Part 28

The patriotic and the religious party soon made common cause. French immorality had been confronted with a peculiarly German morality; now French free-thought was confronted with a peculiarly German Christianity. Because the religion of Germany's enemies paid homage to the human mind, with its lucidity and freedom, the religion of Germany was to be ecclesiastical Christianity, with its obscurity and tyranny. Believing that they were becoming more religious, they in reality became less so. For it is an indisputable truth, one that holds good in all ages and all countries, that, true religion being enthusiasm for the living spirit and idea of the times, as yet unrealised by the many, he who is filled with that living spirit will seem irreligious, but really be religious, whilst he who is filled with the spirit or faith of a bygone, a defunct age, will be most irreligious, but seem and be called religious.

The immature intellects of the War of Liberation were caught in the snares of Romanticism. It is significant that men who, like Arndt and Görres, were regarded as the champions of liberty, soon began to express most anti-liberal opinions. Arndt made a bitter attack upon what he called industrialism, i.e., modern industrial conditions, as opposed to the old guild system, and was loud in his condemnation of machinery and steam, which robbed human feet of their right (to walk), the labourer of his work, and mountain and valley of their meaning. He was anxious that any future additions to the ranks of the aristocracy should be prevented by the inscription of all noble names in a final roll, a "golden book;" and he advocated entail and primogeniture as the one sure defence against the general break-up of society by an inundation of the proletariat. Görres, who for a time retained some remembrance of the days when he edited _Das rothe Blatt_, ultimately became the author of _Christian Mysticism_, and such a fierce reactionary that he attacked the pietistic policy of Prussia as not sufficiently thorough-going, and brought on himself a reproof from Leo XII.

The Christian-Germanic reaction which was one of the results of the War of Liberation found very characteristic literary expression in a series of tales by a nobleman who had fought in the war as a cavalry officer, Baron de la Motte Fouqué. Fouqué is principally known to the reading world at large by his charming little story, _Undine_. As a specimen of Romantic "Naturpoesie" at its best, this tale is only inferior to Tieck's _Elfenmärchen_ ("The Elves"). But Undine is the one really living figure which Fouqué has produced. The cause of his success in this case probably lay in the fact that he was depicting a being who was only half human, half an element of nature--a wave, spray, the cool freshness and wild movement of water--a being without a soul. Until Undine has given herself to the Knight, she stands in some magic relationship to the restless, soulless sea; it is she who flings its spray against the window, and makes it rise until the peninsula is changed into an island, and the Knight is a captive in the fisherman's hut. Fouqué, who was a poet without being a psychologist, found a subject exactly suited to his imaginative talent in this being, which corresponded to one of the elements, and hence itself consisted of but one life-element. (It was in Undine's image that Hans Christian Andersen created "The Little Mermaid.") The bridal night brings a soul to Undine, and she is changed into the model German wife, obedient, tender, and sentimental. Her husband's harshness kills her. In her magnanimity she has caused the castle well to be covered with an enormous stone, in order to block up the only way by which her uncle, the water-spirit, Kühleborn, can enter the castle and avenge her. When, despite every warning, the Knight is faithless and marries again, and his arrogant bride has the stone removed from the well, inexorable fate compels Undine to rise out of its depths and bring him death in a kiss. Although the theme is genuinely medieval (borrowed, in fact, from Paracelsus, whose theory of the elemental spirits is founded upon old popular beliefs), and although in the course of its elaboration the author often relapses into sentimental piety, yet, to its decided advantage, a fresh pagan note is predominant in the story. Undine's originality lies in her pagan nature, as it reveals itself before she is baptized; and there is something genuinely Greek in the idea of its not being the skeleton with the scythe which comes for the dying man, but an elemental spirit which brings him death in a loving kiss.

But at the same time that Fouqué was embodying such originality and genius as he possessed in this little tale, he was also, under the influence of the great national movement, projecting the long series of romances of chivalry which began with _Der Zauberring_ ("The Magic Ring"), published in 1815. To the romantic reactionaries _The Magic Ring_ became a sort of gospel. Nobles and squires saw themselves reflected in all these old burnished shields and coats of mail, and rejoiced at the sight. But it was not a faithful historical picture which Fouqué exhibited. His age of chivalry is an imaginary age, in which stately, high-born men, clad in armour of burnished silver or of some dull metal inlaid with gold, and wearing silver helmets, plumed or unplumed, or iron helmets surmounted by golden eagles' wings, the visors sometimes raised, sometimes lowered, ride forth upon fiery chargers of all breeds and all colours, shiver each other's lances, and yet sit as if moulded in the saddle, or else fall to the earth only to rise as quick as lightning and draw a two-edged sword. The knights are proud and brave, the faithful squires give their lives for their masters, the slender demoiselles award the prizes at the tourneys, and love their knights "_minniglich_." Everything is ordered according to the exact prescriptions of the book of the laws of chivalry.

Everything is conventional--first and foremost, the mawkish, languishing style, supposed to be peculiarly adapted to the glorification of this high-born society. Only examples can give any idea of it. Bertha, sitting by a rivulet, sees her reflection in the water. "Bertha blushed so brightly that it seemed as if a star had been kindled in the water." "They sang a morning song so sweet and pleasurable that it seemed as though the setting sun must rise again, drawn by the yearning harmonies." There is a plentiful use of embellishing adjectives: "The youth's heart burned with _charming_ (_anmutig_) curiosity." "Two crystal-clear drops fell from the eyes of the old knight." Great importance is attached to the description of splendid clothes and armour and ornaments: "He was beautiful to look upon in his armour of the darkest blue steel, magnificently chased and ornamented with gold; beautiful were his dark brown hair, his trim moustache, and the fresh young mouth smiling below it, disclosing two rows of pearly white teeth." A noble lady, pouring forth the tale of her misfortunes, takes time to interlard it with descriptions like the following: "I paced distractedly up and down my room, would hear nothing of the games in which the other noble maidens invited me to take part in the evening, and impatiently waved my maid away when she brought me a beautiful fishing-rod, _inlaid with mother-of-pearl_, with a _golden_ line and _silver_ hook." It is strange that the inhabitants of a world where all utensils seem to be made of mother-of-pearl, gold, and silver, should think it necessary specially to mention that the gift offered her was composed of these peerless materials.

The emotions are of the same material, all mother-of-pearl and cloth of gold--not one breath of unrestrained natural feeling, not one action dictated by pure, unreflecting passion. All the emotions and passions are as carefully trained as the knights' chargers. We know beforehand how everything will happen. The knights talk to and treat each other with that distinguished courtesy which is peculiar to the privileged classes. One of them inadvertently lets fall a word (about a lady or a joust) which makes it necessary for another to challenge him to mortal combat. Without showing a trace of petty rancour or ill-feeling, the two combatants arm and leap on their snorting chargers; their attendants form a circle round them, holding torches if it is night, and they thrust and hew at each other with all their might. When the one sinks bleeding to the earth, the other throws himself down beside him and binds his wounds with brotherly tenderness and practised surgical skill; then he gives him his arm, and they march off together, their armour clanking bravely.--It is an attempt to resolve the whole rich life of the human soul into a few conventional elements--honour, loyalty, devout and humble love.

In combination with these fine feelings we have the greatest contempt for all except the privileged classes. The hero, Sir Otto, is at a masquerade at the house of his friend, the young merchant, Tebaldo. A troupe of mummers appear and give a performance. In one of the scenes a warrior in armour comes on the stage, bows to Plutus, the god of wealth, and repeats the following lines:--

"Für Beulen Silber, Gold für Blut Herr, gieb Dein Gut, so schlag ich gut."[3]

"Plutus was about to give some ingenious answer, but Otto von Trautwangen rose in wrath, laid his hand on his sword and cried: 'Yonder knave disgraces his armour, and I will prove it on his head, if so be he has the courage to meet me.' Half amused, half alarmed, the company gazed at the wrathful young knight, while Tebaldo angrily dismissed the astounded mummers, upbraiding them with the baseness of their shameful inventions, and forbidding them to enter his house again. Hereupon, blushing with shame, he returned to Otto, and in well-chosen, courtly words prayed his guest not to lay it to his charge that the scurvy crew had thought to flatter the rich merchant by thus _outrageously comparing_ his calling with that of arms." The same evening Otto meets at his inn a certain Sir Archimbald, and is seized by the fancy to exchange armour with him, "which, methinks, we may readily do, since we are both of the old High-German heroic stature." In exchange for his coat of silver mail Otto receives a black one. An entire change comes over him with the change of armour, which does not surprise us when we remember the important part dress plays throughout. As a matter of fact, these knights are not much more than stuffed suits of armour. They affect one much as do the figures one sees riding upon armoured wooden horses in the Tower of London or the great armoury in Dresden.

From the description of one of Otto's earliest single combats we gain an idea of the extraordinary influence attributed to attire. His opponent, Sir Heerdegen, wears a rusty suit of armour, and his rusty voice shouts from behind the bars of his _rusty_ helmet: "Bertha! Bertha!" while from Otto's _silver_ helmet comes in _silvery_ tones the cry: "Gabriele! Gabriele!" When Otto goes back to Tebaldo in his new armour, he has become so much handsomer and more manly, that the young merchant, who happens at the moment to be measuring costly fabrics in his storehouse, is almost ashamed to appear before him. "Then Otto von Trautwangen raised his visor. Tebaldo, half affrighted, fell back, exclaiming: 10 heavens! how you have gained in dignity even since yesterday! And here must I stand before you with an ell-wand in my hand!' Thereupon he flung his beautiful measuring rod against a pillar, shattering it into fragments. It was made of ivory and gold, and his servants could not but believe that this had happened by mischance." They attempt to console their master, but he does not listen to them; all his desire now is to give up his merchant's calling and be allowed to follow Otto as his squire. May not something very like all this be observed to-day in the mutual feelings and demeanour of a Prussian cavalry officer and a Prussian merchant?

This literature is really literature for cavalry officers. The horses are the only creatures in the book whose psychology Fouqué has successfully mastered, and this for the same reason that he was successful with Undine, namely, that it is elementary psychology. In the romances of our Danish author, Ingemann, the milk-white palfrey and the steel-clad black charger also play important parts. When the Lord High Constable is shown us attired in a scarlet cloak edged with ermine and a white-plumed hat, mounted on a tall iron-grey stallion, his swarthy little squire standing beside him holding the bridle of a nimble, restless Norwegian pony, the author has exhausted all his capacity of character drawing. In the description of the tall iron-grey stallion and the nimble little Norwegian pony we have life-like portraits of the Lord High Constable and his squire.

It is exactly the same with Fouqué. Sir Folko's horse is described as a slender-necked, light-footed, silver-grey stallion. "At a signal from his rider he approached Gabriele and bent his forelegs, then leaped into the air and caracoled so lightly back to his place that he seemed to be flying, the golden bells on his harness ringing sweet chimes. Perfectly still and obedient he stood, only turning his beautiful head, under its rich trappings, to look caressingly and inquiringly at his master, as if asking: 'Have I done well?'"--Gallantry, sense of honour, loyalty! What more is there in the knights themselves?

"Sir Archimbald's steed presented a strange contrast. Flecked with white foam, rearing and kicking, he seemed to be about to break the silver chain by which two men-at-arms were holding him back with all their might. His eyes flamed so fiercely that they might well be likened to burning torches, and with his right forefoot he pawed the earth as though he were digging a grave for his master's enemies." --Audacious valour, ardent longing for the fight, indomitable strength! What is there more in the knights?

Sir Otto's father presents him with a horse. "The youth, hastening down, saw a crowd of men-at-arms collected round a bright brown horse with golden trappings. 'Mount,' said his father, 'and make essay if so noble an animal is content to be your property.' Then the young knight Otto von Trautwangen, controlling the animal with a powerful hand, put him through his paces in such a manner that the soldiers, filled with astonishment, felt assured that the noble steed must recognise his destined master, and that in the knight's power over him there lay some strange significance. Sir Otto sprang from his horse and threw himself into his father's arms. Then the charger snorted and kicked wildly at the retainers who grasped at his bridle, and, breaking away from them, followed his young master and laid his head caressingly upon his shoulder."--Invincibility until the destined master, he whose power over the heart is felt to be "of strange significance," appears, and from that moment onwards absolute devotion and the most tender caresses! What else, what more is there in Fouqué's young maidens of high degree?

It was the fault of the sea-king Arinbjörn that, at the critical moment, Otto lost his beloved and the magic ring. Arinbjörn is riding along a solitary road. A wild bay stallion comes galloping up and makes a furious attack upon the sea-king's horse, and throws him down before his rider can spring from the saddle. Man and horse, lying in a confused heap, are mercilessly kicked by the furious stallion. When we know that the following extraordinary speech of Otto's is made of so sagacious and devoted a horse as this, it does not astonish us so much as it otherwise might: "My horse's colour makes him specially dear to me. For this bright brown is in my eyes a colour of angelic beauty; my blessed mother had great, bright brown eyes, and, as all heaven looked out of them, the colour has always seemed to me like a greeting from heaven."

Thus does the psychology of the romance of chivalry culminate--psychology of the patrician, or psychology of the horse, call it which you will. In its portraiture of knights hailing from all the ends of the earth, _The Magic Ring_, as Gottschall aptly remarks, confines itself to primary types of humanity and the colouring produced by the sun--we are able to distinguish a Moor from a Finn. This book was followed by many others of the same description, amongst which _Die Fahrten Thiodolfs des Isländers_ ("The Expeditions of Thiodolf the Icelander") is the best known. Thiodolf had been forecast by an earlier work of Fouqué's, the great trilogy, _Der Held des Nordens_ ("The Hero of the North"), which consists of _Sigurd the Serpent Slayer_, _Sigurd's Revenge_, and _Aslauga_. _Der Held des Nordens_ is dedicated to Fichte, and is evidently inspired by the enthusiasm which he had aroused for the olden days of Germany, and for everything characteristically national. The three lyrical-rhetorical "reading-dramas" of which it consists are written in iambics; and where the language becomes particularly impressive or impassioned, short lines are employed, the rhythm and alliteration of which are intended to recall the old Northern metre. The general impression is much the same as that produced by the texts of such of Richard Wagner's operas as deal with the legends of the North.

The verse, though sometimes laboured, generally rings well, the sentiments are noble and chivalrous, the greatness portrayed is superhuman, yet puerile, the light is not the light of day. The hero's bodily strength and endurance are prodigious. He splits an anvil with one blow; he climbs the outer wall of a high tower, and, when he has looked in at the topmost casement and seen all that he wishes to see, jumps lightly down again. Intellectually he is less remarkable.

Of this dramatised version of the Volsung Saga Heine writes: "_Sigurd the Serpent Slayer_ is a spirited work, in which the old Scandinavian Saga, with its giants and its witchcraft, is reflected. The hero, Sigurd, is a mighty figure. He is as strong as the Norwegian cliffs, and as wild as the sea that breaks upon them. He has the courage of a hundred lions and the wit of two asses." We may take this last remark as applying to all Fouqué's knightly figures. They are all national portraits, like those we read of in Brentano's story, _Die Mehreren Wehmüller_, those thirty-nine Hungarian types, painted by the artist before he went to Hungary, from amongst which every one afterwards selected his own portrait. In Arnim's and Brentano's writings everything is specialised and characteristic, the situations as well as the personalities; here everything is generalised. A king is always a hero or a stage-king; a queen is either dark and haughty or gentle and fair, &c., &c. The general type is there once for all; the individual features of the "national portraits" are added later.

The national type, of course, varies with the country. In Denmark, under Frederick VI., the romance of chivalry is patriotic and loyal. In Germany, after the War of Liberation, it is patriotic and aristocratic. In _The Magic Ring_ we read: "The Stranger had seen much of the world, but had remained a true, pious German; nay, it was in foreign lands that he had become one; for distance had revealed to him what a glorious country that old Germany was."

In both countries the political tendency of Romanticism is the same.

[1] Ruge, _Werke_, ii. 60, &c.

[2] "When men of noble, knightly mien trod the banks of the Rhine."

[3] "Silver for bruises, gold for blood! Pay me well, Plutus, and I'll fight well for you."

XVII

ROMANTIC POLITICIANS

In his _Christian Mysticism_ (ii. 39) Görres tells us that one of the most noticeable characteristics of a body which, through regeneration, has attained to higher harmony, is the fragrance it exhales. "Just as a foul odour is indicative of diseased and discordant organic life, so inward harmony is revealed by the fragrance which proceeds from it. Therefore the expression, 'the odour of sanctity' is by no means merely figurative; it is derived from countless well-established instances of sweet odour emanating from persons who lead a holy life." And he quotes numbers of authentic examples of this.

If Görres is right--and I cast no doubt on his assertion--then the personages to whom, in conclusion, I would direct attention for a moment must have exhaled a most fragrant odour, for they are personages with whom both he and the Church were well pleased. All that is now wanting to complete the picture of the Romantic group, is a characterisation of the men who transferred the principles of Romanticism from the domain of literature into that of practical life and politics. Görres himself may be taken as the representative of Romantic ecclesiasticism, and Friedrich Gentz as in all respects the most interesting of the politicians proper.

Joseph Görres was born in the Rhine district in 1776. He sat on the same school-bench with Clemens Brentano. At the time when the French armies overran Germany he was completely carried away by the revolutionary movement. Before he had even begun his university studies, he became a member of the Jacobin Club in his native town, Coblentz, distinguished himself by his championship of the ideas of liberty, and, in _Das rothe Blatt_ ("The Red Journal"), provided the German revolutionary party with an organ. To him the past was detestable, France the promised land, and the rest of the world the domain of slavery.

When, in 1798, the French army marched into Rome, Görres was loud in his rejoicings over the fall of the city and the collapse of the temporal power of the Pope. He writes in _The Red Journal_: "We will tear the mask from ecclesiasticism, and set healthy ideas in circulation everywhere. We too have sworn eternal hatred to priestcraft and monasticism, and work for the good of the people. We at the same time work for the monarchs, by proving their inutility and helping to relieve them from the burden of government."

His style is youthfully audacious and witty, a genuine demagogue and journalist style. But in his scorn we distinguish a certain fanaticism, which, like all fanaticism, is significant of the possibility of a complete revulsion. When the transactions of the Congress of Rastadt had made it easy to forecast the abolition of the three spiritual electorates, of bishoprics, abbacies, &c., Görres advertised in his paper, under the heading of "For Sale," the following wares: "A whole cargo of seed of the tree of liberty, the flowers of which make the best bouquets for princes and princesses.... 12,000 human cattle, well broken in, who can shoot, cut and thrust, wheel to the right and wheel to the left. A splendid drilling with cudgel and lash, for twelve years, has brought them to the point of allowing themselves to be shot dead for their masters without so much as a grumble.... Three electoral mitres of finely tanned buffalo hide. The croziers belonging to the same are loaded with lead, conceal daggers, and are decorated with artificial serpents. The eye of God on the top is blind."