"Alles ist zum Seyn erkoren,Alles wird durch Tod geboren,Und kein Saatkorn geht verloren."Wer durch Blut und Nacht geschwommen,Ist den Aengsten bald entnommen,Blutiger, sei uns willkommen!"[20]
We gain some idea of the extent to which the mysteries are utilised in the elaboration of stage decoration and costumes from the fact that in the twelfth scene of the fifth act, which consists of sixty-four lines, only six are dialogue, the remainder being devoted to directions regarding "a great burial mound, covered with roses, with transparencies of an angel, a lion, a bull, and an eagle, disposed at the four corners"—the costumes to be worn by the dignitaries of the "Vale," of which some are to be cloth of gold, some silver, some sky blue, some blood red—and the incense, the harps, the bells, the crowns and crowns of thorns, the banners, and the "colossal statue of Isis," required in the scene.
The Order of Knights Templar has degenerated. The mother-order determines to abolish it altogether, and condemns its Grand Master, the noble and heroic Molay, to be burned, although he is entirely guiltless of the decadence of his order—has, in fact, striven hard to arrest it. The Archbishop, who tries him, is convinced of the injustice of the accusations brought against him, and loves and admires him, but is compelled to obey orders. Molay faces death with as great calm as Paludan-Müller's Kalanus; in fact, he longs for the "purifying flames." The bystanders sympathise with him, and cry to him to make his escape; but, like Kalanus, he resists all entreaties. The Archbishop's feeling for him is shared by every one; he is surrounded by a crowd of sentimental executioners, who consign him to the flames with expressions of the utmost admiration and esteem. They are cruel, sentimental fanatics, like Werner himself. Every character in the play is tainted with repulsive sentimentality. Molay's old comrade in arms, when prevented from rescuing him, says:—
"Du böser Jakob Du!—Pfui! sterben will er,Verlassen seinen Waffenbruder!—Jakob!Du musst nicht sterben! hörst Du?"[21]
But the guiltless Molay dies. There is the same play upon the Christian mystery here as in Kleist's drama. Molay is venerated like a second Christ, even by his executioners. After his death a miracle happens. "Sunlight gilds the scene. Above the entrance to the Vale cavern, below the brightly illuminated name 'Jesus' there appear the names 'John,' 'J. B. Molay,' and 'Andrew,' also in bright transparencies." All the crusaders fall upon their knees. "Long, solemn pause, during which there come from the interior of the cavern the muffled sounds of the 'Holy! Holy! Holy!' sung by the elders of the Order of the Vale to the usual tune, with an accompaniment of harps and bells."
Martyrdom is Werner's specialty. He is at home in such subjects as beating to death with clubs, boiling in oil, and the tortures of the rack. He revels in agonies, as does Görres, whose satisfaction we almost seem to feel as we read of all the mysteries of martyrdom in the first part of hisChristian Mysticism. "The sacrificial victims are stretched upon the rack or the wheel, and all their limbs are twisted out of joint by means of screws ... while the lictors scorch their sides with torches or tear them with iron claws. Chains are sometimes drawn round their bodies until their ribs are broken; their chests and eyes are pierced with pointed reeds; their jaws are broken with heavy blows of the torturer's fist; and, though the victims are now hardly drawing breath, nails are hammered through their feet and red-hot iron rods are laid upon their tenderest parts and allowed to burn themselves in," &c., &c.
In Werner's drama,Attila, a young man whom Attila loves is accused of perjury and confesses his guilt. Attila, who is an emotional, sentimental enthusiast, embraces him, shedding burning tears, and then orders him to be torn asunder by horses. Cruel sentimentality, fanatic brutality, is Romantic wont. Along with Attila we have Pope Leo, another character who seems to have escaped from the pages of Görres'Mysticism—this time undoubtedly from the chapter treating of the height from the ground to which the enthusiast in his religious rapture is at times raised; for, while he is praying, Leo "raises himself higher and higher, until he is resting only on the tips of his toes." He sympathises with Attila, and has a sort of magnetic influence over him.
InMartin Luther, oder die Weihe der Kraft("The Consecration of Strength"), the mystery of religious consecration is the subject. The play opens significantly with a scene of the Novalis type, miners going down into and being drawn up from a mine. The representation of Luther is more suggestive of a Catholic saint than of the Protestant reformer. Of Katharina von Bora, too, a saintly character is made. Luther and she are accompanied throughout the play by guardian angels, Luther by the boy Theobald, who is really art in the shape of a seraph, and Katharina by a girl named Therese, who represents faith. A few years after Werner had thus sung the praises of the Reformation, he was converted; whereupon he wrote a poem,Die Weihe der Unkraft, full of such sentiments regarding his drama as: "Durch dies Gaukelblendwerk sprach ich der Wahrheit Hohn!" (With this delusive mummery I set at nought the truth.)
The subject of his last tragedy,Die Mutter der Makkabäer, offered glorious opportunities for introducing all the tortures described in the legends of the martyrs; it abounds in physical suffering and religious ecstasies. The sons of Salome must either eat of the flesh of the sacrifice offered to Jupiter or die the most cruel death. The comical idea of its being a matter of life and death whether children taste certain food or not, is treated with the most overwhelming solemnity. In a state of supernatural excitement, Salome entreats her children, one by one, to allow themselves to be impaled, flayed, burned, &c. The sentimental chief torturer, Antiochus, admires Salome intensely; he actually falls upon his knees before her, crying—
"Du bist kein irdisch Weib!—Solch Opfer spendetKein menschlich Wesen!—Segne mich, Du, vom Olymp gesendet!"[22]
And the equally sentimental Salome blesses him. Her son Benoni, too, blesses his murderer, immediately after which his hands and feet are cut off, and he is boiled in oil. Presently two loud axe-strokes are heard—Abir's feet have been cut off. Juda is tortured next; and so on it goes. Antiochus, the barbarous king, or Werner, the equally barbarous poet, has the children broken on the wheel joint by joint, and their limbs torn off. The mother, who is compelled to witness it all, feels nothing but the rapturous bliss of martyrdom; and when Antiochus, in his insane sentimentality, bows before her a second time, "deeply moved," crying: "Willst, grosse Niobe, Du Dich von mir im Zorne trennen?" ("And must thou part from me in wrath, great Niobe?"), she lays her right hand on his head, and says "very solemnly": "Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebt!—Lern' sterbend ihn erkennen!" ("I know that my Redeemer liveth!—Ere death come, mayst thou know him too!").
In the last scene the background opens, and we see the instruments of torture and the huge copper full of boiling oil, in which Benoni lies. His wife is staring down into it. The flames of the stake are still blazing. Salome's spirit appears above them and extinguishes them.
And there was a time when this was considered poetry! Goethe took a warm interest in Werner, and had several of his plays performed in the court theatre at Weimar. In 1808 he wrote of him to Jacobi: "It seems strange to an old pagan like me, that I can see the cross planted on my own territory, and hear Christ's blood and wounds preached poetically, without its being actually offensive to me. The standpoint to which philosophy has raised us makes this degree of tolerance obligatory. We have learned to value the ideal, even when it manifests itself in the strangest forms."
Few educated men will be inclined to take so mild and tolerant a view of the matter to-day. The development is utterly repugnant to us. For we have seen to what it led. We have seen that this "Christian poetry" helped to bring about the worst intellectual reaction of modern times. Men played so long with the idea of the purifying flames of the stake that they began to extol them in sober earnest. It is but a step from Werner to Görres, who ardently defends exorcism of evil spirits and punishment of witchcraft; and the distance is no greater between Görres and Joseph de Maistre, who writes: "In many a well-governed country in Europe they say of a man who has set fire to an inhabited house and been burned with it: 'It is only what he deserved.' Is a human being who has been guilty of any amount of theoretical and practical (i.e. religious) evil-doing less deserving of being burned? When one reflects that it was undoubtedly in the power of the Inquisition to have prevented the French Revolution, one cannot feel certain that the sovereign who calmly discarded such a weapon did not deal a fatal blow to humanity."
If Romantic Christianity is, as Ruge says, the Christianity which cannot be resolved into humanitarianism, then Joseph de Maistre is a genuine Romanticist.
The whole history of Romanticism substantiates Ruge's famous definition: "A Romanticist is an author who, aided by all the intellectual advantages of our day, assails the periods of 'enlightenment' and of revolution, and reprobates and combats the principle of pure humanitarianism in the domains of science, art, morality, and politics."
[1]"It is not, then, so much religion that influences me, as strong affection for the olden times, and grief that we of to-day are so unlike those heroes of the faith."
[1]"It is not, then, so much religion that influences me, as strong affection for the olden times, and grief that we of to-day are so unlike those heroes of the faith."
[2]"What I had taken to be ravine and mountain, wood, meadow, and cliff, was one great head, the forest its hair and beard. The giant smiles to see his children happy at their play. He beckons, and straightway through the forest is heard a rustle of holy awe. I fell upon my knees, trembling with fear. I whispered to the little child: 'What is that great being yonder?' The child replied: 'The fear of him comes upon thee because thou hast been permitted to see him without warning; that is our father, our preserver; his name is Pan.'"
[2]"What I had taken to be ravine and mountain, wood, meadow, and cliff, was one great head, the forest its hair and beard. The giant smiles to see his children happy at their play. He beckons, and straightway through the forest is heard a rustle of holy awe. I fell upon my knees, trembling with fear. I whispered to the little child: 'What is that great being yonder?' The child replied: 'The fear of him comes upon thee because thou hast been permitted to see him without warning; that is our father, our preserver; his name is Pan.'"
[3]"Beloved, thou hast pierced my heart,Oh, bitterer this than hell's worst smart!"
[3]"Beloved, thou hast pierced my heart,Oh, bitterer this than hell's worst smart!"
[4]"The child, a heavy weight, you have borne;Flap your wings at the mother, all forlorn;A weary way you have had to bear it,Catch hold of her cheek with your bill, and tear it," &c., &c.
[4]"The child, a heavy weight, you have borne;Flap your wings at the mother, all forlorn;A weary way you have had to bear it,Catch hold of her cheek with your bill, and tear it," &c., &c.
[5]"In my irritation,In the journey's agitation,I crushed the child," &c., &c.
[5]"In my irritation,In the journey's agitation,I crushed the child," &c., &c.
[6]Cf. Otto Brahm,Heinrich von Kleist.
[6]Cf. Otto Brahm,Heinrich von Kleist.
[7]This speech is taken from the early edition. "To think that he could crush this breast, Prothoe! a breast so full of song, Asteria! At every touch upon its strings it gave forth melody."
[7]This speech is taken from the early edition. "To think that he could crush this breast, Prothoe! a breast so full of song, Asteria! At every touch upon its strings it gave forth melody."
[8]"The utmost that human powers can do, I have done; setting my all upon one throw of the dice, I have attempted the impossible. There the dice lie—and I have lost, have lost; 'tis this that I must force myself to understand."
[8]"The utmost that human powers can do, I have done; setting my all upon one throw of the dice, I have attempted the impossible. There the dice lie—and I have lost, have lost; 'tis this that I must force myself to understand."
[9]"Set all the dogs upon him! Drive on the elephants with firebrands, that they may crush him under foot! Press on the chariots, that their scythes may mow his lusty limbs!"
[9]"Set all the dogs upon him! Drive on the elephants with firebrands, that they may crush him under foot! Press on the chariots, that their scythes may mow his lusty limbs!"
[10]"'At him, good dogs!' she cries, 'at him, good Tigris, Leäne, Sphinx, Melampus, Dirke, and Hyrkaon!' and, shouting thus, she rushes madly at him with the pack, and, like a dog among the dogs, catches him by the plume of his helmet and pulls him down, the earth shuddering at his fall. One has him by the neck, one by the breast. Weltering in his blood, he touches her soft cheek and cries: 'Penthesilea! sweet love! art thou beside thyself? Is this the bridal festival thou promisedst?' The lioness, the hungry lioness roaring for her prey on the barren plain, would have listened to him—but she—she tears the breastplate from his breast, and sets her teeth deep in his flesh—she and her hounds in rivalry; Oxus and Sphinx have him by the right breast, she by the left. When I arrived, the blood was streaming from her mouth and hands."
[10]"'At him, good dogs!' she cries, 'at him, good Tigris, Leäne, Sphinx, Melampus, Dirke, and Hyrkaon!' and, shouting thus, she rushes madly at him with the pack, and, like a dog among the dogs, catches him by the plume of his helmet and pulls him down, the earth shuddering at his fall. One has him by the neck, one by the breast. Weltering in his blood, he touches her soft cheek and cries: 'Penthesilea! sweet love! art thou beside thyself? Is this the bridal festival thou promisedst?' The lioness, the hungry lioness roaring for her prey on the barren plain, would have listened to him—but she—she tears the breastplate from his breast, and sets her teeth deep in his flesh—she and her hounds in rivalry; Oxus and Sphinx have him by the right breast, she by the left. When I arrived, the blood was streaming from her mouth and hands."
[11]"Many is the woman who, with her arms round her lover's neck, has said: 'I love thee so, that I could eat thee.' If the fool tried, she was disgusted. It was not so with me, beloved. When I hung upon thy neck I said it not; I did it. I was not so mad as I seemed to thee to be."
[11]"Many is the woman who, with her arms round her lover's neck, has said: 'I love thee so, that I could eat thee.' If the fool tried, she was disgusted. It was not so with me, beloved. When I hung upon thy neck I said it not; I did it. I was not so mad as I seemed to thee to be."
[12]"Kisses and bites—the two words rhyme (in German); and when one loves with all one's heart, it often happens that one confuses them."
[12]"Kisses and bites—the two words rhyme (in German); and when one loves with all one's heart, it often happens that one confuses them."
[13]Jul. Schmidt,Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur, ii. 307.
[13]Jul. Schmidt,Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur, ii. 307.
[14]"Art thou not conscious of him in the world, his work?Dost thou not see him in the sunset glowThat falls so softly on the silent woods?Dost thou not hear him in the rippling stream,And in the nightingale's melodious notes?Is it in vain the heaven-high mountains speak,And hissing foam of rock-torn waterfall?When bright the sun into his temple shines,And all created life pulsates with joy,And magnifies its great Creator's name,Dost thou not seek the shrine of thy pure heartAnd worship there thine idol?"
[14]"Art thou not conscious of him in the world, his work?Dost thou not see him in the sunset glowThat falls so softly on the silent woods?Dost thou not hear him in the rippling stream,And in the nightingale's melodious notes?Is it in vain the heaven-high mountains speak,And hissing foam of rock-torn waterfall?When bright the sun into his temple shines,And all created life pulsates with joy,And magnifies its great Creator's name,Dost thou not seek the shrine of thy pure heartAnd worship there thine idol?"
[15]"Thou art armed in adamant, thou holy one, against every approach of evil. The highly-favoured one embraced by thee leaves thee still innocent and pure."
[15]"Thou art armed in adamant, thou holy one, against every approach of evil. The highly-favoured one embraced by thee leaves thee still innocent and pure."
[16]"They write their plans for liberating Germany in cipher, and send them to each other by messengers whom the Romans catch and hang; they meet in the dusk, they eat, they drink, and sleep, when night comes, with their wives.... The hope that Augustus may die to-morrow leads them to live on thus, covered with shame, from one week to another."
[16]"They write their plans for liberating Germany in cipher, and send them to each other by messengers whom the Romans catch and hang; they meet in the dusk, they eat, they drink, and sleep, when night comes, with their wives.... The hope that Augustus may die to-morrow leads them to live on thus, covered with shame, from one week to another."
[17]"How it all happened I'll tell you again; to-day I'm in too great a hurry."
[17]"How it all happened I'll tell you again; to-day I'm in too great a hurry."
[18]Adolf Wilbrandt,Heinrich von Kleist, 1863; Otto Brehm,Heinrich von Kleist, 1884.
[18]Adolf Wilbrandt,Heinrich von Kleist, 1863; Otto Brehm,Heinrich von Kleist, 1884.
[19]Hitzig,Lebens-Abriss Zacharias Werners, 1823; Schütz,Zacharias Werner, Biographie und Charakteristik, 1841.
[19]Hitzig,Lebens-Abriss Zacharias Werners, 1823; Schütz,Zacharias Werner, Biographie und Charakteristik, 1841.
[20]"Life is the destiny of everything; through death comes birth; not one grain of seed is lost. He who has struggled through blood and darkness has overcome. All hail, O bleeding knight!"
[20]"Life is the destiny of everything; through death comes birth; not one grain of seed is lost. He who has struggled through blood and darkness has overcome. All hail, O bleeding knight!"
[21]"You wicked Jacques! What? Die and leave your old comrade? No, no, Jacques—you must not do it."
[21]"You wicked Jacques! What? Die and leave your old comrade? No, no, Jacques—you must not do it."
[22]"Thou art not of this earth! No mortal offers such a sacrifice! Bless me, thou daughter of Olympian gods!"
[22]"Thou art not of this earth! No mortal offers such a sacrifice! Bless me, thou daughter of Olympian gods!"
In its first period, Romanticism is distinctly non-political. It exalts the established order of things (videNovalis), it submissively acknowledges the authority of the king and of the Church, but in its purely literary productions it is, generally speaking, politically colourless.
Take Tieck's satiric comedies. In their outward form there is something Aristophanic; but their satire is never directed against any political character or tendency. It is aimed at "enlightenment;" and from Tieck's biographer we learn exactly what the poet understood by this word. At that time, says Köpke, the most prominent and respected men in Berlin, those who were still the leaders of public opinion, were of the school of Frederick the Great. The prevailing opinions of the eighteenth century had become their second nature. They were moral, conscientious men, who, in all the different departments of administration, science, and literature, devoted themselves zealously, and often with extraordinary industry, to their duties. Whether government officials, theologians, teachers, critics, popular philosophers, or poets, they all aimed at making religion and science useful, and at educating mankind by external provisions and rules. Intelligibility and popularity being to them all-important, they naturally diluted and levelled everything to one general plane of mediocrity. A certain blameless philistinism became their moral ideal, an ideal which seemed poor and tame in comparison with the old fervour of faith. Lessing was their prophet, and they believed themselves to be perpetuating his tradition. We can readily understand that they fell foul of Goethe, which indeed Lessing himself had done, and that they had a narrow conception of the significance and value of imagination. To them it was only the handmaid of utility, and of no value except as an instrument in the service of morality.
Everywhere throughout Tieck's writings we come upon mockery of this moral literary tendency. Take, for instance,Der Gestiefelte Kater("Puss in Boots").—Hinze, the cat, is taking an evening walk, absorbed in melancholy thought. He begins to sing a hunting song. A nightingale strikes up in a bush close at hand. "She sings magnificently, this songstress of the groves," says Hinze; "but think how delicious she musttaste! Happy indeed are the great of the earth; they can eat as many nightingales and larks as they fancy. We poor common people have to be content with the song, with the beauty, with the indescribably sweet harmony.—It is terrible that I cannot hear anything sing without wanting to eat it."
Hisses from the pit. The worthy audience is shocked by the cat's ignoble train of thought. So Hinze lets the nightingale alone; but presently, when a rabbit comes bounding by, he catches him adroitly and puts him into his bag. It is his intention, by the gift of this rabbit, to win the king's heart for his master. "The creature," he reflects aloud, "is a sort of cousin of mine; but it's the way of the world nowadays—kinsman against kinsman, brother against brother!" He is presently strongly tempted to eat the rabbit himself, but overcomes the desire, and cries: "Fie! for shame, Hinze! Is it not the duty of the truly noble to sacrifice themselves and their inclinations to the happiness of their fellow-creatures? It is the end for which we were created, and he who cannot do it—oh! it were better for him that he had never been born!" He is about to retire, but loud applause and cries ofDa Capo! oblige him to repeat the last speech, after which he bows, and goes off with the rabbit. The audience is in the seventh heaven of delight—Hinze's speech is as effective as one of Iffland's tirades.
The satire in Tieck'sDäumling("Hop o' my Thumb") is also of a literary nature, being directed against the neo-classic tendency, and in particular against Goethe. Such a theme, treated, as it was in part, in the dignified metre of Greek tragedy, afforded many opportunities for drollery. All the incidents of the medieval fairy-tale are viewed from the antique standpoint. Of the seven-league boots, for instance, we read: "Trust me; I see quite well that these boots have come down to us from old Greek times. No man in our day produces work like that—so strong, so simple, such noble lines, such stitching! No, no! this is the work of Phidias, there is no doubt about it. Look! When I place the one in this position—how noble, how plastic, how grand in its simplicity! No superfluity, no ornament, no Gothic detail, none of the romantic medley of our days—when sole, leather, flaps, folds, blacking, varnish, must all contribute to produce variety, brilliancy, a dazzling resplendence in which there is nothing ideal. Nowadays the leather must shine, the sole must creak when one sets one's foot down: wretched rhyming trickery of which the ancients knew nothing." Several of Goethe's favourite words are employed in this more sarcastic than witty description.
Tieck shows most wit in defending himself against the accusation of exaggerated sentimentality. His satire might quite well apply to the modern admirers of Prosper Mérimée. He revenges himself upon his critics by placing their objections in the mouth of Leidgast, the cannibal, who comes home, smells human flesh, and determines to eat Hop o' my Thumb and his brothers and sisters for breakfast next morning. In the meantime they are to be kept in the garret. "But what if your own three little ones should awake?" objects his wife. "Well, what then?" "The strange children would not be safe. Yours are so eager for human flesh that they have lately actually tried to suck my blood." "You don't say so? I should never have credited them with so much sense and understanding." His wife weeps. "Be done with this sentimentality, wife. I cannot bear an effeminate education. I have strictly forbidden them all these prejudices, superstitions, and enthusiasms. Untutored, unadulterated nature! that's the thing for me."
However varied the objects of Tieck's satire may be, it is always literary satire; it never crosses the boundary between literature and life. Iffland and Kotzebue, the bombastic classic style and narrow-minded philistine criticism, the text ofThe Magic Flute, Nicolai's travellers' tales, academic pedantry and theLitteraturzeitung—these are the unfailing scapegoats.
Occasionally, in striking at "enlightenment" and everything thereto pertaining, he has a half accidental thrust at the powers that be. The king inPuss in Boots, for instance, who places the court scientist on the same level with the court fool, who lives for military parades, loves to listen to repetitions of the figures arrived at in astronomical calculations, and bestows his favour in return for a tasty rabbit, certainly does not represent royalty in the most advantageous light. But this happened half accidentally. In the same play the law goes by the name of Popanz (the bogey-man), is changed into a mouse, creeps into a mouse-hole, and is eaten by Hinze, who, not long after, shouts: 'Long live the Tiers Etat!' But this is no more nor less than a specimen of real Romantic nonsense, with no meaning in it at all. The only trace of real political satire to be found, is in one of Tieck's early works,Hanswurst als Emigrant, Hanswurst being no other than the Prince d'Artois, who, in his character of poor, stupid emigrant, has to ride on his servant's back for want of a horse. But this work remained unpublished during Tieck's lifetime.
It does not surprise us that Kotzebue failed in his attempts to get Tieck into disgrace for writing political satire. Having succeeded, in 1802, in gaining admission to the court, he, Kotzebue, endeavoured to revenge himself on his adversary by reading the parade scene fromZerbinoto the king, interspersing malicious hints. It was an ineffectual endeavour, for the king took no notice. And Tieck was pleased and proud to be able to prove his innocence—the play had been written in 1790, under totally different conditions, and was founded entirely upon youthful impressions. His satisfaction was so far justifiable; for abusive personal satire is out of place in art. Nevertheless, the anecdote affects us tragi-comically. The poetry was harmless enough, heaven knows. There was no cause for any king or government in the world to be in the least disturbed by such satire. Unluckily, the best satirical poetry is not of the kind that leaves every one unscathed. The comedies of Aristophanes, with which Tieck's admirers thought his worthy of comparison, were considerably less innocent and innocuous; and all the really great satirical works of later days, such as Molière'sTartuffeor Beaumarchais'Figaro, have one characteristic in common—their action does not take place in the moon; they make war on something besides inept poets and moralising poetry.
Romanticism, however, did not long maintain this aloofness from life and politics.
The year 1806 was a critical year for Prussia and Germany.[1]The country was entirely in the power of the foreign conqueror. But this is the very reason why all the great reforms trace their origin to this year. The depth of adversity reached was so great that an energetic upward struggle had become imperative. The indefatigable Baron von Stein began the reorganisation of Prussian public institutions; Scharnhorst remodelled the army; the state of the universities was inquired into; and as one result of this last proceeding Fichte was called to Berlin in 1807. The appointment was a remarkable one in many respects. It was intended to show that henceforth a new and different spirit was to rule. When, in 1792, Fichte wrote his first work,Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung("An Attempt at a Criticism of all Revelation"), he was afraid to publish it otherwise than anonymously. When, somewhat later, he brought out hisZurückforderung der Denkfreiheit("Demand for the Restoration of Freedom of Thought"), he dared not even name the town in which the book was printed. It was published in "Heliopolis"—also anonymously. From his post of professor at Jena he was dismissed on a charge of atheism. But now that the day of need had come, he was suddenly appealed to, to rouse the youth of Germany. As every one is aware, hisReden an die Deutsche Nation("Addresses to the German Nation") surpassed all expectation. It had been no bad idea, this thrusting of the German flag into the hand of the persecuted philosopher. At the University of Berlin, with French bayonets gleaming outside the windows and French drums drowning his words, he delivered the memorable addresses which sounded theréveillein the ears of Germany, and did their part in driving those drums and bayonets out of the country. For from these lectures a general and powerful revulsion of feeling may be dated. In them Fichte's philosophy became a kind of national poetry. And what wonder that this poetry proved a torch, at which many other poetical torches were kindled—Körner's, Schenkendorf's, and Arndt's among the rest?
The long-prepared-for war broke out in 1813, and ended, after various vicissitudes, in the downfall of foreign rule. But the War of Liberation, as it was called, has two aspects. It was a revolt against a monstrous tyranny, but a tyranny which represented many of the ideas of the Revolution. It was a war for hearth and home, but waged at the command of the old dynasties. The revolutionary tyranny was opposed in the interest of reactionary princes. Moreover, even in the ardour with which the struggle was maintained, there were two very different elements, which were so closely commingled that in the beginning it occurred to no one to distinguish between them, but which soon betrayed their opposite characters. The one element was national hatred of the French people—the national prejudice which seems to be inseparably connected with patriotism, and which led in this case to enthusiasm for everything German and contempt for everything French. The other element was pure love of freedom—the determination to attain political independence, to fight, not only in the name of Germany, but in the name of humanity, for human rights and privileges.
This dual feeling may be traced even in Fichte's addresses. He affirmed that only a people that had been a people from of old, a people that understood the depths of its own spirit, its own language, i.e. itself, could be free, and the liberators of the world; "and" he added, "the Germans are such a people." Teutonic national arrogance lay dormant in these words. And the seed soon began to grow. The young, healthy love of freedom found expression in Theodor Körner's bold lyrics. It was Schiller's lyre that he touched, but the genius of a new era had tuned its strings in a new key. The patriotism of a whole group of other poets took the form of enthusiasm for the German Empire and a German Emperor, that is to say, for the Germany of the Middle Ages; and these made the glories of the past their theme. Max von Schenkendorf sang mournfully and longingly of the days when—
"Die hohen adligen GestaltenAm Rheinstrom auf und nieder wallten,"[2]
and when predatory nobles ruled town and country from their fortified castles. He wrote odes to the old cathedrals, groped with tremulous awe among the skeletons of saints and knights buried in their chapels.
One of the most famous of the patriotic poets was Ernst Moritz Arndt. With Arndt hatred of everything French became a fixed idea. HisGeist der Zeit("Spirit of the Times"), the first part of which appeared in 1806, had a very powerful influence on the minds of his countrymen. And while he was writing his manly, vigorous songs in praise of freedom, he was also occupied in attacking the French language and French fashions; he even went the length of attempting to introduce a German national dress. At this same moment, Jahn, the famous introducer of gymnastics, the "Turnvater," as he is called, was earnestly engrossed with the idea of making the whole youth of Germany fit for war by means of physical exercises. In 1811, at Hasenhaide, near Berlin, he started his school of gymnastics; but previous to this, following Arndt's example, he had published writings, in which, in affectedly violent language, he tried to inflame the spirit of patriotism. The old German mythology and heroic sagas, Hermann and the Teutoburgerwald, Wodan and the Druids, the sacred oaks, the divine primitive German warrior in his boldness and uncouthness, his unkempt hair flowing over his shoulders and a club grasped in his gigantic fists, were anew elevated to the place of honour. German uncouthness was supposed to testify to German morality.
It was not long till all these patriotic ideas and enterprises were pressed into the service of reaction. The object of worship became, not the freedom that was to be won, but Germany's vanished past. Men began to study the history of their country with an ardour with which it had never been studied before, and a keen eye for all peculiarly German traits. With the brothers Grimm at their head, they turned their attention to the history and grammar of their own language, and in this domain, as in every other, fell foolishly in love with the past and its childish naïveté. Important as the results of these investigations have been to science, it is certain that in Germany they produced some of the worst enemies of liberty, men who sided with the past against the present.
The patriotic and the religious party soon made common cause. French immorality had been confronted with a peculiarly German morality; now French free-thought was confronted with a peculiarly German Christianity. Because the religion of Germany's enemies paid homage to the human mind, with its lucidity and freedom, the religion of Germany was to be ecclesiastical Christianity, with its obscurity and tyranny. Believing that they were becoming more religious, they in reality became less so. For it is an indisputable truth, one that holds good in all ages and all countries, that, true religion being enthusiasm for the living spirit and idea of the times, as yet unrealised by the many, he who is filled with that living spirit will seem irreligious, but really be religious, whilst he who is filled with the spirit or faith of a bygone, a defunct age, will be most irreligious, but seem and be called religious.
The immature intellects of the War of Liberation were caught in the snares of Romanticism. It is significant that men who, like Arndt and Görres, were regarded as the champions of liberty, soon began to express most anti-liberal opinions. Arndt made a bitter attack upon what he called industrialism, i.e., modern industrial conditions, as opposed to the old guild system, and was loud in his condemnation of machinery and steam, which robbed human feet of their right (to walk), the labourer of his work, and mountain and valley of their meaning. He was anxious that any future additions to the ranks of the aristocracy should be prevented by the inscription of all noble names in a final roll, a "golden book;" and he advocated entail and primogeniture as the one sure defence against the general break-up of society by an inundation of the proletariat. Görres, who for a time retained some remembrance of the days when he editedDas rothe Blatt, ultimately became the author ofChristian Mysticism, and such a fierce reactionary that he attacked the pietistic policy of Prussia as not sufficiently thorough-going, and brought on himself a reproof from Leo XII.
The Christian-Germanic reaction which was one of the results of the War of Liberation found very characteristic literary expression in a series of tales by a nobleman who had fought in the war as a cavalry officer, Baron de la Motte Fouqué. Fouqué is principally known to the reading world at large by his charming little story,Undine. As a specimen of Romantic "Naturpoesie" at its best, this tale is only inferior to Tieck'sElfenmärchen("The Elves"). But Undine is the one really living figure which Fouqué has produced. The cause of his success in this case probably lay in the fact that he was depicting a being who was only half human, half an element of nature—a wave, spray, the cool freshness and wild movement of water—a being without a soul. Until Undine has given herself to the Knight, she stands in some magic relationship to the restless, soulless sea; it is she who flings its spray against the window, and makes it rise until the peninsula is changed into an island, and the Knight is a captive in the fisherman's hut. Fouqué, who was a poet without being a psychologist, found a subject exactly suited to his imaginative talent in this being, which corresponded to one of the elements, and hence itself consisted of but one life-element. (It was in Undine's image that Hans Christian Andersen created "The Little Mermaid.") The bridal night brings a soul to Undine, and she is changed into the model German wife, obedient, tender, and sentimental. Her husband's harshness kills her. In her magnanimity she has caused the castle well to be covered with an enormous stone, in order to block up the only way by which her uncle, the water-spirit, Kühleborn, can enter the castle and avenge her. When, despite every warning, the Knight is faithless and marries again, and his arrogant bride has the stone removed from the well, inexorable fate compels Undine to rise out of its depths and bring him death in a kiss. Although the theme is genuinely medieval (borrowed, in fact, from Paracelsus, whose theory of the elemental spirits is founded upon old popular beliefs), and although in the course of its elaboration the author often relapses into sentimental piety, yet, to its decided advantage, a fresh pagan note is predominant in the story. Undine's originality lies in her pagan nature, as it reveals itself before she is baptized; and there is something genuinely Greek in the idea of its not being the skeleton with the scythe which comes for the dying man, but an elemental spirit which brings him death in a loving kiss.
But at the same time that Fouqué was embodying such originality and genius as he possessed in this little tale, he was also, under the influence of the great national movement, projecting the long series of romances of chivalry which began withDer Zauberring("The Magic Ring"), published in 1815. To the romantic reactionariesThe Magic Ringbecame a sort of gospel. Nobles and squires saw themselves reflected in all these old burnished shields and coats of mail, and rejoiced at the sight. But it was not a faithful historical picture which Fouqué exhibited. His age of chivalry is an imaginary age, in which stately, high-born men, clad in armour of burnished silver or of some dull metal inlaid with gold, and wearing silver helmets, plumed or unplumed, or iron helmets surmounted by golden eagles' wings, the visors sometimes raised, sometimes lowered, ride forth upon fiery chargers of all breeds and all colours, shiver each other's lances, and yet sit as if moulded in the saddle, or else fall to the earth only to rise as quick as lightning and draw a two-edged sword. The knights are proud and brave, the faithful squires give their lives for their masters, the slender demoiselles award the prizes at the tourneys, and love their knights "minniglich." Everything is ordered according to the exact prescriptions of the book of the laws of chivalry.
Everything is conventional—first and foremost, the mawkish, languishing style, supposed to be peculiarly adapted to the glorification of this high-born society. Only examples can give any idea of it. Bertha, sitting by a rivulet, sees her reflection in the water. "Bertha blushed so brightly that it seemed as if a star had been kindled in the water." "They sang a morning song so sweet and pleasurable that it seemed as though the setting sun must rise again, drawn by the yearning harmonies." There is a plentiful use of embellishing adjectives: "The youth's heart burned withcharming(anmutig) curiosity." "Two crystal-clear drops fell from the eyes of the old knight." Great importance is attached to the description of splendid clothes and armour and ornaments: "He was beautiful to look upon in his armour of the darkest blue steel, magnificently chased and ornamented with gold; beautiful were his dark brown hair, his trim moustache, and the fresh young mouth smiling below it, disclosing two rows of pearly white teeth." A noble lady, pouring forth the tale of her misfortunes, takes time to interlard it with descriptions like the following: "I paced distractedly up and down my room, would hear nothing of the games in which the other noble maidens invited me to take part in the evening, and impatiently waved my maid away when she brought me a beautiful fishing-rod,inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with agoldenline andsilverhook." It is strange that the inhabitants of a world where all utensils seem to be made of mother-of-pearl, gold, and silver, should think it necessary specially to mention that the gift offered her was composed of these peerless materials.
The emotions are of the same material, all mother-of-pearl and cloth of gold—not one breath of unrestrained natural feeling, not one action dictated by pure, unreflecting passion. All the emotions and passions are as carefully trained as the knights' chargers. We know beforehand how everything will happen. The knights talk to and treat each other with that distinguished courtesy which is peculiar to the privileged classes. One of them inadvertently lets fall a word (about a lady or a joust) which makes it necessary for another to challenge him to mortal combat. Without showing a trace of petty rancour or ill-feeling, the two combatants arm and leap on their snorting chargers; their attendants form a circle round them, holding torches if it is night, and they thrust and hew at each other with all their might. When the one sinks bleeding to the earth, the other throws himself down beside him and binds his wounds with brotherly tenderness and practised surgical skill; then he gives him his arm, and they march off together, their armour clanking bravely.—It is an attempt to resolve the whole rich life of the human soul into a few conventional elements—honour, loyalty, devout and humble love.
In combination with these fine feelings we have the greatest contempt for all except the privileged classes. The hero, Sir Otto, is at a masquerade at the house of his friend, the young merchant, Tebaldo. A troupe of mummers appear and give a performance. In one of the scenes a warrior in armour comes on the stage, bows to Plutus, the god of wealth, and repeats the following lines:—
"Für Beulen Silber, Gold für BlutHerr, gieb Dein Gut, so schlag ich gut."[3]
"Plutus was about to give some ingenious answer, but Otto von Trautwangen rose in wrath, laid his hand on his sword and cried: 'Yonder knave disgraces his armour, and I will prove it on his head, if so be he has the courage to meet me.' Half amused, half alarmed, the company gazed at the wrathful young knight, while Tebaldo angrily dismissed the astounded mummers, upbraiding them with the baseness of their shameful inventions, and forbidding them to enter his house again. Hereupon, blushing with shame, he returned to Otto, and in well-chosen, courtly words prayed his guest not to lay it to his charge that the scurvy crew had thought to flatter the rich merchant by thusoutrageously comparinghis calling with that of arms." The same evening Otto meets at his inn a certain Sir Archimbald, and is seized by the fancy to exchange armour with him, "which, methinks, we may readily do, since we are both of the old High-German heroic stature." In exchange for his coat of silver mail Otto receives a black one. An entire change comes over him with the change of armour, which does not surprise us when we remember the important part dress plays throughout. As a matter of fact, these knights are not much more than stuffed suits of armour. They affect one much as do the figures one sees riding upon armoured wooden horses in the Tower of London or the great armoury in Dresden.
From the description of one of Otto's earliest single combats we gain an idea of the extraordinary influence attributed to attire. His opponent, Sir Heerdegen, wears a rusty suit of armour, and his rusty voice shouts from behind the bars of hisrustyhelmet: "Bertha! Bertha!" while from Otto'ssilverhelmet comes insilverytones the cry: "Gabriele! Gabriele!" When Otto goes back to Tebaldo in his new armour, he has become so much handsomer and more manly, that the young merchant, who happens at the moment to be measuring costly fabrics in his storehouse, is almost ashamed to appear before him. "Then Otto von Trautwangen raised his visor. Tebaldo, half affrighted, fell back, exclaiming: 10 heavens! how you have gained in dignity even since yesterday! And here must I stand before you with an ell-wand in my hand!' Thereupon he flung his beautiful measuring rod against a pillar, shattering it into fragments. It was made of ivory and gold, and his servants could not but believe that this had happened by mischance." They attempt to console their master, but he does not listen to them; all his desire now is to give up his merchant's calling and be allowed to follow Otto as his squire. May not something very like all this be observed to-day in the mutual feelings and demeanour of a Prussian cavalry officer and a Prussian merchant?
This literature is really literature for cavalry officers. The horses are the only creatures in the book whose psychology Fouqué has successfully mastered, and this for the same reason that he was successful with Undine, namely, that it is elementary psychology. In the romances of our Danish author, Ingemann, the milk-white palfrey and the steel-clad black charger also play important parts. When the Lord High Constable is shown us attired in a scarlet cloak edged with ermine and a white-plumed hat, mounted on a tall iron-grey stallion, his swarthy little squire standing beside him holding the bridle of a nimble, restless Norwegian pony, the author has exhausted all his capacity of character drawing. In the description of the tall iron-grey stallion and the nimble little Norwegian pony we have life-like portraits of the Lord High Constable and his squire.
It is exactly the same with Fouqué. Sir Folko's horse is described as a slender-necked, light-footed, silver-grey stallion. "At a signal from his rider he approached Gabriele and bent his forelegs, then leaped into the air and caracoled so lightly back to his place that he seemed to be flying, the golden bells on his harness ringing sweet chimes. Perfectly still and obedient he stood, only turning his beautiful head, under its rich trappings, to look caressingly and inquiringly at his master, as if asking: 'Have I done well?'"—Gallantry, sense of honour, loyalty! What more is there in the knights themselves?
"Sir Archimbald's steed presented a strange contrast. Flecked with white foam, rearing and kicking, he seemed to be about to break the silver chain by which two men-at-arms were holding him back with all their might. His eyes flamed so fiercely that they might well be likened to burning torches, and with his right forefoot he pawed the earth as though he were digging a grave for his master's enemies." —Audacious valour, ardent longing for the fight, indomitable strength! What is there more in the knights?
Sir Otto's father presents him with a horse. "The youth, hastening down, saw a crowd of men-at-arms collected round a bright brown horse with golden trappings. 'Mount,' said his father, 'and make essay if so noble an animal is content to be your property.' Then the young knight Otto von Trautwangen, controlling the animal with a powerful hand, put him through his paces in such a manner that the soldiers, filled with astonishment, felt assured that the noble steed must recognise his destined master, and that in the knight's power over him there lay some strange significance. Sir Otto sprang from his horse and threw himself into his father's arms. Then the charger snorted and kicked wildly at the retainers who grasped at his bridle, and, breaking away from them, followed his young master and laid his head caressingly upon his shoulder."—Invincibility until the destined master, he whose power over the heart is felt to be "of strange significance," appears, and from that moment onwards absolute devotion and the most tender caresses! What else, what more is there in Fouqué's young maidens of high degree?
It was the fault of the sea-king Arinbjörn that, at the critical moment, Otto lost his beloved and the magic ring. Arinbjörn is riding along a solitary road. A wild bay stallion comes galloping up and makes a furious attack upon the sea-king's horse, and throws him down before his rider can spring from the saddle. Man and horse, lying in a confused heap, are mercilessly kicked by the furious stallion. When we know that the following extraordinary speech of Otto's is made of so sagacious and devoted a horse as this, it does not astonish us so much as it otherwise might: "My horse's colour makes him specially dear to me. For this bright brown is in my eyes a colour of angelic beauty; my blessed mother had great, bright brown eyes, and, as all heaven looked out of them, the colour has always seemed to me like a greeting from heaven."
Thus does the psychology of the romance of chivalry culminate—psychology of the patrician, or psychology of the horse, call it which you will. In its portraiture of knights hailing from all the ends of the earth,The Magic Ring, as Gottschall aptly remarks, confines itself to primary types of humanity and the colouring produced by the sun—we are able to distinguish a Moor from a Finn. This book was followed by many others of the same description, amongst whichDie Fahrten Thiodolfs des Isländers("The Expeditions of Thiodolf the Icelander") is the best known. Thiodolf had been forecast by an earlier work of Fouqué's, the great trilogy,Der Held des Nordens("The Hero of the North"), which consists ofSigurd the Serpent Slayer,Sigurd's Revenge, andAslauga.Der Held des Nordensis dedicated to Fichte, and is evidently inspired by the enthusiasm which he had aroused for the olden days of Germany, and for everything characteristically national. The three lyrical-rhetorical "reading-dramas" of which it consists are written in iambics; and where the language becomes particularly impressive or impassioned, short lines are employed, the rhythm and alliteration of which are intended to recall the old Northern metre. The general impression is much the same as that produced by the texts of such of Richard Wagner's operas as deal with the legends of the North.
The verse, though sometimes laboured, generally rings well, the sentiments are noble and chivalrous, the greatness portrayed is superhuman, yet puerile, the light is not the light of day. The hero's bodily strength and endurance are prodigious. He splits an anvil with one blow; he climbs the outer wall of a high tower, and, when he has looked in at the topmost casement and seen all that he wishes to see, jumps lightly down again. Intellectually he is less remarkable.
Of this dramatised version of the Volsung Saga Heine writes: "Sigurd the Serpent Slayeris a spirited work, in which the old Scandinavian Saga, with its giants and its witchcraft, is reflected. The hero, Sigurd, is a mighty figure. He is as strong as the Norwegian cliffs, and as wild as the sea that breaks upon them. He has the courage of a hundred lions and the wit of two asses." We may take this last remark as applying to all Fouqué's knightly figures. They are all national portraits, like those we read of in Brentano's story,Die Mehreren Wehmüller, those thirty-nine Hungarian types, painted by the artist before he went to Hungary, from amongst which every one afterwards selected his own portrait. In Arnim's and Brentano's writings everything is specialised and characteristic, the situations as well as the personalities; here everything is generalised. A king is always a hero or a stage-king; a queen is either dark and haughty or gentle and fair, &c., &c. The general type is there once for all; the individual features of the "national portraits" are added later.
The national type, of course, varies with the country. In Denmark, under Frederick VI., the romance of chivalry is patriotic and loyal. In Germany, after the War of Liberation, it is patriotic and aristocratic. InThe Magic Ringwe read: "The Stranger had seen much of the world, but had remained a true, pious German; nay, it was in foreign lands that he had become one; for distance had revealed to him what a glorious country that old Germany was."
In both countries the political tendency of Romanticism is the same.