Part 14

Such excellence older readers are likely to prize more highly, for they like to enjoy in comfort a perfectly adequate presentation; younger men, on the contrary, actively engaged in work, coöperating and struggling, do not always acknowledge merit which they themselves hope to emulate.

All honor then to the translator, who concentrated his energies on a single point, and went ahead in a _single_ direction, so that we could enjoy in a _thousand_ different ways!

MOLIÈRE’S _MISANTHROPE_

(1828)

_Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Molière_, par J. Taschereau. Paris, 1828.

This work deserves to be read carefully by all true lovers of literature, because it gives us new insight into the qualities and individuality of a great man. It will also be welcome to his devoted admirers, although they hardly need this in order to treasure him highly; to the attentive reader he has revealed himself sufficiently in his works.

Examine the _Misanthrope_ carefully and ask yourself whether a poet has ever represented his inner spirit more completely or more admirably. We can well call the content and treatment of this play “tragic.” Such an impression at least it has always left with us, because that mood is brought before our mind’s eye which often in itself brings us to despair, and seems as if it would make the world unbearable.

Here is represented the type of man who despite great cultivation has yet remained natural, and who with himself, as well as others, would like only too well to express himself with complete truth and sincerity. But we see him in conflict with the social world, where one cannot move without dissimulation and shallowness.

In contrast to such a type Timon is merely a comic character. I wish that a talented poet would depict such a visionary who was always deceiving himself as to the world, and then was greatly put out with it, as if it had deceived him.

OLD GERMAN FOLKSONGS

(1806)

_Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Old German Songs_, edited by Achim von Arnim and Klemens Brentano. Heidelberg, 1806.

We are decidedly of the opinion that for the present criticism should not concern itself with this collection. The editors have collected and arranged this volume with such love and diligence, such good taste and delicacy of feeling, that their countrymen should first of all show their gratitude for this loving care by their good-will, their interest, and their sympathetic appreciation. This little book ought to be found in every home in which lively and healthy people dwell,--at the window, under the mirror, or wherever else songbooks and cookbooks are usually found, so that it may be opened in any happy or unhappy mood, and one may always find something which strikes a similar or a new chord, even though one must perhaps turn over a few pages.

But the most fitting place for this volume would be upon the piano of a lover or a master of music, so that full justice might be done the songs by setting them to old familiar tunes, or suitable tunes might be adapted to them, or, God willing, new and striking melodies might be composed through their inspiration.

If these songs were then borne from ear to ear, from mouth to mouth, clothed in their own melodious harmony, if they gradually returned regenerated and enhanced in beauty to the people from whom they, so to speak, have in part sprung, then we might truly say that the little book had fulfilled its mission, and could now be lost again in its written or printed form, because it had become part and parcel of the life and culture of the nation.

But since in our modern times, especially in Germany, nothing seems to exist or to have any effect unless it is written about again and again, adjudged and made a bone of contention, a few remarks may not improperly be introduced here about this collection,--a few observations which may not enhance our enjoyment of the book, but at least will not impair or destroy it.

What may at the outset be said unreservedly in praise of the collection is that it is thoroughly varied and characteristic. It contains more than two hundred poems of the last three centuries, all of them differing so much from one another in sense, conception, sound, and manner that the same criticism cannot apply to any two of them. We shall therefore assume the agreeable task of characterizing [some of] them in order as the inspiration of the moment may prompt us:

_The Wunderhorn._ Fairy-like, childlike, pleasing.

_The Sultan’s Little Daughter._ Tender Christian feeling, charming.

_Tell and His Child._ Honest and solid.

_Grandmother Snake-cook._ Deep, enigmatic, dramatic, admirably handled.

_Isaiah’s Face._ Barbaric grandeur.

_Fire Incantation._ Appropriate and true to the spirit of the brigand.

_Poor Schwartenhals._ Roguish, whimsical, jolly.

_Death and the Maiden._ After the manner of the Dance of Death; like a woodcut; admirable.

_Nocturnal Musicians._ Droll, extravagant, inimitable.

_The Stubborn Bride._ Humorous, somewhat grotesque.

_Cloister-shy._ Capriciously confused, yet to the purpose.

_The Braggart Knight._ Very good in the realistic-romantic manner.

_The Black-brown Witch._ Rather confused in transmission, but the theme of inestimable value.

_Love Without Caste._ Romantic twilight.

_The Hospitality of Winter._ Written with a great deal of elegance.

_The High-born Maiden._ Christian pedantry, but not wholly unpoetical.

_Love Spins no Silk._ Charmingly confused and therefore rousing the imagination.

_The Faith of an Hussar._ Swiftness and lightness expressed in a wonderful way.

_The Ratcatcher of Hameln._ Tends toward the manner of the ballad-monger, but not coarse.

_Tuck Your Dress, Gretlein._ After the manner of vagabond poets; unexpectedly epigrammatic.

_The Song of the Ring._ Romantic tenderness.

_The Knight and the Maiden._ Romantic twilight; powerful.

_Harvest Song._ A Catholic funeral hymn; good enough to be Protestant!

_A Surfeit of Learning._ A gallant piece; but the pedant cannot get rid of his learning.

_The Fight at Murten._ Realistic, probably modernized.

_The Haste of Time in God._ Christian, somewhat too historical, but quite suited to its subject, and very good.

_Reveille._ Priceless for any one who has the imagination to understand it.

_Drought._ Thought, feeling, presentation everywhere right.

_The Drummer Boy._ Lively presentation of a distressing incident. A poem which the discriminating will find it difficult to match.

_Should and Must._ Perfect in plan, although here in a dismembered and curiously restored condition.

_A Friendly Service._ German romanticism, pious and pleasing.

_Cradle Song._ Rhyming nonsense, perfectly suited to put one to sleep.

_Miller’s Farewell._ To one who can grasp the situation, a priceless thing; but the first stanza requires an emendation.

_Abbot Neidhard and His Monks._ A prank of Till Eulenspiegel of the very best sort, and very well told.

_The Horrible Marriage._ An extraordinary case; in the ballad-monger’s manner, but admirably handled.

_The Excellent Comrade._ Nonsense; but happy the man who can sing it agreeably!

_Unrequited Love._ Very good, but tending toward a rather Philistine prose.

_The Little Tree._ Full of longing and playfulness, yet full of fervor.

_Mésalliance._ Excellent enigmatic fable, but a clearer treatment might have been more pleasing to the reader.

With these impromptu characterizations--for how could they be other than impromptu?--we do not intend to anticipate the judgment of any readers of the book, and least of all those readers who by their own lyric enjoyment and the appreciation of a sympathetic heart can get more from the poems themselves than any brief characterizations like ours can ever give them. We should like, however, in conclusion to say something about the value of the collection as a whole.

We have been accustomed for years to give the name of “folksongs” to this species of poetry, not because it is really composed by the people or for the people, but because it embraces in itself something so vigorous and wholesome that the healthy stock of the nation understands it, remembers it, appropriates it, and at times propagates it. Poetry of this kind is as true poetry as can possibly exist. It has an incredible charm even for us who stand on a higher plane of culture, just as the sight of young people and the memory of one’s own youth have for old age. Art in them is in conflict with nature; and it is because of their gradual development, their mutual influence, and their striving for form that these songs seem to seek a further perfection when they have already reached their goal. True poetic genius, wherever it appears, is perfect in itself: no matter what imperfections of language, of external technique, or anything else, stand in its way, it possesses the higher inner form which ultimately has everything at its command, and often in an obscure and imperfect medium produces a more striking effect than it can later produce in a more perfect medium. The vivid poetic perception of a limited state or condition gives to what is purely individual a universal significance, finite to be sure, but after all limitless and unrestricted, so that within a small compass we fancy we see the whole world. The promptings of a profound intuition urge the poet to a significant brevity; and what would seem in prose unpardonably topsy-turvy is to the true poetic sense a necessity and a virtue; even a solecism, if it appeals seriously to our whole imagination, stimulates it to a surprisingly high degree of enjoyment.

In characterizing the individual poems we avoided the kind of formal classification which may more readily be made in the future when several authentic and typical examples of every kind have been collected. But we cannot conceal our own preference for those songs in which lyric, dramatic, and epic treatment is interwoven in such a way that a problem, at first shrouded in mystery, is finally solved skilfully, or even, if you will, epigrammatically. The well-known ballad, “Why dois your brand sae drop wi’ bluid, Edward, Edward?” is, especially in the original, the most perfect example of this species of poetry.

We hope that the editors will be encouraged to publish in the near future another volume of poems from the rich store collected by them as well as from those already printed. We trust that when they do this they will guard themselves carefully against the sing-song of the Minnesingers, the blatant coarseness and the platitudes of the Mastersingers, as well as against everything monkish and pedantic. If they should collect a second volume of these German songs, they might also be asked to select songs of the same kind from foreign nations and to give them in the original and in translations that are either already extant or may be made by them for this special purpose. The most of these, to be sure, will be from the English, fewer from the French, some of a different type from the Spanish, and almost none from the Italian.

If from the outset we have doubted the competence of criticism, even in its highest sense, to judge this work, we have all the more reason to ignore that kind of research which attempts to separate the songs that are genuine from those that have been more or less restored. The editors, so far as it is possible in these later times, have caught the spirit of their task, and we ought to be grateful to them even for those poems which have been oddly restored or made up of heterogeneous parts or are absolutely spurious. Who does not know what a song has to undergo when it has been for some time in the mouth of the people, and not merely uneducated people either? Why should he who finally writes it down and inserts it in a collection with other poems not have a certain personal right to it? We do not possess any poetic or sacred book of earlier times which has not depended for its final form on the skill or whim of him who first wrote it down or some later copyist.

If we accept the printed collection lying before us from this point of view, and with a grateful and kindly spirit, we may charge the editors all the more earnestly to keep their poetic archives pure, lofty, and in good order. It serves no purpose to print everything; but they will place the whole nation in their debt if they contribute toward that thorough, faithful, and intelligent history of our poetry and our poetic culture which from now on must be the ultimate goal of scholars.

FOLKSONGS AGAIN COMMENDED

(1823)

My old love for original folksongs has not lessened, but has rather been increased by receiving valuable communications from many quarters.

In particular, I have received from the East, some separately, and some in collections, such songs of many different peoples; they extend from Olympus to the Baltic Sea, and from that line towards the northeast.

My hesitation in publishing any of them is due partly to the fact that many varied interests have drawn me here and there and so prevented me, but also more particularly to the following circumstance.

All true national poems have a small circle of ideas, to which they are always limited, and in which they revolve. For that reason they become monotonous in mass, because they express one and the same limited situation.

Examine the six modern Greek songs inserted above; every one will admire the powerful contrast between the virile freedom of spirit in the wilderness and a government, orderly indeed, but still barbaric and of insufficient power. A dozen or more would be sufficient to exhibit this refractory character in them, and show us repetitions such as we find in our own folksongs, where we often come upon more or less happy variations of the same theme, as well as mixed and heterogeneous fragments.

It is remarkable, nevertheless, how much the individual peoples mentioned above differ among themselves in their songs; this characteristic we shall not discuss abstractly, but will rather develop by means of examples from time to time in the ensuing numbers.

Since contributions for this purpose will be highly welcome from all quarters, we request the friend who showed us at Wiesbaden in the summer of 1815 some Greek songs in the original and in a very happy translation, promising to send us soon a copy which never however appeared, to get in touch with us again and cooperate with us in this praiseworthy undertaking.

LAURENCE STERNE

(1827)

In the swift progress of literary, as of human, culture it happens commonly that we forget the person to whom we owe the first stimulus, the original influence. What is, and what flourishes here and now, we believe had to be so and had to happen so. But in this we are wrong, for we lose sight of those who guided us to the right path. From this point of view I call attention to a man who first gave the stimulus to the great epoch in the second half of the last century, an epoch of clearer human knowledge, nobler toleration, gentler humanity.

Of this man, to whom I owe so much, I am often reminded, especially when the talk is of truth and error, which fluctuate here and there among mankind. A third word may be added of gentler meaning, that is, “singularity” (_Eigenheit_), for there are certain human phenomena which can be best expressed by this term. Viewed externally they are erroneous, but from within full of truth, and rightly considered, of the highest psychological importance. They are those qualities which constitute the individual; the universal is thereby specified, and in the most peculiar of them there always shines some intelligence, reason, and good-will which charms us and fetters us. From this standpoint, “Yorick” Sterne, revealing in the tenderest way the human in men, has called these “singularities,” in so far as they express themselves in action, “ruling passions.” For certainly they are what drive men in a certain direction, push them along on a consistent track, and without requiring reflection, conviction, purpose or strength of will, keep them continually in life and motion. It is immediately apparent how closely related habit is to them; for it promotes that convenience in which our idiosyncrasies love to saunter undisturbed.

THE ENGLISH REVIEWERS

(1821)

English critics, as we have come to know them from their various Reviews, deserve a great deal of respect. Their acquaintance not only with their own literature, but also with that of other countries, is most gratifying; the seriousness and the thoroughness with which they go to work arouse our admiration, and we are glad to confess that much may be learned from them. Moreover, we find ourselves very favorably impressed by the attitude these men take toward their calling as critics and the respect which they have for the intelligence of the public,--a public, to be sure, which is very attentive to all things written and spoken, but is probably hard to satisfy, and ever disposed to contradict and argue.

No matter how thorough and comprehensive the presentation of a case by an attorney before a body of judges or by a speaker before a provincial diet may be, some opponent will very soon come to the fore with forcible arguments; the attentive and critical hearers will themselves be divided, and many an important matter is often decided by a very small majority.

Such a spirit of opposition, even though passive, we occasionally assume toward critics, both at home and abroad, whose knowledge of facts we by no means deny and whose premises we often grant, but whose conclusions nevertheless we do not share.

Still we must be especially forbearing to the English when they appear harsh and unjust toward foreign productions; for those who count Shakespeare among their forebears may well allow themselves to be carried away by their pride of ancestry.

GERMAN LITERATURE IN GOETHE’S YOUTH

(1811-14)

So much has been written about the condition of German literature at that time,[12] and to such good purpose, that every one who takes any interest in it can obtain full information; the opinions with regard to it, too, are fairly unanimous; so that anything I say about it here, in my fragmentary and desultory fashion, is not so much an analysis of its characteristics as of its relation to me. I will therefore first speak of those branches which especially react upon the public, those two hereditary foes of all easy-going life, and of all cheerful, self-sufficient, living poetry:--I mean, satire and criticism.

In quiet times every one desires to live after his own fashion; the citizen wishes to carry on his trade or his business, and then enjoy himself; so, too, the author likes to produce something, see his work published, and, in the consciousness of having done something good and useful, looks, if not for remuneration, at any rate for praise. From this state of tranquillity the citizen is roused by the satirist, the author by the critic, and so it comes that peaceful society is rudely disturbed.

The literary epoch in which I was born developed out of the preceding one by opposition. Germany, so long inundated by foreign people, pervaded by other nations, employing foreign languages in learned and diplomatic transactions, could not possibly cultivate her own. Together with so many new ideas, innumerable strange words were obtruded necessarily and unnecessarily upon her, and even for objects already known people were induced to make use of foreign expressions and turns of language. The Germans, brutalized by nearly two centuries of misery and confusion, took lessons from the French in manners and from the Latins in the art of expression. This art ought to have been cultivated in German, since the use of French and Latin idioms, and their partial translation into German, made both their social and business style ridiculous. Besides this, they recklessly adopted figures of speech belonging to the southern languages, and employed them most extravagantly. In the same way the stately ceremoniousness of prince-like Roman citizens had been transferred to the educated circles in German provincial towns. As a result, they nowhere felt themselves at home, least of all in their own houses.

But in this epoch works of genius had already appeared, and the German independence of mind and enjoyment of life began to assert themselves. This cheerful spirit, combined with an honest sincerity, led to the demand for purity and naturalness in writing, without the intermixture of foreign words, and in accordance with the dictates of plain common sense. By these praiseworthy endeavors, however, the flood-gates were thrown open to a prolix national insipidity, nay, the dam was broken down, and an inundation was bound to follow. However, a stiff pedantry continued for some time to hold sway in the four learned professions, and eventually, at a much later date, fled for refuge first to one and then to another.

Men of parts, children of nature looking freely about them, had therefore two objects on which they could exercise their faculties, against which they could direct their energies, and, as the matter was of no great importance, vent their mischievousness; these were, on the one hand, a language disfigured by foreign words, forms, and turns of speech; and on the other, the worthlessness of such writings as had been careful to avoid those faults; but it never occurred to any one that each evil was being combated by fostering the other.

Liscow, a daring young man, first ventured to attack by name a shallow, silly writer, whose foolish behavior soon gave him an opportunity for yet more drastic treatment. He then sought other subjects, invariably directing his satire against particular objects and persons, whom he despised and sought to render despicable; indeed, he pursued them with passionate hatred. But his career was short; for he died early, and was remembered only as a restless, irregular youth. The talent and character shown in what he did, in spite of the smallness of his production, may well have seemed valuable to his countrymen: for the Germans have always shown a peculiar piety towards the promise of genius prematurely cut off. Suffice it to say that in our early youth Liscow was praised and commended to us as an excellent satirist, who might justly claim preference even before the universally beloved Rabener. But we did not gain much from him; for the only thing we discovered from his works was that he considered the absurd absurd, and this seemed to us a matter of course.

Rabener, well educated, grown up under good school discipline, of a cheerful and by no means passionate or malicious disposition, turned to general satire. His censure of so-called vices and follies is the outcome of clear-sighted and unimpassioned common sense, and of a definite moral conception as to what the world ought to be. His denunciation of faults and failings is harmless and cheerful; and in order to excuse even the slight daring of his writings, he assumes that the attempt to improve fools by ridicule is not in vain.

Rabener’s personal character was such as we do not often meet. A thorough and strict man of business, he did his duty, and so gained the good opinion of his fellow-townsmen and the confidence of his superiors; at the same time, by way of relaxation, he indulged in a genial contempt for all that immediately surrounded him. Learned pedants, vain youngsters, every sort of narrowness and conceit, he made fun of rather than satirized, and even his satire expressed no scorn. Just in the same way he jested about his own condition, his unhappiness, his life, and his death.