vain, when any one did not know how to make use of his time, or found no
opportunity for turning it to account, carried his economy of time and
abilities so far, that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to kill
two birds with one stone. [Footnote: Literally, "to strike two flies
with one flapper."--TRANS.] He had, therefore, never engaged a servant
who could not be useful to the house in something else. Now, as he had
always written every thing with his own hand, and had, latterly, the
convenience of dictating to the young inmate of the house, he found it
most advantageous to have tailors for his domestics, who were obliged to
make good use of their time, as they not only had to make their own
liveries, but the clothes for my father and the children, besides doing
all the mending. My father himself took pains to have the best materials
and the best kind of cloth, by getting fine wares of the foreign
merchants at the fair, and laying them up in store. I still remember
well that he always visited the Herr von Löwenicht, of Aix-la-Chapelle,
and from my earliest youth made me acquainted with these and other
eminent merchants.
Care was also taken for the fitness of the stuff: and there was a
plentiful stock of different kinds of cloth, serge, and Götting stuff,
besides the requisite lining; so that, as far as the materials were
concerned, we might well venture to be seen. But the form spoiled almost
every thing. For, if one of our home-tailors was any thing of a clever
hand at sewing and making up a coat which had been cut out for him in
masterly fashion, he was now obliged also to cut out the dress for
himself, which did not always succeed to perfection. In addition to
this, my father kept whatever belonged to his clothing in very good and
neat order, and preserved more than used it for many years. Thus he had
a predilection for certain old cuts and trimmings, by which our dress
sometimes acquired a strange appearance.
In this same way had the wardrobe which I took with me to the university
been furnished: it was very complete and handsome, and there was even a
laced suit amongst the rest. Already accustomed to this kind of attire,
I thought myself sufficiently well dressed; but it was not long before
my female friends, first by gentle raillery, then by sensible
remonstrances, convinced me that I looked as if I had dropped down out
of another world. Much as I felt vexed at this, I did not see at first
how I was to mend matters. But when Herr von Masuren, the favorite
poetical country squire, once entered the theatre in a similar costume,
and was heartily laughed at, more by reason of his external than his
internal absurdity, I took courage, and ventured at once to exchange my
whole wardrobe for a new-fashioned one, suited to the place, by which,
however, it shrunk considerably.
When this trial was surmounted, a new one was to come up, which proved
to be far more unpleasant, because it concerned a matter which one does
not so easily put off and exchange.
I had been born and bred in the Upper-German dialect; and although my
father always labored to preserve a certain purity of language, and,
from our youth upwards, had made us children attentive to what may be
really called the defects of that idiom, and so prepared us for a better
manner of speaking, I retained nevertheless many deeper-seated
peculiarities, which, because they pleased me by their /naïvete/, I
was fond of making conspicuous, and thus every time I used them incurred
a severe reproof from my new fellow-townsmen. The Upper-German, and
perhaps chiefly he who lives by the Rhine and Main (for great rivers,
like the seacoast, always have something animating about them),
expresses himself much in similes and allusions, and makes use of
proverbial sayings with a native common-sense aptness. In both cases he
is often blunt: but, when one sees the drift of the expression, it is
always appropriate; only something, to be sure, may often slip in, which
proves offensive to a more delicate ear.
Every province loves its own dialect; for it is, properly speaking, the
element in which the soul draws its breath. But every one knows with
what obstinacy the Misnian dialect has contrived to domineer over the
rest, and even, for a long time, to exclude them. We have suffered for
many years under this pedantic tyranny, and only by reiterated struggles
have all the provinces again established themselves in their ancient
rights. What a lively young man had to endure from this continual
tutoring, may be easily inferred by any one who reflects that modes of
thought, imagination, feeling, native character, must be sacrificed with
the pronunciation which one at last consents to alter. And this
intolerable demand was made by men and women of education, whose
convictions I could not adopt, whose injustice I thought I felt, though
I was unable to make it plain to myself. Allusions to the pithy biblical
texts were to be forbidden me, as well as the use of the honest-hearted
expressions from the Chronicles. I had to forget that I had read the
"Kaiser von Geisersberg," and eschew the use of proverbs, which
nevertheless, instead of much fiddle-faddle, just hit the nail upon the
head,--all this, which I had appropriated to myself with youthful ardor,
I was now to do without: I felt paralyzed to the core, and scarcely knew
any more how I had to express myself on the commonest things. I was,
moreover, told that one should speak as one writes, and write as one
speaks; while to me, speaking and writing seemed once for all two
different things, each of which might well maintain its own rights. And
even in the Misnian dialect had I to hear many things which would have
made no great figure on paper.
Every one who perceives in this the influence which men and women of
education, the learned, and other persons who take pleasure in refined
society, so decidedly exercise over a young student, would be
immediately convinced that we were in Leipzig, even if it had not been
mentioned. Each one of the German universities has a particular
character; for, as no universal cultivation can pervade our fatherland,
every place adheres to its own fashion, and carries out, even to the
last, its own characteristic peculiarities: exactly the same thing holds
good of the universities. In Jena and Halle roughness had been carried
to the highest pitch: bodily strength, skill in fighting, the wildest
self-help, was there the order of the day; and such a state of affairs
can only be maintained and propagated by the most universal riot. The
relations of the students to the inhabitants of those cities, various as
they might be, nevertheless agreed in this, that the wild stranger had
no regard for the citizen, and looked upon himself as a peculiar being,
privileged to all sorts of freedom and insolence. In Leipzig, on the
contrary, a student could scarcely be any thing else than polite, as
soon as he wished to stand on any footing at all with the rich, well-
bred, and punctilious inhabitants.
All politeness, indeed, when it does not present itself as the flowering
of a great and comprehensive mode of life, must appear restrained,
stationary, and, from some points of view, perhaps, absurd; and so those
wild huntsmen from the Saale [Footnote: The river on which Halle is
built.--TRANS.] thought they had a great superiority over the tame
shepherds on the Pleisse. [Footnote: The river near Leipzig.--TRANS.]
Zachariä's "Renommist" will always be a valuable document, from which
the manner of life and thought at that time rises visibly forth; as in
general his poems must be welcome to every one who wishes to form for
himself a conception of the then prevailing state of social life and
manners, which was indeed feeble, but amiable on account of its
innocence and child-like simplicity.
All manners which result from the given relations of a common existence
are indestructible; and, in my time, many things still reminded us of
Zachariä's epic poem. Only one of our fellow-academicians thought
himself rich and independent enough to snap his fingers at public
opinion. He drank acquaintance with all the hackney-coachmen, whom he
allowed to sit inside the coach as if they were gentlemen, while he
drove them on the box; thought it a great joke to upset them now and
then, and contrived to satisfy them for their smashed vehicles as well
as for their occasional bruises; but otherwise he did no harm to any
one, seeming only to make a mock of the public /en masse/. Once, on
a most beautiful promenade-day, he and a comrade of his seized upon the
donkeys of the miller in St. Thomas's square: well-dressed, and in their
shoes and stockings, they rode around the city with the greatest
solemnity, stared at by all the promenaders, with whom the glacis was
swarming. When some sensible persons remonstrated with him on the
subject, he assured them, quite unembarrassed, that he only wanted to
see how the Lord Christ might have looked in a like case. Yet he found
no imitators and few companions.
For the student of any wealth and standing had every reason to show
himself attentive to the mercantile class, and to be the more solicitous
about the proper external forms, as the colony [Footnote: Leipzig was so
called, because a large and influential portion of its citizens were
sprung from a colony of Huguenots, who settled there after the
revocation of the edict of Nantes.--/American Note/.] exhibited a
model of French manners. The professors, opulent both from their private
property and from their liberal salaries, were not dependent upon their
scholars; and many subjects of the state, educated at the government
schools or other gymnasia, and hoping for preferment, did not venture to
throw off the traditional customs. The neighborhood of Dresden, the
attention thence paid to us, and the true piety of the superintendent of
the course of study, could not be without a moral, nay, a religious,
influence.
At first this kind of life was not repugnant to me: my letters of
introduction had given me the /entrée/ into good families, whose
circle of relatives also received me well. But as I was soon forced to
feel that the company had much to find fault with in me, and that, after
dressing myself in their fashion, I must now talk according to their
tongue also; and as, moreover, I could plainly see that I was, on the
other hand, but little benefited by the instruction and mental
improvement I had promised myself from my academical residence,--I began
to be lazy, and to neglect the social duties of visiting, and other
attentions; and indeed I should have sooner withdrawn from all such
connections, had not fear and esteem attached me firmly to Hofrath
Böhme, and confidence and affection to his wife. The husband,
unfortunately, had not the happy gift of dealing with young people, of
winning their confidence, and of guiding them, for the moment, as
occasion might require. When I visited him I never got any good by it:
his wife, on the contrary, showed a genuine interest in me. Her ill
health kept her constantly at home. She often invited me to spend the
evening with her, and knew how to direct and improve me in many little
external particulars: for my manners were good, indeed; but I was not
yet master of what is properly termed /étiquette/. Only one friend
spent the evenings with her; but she was much more dictatorial and
pedantic, for which reason she displeased me excessively: and, out of
spite to her, I often resumed those unmannerly habits from which the
other had already weaned me. Nevertheless she always had patience enough
with me, taught me piquet, ombre, and similar games, the knowledge and
practice of which is held indispensable in society.
But it was in the matter of taste that Madame Böhme had the greatest
influence upon me,--in a negative way truly, yet one in which she agreed
perfectly with the critics. The Gottsched waters [Footnote: That is to
say, the influence of Gottsched on German literature, of which more is
said in the next book.--TRANS.] had inundated the German world with a
true deluge, which threatened to rise up, even over the highest
mountains. It takes a long time for such a flood to subside again, for
the mire to dry away; and as in any epoch there are numberless aping
poets, so the imitation of the flat and watery produced a chaos, of
which now scarcely a notion remains. To find out that trash was trash
was hence the greatest sport, yea, the triumph, of the critics of those
days. Whoever had only a little common sense, was superficially
acquainted with the ancients, and was somewhat more familiar with the
moderns, thought himself provided with a standard scale which he could
everywhere apply. Madame Böhme was an educated woman, who opposed the
trivial, weak, and commonplace: she was, besides, the wife of a man who
lived on bad terms with poetry in general, and would not even allow that
of which she perhaps might have somewhat approved. She listened, indeed,
for some time with patience, when I ventured to recite to her the verse
or prose of famous poets who already stood in good repute,--for then, as
always, I knew by heart every thing that chanced in any degree to please
me; but her complaisance was not of long duration. The first whom she
outrageously abused were the poets of the Weisse school, who were just
then often quoted with great applause, and had delighted me very
particularly. If I looked more closely into the matter, I could not say
she was wrong. I had sometimes even ventured to recite to her, though
anonymously, some of my own poems; but these fared no better than the
rest of the set. And thus, in a short time, the beautiful variegated
meadows at the foot of the German Parnassus, where I was fond of
luxuriating, were mercilessly mowed down; and I was even compelled to
toss about the drying hay myself, and to ridicule that as lifeless
which, a short time before, had given me such lively joy.
Without knowing it, Professor Morus came to strengthen her instructions.
He was an uncommonly gentle and friendly man, with whom I became
acquainted at the table of Hofrath Ludwig, and who received me very
pleasantly when I begged the privilege of visiting him. Now, while
making inquiries of him concerning antiquity, I did not conceal from him
what delighted me among the moderns; when he spoke about such things
with more calmness, but, what was still worse, with more profundity than
Madame Böhme; and he thus opened my eyes, at first to my greatest
chagrin, but afterwards to my surprise, and at last to my edification.
Besides this, there came the Jeremiads, with which Gellert, in his
course, was wont to warn us against poetry. He wished only for prose
essays, and always criticised these first. Verses he treated as a sorry
addition: and, what was the worst of all, even my prose found little
favor in his eyes; for, after my old fashion, I used always to lay, as
the foundation, a little romance, which I loved to work out in the
epistolary form. The subjects were impassioned, the style went beyond
ordinary prose, and the contents probably did not display any very deep
knowledge of mankind in the author; and so I stood in very little favor
with our professor, although he carefully looked over my labors as well
as those of the others, corrected them with red ink, and here and there
added a moral remark. Many leaves of this kind, which I kept for a long
time with satisfaction, have unfortunately, in the course of years, at
last disappeared from among my papers.
If elderly persons wish to play the pedagogue properly, they should
neither prohibit nor render disagreeable to a young man any thing which
gives him pleasure, of whatever kind it may be, unless, at the same
time, they have something else to put in its place, or can contrive a
substitute. Everybody protested against my tastes and inclinations; and,
on the other hand, what they commended to me lay either so far from me
that I could not perceive its excellencies, or stood so near me that I
thought it not a whit better than what they inveighed against. I thus
became thoroughly perplexed on the subject, and promised myself the best
results from a lecture of Ernesti's on "Cicero de Oratore." I learned
something, indeed, from this lecture, but was not enlightened on the
subject which particularly concerned me. What I demanded was a standard
of opinion, and thought I perceived that nobody possessed it; for no one
agreed with another, even when they brought forward examples: and where
were we to get a settled judgment, when they managed to reckon up
against a man like Wieland so many faults in his amiable writings, which
so completely captivated us younger folks?
Amid this manifold distraction, this dismemberment of my existence and
my studies, it happened that I took my dinners at Hofrath Ludwig's. He
was a medical man, a botanist; and his company, with the exception of
Morus, consisted of physicians just commencing or near the completion of
their studies. Now, during these hours, I heard no other conversation
than about medicine or natural history, and my imagination was drawn
over into quite a new field. I heard the names of Haller, Linnaeus,
Buffon, mentioned with great respect; and, even if disputes often arose
about mistakes into which it was said they had fallen, all agreed in the
end to honor the acknowledged abundance of their merits. The subjects
were entertaining and important, and enchained my attention. By degrees
I became familiar with many names and a copious terminology, which I
grasped more willingly as I was afraid to write down a rhyme, however
spontaneously it presented itself, or to read a poem, for I was fearful
that it might please me at the time, and that perhaps immediately
afterwards, like so much else, I should be forced to pronounce it bad.
This uncertainty of taste and judgment disquieted me more and more every
day, so that at last I fell into despair. I had brought with me those of
my youthful labors which I thought the best, partly because I hoped to
get some credit by them, partly that I might be able to test my progress
with greater certainty; but I found myself in the miserable situation in
which one is placed when a complete change of mind is required,--a
renunciation of all that one has hitherto loved and found good. However,
after some time and many struggles, I conceived so great a contempt for
my labors, begun and ended, that one day I burnt up poetry and prose,
plans, sketches, and projects, all together on the kitchen hearth, and
threw our good old landlady into no small fright and anxiety by the
smoke which filled the whole house.
SEVENTH BOOK.
About the condition of German literature of those times so much has been
written, and so exhaustively, that every one who takes any interest in
it can be completely informed; in regard to it critics agree now pretty
well; and what at present I intend to say piecemeal and disconnectedly
concerning it, relates not so much to the way in which it was
constituted in itself, as to its relation to me. I will therefore first
speak of those things by which the public is particularly excited; of
those two hereditary foes of all comfortable life, and of all cheerful,
self-sufficient, living poetry,--I mean, satire and criticism.
In quiet times every one wants to live after his own fashion: the
citizen will carry on his trade or his business, and enjoy the fruits of
it afterwards; thus will the author, too, willingly compose something,
publish his labors, and, since he thinks he has done something good and
useful, hope for praise, if not reward. In this tranquillity the citizen
is disturbed by the satirist, the author by the critic; and peaceful
society is thus put into a disagreeable agitation.
The literary epoch in which I was born was developed out of the
preceding one by opposition. Germany, so long inundated by foreigners,
interpenetrated by other nations, directed to foreign languages in
learned and diplomatic transactions, could not possibly cultivate her
own. Together with so many new ideas, innumerable foreign words were
obtruded necessarily and unnecessarily upon her; and, even for objects
already known, people were induced to make use of foreign expressions
and turns of speech. The German, having run wild for nearly two hundred
years in an unhappy tumultuary state, went to school with the French to
learn manners, and with the Romans in order to express his thoughts with
propriety. But this was to be done in the mother-tongue, when the
literal application of those idioms, and their half-Germanization, made
both the social and business style ridiculous. Besides this, they
adopted without moderation the similes of the southern languages, and
employed them most extravagantly. In the same way they transferred the
stately deportment of the prince-like citizens of Rome to the learned
German small-town officers, and were at home nowhere, least of all with
themselves.
But as in this epoch works of genius had already appeared, the German
sense of freedom and joy also began to stir itself. This, accompanied by
a genuine earnestness, insisted that men should write purely and
naturally, without the intermixture of foreign words, and as common
intelligible sense dictated. By these praiseworthy endeavors, however,
the doors and gates were thrown open to an extended national insipidity,
nay,--the dike was dug through by which the great deluge was shortly to
rush in. Meanwhile, a stiff pedantry long stood its ground in all the
four faculties, until at last, much later, it fled for refuge from one
of them to another.
Men of parts, children of nature looking freely about them, had
therefore two objects on which they could exercise themselves, against
which they could labor, and, as the matter was of no great importance,
give a vent to their petulance: these were,--a language disfigured by
foreign words, forms, and turns of speech on the one hand, and the
worthlessness of such writings as had been careful to keep themselves
free from those faults on the other; though it occurred to nobody, that,
while they were battling against one evil, the other was called on for
assistance.
Liskow, a daring young man, first ventured to attack by name a shallow,
silly writer, whose awkward demeanor soon gave him an opportunity to
proceed still more severely. He then went farther, and constantly aimed
his scorn at particular persons and objects, whom he despised and sought
to render despicable,--nay, even persecuted them with passionate hatred.
But his career was short; for he soon died, and was gradually forgotten
as a restless, irregular youth. The talent and character shown in what
he did, although he had accomplished little, may have seemed valuable to
his countrymen; for the Germans have always shown a peculiar pious
kindliness to talents of good promise, when prematurely cut off. Suffice
it to say, that Liskow was very soon praised and recommended to us as an
excellent satirist, who could have attained a rank even above the
universally beloved Rabener. Here, indeed, we saw ourselves no better
off than before; for we could discover nothing in his writings, except
that he had found the silly, silly, which seemed to us quite a matter of
course.
Rabener, well educated, grown up under good scholastic instruction, of a
cheerful, and by no means passionate or malicious, disposition, took up
general satire. His censure of the so-called vices and follies springs
from the clear views of a quiet common sense, and from a fixed moral
conception of what the world ought to be. His denunciation of faults and
failings is harmless and cheerful; and, in order to excuse even the
slight boldness of his writings, it is supposed that the improving of
fools by ridicule is no fruitless undertaking.
Rabener's personal character will not easily appear again. As an able,
punctual man of business, he does his duty, and thus gains the good
opinion of his fellow-townsmen and the confidence of his superiors;
along with which, he gives himself up to the enjoyment of a pleasant
contempt for all that immediately surrounds him. Pedantic
/literati/, vain youngsters, every sort of narrowness and conceit,
he banters rather than satirizes; and even his banter expresses no
contempt. Just in the same way does he jest about his own condition, his
misfortune, his life, and his death.