cannibals, and dragons, to the best of my ability, but never with
clouds, what shape soever it pleased them to take. A sensible man
leaves it to the winds that have blown them together to sweep them away
again.
W. You are a monster, a blasphemer.
H. And you can't understand. Your Hercules stands like a beardless
simpleton, hesitating between virtue and vice. If the two jades had met
_me_ on the way--see! one under this arm, one under that, off I'd have
gone with them both.
Here we have Goethe's early and vigorous new conception of the antique
contrasted with Wieland's Frenchified one; and we have at the same time
the poetical confession of faith of the man whom his contemporaries
called the Great Pagan. This is the philosophy of Spinoza in the form
of a daring jest. But Goethe did not retain this bold, naturalistic
view of the antique. When his youthful ardour had exhausted itself
in _Werther_, in _Götz_, and in his enthusiastic treatise on Gothic
architecture, he abruptly turned his back upon the Gothic and upon
enthusiasm; and when he returns to the Greeks, it is their serenity
and their lucidity, their simple harmonies and their sound common
sense which captivate him. All that was passionate, full of colour,
and realistic, he put aside and ignored; what was popular, burlesque,
sensational, he only admitted in his allegorical farces, such as _Die
klassische Walpurgisnacht_ in Faust; and for what was wildly bacchantic
or darkly mystical his eyes were closed.
With an increasing aversion for Christianity, which finds its chief
expression in the Venetian Epigrams, was associated such a repugnance
for the Gothic and all Christian art, that when he was at Assisi,
a place so rich in famous Christian mementoes, Goethe did not even
visit the beautiful Church of St. Francis, but devoted his attention
exclusively to the insignificant ruins of the Temple of Minerva. It
was in this frame of mind that he wrote his Iphigenia, a work which
may be looked upon as typical of the whole Germanic-Gothic renaissance
of the antique, and which played an important part in the formation of
the art theories of the nineteenth century. It was regarded by German
æstheticism under the leadership of Hegel, and by French æstheticism
under the leadership of Taine, as a species of model work of art.
Hegel considered that only the _Antigone_ of Sophocles was worthy to
be compared with it. The spirit by which it is inspired is the same
spirit which inspired all Schiller's neo-Hellenic poems, _Die Götter
Griechenlands, Die Künstler, Die Ideale, Das Ideal und das Leben_. Men
were actually inclined at that time to accept, as representative of the
life of the Greeks, Schiller's description of the life of the gods:
"Ewig klar und spiegelrein und eben
Fliesst das zephyrleichte Leben
Im Olymp den Seligen dahin."
It is this entirely one-sided conception of the antique which is
gradually evolved from that expressed in _Götter, Helden und Wieland_,
and which finally leads Goethe to write Homeric poems like _Achilleïs_.
Thorvaldsen's position to the antique is influenced by the same ideas
and presents a succession of almost parallel movements. In some of his
earliest bas-reliefs--Achilles and Briseïs, for example--we observe
that greater daring in the rendering of the antique with which Goethe
started; but all his later representations of Greek subjects have been
inspired by the ideal of peaceful, subdued harmony which superseded the
vigorous tendency.
This new, Germanic-Gothic conception of Hellas is that with which all
my (Danish) readers have been brought up, which they have imbibed from
conversation, from newspapers, from German and Danish poetry, and from
the Thorvaldsen sculptures. It is the conception which with us is not
only regarded as the Danish and German, but as the only, the absolutely
correct one.
The view which I venture to express here for the first time is,
that the Greece of Winckelmann, Goethe, and Thorvaldsen is _almost_
as un-Greek as that of Racine and that of Barthélemy in _Le Jeune
Anacharse_. Racine's style has too strong a flavour of the drawing-room
and the court to be Greek; Goethe's and Thorvaldsen's (framed on
Winckelmann's theories) is, in spite of the surpassing genius of these
two great men, too chastened, too limpid, and too cold to be Greek.
I believe that the time will come when Goethe's Iphigenia will not
be considered appreciably more Greek than Racine's, when it will be
discovered that the German Iphigenia's dignified morality is as German
as the French Iphigenia's graceful refinement is French. The only
question that remains is, whether one is more Greek when one is German
or when one is French. I am perfectly aware that I am dashing my head
against a wall of Germanic-Gothic prejudice when I declare myself
on the side of the French. I am not ignorant of the firmly-rooted
conviction that of the two European streams of culture one is Latin,
Spanish, French, the other Greek, German, Northern. I know of the
plausible arguments, that German poetry with Goethe at its head has an
antique bias, and is more or less Hellenic; that Germany has produced
Winckelmann, the re-discoverer of the antique, and the philologists who
have interpreted Greece to us; while France has only produced Racine,
who turned the Greek demigods and heroes into French courtiers, and
Voltaire, who considered Aristophanes a charlatan.
And yet, when in comparing the two Iphigenias I asked myself the
question: Which of the two, the Frenchman's or the German's, more
resembles the Greek? the answer I gave myself was--The Frenchman's.
The spirit of the French people resembles the Greek spirit in its
absolute freedom from awkwardness, its love of lightness, elegance,
form and colour, passion and dramatic life. No reasonable person would
dream of ranking the French with the Greeks. The distance between them
is so great as to be practically immeasurable. Still one must maintain
their right to the place of honour against those who assert that the
Germans stand nearer to the Greeks.
The Germans who more immediately influenced Mme. de Staël, the leaders
of the Romantic School, cherished a firm conviction of the vanity of
literary and artistic attempts to reproduce the antique. A. W. Schlegel
perpetuated Lessing's antagonism to the so-called classical poetry of
France, exalting at its expense the poetry of the Troubadours, which
did not depend for support on Greek or Latin literature; and he was
very much colder in his criticism of Goethe's neo-Hellenic poems than
of those which dealt with more home-like and more varied themes. To
such influence is to be ascribed Corinne's dictum (i. 321) that, since
we cannot make our own either the religious feelings of the Greeks
and Romans or their intellectual tendencies, it is impossible for us
to produce anything in their spirit, to invent, so to speak, anything
in their domain. We do not need the footnote referring to an essay
by Fr. Schlegel to tell us whose suggestion the authoress has here
followed. And we almost feel as if we were reading the work of one
of the Romantic critics when, in _De l'Allemagne_, we come upon the
following development of the same thought: "Even if the artists of our
day were restricted to the simplicity of the ancients, it would be
impossible for us to attain to the original vigour which distinguishes
them, and we should lose that intensity and complexity of emotion which
is only found with us. Simplicity in art is apt with us moderns to
become coldness and unreality, whereas with the ancients it was full of
life."[2]
I believe that this utterance hits the mark. And just as the German
reproduction of the antique is German, so the Danish renaissance of
the antique is Danish and not Greek; that is to say, it is too Danish
to be properly Greek, and too Greek to be genuinely Danish and really
modern. One is never more conscious of this than when one sees a work
of Thorvaldsen's side by side with an antique bas-relief; when, for
instance, one compares the Christiansborg medallions with the metopes
of the Parthenon, or, as in the Naples Museum, sees a bas-relief of
the most vigorous Greek period beside Thorvaldsen's most beautiful
bas-relief, his "Night."
Thorvaldsen's "Night" is only the stillness of night, the night in
which men sleep. Night, as a Greek would conceive of it, the night
in which men love, in which they murder, the night which hides under
its mantle voluptuousness and crime, it certainly is not. It is a
mild summer night in the country. And it is this idyllic spirit and
sweet serenity which is the specially Danish characteristic of this
production of the Northern renaissance of the antique. The peculiar
rustic beauty of the charming figure is as essentially Danish as the
severe grandeur and nobility of Goethe's Iphigenia are German.
Like Goethe's, Thorvaldsen's revival of the antique is the expression
of a reaction against the French-Italian rococo style, which, in spite
of its justifiableness, was not a successful reaction. For, even where
the rococo style is most ridiculous, there is always this to be said
for it, that it has the strongest objection to repeat the old, to do
over again what has already been done, and that, though its attempts
frequently result in ugliness and distortion, they nevertheless evince
a passionate, personal endeavour to find something new, something that
shall be its own. Hence Bernini, in spite of his sins against truth and
beauty, is really great in his best works, such as his St. Theresa in
Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, and his St. Benedict at Subiaco--so
great that we understand the enthusiasm he aroused, and feel that he
far excels many modern sculptors, who never produce anything distorted,
but also never produce anything original.
By his abrupt return to the antique, Thorvaldsen as it were ignored
the whole development of art since the days of the Greeks. It would
be impossible to divine from his work that such a sculptor as Michael
Angelo had ever lived. He was drawn to the antique by precisely the
same qualities which attracted Goethe--its serenity and quiet grandeur.
It is possible to share Mme. de Staël's and the Romanticists' view
that the neo-Hellenic style in modern art (that offspring of a
disinclination to be one's self, i.e. modern, and an attempt to be
the impossible, i.e. antique) is in itself an abortion--exactly as
the Romanticists' own medieval hieratic style was one--and at the
same time, without any self-contradiction, warmly to admire Goethe's
_Iphigenia_ and Thorvaldsen's finest works. This is, indeed, only what
the German Romanticists and Mme. de Staël herself did. But Mme. de
Staël has failed to observe, that in every case in which a work that
is the result of the study of the antique is a work of real, lasting
importance, it is so because the artist's or poet's national character
and personal peculiarities show distinctly through the more refined,
but less robust, classicism which is the result of his endeavour.
The attacks made in _Corinne_ and _De l'Allemagne_ upon spurious
classicism were an expression, in the first instance, of the reaction
against the eighteenth century; but, so far as France was concerned,
they applied also to an earlier period, were attacks upon the great
names of the seventeenth century, of the classic period of Louis XIV.,
which A. W. Schlegel, following in Lessing's steps, had so severely
criticised. Here, where Mme. de Staël was running the risk of wounding
French national pride, she shows all possible circumspection, only
repeats the remarks of others, and qualifies where she can. She justly
maintains, however, that the spirit of this criticism is not un-French,
since it is the same as that which inspires Rousseau's Letter on French
Music, the same accusation of having supplanted natural expression of
the emotions by a certain pompous affectation.
When the Germans of those days desired to give a tangible example of
the French conception of the antique, they pointed to the portraits
of Louis XIV., in which he is represented now as Jupiter, now as
Hercules, naked or with a lion's hide thrown over his shoulders, but
never without his great wig. But when Madame de Staël, following
their example, praises German Hellenism at the expense of French, she
scarcely does her countrymen justice. The art of David had already
proved that Frenchmen were capable of discarding the periwig without
foreign suggestion. Besides, she over-estimates German neo-Hellenism.
There is no doubt that the Germans, whose literature is so critical,
whose modern poetry is actually an offspring of criticism and
æstheticism, have understood the Greeks far better than the French have
done, and that this understanding has been of value in their imitation
of them. But one never resembles an original nature less than when
one imitates it. The Germans favour restriction and moderation in all
practical matters, but are opposed to the restriction of either thought
or imagination. Therefore they triumph where plastic form vanishes--in
metaphysics, in lyrical poetry, and in music; but therefore also there
are conjectures in their science, their art is formless, colour is
their weak point in painting, and the drama in poetry. In other words,
they lack exactly that plastic talent which the Greeks possessed in the
highest degree. If France is far from being a Greece in art, Germany
is still farther. Of all the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, the
Germans have only succeeded in acclimatising one--Pallas Athene, and
in Germany she wears spectacles. Mme. de Staël might have observed to
Schlegel that an Athene with spectacles is not much more beautiful than
a Jupiter with a wig.
[1] It cannot be denied that this scientific, anti-mythological simile
does not come well from Hercules. But the rest atones for it.
[2] Madame de Staël: _Oeuvres complètes_, x. 273.
XIII
DE L'ALLEMAGNE
The strongly opposed and long suppressed book on Germany is the most
mature production of Mme. de Staël's culture and intellect. It is the
first of her longer works in which she so entirely loses herself in
her subject as to have apparently forgotten her own personality. In
it she gives up describing herself, and only appears to the extent
that she gives an account of her travels in Germany and reproduces
her conversations with the most remarkable men of that country. In
place of self-defence and self-exaltation, she offers her countrymen
a comprehensive view of a whole new world. The last information
Frenchmen had received regarding the intellectual life of Germany was,
that there was a king in Berlin who dined every day in the company of
French savants and poets, who sent, his indifferent French verse to be
corrected by Voltaire, and who refused to acknowledge the existence of
a German literature. And now, not so many years later, they learned
that this same country, which their conquering armies were in the act
of treading under foot, had, in the course of a single generation,
produced, as if by magic, a great and instructive literature, which
some had the audacity to rank with the French, if not above it.
The book gave a complete, comprehensive picture of this foreign
intellectual life and literary production. It began with a description
of the appearance of the country and its towns; it noted the contrasts
between the character of Northern and of Southern Germany, between
the tone and morals of Berlin and of Vienna; it gave information on
the subject of German university education, and of the new life which
Pestalozzi had imparted to the training of children. From this it
passed on to a general survey of contemporary German poetry, made
doubly intelligible by many translations of poems and fragments of
drama; and the authoress did not even flinch from putting the climax to
her work by giving a sketch of the evolution of German philosophy from
Kant to Schelling.
The impressions of German naïveté, good-nature, and straightforwardness
which prevailed in France until 1870 were due to Mme. de Staël's
book. She made the acquaintance of the people who had caused Europe
to resound with the clash of their arms throughout the Thirty Years'
War and during the reign of Frederick the Great, at the moment of
its deepest political and military degradation, and this led her to
conclude that the national character was peaceful and idyllic. It
seemed to her that the warmth of the stoves and the fumes of ale and
tobacco gave the atmosphere in which this people moved a peculiar,
heavy, dull quality; and it was her opinion that their strength
lay exclusively in their earnest morality and their intellectual
independence.
She never wearies of praising the integrity and truthfulness of the
German men, and only very occasionally does she hint at a pretty
general lack of refinement and tact. We feel that their conversation
often wearied her, but for this she blames the social customs and the
language. It is impossible, she says, to express one's self neatly in
a language in which one's meaning as a rule only becomes intelligible
at the end of the sentence, in which, consequently, the interruptions
which give life to a conversation are almost impossible, it being also
impossible always to reserve the pith of the sentence for the end. It
is natural, she thinks, that a foreigner should sometimes be bored by
the conversation in a society where the listeners are so unexacting
and so patient; where no one consequently has that dread of boring
which prevents circumlocution and repetitions. Even the custom of
perpetually repeating insignificant and lengthy titles necessarily
makes conversation formal and cumbersome.
The German women she describes with warm sympathy, but not without a
touch of sarcasm, as follows:--
"They have an attraction peculiarly their own, touching voices, fair
hair, dazzling complexions; they are modest, but less timid than
Englishwomen; one can see that they less frequently meet men who are
their superiors. They seek to please by their sensibility, to interest
by their imagination, and are familiar with the language of poetry and
of the fine arts. They play the coquette with their enthusiasms as
Frenchwomen do with their _esprit_ and merry wit. The perfect loyalty
distinctive of the German character makes love less dangerous to
women's happiness, and possibly they approach the feeling with more
confidence because it has been invested for them with romantic colours,
and because slights and infidelity are less to be dreaded here than
elsewhere. Love is a religion in Germany, but a poetic religion, which
only too readily permits all that the heart can find excuse for.
"One may fairly laugh at the ridiculous airs of some German women, who
are so habitually enthusiastic that enthusiasm has with them become
mere affectation, their mawkish utterances effacing any piquancy
or originality of character they may possess. They are not frankly
straightforward like Frenchwomen, which by no means implies that they
are false; but they are not capable of seeing and judging things as
they really are; actual events pass like a phantasmagoria before their
eyes. Even when, as occasionally happens, they are frivolous, they
still preserve a touch of that sentimentality which in their country is
held in high esteem. A German lady said to me one day with a melancholy
expression: 'I do not know how it is, but the absent pass out of my
soul.' A Frenchwoman would have expressed the idea more gaily, but the
meaning would have been the same.
"Their careful education and their natural purity of soul render the
dominion they exercise gentle and abiding. But that intellectual
agility which animates conversation and sets ideas in motion is rare
among German women."
Mme. de Staël was necessarily much impressed by the intellectual life
of Germany. In her own country everything had stiffened into rule and
custom. There, a decrepit poetry and philosophy were at the point of
death; here, everything was in a state of fermentation, full of new
movement, life, and hope.
The first difference between the French and the German spirit which
struck her was their different attitude to society. In France the
dominion exercised by society was absolute; the French people were
by nature so social that every individual at all times felt bound to
act, to think, to write like every one else. The Revolution of 1789
was spread from district to district merely by sending couriers with
the intelligence that the nearest town or village had taken up arms.
In Germany, on the contrary, there was no society; there existed no
universally accepted rules of conduct, no desire to resemble every
one else, no tyrannical laws of language or poetry. Each author wrote
as he pleased, for his own satisfaction, paying little heed to that
reading world around which all the thoughts of the French writer
revolved. In Germany the author created his public, whereas in France
the public, the fashion of the moment, moulded the author. In Germany
it was possible for the thought of the individual to exercise that
power over men's minds which in France is exercised exclusively by
public opinion. At the time when the French philosopher was a society
man, whose great aim was to present his ideas in clear and attractive
language, a German thinker, living isolated from the culture of his
time at far-away Königsberg, revolutionised contemporary thought by a
couple of thick volumes written in a language saturated with the most
difficult technical terms. A woman who had suffered all her life from
the oppression of a narrow-minded social spirit could not but feel
enthusiasm for such conditions as these.
The next great contrast with French intellectual life that struck
Mme. de Staël was the prevailing idealism of German literature. The
philosophy which had reigned in France during the last half of the
eighteenth century was one which derived all human ideas and thoughts
from the impressions of the senses, which, consequently, asserted
the human mind to be dependent upon and conditioned by its material
surroundings. It was certainly not in Mme. de Staël's power to
estimate the nature and the bearing of this philosophy, but, like
a genuine child of the new century, she loathed it. She judged it
like a woman, with her heart rather than her head, and ascribed to
it all the materialism she objected to in French morals, and all the
servile submission to authority she objected to in French men. Taking
Condillac's sensationalism in combination with the utilitarianism of
Helvetius, she pronounced the opinion that no doctrine was more adapted
to paralyse the soul in its ardent, upward endeavour than this, which
derived all good from properly understood self-interest. With genuine
delight she saw the opposite doctrine universally accepted in Germany.
The ethics of Kant and Fichte and the poetry of Schiller proclaimed
exactly that sovereignty of the spirit in which she had believed all
her life. These great thinkers demonstrated, that inspired poet in
each of his poems proved, the spirit's independence of the world of
matter, its power to rise above it, to rule it, to remould it. They
expressed the most cherished convictions of her heart; and it was in
her enthusiasm for these doctrines, for German high-mindedness and
loftiness of aspiration, that she set to work to write her book _De
l'Allemagne_ (as Tacitus in his day had written _De Germania_), for
the purpose of placing before her fellow-countrymen a great example of
moral purity and intellectual vigour.