CONTINUANCE OF CONVALESCENCE AND THE FIRST NOVEL.
The remainder of the summer I spent half with my mother, half with my
aunt, and pursued the same course during the subsequent years, until
from 1862 I remained longer in Berlin, engaged in study, and began my
scientific journeys.
There were few important events either in the family circle or in
politics, except the accession to the throne of King William of Prussia
and the Franco-Austrian war of 1859. In Berlin the "new era" awakened
many fair and justifiable hopes; a fresher current stirred the dull,
placid waters of political life.
The battles of Magenta and Solferino (June 4 and 24, 1859) had caused
great excitement in the household of my aunt, who loved me as if I were
her own son, and whose husband was also warmly attached to me. They felt
the utmost displeasure in regard to the course of Prussia, and it was
hard for me to approve of it, since Austria seemed a part of Germany,
and I was very fond of my uncle's three nearest relatives, who were all
in the Austrian service.
The future was to show the disadvantage of listening to the voice of the
heart in political affairs. Should we have a German empire, and would
there be a united Italy, if Austria in alliance with Prussia had fought
in 1859 at Solferino and Magenta and conquered the French?
At Hosterwitz I became more intimately acquainted with the lyric poet,
Julius Hammer. The Kammergerichtrath-Gottheiner, a highly educated man,
lived there with his daughter Marie, whose exquisite singing at the villa
of her hospitable sister-in-law so charmed my heart. Through them I met
many distinguished men-President von Kirchmann, the architect Nikolai,
the author of Psyche, Privy Councillor Carus, the writer Charles Duboc
(Waldmuller) with his beautiful gifted wife, and many others.
Many a Berlin acquaintance, too, I met again at Hosterwitz, among them
the preacher Sydow and Lothar Bucher.
To the friendship of this remarkable man, whom I knew just at the time he
was associated with Bismarck, I owe many hours of enjoyment. Many will
find it hardly compatible with the reserved, quiet manner of the astute,
cool politician, that during a slight illness of my mother he read Fritz
Reuter's novels aloud to her--he spoke Plattdeutsch admirably--as
dutifully as a son.
So there was no lack of entertainment during leisure hours, but the
lion's share of my time was devoted to work.
The same state of affairs existed during my stay with my aunt, who
occupied a summer residence on the estate of Privy-Councillor von
Adelsson, which was divided into building lots long ago, but at that time
was the scene of the gayest social life in both residences.
The owner and his wife were on the most intimate terms with my relatives,
and their daughter Lina seemed to me the fairest of all the flowers in
the Adelsson garden. If ever a girl could be compared to a violet it was
she. I knew her from childhood to maidenhood, and rejoiced when I saw
her wed in young Count Uexkyll-Guldenbrand a life companion worthy of
her.
There were many other charming girls, too, and my aunt, besides old
friends, entertained the leaders of literary life in Dresden.
Gutzkow surpassed them all in acuteness and subtlety of intellect, but
the bluntness of his manner repelled me.
On the other hand, I sincerely enjoyed the thoughtful eloquence of
Berthold Auerbach, who understood how to invest with poetic charm not
only great and noble subjects, but trivial ones gathered from the dust.
If I am permitted to record the memories of my later life, I shall have
more to say of him. It was he who induced me to give to my first
romance, which I had intended to call Nitetis, the title An Egyptian
Princess.
The stars of the admirable Dresden stage also found their way to my
aunt's.
One day I was permitted to listen to the singing of Emmy La Gruas, and
the next to the peerless Schroder-Devrient. Every conversation with the
cultured physician Geheimerath von Ammon was instructive and fascinating;
while Rudolf von Reibisch, the most intimate friend of the family,
whose great talents would have rendered him capable of really grand
achievements in various departments of art, examined our skulls as a
phrenologist or read aloud his last drama. Here, too, I met Major Serre,
the bold projector of the great lottery whose brilliant success called
into being and insured the prosperity of the Schiller Institute, the
source of so much good.
This simple-hearted yet energetic man taught me how genuine enthusiasm
and the devotion of a whole personality to a cause can win victory under
the most difficult circumstances. True, his clever wife shared her
husband's enthusiasm, and both understood how to attract the right
advisers. I afterwards met at their beautiful estate, Maxen, among many
distinguished people, the Danish author Andersen, a man of insignificant
personal appearance, but one who, if he considered it worth while and was
interested in the subject, could carry his listeners resistlessly with
him. Then his talk sparkled with clever, vivid, striking, peculiar
metaphors, and when one brilliant description of remarkable experiences
and scenes followed another he swiftly won the hearts of the women who
had overlooked him, and it seemed to the men as if some fiend were aiding
him.
During the first years of my convalescence I could enjoy nothing save
what came or was brought to me. But the cheerful patience with which I
appeared to bear my sufferings, perhaps also the gratitude and eagerness
with which I received everything, attracted most of the men and women for
whom I really cared.
If there was an entertaining conversation, arrangements were always made
that I should enjoy it, at least as a listener. The affection of these
kind people never wearied in lightening the burden which had been laid
upon me. So, during this whole sad period I was rarely utterly wretched,
often joyous and happy, though sometimes the victim to the keenest
spiritual anguish.
During the hours of rest which must follow labour, and when tortured at
night by the various painful feelings and conditions connected even with
convalescence from disease, my restrictions rose before me as a specially
heavy misfortune. My whole being rebelled against my sufferings, and--
why should I conceal it?--burning tears drenched my pillows after many
a happy day. At the time I was obliged to part from Nenny this often
happened. Goethe's "He who never mournful nights" I learned to
understand in the years when the beaker of life foams most impetuously
for others. But I had learned from my mother to bear my sorest griefs
alone, and my natural cheerfulness aided me to win the victory in the
strife against the powers of melancholy. I found it most easy to master
every painful emotion by recalling the many things for which I had cause
to be grateful, and sometimes an hour of the fiercest struggle and
deepest grief closed with the conviction that I was more blessed than
many thousands of my fellow-mortals, and still a "favourite of Fortune."
The same feeling steeled my patience and helped to keep hope green and
sustain my pleasure in existence when, long after, a return of the same
disease, accompanied with severe suffering, which I had been spared in
youth, snatched me from earnest, beloved, and, I may assume, successful
labour.
The younger generation may be told once more how effective a consolation
man possesses--no matter what troubles may oppress him--in gratitude.
The search for everything which might be worthy of thankfulness
undoubtedly leads to that connection with God which is religion.
When I went to Berlin in winter, harder work, many friends, and
especially my Polish fellow-student, Mieczyslaw helped me bear
my burden patiently.
He was well, free, highly gifted, keenly interested in science, and made
rapid progress. Though secure from all external cares, a worm was
gnawing at his heart which gave him no rest night or day--the misery of
his native land and his family, and the passionate longing to avenge it
on the oppressor of the nation. His father had sacrificed the larger
portion of his great fortune to the cause of Poland, and, succumbing to
the most cruel persecutions, urged his sons, in their turn, to sacrifice
everything for their native land. They were ready except one brother,
who wielded his sword in the service of the oppressor, and thus became to
the others a dreaded and despised enemy.
Mieczyslaw remained in Berlin raging against himself because, an
intellectual epicurean, he was enjoying Oriental studies instead of
following in the footsteps of his father, his brothers, and most of his
relatives at home.
My ideas of the heroes of Polish liberty had been formed from Heinrich
Heine's Noble Pole, and I met my companion with a certain feeling of
distrust. Far from pressing upon me the thoughts which moved him so
deeply, it was long ere he permitted the first glimpse into his soul.
But when the ice was once broken, the flood of emotion poured forth with
elementary power, and his sincerity was sealed by his blood. He fell
armed on the soil of his home at the time when I was most gratefully
rejoicing in the signs of returning health--the year 1863. I was his
only friend in Berlin, but I was warmly attached to him, and shall
remember him to my life's end.
The last winter of imprisonment also saw me industriously at work. I had
already, with Mieczyslaw, devoted myself eagerly to the history of the
ancient East, and Lepsius especially approved these studies. The list of
the kings which I compiled at that time, from the most remote sources to
the Sassanida, won the commendation of A. von Gutschmid, the most able
investigator in this department. These researches led me also to Persia
and the other Asiatic countries. Egypt, of course, remained the
principal province of my work. The study of the kings from the twenty-
sixth dynasty--that is, the one with which the independence of the
Pharaohs ended and the rule of the Persians under Cambyses began in the
valley of the Nile--occupied me a long time. I used the material thus
acquired afterward for my habilitation essay, but the impulse natural to
me of imparting my intellectual gains to others had induced me to utilize
it in a special way. The material I had collected appeared in my
judgment exactly suited for a history of the time that Egypt fell into
the power of Persia. Jacob Burckhardt's Constantine the Great was to
serve for my model. I intended to lay most stress upon the state of
civilization, the intellectual and religious life, art, and science in
Egypt, Greece, Persia, Phoenicia, etc., and after most carefully planning
the arrangement I began to write with the utmost zeal.
[I still have the unfinished manuscript; but the farther I advanced
the stronger became the conviction, now refuted by Eduard Meyer,
that it would not yet be possible to write a final history of that
period which would stand the test of criticism.]
While thus engaged, the land of the Pharaohs, the Persian court, Greece
in the time of the Pisistratidae and Polycrates grew more and more
distinct before my mental vision. Herodotus's narrative of the false
princess sent by Pharaoh Amasis to Cambyses as a wife, and who became the
innocent cause of the war through which the kingdom of the Pharaohs lost
its independence, would not bear criticism, but it was certainly usable
material for a dramatic or epic poem. And this material gave me no
peace.
Yes, something might certainly be done with it. I soon mastered it
completely, but gradually the relation changed and it mastered me, gave
me no rest, and forced me to try upon it the poetic power so long
condemned to rest.
When I set to work I was not permitted to leave the house in the evening.
Was it disloyal to science if I dedicated to poesy the hours which others
called leisure time? The question was put to the inner judge in such a
way that he could not fail to say "No." I also tried successfully to
convince myself that I merely essayed to write this tale to make the
material I had gathered "live," and bring the persons and conditions of
the period whose history I wished to write as near to me as if I were
conversing with them and dwelling in their midst. How often I repeated
to myself this well-founded apology, but in truth every instinct of my
nature impelled me to write, and at this very time Moritz Hartmann was
also urging me in his letters, while Mieczyslaw and others, even my
mother, encouraged me.
I began because I could not help it, and probably scarcely any work
ever stood more clearly arranged, down to the smallest detail, in its
creator's imagination, than the Egyptian Princess in mine when I took up
my pen. Only the first volume originally contained much more Egyptian
material, and the third I lengthened beyond my primary intention. Many
notes of that time I was unwilling to leave unused and, though the
details are not uninteresting, their abundance certainly impairs the
effect of the whole.
As for the characters, most of them were familiar.
How many of my mother's traits the beautiful, dignified Rhodopis
possessed! King Amasis was Frederick William IV, the Greek Phanes
resembled President Seiffart. Nitetis, too, I knew. I had often jested
with Atossa, and Sappho was a combination of my charming Frankfort cousin
Betsy, with whom I spent such delightful days in Rippoldsau, and lovely
Lina von Adelsson. Like the characters in the works of the greatest of
writers--I mean Goethe--not one of mine was wholly invented, but neither
was any an accurate portrait of the model.
I by no means concealed from myself the difficulties with which I had to
contend or the doubts the critics would express, but this troubled me
very little. I was writing the book only for myself and my mother, who
liked to hear every chapter read as it was finished. I often thought
that this novel might perhaps share the fate of my Poem of the World,
and find its way into the fire.
No matter. The greatest success could afford me no higher pleasure than
the creative labour. Those were happy evenings when, wholly lifted out
of myself, I lived in a totally different world, and, like a god,
directed the destinies of the persons who were my creatures. The love
scenes between Bartja and Sappho I did not invent; they came to me.
When, with brow damp with perspiration, I committed the first one to
paper in a single evening, I found the next morning, to my surprise,
that only a few touches were needed to convert it into a poem in iambics.
This was scarcely permissible in a novel. But the scene pleased my
mother, and when I again brought the lovers together in the warm
stillness of the Egyptian night, and perceived that the flood of iambics
was once more sweeping me along, I gave free course to the creative
spirit and the pen, and the next morning the result was the same.
I then took Julius Hammer into my confidence, and he thought that I had
given expression to the overflowing emotion of two loving young hearts
in a very felicitous and charming way.
While my friends were enjoying themselves in ball-rooms or exciting
society, Fate still condemned me to careful seclusion in my mother's
house. But when I was devoting myself to the creation of my Nitetis,
I envied no man, scarcely even a god.
So this novel approached completion. It had not deprived me of an hour
of actual working time, yet the doubt whether I had done right to venture
on this side flight into fairer and better lands during my journey
through the department of serious study was rarely silent.
At the beginning of the third volume I ventured to move more freely.
Yet when I went to Lepsius, the most earnest of my teachers, to show him
the finished manuscript, I felt very anxious. I had not said even a word
in allusion to what I was doing in the evening hours, and the three
volumes of my large manuscript were received by him in a way that
warranted the worst fears. He even asked how I, whom he had believed to
be a serious worker, had been tempted into such "side issues."
This was easy to explain, and when he had heard me to the end he said:
"I might have thought of that. You sometimes need a cup of Lethe water.
But now let such things alone, and don't compromise your reputation as a
scientist by such extravagances."
Yet he kept the manuscript and promised to look at the curiosity.
He did more. He read it through to the last letter, and when, a
fortnight later; he asked me at his house to remain after the others
had left, he looked pleased, and confessed that he had found something
entirely different from what he expected. The book was a scholarly work,
and also a fascinating romance.
Then he expressed some doubts concerning the space I had devoted to the
Egyptians in my first arrangement. Their nature was too reserved and
typical to hold the interest of the unscientific reader. According to
his view, I should do well to limit to Egyptian soil what I had gained by
investigation, and to make Grecian life, which was familiar to us moderns
as the foundation of our aesthetic perceptions, more prominent. The
advice was good, and, keeping it in view, I began to subject the whole
romance to a thorough revision.
Before going to Wildbad in the summer of 1863 I had a serious
conversation with my teacher and friend. Hitherto, he said, he had
avoided any discussion of my future; but now that I was so decidedly
convalescing, he must tell me that even the most industrious work as a
"private scholar," as people termed it, would not satisfy me. I was
fitted for an academic career, and he advised me to keep it in view.
As I had already thought of this myself, I eagerly assented, and my
mother was delighted with my resolution.
How we met in Wildbad my never-to-be-forgotten friend the Stuttgart
publisher, Eduard von Hallberger; how he laid hands upon my Egyptian
Princess; and how the fate of this book and its author led through joy
and sorrow, pleasure and pain, I hope, ere my last hour strikes, to
communicate to my family and the friends my life and writings have
gained.
When I left Berlin, so far recovered that I could again move freely,
I was a mature man. The period of development lay behind me. Though
the education of an aspiring man ends only with his last breath, the
commencement of my labours as a teacher outwardly closed mine, and an
important goal in life lay before me. A cruel period of probation, rich
in suffering and deprivations, had made the once careless youth familiar
with the serious side of existence, and taught him to control himself.
After once recognizing that progress in the department of investigation
in which I intended to guide others demanded the devotion of all my
powers, I succeeded in silencing the ceaseless longing for fresh
creations of romance. The completion of a second long novel would have
imperilled the unity with myself which I was striving to attain, and
which had been represented to me by the noblest of my instructors as my
highest goal in life. So I remained steadfast, although the great
success of my first work rendered it very difficult. Temptations of
every kind, even in the form of brilliant offers from the most prominent
German publishers, assailed me, but I resisted, until at the end of half
a lifetime I could venture to say that I was approaching my goal, and
that it was now time to grant the muse what I had so long denied. Thus,
that portion of my nature which was probably originally the stronger was
permitted to have its life. During long days of suffering romance was
again a kind and powerful comforter.
Severe suffering had not succeeded in stifling the cheerful spirit of the
boy and the youth; it did not desert me in manhood. When the sky of my
life was darkened by the blackest clouds it appeared amid the gloom like
a radiant star announcing brighter days; and if I were to name the powers
by whose aid I have again and again dispelled even the heaviest clouds
which threatened to overshadow my happiness in existence, they must be
called gratitude, earnest work, and the motto of blind old Langethal,
"Love united with the strife for truth."
THE END.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Appreciation of trifles
Carpe diem
How effective a consolation man possesses in gratitude
Men studying for their own benefit, not the teacher's
Phrase and idea "philosophy of religion" as an absurdity