the acme not only of Goethean but of all modern art,
was written professedly as an attempt in the Homeric[7]
style, motived by Wolf's "Prolegomena" and Voss's
"Luise." It is Homeric only in its circumstantiality,
in the repetition of the same epithets applied to the
same persons, and in the Greek realism of Goethe's
nature. The theme is very un-Homeric; it is thoroughly
modern and German,--
"Germans themselves I present, to the humbler dwelling I lead you,
Where with Nature as guide man is natural still." [8]
[Footnote 7: "Doch Homeride zu sein, auch noch als letzter, ist schön."]
[Footnote 8: From the Elegy entitled "Hermann und Dorothea."]
This exquisite poem has been translated into English hexameters with
great fidelity by Miss Ellen Frothingham.
"Iphigenie auf Tauris" handles a Greek theme, exhibits Greek characters,
and was hailed on its first appearance as a genuine echo of the Greek
drama. Mr. Lewes denies it that character; and certainly it is not
Greek, but Christian, in sentiment. It differs from the extant drama of
Euripides, who treats the same subject, in the Christian feeling which
determines its _dénouement_....
A large portion of Goethe's productions have taken the dramatic form;
yet he cannot be said, theatrically speaking, to have been, like
Schiller, a successful dramatist. His plays, with the exception of
"Egmont" and the First Part of "Faust," have not commanded the stage;
they form no part, I believe, of the stock of any German theatre. The
characterizations are striking, but the positions are not dramatic.
Single scenes in some of them are exceptions,--like that in "Egmont,"
where Clara endeavors to rouse her fellow-citizens to the rescue of the
Count, while Brackenburg seeks to restrain her, and several of the
scenes in the First Part of "Faust." But, on the whole, the interest of
Goethe's dramas is psychological rather than scenic. Especially is this
the case with "Tasso," one of the author's noblest works, where the
characters are not so much actors as metaphysical portraitures.
Schiller, in his plays, had always the stage in view. Goethe, on the
contrary, wrote for readers, or cultivated, reflective hearers, not
spectators.....
When I say, then, that Goethe, compared with Schiller, failed of
dramatic success, I mean that his talent did not lie in the line of
plays adapted to the stage as it is; or if the talent was not wanting,
his taste did not incline to such performance. He was no playwright.
But there is another and higher sense of the word _dramatic_, where
Goethe is supreme,--the sense in which Dante's great poem is called
_Commedia_, a play. There is a drama whose scope is beyond the compass
of any earthly stage,--a drama not for theatre-goers, to be seen on the
boards, but for intellectual contemplation of men and angels. Such a
drama is "Faust," of which I shall speak hereafter.
Of Goethe's prose works,--I mean works of prose fiction,--the most
considerable are two philosophical novels, "Wilhelm Meister" and the
"Elective Affinities."
In the first of these the various and complex motives which have shaped
the composition may be comprehended in the one word _education_,--the
education of life for the business of life. The main thread of the
narrative traces through a labyrinth of loosely connected scenes and
events the growth of the hero's character,--a progressive training by
various influences, passional, intellectual, social, moral, and
religious. These are represented by the _personnel_ of the story. In
accordance with this design, the hero himself, if so he may be called,
has no pronounced traits, is more negative than positive, but is brought
into contact with many very positive characters. His life is the stage
on which these characters perform. A ground is thus provided for the
numerous portraits of which the author's large experience furnished the
originals, and for lessons of practical wisdom derived from his close
observation of men and things and his lifelong reflection thereon.
"Wilhelm Meister," if not the most artistic, is the most instructive,
and in that view, next to "Faust," the most important, of Goethe's
works. In it he has embodied his philosophy of life,--a philosophy far
enough removed from the epicurean views which ignorance has ascribed to
him,--a philosophy which is best described by the term _ascetic_. Its
keynote is Renunciation. "With renunciation begins the true life," was
the author's favorite maxim; and the second part of "Wilhelm
Meister"--the _Wanderjahre_--bears the collateral title _Die
Entsagenden_; that is, the "Renouncing" or the "Self-denying." The
characters that figure in this second part--most of whom have had their
training in the first--form a society whose principle of union is
self-renunciation and a life of beneficent activity....
The most fascinating character in "Wilhelm Meister"--the wonder and
delight of the reader--is Mignon, the child-woman,--a pure creation of
Goethe's genius, without a prototype in literature. Readers of Scott
will remember Fenella, the elfish maiden in "Peveril of the Peak." Scott
says in his Preface to that novel: "The character of Fenella, which from
its peculiarity made a favorable impression on the public, was far from
being original. The fine sketch of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister's
_Lehrjahre_--a celebrated work from the pen of Goethe--gave the idea of
such a being. But the copy will be found to be greatly different from my
great prototype; nor can I be accused of borrowing anything save the
general idea."
As I remember Fenella, the resemblance to Mignon is merely superficial.
A certain weirdness is all they have in common. The intensity of the
inner life, the unspeakable longing, the cry of the unsatisfied heart,
the devout aspiration, the presentiment of the heavenly life which
characterize Mignon are peculiar to her; they constitute her
individuality. Wilhelm has found her a kidnapped child attached to a
strolling circus company, and has rescued her from the cruel hands of
the manager. Thenceforth she clings to him with a passionate devotion,
in which gratitude for her deliverance, filial affection, and the love
of a maiden for her hero are strangely blended. Afflicted with a disease
of the heart, she is subject to terrible convulsions, which increase the
tenderness of her protector for the doomed child. After one of these
attacks, in which she had been suffering frightful pain, we read:--
"He held her fast. She wept; and no tongue can express the force of
those tears. Her long hair had become unfastened and hung loose over her
shoulders. Her whole being seemed to be melting away.... At last she
raised herself up. A mild cheerfulness gleamed from her face. 'My
father!' she cried, 'you will not leave me! You will be my father! I
will be your child.' Softly, before the door, a harp began to sound. The
old Harper was bringing his heartiest songs as an evening sacrifice to
his friend."
Then bursts on the reader that world-famed song, in which the soul of
Mignon, with its unconquerable yearnings, is forever embalmed,--"Kennst
du das Land":--
"Know'st thou the land that bears the citron's bloom?
The golden orange glows 'mid verdant gloom,
A gentle wind from heaven's deep azure blows,
The myrtle low, and high the laurel grows,--
Know'st thou the land?[9]
Oh, there! oh, there!
Would I with thee, my best beloved, repair." ...
[Footnote 9: Literally, "Know'st thou it well?" But the word "well," in
this case, does not answer to the German _wohl_.]
The "Elective Affinities" has been strangely misinterpreted as having
an immoral tendency, as encouraging conjugal infidelity, and approving
"free love." That any one who has read the work with attention to the
end could so misjudge it seems incredible. Precisely the reverse of
this, its aim is to enforce the sanctity of the nuptial bond by showing
the tragic consequences resulting from its violation, though only in
thought and feeling....
Here, a word concerning one merit of Goethe which seems to me not to
have been sufficiently appreciated by even his admirers,--his loving
skill in the delineation of female character; the commanding place he
assigns to woman in his writings; his full recognition of the importance
of feminine influence in human destiny. The prophetic utterance, which
forms the conclusion of "Faust,"--"The ever womanly draws us on,"--is
the summing up of Goethe's own experience of life. Few men had ever such
wide opportunities of acquaintance with women. If, on the one hand, his
loves had revealed to him the passional side of feminine nature, he had
enjoyed, on the other, the friendship of some of the purest and noblest
of womankind. Conspicuous among these are Fräulein von Klettenberg and
the Duchess Luise, whom no one, says Lewes, ever speaks of but in terms
of veneration. No poet but Shakspeare, and scarcely Shakspeare, has set
before the world so rich a gallery of female portraits. They range from
the lowest to the highest,--from the wanton to the saint; they are drawn
in firm lines, and limned in imperishable colors, ... each bearing the
stamp of her own individuality, and each confessing a master's hand.
These may be considered as representing different phases of the poet's
experience,--different _stadia_ in his view of life. "The ever womanly
draws us on." So Goethe, of all men most susceptible of feminine
influence, was led by it from weakness to strength, from dissipation to
concentration, from doubt to clearness, from tumult to repose, from the
earthly to the heavenly.
"FAUST."
Goethe appears to have derived his knowledge of the Faust legend partly
from the work of Widmann, published in 1599,[10] partly from another
more modern in its form, which appeared in 1728, and partly from the
puppet plays exhibited in Frankfort and other cities of Germany, of
which that legend was then a favorite theme. He was not the only writer
of that day who made use of it. Some thirty of his contemporaries had
produced their "Fausts" during the interval which elapsed between the
inception and publication of his great work. Oblivion overtook them all,
with the exception of Lessing's, of which a few fragments are left; the
manuscript of the complete work was unaccountably lost on its way to the
publisher, between Dresden and Leipsic.
[Footnote 10: The earlier work of Spiess (1588) was translated into
English and furnished Marlowe with the subject-matter of his "Dr.
Faustus."]
The composition of "Faust," as we learn from Goethe's biography,
proceeded spasmodically, with many and long interruptions between the
inception and conclusion. Projected in 1769 at the age of twenty, it was
not completed till the year 1831, at the age of eighty-two....
But the effect of the long arrest, which after Goethe's removal to
Weimar delayed the completion of the "Faust," is most apparent in the
wide gulf which separates, as to character and style, the Second Part
from the First. So great, indeed, is the distance between the two that,
without external historical proofs of identity, it would seem from
internal evidence altogether improbable, in spite of the slender thread
of the fable which connects them, that both poems were the work of one
and the same author. And really the author was not the same. The change
which had come over Goethe on his return from Italy had gone down to the
very springs of his intellectual life. The fervor and the rush, the
sparkle and foam of his early productions, had been replaced by the
stately calm and the luminous breadth of view that is born of
experience. The torrent of the mountains had become the river of the
plain; romantic impetuosity had changed to classic repose. He could
still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back into the old
moods, resume the old thread, and so complete the first "Faust." But we
may confidently assert that he could not, after the age of forty, have
originated the poem, any more than before his Italian tour he could have
written the second "Faust," purporting to be a continuation of the
first. The difference in spirit and style is enormous.
As to the question which of the two is the greater production, it is
like asking which is the greater, Dante's "Commedia" or Shakspeare's
"Macbeth"? They are incommensurable. As to which is the more generally
interesting, no question can arise. There are thousands who enjoy and
admire the First Part to one who even reads the Second. The interest of
the former is poetic and thoroughly human; the interest of the other is
partly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scientific....
The symbolical character of "Faust" is assumed by all the critics, and
in part confessed by the author himself. Besides the general symbolism
pervading and motiving the whole,--a symbolism of human destiny,--and
here and there a shadowing forth of the poet's private experience, there
are special allusions--local, personal, enigmatic conceits--which have
furnished topics of learned discussion and taxed the ingenuity of
numerous commentators. We need not trouble ourselves with these
subtleties. But little exegesis is needed for a right comprehension of
the true and substantial import of the work.
The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven. The devil, in
the character of Mephistopheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he
boasts his ability to get entire possession of his soul and drag him
down to hell. The Lord grants the permission, and prophesies the failure
of the attempt:--
"Be it allowed! Draw this spirit from its Source if you can lay hold of
him; bear him with you on your downward path, and stand ashamed when you
are forced to confess that a good man in his dark strivings has a
consciousness of the right way."
Here we have a hint of the author's design. He does not intend that the
devil shall succeed; he does not mean to adopt the conclusion of the
legend and send Faust to hell. He had the penetration to see, and he
meant to show, that the notion implied in the old popular superstition
of selling one's soul to the devil--the notion that evil can obtain the
entire and final possession of the soul--is a fallacy; that the soul is
not man's to dispose of, and cannot be so traded away. We are the
soul's, not the soul ours. Evil is self-limited; the good in man must
finally prevail. So long as he strives he is not lost; Heaven will come
to the aid of his better nature. This is the doctrine, the philosophy,
of "Faust." In the First Part, stung by disappointment in his search of
knowledge, by failure to lay hold of the superhuman, and urged on by his
baser propensities personified in Mephistopheles, Faust abandons himself
to sensual pleasure,--seduces innocence, burdens his soul with heavy
guilt, and seems to be entirely given over to evil. This Part ends with
Mephistopheles' imperious call,--"Her zu mir,"--as if secure of his
victim. Before the appearance of the Second Part, the reader was at
liberty to accept that conclusion. But in the Second Part Faust
gradually wakes from the intoxication of passion, outgrows the dominion
of appetite, plans great and useful works, whereby Mephistopheles loses
more and more his hold of him; and after his death is baffled in his
attempt to appropriate Faust's immortal part, to which the heavenly
Powers assert their right....
The character of Margaret is unique; its duplicate is not to be found in
all the picture galleries of fiction. Shakspeare, in the wide range of
his feminine _personnel_, has no portrait like this. A girl of low birth
and vulgar circumstance, imbued with the ideas and habits of her class,
speaking the language of that class from which she never for a moment
deviates into finer phrase, takes on, through the magic handling of the
poet, an ideal beauty. Externally common and prosaic in all her ways,
she is yet thoroughly poetic, transfigured in our conception by her
perfect love. To that love, unreasoning, unsuspecting,--to the excess of
that which in itself is no fault, but beautiful and good,--her fall and
ruin are due. Her story is the tragedy of her sex in all time. As
Schlegel said of the "Prometheus Bound,"--"It is not a single tragedy,
but tragedy itself." ...
[The First Part ends with the prison scene, where poor Margaret,
escaping by death, ascends to heaven, while Mephistopheles, shouting an
imperious "Hither to me!" disappears with Faust.] The reader is allowed
to suppose--and most readers did suppose--that the author meant it
should be inferred that the devil had secured his victim, and that
Faust, according to the legend, had paid the forfeit of his soul to the
powers of hell.
But Faust reappears in a new poem,--the Second Part. He is there
introduced sleeping, as if burying in torpor the lusts and crimes and
sorrows of his past career. Pitying spirits are about him, to heal his
woes and promote his return to a better life....
[At the end of his hundred years of earthly life,] Mephistopheles ...
fails to secure the immortal part of Faust, which the angels appropriate
and bear aloft:
"This member of the upper spheres
We rescue from the devil;
For whoso strives and perseveres
May be redeemed from evil."
The last two lines may be supposed to contain the author's justification
of Mephistopheles' defeat and Faust's salvation. Though a man surrender
himself to evil, if there is that in him which evil cannot satisfy, an
impulse by which he outgrows the gratifications of vice, extends his
horizon and lifts his desires, pursues an onward course until he learns
to place his aims outside of himself, and to seek satisfaction in works
of public utility,--he is beyond the power of Satan: he may be redeemed
from evil.
One could wish, indeed, that more decisive marks of moral development
had been exhibited in the latter stages of Faust's career. But here
comes in the Christian doctrine of Grace, which Goethe applies to the
problem of man's destiny. Faust is represented as saved by no merit of
his own, but by the interest which Heaven has in every soul in which
there is the possibility of a heavenly life.
And so the new-born ascending spirit is committed by the Mater gloriosa
to the tutelage of Gretchen [Margaret],--_una poenitentium,_--now
purified from all the stains of her earthly life, to whom is given the
injunction:--
"Lift thyself up to higher spheres!
When he divines, he'll follow thee."
And the Mystic Choir chants the epilogue which embodies the moral of
the play:--
"All that is perishing
Types the ideal;
Dream of our cherishing
Thus becomes real.
Superhumanly
Here it is done;
The ever womanly
Draweth us on."
ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON.
1809-1892.
THE SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY.
BY G. MERCER ADAM.
Of Tennyson what can one write freshly to-day that will not seem but an
echo of what has been said or written of England's noble singer who, on
the death of Wordsworth, now over half a century ago, assumed the
official bays of the English laureateship? Personal homage, of course,
one can pay to the illustrious name, so dear to the heart of the
English-speaking race; but how freshly or vitally can any writer now
speak of that magnificent body of his verse which is the glory of his
age, of the nobility and knightly virtues of its author's character, of
the splendor of his genius, or of the breadth of intellectual and
spiritual interests which was so signally manifested in all that
Tennyson thought and wrote? Among the "Beacon Lights" in the present
series of volumes the Laureate of the age has not hitherto been
included, and to fill the gap the writer of this sketch has ventured,
not, of course, to say all that might be said of the great poet, but
modestly to deal with the man and his art, so that neither his era nor
his work shall go unchronicled or fail of some recognition, however
inadequate, in these pages.
Tennyson's supreme excellence, it is admitted, lies not so much in his
themes as in his transcendent art. It is this that has given him his
hold upon a cultured age and won for him immortality. His work is the
perfection of literary form, and, in his lyrical pieces especially, his
melody is exquisite. Not less masterly is his power of construction,
while his sensibility to beauty is phenomenal. His secluded life brought
him close to nature's heart and made him familiar with her every voice
and mood. In interpreting these, much of the charm lies in the fidelity
of his descriptions and in the surpassing beauty of the word-painting.
In the Shakespearian sense he lacked the dramatic faculty, and he had
but slender gifts of invention and creation. But broad, if not always
strong, was his intelligence, and keen his interest in the problems of
the time. Though living apart from the world, he was yet of it; and in
many of his poems may be traced not only the doings, but the thought and
tendencies, of his age. His Christianity, though undogmatic, was real
and pervasive, and his love for nature was a devotion. In national
affairs, as befitted the official singer of his country (witness his
fine 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington'), he showed himself
the historic as well as the modern Englishman, and great was his
reverence for law and freedom. Attractive also, if at times somewhat
commonplace, is the quiet domestic sphere which Tennyson has hallowed in
the many modern idylls which depict the joys and sorrows of humble life.
No trait in the poet's many-sided character is more beautiful than the
sympathy he has manifested in these poems with the world's toilers;
while nothing could well be more touching than the pathos with which he
invests their simple annals.
Typical of the Victorian age in which he lived, Tennyson is also
representative of its highest thought and culture. This is seen not only
in the thought of his verse, but in its splendid forms, and especially
in the technical equipment of the poet. In his dialogues there is much
movement and action, and he had consummate skill in the handling of
metres. Few poets have approached him in the successful writing of blank
verse, which has a delightful cadence as well as calm strength. Above
all his gifts, he was an artist in words, his ear being most sensitively
attuned and his taste pure and refined for the delicate artistry of the
poet's work. In this respect he is a matchless literary workman. Besides
the music of his verse, his thought is ever high, and in his serious
moods consecrated to noble and reverent purposes. In the midst of the
negations and convulsive movements of his day his spirit is always
serene, and his thought, while at times dreamily melancholy, is
conserving and full of faith's highest assurance. His sympathy with his
fellow-man was keen and wide-souled; and though he stood aloof from the
conflict and struggle of his day, he was far from indifferent to its
movements, and with high purpose strove if not to direct at least to
reflect them. This was specially characteristic of the man, and in the
conflict with doubt no poet has more keenly interpreted the mental
struggles of the thoughtful soul and the deep underlying spirit of his
time, or more beneficently given the age an assured ground of faith
while conserving its highest and dearest hopes. Happily, too, unlike
many poets, his own character was lofty and blameless, and hence his
message comes with more consistency, as well as with a higher
inspiration and power. Nor is the message the less impressive for the
note of honest doubt which finds utterance in many a poem, or for the
intimation of a creed that is at once liberal and conservative. With the
evidences before the reader that the poet himself had had his own
soul-wrestlings and periods of mental conflict, his counsellings of
courage and faith are all the more effective, as they are in unison with
his belief in the upward progress of the race, and his unshaken trust in
a higher Power.