Part 13

The unimportant supernumerary rôles were first designated merely by numbers, but here we find them endowed with honor and significance through being given names. We are thus reminded of Schiller, who in _Wilhelm Tell_ gave names to his peasant women and some words to speak, so that they became more acceptable rôles. The poet does the same here with guards and courtiers.

If in the first edition we find a loosely written syllabication, in the later one we find it better controlled, though always without pedantry. Rhythmic passages are divided into five-foot iambics, though half and quarter verses are not avoided.

So much for the external expression. A comparison of the inner connections and relations will be of profit to any admirer who gives the work an individual study. Here are only a few suggestions.

Passages, which in the first version are only lightly sketched by the hand of genius, we find more deliberately executed, and in a way that we have to approve and admire as necessary. We come, too, upon pleasing amplifications, which may not be absolutely necessary, but which are highly welcome. Here and there we find hardly perceptible yet vivid aspersions, connective passages, even important transpositions to make a highly effective speech,--everything done with a master-hand, with intelligence and feeling, everything thrilling our emotions and clarifying our insight.

Everywhere in the first version we admire that sureness of touch which, without lengthy reflection, seems rather as if it had been poured out spontaneously, a vivifying and illuminating discovery. And whatever excellences the poet may have given to his later work, whatever deviations he employed, at least we find nowhere any important omission or alteration. Only here and there some rather coarse and naïve expressions are expunged.

In closing we shall mention, however, a noticeable difference which concerns the costume of the Ghost. His first appearance, as we know, is in armor; he is armed from head to foot; his face is pale and sad, his glance wan and yet austere. In this guise he appears on the terrace, where the castle guard is marching up and down, and where he himself may often have drawn up his warriors.

In the closet of the Queen, on the other hand, we find mother and son in the familiar dialogue, and finally these words:--

“Queen. Hamlet, you break my heart.

Hamlet. O throw the worser part away and keep the better.”

But then follows: “Enter the Ghost in his night-gowne.”

Who, on first hearing this, does not find it for a moment incongruous? And yet if we grasp it, if we think it over, we shall find it right and proper. He should--indeed he must--appear first in armor, when he is entering the place where he has rallied his warriors, where he has encouraged them to noble deeds. And now we begin to be less confident of our conviction that it was suitable to see him enter the private closet of the queen in armor, too. How much more private, homelike, terrible, is his entrance here in the form in which he used to appear--in his house apparel, his night robe, harmless and unarmed--a guise which in itself stigmatizes in the most piteous way the treachery which befell him. Let the intelligent reader, as he may, picture this to himself. Let the stage-manager, convinced of this effect, produce it in this way, if Shakespeare is to be staged in his integrity.

It is worth noting that the commentator Steevens has already criticized this scene. When Hamlet says:--

“My father in his habit as he lived!”

this discerning critic adds this note:--“If the poet means by this expression that the father is appearing in his own house costume, he has either forgotten that at the beginning he introduced him in armor, or else it must be his intention in this latter appearance to alter his attire. Hamlet’s father, just as a warrior prince might do, does not always remain in armor, or sleep, as they tell of King Haakon, of Norway, with his battle-ax in his hand.”

If we had been clever enough, we should have already thought of Hamlet’s first utterance in this scene, when he sees the Ghost:--“What would your gracious figure?” For we have not words enough to express all that the English mean by the word “gracious,”--everything that is kind and gentle, friendly and benign, tender, and attractive, is fused in that word. Certainly it is no term for a hero in armor.

These doubts are happily now dispelled by the reprinting of the first edition. We are convinced anew that Shakespeare, like the Universe, is always offering us new aspects, and still remains, at the end of it all, lofty and inaccessible. For all our powers are not competent to do justice to his words, much less his genius.

_TROILUS AND CRESSIDA_

(1824)

A comparison of the _Iliad_ with _Troilus and Cressida_ leads to similar conclusions: here, too, there is neither parody nor travesty, but, as in the case of the eagle and the owl two subjects taken from nature were put in striking contrast with each other, so here are contrasted the intellectual fibre of two epochs. The Greek poem is in the grand style, self-restrained and self-sufficient, using only the essential, and, in description and simile, disdaining all ornament,--basing itself on noble myths and tradition. The English classic, on the other hand, one might consider a happy transposition and translation of the other great work into the romantic-dramatic style.

In this connection we should not forget, however, that this piece, like many another, is based on second-hand narratives, already rendered into prose, and only half-poetical.

Yet it is also quite original, as much so as if the ancient piece had never been at all; for it requires just as profound a sincerity, just as decided a talent, to depict for us similar personalities and characters with so light a touch and so lucid a meaning, and represent them for a later age with all the human traits of that age, which thus sees itself reflected in the guise of the ancient story.

ON OTHER WRITERS

GOETHE AS A YOUNG REVIEWER

(1772)

I

_Lyrical Poems_, by J. C. Blum. Berlin, 1772

We no longer feel certain whether it is wise for young poets to read the ancients early. Our unimaginative mode of life stifles genius, unless the singers of freer times kindle it and open to it an atmosphere at least ideally more free; but these very singers also breathe into the soul so exotic a spirit that the very best poet, with the most fortunate genius, can soon merely support himself in his flight through his imagination, and can no longer give expression to that glowing inspiration which alone makes true poetry. Why are the poems of the old skalds, of the Celts and the old Greeks, even of the Orientals, so strong, so fiery, so great? Nature drives them to singing as it does the bird in the air. As for us (for we cannot deceive ourselves) we are driven to the lyre by an artificial and stimulated feeling, which we owe to our admiration for the ancients, and to our delight in them; and for this reason our best songs, with few exceptions, are merely imitative copies.

These remarks have been suggested by the lyrical poems of Herr Blum. This poet is certainly not without talent, and yet how seldom does he seem to be able to stand on his own feet when his Horace is not before his eyes. The latter illumines the way for him, like Hero’s torch; the moment he must go alone, he sinks. Space does not permit us to prove our point here, but we ask every reader who knows his Horace whether the poet does not grow tired and cold whenever Horace and King David do not lend him thoughts, feelings, expressions, situations, and in the case of the former even his mythology, all of which, we must feel, are seldom used except when the imagination creates with a cold heart. The well-known Horatian dialogue, _Donec gratus eram_, Kleist has translated much better; but the “Lamentation of David and Jonathan” we have never seen better versified than here. We wish the writer an unspoilt maiden, days of complete leisure, and the pure spirit of poetry without the spirit of mere authorship. The very best of poets degenerates when in composing he thinks of the public, and is filled with a yearning for fame, especially newspaper fame, rather than completely absorbed by his subject.

II

_Cymbelline, a Tragedy, Based on a Shakespearian Theme_ [by J. G. Sulzer]. Danzig, 1772.

The author, obliged by a severe illness to avoid all fatiguing work,--so we are informed in the Preface,--amused himself with the study of Shakespeare’s works. We could have told him in advance that this was no reading for a convalescent; whoever wishes to share in the life that glows through Shakespeare’s plays must himself be sound in body and mind. At all events, our author, moved by a cool, weak, critical modesty, regretted that so many “incongruités” should mar the “many just sentiments” and “some beauties” (as the eminent Dr. Johnson likewise remarks) that are to be found in this play. So he resolved to separate the dross from the gold (that is _vox populi critici_ in regard to Shakespeare since time immemorial), and to attempt nothing less than this: what Sophocles would approximately have done if he had tried to make a play out of the same material. So he _travestied_--no, not travestied, for then something of the appearance of the original would remain--_parodied_--no, not that either, for then something could be guessed by the very contrast--what then? what word will express the poverty that is here, compared with the infinite riches of Shakespeare!

Shakespeare, who felt the spirit of several centuries in his breast, through whose soul the life of whole centuries was stirring!--and here--comedians in silk and buckram, and daubed scene-painting! The scene a wood; in front a thick copse, through which one enters a grotto; in the background a large pasteboard rock, on which ladies and gentlemen sit, lie, are stabbed, etc.

That is the way Sophocles would have handled this theme! It is bad enough to take Shakespeare’s play, whose very essence is the life of history, and reduce it to the Sophoclean unity which aims merely at presenting action; but to model it on the “Treatise on Tragedy” in the first part of the old _Leipziger Bibliothek_![9] We are certain that every one, not merely readers of Shakespeare, will cast it aside with contempt.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] By Nicolai.

BYRON’S _MANFRED_

(1820)

To me Byron’s tragedy of _Manfred_ was a wonderful phenomenon, touching me closely. This singular but highly gifted poet has absorbed my own _Faust_ into himself, and, like a hypochondriac, drawn from it the strangest sort of nourishment. Those motives and ideas which suited his purposes he has made use of, but in his own original way, so that everything seems different; and for this reason I cannot wonder enough at his genius. This transformation affects the whole so intimately that highly interesting lectures could be given on the similarity and dissimilarity which his work bears to his pattern; but I do not deny that in the long run the dull glow of a boundless and profound despair becomes irksome to us. Yet in the dissatisfaction which one feels there are always interwoven both admiration and respect.

Thus we find in this tragedy quite uniquely the very quintessence of the feelings and passions of a remarkable genius, but a genius doomed from birth to suffering and anguish. The details of his life and the characteristics of his poetry hardly permit of a just and fair criticism. He has often enough confessed his anguish; he has repeatedly presented it in his verse, and it is difficult for any one not to feel real pity for the unbearable pain which he is forever working and gnawing over in his heart.

There are two women whose shadows follow him unceasingly, and who play a large rôle in his best-known works; one appears under the name Astarte, the other, without form or presence, simply as A Voice.

The following story is told of the tragic adventure which was his experience with the first. As a young, daring and highly attractive youth he won the love of a Florentine lady; her husband discovered it and murdered her. But the murderer was found dead that same night in the street, and there was nothing to throw suspicion upon a single soul. Lord Byron left Florence, but these apparitions haunted him throughout his whole life.

This romantic event appears in his poems in countless allusions, as for example where he, probably brooding over his own tragedy, applies the sad story of the king of Sparta to his own case. The story is as follows: Pausanias, the Lacedæmonian general, having won fame in the important victory at Platæa, later through arrogance, stubbornness, and cruel treatment, loses the affection of the Greeks, and, on account of a secret understanding with the enemy, loses also the confidence of his countrymen. He thus brings blood-guiltiness upon his head, which pursues him to a miserable end. For while in command of the fleet of the Greek allies in the Black Sea, he falls violently in love with a girl of Byzantium. After a long struggle he wins her from her parents; she is to be brought to him in the night. Filled with shame, she requests the servants to put out the light; this is done, but groping about in the room, she knocks over the lamp-stand. Pausanias awakes suddenly from sleep, suspects murder, seizes his sword and kills his beloved. The horrible vision of this scene never leaves him afterwards, its shadow pursues him unceasingly, so that he appeals in vain to the gods and to necromancers for aid and absolution.

What a sick heart the poet must have who would seek out such a story from the ancient world, appropriate it to himself, and burden himself with its tragic image! This will explain the following monologue, so laden with gloom and the despair of life; we recommend it to all lovers of declamation for serious practice. Hamlet’s monologue is here intensified. It will take considerable art especially to pick out the interpolations and yet keep the connection and the flow and smoothness of the whole. Besides it will be discovered that a certain vehement, even eccentric, expression is needed in order to do justice to the intention of the poet.[10]

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The quotation which follows here, translated by Goethe into German, is Manfred’s speech at the end of act 2, scene 2, beginning:

“We are the fools of Time and Terror! Days Steal on us, and steal from us; yet we live, Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.”

BYRON’S _DON JUAN_[11]

(1821)

In hesitating some time ago to insert a passage from [Manzoni’s] _Count Carmagnola_, a piece which is perhaps translatable, and in the present instance making the daring attempt to take up and discuss the untranslatable _Don Juan_, it may seem as if we are guilty of an inconsistency. We shall therefore point out the difference between the two cases. Manzoni is as yet but little known among us, and it is better that people should learn to know his merits first in their complete fullness, as they are presented only in the original; after that, a translation by one of our young poets would be decidedly in order. With Lord Byron’s talent, on the other hand, we are sufficiently acquainted, and can neither help nor injure him by translation, for the originals are in the hands of all cultivated people.

Yet such an attempt, even if it were attempting the impossible, will always have a certain value. For if a false reflection does not exactly give back the original picture to us, yet it makes us attentive at least to the mirror itself and to its more or less perceptible defects.

_Don Juan_ is a work of infinite genius, misanthropical with the bitterest inhumanity, yet sympathetic with the deepest intensity of tender feeling. And since we now know the author and esteem him, and do not wish him to be otherwise than he is, we enjoy thankfully what he dares with overgreat independence, indeed insolence, to bring before us. The technical treatment of the verse is quite in accord with the singular, reckless, unsparing content. The poet spares his language as little as he does his men, and as we examine it more closely we discover indeed that English poetry has a cultivated comic language which we Germans wholly lack.

The comic in German lies preëminently in the idea, less in the treatment or style. We admire Lichtenberg’s abounding wealth; he has at his command a whole world of knowledge and relations to mix like a pack of cards and deal them out roguishly at pleasure. With Blumauer too, whose compositions in verse certainly possess the comic spirit, it is especially the sharp contrast between old and new, aristocrats and common people, the noble and the mean, that delights us. If we examine further we find that the German, in order to be amusing, steps back several centuries and has the luck to be peculiarly ingenuous and engaging only in doggerel rhyme.

In translating _Don Juan_ there are many useful things to be learned from the Englishman. There is only one joke which we cannot imitate from him,--one that gets its effect by a singular and dubious accent in words which look quite differently on paper. The English linguist may judge how far the poet in this case has wantonly exceeded the proper limits.

It is only by chance that the verses inserted here happened to be translated, and they are now published not as a pattern but for their suggestiveness. All our talented translators ought to try their skill at least partly upon them; they will have to permit assonances and imperfect rhymes and who knows what besides. A certain laconic treatment will also be necessary, in order to give the full quality and significance of this audacious mischievousness. Only when something has been accomplished along these lines, can we discuss the subject further.

Possibly we may be reproached for spreading in translation such writings as these through Germany, thus making an honest, peaceful, decorous nation acquainted with the most immoral works that the art of poetry ever produced. But according to our way of thinking, these attempts at translation should not be intended for the press, but may serve as excellent practice for talented brains. Our poets may then discreetly apply and cultivate what they acquire in this way, for the pleasure and delight of their countrymen. No particular injury to morality is to be feared from the publication of such poems, since poets and authors would have to cast aside all restraint to be more corrupting than the papers of the present day.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] This paper is preceded by a translation into German verse of the first five stanzas of _Don Juan_.

CALDERON’S _DAUGHTER OF THE AIR_

(1822)

“De nugis hominum seria veritas Uno volvitur assere.”

Certainly if any course of human follies, presented in lofty style, is to be put upon the stage, then this drama should carry off the prize.

We often allow ourselves to be charmed by the merits of a work of art, to the extent that the last good thing which has come before us we consider and discuss as the greatest we have ever seen. Still this does no harm, for we study such a work then _con amore_ and all the more closely, and seek to discover its merits, in order that our judgment may be justified. For this reason I do not hesitate to acknowledge that in the _Daughter of the Air_ I admire more than ever Calderon’s great talent, his lofty genius and clear insight. We should not fail to recognize that the subject is superior to his other plays, in that the story is based on motives purely human, and there is no more of the supernatural element than is necessary for the extraordinary and the exceptional in human affairs to develop and proceed in natural fashion. Only the beginning and the end are marvelous; everything else proceeds in a natural course.

What there is to say of this play is true of all the plays by this poet. He gives us in no way a real view of nature; he is rather theatrical throughout, even stagey. Of what we call illusion, especially such as touches the feelings, we find not a trace. The design is clear to one’s mind, the scenes follow of necessity, in a kind of ballet-order, pleasing and artistic in its way, and suggest the technique of our latest comic opera. The inner leading motives are always the same,--conflict of duty, passion, conditions derived from the antithesis of the characters and the existing relations.

The main action proceeds in a poetic and dignified manner; the minor scenes, which have an elegant movement, in the style of the minuet, are rhetorical, dialectical, sophisticated. All the types of humanity are exhausted; there is not missing even the fool, whose simple mind makes havoc of deception whenever a pretense is made of sympathy and kindness.

Now we must admit on reflection that human situations and emotions cannot be put on the stage in their primitive realism, but must be worked up, touched up, idealized. And thus we find them in this case, too; the poet however stands on the threshold of over-refinement, he gives us a quintessence of humanity.

Shakespeare on the contrary gives us the rich ripe grape from the vine. According to our taste we can enjoy the single berries, press them out and taste or sip the juice or the fermented wine--however we treat them we are refreshed. With Calderon, on the other hand, nothing is left to the choice or taste of the spectator; we receive from him the spirits already drawn off and distilled, seasoned with many spices, or flavored with sweets; we must accept the beverage as it is, as a delicious and palatable stimulant, or else refuse it.

But the reason for our giving the _Daughter of the Air_ so high a place has already been suggested; it is favored by its excellent subject-matter. For we object to seeing a noble and free man, as in several of Calderon’s plays, indulging in dark error and lending his reason to indiscretions and folly; here we have a quarrel with the poet himself, since his material offends us, whereas his manner charms. This is the case in _The Devotion of the Cross_ and in _Daybreak in Copacabana_.

In this connection we may say in print what we have often expressed privately, that we must regard it as one of the greatest advantages of life that Shakespeare enjoyed, that he was born and brought up as a Protestant. He appears always as a human being, with a complete faith and confidence in human values and affairs: error and superstition he feels to be beneath him, and only toys with them, compelling the supernatural to serve his purposes. Tragic ghosts, droll goblins he summons to his ends, in which everything is clarified and cleansed of superstition, so that the poet never feels the dilemma of being compelled to deify the absurd, the saddest downfall which mankind, conscious of possessing reason, can experience.

Returning to the _Daughter of the Air_, this question suggests itself: If we are now enabled to transport ourselves to so remote an atmosphere, without knowing the locality or understanding the language, to enter familiarly into a foreign literature without previous historical research, and to bring home to ourselves in one example the quality and flavor of a certain age, the mind and genius of a people--to whom do we owe thanks for all this? Evidently to the translator, who all his life and with laborious industry has thus utilized his talent to our benefit. Our warmest thanks, therefore, we present to Dr. Gries; he has given us a gift whose value is overwhelming, a gift in considering which we gladly refrain from all comparisons, because it delights us by its clearness, wins us by its charm, and by the complete harmony of all its parts convinces us that nothing in it could or should have been different.