Part 32

If heart and style remain still true, I'll not object, whatever you do. My friend, I never will mistake you, E'en though a Councillor they make you. (BOWRING.)

[13] They lie, they squabble, they hate one another with a deadly hatred; it is only want of courage that keeps them from robbing and murdering. They dare not do the things they long to do, and so they talk much about right and duty. Those that think keep their thoughts to themselves; most of them do not think.

[14] We clung to each other-was it to pass the time, or was it in despair? she a lost, new-born woman, I a lost, new-born man.

[15] _Briefwechsel zwischen Feuerbach und Christian Kapp_, 1876, p, 176.

[16] _Wesen der Religion_, p. vii.

XXVII

REVOLUTIONARY POETRY

The profoundest characteristic of that literature which in the Forties still continued to be known by the name of _Bewegungslitteratur_, is its utter want of connection with official Germany. It is the absence of any such connection that gives it its strength and its freshness. Official Germany is not to be taken here in the narrow sense of German officialdom; it means all that part of the people--German or any other--which in normal circumstances appears to be the whole people, and as such sets the stamp of nationality on all that is produced by that people, the same stamp which it has set on all that has emanated from it in the past. With what a later period has called _Bildungsphilisterei_ (cultured philistinism), the most eminent literary men of the period in question have no connection whatever. There is no corresponding group of personalities and writings in Scandinavian literature. Even the Radical poetry of the Scandinavian students became official in the course of a very few years. The most gifted of the German poets of the day are independent, or make themselves independent, of official Germany, and bear like men the consequences of the position they take up.

Among those who declare their independence, the most interesting figure is Freiligrath, born in Detmold in 1810. Fair, blue-eyed, massively built, and shaggy-maned, he is the true son of Westphalia. His father, a schoolmaster, educated him against his will as a merchant, and to his commercial education and pursuits are to be ascribed his freedom from classical reminiscences, his exclusively modern literary culture, his understanding of the foreign climes and countries with which commerce brings us into communication, and his distinctly modern turn of thought.

Freiligrath is not, like Hoffmann von Fallersleben, his predecessor in the field of political poetry, only a prolific song writer; he is a genuine, inspired poet. Hoffmann, who had made a study of the old German songs and ballads, and was himself a man of simple, popular tastes, poured forth an inexhaustible stream of polemical verse, directed against the squirearchy and bureaucracy, but he repeated himself with the monotony of the popular poet. Freiligrath wrote comparatively little, but every one of his poems has its distinct individuality. He is influenced by that modern French and English poetry of which he has given us so many admirable translations, and makes his debut as a descriptive poet of the Victor Hugo school, but soon develops a distinct literary individuality. He possesses in a very high degree two qualities which are seldom found united, the faculty of picturesque description and intensity of feeling. The former leads him to depict themes from foreign lands, full of glowing colour, the latter displays itself when he sings of home and fatherland. In his revolutionary period his warm feeling became powerful pathos, and his gift of graphic delineation was exclusively devoted to the service of hostility and ire.

In his youth, in Amsterdam (1831), the sea and the shipping made a deep impression on him. In his dreams he followed all the vessels that glided out of the harbour bound for Africa, for India, for Turkey, for America. He was seized by the desire to describe these foreign climes as they appeared in his imagination, and Hugo's _Les Orientales_ not only suggested the colours to be employed in the treatment of such themes, but also the metrical form. Freiligrath alone among German poets tried to master the alexandrines beloved of Frenchmen, despised in Germany, and to vindicate their beauty. Strangely enough, in spite of his usually correct ear, he so entirely misapprehended the peculiarity of this metre that he always writes it in pure iambics, a practice which Germans have continued.

He was possessed by the longing to roam--out into the wide world, across the great ocean. Instead of German "garret poetry," he wrote, in his garret, scenes laid in the deserts of Africa and the primeval forests of America. He attempted tropical local colouring, which was at times successful, at times unnatural; his linguistic specialty was new and remarkable rhymes, produced with the assistance of resonant foreign words like "Sykomore," "Tricolore," &c. His good verses were like living, his bad, in their lifeless splendour, like stuffed humming-birds.

But this African Freiligrath is not the best Freiligrath. Freiligrath, the Liberal patriot, is greatly his superior. After Herwegh's political challenge had roused him, he took himself to task, tested with simple-minded fairness those sympathies and tendencies of his nature as to which he himself was not yet absolutely clear, and discovered in the depths of his being an unquenchable desire for liberty and a sympathy with the oppressed which on occasion could develop into burning indignation and hatred. His genius chose the revolutionary path, pursued it at full speed, and finally spread its wings and flew. _Marseillaise_ after _Marseillaise_ came from the poet's pen. O these hymns of 1848! they are enthusiasm itself, the enthusiasm that begets enthusiasm. In the earlier ones we have fierceness, faith, revolutionary piety, fiery sarcasm, the intoxicated jubilation of victory; in the later, noble despair, sublime in its expression.

But the poems which anticipate the Revolution and incite to it are also worth reading. Take, for instance, the volume entitled _Ça ira_, published in 1846. In each of the poems of which it consists a symbolical picture is graphically elaborated. In the first, a ship is setting sail; her name is Revolution, she is the black fire-ship that sends her rockets aboard that hypocritical craft, the Church, and then points her guns at the silver fleet of Wealth. In another we have a symbolical idea borrowed from Thomas Moore: the ice-palace of despotism, which will crack, and break up, and melt away as soon as spring comes. In _Wie man's macht_ ("How the Thing is Done") the poet describes the storming of the arsenal of a capital with such infectious ardour, so dramatically and vividly, that we see it all, are ourselves in the thick of the fray. As the Revolution which he foresees draws nearer and nearer, his poetry becomes more and more up to date. He describes a Rhine steamer, which has the King and Queen of Prussia on board. The steamer is a picture of German society. The company on deck are enjoying the fresh air, the bright sunshine, the beautiful scenery of the Rhine; but down below in the engine-room stand the proletariat, in the shape of engineer and stoker, masters of the volcano that drives the ship onwards. One push, one blow from them, and the whole edifice of which the king is the crown, collapses; the deck is blown to fragments, the flames mount to the clouds--but not yet, thou angry element, not to-day! In such a poem as _Freie Presse_ the course of events is anticipated: the insurrection is on the point of breaking out; one day more, and there will be fighting in the streets. Ammunition being short, the owner of the printing works orders his workmen to melt down all the alphabets. And presently the hissing, glowing mass is flowing into the bullet moulds. The times are such that only in the form of bullets can the types emancipate humanity.

The days of Young Germany were over, but now it seemed as if Germany herself had grown young.

Robert Prutz (born in 1816 at Stettin) received that classical education which had been denied to Freiligrath. A critical student of philosophy and history, he wrote upon many subjects, but it is only as a political poet that he has any abiding significance. He was one of the young men who ardently vented their opinions in Ruge's _Hallische Jahrbücher_, the result in his case being banishment. He is the Feuerbachian as poet. His political poetry, from the absolute directness with which it follows its aim, is apt to be somewhat dry and unimaginative, but his sober and yet warm love of liberty attracts us. If you once learn to like him, it will be a thorough liking; you will even highly prize his latest collection of poems, _Aus der Heimath_, a book which has been foolishly condemned as sensual; it cannot be denied that he showed bad taste in dedicating it to his wife.

In his best work, a little Aristophanic masterpiece entitled _Die politische Wochenstube_ ("The Political Lying-in Room"), Zürich, 1843, Prutz, Holberg's warmest German admirer,[1] has succeeded in epitomising the wit, the irony, the endeavour, and the hopes of the younger generation.

It was only natural that a poet with Prutz's classical training should adopt the Aristophanic method, the pity was that he followed it too closely. His play became in consequence a jewel of price for a select circle of readers instead of food for the multitude. It is the production of a young, hopeful dreamer, whose faith in a glorious future for Germany was quite as lively and as strong as the pleasure he felt in demolishing with his sarcasm what was decrepit and decayed; the burlesque figures and conceits stand out against an idealistic golden background because the poet sees the sun of the future rising and shining behind them.

The action passes partly in, partly outside of the house of a doctor who keeps a kind of private lying-in hospital, where young ladies of the upper classes at times take refuge. Of late his business has not thriven. It had flourished when Pietism flourished in Königsberg; much pious embracing had gone on then, which, with God's blessing, had borne fruit; but now that the State Church has set itself to suppress Pietism, his wards stand empty. He will soon be driven to apply for a post on the staff of the Prussian official newspaper; those who are fit for nothing else can always earn their bread in its service. The Doctor's servant, Kilian, who is famishing, asks for food. The Doctor advises him to have his stomach removed, takes out his knife to do the operation, tells him that he will never feel hungry again, and that he will confer an inestimable benefit on humanity if he can show himself as a living proof that the operation is possible. For what is the rock on which virtue splits nowadays? Why did Freiligrath take a pension? Why did Dingelstedt allow himself to be branded. The stomach, and nothing but the stomach is to blame for everything.

In the meantime Herr Schlaukopf (Mr. Sly) has come on the scene, disguised as a beggar. He declaims some patriotic sentiment, in the style of the Niebelungenlied, on the subject of Hermann the Cheruscan, and then asks for a contribution for the statue of that national hero. The Doctor is incautious enough to call the statue a scarecrow, a hideous sentry brandishing a spit, on which Schlaukopf declares that he shall pay for these words by at least twelve years' imprisonment with hard labour. They fight, the Doctor pulls off Schlaukopfs false nose, and thereupon recognises in him the friend of his youth, the quondam socialist, singer of liberty, republican, and regicide, now advanced to the post of "Wirklicher-geheimer-königlicher Leibspion" (Real Private Royal Body-spy). They fall into each other's arms, and Schlaukopf tells his errand, but not till he has assured himself that the Doctor holds no awkward or seditious political beliefs. The Doctor, recognising the importance of the man with whom he has to do, falls on his knees and swears that he believes nothing except that crown-pieces are round. Then Schlaukopf divulges the secret: "Germany, our mother-country, the Germany of Frederick and of Luther, the fair-haired queen, is with child."

The Doctor is at first incredulous. Is it not dropsy, the result of all the water-drinking introduced by these new total abstinence associations? No, she is pregnant, and the only surprising thing about it is that the fact has not been announced in the newspapers, which usually inform the public when queens and princesses are in that condition. And now Schlaukopf communicates the joyful intelligence that the Doctor, as an experienced accoucheur, has been chosen to attend Germania; he, and no other, is to deliver her. The Doctor dances for joy, demands that he shall be rewarded with perquisites and an order, requests Schlaukopf to bring the lady--but see, she comes!

Slaves, who represent the enthralled people, bear her in in a golden chair. She is fair, with a fat, amiable face, a wide mouth, and eyes of watery blue. All salute and do homage to her as Germania. But from a confidential conversation between her and Schlaukopf we learn that she is not the person she gives herself out to be. He asks her if she is really pregnant; she replies that he ought to know best, he and the others whom he has introduced to her. It seems that he has taken her from the street and trained her to play her part. She is the official Germania--and she has done everything that her artful masters have ordered her to do, has bowed, and knelt, and pattered prayers at command. And now, at command, she is pregnant. Schlaukopf abuses her, and threatens to beat her; she taunts him and threatens in return to run away and leave him to find another Germania where he best can.

Meanwhile in the darkness of night a stranger has appeared in the street in front of the house, a woman with a harassed, hunted look, who declares that she knows not where to lay her outlawed head. "I," she says, "the legitimate queen, must, like a common vagrant, hide my royal head in the darkness of night, whilst she who has been exalted in my stead and impudently allows herself to be called by my name, sleeps voluptuously on silken pillows. Ye stones, be my pillow! For my people, like their queen, have to lie on stone."

Through the night comes a cry, "Germania!" The woman in the house and the woman on the street answer at the same moment. Wrangling and confusion ensue, the gendarmes arrive, and an attempt is made to discover which of the two has taken a name that does not belong to her. "Not I!" cries the stranger to Schlaukopf. She maintains that he has stolen her name and decked his brazen-faced paramour with it, and concludes: "Shame on you both! I alone am the real, the true Germania!" Kilian finds it impossible to believe that any one so slender and emaciated can be Germania, but the serfs are thrilled to the heart by the sweet sound of her voice. The diplomatic Schlaukopf alone keeps his countenance:

"Allein, so thut ein wenig nur die Augen auf, Zu sehen braucht Ihr diese da und jene nur, So ist's ja klärlicb, welche hier die Rechte sei: In Lumpen jene, diese jedoch im seidnen Rock; Die abgemagert, hungerbleich, ein Schattenbild, Verbannt zu Bettlern, selber eine Bettlerin; Höchst stattlich diese, wohlgenährt, anmuthiglich, In hoher Herren ehrender Festgenossenschaft, Ja selbst gesegneten Leibes ist, wie Ihr seht."[2]

To this comparison between her rival's magnificence and her own poverty the stranger answers with dignity:

"Wohl spotte mein! In meine Wunde lege du Die blutbefleckten, diebsgewandten Finger mir! Auf meine Lumpen speie du, und rühme dich Weil ich ein armes, heimathlos vertriebnes Weib; Du weisst am besten, wessen Hand mein Blut vergoss, Und wer vom Haupt die Krone mir gerissen hat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ihr bautest du Paläste, mir Gefängnisse. Ihr schmeichelten deine Schergen, mich verfolgten sie-- Dir aber sag ich, Schattenkönigin, o du, Die du mit Zittern meines Namens dich erfrechst: Hinweg! verbirg dich! Räume du den Platz, der mir Allein gebührt! Denn eure Herrscherin bin ich."[3]

And the serfs bend low in homage to the woman who comes, not in regal purple, but in rags like their own, saying to each other: "May not this be the long-looked-for redresser of our wrongs, she who is to break our yoke asunder and awaken the sleeping world with the lightning flash of liberty?"

But now the two women are called upon to prove their respective claims. Schlaukopf exclaims: "It is the legitimist principle we are called on to defend!" and proceeds to prompt official Germania. That fat, fair lady, who boasts that she bears the future of Germany in her womb and claims in consequence to be treated with consideration and reverence, repeats a long rigmarole, supposed to be the story of her life: In the gray of eld she lay on bear-skins in the forest, drinking foaming mead and eating beech-nuts and acorns. "Beech-nuts and acorns!" cry the Doctor, Kilian, and Schlaukopf. "It is she." Then she tells how she was sent to school to the priests, had her nose flattened against the crucifix, became _christlich-germanisch_, endowed monasteries, built churches, kissed the Pope's toe, &c, &c., and once more the Doctor, Kilian, and Schlaukopf cry: "It is she!" She tells what a peaceable, governable disposition she developed, how she allowed any one that liked to box her ears, how her loyalty has now reached such a pitch that if her master but whistle, she comes, stands on her hind legs, fetches the stick--"In a word, I am a well-trained poodle." And again we hear the jubilant chorus: "It is she!" She concludes: "God and the king willing, I shall be in the future what I have been in the past. By government order I am now, as you see, with child. O gendarmes, take my part! Recognise me as the one, true, Germania, as the thoroughbred German, and be assured that in return I will bring up my son as a gendarme!"

The gendarmes are of opinion that she has made out a good case, and Schlaukopf is beginning to boast that the vagrant has been silenced, when she in turn lifts up her voice. She does not understand the art of self-praise, she says, nor has she much to praise herself for; the future will show what she is. "I cannot deny," she continues, "that she who stands there is a Germania; she is official Germany, the Germany of the Government, of the Federal Diet; but the Germany of the German people she is not; they do not know her, they do not care a straw for her rotten genealogical tree. If you would know which is the true Germania, ask these fettered serfs!" At this moment the other Germania is seized with violent pains. She suddenly explodes with a loud report and disappears in a cloud of smoke, which, as it gradually disperses, takes the shape of pilgrim monks, of romantic poets who sing the praises of the holy Middle Ages, of geese who lament that the Order of the Swan is not yet instituted, of moderate Liberals singing the chorus:

"Immer langsam voran, immer langsam voran! Dass der preussische Fortschritt nachkommen kann!"[4]

Then the serfs break their chains, cast themselves on the ground before the poor stranger, and do homage to her as the true Germania, who is still a virgin, but who one day will give birth to the ruler of the future....

The emblematical picture is a very fine, powerful one, and moreover it is true. The German Empire of to-day is not the offspring of the oppressed, divided Germany that was then extolled as pregnant with future greatness; it is the outcome of the much-despised, the harshly suppressed endeavours after liberty and unity. It is a mistake, however, to have represented the true Germania with no past, with all her power and glory in the future; though such a break of historical continuity did not in those days seem the impossibility that it does in ours.

One of the truths proclaimed by this Radical polemical poem admits of no controversion, namely, that the official fatherland, the official country, everywhere lays claim to all that the genius of the people in times past has produced, to all their great men, even those whose lives were one constant rebellion against it. It banished, imprisoned, executed them--no matter; now it wears their portraits next its heart. And the official fatherland claims, and always has claimed, to bear the future in its womb. It not only maintains that the present existence of all and of everything is inseparably bound up with its existence, but that it is pregnant with the new age and is consequently entitled to receive the respectful care that is the due of a pregnant queen. For the thinking men of any people there is, besides this fatherland, another, one that is not recognised, that is often disowned. It does not deck itself with the national colours; for it the national song is not sung. It exists wherever people feel and act in the spirit that has been the spirit of the best of the country's sons. It has the allegiance of all the thinking youth. Those of low degree have more part and lot in it than those in place and power. To it alone the future belongs.

[1] The name of one of Holberg's best known comedies is _The Lying-in Room_ ("Barselstuen").

[2] To know which is the true Germania, you need but use your eyes. Look first at one and then the other. Is not the one in rags, the other clad in silk? the one starving and pale, a mere shadow, driven to house with beggars, herself a beggar; the other stately, plump, and pleasant to the sight, consorting with right honourable gentlemen; with child moreover, as you plainly see?

[3] Yes, mock at me! Put your pilfering, blood-stained fingers into my wounds! Spit on my rags, and proclaim me to be a poor, banished, homeless woman. You know best whose hand shed my blood and tore the crown from my head.... For her you built palaces, for me prisons. Your menials flattered her, me they persecuted. And you, trembling phantom queen, who have the effrontery to call yourself by my name, away! hide yourself! make room for the rightful sovereign! make room for me!

[4]

Slowly onward, slowly onward in the race! That Prussian progress may be able to keep pace!

XXVIII

REVOLUTIONARY POETRY

There were real poets, aspiring spirits, who did not follow the general trend of literature at this period. There were men like Eduard Mörike (born in 1804), the last scion of the Swabian School, who broke the bounds of its narrow tradition, and in his lyric verse may rather be regarded as an offshoot of the Goethe stem--a genuinely gifted poet, the idyllic, arch, melancholy singer of the inner life, author of the immortal poem, _Denk es, O Seele!_ And there were men like Otto Ludwig, the Thuringian, and Friedrich Hebbel, the Ditmarschian, the two most robust originals in modern German literature, who were both born in 1813, and both developed their very dissimilar peculiarities after 1848--two gnarled, leafy oaks standing without the forest's bounds. The only mark of the period in which they were youths is the peculiar defiant gloom which lies deep down in both natures. Specially their own is a kind of melancholy keen-sightedness, inclining towards bold realism. They are the heralds of the realism of a later, unpolitical age. But they have not the characteristic common to all the political poets of their own age--sunny enthusiasm, a natural bias towards public life, towards the radical reform, or, if necessary, the complete revolution of society.