
and the latest edition of Meyer’s “Conversations Lexicon” will be far
more necessary to fit you for a walk in the Wienerwald than a pair of
Euknemida walking-shoes.
To go into a civilized Austrian forest requires at least as much
preparation as to enter a fashionable ball-room; and unless you have
been thoroughly grounded in contemporary literature, general history,
and the biographies of celebrated men, you had far better stay at home.
There you are not left to yourself to make acquaintance with trees and
flowers, as your ignorant rustic fashion has hitherto been; but your
exact relations to the botanical world around you are precisely defined
from the very outset. At every step you make you are overwhelmed with
alternate doses of advice, admonition, entreaty, or threat; but never,
never by any chance are you left to your own devices! You cannot feel
as if you were alone even in the most hidden depths of the forest,
for the tormenting spirit of the _Verschönerungs Verein_ will insist
on following you about step by step, its jarring voice ever breaking
in on your most secret reveries. It _warns_ you not to tread on the
grass; it _entreats_ you to spare the pine-cones; it _instructs_ you to
avoid meddling with the toadstools; it _recommends_ the flowers to your
protection; it _advises_ you to be careful with your cigar-ashes; it
_commands_ you to muzzle your unhappy terrier; it weighs you down with
a crushing sense of your own unworthiness by appealing to your sense
of honor, of probity, of refinement, of patriotism, and to a hundred
other noble qualities you are acutely conscious of _not_ possessing;
then passing from fawning flattery to brutal menace, it growls dark
threats against your liberty or your purse, should you have remained
deaf to its hateful voice, and presume to have overstepped the limits
of familiarity prescribed towards an oak-tree or a bush of wild-rose.
If, chafing in spirit at these reiterated pinpricks, you would take
some rest by sitting down on one of the numerous benches placed there
for the accommodation of exhausted but perfectly educated individuals,
you are abruptly called upon to choose between Goethe and Schiller,
Kant or Hegel, Lessing or Wieland, to the immortal memory of each of
which celebrities the proud monument of six feet of white-painted board
has been dedicated.
A harmless enough looking little bridge is designated as Custozza
bridge, and a delicious opening in the forest redolent of wild
cyclamen desecrated by the base appellation of _Philosophen Wiese_
(Philosopher’s meadow). Even the source where you pause to slake your
thirst has been christened by some such preposterous title as the
fountain of friendship or the spring of gratitude. You cannot, in fact,
move a hundred yards in any given direction without having the names
of celebrated men, cardinal virtues, or national victories forced down
your throat _ad nauseam_, and—what to my thinking is the cruelest
grievance of all—you are there debarred the simple satisfaction of
losing your way in a natural unsophisticated manner, every second
tree having been converted into a sign-post, which persists in giving
information you would much rather be without.
Latitude and longitude are dinned into your ears with merciless
precision; staring patches of scarlet, blue, and yellow paint, arranged
to express a whole series of cabalistic signs, disfigure the ruddy
bronze of noble pine-stems; gaunt pointing fingers, multiplied as
in a delirious nightmare, meet you at every turn, informing you of
your exact bearings with regard to every given point of the landscape
within a radius of ten miles. “Two hours from Bürgersruhe,” they tell
you; “Five hours from Wienerlust;” “An hour and a half from Philister
Berg”—and oh, how many weary miles away from anything resembling
nature and freedom, eagles and poetry!
You long to be gone from the mournful spectacle of nature profaned
and debased; your independent spirit chafes and frets under the
oppressive tyranny of a vulgar despot, who, not content with directing
your movements and restricting your actions, would further extend
his detested interference to the inmost regions of your thoughts
and feelings. Why should I be confronted with Hegel, when I wish to
cultivate the far more congenial society of an interesting stag-beetle?
Wherefore disturb the luxurious feeling of gloomy revenge my soul is
brooding by the suggestion of any sentiment as sickly and as utterly
fabulous as friendship or gratitude? Why dishonor the fragrance of
pale cyclamen by a bookworm odor of mustiness and mildew? Why, O cruel
_Verschönerungs Verein_, skilful annihilator of all that is beautiful
and sublime, have you left no margin for poetry or imagination, romance
or accident, conjecture or hope, in visiting these regions? “_Lasciate
ogni speranza voi ch’ entrate_” it is indeed the case here to say; or
rather, if you be wise, do not enter these hopeless regions at all, but
turning your back on all such, go straight through to Transylvania,
where you will find in profusion all those charms of which the
Wienerwald has been so cruelly robbed!