Part 21

Perhaps not one of the regular German Romanticists is so completely the poet of Romantic longing as Shack Staffeldt, who, though a German born, wrote in Danish. But he does not depict the longing which produced outward restlessness. His longing is far too deep to be satisfied by wandering about the world. It is in the writings of certain of the later Romanticists that longing appears as the restless desire which drives man from place to place.

Of this it seems to me that we have the most typical description in Eichendorff's novel, _Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts_ ("The Life of a Ne'er-Do-Well"). Published in 1824, this book was written twenty years after _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_, though by a man only ten years Novalis's junior, a disciple of Tieck, an ultra-Romanticist of a pious, amiable disposition.

Joseph, Baron von Eichendorff, the son of a nobleman of high position, was born in Upper Silesia in 1788. His family being Catholic, his early education was superintended by a Catholic ecclesiastic. In 1805 he went to the University of Halle to study law, and, amongst other lectures, attended those of Professors Schleiermacher and Steffens, the latter of whom had a special attraction for him. It was here that he made his first acquaintance with Romantic literature; Novalis opened to him a new dream-world, rich in promise. In his very first holidays he went to Wandsbeck to visit old Claudius, whom he had loved from his early boyhood. Claudius's paper, the _Wandsbecker Bote_, had been his greatest comfort in the days when his tutor plagued him with instructive children's books. There is something of Claudius's mild humour in Eichendorffs own poetry.

The year 1807 found him at Heidelberg, where he made the acquaintance of the Romanticists living there, Arnim, Brentano, and Görres being the most notable. He assisted in editing _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ (a famous collection of popular songs and poetry), and collaborated with Görres in his work on the old popular literature. In 1809 he met Arnim and Brentano again in Berlin; here he also made the acquaintance of Adam Müller, who exercised a considerable influence upon him. He was strongly influenced, too, by Fichte's lectures.

As there seemed no prospect of a career for him in Prussia, he went in 1810 to Vienna, intending to enter the service of the Austrian Government. In Vienna he spent much of his time in the company of Friedrich Schlegel, formed a close friendship with Schlegel's stepson, Philipp Veit, the painter, and wrote his first, exaggeratedly Romantic story, _Ahnung und Gegenwart_, which is nothing but a collection of lyric dreams and fancies. Nevertheless, in this work, as well as in his later productions, it was his desire to contrast the "fervent harmony existing between healthy, fresh humanity and nature, in forest, stream, and mountain, shining mornings and dreamy starlit nights, with the empty pleasures of the great world, and the affected prudery or real depravity of the period." As in all his works, adventure predominates. As soon as he quits the domain of merry vagabond life and romantic adventure, he is in danger of relapsing into the supernatural and horrible.

Instead of entering the Austrian Government service as he had intended, he determined to take part in the war against Napoleon. He joined Lützow's famous Free Corps, and was attached to a militia battalion. He had just been discharged when the news came of Napoleon's return from Elba. He immediately enlisted again, and entered Paris with the German troops.

In course of time he received an appointment in the Prussian Kultusministerium (department of religion and education), and developed into a conscientious and capable official. In 1840, a dispute between the Government and the Roman Catholic bishops produced strained relations between him (the good Catholic) and the head of his department. He sent in his resignation, but it was not immediately accepted; he was commissioned to prepare a report on the restoration of the castle of Marienburg.

Having made himself master of the Spanish language, he translated some of Calderon's _Autos Sacramentales_. This pursuit led to a still closer connection between him and the leaders of the Ultramontane party. In his later years he criticised modern German literature in the spirit of orthodox Catholicism, writing of the Catholic tendency of the Romanticists as if it were the most important and best feature of the school, and treating the change of opinion of some of the leaders in regard to this matter as a falling away from the truth and a sign of literary decadence. He looked with contempt upon Schiller's heroes, with their "rhetorical ideality," and upon the symbolic "Naturpoesie" of Goethe's shorter poems. "How different," he says, "is the great idea of Romanticism, _homesickness_, longing for the lost home--that is to say, for the universal, the Catholic Church." With these unsound theories Eichendorff combined real and considerable lyrical talent. No one has given, in a condensed form, better representations of the longings and the ideals of Romanticism. In the little story, _Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts_, we seem to hear young Romanticism twittering and singing as if he had caught it bodily and shut it up in a cage. It is all there--the fragrance of the woods and the song of the birds; longing for travel and delight in it, especially when Italy is the goal; Sunday emotions and moonlight; genuine Romantic vagrancy and idleness--such idleness that from want of use the limbs actually begin to fall out of joint, and the hero begins to feel as though he "were tumbling to pieces."

The Ne'er-Do-Well is a miller's son, young and poor, whose only pleasure in life is to lie under the trees and look up into the sky, or to roam aimlessly about the country with his zither, singing such sad and beautiful songs that the hearts of all who hear him "long." "Every one," he says, "has his allotted place upon this earth, his warm hearth, his cup of coffee, his wife, his glass of wine of an evening, and is content. But I am content nowhere." He, the humble gardener (for such, when he does work, is his occupation), adores a high-born, lovely lady whom he has only seen once or twice; he addresses her in a beautiful and touching song:--

"Wohin ich geh' und schaue In Feld und Wald und Thal, Vom Berg hinab in die Aue, Vielschöne, hohe Fraue, Grüss ich dich tausendmal.

In meinem Garten find' ich Viel Blumen, schön und fein, Viel Kränze wohl draus wind' ich, Und tausend Gedanken bind' ich Und Grüsse mit darein.

"Ihr darf ich keinen reichen, Sie ist zu hoch und schön; Sie müssen alle verbleichen, Die Liebe nur ohne Gleichen Bleibt ewig im Herzen stehn.

"Ich schein' wohl froher Dinge Und schaffe auf und ab, Und ob das Herz zerspringe, Ich grabe fort und singe Und grab' mir bald mein Grab."[3]

Through his lady's influence he is promoted to the post of rent-collector for the castle. He inherits from his predecessor a magnificent dressing-gown, red with yellow spots, a pair of green slippers, a nightcap, and some long-stemmed pipes.

Arrayed in his new splendour, and smoking the longest pipe he can find, he lives a quiet, easy life for some time, digging up all the potatoes and vegetables in his garden and planting flowers in their stead, listening with rapture to a distant hunting or post horn, and placing a bouquet every morning upon a stone table where his lady is certain to find it. This goes on until she vanishes from his horizon. As he is sitting alone one day over his account-book, his zither lying beside him, a sunbeam falls through the window upon its dusty strings. "It touched a string in my heart. 'Yes,' said I; 'come away, my faithful zither! Our kingdom is not of this world!'" So he leaves behind his account-book, dressing-gown, slippers, and pipe, and wanders out into the wide world; to Italy first.

This Ne'er-Do-Well is the most comical, awkward, childlike creature one can imagine; in mind he is about ten years old, and he never grows any older. Like Andersen's heroes, the Improvisatore and O.T., he is repeatedly saved from temptation simply by his ignorance and inexperience. He never realises what is going on around him. Things happen to him without his doing anything to bring them about. He is the central figure of a group of characters who all pursue callings which leave them as free as he is himself--painters travelling to Italy, an artist who runs away with his lady-love, musicians wandering from town to town, and roaming students, who trudge along, singing student songs. Compared with this life of wandering and seeking and expectation, ordinary, every-day life naturally appears excessively monotonous. When the hero returns to his native town, he finds the new rent-collector sitting at his door, wearing the same spotted dressing-gown, the same slippers, &c. After having spent his life seeking for his "blue flower," he finds it at last at home. His first rapture is described playfully, almost in Hans Andersen's manner, as follows: "It was such a pleasure to hear her talk so brightly and trustfully to me, that I could have listened to her till morning. I was as happy as I could be. I took a handful of almonds, which I had brought all the way from Italy, out of my pocket. She took some, and we sat and cracked them, and looked contentedly out over the peaceful scene."

The Ne'er-Do-Well may be regarded as the representative, the spokesman, of the ornamental, profitless arts, and of infinite longing. _Infinite longing!_ Let us imprint these words in our memory, for they are the foundation-stone of Romantic poetry.

The longing took curiously morbid forms in the less healthy Romantic souls. The well-known German author, Franz Horn, informs us in his autobiography that at the age of three or four he was already capable of poetic longing and suffering, and of divining life in apparently dead things. He goes on to say that the child-like mysticism of a certain popular refrain had a perfectly magic attraction for him. He quotes the verse in question, and it proves to be none other than the good old rhyme: "Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home!"

"Maikäfer flieg! Dein Vater ist im Krieg, Deine Mutter ist im Pommerland, Und Pommerland ist abgebrannt, Maikäfer flieg!"[4]

The other children were hard-hearted enough to laugh at this poem, but to him it seemed most touching. The unhappy cockchafer was fatherless and motherless. His father was in the wars, and "what might not come of that?" And his mother? Of her "the news was still more uncertain." She was in far-off Pomerania, and Pomerania was on fire! What scope for fancy! And there was the poor cockchafer, too, borne on the wings of his longing out into the wide, wide world, seeking, ever seeking.--We positively feel as if we were turning into children again.

But let us return to the idea that underlies all this. The longing of the individual for infinite happiness rests, as has already been said, upon the belief that this infinite happiness is attainable by man. But this belief, in its turn, rests upon the individual's Romantic conviction of his own infinite importance. The doctrine of immortality itself is only a result of belief in the cosmic importance of the individual. And this belief in the infinite importance of each separate individual is genuinely medieval. Whole sciences, such as astrology, were founded upon it. The very stars of heaven were supposed to have a close connection with the destinies of individual men, and actually to occupy themselves with them. Heaven and earth and all that in them is, revolved round man. The Romanticists naturally feel the want of astrology, and would fain have the science restored. What they call the "blue flower" is what in astrology was called a man's planet, and in alchemy, the philosopher's stone.

In his lectures _Upon the Literature, Art, and Spirit of the Age_ (1802), A. W. Schlegel writes: "In the same sense in which we may call Kepler the last astrologist, we may demand that _astronomy should become astrology_ again. Astrology fell into disrepute because it made pretensions to science which it could not sustain; but the fact of its having made such pretensions does not take away the idea, the imperishable truths, which lie at its foundation. There is unquestionably something more sublime in the idea of the dynamic influence of the stars, in the supposition that they are animated by reason, and, like subordinate deities, exercise creative power in their appointed spheres, than in the theory that they are dead, mechanically governed masses." And in a letter to Buntzen, Heiberg writes: "It must be allowed that the Middle Ages, with their alchemistic and astrological superstitions, which, albeit superstitions, were based upon a belief in the unity of nature and mind ... possessed more of the _true scientific spirit than the present day_, with its deliberate renunciation of the one thing which in the long run is of any account." In the same strain (in his essay on Hveen) he praises astrology, as "based upon the profound mysticism of the Middle Ages." When even Heiberg could praise Tycho Brahe for his astrological bias, can we wonder that Grundtvig defended his hypothesis of the earth being the centre of the universe? O Romanticism! Romanticism!

The Romanticists aimed at founding a philosophy and a literature upon want and longing--that is to say, upon the idea of the infinite importance of the individual. The man who bases his philosophy of life upon want is certainly more reasonable than the man who bases it upon either present happiness or the pleasures and bliss of a future existence; for all the happiness we know is undermined by sorrow and by insufficiency, and thus it is on the whole better and safer to build upon want and desire. But the Romanticists do not build upon desire alone, but also upon its satisfaction; they yearn, they wander about in longing quest of the "blue flower," which beckons to them from afar.

Longing, however, is inactivity, is nourished and thrives upon inactivity. He who has left the Romantic philosophy behind him will not base his life upon such a foundation.

Longing engenders the impotent wish. But the Romantic wish is so instinct with genius, that its fulfilment is permitted--in the Romantic world. What desire promises, life fulfils. Fortune comes to the genuine Romantic hero while he sleeps. Romantic literature consequently leaves the simple-minded reader with the impression of a world where everything comes to those who know how to long and to desire ardently enough, where all hindrances are swept aside without labour, without understanding, without trouble.

It is eternally true that we long; and it is no less true that we must build upon something certain. Amidst all the uncertainty, insecurity, and doubt wherewith we are surrounded, there is one thing certain, one thing which cannot be explained away, and that is suffering. And equally certain is the good of the alleviation of suffering and of release from it. It is certain that it is extremely disagreeable to endure pain, to be fettered, or to be imprisoned; and it is equally certain that it is a great relief to be cured, to have one's fetters loosed, one's prison door flung wide open. _Hic Rhodus, hic salta_! Here is a deed to be done, a stroke to be struck for liberty. We may wander about, full of uncertainty and doubt, not knowing what to believe or what to do; but from the moment we come upon a fellow-being with his fingers jammed in some heavy door that has shut upon them, there is no longer any doubt what we have to do. We must try to open the door and release the hand.

And, fortunately or unfortunately, it so happens that there are always plenty of human beings whose hands are caught fast, plenty who suffer, plenty who sit in all manner of chains--chains of ignorance, of dependence, of stupidity, of slavery. To free these must be the object of our lives. The Romanticist egotistically pursues his personal happiness, and believes himself to be of infinite importance. The child of the new age will neither scan the heavens in search of his star nor the far horizon in search of the "blue flower." Longing is inactivity. He will act. He will understand what Goethe meant by making Wilhelm Meister end his life as a physician.

If it is impossible to found a satisfactory philosophy of life upon longing, it is equally impossible to found upon it a literature which has any connection with life, and which is capable of satisfying in the long run. The task of literature in all ages is to give a condensed representation of the life of a people and an age. Romanticism contemptuously refused this task. Novalis in Germany and Shack Staffeldt in Denmark present the most typical examples of the manner in which it turned its back on outward reality, to create a poetico-philosophic system out of the mind and the poetical longing of the author. It does not represent human life in all its breadth and depth, but the dreams of a few highly intellectual individuals. The cloud-city of Aristophanes, with its air-castles, is the sacred city and goal of its longing.

[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!"

XIV

ARNIM AND BRENTANO

Herder's _Stimmen 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 of _Des 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 title _Trösteinsamkeit_ ("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.