THE RELIGION OF THE PINEWOODS
Coleridge called the letters from Germany which he published in "The
Friend" of 1809 the "Letters of Satyrane". He was fond of masquerading
under the name of this allegorical personage of the "Faery Queen"; and
in his "Tombless Epitaph" he described himself as Idolocrastes Satyrane.
Under this disguise he looked upon himself as the spokesman of the Idea
of the Omnipresence of the Deity. In order to appreciate the following
beautiful letter, one of the finest Coleridge ever wrote, the reader
should peruse Coleridge's "Aeolian Harp", "Lines written on leaving a
Place of Retirement", "The Lime-Tree Bower", and Wordsworth's "Tintern
Abbey". Wordsworth's sonnet, "It is a beauteous evening", and
Coleridge's own "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni", also
belong to the same feeling for the God of Nature, but they were composed
after the letter "Over the Brocken".
Clement Carlyon, who is the chief authority for the life of Coleridge
during his stay at Gttingen, gives a lively account of the ascent of
the Brocken, which took place on Whit Sunday, 12th May 1799. The party
visited the "magic circle of stones where the fairies assembled," and
halted for the first time at the village of Satzfeld, a romantic
village, "a bright moonlight at night, and the nightingale heard."
Coleridge was in high spirits, and kept talking all the way, discoursing
on his favourite topics. Sublimity was defined as a "suspension of the
powers of comparison"; "no animal but man can be struck with wonder";
Shakespeare owed his success largely to the cheering breath of popular
applause, the enthusiastic gale of admiration. The English Divines were
applauded by Coleridge, Jeremy Taylor prominently; and a play by Hans
Sachs was preferred to a play of Kotzebue; from which he launched into a
discourse on Miracle plays. Coleridge's conversation was peppered with
puns, some of which Carlyon quotes.
Carlyon also notices that their course up the mountain was impeded by
stunted firs; and he describes the dancing party of peasants with whom
Coleridge was so much taken. The party returned to Gottingen on 18th
May. Coleridge had written the day before to his wife.
LETTER 84. TO MRS. COLERIDGE
Clausthal, 17 May 1799.
Through roads no way rememberable, we came to Gieloldshausen, over a
bridge, on which was a mitred statue with a great crucifix in its arms.
The village, long and ugly; but the church, like most Catholic churches,
interesting; and this being Whitsun Eve, all were crowding to it, with
their mass-books and rosaries, the little babies commonly with coral
crosses hanging on the breast. Here we took a guide, left the village,
ascended a hill, and now the woods rose up before us in a verdure which
surprised us like a sorcery. The spring had burst forth with the
suddenness of a Russian summer. As we left Gottingen there were buds,
and here and there a tree half green; but here were woods in full
foliage, distinguished from summer only by the exquisite freshness of
their tender green. We entered the wood through a beautiful mossy path;
the moon above us blending with the evening light, and every now and
then a nightingale would invite the others to sing, and some or other
commonly answered, and said, as we suppose, "It is yet somewhat too
early!" for the song was not continued. We came to a square piece of
greenery, completely walled on all four sides by the beeches; again
entered the wood, and having travelled about a mile, emerged from it
into a grand plain--mountains in the distance, but ever by our road the
skirts of the green woods. A very rapid river ran by our side; and now
the nightingales were all singing, and the tender verdure grew paler in
the moonlight, only the smooth parts of the river were still deeply
purpled with the reflections from the fiery light in the west. So
surrounded and so impressed, we arrived at Prele, a dear little cluster
of houses in the middle of a semicircle of woody hills; the area of the
semicircle scarcely broader than the breadth of the village.
* * * * *
We afterwards ascended another hill, from the top of which a large plain
opened before us with villages. A little village, Neuhoff, lay at the
foot of it: we reached it, and then turned up through a valley on the
left hand. The hills on both sides the valley were prettily wooded, and
a rapid lively river ran through it. So we went for about two miles, and
almost at the end of the valley, or rather of its first turning, we
found the village of Lauterberg. Just at the entrance of the village,
two streams come out from two deep and woody coombs, close by each
other, meet, and run into a third deep woody coomb opposite; before you
a wild hill, which seems the end and barrier of the valley; on the right
hand, low hills, now green with corn, and now wooded; and on the left a
most majestic hill indeed--the effect of whose simple outline painting
could not give, and how poor a thing are words! We pass through this
neat little town--the majestic hill on the left hand soaring over the
houses, and at every interspace you see the whole of it--its beeches,
its firs, its rocks, its scattered cottages, and the one neat little
pastor's house at the foot, embosomed in fruit-trees all in blossom, the
noisy coomb-brook dashing close by it. We leave the valley, or rather,
the first turning on the left, following a stream; and so the vale winds
on, the river still at the foot of the woody hills, with every now and
then other smaller valleys on right and left crossing our vale, and ever
before you the woody hills running like groves one into another. We
turned and turned, and entering the fourth curve of the vale, we found
all at once that we had been ascending. The verdure vanished! All the
beech trees were leafless, and so were the silver birches, whose boughs
always, winter and summer, hang so elegantly. But low down in the
valley, and in little companies on each bank of the river, a multitude
of green conical fir trees, with herds of cattle wandering about, almost
every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no inconsiderable
size, and as they moved--scattered over the narrow vale, and up among
the trees on the hill--the noise was like that of a great city in the
stillness of a sabbath morning, when the bells all at once are ringing
for church. The whole was a melancholy and romantic scene, that was
quite new to me. Again we turned, passed three smelting houses, which we
visited; a scene of terrible beauty is a furnace of boiling metal,
darting, every moment blue, green, and scarlet lightning, like serpents'
tongues!--and now we ascended a steep hill, on the top of which was St.
Andrias Berg, a town built wholly of wood.
We descended again, to ascend far higher; and now we came to a most
beautiful road, which winded on the breast of the hill, from whence we
looked down into a deep valley, or huge basin, full of pines and firs;
the opposite hills full of pines and frs; and the hill above us, on
whose breast we were winding, likewise full of pines and firs. The
valley, or basin, on our right hand, into which we looked down, is
called the Wald Rauschenbach, that is, the Valley of the Roaring Brook;
and roar it did, indeed, most solemnly!
The road on which we walked was weedy with infant fir-trees, an inch or
two high; and now, on our left hand, came before us a most tremendous
precipice of yellow and black rock, called the Rehberg, that is, the
Mountain of the Roe. Now again is nothing but firs and pines above,
below, around us! How awful is the deep unison of their undividable
murmur; what a one thing it is--it is a sound that impresses the dim
notion of the Omnipresent! In various parts of the deep vale below us,
we beheld little dancing waterfalls gleaming through the branches, and
now, on our left hand, from the very summit of the hill above us, a
powerful stream flung itself down, leaping and foaming, and now
concealed, and now not concealed, and now half concealed by the
fir-trees, till, towards the road, it became a visible sheet of water,
within whose immediate neighbourhood no pine could have permanent
abiding place. The snow lay every where on the sides of the roads, and
glimmered in company with the waterfall foam, snow patches and
waterbreaks glimmering through the branches in the hill above, the deep
basin below, and the hill opposite. Over the high opposite hills, so
dark in their pine forests, a far higher round barren stony mountain
looked in upon the prospect from a distant country. Through this scenery
we passed on, till our road was crossed by a second waterfall, or
rather, aggregation of little dancing waterfalls, one by the side of the
other for a considerable breadth, and all came at once out of the dark
wood above, and rolled over the mossy rock fragments, little firs,
growing in islets, scattered among them. The same scenery continued till
we came to the Oder Seich, a lake, half made by man, and half by nature.
It is two miles in length, and but a few hundred yards in breadth, and
winds between banks, or rather through walls, of pine trees. It has the
appearance of a most calm and majestic river. It crosses the road, goes
into a wood, and there at once plunges itself down into a most
magnificent cascade, and runs into the vale, to which it gives the name
of the "Vale of the Roaring Brook." We descended into the vale, and
stood at the bottom of the cascade, and climbed up again by its side.
The rocks over which it plunged were unusually wild in their shape,
giving fantastic resemblances of men and animals, and the fir-boughs by
the side were kept almost in a swing, which unruly motion contrasted
well with the stern quietness of the huge forest-sea every where else.
* * * * *
In nature all things are individual, but a word is but an arbitrary
character for a whole class of things; so that the same description may
in almost all cases be applied to twenty different appearances; and in
addition to the difficulty of the thing itself, I neither am, nor ever
was, a good hand at description. I see what I write, but, alas! I cannot
write what I see. From the Oder Seich we entered a second wood; and now
the snow met us in large masses, and we walked for two miles knee-deep
in it, with an inexpressible fatigue, till we came to the mount called
Little Brocken; here even the firs deserted us, or only now and then a
patch of them, wind-shorn, no higher than one's knee, matted and
cowering to the ground, like our thorn bushes on the highest sea-hills.
The soil was plashy and boggy; we descended and came to the foot of the
Great Brocken without a river--the highest mountain in all the north of
Germany, and the seat of innumerable superstitions. On the first of May
all the witches dance here at midnight; and those who go may see their
own ghosts walking up and down, with a little billet on the back, giving
the names of those who had wished them there; for "I wish you on the top
of the Brocken," is a common curse throughout the whole empire. Well, we
ascended--the soil boggy--and at last reached the height, which is 573
toises [1] above the level of the sea. We visited the Blocksberg, a sort of
bowling-green, enclosed by huge stones, something like those at
Stonehenge, and this is the witches' ball-room; thence proceeded to the
house on the hill, where we dined; and now we descended. In the evening
about seven we arrived at Elbingerode. At the inn they brought us an
album, or stammbuch, requesting that we would write our names, and
something or other as a remembrance that we had been there. I wrote the
following lines, which contain a true account of my journey from the
Brocken to Elbingerode.
I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills;
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Wearily my way
Downward I dragged, through fir groves evermore
Where bright green moss moved in sepulchral forms,
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song become a hollow sound;
And the gale murmuring indivisibly,
Reserved its solemn murmur, more distinct
From many a note of many a waterbreak,
And the brook's chatter; on whose islet stones
The dingy kidling, with its tinkling bell,
Leapt frolicksome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
With low and languid thought, for I had found
That grandest scenes have but imperfect charms
Where the eye vainly wanders, nor beholds
One spot with which the heart associates
Holy remembrances of child or friend,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country. O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O "dear, dear" England! how my longing eyes
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs! Sweet native isle,
This heart was proud, yea, mine eyes swam with tears
To think of thee; and all the goodly view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim. Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is every where, the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty brotherhood,
Himself our Father, and the world our home.
We left Elbingerode, May 14th, and travelled for half a mile through a
wild country, of bleak stony hills by our side, with several caverns, or
rather mouths of caverns, visible in their breasts; and now we came to
Rubilland,--Oh, it was a lovely scene! Our road was at the foot of low
hills, and here were a few neat cottages; behind us were high hills,
with a few scattered firs, and flocks of goats visible on the topmost
crags. On our right hand a fine shallow river about thirty yards broad,
and beyond the river a crescent hill clothed with firs, that rise one
above another, like spectators in an amphitheatre. We advanced a little
farther,--the crags behind us ceased to be visible, and now the whole
was one and complete. All that could be seen was the cottages at the
foot of the low green hill, (cottages embosomed in fruit trees in
blossom,) the stream, and the little crescent of firs. I lingered here,
and unwillingly lost sight of it for a little while. The firs were so
beautiful, and the masses of rocks, walls, and obelisks started up among
them in the very places where, if they had not been, a painter with a
poet's feeling would have imagined them. Crossed the river (its name
Bodi), entered the sweet wood, and came to the mouth of the cavern, with
the man who shews it. It was a huge place, eight hundred feet in length,
and more in depth, of many different apartments; and the only thing that
distinguished it from other caverns was, that the guide, who was really
a character, had the talent of finding out and seeing uncommon
likenesses in the different forms of the stalactite. Here was a
nun;--this was Solomon's temple;--that was a Roman Catholic
Chapel;--here was a lion's claw, nothing but flesh and blood wanting to
make it completely a claw! This was an organ, and had all the notes of
an organ, etc. etc. etc.; but, alas! with all possible straining of my
eyes, ears, and imagination, I could see nothing but common stalactite,
and heard nothing but the dull ding of common cavern stones. One thing
was really striking;--a huge cone of stalactite hung from the roof of
the largest apartment, and, on being struck, gave perfectly the sound of
a death-bell. I was behind, and heard it repeatedly at some distance,
and the effect was very much in the fairy kind,--gnomes, and things
unseen, that toll mock death-bells for mock funerals. After this, a
little clear well and a black stream pleased me the most; and multiplied
by fifty, and coloured ad libitum, might be well enough to read of in a
novel or poem. We returned, and now before the inn, on the green plat
around the Maypole, the villagers were celebrating Whit-Tuesday. This
Maypole is hung as usual with garlands on the top, and, in these
garlands, spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high
smooth round pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to
the top may have what he can get,--a very laughable scene as you may
suppose, of awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of
success. Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general,
I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the lower ranks
degenerate far less from the ideal of a woman, than the men from that of
man. The dances were reels and waltzes; but chiefly the latter. This
dance is, in the higher circles, sufficiently voluptuous; but here the
emotions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the passion,
which, doubtless, the dance was intended to shadow; yet, ever after the
giddy round and round is over, they walked to music, the woman laying
her arm, with confident affection, on the man's shoulders, or around his
neck. The first couple at the waltzing was a very fine tall girl, of two
or three and twenty, in the full bloom and growth of limb and feature,
and a fellow with huge whiskers, a long tail, and woollen night-cap; he
was a soldier, and from the more than usual glances of the girl, I
presumed was her lover. He was, beyond compare, the gallant and the
dancer of the party. Next came two boors: one of whom, in the whole
contour of his face and person, and, above all, in the laughably
would-be frolicksome kick out of his heel, irresistibly reminded me of
Shakespeare's Slender, and the other of his Dogberry. Oh! two such
faces, and two such postures! O that I were an Hogarth! What an enviable
gift it is to have a genius in painting! Their partners were pretty
lasses, not so tall as the former, and danced uncommonly light and airy.
The fourth couple was a sweet girl of about seventeen, delicately
slender, and very prettily dressed, with a full-blown rose in the white
ribbon that went round her head, and confined her reddish-brown hair;
and her partner waltzed with a pipe in his mouth, smoking all the while;
and during the whole of this voluptuous dance, his countenance was a
fair personification of true German phlegm. After these, but, I suppose,
not actually belonging to the party, a little ragged girl and ragged
boy, with his stockings about his heels, waltzed and danced;--waltzing
and dancing in the rear most entertainingly. But what most pleased me,
was a little girl of about three or four years old, certainly not more
than four, who had been put to watch a little babe, of not more than a
year old (for one of our party had asked), and who was just beginning to
run away, the girl teaching him to walk, and who was so animated by the
music, that she began to waltz with him, and the two babes whirled round
and round, hugging and kissing each other, as if the music had made them
mad. There were two fiddles and a bass viol. The fiddlers,--above all,
the bass violer,--most Hogarthian phizzes! God love them! I felt far
more affection for them than towards any other set of human beings I
have met with since I have been in Germany, I suppose because they
looked so happy!
[Footnote 1: marked with an asterisk in the proofing (not the original
text), but not explained further.]