Part 27

And the equally sentimental Salome blesses him. Her son Benoni, too, blesses his murderer, immediately after which his hands and feet are cut off, and he is boiled in oil. Presently two loud axe-strokes are heard--Abir's feet have been cut off. Juda is tortured next; and so on it goes. Antiochus, the barbarous king, or Werner, the equally barbarous poet, has the children broken on the wheel joint by joint, and their limbs torn off. The mother, who is compelled to witness it all, feels nothing but the rapturous bliss of martyrdom; and when Antiochus, in his insane sentimentality, bows before her a second time, "deeply moved," crying: "Willst, grosse Niobe, Du Dich von mir im Zorne trennen?" ("And must thou part from me in wrath, great Niobe?"), she lays her right hand on his head, and says "very solemnly": "Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebt!--Lern' sterbend ihn erkennen!" ("I know that my Redeemer liveth!--Ere death come, mayst thou know him too!").

In the last scene the background opens, and we see the instruments of torture and the huge copper full of boiling oil, in which Benoni lies. His wife is staring down into it. The flames of the stake are still blazing. Salome's spirit appears above them and extinguishes them.

And there was a time when this was considered poetry! Goethe took a warm interest in Werner, and had several of his plays performed in the court theatre at Weimar. In 1808 he wrote of him to Jacobi: "It seems strange to an old pagan like me, that I can see the cross planted on my own territory, and hear Christ's blood and wounds preached poetically, without its being actually offensive to me. The standpoint to which philosophy has raised us makes this degree of tolerance obligatory. We have learned to value the ideal, even when it manifests itself in the strangest forms."

Few educated men will be inclined to take so mild and tolerant a view of the matter to-day. The development is utterly repugnant to us. For we have seen to what it led. We have seen that this "Christian poetry" helped to bring about the worst intellectual reaction of modern times. Men played so long with the idea of the purifying flames of the stake that they began to extol them in sober earnest. It is but a step from Werner to Görres, who ardently defends exorcism of evil spirits and punishment of witchcraft; and the distance is no greater between Görres and Joseph de Maistre, who writes: "In many a well-governed country in Europe they say of a man who has set fire to an inhabited house and been burned with it: 'It is only what he deserved.' Is a human being who has been guilty of any amount of theoretical and practical (i.e. religious) evil-doing less deserving of being burned? When one reflects that it was undoubtedly in the power of the Inquisition to have prevented the French Revolution, one cannot feel certain that the sovereign who calmly discarded such a weapon did not deal a fatal blow to humanity."

If Romantic Christianity is, as Ruge says, the Christianity which cannot be resolved into humanitarianism, then Joseph de Maistre is a genuine Romanticist.

The whole history of Romanticism substantiates Ruge's famous definition: "A Romanticist is an author who, aided by all the intellectual advantages of our day, assails the periods of 'enlightenment' and of revolution, and reprobates and combats the principle of pure humanitarianism in the domains of science, art, morality, and politics."

[1] "It is not, then, so much religion that influences me, as strong affection for the olden times, and grief that we of to-day are so unlike those heroes of the faith."

[2] "What I had taken to be ravine and mountain, wood, meadow, and cliff, was one great head, the forest its hair and beard. The giant smiles to see his children happy at their play. He beckons, and straightway through the forest is heard a rustle of holy awe. I fell upon my knees, trembling with fear. I whispered to the little child: 'What is that great being yonder?' The child replied: 'The fear of him comes upon thee because thou hast been permitted to see him without warning; that is our father, our preserver; his name is Pan.'"

[3]

"Beloved, thou hast pierced my heart, Oh, bitterer this than hell's worst smart!"

[4]

"The child, a heavy weight, you have borne; Flap your wings at the mother, all forlorn; A weary way you have had to bear it, Catch hold of her cheek with your bill, and tear it," &c., &c.

[5]

"In my irritation, In the journey's agitation, I crushed the child," &c., &c.

[6] Cf. Otto Brahm, _Heinrich von Kleist_.

[7] This speech is taken from the early edition. "To think that he could crush this breast, Prothoe! a breast so full of song, Asteria! At every touch upon its strings it gave forth melody."

[8] "The utmost that human powers can do, I have done; setting my all upon one throw of the dice, I have attempted the impossible. There the dice lie--and I have lost, have lost; 'tis this that I must force myself to understand."

[9] "Set all the dogs upon him! Drive on the elephants with firebrands, that they may crush him under foot! Press on the chariots, that their scythes may mow his lusty limbs!"

[10] "'At him, good dogs!' she cries, 'at him, good Tigris, Leäne, Sphinx, Melampus, Dirke, and Hyrkaon!' and, shouting thus, she rushes madly at him with the pack, and, like a dog among the dogs, catches him by the plume of his helmet and pulls him down, the earth shuddering at his fall. One has him by the neck, one by the breast. Weltering in his blood, he touches her soft cheek and cries: 'Penthesilea! sweet love! art thou beside thyself? Is this the bridal festival thou promisedst?' The lioness, the hungry lioness roaring for her prey on the barren plain, would have listened to him--but she--she tears the breastplate from his breast, and sets her teeth deep in his flesh--she and her hounds in rivalry; Oxus and Sphinx have him by the right breast, she by the left. When I arrived, the blood was streaming from her mouth and hands."

[11] "Many is the woman who, with her arms round her lover's neck, has said: 'I love thee so, that I could eat thee.' If the fool tried, she was disgusted. It was not so with me, beloved. When I hung upon thy neck I said it not; I did it. I was not so mad as I seemed to thee to be."

[12] "Kisses and bites--the two words rhyme (in German); and when one loves with all one's heart, it often happens that one confuses them."

[13] Jul. Schmidt, _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_, ii. 307.

[14]

"Art thou not conscious of him in the world, his work? Dost thou not see him in the sunset glow That falls so softly on the silent woods? Dost thou not hear him in the rippling stream, And in the nightingale's melodious notes? Is it in vain the heaven-high mountains speak, And hissing foam of rock-torn waterfall? When bright the sun into his temple shines, And all created life pulsates with joy, And magnifies its great Creator's name, Dost thou not seek the shrine of thy pure heart And worship there thine idol?"

[15] "Thou art armed in adamant, thou holy one, against every approach of evil. The highly-favoured one embraced by thee leaves thee still innocent and pure."

[16] "They write their plans for liberating Germany in cipher, and send them to each other by messengers whom the Romans catch and hang; they meet in the dusk, they eat, they drink, and sleep, when night comes, with their wives.... The hope that Augustus may die to-morrow leads them to live on thus, covered with shame, from one week to another."

[17] "How it all happened I'll tell you again; to-day I'm in too great a hurry."

[18] Adolf Wilbrandt, _Heinrich von Kleist_, 1863; Otto Brehm, _Heinrich von Kleist_, 1884.

[19] Hitzig, _Lebens-Abriss Zacharias Werners_, 1823; Schütz, _Zacharias Werner, Biographie und Charakteristik_, 1841.

[20] "Life is the destiny of everything; through death comes birth; not one grain of seed is lost. He who has struggled through blood and darkness has overcome. All hail, O bleeding knight!"

[21] "You wicked Jacques! What? Die and leave your old comrade? No, no, Jacques--you must not do it."

[22] "Thou art not of this earth! No mortal offers such a sacrifice! Bless me, thou daughter of Olympian gods!"

XVI

ROMANTIC LITERATURE AND POLITICS

In its first period, Romanticism is distinctly non-political. It exalts the established order of things (_vide_ Novalis), it submissively acknowledges the authority of the king and of the Church, but in its purely literary productions it is, generally speaking, politically colourless.

Take Tieck's satiric comedies. In their outward form there is something Aristophanic; but their satire is never directed against any political character or tendency. It is aimed at "enlightenment;" and from Tieck's biographer we learn exactly what the poet understood by this word. At that time, says Köpke, the most prominent and respected men in Berlin, those who were still the leaders of public opinion, were of the school of Frederick the Great. The prevailing opinions of the eighteenth century had become their second nature. They were moral, conscientious men, who, in all the different departments of administration, science, and literature, devoted themselves zealously, and often with extraordinary industry, to their duties. Whether government officials, theologians, teachers, critics, popular philosophers, or poets, they all aimed at making religion and science useful, and at educating mankind by external provisions and rules. Intelligibility and popularity being to them all-important, they naturally diluted and levelled everything to one general plane of mediocrity. A certain blameless philistinism became their moral ideal, an ideal which seemed poor and tame in comparison with the old fervour of faith. Lessing was their prophet, and they believed themselves to be perpetuating his tradition. We can readily understand that they fell foul of Goethe, which indeed Lessing himself had done, and that they had a narrow conception of the significance and value of imagination. To them it was only the handmaid of utility, and of no value except as an instrument in the service of morality.

Everywhere throughout Tieck's writings we come upon mockery of this moral literary tendency. Take, for instance, _Der Gestiefelte Kater_ ("Puss in Boots").--Hinze, the cat, is taking an evening walk, absorbed in melancholy thought. He begins to sing a hunting song. A nightingale strikes up in a bush close at hand. "She sings magnificently, this songstress of the groves," says Hinze; "but think how delicious she must _taste_! Happy indeed are the great of the earth; they can eat as many nightingales and larks as they fancy. We poor common people have to be content with the song, with the beauty, with the indescribably sweet harmony.--It is terrible that I cannot hear anything sing without wanting to eat it."

Hisses from the pit. The worthy audience is shocked by the cat's ignoble train of thought. So Hinze lets the nightingale alone; but presently, when a rabbit comes bounding by, he catches him adroitly and puts him into his bag. It is his intention, by the gift of this rabbit, to win the king's heart for his master. "The creature," he reflects aloud, "is a sort of cousin of mine; but it's the way of the world nowadays--kinsman against kinsman, brother against brother!" He is presently strongly tempted to eat the rabbit himself, but overcomes the desire, and cries: "Fie! for shame, Hinze! Is it not the duty of the truly noble to sacrifice themselves and their inclinations to the happiness of their fellow-creatures? It is the end for which we were created, and he who cannot do it--oh! it were better for him that he had never been born!" He is about to retire, but loud applause and cries of _Da Capo_! oblige him to repeat the last speech, after which he bows, and goes off with the rabbit. The audience is in the seventh heaven of delight--Hinze's speech is as effective as one of Iffland's tirades.

The satire in Tieck's _Däumling_ ("Hop o' my Thumb") is also of a literary nature, being directed against the neo-classic tendency, and in particular against Goethe. Such a theme, treated, as it was in part, in the dignified metre of Greek tragedy, afforded many opportunities for drollery. All the incidents of the medieval fairy-tale are viewed from the antique standpoint. Of the seven-league boots, for instance, we read: "Trust me; I see quite well that these boots have come down to us from old Greek times. No man in our day produces work like that--so strong, so simple, such noble lines, such stitching! No, no! this is the work of Phidias, there is no doubt about it. Look! When I place the one in this position--how noble, how plastic, how grand in its simplicity! No superfluity, no ornament, no Gothic detail, none of the romantic medley of our days--when sole, leather, flaps, folds, blacking, varnish, must all contribute to produce variety, brilliancy, a dazzling resplendence in which there is nothing ideal. Nowadays the leather must shine, the sole must creak when one sets one's foot down: wretched rhyming trickery of which the ancients knew nothing." Several of Goethe's favourite words are employed in this more sarcastic than witty description.

Tieck shows most wit in defending himself against the accusation of exaggerated sentimentality. His satire might quite well apply to the modern admirers of Prosper Mérimée. He revenges himself upon his critics by placing their objections in the mouth of Leidgast, the cannibal, who comes home, smells human flesh, and determines to eat Hop o' my Thumb and his brothers and sisters for breakfast next morning. In the meantime they are to be kept in the garret. "But what if your own three little ones should awake?" objects his wife. "Well, what then?" "The strange children would not be safe. Yours are so eager for human flesh that they have lately actually tried to suck my blood." "You don't say so? I should never have credited them with so much sense and understanding." His wife weeps. "Be done with this sentimentality, wife. I cannot bear an effeminate education. I have strictly forbidden them all these prejudices, superstitions, and enthusiasms. Untutored, unadulterated nature! that's the thing for me."

However varied the objects of Tieck's satire may be, it is always literary satire; it never crosses the boundary between literature and life. Iffland and Kotzebue, the bombastic classic style and narrow-minded philistine criticism, the text of _The Magic Flute_, Nicolai's travellers' tales, academic pedantry and the _Litteraturzeitung_--these are the unfailing scapegoats.

Occasionally, in striking at "enlightenment" and everything thereto pertaining, he has a half accidental thrust at the powers that be. The king in _Puss in Boots_, for instance, who places the court scientist on the same level with the court fool, who lives for military parades, loves to listen to repetitions of the figures arrived at in astronomical calculations, and bestows his favour in return for a tasty rabbit, certainly does not represent royalty in the most advantageous light. But this happened half accidentally. In the same play the law goes by the name of Popanz (the bogey-man), is changed into a mouse, creeps into a mouse-hole, and is eaten by Hinze, who, not long after, shouts: 'Long live the Tiers Etat!' But this is no more nor less than a specimen of real Romantic nonsense, with no meaning in it at all. The only trace of real political satire to be found, is in one of Tieck's early works, _Hanswurst als Emigrant_, Hanswurst being no other than the Prince d'Artois, who, in his character of poor, stupid emigrant, has to ride on his servant's back for want of a horse. But this work remained unpublished during Tieck's lifetime.

It does not surprise us that Kotzebue failed in his attempts to get Tieck into disgrace for writing political satire. Having succeeded, in 1802, in gaining admission to the court, he, Kotzebue, endeavoured to revenge himself on his adversary by reading the parade scene from _Zerbino_ to the king, interspersing malicious hints. It was an ineffectual endeavour, for the king took no notice. And Tieck was pleased and proud to be able to prove his innocence--the play had been written in 1790, under totally different conditions, and was founded entirely upon youthful impressions. His satisfaction was so far justifiable; for abusive personal satire is out of place in art. Nevertheless, the anecdote affects us tragi-comically. The poetry was harmless enough, heaven knows. There was no cause for any king or government in the world to be in the least disturbed by such satire. Unluckily, the best satirical poetry is not of the kind that leaves every one unscathed. The comedies of Aristophanes, with which Tieck's admirers thought his worthy of comparison, were considerably less innocent and innocuous; and all the really great satirical works of later days, such as Molière's _Tartuffe_ or Beaumarchais' _Figaro_, have one characteristic in common--their action does not take place in the moon; they make war on something besides inept poets and moralising poetry.

Romanticism, however, did not long maintain this aloofness from life and politics.

The year 1806 was a critical year for Prussia and Germany.[1] The country was entirely in the power of the foreign conqueror. But this is the very reason why all the great reforms trace their origin to this year. The depth of adversity reached was so great that an energetic upward struggle had become imperative. The indefatigable Baron von Stein began the reorganisation of Prussian public institutions; Scharnhorst remodelled the army; the state of the universities was inquired into; and as one result of this last proceeding Fichte was called to Berlin in 1807. The appointment was a remarkable one in many respects. It was intended to show that henceforth a new and different spirit was to rule. When, in 1792, Fichte wrote his first work, _Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung_ ("An Attempt at a Criticism of all Revelation"), he was afraid to publish it otherwise than anonymously. When, somewhat later, he brought out his _Zurückforderung der Denkfreiheit_ ("Demand for the Restoration of Freedom of Thought"), he dared not even name the town in which the book was printed. It was published in "Heliopolis"--also anonymously. From his post of professor at Jena he was dismissed on a charge of atheism. But now that the day of need had come, he was suddenly appealed to, to rouse the youth of Germany. As every one is aware, his _Reden an die Deutsche Nation_ ("Addresses to the German Nation") surpassed all expectation. It had been no bad idea, this thrusting of the German flag into the hand of the persecuted philosopher. At the University of Berlin, with French bayonets gleaming outside the windows and French drums drowning his words, he delivered the memorable addresses which sounded the _réveille_ in the ears of Germany, and did their part in driving those drums and bayonets out of the country. For from these lectures a general and powerful revulsion of feeling may be dated. In them Fichte's philosophy became a kind of national poetry. And what wonder that this poetry proved a torch, at which many other poetical torches were kindled--Körner's, Schenkendorf's, and Arndt's among the rest?

The long-prepared-for war broke out in 1813, and ended, after various vicissitudes, in the downfall of foreign rule. But the War of Liberation, as it was called, has two aspects. It was a revolt against a monstrous tyranny, but a tyranny which represented many of the ideas of the Revolution. It was a war for hearth and home, but waged at the command of the old dynasties. The revolutionary tyranny was opposed in the interest of reactionary princes. Moreover, even in the ardour with which the struggle was maintained, there were two very different elements, which were so closely commingled that in the beginning it occurred to no one to distinguish between them, but which soon betrayed their opposite characters. The one element was national hatred of the French people--the national prejudice which seems to be inseparably connected with patriotism, and which led in this case to enthusiasm for everything German and contempt for everything French. The other element was pure love of freedom--the determination to attain political independence, to fight, not only in the name of Germany, but in the name of humanity, for human rights and privileges.

This dual feeling may be traced even in Fichte's addresses. He affirmed that only a people that had been a people from of old, a people that understood the depths of its own spirit, its own language, i.e. itself, could be free, and the liberators of the world; "_and_" he added, "_the Germans are such a people_." Teutonic national arrogance lay dormant in these words. And the seed soon began to grow. The young, healthy love of freedom found expression in Theodor Körner's bold lyrics. It was Schiller's lyre that he touched, but the genius of a new era had tuned its strings in a new key. The patriotism of a whole group of other poets took the form of enthusiasm for the German Empire and a German Emperor, that is to say, for the Germany of the Middle Ages; and these made the glories of the past their theme. Max von Schenkendorf sang mournfully and longingly of the days when--

"Die hohen adligen Gestalten Am Rheinstrom auf und nieder wallten,"[2]

and when predatory nobles ruled town and country from their fortified castles. He wrote odes to the old cathedrals, groped with tremulous awe among the skeletons of saints and knights buried in their chapels.

One of the most famous of the patriotic poets was Ernst Moritz Arndt. With Arndt hatred of everything French became a fixed idea. His _Geist der Zeit_ ("Spirit of the Times"), the first part of which appeared in 1806, had a very powerful influence on the minds of his countrymen. And while he was writing his manly, vigorous songs in praise of freedom, he was also occupied in attacking the French language and French fashions; he even went the length of attempting to introduce a German national dress. At this same moment, Jahn, the famous introducer of gymnastics, the "Turnvater," as he is called, was earnestly engrossed with the idea of making the whole youth of Germany fit for war by means of physical exercises. In 1811, at Hasenhaide, near Berlin, he started his school of gymnastics; but previous to this, following Arndt's example, he had published writings, in which, in affectedly violent language, he tried to inflame the spirit of patriotism. The old German mythology and heroic sagas, Hermann and the Teutoburgerwald, Wodan and the Druids, the sacred oaks, the divine primitive German warrior in his boldness and uncouthness, his unkempt hair flowing over his shoulders and a club grasped in his gigantic fists, were anew elevated to the place of honour. German uncouthness was supposed to testify to German morality.

It was not long till all these patriotic ideas and enterprises were pressed into the service of reaction. The object of worship became, not the freedom that was to be won, but Germany's vanished past. Men began to study the history of their country with an ardour with which it had never been studied before, and a keen eye for all peculiarly German traits. With the brothers Grimm at their head, they turned their attention to the history and grammar of their own language, and in this domain, as in every other, fell foolishly in love with the past and its childish naïveté. Important as the results of these investigations have been to science, it is certain that in Germany they produced some of the worst enemies of liberty, men who sided with the past against the present.