Chapter 9

[1]Auerbach:Deutsche Abende.

[2]"The everlasting kingdom is firmly established; strife ends in love and peace; the long and painful dream is at an end; Sophia is priestess of all hearts henceforward and for ever."

[3]"From wherever I am, field, forest, valley, meadow, or mountain-top, I send a thousand greetings to my fair and noble lady. In my garden I gather the loveliest flowers that blow; I bind them into wreaths, and bind along with them a thousand thoughts and greetings. I may not give her my flowers; she is too great and beautiful; they wither, every one, but love lives eternally in my heart. In seeming cheerfulness I go about my daily task; my heart is breaking, but I dig and sing, and soon I'll dig my grave."

[4]"Fly, cockchafer, fly! Your father is in the wars; your mother is in Pommerland, and Pommerland is on fire. Fly, cockchafer, fly!"

Herder'sStimmen der Völker("Voices of the Nations"), published in 1767, contained only twenty German "Volkslieder;" but at the time he brought it out, he expressed the wish that he might live to see the publication of a large collection of the old "Nationallieder," as he called them. In 1806 L. A. von Arnim and Clemens Brentano published the first volume ofDes Knaben Wunderhorn; it contained 210 German popular songs and ballads, and was followed in 1808 by two more volumes of about the same size. This book was not only of the greatest historical interest, but was epoch-making in German lyric poetry and German literature generally. It struck that natural note which for many years gave freshness and sonority to both the Romantic and the ante-Romantic lyric poetry. Even when, in the case of Heine, the entirely modern had supplanted the Romantic theme, rhythm and form and many hardly noticeable turns of expression owed their simple charm to the inspiration of the Volkslied. The superiority of German to French lyric poetry in this century possibly lies chiefly in that absence of everything rhetorical which it owes to the influence of Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

Though the two publishers of this great collection were of one accord in their love for the old popular poetry of their country, and also as to the slightly modernised and carefully expurgated form in which the songs were to appear, and though both were thorough-going Romanticists in principle, they were men of very different characters.

Ludwig Achim von Arnim was born in Berlin in 1781. He studied natural science for some time in Göttingen, and then travelled all over Germany, to make himself acquainted with the country and the people and to collect popular songs and ballads. After this he settled for a time in Heidelberg, where he met Clemens Brentano and Görres. In company with them, in 1808, he started a literary periodical, the Einsiedlerzeitung ("Hermit's Chronicle"), amongst the contributors to which were Tieck, Uhland, Hölderlin, and Jacob Grimm. This periodical he continued at a later time under the titleTrösteinsamkeit("Consolation in Solitude").

In 1811 he married Brentano's sister, the famous Bettina, and thenceforward lived partly in Berlin and partly on his estate of Wiepersdorf in Brandenburg. He kept his Romanticism out of his private life; he was a sane, healthy human being, a clever farmer, a sober Protestant and Prussian. Eichendorff describes him as follows: "Handsome and distinguished looking, frank, ardent, and yet gentle, honourable and reliable in all things, faithful to his friends even when every one else deserted them, Arnim was in reality what others, by dint of a sort of mediæval polish, strove to appear—a knightly figure in the best sense of the word; but for this very reason it always seemed to his contemporaries that there was something strange and out of place about him."

Something strange there must certainly have been in his nature, for, staid and sober, calm and harmonious as was his life, his writings give us the impression of restlessness and complexity. He himself was cast in one piece, his works never are.

Besides plays, now unreadable, he wrote two long novels and a number of short tales, which all bear witness to the fantast in him. The epithet "fantast" may be equally suitably applied to Brentano. The first conspicuous difference between the two is, that, whereas Brentano's strength lies in his naïveté and his childlike fancies, Arnim is profoundly serious even in his wildest flights. With all his love for the popular, with all his eagerness to open the eyes of the cultured to the beauty of the simple and childlike, he remained the dignified aristocrat in his own writings; he never let himself go as Brentano did. When his muse has a paroxysm of madness, it is cold, almost severe insanity, not a fiery, merry frenzy, like that to which Brentano's muse is subject.

His power of plastic representation was great, but quickly exhausted. It shows to advantage in some of his short stories, and in some still shorter fragments of his long novels; but along with descriptions and figures which evince real talent, we are presented with a mass of padding—diffuse digressions from the subject, interpolated tales which have little or no connection with the tale proper, fantastic, impossible episodes, against which even the reader with the most undeveloped sense of realism must protest. Sometimes he lays the whole stock of popular superstitions under contribution, treating them with the utmost seriousness—clay figures are magically endowed with life; a mandrake develops into Field-Marshal Cornelius Nepos. At other times he has recourse to the stock-in-trade of the old-fashioned romances—fabulous parentage, recovery of long-lost children, disguises, strange meetings after the lapse of many years. He is also given to introducing ballads and songs, generally under the rather flimsy pretext that they are the composition of one or other of his characters: fluent, but not melodious, they interrupt the course of the action, momentarily attract the attention of the reader, and are immediately forgotten.

Arnim's principal novel with a modern plot,Armuth, Reichthum, Schuld und Busse der Gräfin Dolores: Eine wahre Geschichte zur lehrreichen Unterhaltung armer Fräulein aufgeschrieben("Poverty, Wealth, Sin, and Penance of Countess Dolores: A True Story, Recorded for the Instruction and Amusement of Poor Young Ladies"), is, taken as a whole, quite as tedious as its title. This novel is another ofWilhelm Meister'sprogeny. It describes the inner life of gifted and distinguished individuals of very varied character, in very varied circumstances. But there is a smooth, pious strain throughout the whole, which is altogether unlikeWilhelm Meister.

The story opens with a description of a castle which has fallen almost into ruins because of its owner's poverty. This description is striking and good; it has its counterpart in French literature in the picture of the Chateau de la Misère in Th. Gautier'sCapitaine Fracasse. We are made to feel all the melancholy associated with the idea of former grandeur and present decay. The somewhat frivolous and selfish character of the penniless young Countess Dolores is also drawn with a masterly hand. This lady succeeds in engaging the affections of a distinguished and rich young man, Count Karl, who falls passionately in love with her and marries her, after overcoming various outward and inward difficulties. In the character of Count Karl, Arnim has succeeded in doing what had perhaps never been done in German literature before, namely, depicting what the English call aperfect gentleman, a conception for which other nations have no corresponding expression. Agentlemanis a man of honour, manly, serious, born to command; he is, moreover, a good Christian, conscientious, unselfish, the protector of those around him, not only good by natural disposition, but moral on principle. In this character Arnim seems to have embodied much of what was best in his own nature. Unfortunately he did not succeed in imparting to it sufficient life; a kind of dream-haze surrounds this man of fine feelings, who is always writing verses and who talks a language inspired by the spirit of romance.

The plot turns upon the seduction of the young Countess. She is ensnared by a Spanish duke, who, under a false name and title, gains admission to the house, flatters her vanity in every possible way, and gradually, by the help of magnetism and romantic mysticism, gains complete influence over her, and persuades her that he has some mysterious connection with higher, nay, actually with divine, powers. It seems almost as if Arnim must have had Zacharias Werner in his mind when he drew this character. In Werner's writings we have exactly this same mixture of impudent lust and sanctimonious mystery; and we know that with Werner's mother it became a fixed idea that she was the Virgin Mary and her son the Saviour of the world. We come upon a similar idea in the following somewhat ineffective description of the seduction of Dolores:—

"The Marquis looked up to the sky with an inspired gaze, held up his hands, and appeared to salute some superior being. He said something, but she could not hear what it was, and anxiously asked what he saw. He answered that he saw the blessed Virgin, that she was pressing her, Dolores, to his breast and placing a crown of roses on her head, saying: 'Follow me!' Dolores, startled, went close up to him, imagining that she felt herself pushed towards him; she felt his breath, imagined it to be the divine breath, and cried: 'I feel her, I feel her breath; it is warm as the sun of the East and as a mother's love.' Upon this, exclaiming: 'And I am her son!' he seized her in his arms, trembling convulsively. He had often talked to her before of a wonderful renewal of the holy myth; she seemed almost unconscious as she stammered the words: 'Yes, it is thou, the all-powerful, the most holy—who hast been given to me in the weakness of our human nature.' 'And thou,' he sobbed, 'art my eternal bride.'"

It would almost seem as though it had been Arnim's intention to describe with the aid of these fictitious characters, the mystic-sensual debaucheries of one of his fellow Romanticists, a Werner or a Brentano. He himself was almost the only one of the school who, in spite of the poetic attraction of Catholicism, remained all his life a staunch Protestant. He seems to be attempting to explain exactly that species of piety which mixed itself up with the licentiousness of his Romantic contemporaries when he gives the following diagnosis of the character of the hypnotising seducer: "We are not justified in altogether doubting the piety of this nobleman, which to his truly pious wife seemed so real. He too possessed the religious instinct; and it was Clelia's natural piety which attracted him to her, though the attraction did not last long.... Afterwards superstitious fear took possession of him. He had outlived his vices. It was now not merely his religious instinct which impelled him to visit all the places of pilgrimage in Sicily and all the famous priests; he was deluding himself into the piety which in his wife was genuine. It was a new stimulant, the strength of which he was obliged constantly to increase. Religion was to him a kind of opium; his nature craved for more and more of it, till all craving was at an end." (Gräfin Dolores, ii. 136, &c.)

But it is not only the excesses peculiar to the Romanticists which Arnim reprehends; he also sharply and wittily castigates the anti-Romanticist, Jens Baggesen. In Heidelberg, where he must have met Arnim, Baggesen had written a series of satirical sonnets directed against the Romanticists, "literary sansculottes on the German Parnassus," as he called them. These he published in the same year thatDoloresappeared, under the title,Der Karfunkel- oder Klingklingel-Almanack, ein Taschenbuch für vollendete Romantiker und angehende Mystiker auf das Jahr der Gnade1810. It was, however, undoubtedly less Baggesen's verses than his extraordinary instability of character which provoked Arnim's satire. The life of this enemy of Romanticism was more planless and capricious than the life of any one of the Romanticists; and Arnim, for whom everything strange and improbable had an attraction, could not fail to be interested in such a singular personality. InDoloreshe caricatures him wittily and mercilessly in the person of the poet "Waller." But though, in this instance, the weaknesses of a special individual are caricatured, Arnim's general purpose unmistakably is to throw into salient relief characteristics which exemplify the lawlessness and levity of the emotional life of a whole generation.

His unfinished historical novel,Die Kronenwächter("The Guardians of the Crown"), published in 1817, presents us, likeDolores, with several well-conceived and ably elaborated characters along with a mass of undigested mystic and lyric material. In the background of this tale looms a huge, mysterious, enchanted castle, the seven towers of which are absolutely transparent; they appear to be built of glass, for each of them projects a brilliant rainbow upon black rocks and upon distant water. In this castle the guardians of the crown of the Hohenstaufens have their lonely retreat, and hence they sally forth into the world, to act and to avenge. But it is not this mystical background which is of importance. What one really remembers are one or two characters portrayed with such virile force as probably no German author has exhibited since, unless it be Gottfried Keller, in his historical novels.

We have, for example, the hero's foster-mother, Frau Hildegard, to whom we are thus amusingly introduced at the beginning of the book:—"Martin, the new tower watchman, has to-day married his predecessor's widow, because she has grown too stout to come down the narrow corkscrew stair. We really could not pull the tower down for her sake, so she had to make up her mind to this marriage, though she would have preferred our clerk, Berthold. The priest has had to tie the knot up there." This story of the widow's corpulence is of course nonsense, but none the less it makes a very original beginning to the book.

The action passes in the days of Luther, and Luther's figure is seen in the background. It is rare to find a Romanticist writing of him with such warmth as this:—"As a mountain sends out streams to the east and to the west, so this man combined opposites, things that in others are never found together—humility and pride, conviction of the path he was bound to tread and willing acceptance of the advice of others, clear understanding and blind faith."

A prominent part in the action is taken by Dr. Faust, the Faustus of popular legend, the famous doctor and alchemist. He is represented with a fiery red face, white hair, and bald crown, wearing scarlet trunk hose and ten orders. He is half-genius, half-charlatan, and works miraculous cures.

The most beautifully drawn character is that of a woman, the hero's betrothed, Anna Zähringer, daughter of Apollonia, the love of his youth. She is the tall German maiden of powerful build and noble carriage, but she also possesses the sensuous attraction which Gottfried Keller has a special faculty of imparting to his young women. The hero of the story, Berthold, the burgomaster, is another personification of Arnim's personal ideal. He is of noble descent, but having grown up in humble circumstances, is simple and plain in all his ways, a good, upright, quiet citizen. Yet all the time he is at heart an aristocrat, who longs for armour and weapons and tournaments, and who actually, without previous training, wins the prize in the first tournament in which he takes part.

Mystic incidents are, of course, not lacking. If Arnim could not forego them in his modern novel, in which we read of a priest who, with one look, imparted to childless wives the power of conception, they were certain to occur much more frequently, and to be of an even more surprising nature, in a tale of times long past. Faust, for instance, cures Berthold by injecting into his veins some of the blood of a stalwart young man, Anton by name, and ever after this, Berthold has the feeling that Anton has somehow acquired a right of possession in his, Berthold's, lady-love, Anna; and Anton himself immediately feels mysteriously attracted to Anna.Die Kronenwächter, like all Arnim's longer productions, is a piece of patchwork, though it must be allowed that the patchwork does not lack poetic value.

It was only in his short tales that he succeeded in producing the effect of unity.Philanderis a clever and pleasing imitation of the style of Moscherosch, a writer who lived in the days of the Thirty Years' War. InFürst Ganzgott und Sänger Halbgott, we have a humorous variation of the favourite Romantic "Doppelgänger" theme, based upon an extraordinary likeness between two half-brothers who do not know each other; the story is at the same time a travesty of the stiffness and burdensome conventions of small courts. But Arnim's best and most characteristic work is the short tale,Der tolle Invalide auf dem Fort Ratonneau. In it we have all his quaint extravagance, without any breach of the laws of possibility; and the central idea is touchingly human.

The story, like most of Arnim's, has a whimsically grotesque introduction. The old Commandant of Marseilles, Count Durande, is sitting in the evening by his crackling fire, shoving olive branches into the flames with his wooden leg, and dreaming of the construction of new kinds of fireworks, when he suddenly awakens to the fact that his leg is on fire. He shouts for help, and a strange woman, who is in the act of entering the room, rushes up to him and attempts to stifle the flames with her apron; the burning wooden leg sets fire to the apron, but the two are saved by people rushing in from the street with buckets of water. The woman's errand is to present a petition on behalf of her husband, whose behaviour has been peculiar ever since he received a wound in the head. He is a most capable, deserving sergeant, only at times so irritable that it is impossible to get on with him. Partly out of compassion, partly because the case interests him, the Commandant gives this sergeant charge of a fort which only requires a garrison of three men, where, therefore, he runs no great danger of falling out with those about him.

Hardly has he entered the fort before he has an attack of furious madness; he turns out his good wife, refuses to admit his two subordinates, declares war against the Commandant, and opens fire upon Marseilles from his high, inaccessible nest upon the cliffs. For three days he keeps the town in a state of terror. Preparations are made for the storming of the fort, in spite of the certain prospect of loss of life and the fear that the madman may blow up the powder magazine. His brave wife, who loves him, mad as he is, begs that she may first be allowed to try to get into the fort, and, if possible, disarm her husband. He fires upon her, but, led by her love, she climbs undismayed up the narrow rocky path at the top of which two loaded cannons face her. And now, as the result of this terrible excitement, the old wound in the madman's head bursts open again; he comes to his senses, totters to meet his wife—he and she and the town are saved.

The effect of this little work is rather weakened by the introduction of supernatural agencies; the whole calamity, namely, is explained to be the result of a stepmother's foolish curse; still, the story in its simplicity is a glorification of that strong, beautiful love which has power to drive out even the devil himself.

And in this, as in several of his other tales, Arnim evinces a humane sympathy with the lower classes which becomes the aristocratic Romanticist well. It is the same feeling of affection for those who are simple of heart as that which led him to collect and publish the popular songs and ballads, and which finds expression inDoloresin the following words of the hero: "I swear to you that often, when I had to pay a couple of thalers for a few lines containing some utterly superfluous formality, I felt a furious desire to take up the inkpot and knock in the lawyer's teeth with it. I should not have been the least surprised to see a flash of lightning come straight from heaven and burn up all his musty documents. And if I feel thus, how much more grievous must such an outlay seem to the poor man who has perhaps to work a whole week from morning till late at night to scrape the money together." We come on this same idea again in his essayVon Volksliedern, where he declares that the people have come "to look on the law as they look upon a hurricane, or any other superhuman power, against which they must defend themselves, or from which they must hide, or which leaves them nothing to do but despair."

His aristocratic bias is perceptible in all his Romantic vagaries.

With Arnim's name is always coupled that of Clemens Brentano (1778-1849), his partner in the work of collecting and publishing the German popular songs and ballads. Brentano resembles Arnim in his habit of giving free rein to a vivid imagination, but differs from him in being an unstable, unreliable personality. His talent is more sparkling and supple, he is more of an intellectual prodigy; but it is as a psychological phenomenon that he awakens our interest, not as a man. His only claim upon our sympathy is, that he does not, like his spiritual kinsman, Zacharias Werner, degrade himself by sentimental obscenity. He does not act basely, but he is never truthful in the strictest sense of the word, until, intellectually dulled, he renounces the calling of poet, or even of author, and lives entirely for his religious enthusiasms. His case has a certain resemblance to that of Hölderlin, who became insane at such an early age—the last twenty-five years of his life are lost to literature.

In his young days Brentano is the jester of the Romanticists, the wayward knave and wag who cannot refrain from doing what he knows will cost him the friends he has made, nor from disturbing and destroying the emotions and illusions which he himself has skilfully produced. With the quality, rare among the Romanticists, of grace in art, he combines a certain simple pathos. Like many other men of productive intellect, when he took pen in hand he became more profound, more serious, and, above all, more warm-hearted than he was in real life. Hence he not unfrequently as an artist produces the impression of genuineness, though he was insincere as a man.

As an intellectual personality he had no backbone. Destitute of firm convictions, he could only conceive of two attitudes towards the principle of authority in matters of belief—wild revolt or unqualified submission. His intellect oscillated between these two extremes until it found rest in submission.

Of all his gifts and capacities, he, the arch-Romanticist, had only sought to develop that of imagination. Palpably true is the following confession extracted from one of his letters: "Oh, my child! we had nourished nothing but imagination, and it, in return, had half devoured us." Unbridled imagination, developed without any counterbalancing quality, is distinctly akin to mendacity; and, as a matter of fact, Brentano in his youth was an incorrigible liar, whose favourite amusement it was to move ladies to tears by accounts of his entirely imaginary woes.

He was theenfant perduof the Romantic School. He might also be called the prodigal son of poetry. Like the young man in the New Testament, he was a spendthrift. He squandered all the many good and witty ideas that occurred to him, all the fertile situations which he invented, upon works destitute of definite plan and form, and consequently destitute of the power to withstand time, which so soon sweeps away everything formless. Before he was forty he had exhausted his intellectual capital, had squandered his substance, and was fain, like the young man of the Bible, "to fill his belly with the husks that the swine did eat"—the husks that were the food of only ignorant and superstitious human beings. In other words, he relapsed into foolish bigotry. In the year 1817 he began to go to confession again, as in the days of his earliest youth, and in the following year withdrew from all intercourse with his fellows, to pass the next six years of his life in devout contemplation by the sick-bed of the nun, Catharina Emmerich, who bore on her body the marks of the wounds of Christ. He regarded the bodily infirmities of this pious, single-minded, but perfectly hysterical girl, as so many wonderful signs of grace, believed in the miraculousness of the supposed imprints of the Saviour's wounds, and with awe-strick'en compassion watched them bleed from time to time. Catharina's words convinced him that she possessed a mysterious, supernatural gift of second-sight, and he carefully noted down every one of her visions and hallucinations. He wrote the story of her life, edited her reflections, and wrote to her dictationThe Life of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. After her death, which happened in 1824, practically his only occupation was the preparing for publication of the fourteen volumes of manuscript containing her various utterances.

Brentano's life is a remarkable exemplification of the truth of the words of Mephistopheles in Goethe'sFaust:—

"Verachte nur Vernunft und Wissenschaft,Des Menschen aller höchste Kraft,Lass nur in Blend- und ZauberwerkenDich von dem Lügengeist bestärken,So hab' ich dich schon unbedingt."[1]

Hallucinations and magic played no small part in his existence, and the man who had begun by sneering at rationalism as dull and barren, fell a prey to ideas far duller and more barren than the emptiest rationalism. He was no more a hypocrite than the good soul, Catharina Emmerich, was an impostor. But the craving for some firm, external support for his weak, wavering Ego, now still farther enfeebled by remorse for the recklessness of his youth, led him to cling with all the fanatical enthusiasm of his soul to the Church and its miracles, just as he had clung in earlier days to poetry with its fairy-tales and magic.

In his later years he was possessed by a kind of religious mania, though on a rare occasion he showed a trace of his old inclination to waggery. He declared, for instance, that he had drawn the apostles who appeared to Catharina Emmerich in her visions exactly as she had described them to him; but Bettina discovered that he had been unable to resist hanging round the apostle Paul's neck, in lieu of a scrip, a curious old tobacco pouch, which had belonged to himself in former days, and about which many funny stories were in circulation among his acquaintances.

On his father's side Clemens Brentano was of Italian descent. His grandfather, a successful Frankfort merchant, was a native of Tremezzo on the Lake of Como. Through his mother he was descended from the authoress Sophie Laroche, Wieland's friend.

In personal appearance he was the popular ideal poet, handsome, pale, and slight, with a confusion of curly black hair. He had a Southern complexion and sparkling, restless brown eyes shadowed by long lashes. His voice was deep and beautiful, and he was fond of singing his own songs, accompanying himself on the guitar.

He was apprenticed to a merchant, but the experiment proved totally unsuccessful, and in 1797 he went to Jena, where he made the acquaintance of the most famous of the Romanticists, Fr. Schlegel, Steffens, and others. These friends often threatened to thrash him for his mad tricks and "not unfrequently malicious boasts and lies," and the threat was more than once actually carried out. But he could not refrain from offending; it was impossible to him to restrain a caprice. While still quite young, he fell in love with a very gifted woman, Sophie Mereau, wife of one of the Jena professors. In the course of this love affair the couple had many wonderful adventures, some of which we find reproduced in his first book,Godwi, or the Mother's Statue. When, in 1802, Fr. Tieck executed a marble bust of Brentano, Frau Mereau described the impression it produced on her in the following beautiful sonnet, inspired by genuine admiration and love:—

"Welch süsses Bild erschuf der Künstler hier?Von welchem milden Himmelsstrich erzeuget?Nennt keine Inschrift seinen Namen mir,Da diese todte Lippe ewig schweiget?Nach Hohem loht im Auge die Begier,Begeistrung auf die Stirne niedersteiget,Um die, nur von der schönen Locken ZierGeschmücket, noch kein Lorbeerkranz sich beuget.Ein Dichter ist es. Seine Lippen prangenVon Lieb' umwebt, mit wunderselgem Leben,Die Augen gab ihm sinnend die Romanze!Und schalkhaft wohnt der Scherz auf seinen Wangen;Den Namen wird der Ruhm ihm einstens geben,Das Haupt ihm schmückend mit dem Lorbeerkranze."[2]

Happiness came to Brentano before fame. In 1803 he married Sophie Mereau, who had been divorced from her husband, and they lived most happily together till 1806, when she died in childbirth.

In Heidelberg Brentano collaborated with Arnim in the publication ofDes Knaben Wunderhornand with Görres inDie Geschichte des Uhrmachers BOGS("Story of Bogs, the Watchmaker"). He had already published several works on his own account—Ponce de Leon, die lustigen Musikanten("The Merry Musicians"),Chronika eines fahrenden Schülers("Chronicles of a Roving Student"). In Frankfort he became entangled in a love affair, which led to one of the many tragi-comic episodes in his life. He ran away with a young girl who had fallen violently in love with him, Auguste Busmann, a niece of the famous banker, Bethmann. They went to Cassel, where he married her. It is said that he tried to escape from her on the way to church, but that the energetic bride held him fast. A few days after the ceremony she threw her wedding-ring out of the window. One of her fancies was to dash through the town on horseback, the long plumes of her hat and the scarlet trappings of her horse floating in the wind. She plagued her husband in many ways. We are told that one of the worst tortures he had to endure was caused by her skill in beating a tattoo with her feet against the footboard of the bed, a performance invariably followed by a skilfulpizzicatoplayed with her toe-nails upon the sheet.[3]This and other things grew so unendurable that he ran away. The valiant lady procured a divorce the same year, and was ere long married again.

Brentano settled in Berlin, and was soon in great request in social circles there, on account of his powers of conversation, his whimsicality, and his rocket-like sallies of wit. It was in Berlin that he wrote his fairy-tales and most of hisRomanzen vom Rosenkranz("Romances of the Rosary"). His play,The Founding of Prague, was written in Bohemia, where lay the family estate, Bukowan, of which the younger brother, Christian, took charge. After his return to Berlin in 1816, he wrote the famous tale,Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und der schönen Nannerl("Story of Brave Kasperl and Fair Nannerl"), alsoDie mehreren Wehmüller, andDie drei Nüsse("The Three Nuts"). Then his conversion took place, and he no longer lived for literature. The profits of anything he wrote subsequently were devoted to charitable objects.

Steffens remarks of Brentano that he is the only one of the Romanticists who seems to be thoroughly aware that he has no aim. He calls him an ironical, sportive Kronos, who fantastically demolishes every one of his definite utterances by means of its successor, in this manner devouring his own children. Still, as a lyric poet, a writer of fairy-tales, and a novelist, Brentano has produced works of art, few in number, but of permanent value.

In his poetry there is something touching, simple, and caressingly sweet. He understands the art of condensing an emotion, but he generally dilutes it again, and spoils his effect by repetitions, refrains, or the introduction of inarticulate sounds, such as "Ru, ku, ku, kuh," and the like. Almost all his poems contain single verses of great excellence, but almost all are too long. He has appropriated the diffuseness of the Volkslied. He is distinctly original in such untranslatable verses as the following, taken from theDichters Blumenstrauss("Poet's Garland"):—

"Ein verstimmend FühlgewächschenEin Verlangen abgewandt,Ein erstarrend Zitterhexchen,Zuckeflämmchen, nie verbrannt.Offnes Räthsel, nie zu lösen,Steter Wechsel, fest gewöhnt,Wesen, wie noch keins gewesen,Leicht verhöhnt und schwer versöhnt.* * * * * * *Auf dem Kehlchen wiegt das Köpfchen,Blumenglöckchen auf dem Stiel,Seelchen, selig Thaueströpfchen,Das hinein vom Himmel fiel."

The highly artificial style of this poem is very characteristic of Brentano. Both as lyric poet and story-teller he is artificial; but his mannerism seldom gives the impression of affectation, it only witnesses to the almost morbid sensibility of his temperament.

InDer Spinnerin Liedwe have a simple and touching expression of the pain of the long separation from Sophie Mereau. It begins:—

"Es sang vor langen JahrenWohl auch die Nachtigall,Das war wohl süsser Schall,Da wir zusammen waren.Ich sing und kann nicht weinen,Und spinne so alleinDen Faden klar und rein,So lang der Mond wird scheinen.Da wir zusammen waren,Da sang die Nachtigall,Nun mahnet mich ihr SchallDass du von mir gefahren.So oft der Mond mag scheinenGedenk ich dein allein;Mein Herz ist klar und rein,Gott wolle uns vereinen."[4]

It is right to give Brentano all honour as the creator, in his ballad "Loreley," of a figure which, under the treatment of other poets, notably Heine, has become so living, so truly popular, that one can hardly believe that it is not a genuine legendary figure. It is wrong to do what Griesebach and Scherer have done, namely, turn this praise into a depreciation of Heine's merits, credit him only with the greater literary dexterity, Brentano with the greater capacity of invention. It seems particularly unjust when we remember that Brentano's own finest lyrics are adaptations of popular songs. Read, for example, his beautifulEs ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod.The poem is to be found under the nameErnteliedinDes Knaben Wunderhorn, and begins thus:—

"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,Hat Gewalt vom höchsten Gott,Heut wetzt er das Messer,Es schneid't schon viel besser,Bald wird er drein schneiden,Wir müssen's nur leiden;Hüte dich, schön's Blümelein!"

Brentano's lines are more polished:—

"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,Er mäht das Korn, wenn Gott's gebot,Schon wetzt er die Sense,Dass schneidend sie glänze;Bald wird er dich schneiden,Du musst es nur leiden;Musst in den Erntekranz hinein;Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

In their original form the following lines are not only simpler, but more beautiful than in Brentano's version:—

"Viel hundert Tausend ungezählt,Was nur unter die Sichel fällt,Ihr Rosen, Ihr Liljen,Euch wird er austilgen.Auch die KaiserkronenWird er nicht verschonen.Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

Brentano's run thus:—

"Viel hunderttausend ohne Zahl,Ihr sinket durch der Sense Strahl;Weh' Rosen, weh' Lilien,Weh' krause Basilien!Selbst euch KaiserkronenWird er nicht verschonen.Ihr müsst zum Erntekranz hinein.Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

He spins out the six verses of the old song to fourteen by the aid of a long list of flowers and plants; we are out of breath before we get to the end of them. The volume of poems entitledDie Romanzen vom Rosenkranz("Romances of the Rosary") is a romantic variation of the Faust legend, showing the evil of thirst for knowledge and pride of it. Faust himself is transformed into the Mephistophelian evil principle. In this work, as well as in "Loreley," Brentano prepares the way for Heinrich Heine. The romances are written in four-footed trochees, which in their cadence and whole character anticipate Heine's trochaic verse, especially in the droll juxtaposition of light, graceful lines and lines consisting of learned names, obscure legal matter, and scraps of mediæval mystic jargon.

As a prose writer, Brentano began, with hisGodwi, in the style ofLucinde. The first part of the book assumes that true morality consists in allowing the sensual instincts free play, and immorality in repressing or ignoring them. With bacchantic wildness the heroine preaches the gospel of free love, and denounces marriage and every species of compulsory virtue. The second part, in genuine Romantic fashion, satirises the first part and the characters delineated in it. Godwi, the hero of the first volume, retires into the background, and the author himself, under the pseudonym Maria, takes his place. We learn that it was simply with the view of obtaining the hand of the daughter of one of the personages in the first part of the book, that the author managed to gain possession of the correspondence of which that first part consists. He had hoped by publishing it to attain this end. But, as the first volume is not approved of, he takes it to Godwi, the principal character, and begs him to tell what other love adventures he has had. The astounded Godwi reads his own story. Book in hand, he conducts the author round his garden, and says, pointing to a pond: "This is the pond into which I fall on page 266 of the first volume." Thus inGodwiwe have Romantic sensual licence in combination with Romantic irony and selfduplication.

The revulsion from revolutionary ardour and passion was even more complete in Brentano's case than in Fr. Schlegel's; it became positive renunciation of reason. And his conversion, like Zacharias Werner's, was of the species accompanied by a tearful conviction of sin. In hisSketch of the Life of Anna Catharina Emmerichhe tells, without giving a thought to any possible physiological explanation of the fact, that her longing for the Holy Sacrament was so great, that often at night, feeling herself irresistibly drawn to it, she left her cell, and was found in the morning kneeling with outstretched arms outside the locked church door. It never occurred to him that her condition might be a morbid one, not even when she told him all the particulars of the appearance of the stigmata on her body as if the whole thing had happened to another nun of the neighbourhood.

But during the middle period of his literary career, Brentano produced some prose works which are of more than merely historical literary interest; for example, the fairy-tale,Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia, which he first wrote in a pithy, condensed form, but at a later period diluted with holy water and greatly expanded. This tale gives us an idea of the inexhaustible supply of amusing and grotesque conceits to which his conversation doubtless owed its great charm. In it Brentano reveals himself as a master of the prose which, while playing with words and ideas and connecting things which have not the remotest connection, nevertheless dexterously refrains from mixing metaphors, and never breaks the link in the chain of ideas. It may be a perfect trifle, some accidental reminiscence (Brentano's remembering, for instance, that in his childhood he had heard Goethe's mother say: "Dies ist keine Puppe, sondern nur eine schöne Kunstfigur"), which sets him weaving the chain. But with the inexorable artistic severity of a contrapuntist, he holds to his fugitive motive throughout the whole length of his composition, varying and enriching it. As a specimen of this style, take the following paragraph fromGockel, Hinkelund Gackeleia, that tale in which, throughout several hundred pages, words and ideas undergo a transformation which fits them for their place in the hen-world:—

"Die Franzosen haben das Schloss so übel mitgenommen, dass sie es recht abscheulich zurückliessen. Ihr König Hahnri hatte gesagt, jeder Franzose solle Sonntags ein Huhn, und wenn keins zu haben sei, ein Hinkel in den Topf stecken und sich eine Suppe kochen. Darauf hielten sie streng, und sahen sich überall um, wie jeder zu seinem Huhn kommen könne. Als sie nun zu Haus mit den Hühnern fertig waren, machten sie nicht viel Federlesens und hatten bald mit diesem, bald mit jenem Nachbarn ein Hühnchen zu pflücken. Sie sahen die Landkarte wie einen Speisezettel an; we etwas von Henne, Huhn oder Hahn stand, das strichen sie mit rother Tinte an und giengen mit Küchenmesser und Bratspiess darauf los. So giengen sie über den Hanebach, steckten Gross- und Kleinhüningen in den Topf, und dann kamen his in das Hanauer Land. Als sie nun Gockelsruh, das herrliche Schloss der Raugrafen von Hanau, im Walde fanden, statuirten sie ein Exempel, schnitten allen Hühnern die Hälse ab, steckten sie in den Topf und den rothen Hahn auf das Dach, das heisst, sie machten ein so gutes Feuerchen unter den Topf, dass die lichte Lohe zum Dach herausschlug und Gockelsruh darüber verbrannte. Dann giengen sie weiter nach Hünefeld und Hunhaun."

This fairy-tale style, with its perpetual farcical play upon words, almost reminds one of the manner in which the young men in some of Shakespeare's plays give vent to their overflowing humour.

Much graver, if not less mannered, is the style of Brentano's most famous story,Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl("The Story of Brave Kasperl and Fair Annerl").

The subject is taken fromDes Knaben Wunderhorn. In the second volume of the collection, p. 204, is to be found a short ballad,Weltlich Recht("Earthly Justice"), which tells the tale of the execution of Fair Nanerl, who is glad to die and go to her child:—

"Der Fähndrich kam geritten und schwenket seine Fahn:'Halt still mit der schönen Nanerl, ich bringe Pardon.''Fähndrich, lieber Fähndrich, sie ist ja schon todt.'Gute nacht, meine schöne Nanerl, deine Seel ist bei Gott.'"[5]

In Brentano's version the whole story is told in the street, on a long summer evening, by a poor old woman of eighty-eight, the beautiful Annerl or Nanerl's grandmother. He has been so successful in reproducing this aged, pious, and very superstitious woman's language, that we seem to see her before us all the time. With consummate art, he manages to keep the reader in constant suspense by the erratic manner in which she tells her story, hurrying onward and then turning back to catch up the thread she has let fall. We are never told enough during the course of the narration to give us a clear understanding of the whole position of affairs, but always enough to keep up our interest and make us anxious to know the answer of the riddle, to get at the explanation of the story-teller's mysterious hints. Seldom have the veils concealing a series of incidents from the reader been raised so skilfully, one by one.

Another of the merits of the tale is the vigour with which its main idea, honour (the true and the false sense of honour, the shame of wounded pride and the real shame and infamy to which ambition may lead), is presented to us and developed in the actions and experiences of the two principal characters. Kasperl, the brave Uhlan, whose sense of honour is so keen that it amounts to sentimental weakness, is driven to despair by the dishonourable conduct of his father and stepbrother. He commits suicide, and is thereby saved the anguish of knowing the fate of his sweetheart, fair Annerl. Annerl's whole life has been controlled by a cruel fate. The poet, in his gloomy superstition, has taken real pleasure in driving her onwards to calamity and death with the irresistible, mysterious power of predestination. Annerl's mother in her day had loved a huntsman. This huntsman is to be executed for murder. When the child comes near the executioner, his sword trembles in its scabbard—an unmistakable sign that it thirsts for her blood. The huntsman's head, when it is cut off, flies towards her, and the teeth grip her frock. Of the power that draws her on to wrong-doing and misfortune we are constantly told: "It drew her with its teeth" ("Es hat sie mit den Zähnen dazu gerissen"). Ambition leads to disgrace; Annerl is seduced by a young officer under a false promise of marriage; in her anguish and madness she strangles her new-born child, then gives herself up to justice and pays the penalty of her crime with her young life—her seducer, the ensign, arriving too late with a pardon.

This epitome of the tale shows to what extent Brentano, in this particular case, has done homage to the doctrines of Romanticism. Supernatural warnings play an important part. The career of the heroine is regarded from the standpoint of Oriental fatalism; but at the same time, and without any attempt to smooth away the contradiction, we have the genuinely Catholic persuasion that a sin is being punished, the sin committed by the chief character in setting the purely human principle of honour above the Church's doctrine of heavenly grace. Nevertheless, the little tale has both artistic style and a genuine popular ring. The spirit of the popular ballad from which its theme is borrowed hovers over it. And, what is still more worthy of note, it is in so far an epoch-making work in German literature, that, long before the appearance of Immermann'sDer Oberhofit heralds the age of the peasant-story, striking in its naïve if somewhat artificial style the chord of which we hear the echo so long afterwards in Auerbach and others.

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