_Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas, Madame!_
But life is in reality so terribly serious, that it would be
insupportable without such union of the pathetic and the comic; as our
poets well know. The most harrowing forms of human madness Aristophanes
exhibits only in the laughing mirror of wit; Goethe only presumes to set
forth the fearful pain of thought comprehending its own nothingness in
the doggerel of a puppet show; and Shakespeare puts the most deadly
lamentation over the misery of the world into the mouth of a fool, who
rattles his cap and bells in agony.
They have all learned from the great First Poet, who, in his World
Tragedy in thousands of acts, knows how to carry humour to the highest
point, as we see every day. After the departure of the heroes, the
clowns and _graciosos_ enter with their baubles and wooden swords, and
after the bloody scenes of the Revolution there came waddling on the
stage the fat Bourbons, with their stale jokes and tender "legitimate"
_bon mots_, and the old noblesse with their starved laughter hopped
merrily before them, while behind all swept the pious Capuchins with
candles, cross, and banners of the Church. Yes, even in the highest
pathos of the World Tragedy, bits of fun slip in. The desperate
republican, who, like Brutus, plunged a knife to his heart, perhaps
smelt it first to see whether some one had not split a herring with
it--and on this great stage of the world all passes exactly the same as
on our beggarly boards. On it, too, there are tipsy heroes, kings who
forget their part, scenes which obstinately stay up in the air,
prompters' voices sounding above everything, danseuses who create
astonishing effects with the poetry of their legs, and costumes which
are the main thing. And high in Heaven, in the first row of the boxes,
sit the dear little angels, and keep their _lorgnettes_ on us comedians
here down below, and the blessed Lord himself sits seriously in his
great box, and, perhaps, finds it dull, or calculates that this theatre
cannot be kept up much longer because this one gets too high a salary,
and that one too little, and that they all play much too badly.
_Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas, Madame!_ As I ended the last
chapter, narrating to you how Monsieur Le Grand died, and how I
conscientiously executed the _testamentum militaire_ which lay in his
last glance, some one knocked at my door, and there entered a poor old
lady, who asked if I were not a Doctor. And as I assented, she kindly
asked me to go home with her and cut her husband's corns.
LAST WORDS (REISEBILDER).
Written 29th November 1830.
It was a depressed, an arrested time in Germany when I wrote the second
volume of the _Reisebilder_, and had it printed as I wrote. But before
it appeared something was whispered about it; it was said that my book
would awaken and encourage the cowed spirit of freedom, and that
measures were being taken to suppress it. When such rumours were afloat,
it was advisable to advance the book as quickly as possible, and drive
it through the press. As it was necessary, too, that it should contain a
certain number of leaves, to escape the requisitions of the estimable
censorship, I followed the example of Benvenuto Cellini, who, in
founding his Perseas, was short of bronze, and to fill up the mould
threw into the molten metal all the tin plates he could lay his hands
on. It was certainly easy to distinguish between the tin--especially the
tin termination of the book--and the better bronze; anyone, however, who
understands the craft will not betray the workman.
But as everything in this world is liable to turn up again, so it came
to pass that, in this very volume, I found myself again in the same
scrape, and I have been obliged to again throw some tin into the
mould--let me hope that this renewed melting of baser metal will simply
be attributed to the pressure of the times.
Alas! the whole book sprang from the pressure of the times, as well as
the earlier writings of similar tendency. The more intimate friends of
the writer, who are acquainted with his private circumstances, know well
how little his own vanity forced him to the tribune, and how great were
the sacrifices which he was obliged to make for every independent word
which he has spoken since then and--if God will!--which he still means
to speak. Now-a-days, a word is a deed whose consequences cannot be
measured, and no one knows whether he may not in the end appear as
witness to his words in blood.
For many years I have waited in vain for the words of those bold
orators, who once in the meetings of the German Burschenschaft so often
claimed a hearing, who so often overwhelmed me with their rhetorical
talent, and spoke a language spoken so oft before; they were then so
forward in noise--they are now so backward in silence. How they then
reviled the French and the foreign Babel, and the un-German frivolous
betrayers of the Fatherland, who praised French-dom. That praise
verified itself in the great week!
Ah, the great week of Paris! The spirit of freedom, which was wafted
thence over Germany, has certainly upset the night-lamps here and there,
so that the red curtains of several thrones took fire, and golden crowns
grew hot under blazing night-caps; but the old catch-polls, in whom the
royal police trusted, are already bringing out the fire-buckets, and now
scent around all the more suspiciously, and forge all the more firmly
their secret chains, and I mark well that a still thicker prison vault
is being invisibly arched over the German people.
Poor imprisoned people! be not cast down in your need. Oh, that I could
speak catapults! Oh, that I could shoot falarica from my heart!
The distinguished ice-rind of reserve melts from my heart, a strange
sorrow steals over me--is it love, and love for the German people? Or is
it sickness?--my soul quivers and my eyes burn, and that is an
unfortunate occurrence for a writer, who should command his material,
and remain charmingly objective, as the art school requires, and as
Goethe has done--he has grown to be eighty years old in so doing, and a
minister, and portly--poor German people! that is thy greatest man!
I still have a few octavo pages to fill, and I will therefore tell a
story--it has been floating in my head since yesterday--a story from the
life of Charles the Fifth.[8] But it is now a long time since I heard
it, and I no longer remember its details exactly. Such things are easily
forgotten, if one does not receive a regular salary for reading them
every half-year from his lecture books. But what does it matter if
places and dates are forgotten, so long as one holds their significance,
their moral meaning, in his memory. It is this which stirs my soul and
moves me even to tears. I fear I am getting ill.
The poor emperor was taken prisoner by his enemies, and lay in stern
imprisonment. I believe it was in Tyrol. There he sat in solitary
sorrow, forsaken by all his knights and courtiers, and no one came to
his help. I know not if he had even in those days that cheese-yellow
complexion with which Holbein painted him. But the misanthropic
under-lip certainly protruded, even more then than in his portraits. He
must have despised the people who fawned around him in the sunshine of
prosperity, and who left him alone in his bitter need. Suddenly the
prison door opened, and there entered a man wrapped in a cloak, and as
he cast it aside, the emperor recognised his trusty Kunz von der Rosen,
the court-fool. One brought him consolation and counsel--and it was the
court-fool.
O, German Fatherland! dear German people! I am thy Kunz von der Rosen.
The man whose real office was pastime, and who should only make thee
merry in happy days, forces his way into thy prison, in time of need;
here, beneath my mantle, I bring thee thy strong sceptre and the
beautiful crown--dost thou not remember me, my emperor? If I cannot free
thee, I will at least console thee, and thou shalt have some one by thee
who will talk with thee about thy most pressing oppressions, and will
speak courage to thee, and who loves thee, and whose best jokes and best
blood are ever at thy service. For thou, my people, art the true
emperor, the true lord of the land--thy will is sovereign and more
legitimate than that purple _Tel est notre plaisir_, which grounds
itself upon divine right, without any better guarantee than the quackery
of shaven jugglers--thy will, my people, is the only righteous source of
all power. Even though thou liest down there in fetters, thy good right
will arise in the end, the day of freedom draws near, a new time
begins--my emperor, the night is over, and the dawn shines outside.
"Kunz von der Rosen, my Fool, thou errest. Thou hast perhaps mistaken a
bright axe for the sun, and the dawn is nothing but blood."
"No, my Emperor, it is the sun, though it rises in the west--for six
thousand years men have always seen it rise in the east--it is high time
that it for once made a change in its course."
"Kunz von der Rosen, my Fool, thou hast lost the bells from thy red cap,
and it now has such a strange look, that red cap!"
"Ah, my Emperor, I have shaken my head in such mad earnest over your
distress that the fool's bell fell from my cap; but it is none the worse
for that!"
"Kunz von der Rosen, my Fool, what is that breaking and cracking outside
there?"
"Hush! it is the saw and the carpenter's axe; the doors of your prison
will soon be broken in, and you will be free, my Emperor!"
"Am I then really Emperor? Alas! it is only the Fool who tells me so!"
"Oh, do not sigh, my dear lord, it is the air of the dungeon which so
dispirits you; when you have once regained your power, you will feel the
bold imperial blood in your veins, and you will be proud as an emperor,
and arrogant, and gracious, and unjust, and smiling, and ungrateful as
princes are."
"Kunz von der Rosen, my Fool, when I am free again, what wilt thou be
doing?"
"I will sew new bells on my cap."
"And how shall I reward thy fidelity?"
"Ah! dear master--do not let me be put to death!"
ENGLISH FRAGMENTS.
[The _English Fragments_, from which three chapters have been
selected for this volume, were published in 1828 in a German
magazine of which Heine was one of the editors. They were collected
and published with important additions (including the following
chapters) in 1831. Mr. Leland's translation, revised throughout,
has been here used.]
LONDON.
I have seen the greatest wonder which the world can show to the
astonished spirit; I have seen it, and am more astonished then ever--and
still there remains fixed in my memory that stone forest of houses, and
amid them the rushing stream of faces, of living human faces, with all
their motley passions, all their terrible impulses of love, of hunger,
and of hate--I am speaking of London.
Send a philosopher to London, but no poet! Send a philosopher there, and
stand him at a corner of Cheapside, he will learn more there than from
all the books of the last Leipzig fair; and as the human waves roar
around him, so will a sea of new thoughts rise before him, and the
Eternal Spirit which moves upon the face of the waters will breathe upon
him; the most hidden secrets of social harmony will be suddenly revealed
to him, he will hear the pulse of the world beat audibly, and see it
visibly--for, if London is the right hand of the world--its active,
mighty right hand--then we may regard that that which leads from the
Exchange to Downing Street is the world's radial artery.
But send no poet to London! This downright earnestness of all things,
this colossal uniformity, this machine-like movement, this moroseness
even in pleasure, this exaggerated London, smothers the imagination and
rends the heart. And should you ever send a German poet thither--a
dreamer, who stands staring at every single phenomenon, even a ragged
beggar-woman, or a shining jeweller's shop--why, then he will find
things going badly with him, and he will be hustled about on every side,
or even be knocked over with a mild "_God damn!_" _God damn!_--the
damned pushing! I soon saw that these people have much to do. They live
on a large scale, and though food and clothes are dearer with them than
with us, they must still be better fed and clothed than we are--as
gentility requires. Moreover, they have enormous debts, yet occasionally
in a vain-glorious mood they make ducks and drakes of their guineas, pay
other nations to fight for their pleasure, give their respective kings a
handsome _douceur_ into the bargain--and, therefore, John Bull must work
day and night to get the money for such expenses; by day and by night he
must tax his brain to discover new machines, and he sits and reckons in
the sweat of his brow, and runs and rushes without looking about much
from the Docks to the Exchange, and from the Exchange to the Strand,
and, therefore, it is quite pardonable if, when a poor German poet,
gazing into a print-shop window, stands in his way at the corner of
Cheapside, he should knock him aside with a rather rough "God damn!"
But the picture at which I was gazing as I stood at the corner of
Cheapside, was that of the passage of the French across the Beresina.
And when, jolted out of my gazing, I looked again on the raging street,
where a parti-coloured coil of men, women, and children, horses,
stage-coaches, and with them a funeral, whirled groaning and creaking
along, it seemed to me as though all London were such a Beresina Bridge,
where every one presses on in mad haste to save his scrap of life, where
the daring rider stamps down the poor pedestrian, where every one who
falls is lost forever; where the best friends rush, without feeling,
over each other's corpses, and where thousands, weak and bleeding, grasp
in vain at the planks of the bridge, and slide down into the ice-pit of
death.
How much more pleasant and homelike it is in our dear Germany! How
dreamily comfortable, how Sabbatically quiet all things glide along
here! Calmly the sentinels are changed, uniforms and houses shine in the
quiet sunshine, swallows flit over the flag-stones, fat
court-councilloresses smile from the windows, while along the echoing
streets there is room enough for the dogs to sniff at each other, and
for men to stand at ease and chat about the theatre, and bow low--oh,
how low!--when some small aristocratic scamp or vice-scamp, with
coloured ribbons on his shabby coat, or some powdered and gilded
court-marshal struts by, graciously returning salutations!
I had made up my mind not to be astonished at that immensity of London
of which I had heard so much. But it happened to me as to the poor
school-boy, who had made up his mind not to feel the whipping he was to
receive. The facts of the case were, that he expected to get the usual
blows with the usual stick in the usual way on the back, whereas he
received a most unusually severe thrashing on an unusual place with a
slender switch. I anticipated great palaces, and saw nothing but mere
small houses. But their very uniformity and their limitless extent are
wonderfully impressive.
These houses of brick, owing to the damp atmosphere and coal smoke,
become uniform in colour, that is to say, of a brown olive green; they
are all of the same style of building, generally two or three windows
wide, three storeys high, and adorned above with small red tiles, which
remind one of newly-extracted bleeding teeth; so that the broad and
accurately-squared streets seem to be bordered by endlessly long
barracks. This has its reason in the fact that every English family,
though it consist of only two persons, must still have a house to itself
for its own castle, and rich speculators, to meet the demand, build
wholesale entire streets of these dwellings, which they retail singly.
In the principal streets of the city, where the business of London is
most at home, where old-fashioned buildings are mingled with the new,
and where the fronts of the houses are covered with names and signs,
yards in length, generally gilt, and in relief, this characteristic
uniformity is less striking--the less so, indeed, because the eye of the
stranger is incessantly caught by the new and brilliant articles exposed
for sale in the windows. And these articles do not merely produce an
effect because the Englishman completes so perfectly everything which he
manufactures, and because every article of luxury, every astral lamp and
every boot, every tea kettle and every woman's dress, shines out so
invitingly and so "finished;" there is a peculiar charm in the art of
arrangement, in the contrast of colours, and in the variety of the
English shops; even the most commonplace necessaries of life appear in a
startling magic light through this artistic power of setting forth
everything to advantage. Ordinary articles of food attract us by the new
light in which they are placed, even uncooked fish lie so delightfully
dressed that the rainbow gleam of their scales attracts us; raw meat
lies, as if painted, on neat and many-coloured porcelain plates,
garlanded about with parsley--yes, everything seems painted, reminding
us of the brilliant, yet modest pictures of Franz Mieris. Only the
people are not so cheerful as in the Dutch paintings; they sell the most
delightful playthings with the most serious faces, and the cut and
colour of their clothes is as uniform as that of their houses.
At the opposite side of the town, which they call the West End, where
the more aristocratic and less-occupied world lives, this uniformity is
still more dominant; yet here there are very long and very broad
streets, where all the houses are large as palaces, though outwardly
anything but distinguished, unless we except the fact that in these, as
in all the better class of houses in London, the windows of the first
storey are adorned with iron-barred balconies, and also on the ground
floor there is a black railing protecting the entrance to certain cellar
apartments buried in the earth. In this part of the city there are also
great squares, where rows of houses, like those already described, form
a quadrangle, in whose centre there is a garden enclosed by a black iron
railing, and containing some statue or other. In all of these squares
and streets the eye is never shocked by the dilapidated huts of misery.
Everywhere we are stared down on by wealth and respectability, while
crammed away in retired lanes and dark, damp alleys poverty dwells with
her rags and her tears.
The stranger who wanders through the great streets of London, and does
not chance right into the regular quarters of the people, sees little or
nothing of the misery there. Only here and there, at the mouth of some
dark alley, stands a ragged woman with a suckling babe at her wasted
breast, and begs with her eyes. Perhaps if those eyes are still
beautiful, one glances into them and shrinks back at the world of
wretchedness within them. The common beggars are old people, generally
blacks, who stand at the corners of the streets cleaning pathways--a
very necessary thing in muddy London--and ask for "coppers" in reward.
It is in the dusky twilight that Poverty with her mates, Vice and Crime,
glide forth from their lairs. They shun daylight the more anxiously, the
more cruelly their wretchedness contrasts with the pride of wealth which
glitters everywhere; only Hunger sometimes drives them at noonday from
their dens, and then they stand with silent, speaking eyes, staring
beseechingly at the rich merchant who hurries along, busy and jingling
gold, or at the lazy lord who, like a surfeited god, rides by on his
high horse, casting now and then an aristocratically indifferent glance
at the mob below, as though they were swarming ants, or, at all events,
a mass of baser beings, whose joys and sorrows have nothing in common
with his feelings. Yes, over the vulgar multitude which sticks fast to
the soil, soar, like beings of a higher nature, England's nobility, who
regard their little island as only a temporary resting-place, Italy as
their summer garden, Paris as their social saloon, and the whole world
as their inheritance. They sweep along, knowing nothing of sorrow or
suffering, and their gold is a talisman which conjures into fulfilment
their wildest wish.
Poor Poverty! how agonising must thy hunger be where others swell in
scornful superfluity! And when some one casts with indifferent hand a
crust into thy lap, how bitter must the tears be wherewith thou
moistenest it! Thou poisonest thyself with thine own tears. Well art
thou in the right when thou alliest thyself to Vice and Crime. Outlawed
criminals often bear more humanity in their hearts than those cold,
blameless citizens of virtue, in whose white hearts the power of evil is
quenched; but also the power of good. I have seen women on whose cheeks
red vice was painted, and in whose hearts dwelt heavenly purity. I have
seen women--I would I saw them again!----
WELLINGTON.
This man has the bad fortune to meet with good fortune wherever the
greatest men in the world were unfortunate, and that angers us, and
makes him hateful. We see in him only the victory of stupidity over
genius--Arthur Wellington triumphant where Napoleon Bonaparte was
overwhelmed! Never was a man more ironically gifted by Fortune, and it
seems as though she would exhibit his empty littleness by raising him
high on the shield of victory. Fortune is a woman, and perhaps, in
womanly wise, she cherishes a secret grudge against the man who
overthrew her former darling, though the very overthrow came from her
own will. Now she lets him conquer again on the Catholic Emancipation
question--yes, in the very fight in which George Canning was
overwhelmed. It is possible that he might have been loved had the
wretched Londonderry been his predecessor in the ministry; but he is the
successor of the noble Canning, of the much-wept, adored, great
Canning--and he conquers where Canning was overwhelmed. Without so
unlucky a luck, Wellington would perhaps pass for a great man; people
would not hate him, would not measure him too accurately, at least not
with the heroic measure with which a Napoleon and a Canning is
measured, and consequently it would never have been discovered how small
a man he is.
He is a small man, and less than small. The French could say nothing
more sarcastic of Polignac than that he was a Wellington without
celebrity. In fact, what remains when we strip from a Wellington the
field-marshal's uniform of celebrity?
I have here given the best apology for Lord Wellington--in the English
sense of the word. My readers will be astonished, however, when I
honourably confess that I once clapped on all sail in praise of this
hero. It is a good story, and I will tell it here.
My barber in London was a radical named Mr. White, a poor little man in
a shabby black dress, worn until it almost shone white; he was so lean
that even his full face looked like a profile, and the sighs in his
bosom were visible before they rose. These sighs were caused by the
misfortunes of Old England, and by the impossibility of paying the
National Debt.
"Ah!" I often heard him sigh, "why need the English people trouble
themselves as to who reigns in France, and what the French are doing at
home? But the nobility, sir, and the Church were afraid of the
principles of liberty of the French Revolution, and, to keep down these
principles, John Bull must give his gold and his blood, and make debts
into the bargain. We've got all we wanted out of the war--the revolution
has been put down, the French eagles of liberty have had their wings
cut, and the Church may be quite sure that none of them will come flying
over the Channel; and now the nobility and the Church ought to pay for
the debts which were made for their own good, and not for any good of
the poor people. Ah!--the poor people!"
Whenever Mr. White came to the "poor people," he always sighed more
deeply than ever, and the refrain then was, that bread and beer were so
dear that the poor people must starve to feed fat lords, stag-hounds,
and priests, and that there was only one remedy. At these words he was
wont to whet his razor, and as he drew it murderously up and down the
strop, he muttered grimly to himself, "Lords, priests, hounds."
But his radical rage boiled most fiercely against the Duke of
Wellington; he spat gall and poison whenever he alluded to him, and as
he lathered me, he himself foamed with rage. Once I was fairly
frightened, when he, while barbering just at my neck, burst out against
Wellington, murmuring all the while, "If I only had him so under my
razor, I'd save him the trouble of cutting his own throat, as his
brother in office and fellow-countryman, Londonderry, did, who killed
himself that way at North Cray, in Kent--God damn him!"
I felt already that the man's hand trembled, and fearing lest he might
imagine in his excitement that I really was the Duke of Wellington, I
endeavoured to allay his violence, and in an underhanded manner, to
soothe him, I called up his national pride, I represented to him that
the Duke of Wellington had advanced the glory of the English, that he
had always been an innocent tool in the hands of others, that he was
fond of beefsteak, and that he--but the Lord only knows what fine things
I said of Wellington as that razor tickled my throat.
What vexes me most is the reflection that Arthur Wellington will be as
immortal as Napoleon Bonaparte. It is true that in like manner the name
of Pontius Pilate is as little likely to be forgotten as that of Christ.
Wellington and Napoleon! It is a wonderful phenomenon that the human
mind can at the same time think of both these names. There can be no
greater contrast than these two, even in their external appearance.
Wellington, the dull ghost, with an ashy grey soul in a buckram body, a
wooden smile on his freezing face--and by the side one thinks of the
figure of Napoleon, every inch a god!
That figure never disappears from my memory. I still see him, high on
his horse, with eternal eyes in his marble, imperial face, gazing down
calm as destiny on the Guards defiling past--he was then sending them to
Russia, and the old grenadiers glanced up at him, so terribly devoted,
so consciously serious, so proud in death--
"Te, Cæsar, morituri salutant!"
There often steals over me a secret doubt whether I ever really saw him,
if we were really his contemporaries, and then it seems to me as if his
portrait, torn from the little frame of the present, vanished away more
proudly and imperiously in the twilight of the past. His name even now
sounds to us like a word of the early world, as antique and heroic as
those of Alexander and Cæsar. It has become a rallying word among races,
and when the East and the West meet, they fraternise through that single
name.
How significant and magical that name can sound I once felt in the
deepest manner in the harbour of London, at the India Docks, as I stood
on board an East Indiaman just arrived from Bengal. It was a giant-like
ship, fully manned with Hindoos. The grotesque forms and groups, the
singularly variegated dresses, the enigmatical expressions, the strange
gestures, the wild and foreign ring of their language, their shouts of
joy and their laughter, and the seriousness ever rising and falling on
certain soft, yellow faces, their eyes like black flowers which looked
at me as with melancholy woe--all this awoke in me a feeling like that
of enchantment; I was suddenly as if transported into Scheherezade's
story, and I thought that broad-leaved palms, and long-necked camels,
and gold-covered elephants, and other fable-like trees and animals, must
forthwith appear. The supercargo who was on the vessel, and who
understood as little of the language as I myself, could not, in his
genuine English narrowness, narrate to me enough of what a ridiculous
race they were, nearly all Mahometans collected from every land of Asia,
from the limits of China to the Arabian sea, even jet black,
woolly-haired Africans.
To one whose whole soul was weary of the spiritless West, and who was as
sick of Europe as I then was, this fragment of the East which moved
cheerfully and changingly before my eyes was a refreshing solace, my
heart enjoyed at least a few drops of that draught which I had so often
longed for in gloomy Hanoverian or Prussian winter nights, and it is
very possible that the foreigners saw how agreeable the sight of them
was to me, and how gladly I would have spoken a kind word to them. It
was also plain from the depths of their eyes that I pleased them well,
and they would also have willingly said something pleasant to me, and it
was a vexation that neither understood the other's language. At length a
means occurred to me of expressing to them with a single word my
friendly feelings, and stretching forth my hands reverently, as if in
loving greeting, I cried the name, "Mahomed!" Joy suddenly flashed over
the dark faces of the foreigners; they folded their arms reverently in
turn, and greeted me back with the exclamation, "Bonaparte!"
THE LIBERATION.
Should the time for leisurely research ever return to me, I will prove
in the most tiresomely fundamental manner that it was not India, but
Egypt which originated that system of castes which has for two thousand
years disguised itself in the garb of every country, and has deceived
every age in its own language, which is now perhaps dead, yet which,
counterfeiting the appearance of life, wanders about among us evil-eyed
and mischief-making, poisoning our blooming life with its corpse
vapour--yes, like a vampire of the Middle Ages, sucking the blood and
the light from the heart of nations. From the mud of the Nile sprang not
merely crocodiles which well could weep, but also priests who understand
it far better, and that privileged hereditary race of warriors, who in
their lust of murder and ravenous appetites far surpass any crocodiles.
Two deeply-thinking men of the German nation discovered the soundest
counter-charm to the worst of all Egyptian plagues, and by the black
art--by gunpowder and the art of printing--they broke the force of that
spiritual and worldly hierarchy which had formed itself from the union
of the priesthood and the warrior caste--that is to say, from the
so-called Catholic Church, and from the feudal nobility, which enslaved
all Europe, body and spirit. The printing-press burst asunder the
dogma-structure in which the archpriest of Rome had imprisoned souls,
and Northern Europe again breathed free, delivered from the nightmare of
that clergy which had indeed abandoned the form of Egyptian inheritance
of rank, but which remained all the truer to the Egyptian priestly
spirit, since it presented itself, with greater sternness and asperity,
as a corporation of old bachelors, continued not by natural
propagation, but unnaturally by a Mameluke system of recruiting. In like
manner we see how the warlike caste has lost its power since the old
routine of the business is worth nothing in the modern methods of war.
For the strongest castles are now thrown down by the trumpet-tones of
the cannon as of old the walls of Jericho; the iron harness of the
knight is no better protection against the leaden rain than the linen
blouse of the peasant; powder makes men equal; a citizen's musket goes
off just as well as a nobleman's--the people rise.
The earlier efforts of which we read in the history of the Lombard and
Tuscan republics, of the Spanish communes, and of the free cities in
Germany and other countries, do not deserve the honour of being classed
as movements on the part of the people; they were not efforts to attain
liberty, but merely liberties; not battles for right, but for municipal
rights; corporations fought for privileges, and all remained fixed in
the bonds of gilds and trades unions.
Not until the days of the Reformation did the battle assume general and
spiritual proportions, and then liberty was demanded, not as an
imported, but as an aboriginal right; not as inherited, but as inborn.
Principles were brought forward instead of old parchments; and the
peasants in Germany, and the Puritans in England, fell back on the
gospel whose texts then were of as high authority as the reason, even
higher, since they were regarded as the revealed reason of God. There it
stood legibly written that men are of equal birth, that the pride which
exalts itself will be damned, that wealth is a sin, and that the poor
are summoned to enjoyment in the beautiful garden of God, the common
Father.
With the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, the peasants
swept over South Germany, and announced to the insolent burghers of
high-towered Nuremberg, that in future no house should be left standing
which was not a peasant's house. So truly and so deeply had they
comprehended equality. Even at the present day in Franconia and in
Suabia we see traces of this doctrine of equality, and a shuddering
reverence of the Holy Spirit creeps over the wanderer when he sees in
the moonshine the dark ruins of the days of the Peasant's War. It is
well for him, who, in sober, waking mood, sees naught besides; but if
one is a "Sunday child"--and every one familiar with history is that--he
will also see the high hunt in which the German nobility, the rudest and
sternest in the world, pursued their victims. He will see how unarmed
men were slaughtered by thousands: racked, speared, and martyred; and
from the waving corn-fields one will see the bloody peasant-heads
nodding mysteriously, and above one hears a terrible lark whistling,
piping revenge, like the Piper of Helfenstein.
The brothers in England and Scotland were rather more fortunate; their
defeat was not so disgraceful and so unproductive, and even now we see
there the results of their rule. But they did not obtain a firm
foundation for their principles, the dainty cavaliers ruled again just
as before, and amused themselves with merry tales of the stiff old
Roundheads, which a friendly bard had written so prettily to entertain
their leisure hours. No social overthrow took place in Great Britain,
the framework of civil and political institutions remained undisturbed,
the tyranny of castes and of corporations has remained there till the
present day, and though drunken with the light and warmth of modern
civilisation, England is still congealed in a mediæval condition, or
rather in the condition of a fashionable Middle Age. The concessions
which have there been made to liberal ideas, have been with difficulty
wrested from this mediæval rigidity, and all modern improvements have
there proceeded, not from a principle, but from actual necessity, and
they all bear the curse of that halfness system which inevitably makes
necessary new exertion and new conflicts to the death, with all their
attendant dangers. The religious reformation in England is consequently
but half completed, and one finds himself much worse off between the
four bare prison walls of the Episcopal Anglican Church than in the
large, beautifully-painted, and softly-cushioned spiritual dungeon of
Catholicism. Nor has the political reformation succeeded much better;
popular representation is in England as faulty as possible, and if ranks
are no longer distinguished by their coats, they are at least divided by
differences in legal standing, patronage, rights of court presentation,
prerogatives, customary privileges, and similar misfortunes; and if the
rights of person and property depend no longer upon aristocratic
caprice, but upon laws, still these laws are nothing but another sort of
teeth with which the aristocratic brood seizes its prey, and another
sort of daggers wherewith it assassinates people. For in reality, no
tyrant upon the Continent squeezes, by his own arbitrary will, so many
taxes out of his subjects as the English people are obliged to pay by
law; and no tyrant was ever so cruel as England's Criminal Law, which
daily commits murder for the amount of one shilling, and that with the
coldest formality. Although many improvements have recently been made in
this melancholy state of affairs in England; although limits have been
placed to temporal and clerical avarice, and though the great falsehood
of a popular representation is, to a certain degree, occasionally
modified by transferring the perverted electoral voice of a rotten
borough to a great manufacturing town; and although the harshest
intolerance is here and there softened by giving certain rights to other
sects, still it is all a miserable patching up which cannot last long,
and the stupidest tailor in England can foresee that, sooner or later,
the old garment of state will be rent asunder into wretched rags.
"No man seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment; else the new
piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made
worse. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine
doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be
marred; but new wine must be put into new bottles."
The deepest truth blooms only out of the deepest love, and hence comes
the harmony of the views of the elder Preacher in the Mount, who spoke
against the aristocracy of Jerusalem; and those later preachers of the
mountain, who, from the summit of the Convention in Paris, preached a
tri-coloured gospel, according to which, not merely the form of the
State, but all social life should be, not patched, but formed anew,
newly founded; yes, born again.
I speak of the French Revolution, that epoch of the world in which the
doctrines of freedom and of equality rose so triumphantly from those
universal sources of knowledge which we call reason, and which must, as
an unceasing revelation which repeats itself in every human head, and
founds a distinct branch of knowledge, be far preferable to that
transmitted revelation which makes itself known only in a few elect, and
which, by the multitude, can only be _believed_. The privileged
aristocracy, the caste-system with their peculiar rights, were never
able to combat this last-mentioned sort of revelation (which is itself
of an aristocratic nature) so safely and surely as reason, which is
democratic by nature, now does. The history of the Revolution is the
military history of this strife, in which we have all taken a greater or
lesser part; it is the death-struggle with Egyptianism.
Though the swords of the enemies grow duller day by day, and though we
have already conquered the best positions, still we cannot raise the
song of victory until the work is perfected. We can only during the
night, when there are armistices, go forth with the lantern on the field
of death to bury the dead. Little avails the short burial service!
Calumny, the vile insolent spectre, sits upon the noblest graves.
Oh, that the battle were only with those hereditary foes of truth who so
treacherously poison the good name of their enemies, and who even
humiliated that first Preacher of the Mount, the purest hero of freedom;
for as they could no longer deny that he was the greatest of men, they
made of him the least of gods. He who fights with priests may make up
his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most
infamous lies and the most cutting slanders. But as those flags which
are most rent by shot, or blackened by powder-smoke, are more highly
honoured than the whitest and soundest recruiting banners, and as they
are at last laid up as national relics in cathedrals, so at some future
day the names of our heroes, the more they are torn and blackened, will
be all the more enthusiastically honoured in the holy St. Geneviève of
Freedom.
The Revolution itself has been slandered, like its heroes, and
represented as a terror to princes, and as a popular scare-crow, in
libels of every description. All the so-called "horrors of the
Revolution" have been learned by heart by children in the schools, and
at one time nothing was seen in the public fairs but harshly-coloured
pictures of the guillotine. It cannot be denied that this machine,
which was invented by a French physician, a great world orthopædist,
Monsieur Guillotin, and with which stupid heads are easily separated
from evil hearts, this wholesome machine has indeed been applied rather
frequently, but still only in incurable diseases, in such cases, for
example, as treachery, falsehood, and weakness, and the patients were
not long tortured, not racked and broken on the wheel as thousands upon
thousands of _roturiers_ and _vilains_, citizens and peasants were
tortured, racked, and broken on the wheel in the good old time. It is,
of course, terrible that the French, with this machine, once even
amputated the head of their State, and no one knows whether they ought
to be accused, on that account, of parricide or of suicide; but on more
thorough reflection, we find that Louis of France was less a sacrifice
to passion than to circumstances, and that those men who forced the
people on to such a sacrifice, and who have themselves, in every age,
poured forth princely blood far more abundantly, should not appear
solely as accusers. Only two kings, both of them rather kings of the
nobility than of the people, were sacrificed by the people, and that not
in a time of peace, or to subserve petty interests, but in the extremest
needs of war, when they saw themselves betrayed, and when they least
spared their own blood. But certainly more than a thousand princes were
treacherously slain, on account of avarice or frivolous interests, by
the dagger, by the sword, and by the poison of nobility and priests. It
really seems as though these castes regarded regicide as one of their
privileges, and therefore bewail the more selfishly the death of Louis
the XVI. and of Charles I. Oh! that kings at last would perceive that
they could live more safely as kings of the people, and protected by the
law, than under the guard of their noble body-murderers.
But not only have the heroes of our revolution and the revolution itself
been slandered, but even our entire age has been parodied with
unheard-of wickedness; and if one hears or reads our vile traducers and
scorners, then he will learn that the people are the _canaille_--the
vile mob--that freedom is insolence, and with heaven-bent eyes and pious
sighs, our enemies complain and bewail that we were frivolous and had,
alas! no religion. Hypocritical, sneaking souls, who creep about bent
down beneath the burden of their secret vices, dare to vilify an age
which is, perhaps, holier than any of its predecessors or successors, an
age that sacrifices itself for the sins of the past and for the
happiness of the future, a Messiah among centuries, which could hardly
endure its bloody crown of thorns and heavy cross, did it not now and
then trill a merry vaudeville, and crack a joke at the modern Pharisees
and Sadducees. Its colossal pains would be intolerable without such
jesting and persiflage! Seriousness shows itself more majestically when
laughter leads the way. And the age in this shows itself exactly like
its children among the French, who have written very terribly wanton
books, and yet have been very strong and serious when strength and
seriousness were necessary, as, for instance, Laclos, and even Louvet de
Couvray, who both fought for freedom with the self-sacrifice and
boldness of martyrs, and yet who wrote in a very frivolous and indecent
way, and, alas! had no religion!
As if freedom were not as good a religion as any other! And since it is
ours, we may, meeting with the same measure, declare its contemners to
be themselves frivolous and irreligious.
Yes, I repeat the words with which I began these pages: freedom is a new
religion, the religion of our age. If Christ is not the God of this
religion, he is still one of its high-priests, and his name shines
consolingly in the hearts of its children. But the French are the chosen
people of the new religion, the first gospels and dogmas were penned in
their language. Paris is the New Jerusalem, and the Rhine is the Jordan
which separates the land of Freedom from the land of the Philistines.
JAN STEEN.
[This fragment--newly translated--is taken from the _Memoiren des
Herrn von Schnabelwopski_, which was written in 1831, and published
in 1834, in the first volume of the _Salon_. The _Memoirs of
Schnabelwopski_ consist simply of the hero's light sketches of
Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Leyden, and his experiences in those towns;
they have generally excited the anger of Heine's German critics and
biographers, who appear to detect a tone of irreverent levity about
them, which they attribute to Parisian influences. Wagner obtained
the story of his _Flying Dutchman_ from a chapter of
_Schnabelwopski's Memoirs_.]
In the house I lodged at in Leyden there once lived Jan Steen, the great
Jan Steen, whom I hold to be as great as Raphael. Even as a sacred
painter Jan was as great, and that will be clearly seen when the
religion of sorrow has passed away, and the religion of joy has torn off
the thick veil that covers the rose-bushes of the earth, and the
nightingales dare at last to sing joyously out their long-concealed
raptures.
But no nightingale will ever sing so joyously as Jan Steen painted. No
one has understood so profoundly as he that there shall be an eternal
festival on the earth; he comprehended that our life is only the
pictured kiss of God, and he felt that the Holy Ghost is revealed most
gloriously in light and in laughter.
His eye laughed into the light, and the light mirrored itself in his
laughing eye. And Jan remained always a dear, good child. The stern old
Pastor of Leyden sat near him by the hearth, and delivered a lengthy
discourse concerning his jovial life, his laughing, unchristian conduct,
his love of drinking, his disorderly domestic affairs, his obdurate
gaiety; and Jan listened quietly for two long hours, and betrayed not
the slightest impatience at the lengthy sermon; only once he broke in
with the words--"Yes, Domine, that light is far better; yes, Domine, I
beg of you to draw your stool a little nearer to the fire, so that the
flame may cast its red gleam over your whole face, and leave the rest of
the figure in shade----"
The Domine stood up wrathful and departed. But Jan seized his palate and
painted the stern old man, just as in that sermon on vice he had
unconsciously furnished a model. The picture is excellent, and hung in
my bed-room at Leyden.
Now that I have seen so many of Jan Steen's pictures in Holland, I seem
to know the whole life of the man. I know all his relations, his wife,
his children, his mother, all his cousins, his enemies, his various
connections--yes, I know them all by sight. These faces greet us out of
all his pictures, and a collection of them would be a biography of the
painter. He has often with a single stroke revealed the deepest secrets
of his soul. As I think, his wife reproached him far too often about
drinking too much. For in the picture which represents the bean-feast,
where Jan and his family are sitting at table, we see his wife with a
large jug of wine in her hand, and eyes beaming like a Bacchante's. I am
convinced, however, that the good lady never indulged in too much wine;
only the rogue wanted us to believe that it was his wife, and not he,
who was too fond of drinking. That is why he laughs so joyously out of
the picture. He is happy; he sits in the midst of his family; his little
son is bean-king, and, with his tinsel crown, stands upon a stool; his
old mother, with the happiest smirk of satisfaction in the wrinkles of
her countenance, carries the youngest grandchild upon her arm; the
musicians play their maddest dance melodies; and the frugal, sulky
housewife is painted in, an object of suspicion to all posterity, as
though she were inebriated.
How often, during my stay at Leyden, did I think myself back for whole
hours into the household scenes in which the excellent Jan must have
lived and suffered. Many a time I thought I saw him bodily, sitting at
his easel, now and then grasping the great jug, "reflecting and
therewith drinking, and then again drinking without reflecting." It was
no gloomy Catholic spectre that I saw, but a modern bright spirit of
joy, who after death still visited his old work-room to paint merry
pictures and to drink. Only such ghosts will our children sometimes see,
in the light of day, while the sun shines through the windows, and from
the spire no black, hollow bells, but red, exulting trumpet tones,
announce the pleasant hour of noon.
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.
[_The Romantic School_, one of Heine's chief works, of which the
most interesting portions are here given, was published in 1833. It
was first written in French, as a counterblast to Madame de Staël's
_De l'Allemagne_, forming a series of articles in the _Europe
Littéraire_. Notwithstanding many errors of detail, and some
occasional injustice, it remains by far the best account of the
most important aspect of German literature. Indirectly Heine wished
to lay down the programme of the future, for he regarded himself as
the last of the Romantic poets, and the inaugurator of a new
school. The following translation is Mr. Fleishman's; it has been
carefully revised.]
Madame de Staël's work, _De l'Allemagne_, is the only comprehensive
account of the intellectual life of Germany which has been accessible to
the French; and yet since her book appeared a considerable period has
elapsed, and an entirely new school of literature has arisen in Germany.
Is it only a transitional literature? Has it already reached its zenith?
Has it already begun to decline? Opinions are divided concerning it. The
majority believe that with the death of Goethe a new literary era begins
in Germany; that with him the old Germany also descended to its grave;
that the aristocratic period of literature was ended, and the democratic
just beginning; or, as a French journal recently phrased it, "The
intellectual dominion of the individual has ceased,--the intellectual
rule of the many has commenced."
So far as I am concerned, I do not venture to pass so decided an opinion
as to the future evolutions of German intellect. I had already
prophesied many years in advance the end of the Goethean art-period, by
which name I was the first to designate that era. I could safely venture
the prophecy, for I knew very well the ways and the means of those
malcontents who sought to overthrow the Goethean art-empire, and it is
even claimed that I took part in those seditious outbreaks against
Goethe. Now that Goethe is dead, the thought of it fills me with an
overpowering sorrow.
While I announce this book as a sequel to Madame de Staël's _De
l'Allemagne_, and extol her work very highly as being replete with
information, I must yet recommend a certain caution in the acceptance of
the views enunciated in that book, which I am compelled to characterise
as a coterie-book. Madame de Staël, of glorious memory, here opened, in
the form of a book, a salon in which she received German authors and
gave them an opportunity to make themselves known to the civilised world
of France. But above the din of the most diverse voices, confusedly
discoursing therein, the most audible is the delicate treble of Herr A.
W. Schlegel. Where the large-hearted woman is wholly herself,--where she
is uninfluenced by others, and expresses the thoughts of her own radiant
soul, displaying all her intellectual fireworks and brilliant
follies,--there the book is good, even excellent. But as soon as she
yields to foreign influences, as soon as she begins to glorify a school
whose spirit is wholly unfamiliar and incomprehensible to her, as soon
as through the commendation of this school she furthers certain
Ultramontane tendencies which are in direct opposition to her own
Protestant clearness, just so soon her book becomes wretched and
unenjoyable. To this unconscious partisanship she adds the evident
purpose, through praise of the intellectual activity, the idealism, of
Germany, to rebuke the realism then existing among the French, and the
materialistic splendours of the Empire. Her book _De l'Allemagne_
resembles in this respect the _Germania_ of Tacitus, who perhaps
likewise designed his eulogy of the Germans as an indirect satire
against his countrymen. In referring to the school which Madame de Staël
glorified, and whose tendencies she furthered, I mean the Romantic
School. That this was in Germany something quite different from that
which was designated by the same name in France, that its tendencies
were totally diverse from those of the French Romanticists, will be made
clear in the following pages.
But what was the Romantic School in Germany?
It was nothing else than the reawakening of the poetry of the middle
ages as it manifested itself in the poems, paintings, and sculptures, in
the art and life of those times. This poetry, however, had been
developed out of Christianity; it was a passion-flower which had
blossomed from the blood of Christ. I know not if the melancholy flower
which in Germany we call the passion-flower is known by the same name in
France, and if the popular tradition has ascribed to it the same
mystical origin. It is that motley-hued, melancholic flower in whose
calyx one may behold a counterfeit presentment of the tools used at the
crucifixion of Christ--namely, hammer, pincers, and nails. This flower
is by no means unsightly, but only spectral: its aspect fills our souls
with a dread pleasure, like those convulsive, sweet emotions that arise
from grief. In this respect the passion-flower would be the fittest
symbol of Christianity itself, whose most awe-inspiring charm consists
in the voluptuousness of pain.
Although in France Christianity and Roman Catholicism are synonymous
terms, yet I desire to emphasise the fact, that I here refer to the
latter only. I refer to that religion whose earliest dogmas contained a
condemnation of all flesh, and not only admitted the supremacy of the
spirit over the flesh, but sought to mortify the latter in order thereby
to glorify the former. I refer to that religion through whose unnatural
mission vice and hypocrisy came into the world, for through the odium
which it cast on the flesh the most innocent gratification of the senses
were accounted sins; and, as it was impossible to be entirely spiritual,
the growth of hypocrisy was inevitable. I refer to that religion which,
by teaching the renunciation of all earthly pleasures, and by
inculcating abject humility and angelic patience, became the most
efficacious support of despotism. Men now recognise the nature of that
religion, and will no longer be put off with promises of a Heaven
hereafter; they know that the material world has also its good, and is
not wholly given over to Satan, and now they vindicate the pleasures of
the world, this beautiful garden of the gods, our inalienable heritage.
Just because we now comprehend so fully all the consequences of that
absolute spirituality, we are warranted in believing that the
Christian-Catholic theories of the universe are at an end; for every
epoch is a sphinx which plunges into the abyss as soon as its problem is
solved.
We by no means deny the benefits which the Christian-Catholic theories
effected in Europe. They were needed as a wholesome reaction against
the terrible colossal materialism which was developed in the Roman
Empire, and threatened the annihilation of all the intellectual grandeur
of mankind. Just as the licentious memoirs of the last century form the
_pièces justificatives_ of the French Revolution; just as the reign of
terror seems a necessary medicine when one is familiar with the
confessions of the French nobility since the regency; so the
wholesomeness of ascetic spirituality becomes manifest when we read
Petronius or Apuleius, books which may be considered as _pièces
justificatives_ of Christianity. The flesh had become so insolent in
this Roman world that Christian discipline was needed to chasten it.
After the banquet of a Trimalkion, a hunger-cure, such as Christianity,
was required.
Or did, perhaps, the hoary sensualists seek by scourgings to stimulate
the cloyed flesh to renewed capacity for enjoyment? Did aging Rome
submit to monkish flagellations in order to discover exquisite pleasure
in torture itself, voluptuous bliss in pain?
Unfortunate excess! it robbed the Roman body-politic of its last
energies. Rome was not destroyed by the division into two empires. On
the Bosphorus as on the Tiber, Rome was eaten up by the same Judaic
spiritualism, and in both Roman history became the record of a slow
dying-away, a death agony that lasted for centuries. Did perhaps
murdered Judea, by bequeathing its spiritualism to the Romans, seek to
avenge itself on the victorious foe, as did the dying centaur, who so
cunningly wheedled the son of Jupiter into wearing the deadly vestment
poisoned with his own blood? In truth, Rome, the Hercules among nations,
was so effectually consumed by the Judaic poison that helm and armour
fell from its decaying limbs, and its imperious battle tones
degenerated into the prayers of snivelling priests and the trilling of
eunuchs.
But that which enfeebles the aged strengthens the young. That
spiritualism had a wholesome effect on the over-robust races of the
north; the ruddy barbarians became spiritualised through Christianity;
European civilisation began. This is a praiseworthy and sacred phase of
Christianity. The Catholic Church earned in this regard the highest
title to our respect and admiration. Through grand, genial institutions
it controlled the bestiality of the barbarian hordes of the North, and
tamed their brutal materialism.
The works of art in the middle ages give evidence of this mastery of
matter by the spirit; and that is often their whole purpose. The epic
poems of that time may be easily classified according to the degree in
which they show that mastery. Of lyric and dramatic poems nothing is
here to be said; for the latter do not exist, and the former are
comparatively as much alike in all ages as are the songs of the
nightingales in each succeeding spring.
Although the epic poetry of the middle ages was divided into sacred and
secular, yet both classes were purely Christian in their nature; for if
the sacred poetry related exclusively to the Jewish people and its
history, which alone was considered sacred; if its themes were the
heroes of the Old and the New Testaments, and their legends--in brief,
the Church--still all the Christian views and aims of that period were
mirrored in the secular poetry. The flower of the German sacred poetry
of the middle ages is, perhaps, _Barlaam and Josaphat_, a poem in which
the dogma of self-denial, of continence, of renunciation, of the scorn
of all worldly pleasures, is most consistently expressed. Next in order
of merit I would rank _Lobgesang auf den Heiligen Anno_, but the latter
poem already evinces a marked tendency towards secular themes. It
differs in general from the former somewhat as a Byzantine image of a
saint differs from an old German representation. Just as in these
Byzantine pictures, so also do we find in _Barlaam and Josaphat_ the
greatest simplicity; there is no perspective, and the long, lean,
statue-like forms, and the grave, ideal countenances, stand severely
outlined, as though in bold relief against a background of pale gold. In
the _Lobgesang auf den Heiligen Anno_, as in the old German pictures,
the accessories seem almost more prominent than the subject; and,
notwithstanding the bold outlines, every detail is most minutely
executed, and one knows not which to admire most, the giant-like
conception or the dwarf-like patience of execution. Ottfried's
_Evangeliengedicht_, which is generally praised as the masterpiece of
this sacred poetry, is far inferior to both of these poems.
In the secular poetry we find, as intimated above, first, the cycle of
legends called the _Nibelungenlied_, and the _Book of Heroes_. In these
poems all the ante-Christian modes of thought and feelings are dominant;
brute force is not yet moderated into chivalry; the sturdy warriors of
the North stand like statues of stone, and the soft light and moral
atmosphere of Christianity have not yet penetrated their iron armour.
But dawn is gradually breaking over the old German forests, the ancient
Druid oaks are being felled, and in the open arena Christianity and
Paganism are battling: all this is portrayed in the cycle of traditions
of Charlemagne; even the Crusades with their religious tendencies are
mirrored therein. But now from this Christianised, spiritualised brute
force is developed the peculiar feature of the middle ages, chivalry,
which finally becomes exalted into a religious knighthood. The earlier
knighthood is most felicitously portrayed in the legends of King Arthur,
which are full of the most charming gallantry, the most finished
courtesy, and the most daring bravery. From the midst of the pleasing,
though bizarre, arabesques, and the fantastic, flowery mazes of these
tales, we are greeted by the gentle Gawain, the worthy Lancelot of the
Lake, by the valiant, gallant, and honest, but somewhat tedious,
Wigalois. By the side of this cycle of legends we find the kindred and
connected legends of the Holy Grail, in which the religious knighthood
is glorified, and in which are to be found the three grandest poems of
the middle ages, _Titurel_, _Parcival_, and _Lohengrin_. In these poems
we stand face to face, as it were, with the muse of romantic poetry; we
look deep into her large, sad eyes, and ere we are aware she has
ensnared us in her network of scholasticism, and drawn us down into the
weird depths of mediæval mysticism. But further on in this period we
find poems which do not unconditionally bow down to Christian
spirituality; poems in which it is even attacked, and in which the poet,
breaking loose from the fetters of an abstract Christian morality,
complacently plunges into the delightful realm of glorious sensuousness.
Nor is it an inferior poet who has left us _Tristan and Isolde_, the
masterpiece of this class. Verily, I must confess that Gottfried von
Strasburg, the author of this, the most exquisite poem of the middle
ages, is perhaps also the loftiest poet of that period. He surpasses
even the grandeur of Wolfram von Eschilbach, whose _Parcival_, and
fragments of _Titurel_, are so much admired. At present, it is perhaps
permissible to praise Meister Gottfried without stint, but in his own
time his book and similar poems, to which even _Lancelot_ belonged, were
considered Godless and dangerous. Francesca da Polenta and her handsome
friend paid dearly for reading together such a book;--the greater
danger, it is true, lay in the fact that they suddenly stopped reading.
All the poetry of the middle ages has a certain definite character,
through which it differs from the poetry of the Greeks and Romans. In
reference to this difference the former is called Romantic, the latter
Classic. These names, however, are misleading, and have hitherto caused
the most vexatious confusion, which is even increased when we call the
antique poetry plastic as well as classic. In this, particularly, lay
the germ of misunderstandings; for artists ought always to treat their
subject-matter plastically. Whether it be Christian or pagan, the
subject ought to be portrayed in clear contours. In short, plastic
configuration should be the main requisite in the modern romantic as
well as in antique art. And, in fact, are not the figures in Dante's
_Divine Comedy_ or in the paintings of Raphael just as plastic as those
in Virgil or on the walls of Herculaneum?
The difference consists in this,--that the plastic figures in antique
art are identical with the thing represented, with the idea which the
artist seeks to communicate. Thus, for example, the wanderings of the
Odyssey mean nothing else than the wanderings of the man who was a son
of Laertes and the husband of Penelope, and was called Ulysses. Thus,
again, the Bacchus which is to be seen in the Louvre is nothing more
than the charming son of Semele, with a daring melancholy look in his
eyes, and an inspired voluptuousness on the soft arched lips. It is
otherwise in romantic art: here the wanderings of a knight have an
esoteric signification; they typify, perhaps, the mazes of life in
general. The dragon that is vanquished is sin; the almond-tree, that
from afar so encouragingly wafts its fragrance to the hero, is the
Trinity, the God-Father, God-Son, and God-Holy-Ghost, who together
constitute one, just as shell, fibre, and kernel together constitute the
almond. When Homer describes the armour of a hero, it is naught else
than a good armour, which is worth so many oxen; but when a monk of the
middle ages describes in his poem the garments of the Mother of God, you
may depend upon it, that by each fold of those garments he typifies some
special virtue, and that a peculiar meaning lies hidden in the sacred
robes of the immaculate Virgin Mary; as her Son is the kernel of the
almond, she is quite appropriately described in the poem as an
almond-blossom. Such is the character of that poesy of the middle ages
which we designate _romantic_.
Classic art had to portray only the finite, and its forms could be
identical with the artist's idea. Romantic art had to represent, or
rather to typify, the infinite and the spiritual, and therefore was
compelled to have recourse to a system of traditional, or rather
parabolic, symbols, just as Christ himself had endeavoured to explain
and make clear his spiritual meaning through beautiful parables. Hence
the mystic, enigmatical, miraculous, and transcendental character of the
art-productions of the middle ages. Fancy strives frantically to portray
through concrete images that which is purely spiritual, and in the vain
endeavour invents the most colossal absurdities; it piles Ossa on
Pelion, Parcival on Titurel, to reach heaven.
Similar monstrous abortions of imagination have been produced by the
Scandinavians, the Hindoos, and the other races which likewise strive
through poetry to represent the infinite; among them also do we find
poems which may be regarded as romantic.
Concerning the music of the middle ages little can be said. All records
are wanting. It was not until late in the sixteenth century that the
masterpieces of Catholic Church music came into existence, and, of their
kind, they cannot be too highly prized, for they are the purest
expression of Christian spirituality. The recitative arts, being
spiritual in their nature, quite appropriately flourished in
Christendom. But this religion was less propitious for the plastic arts,
for as the latter were to represent the victory of spirit over matter,
and were nevertheless compelled to use matter as a means to carry out
this representation, they had to accomplish an unnatural task. Hence
sculpture and painting abounded with such revolting subjects as
martyrdoms, crucifixions, dying saints, and physical sufferings in
general. The treatment of such subjects must have been torture for the
artists themselves; and when I look at those distorted images, with
pious heads awry, long, thin arms, meagre legs, and graceless drapery,
which are intended to represent Christian abstinence and ethereality, I
am filled with an unspeakable compassion for the artists of that period.
It is true the painters were somewhat more favoured, for colour, the
material of their representation, in its intangibility, in its varied
lights and shades, was not so completely at variance with spirituality
as the material of the sculptors; But even they, the painters, were
compelled to disfigure the patient canvas with the most revolting
representations of physical suffering. In truth, when we view certain
picture galleries, and behold nothing but scenes of blood, scourgings,
and executions, we are fain to believe that the old masters painted
these pictures for the gallery of an executioner.
But human genius can transfigure deformity itself, and many painters
succeeded in accomplishing the unnatural task beautifully and sublimely.
The Italians, in particular, glorified beauty,--it is true, somewhat at
the expense of spirituality,--and raised themselves aloft to an
ideality which reached its perfection in the many representations of the
Madonna. Where it concerned the Madonna, the Catholic clergy always made
some concessions to sensuality. This image of an immaculate beauty,
transfigured by motherly love and sorrow, was privileged to receive the
homage of poet and painter, and to be decked with all the charms that
could allure the senses. For this image was a magnet, which was to draw
the great masses into the pale of Christianity. Madonna Maria was the
pretty _dame du comptoir_ of the Catholic Church, whose customers,
especially the barbarians of the North, she attracted and held fast by
her celestial smiles.
During the middle ages architecture was of the same character as the
other arts; for, indeed, at that period all manifestations of life
harmonised most wonderfully. In architecture, as in poetry, this
parabolising tendency was evident. Now, when we enter an old cathedral,
we have scarcely a hint of the esoteric meaning of its stony symbolism.
Only the general impression forces itself on our mind. We feel the
exaltation of the spirit and the abasement of the flesh. The interior of
the cathedral is a hollow cross, and we walk here amid the instruments
of martyrdom itself. The variegated windows cast on us their red and
green lights, like drops of blood and ichor; requiems for the dead
resound through the aisles; under our feet are gravestones and decay; in
harmony with the colossal pillars, the soul soars aloft, painfully
tearing itself away from the body, which sinks to the ground like a
cast-off garment. When one views from without these Gothic cathedrals,
these immense structures, that are built so airily, so delicately, so
daintily, as transparent as if carved, like Brabant laces made of
marble, then only does one realise the might of that art which could
achieve a mastery over stone, so that even this stubborn substance
should appear spectrally etherealised, and be an exponent of Christian
spiritualism.
But the arts are only the mirror of life; and when Catholicism
disappeared from daily life, so also it faded and vanished out of the
arts. At the time of the Reformation Catholic poetry was gradually dying
out in Europe, and in its place we behold the long-buried Grecian style
of poetry again reviving. It was, in sooth, only an artificial spring,
the work of the gardener and not of the sun; the trees and flowers were
stuck in narrow pots, and a glass sky protected them from the wind and
cold weather.
In the world's history every event is not the direct consequence of
another, but all events mutually act and react on one another. It was
not alone through the Greek scholars who, after the conquest of
Constantinople, immigrated over to us, that the love for Grecian art,
and the striving to imitate it, became universal among us; but in art as
in life, there was stirring a contemporary Protestantism. Leo X., the
magnificent Medici, was just as zealous a Protestant as Luther; and as
in Wittenburg protest was offered in Latin prose, so in Rome the protest
was made in stone, colours, and _ottava rime_. For do not the vigorous
marble statues of Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano's laughing nymph-faces,
and the life-intoxicated merriment in the verses of Master Ludovico,[9]
offer a protesting contrast to the old, gloomy, withered Catholicism?
The painters of Italy combated priestdom more effectively, perhaps, than
did the Saxon theologians. The glowing flesh in the paintings of
Titian,--all that is simple Protestantism. The limbs of his Venus are
much more fundamental theses than those which the German monk nailed to
the church door of Wittenburg. Mankind felt itself suddenly liberated,
as it were, from the thraldom of a thousand years; the artists, in
particular, breathed freely again when the Alp-like burden of
Christianity was rolled from off their breasts; they plunged
enthusiastically into the sea of Grecian mirthfulness, from whose foam
the goddess of beauty again rose to meet them; again did the painters
depict the ambrosial joys of Olympus; again did the sculptors, with the
olden love, chisel the heroes of antiquity from out the marble blocks;
again did the poets sing of the house of Atreus and of Laios; a new era
of classic poetry arose.
In France, under Louis XIV., this neo-classic poetry exhibited a
polished perfection, and, to a certain extent, even originality. Through
the political influence of the _grand monarque_ this new classic poetry
spread over the rest of Europe. In Italy, where it was already at home,
it received a French colouring; the Anjous brought with them to Spain
the heroes of French tragedy; it accompanied Madame Henriette to
England; and, as a matter of course, we Germans modelled our clumsy
temple of art after the bepowdered Olympus of Versailles. The most
famous high priest of this temple was Gottsched, that old periwigged
pate, whom our dear Goethe has so felicitously described in his memoirs.
Lessing was the literary Arminius who emancipated our theatre from that
foreign rule. He showed us the vapidness, the ridiculousness, the
tastelessness, of those apings of the French stage, which itself was but
an imitation of the Greek. But not only by his criticism, but also
through his own works of art, did he become the founder of modern
German original literature. All the paths of the intellect, all the
phases of life, did this man pursue with disinterested enthusiasm. Art,
theology, antiquarianism, poetry, dramatic criticism, history,--he
studied these all with the same zeal and with the same aim. In all his
works breathes the same grand social idea, the same progressive
humanity, the same religion of reason, whose John he was, and whose
Messiah we still await. This religion he preached always, but alas!
often quite alone and in the desert. Moreover, he lacked the skill to
transmute stones into bread. The greater portion of his life was spent
in poverty and misery--a curse which rests on almost all the great minds
of Germany, and which probably will only be overcome by the political
emancipation. Lessing was more deeply interested in political questions
than was imagined,--a characteristic which we entirely miss in his
contemporaries. Only now do we comprehend what he had in view by his
description of the petty despotisms in _Emilia Galotti_. At that time he
was considered merely a champion of intellectual liberty and an opponent
of clerical intolerance; his theological writings were better
understood. The fragments "Concerning the Education of the Human race,"
which have been translated into French by Eugene Rodrigue, will perhaps
suffice to give the French an idea of the wide scope of Lessing's
genius. His two critical works which have had the most influence on art
are his _Hamburger Dramaturgie_ and his _Laocoön, or Concerning the
Limits of Painting and Poetry_. His best dramatic works are _Emilia
Galotti_, _Minna von Barnhelm_, and _Nathan the Wise_.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born January 22nd, 1729, at Kamenz, in
Upper Lusatia, and died February 15th, 1781, at Brunswick. He was a
whole man, who; while with his polemics waging destructive battle
against the old, at the same time created something newer and better.
"He resembled," says a German author, "those pious Jews, who, at the
second building of the temple, were often disturbed by the attacks of
their enemies, and with one hand would fight against the foe, while with
the other hand they continued to work at the house of God." This is not
the place to discuss Lessing more fully, but I cannot refrain from
saying that, in the whole range of literary history, he is the author
whom I most love.
I desire here to call attention to another author, who worked in the
same spirit and with the same aim, and who may be regarded as Lessing's
most legitimate successor. It is true, a criticism of this author would
be out of place here, for he occupies a peculiarly isolated place in the
history of literature, and his relation to his epoch and contemporaries
cannot even now be definitely pronounced. I refer to Johann Gottfried
Herder, born in 1744, at Morungen, in East Prussia; died in 1803, at
Weimar, in Saxony.
The history of literature is a great morgue, wherein each seeks the dead
who are near or dear to him. And when, among the corpses of so many
petty men, I behold the noble features of a Lessing or a Herder, my
heart throbs with emotion. How could I pass you without pressing a hasty
kiss on your pale lips?
But if Lessing effectually put an end to the servile apings of
Franco-Grecian art, yet, by directing attention to the true art-works of
Grecian antiquity, to a certain extent he gave an impetus to a new and
equally silly species of imitation. Through his warfare against
religious superstition he even advanced a certain narrow-minded _jejune_
enlightenment, which at that time vaunted itself in Berlin; the sainted
Nicolai was its principal mouthpiece, and the German Encyclopædia its
arsenal. The most wretched mediocrity began again to raise its head,
more disgustingly than ever. Imbecility, vapidity, and the commonplace
distended themselves like the frog in the fable.
It is an error to believe that Goethe, who at that time had already
appeared upon the scene, had met with general recognition. His _Goetz
von Berlichingen_ and his _Werther_ were received with enthusiasm, but
the works of the most ordinary bungler not less so, and Goethe occupied
but a small niche in the temple of literature. It is true, as said
before, that the public welcomed Goetz and Werther with delight, but
more on account of the subject matter than their artistic merits, which
few were able to appreciate. Of these masterpieces, _Goetz von
Berlichingen_ was a dramatised romance of chivalry, which was the
popular style at that time. In _Werther_ the public saw only an
embellished account of an episode in real life--namely, the story of
young Jerusalem, a youth who shot himself from disappointed love,
thereby creating quite a commotion in that dead-calm period. Tears were
shed over his pathetic letters, and it was shrewdly observed that the
manner in which Werther had been ostracised from the society of the
nobility must have increased his weariness of life. The discussion
concerning suicide brought the book still more into notice; a few fools
hit upon the idea of shooting themselves in imitation of Werther, and
thus the book made a marked sensation. But the romances of August
Lafontaine were in equal demand, and as the latter was a voluminous
writer, it followed that he was more famous than Wolfgang Goethe.
Wieland was the great poet of that period, and his only rival was Herr
Ramler of Berlin. Wieland was worshipped idolatrously, more than Goethe
ever was. Iffland, with his lachrymose domestic dramas, and Kotzebue's
farces, with their stale witticisms, ruled the stage.
It was against this literature that, in the closing years of the last
century, there arose in Germany a new school, which we have designated
the Romantic School. At the head of this school stand the brothers
August William and Frederic Schlegel. Jena, where these two brothers,
together with many kindred spirits, were wont to come and go, was the
central point from which the new æsthetic dogma radiated. I advisedly
say dogma, for this school began with a criticism of the art productions
of the past, and with recipes for the art works of the future. In both
of these fields the Schlegelian school has rendered good service to
æsthetic criticism. In criticising the art works of the past, either
their defects and imperfections were set forth, or their merits and
beauties illustrated. In their polemics, in their exposure of artistic
shortcomings and imperfections, the Schlegels were entirely imitators of
Lessing; they seized upon his great battle-sword, but the arm of August
William Schlegel was far too feeble, and the sight of his brother
Frederic too much obscured by mystic clouds; the former could not strike
so strong, nor the latter so sure and telling a blow as Lessing. In
reproductive criticism, however, where the beauties of a work of art
were to be brought out clearly; where a delicate perception of
individualities was required; and where these were to be made
intelligible, the Schlegels are far superior to Lessing. But what shall
I say concerning their recipes for producing masterpieces? Here the
Schlegels reveal the same impotency that we seem to discover in Lessing.
The latter also, strong as he is in negation, is equally weak in
affirmation; seldom can he lay down any fundamental principle, and even
more rarely, a correct one. He lacks the firm foundation of a
philosophy, or a synthetic system. In this respect the Schlegels are
still more woefully lacking. Many fables are rife concerning the
influence of Fichtean idealism and Schelling's philosophy of nature upon
the romantic school, and it is even asserted that the latter is entirely
the result of the former. I can, however, at the most discover the
traces of only a few stray thoughts of Fichte and Schelling, but by no
means the impress of a system of philosophy. It is true that Schelling,
who at that time was delivering lectures at Jena, had personally a great
influence upon the romantic school. Schelling is also somewhat of a
poet, a fact not generally known in France, and it is said that he is
still in doubt whether he shall not publish his entire philosophical
works in poetical, yes, even in metrical form. This doubt is
characteristic of the man.
But if the Schlegels could give no definite, reliable theory for the
masterpieces which they bespoke of the poets of their school, they
atoned for these shortcomings by commending as models the best works of
art of the past, and by making them accessible to their disciples. These
were chiefly the Christian-Catholic productions of the middle ages. The
translation of Shakespeare, who stands at the frontier of this art and
with Protestant clearness smiles over into our modern era, was solely
intended for polemical purposes, the present discussion of which space
forbids. It was undertaken by A. W. Schlegel at a time when the
enthusiasm for the middle ages had not yet reached its most extravagant
height. Later, when this did occur, Calderon was translated and ranked
far above Shakespeare. For the works of Calderon bear most distinctly
the impress of the poetry of the middle ages--particularly of the two
principal epochs of knight-errantry and monasticism. The pious comedies
of the Castilian priest-poet, whose poetical flowers had been
besprinkled with holy water and canonical perfumes, with all their pious
_grandezza_, with all their sacerdotal splendour, with all their
sanctimonious balderdash, were now set up as models, and Germany swarmed
with fantastically-pious, insanely-profound poems, over which it was the
fashion to work one's self into a mystic ecstasy of admiration, as in
_The Devotion to the Cross_, or to fight in honour of the Madonna, as in
_The Constant Prince_. Zacharias Werner carried the nonsense as far as
it might be safely done without being imprisoned by the authorities in a
lunatic asylum.
Our poetry, said the Schlegels, is superannuated; our muse is an old and
wrinkled hag; our Cupid is no fair youth, but a shrunken, grey-haired
dwarf. Our emotions are withered; our imagination is dried up: we must
re-invigorate ourselves. We must seek again the choked-up springs of the
naïve, simple poetry of the middle ages, where bubbles the elixir of
youth. When the parched, thirsty multitude heard this, they did not long
delay. They were eager to be again young and blooming, and, hastening to
those miraculous waters, quaffed and gulped with intemperate greediness.
But the same fate befell them as happened to the aged waiting-maid who
noticed that her mistress possessed a magic elixir which restored youth.
During her lady's absence she took from the toilet drawer the small
flagon which contained the elixir, but, instead of drinking only a few
drops, she took a long deep draught, so that through the power of the
rejuvenating beverage she became not only young again, but even a puny,
puling babe. In sooth, so was it with our excellent Ludwig Tieck, one of
the best poets of this school; he drank so deeply of the mediæval folk
tales and ballads that he became almost as a child again, and dropped
into that childlike lisping which it cost Madame de Staël so much
painstaking to admire. She confesses that she found it rather strange to
have one of the characters in a drama make his _début_ with a monologue,
which begins with the words:--"I am the brave Bonifacius, and I come to
tell you," etc.
By his romance, _Sternbald's Wanderungen_, and through his publication
of the _Herzensergies sungen eines Kunstliebenden Klosterbruders_,
written by a certain Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck sought to set up the
naïve, crude beginnings of art as models. The piety and childishness of
these works, which are revealed in their technical awkwardness, were
recommended for imitation. Raphael was to be ignored entirely; his
teacher, Perugino, fared almost as badly, although rated somewhat
higher, for it was claimed that he showed some traces of those beauties
which were to be found in their full bloom in the immortal masterpieces
of Fra Giovanno Angelico da Fiesole, and were so devoutly admired. If
the reader wishes to form an idea of the taste of the art-enthusiasts of
that period, let him go to the Louvre, where the best pictures of those
masters, who were then worshipped without bounds, are still on
exhibition; and if the reader wishes to form an idea of the great mass
of poets who at that time, in all possible varieties of verse, imitated
the poetry of the middle ages, let him visit the lunatic asylum at
Charenton.
I believe, however, that those pictures in the first salon of the Louvre
are still too graceful to give the observer a correct idea of the art
ideals of that period. The pictures of the old Italian school must be
imagined translated into the old German, for the works of the old German
painters were considered more artless and childlike, and therefore more
worthy of imitation than the old Italian. It was claimed that we
Germans, with our _Gemüth_, a word for which the French language has no
equivalent, have been able to form a more profound conception of
Christianity than other nations, and Frederic Schlegel, and his friend,
Joseph Görres, rummaged among the ancient Rhine cities for the remains
of old German pictures and statuary, which were superstitiously
worshipped as holy relics.
I have just likened the German Parnassus of that period to Charenton.
Even that, however, is too mild a comparison. A French madness falls far
short of a German lunacy in violence, for in the latter, as Polonius
would say, there is method. With a pedantry without its equal, with an
intense conscientiousness, with a profundity of which a superficial
French fool can form no conception, this German folly was pursued.
The political condition of Germany was particularly favourable to those
Christian old German tendencies. "Need teaches prayer," says the
proverb; and truly never was the need greater in Germany. Hence the
masses were more than ever inclined to prayer, to religion, to
Christianity. No people is more loyally attached to its rulers than are
the Germans. And more even than the sorrowful condition to which the
country was reduced through war and foreign rule did the mournful
spectacle of their vanquished princes, creeping at the feet of Napoleon,
afflict and grieve the Germans. The whole nation resembled those
faithful old servants in once great but now reduced families, who feel
more keenly than even their masters all the humiliations to which the
latter are exposed, and who in secret weep most bitterly when the family
silver is to be sold, and who clandestinely contribute their pitiful
savings, so that patrician wax candles and not plebeian tallow dips
shall grace the family table--just as we see it so touchingly depicted
in the old plays. The universal sadness found consolation in religion,
and there ensued a pious resignation to the will of God, from whom alone
help could come. And, in fact, against Napoleon none could help but God
Himself. No reliance could be placed on the earthly legions; hence all
eyes were religiously turned to Heaven.
We would have submitted to Napoleon quietly enough, but our princes,
while they hoped for deliverance through Heaven, were at the same time
not unfriendly to the thought, that the united strength of their
subjects might be very useful in effecting their purpose. Hence they
sought to awaken in the German people a sense of homogeneity, and even
the most exalted personages now spoke of a German nationality, of a
common German fatherland, of a union of the Christian-Germanic races, of
the unity of Germany. We were commanded to be patriotic, and straightway
we became patriots,--for we always obey when our princes command.
But it must not be supposed that the word "patriotism" means the same in
Germany as in France. The patriotism of the French consists in this: the
heart warms; through this warmth it expands; it enlarges so as to
encompass, with its all-embracing love, not only the nearest and
dearest, but all France, all civilisation. The patriotism of the
Germans, on the contrary, consists in narrowing and contracting the
heart, just as leather contracts in the cold; in hating foreigners; in
ceasing to be European and cosmopolitan, and in adopting a narrow-minded
and exclusive Germanism. We beheld this ideal empire of churlishness
organised into a system by Herr Jahn; with it began the crusade of the
vulgar, the coarse, the great unwashed--against the grandest and holiest
idea ever brought forth in Germany, the idea of humanitarianism; the
idea of the universal brotherhood of mankind, of cosmopolitanism--an
idea to which our great minds, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Jean
Paul, and all people of culture in Germany, have ever paid homage.
With the events that speedily followed you are only too familiar. After
God, the snow, and the Cossacks had destroyed the best portion of
Napoleon's forces, we Germans received the command from those highest in
authority to free ourselves from the foreign yoke, and we straightway
flamed with manly wrath at the bondage too long endured; and we let
ourselves be excited to enthusiasm by the fine melodies, but bad verses,
of Köerner's ballads, and we fought until we won our freedom--for we
always do what our princes command.
At a period when the crusade against Napoleon was forming, a school
which was inimical to everything French, and which exalted everything in
art and life that was Teutonic, could not help achieving great
popularity. The Romantic School at that time went hand in hand with the
machinations of the government and the secret societies, and A. W.
Schlegel conspired against Racine with the same aim that Minister Stein
plotted against Napoleon. This school of literature floated with the
stream of the times; that is to say, with the stream that flowed
backwards to its source. When finally German patriotism and nationality
were victorious, the popular Teutonic-Christian-romantic school, "the
new-German-religious-patriotic art-school," triumphed also. Napoleon,
the great classic, who was as classic as Alexander or Cæsar, was
overthrown, and August William and Frederic Schlegel, the petty
romanticists, who were as romantic as Tom Thumb and Puss in Boots,
strutted about as victors.
But the reaction which always follows excess was in this case not long
in coming. As the spiritualism of Christianity was a reaction against
the brutal rule of imperial Roman materialism; as the revival of the
love for Grecian art and science was a reaction against the
extravagances of Christian spiritualism; as the romanticism of the
middle ages may also be considered as a reaction against the vapid
apings of antique classic art; so also do we now behold a reaction
against the re-introduction of that catholic, feudal mode of thought, of
that knight-errantry and priestdom, which were being inculcated through
literature and the pictorial arts, under bewildering circumstances. For
when the artists of the middle ages were recommended as models, and were
so highly praised and admired, the only explanation of their superiority
that could be given was that these men believed in that which they
depicted, and that, therefore, with their artless conceptions they could
accomplish more than the later sceptical artists, notwithstanding that
the latter excelled in technical skill. In short, it was claimed that
faith worked wonders, and, in truth, how else could the transcendent
merits of a Fra Angelico da Fiesole or the poems of Brother Ottfried be
explained? Hence the artists who were honest in their devotion to art,
and who sought to imitate the pious distortions of those miraculous
pictures, the sacred uncouthness of those marvel-abounding poems, and
the inexplicable mysticisms of those olden works--these artists
determined to wander to the same hippocrene whence the old masters had
derived their supernatural inspiration. They made a pilgrimage to Rome,
where the vicegerent of Christ was to re-invigorate consumptive German
art with asses' milk. In brief, they betook themselves to the lap of the
Roman-Catholic-Apostolic Church, where alone, according to their
doctrine, salvation was to be secured. Many of the adherents of the
romantic school--for instance, Joseph Görres and Clemens Brentano--were
Catholics by birth, and required no formal ceremony to mark their
re-adhesion to the Catholic faith; they merely renounced their former
free-thinking views. Others, however, such as Frederic Schlegel, Ludwig
Tieck, Novalis, Werner, Schütz, Carové, Adam Müller, etc., were born and
bred Protestants, and their conversion to Catholicism required a public
ceremony. The above list of names includes only authors; the number of
painters, who in swarms simultaneously abjured Protestantism and reason,
was much larger.
When it was seen how these young people made obeisance, as it were, to
the Roman Catholic Church, and pressed their way into ancient prisons of
the mind, from which their fathers had so valiantly liberated
themselves, much misgiving was felt in Germany. But when it was
discovered that this propaganda was the work of priests and aristocrats,
who had conspired against the religious and political liberties of
Europe; when it was seen that it was Jesuitism itself which was seeking,
with the dulcet tones of Romanticism, to lure the youth of Germany to
their ruin, after the manner of the mythical rat-catcher of Hamelin;
when all this became known, there was great excitement and indignation
in Germany among the friends of Protestantism and intellectual freedom.
I have mentioned intellectual freedom and Protestantism together;
although, in Germany, I profess the Protestant religion, yet I trust no
one will accuse me of a prejudice in its favour. It is entirely without
partiality that I have named Protestantism and free-thought together,
for in Germany they really stand on a friendly footing towards one
another. At all events they are akin, and that as mother and daughter.
Even if the Protestant Church may be charged with a certain odious
narrow-mindedness, yet to its immortal honour be it said, that by
allowing the right of free investigation in the Christian religion, and
by liberating the minds of men from the yoke of authority, it made it
possible for free-thought to strike root in Germany, and for science to
develop an independent existence. Although German philosophy now proudly
takes its stand by the side of the Protestant Church; yes, even assumes
an air of superiority; yet it is only the daughter of the latter, and as
such owes her filial respect and consideration; and when threatened by
Jesuitism, the common foe of them both, the bonds of kindred demanded
that they should combine for mutual defence. All the friends of
intellectual freedom and the Protestant Church, sceptics as well as
orthodox, simultaneously arose against the restoration of Catholicism,
and, as a matter of course, the Liberals, who were not specially
concerned either for the welfare of the Protestant Church or of
philosophy, but for the interests of civil liberty, also joined the
ranks of this opposition. In Germany, however, the Liberals had always,
up to the present time, been students both of philosophy and theology,
and the idea of liberty for which they fought was always the same,
whether the subject under discussion was exclusively political,
philosophical, or theological. This is most clearly manifest in the life
of the man, who, at the very outset of the romantic school in Germany,
undermined its foundation, and contributed the most to its overthrow. I
refer to Johann Heinrich Voss.
This writer is altogether unknown in France, and yet there are few to
whom the German people are more indebted for their intellectual
development. After Lessing, he is probably the greatest citizen in
German literature. He certainly was a great man, and deserves more than
a mere passing mention.
The biography of this man is that of nearly all German authors of the
old school. He was the son of poor parents, and was born at Mecklenberg
in 1751. He studied theology, but did not pursue it as a career. When,
however, he became acquainted with poetry and Greek, he devoted himself
zealously to both. In order not to starve he took to teaching, and
became schoolmaster at Otterndorf, in Hadeln. He translated the
ancients, and lived to the age of seventy-five, poor, frugal, and
industrious. He enjoyed an excellent reputation among the poets of the
old school, but the poets of the new romantic school were continually
plucking at his laurels, and they scoffed not a little at the honest,
old-fashioned Voss, who, however, went on in his straight-forward way,
picturing the life on the lower Elbe, sometimes even writing in the
Platt-Deutsch dialect. He selected no mediæval knights or madonnas as
the heroes and heroines of his works, but chose for his theme the life
of a simple Protestant parson and his virtuous family. Voss was so
thoroughly wholesome, so bourgeois, so natural; while they, the new
troubadours, were so morbid and somnambulistic, so high-flown and
aristocratic, and altogether so unnatural. To Frederic Schlegel, the
intoxicated poet of the dissolute, romantic Lucinde, the staid and sober
Voss, with his "chaste Louise" and his "aged and venerable parson of
Grunau," must have been very obnoxious. August Wilhelm Schlegel, who
never was so sincere as his brother in his glorification of profligacy
and of Catholicism, harmonised much better with old Voss, and between
the two there existed only the rivalry of translators, a rivalry which
has been very beneficial for German literature. Even before the rise of
the new school, Voss had translated Homer; now, with an unprecedented
industry, he translated the other heathen poets of antiquity, while
August Wilhelm Schlegel translated the Christian poets of the
romantic-Catholic period. Secret polemical motives inspired them both.
Voss aimed to advance classic poetry and modes of thought through his
translations, while A. W. Schlegel sought, through good translations, to
make the Christian-romantic poets accessible to the public for imitation
and culture. In sooth, this antagonism manifested itself even in the
forms of speech used by the two translators. While Schlegel became ever
more fastidious and finical in his style, Voss grew more brusque and
rugged. The language in the latter's later translations is as rough as a
file, and at times almost unpronounceable. If one is liable to slip on
the smooth, highly-polished, mahogany-like surface of Schlegel's poems,
there is equal danger of stumbling over Voss's versified blocks of
granite. In a spirit of rivalry, Voss finally attempted a translation of
Shakespeare, a work which Schlegel had accomplished so successfully in
his earlier years. In this undertaking Voss fared very badly, and his
publisher still worse; the translation was a total failure. If
Schlegel's translation, perhaps, reads too smoothly; if his verses
sometimes give the impression of whipped cream, and leave the reader in
doubt whether it is to be eaten or be drunk;--Voss's, on the other hand,
is as hard as stone, and reading his verses aloud makes one fear a
dislocation of the jaw-bone. But that which especially distinguished
Voss was the energy with which he battled against all difficulties; he
not only wrestled with the German language, but also with that
aristocratic Jesuitic monster, which at that period raised its unsightly
head from amidst the dark forest depths of German literature: and Voss
dealt the monster a telling blow.
Herr Wolfgang Menzel, a German author, who is known as one of the
bitterest opponents of Voss, dubs him "a Saxon boor." Notwithstanding
the unfriendly sense in which this epithet is applied, it is
nevertheless very fitting. In truth, Voss is "a Saxon boor," just as
Luther was one: he lacks all that is chivalrous, courteous, and
gracious; he was every inch one of that rude, rough, sturdy race, to
whom Christianity could be preached only by fire and sword, and who only
submitted to that religion after losing three battles, but who in their
customs and ways still retain much of the old Norse pagan doggedness,
and in their material and intellectual combats show themselves as
valiant and as stubborn as their ancient gods. When I contemplate Johann
Heinrich Voss in his polemics and in his whole manner, I seem to see
before me the ancient one-eyed Odin himself, who has left Asgard and has
become a school-teacher in the province of Hadeln, and there teaches
Latin declination and the Christian catechism to the little
flaxen-haired Holsteiners; in his leisure hours he translates the Greek
poets into German, and borrows from Thor his great hammer to beat the
verses into shape; but after a while, becoming tired of the tedious
work, he takes the hammer and cracks poor Fritz Stolberg on the head.
That was a famous affair. Frederick, Count of Stolberg, was a poet of
the old school, and was remarkably popular in Germany, not, perhaps, so
much on account of his poetic talents as for his title of count, which
at that time counted for more in German literature than it does now.
Fritz Stolberg, however, was a liberal man and had a noble heart, and
he was a friend of those less patrician youths, who in Göttingen were
seeking to found a poetic school. I recommend French literary men to
read the preface to the poems of Hölty, in which Johann Heinrich Voss
describes the idyllic life of the band of poets of which he and Fritz
Stolberg were members. Time passed, and these two only were left of all
that galaxy of youthful poets. When Fritz Stolberg, with great _éclat_,
joined the Catholic Church, abjuring reason and the love of freedom,
becoming a promoter of intellectual darkness, and by his aristocratic
example drawing many weaklings after him--then Johann Heinrich Voss, the
venerable man of three-score and ten, publicly entered the lists against
the friend of his youth, and wrote the little book, _Wie Ward Fritz
Stolberg ein Unfreier?_ In it he analysed Stolberg's whole life, and
showed how the aristocratic tendency in the nature of his old comrade
had always existed, and that after the events of the French Revolution
that tendency had steadily become more pronounced; that Stolberg had
secretly joined an association of the nobility, which had for its
purpose to counteract the French ideas of liberty; that these nobles
entered into a league with the Jesuits; that they sought, through the
re-establishment of Catholicism, to advance also the interests of the
nobility: he exposed in general the ways and means by which the
reactionists were seeking to bring about the restoration of the
Christian-Catholic-feudal middle ages, and the destruction of Protestant
intellectual freedom and the political rights of the commonalty. Once,
ere the era of revolutions, good fellowship existed between German
democracy and German aristocracy; the former hoped for nothing, the
latter feared nothing; but now as grey-beards, they faced each other,
and fought a duel for life or death.