~The History and Poetical Form of the Xenions~ 1
The History of the Xenions 3
The Elegiac Distich 13
~Introductory~ 23
Our Purpose 25
Our Method 26
The Distich 27
Boisterous 28
Our Common Fate 29
The Last Martyr 30
~Soul and World~ 31
Our Own 33
Harmony 34
The Key 35
Worth and Value 36
Nature and Reason 37
Oneness 38
Various Destinies 39
The Immutable 40
The Law of Nature 41
Zeus to Heracles 42
Folly and Insanity 43
Motives and Action 44
Baal Priests 45
Salvation 46
Human Life 47
Immortality 48
Indestructible 49
God, World, and Man 50
~Critical and Literary~ 51
The Poet Addresses his Muse 53
To Incompetent Reviewers 54
Wolf’s Homer 55
Intellectual Aristocracy 56
Bad Times 57
Mutual Admiration Society 58
Dilettante 59
To One Author 60
To Another Author 61
Wanted 62
Artifice 63
A Discussion 64
~Satirical and Personal~ 65
The Great Moment 67
To Some Critics 68
The Vinculum 69
Present Generation 70
To Those in Authority 71
Questionable Investigation 72
The Spirit and the Letter 73
The Sense of a Committee 74
Taste in a Watering Place 75
Sample of Modern Criticism 76
Nicolai’s Book on the Source of the Danube 77
The Collector 78
Crudity 79
Nicolai’s Motto 80
A Publisher 81
In Comparison with Socrates 82
To Certain Moralists 83
Martyrs 84
The Brothers Stolberg 85
The Connoisseur 86
Sentimentalists 87
The Prophet 88
The Half-Bird 89
Partisan Spirit 90
~The Philosophers in Hades~ 91
The Poet Speaks 93
Aristotle 94
Urgent 95
Descartes 96
My Answer 97
Spinoza 98
Berkeley 99
Leibniz 100
Kant 101
David Hume 102
Fichte 103
Reinhold 104
My Answer 105
K. C. F. Schmidt, the Moral Philosopher 106
My Answer 107
Philosophy 108
~Philosophical Problems~ 109
For Sale 111
A Flaw 112
Empiricists 113
Theoreticians 114
Last Refuge 115
Natural Science and Transcendental Philosophy 116
The Same 117
Kant and his Interpreters 118
Teleology 119
The Problem of Natural Law 120
Puffendorf’s Reply 121
A Moral Problem 122
The Kantian’s Decision 123
Human Knowledge 124
Systems 126
~Science and Art~ 127
Genius a Gift 129
Truth and Form 130
Creation 131
Different Applications 132
The Sublime 133
Fiction and Truth 134
The Poet and the Naturalist 135
Trust in Scientific Truth 136
Wisdom and Prudence 138
~Wisdom, Morality and Religion~ 139
The Highest 141
Piety and Natural Science 142
Misrepresented 143
Philosopher and Bigot 144
Theological Hedonists 145
Friend and Enemy 146
Distinction 147
Perfection 148
Goodness and Greatness 149
The One Thing Needed 150
Our Duty 151
Difference in Oneness 152
Repetition 153
Utility 154
Harm 155
Discipline 156
Comfort 157
Analytical Truth-Seekers 158
Depreciated Coin 159
Ritual 160
Mystics 161
Light and Color 162
Not Irreligious 163
Our Father 164
~Notes~ 165
THE HISTORY AND POETICAL
FORM OF THE XENIONS.
The History of the Xenions.
The appearance of the Xenions, a collection of satirical epigrams
in the _Musen-Almanach_ of 1797, is a memorable event in the
literature of Germany. With the end of the eighteenth century a new
era had commenced. The idea of evolution, first clearly pronounced by
Caspar Friedrich Wolff in his theory of epigenesis,[A] pointed out
new aims of investigation in the realm of natural sciences; Kant’s
_Critique of Pure Reason_ propounded new problems in philosophy;
and Beethoven conceived his grand sonatas, which reflected the spirit
of an all-comprehensive aspiration in the soul-stirring notes of music.
New ideals, religious, moral, and social, had dawned upon mankind, and
the two great apostles of this movement in the domain of poetry were
Goethe and Schiller.
[A] His _Theoria Generationis_ appeared in 1759.
It is well known what good friends Goethe and Schiller were. After
the two great poets had become personally acquainted they inspired,
criticised, and corrected each other. Their common ideal became the
firm basis of their mutual friendship, and the chief monument of their
alliance is the collection of satirical distichs known as the Xenions.
Great though Schiller and Goethe were, they did not find sufficient
support among those who should have been their first followers and
disciples. The men of literary callings, who should be the priests of
the holiest interests of humanity, were too envious fully to recognize
and acknowledge the merit of these two great poet-thinkers. Moreover,
the men of letters were chiefly enamoured of their own traditional
methods of literary production and could not appreciate the purity, the
grandeur, and the holiness of the new taste. They misunderstood the
progressive spirit of the time, and to their puny minds the rise of the
new era appeared as a mere disturbance of their traditional habits.
They looked upon the twin giants of the world of thought as usurpers,
who from personal vanity and ambition tyrannized over all others, and
whose impositions had either to be resisted, or silenced by shrugs.
On the one side, the orthodox and narrow-minded pietists considered
Goethe and Schiller irreligious and un-Christian, and accused them
of paganism. On the other side we find the two great poets opposed
by such men as the shallow Nicolai, a man of good common sense but
without any genius, a man who preached that stale kind of rationalism
which consisted in both the suppression of all higher aspiration and
the denial of spirituality in any sense. He railed at Goethe and
Schiller as well as at Kant, Fichte, and other great minds of his time
who went beyond his depth and were incomprehensible to him. The pious
are characterized in the Xenions as enthusiasts and sentimentalists
(_Schwärmer_) while the prosaic rationalists are called by the
German student term “philistines” which denotes common-place people,
and the pedantic Nicolai figures as the “arch-philistine.”
Nicolai was a rich and influential publisher in Berlin; he was an
author himself, and a very prolific one too, but his writings are
superficial and barren. On several occasions he criticised Goethe
severely, and our great poets asserted that in fighting superstition
he attacked poetry, and in attempting to suppress the belief in
_spirits_ he also tried to abolish _spirit_. So Goethe makes
him say in the _Walpurgisnacht_:
“Ich sag’s Euch _Geistern_ in’s Gesicht,
Den _Geistes_-Despotismus leid ich nicht;
Mein Geist kann ihn nicht exerciren.”
[I tell you, spirits, to your face,
I give to spirit-despotism no place;
My spirit cannot practise it at all.]
_Tr. by Bayard Taylor._
The irritation of the literary dwarfs showed itself in malevolent
reviews of Schiller’s literary enterprise, _Die Horen_.
Schiller wrote to Goethe June 15, 1795:
“I have thought for some time that it would be well to open a
critical arena in _Die Horen_. Yet we should not give away our
rights by formally inviting the public and the authors. The public
would certainly be represented by the most miserable voices, and the
authors, as we know from experience, would become very importunate. My
proposition is that we make the attack ourselves. In case the authors
wish to defend themselves in _Die Horen_, they must submit to our
conditions. And my advice is, not to begin with propositions, but to
begin with deeds. There is no harm if we are denounced as ill-bred.”
Several letters were exchanged on this subject, and Goethe wrote in a
letter of December 23, 1795, to Schiller:
“We must cultivate the idea of making epigrams upon all journals; one
distich for each magazine, in the manner of Martial’s _Xenia_; and
we must publish a collection of them in the _Musen-Almanach_ of
next year. Enclosed are some Xenions as a specimen.”
Schiller answered at once, December 23, 1795:
“The idea of the Xenions is splendid and must be carried out.... What a
wealth of material is offered by the Stolbergs, by Racknitz, Ramdohr,
the metaphysical world with its _Me’s_ and _Not-Me’s_, friend
Nicolai, our sworn enemy, the Leipsic taste-mongers, Thümmel, with
Göschen as his horsegroom, and others.”
Thus the two poets decided to wage a destructive war against their
common enemies, and to come down upon them in a literary thunderstorm.
The poets planned a “poetical deviltry,” as they called it, and named
their satirical poetry “Xenions.”
The word Xenion originally meant a gift presented by a host to a
stranger who enjoys his hospitality. The Roman poet Martial called his
book of satirical epigrams _Xenia_; and, as Goethe and Schiller
intended to make similar epigrammatical thrusts at Nicolai and other
offenders, they adopted Martial’s expression and called their verses
Xenions.[B] They agreed to publish all their Xenions together, and to
regard them as their common property.
[B] We prefer the Saxon form of the plural (_Xenions_) to the Latin
form (_Xenia_), which is appropriate only as a name of Latin poetry.
The first Xenions were very aggressive, but by and by they became more
general and lost their personal character. There are among them many
which are lofty and full of deep thought. It happened now and then
that the authors of the Xenions hit the wrong man; but this, although
to be regretted, was more excusable than the abuse with which their
adversaries retorted.
The Xenions raised a storm of indignation, as was to be expected, and
Anti-Xenions were written by many of those who had been attacked. But
while the tenor of the Xenions is lofty in spite of their personal
character, and while we feel the high aims of Goethe and Schiller in
their attempts to purify literature, the Anti-Xenions are _wholly_
personal. They are rude, malicious and mean. They insinuate that the
Xenions were prompted by vile motives; that Goethe and Schiller wanted
more praise and flattery; that they were envious of the laurels of
others and wanted to be the sole usurpers of Mount Parnassus. Schiller
was called Kant’s ape, and Goethe was reproached with his family
relations.
The history of the Xenions is their justification. The Anti-Xenions
are, in themselves alone, a wholesale condemnation of the opposition
made to Goethe and Schiller.
Goethe wrote to Schiller concerning the reception which the Xenions
found, on December 5, 1796:
“It is real fun to observe what has been offensive to this kind of
people, and also what they think has been offensive to us. How trivial,
empty, and mean they consider the life of others, and how they direct
their arrows against the outside of the works! How little do they know
that a man who takes life seriously lives in an impregnable castle!”
Goethe and Schiller had wielded a vigorous and two-edged weapon
in the Xenions. They had severely chastised their antagonists for
incompetency; but now it devolved upon themselves to prove the right of
their censorship, and they were conscious of this duty. Goethe wrote,
November 15, 1806:
“After the bold venture of the Xenions, we must confine our labors
strictly to great and worthy works of art. We must shame our
adversaries by transmuting our Protean nature henceforth into noble and
good forms.”
Events proved that both Goethe and Schiller were not only willing but
able to fulfil these intentions. Their antagonists have disappeared.
Some of them would now be entirely forgotten had not the two poets
immortalized them in the Xenions.
Some Xenions are of mere transitory importance, especially such as
contain allusions and criticisms that are lost to those who are not
thoroughly versed in the history of the times, while others are gems
of permanent value, reflecting in a few words flashes of the deepest
wisdom, and they ought to be better known among English-speaking
people. We have therefore extracted and translated those which we deem
worthy of preservation for all time.
Goethe and Schiller’s distichs, we are sorry to add, are not always
very elegant, and sometimes lack in smoothness and correctness. The
first half of their pentameters is often very weak, and many of the
second parts are extremely awkward, as for instance in the distich on
page 163, where we read:
....“Und warum
kei′ne?” Aus Re′ligion′.
This excited the anger of Voss, the translator of Homer in the original
meter of dactylic hexameters. Voss ridiculed Goethe and Schiller for
their bad versification in a distich, which he intentionally made
even worse than the worst of theirs, using the words with a wrong
accentuation:
“In′ Weimar und′ in Jena′
macht man′ Hexa′meter wie′ der;
A′ber die Pen′tameter′
sind′ doch noch ex′cellenter′!”
[In′ Weimar and′ in Jena′
they make′ hexame′ters such as′ this;
But′ the Pen′tameters′
are′ even more′ excellent′.]
In spite of some awkwardness and lack of elegance in diction, the
Xenions became very popular in Germany on account of the profound ideas
embodied in many of them. The shortcomings of their form have been
forgotten on account of their intrinsic value, and there is perhaps no
poetry quoted more frequently than these pithy aphorisms. They have
become household words in Germany and deserve a place of honor in the
literature of the world.
The Elegiac Distich.
The form of the Xenions is, like their Roman prototype, the elegiac
distich.
The elegiac distich has rarely, if ever, been used in English poetry,
although there is much classical beauty in its rhythm. It consists of
alternate dactylic hexameters and pentameters which in ancient Greece
were recited to the accompaniment of the flute, and went by the name
of “elegies,” the etymology of which has nothing to do (as has been
assumed) with lamentations, but probably means flute-songs.
A meter in Greek prosody is comparable to the musical bar, while a
foot is a rhythmic figure. Some meters, such as the iambic (◡–◡–) and
trochaic (–◡–◡), consist of two feet, but the dactylic meters(–◡◡)
consist of one foot only.[C] Accordingly a trochaic trimeter consists
of three meters or six feet; while six dactyls, the last one of which
is always catalectic, are called a dactylic hexameter. Catalectic means
“ending” or “terminating,” signifying that every line is mutilated at
the end. A catalectic meter lacks the last syllable, which, musically
considered, is to be regarded as a pause so as to make a musical halt
between the lines. According to another rule, the last syllable is
always indifferent, i. e., it may be either long or short (̲◡).
[C] The name “dactyl” or “finger” (Greek δάκτυλος) indicates that,
like a finger, it consists of one long and two short members.
The dactylic (or, as it is also called, the heroic) hexameter is too
long to be read in one breathing, so it is divided into two, sometimes
into three parts, and the division is called a _caesura_, i. e., a
cut or incision. This division of the line is irregular and we do not
hesitate to say that to its irregularity the hexameter owes a peculiar
charm, for it breaks the monotony of the dactylic rhythm.
The new start after the caesura will never be dactylic (–◡◡) like the
beginning of the line; it may be anapaestic (◡◡–) or iambic (◡–); but
not dactylic. The break should occur either after an arsis (–) or
after a trochee (–◡) so as to change the character of the latter part
of the hexameter from a descending into an ascending meter. The former,
the descending meter which begins with a long syllable, is halting and
possesses an attitude of holding back, of dignity, of assertion, while
the descending meter rushes forward from a short syllable to a long
one; it is progressive, it rises. The latter indicates struggle while
the former shows strength and the calmness of victory.
Every caesura has its own name in Greek and the most common caesura
cuts the verse in the third meter between the arsis, the long accented
syllable, and the thesis, i. e., the two short syllables or the one
long unaccented syllable. Since in prosody two short syllables are
equivalent to one long syllable, they are regarded as half a meter, and
so this caesura is called penthemimeres πενθημιμερὴς which means the
one after the fifth half-meter. It runs thus:
–◡◡-◡◡–||◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡
There is another caesura after the seventh half-meter. It is called in
Greek hephthemimeres (ἑφθημιμερὴς) and runs thus:
–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–||◡◡–◡◡–◡
Caesuras after the third and after the ninth half-meter are rarely
used; they occur sometimes in Latin but the latter is regarded as
inadmissible in Greek.
Almost as common as the penthemimeres is the caesura between the two
short syllables in the third meter; and because it cuts off from the
meter a trochee (thus –◡||◡) it is called κατὰ τρίτον τροχαῖον, i. e.,
the caesura “after the third trochee.” It runs thus:
–◡◡–◡◡–◡||◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡
Caesuras after the second trochee are rare and after the fourth are
strictly forbidden in Greek metrics.
Finally we must mention the caesura after the end of the fourth
measure, which is not uncommon in bucolic poetry, picturing the
peaceful life of the ancient Greek cowboys, so different from the
cowboys of the American Wild West, and it has therefore received the
name, “bucolic caesura.” It is rare in heroic poems; nevertheless it
occurs sometimes and its occasional appearance is effective, for the
combination of one dactyl with one trochee (–◡◡–◡) gives a euphonious
ring to the verse.
The heroic hexameter is best known to the English-reading public from
Longfellow’s _Evangeline_. It has not been a favorite with them
mainly because of the awkwardness with which it has been handled and
the boldness with which short syllables are frequently used to serve
as long syllables. We may say that at present the German language
has proved itself most apt in reproducing this classical measure, in
which, however, the long syllable (_arsis_) is to be replaced by
a decidedly accented syllable, while the place of a short syllable
(_thesis_) is taken by an unaccented syllable. This makes it
possible that the same word may, according to position, in one place
serve as a short, in another as a long, syllable, while the prosody of
the classical languages is more severe. There a syllable is either long
or short, and a short syllable can only become long through subsequent
consonants, which is called “length through position.”
We have to recognize the fact that Teutonic languages are qualitative
while the classic languages are quantitative. This means that in the
former the accent of the word is predominant and wrong accents render
a word positively unintelligible, while in the latter the word-accent
is of less account. It is of little consequence in English whether we
pronounce “ĕgg” or “aigg,” but it makes a decided difference whether
we say “in′fidel” or “infi′del.” In modern French however, we may
pronounce with propriety either “_la mai′son_” or “_la maison′_”. And
this character of the Teutonic languages which renders quality of
accent so prominent in speech is the reason why they tend to brevity,
for they contract words more and more until, as is the case in English,
most of their forms are reduced to monosyllables. Thus the Gothic word
_habededian_ is contracted in Middle German into _habete_, (viz.,
_haben_--_tat_ = “I did have”), in modern German into _hatte_, and in
English into “had.” The Teutonic languages neglect the unimportant and
unaccented portions of the word, and wherever they can be disposed of
drop them entirely or fuse them into the main syllable.
Another reason why the hexameter is not liked in English is on account
of the length of the verse. If the reader has first to search for the
caesura, for the place where he can take breath, he feels discouraged
at the long line that stretches before him like a road through the
desert, and for this reason we deem it an improvement to print dactylic
verses so as to begin a new line with the caesura. It renders the
reading of the line easier in the measure, as the break in the verse is
thus most easily taken in by the eye.
* * * * *
Since we have been discussing metrical details at some length, we may
be permitted to add a few comments on the iambic trimeter which in
English is really nothing else but what is commonly known as blank
verse. This verse is very generally misunderstood and we have nowhere
seen it properly explained in English books on prosody.
The blank verse is the most common and best adapted form for dignified
speech in both the dialogue and the monologue of the drama. We quote as
a typical verse the first line of Hamlet’s soliloquy:
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
The meter is a catalectic iambic trimeter and there is only one rule of
importance, viz., that at the beginning and after caesuras an iambus
◡– can be replaced by a trochee metric: –◡. A scheme of the meter runs
thus:
◡–◡–|◡–◡–|◡–◡||
Or in musical script thus:
[Music]
The last long syllable, sometimes even the whole last foot, is omitted
or, more correctly, is replaced by a pause. We may write it thus:
[Music]
This latter case, originally merely allowable, has become very frequent
in English, because the English language is rich in monosyllables so
as to make it sometimes difficult to end the verse with an unaccented
(i. e., a short) syllable, but this custom has produced the impression
that the verse consists of five iambi, and among people but little
versed in the rules of classical poetry who forget that an iambic meter
consists of two feet, has given rise to the error that blank verse is
an iambic pentameter. Strange to say this mistake is now perpetuated in
almost all our text-books.
* * * * *
After this digression on the iambic trimeter we shall make, in
conclusion, a few comments on the dactylic pentameter.
The pentameter, i. e., “a five-measure,” is so called because it
consists of twice two and a half dactylic meters thus:
–◡◡–◡◡–
In reality the pentameter is a repetition of a penthemimeres.
Two short syllables may always be replaced in elegiac distichs by one
long syllable, with the exception of the fifth meter of the hexameter
and the latter half of the pentameter. The schedule of a distich,
accordingly, is thus:
— — — — — —
–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡
— —
–◡◡–◡◡–||–◡◡–◡◡–
Considering the fact that the measures of Greek prosody are comparable
to musical bars in which time and not accent is the decisive element,
we readily understand that the name “pentameter” is a misnomer, for the
pentameter consists as much as the hexameter of six full dactylic bars,
only that there is a pause of one-half meter after each two and a half
meters. Expressed in musical characters, the distich reads as follows:
[Music]