Part 1

Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive

Transcriber's Note: 1. Page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/sevenlegends00kelle

2. The diphthong oe is represented by [Oe] and [oe].

THE CAVIARE SERIES

This series, of which Keller's "Seven Legends" is the opening volume, will contain books that have become standard in the literatures of foreign countries.

The title which has been chosen is not intended to convey the impression that none of the books in the series will make a general appeal (for it is hoped that some of them will become as well-known in this country as the standard works of our own literature); but rather to suggest that they will have characteristics and beauties, which can be most fully enjoyed by the reader of wide culture and cultivated taste.

The series will be issued at varying prices, according to number of pages, and the forthcoming appearance of each new volume will be announced through the usual medium of the literary periodicals.

The Caviare Series, No. 1

SEVEN LEGENDS

SEVEN LEGENDS

GOTTFRIED KELLER

AUTHORIZED (AND FIRST) TRANSLATION FROM THE 56TH GERMAN EDITION BY MARTIN WYNESS, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD M. MEYER, PROFESSOR OF GERMAN LITERATURE IN BERLIN UNIVERSITY

GOWANS & GRAY, Ltd. 5 Robert St., Adelphi, London, W.C. 58 Cadogan St., Glasgow 1911

INTRODUCTION

Gottfried Keller, the greatest German narrative writer of recent times, was born in a suburb of Zurich on 19th July, 1819. The life of this remarkable man suggests comparisons with novels of development, such as Goethe taught him to write: from the romantic confusion of youthful dilettantism he brought himself, by strict self-discipline, to take his place in everyday social life. Left, together with his mother and sister, in poverty by a hard-working but unsuccessful father, the child dreamed away the first years of his development, and the youth was still a stranger to the world of reality when, with the aid of some friends in his native place, he went as an art-student to Munich. There, after a promising start, he sank into hopeless lethargy, which continued even after his return home. Prudent helpers then took the half painter, half poet, once more in hand, recognizing that his deficiency consisted in imperfect education and knowledge of the world. He went to study at Heidelberg (1848-50), and received an important stimulus from the well-known literary historian Hettner; thence he proceeded to Berlin (1850-55), where Varnhagen von Ense, the admirer of Goethe and husband of the prophetess Rahel, made him welcome. Here the germs of his most important works awoke within him. He had already, at an early age, published poems, which showed the influence of the revolutionary _Tendenzlyrik_; now there appeared the romantic autobiographical novel "Green Henry" (1854-5) which he afterwards recast in very characteristic fashion (1879-80). This was followed in 1856 by the first part of the charming, fantastically instructive tales, "Seldwyla People" (the second part, 1874). In spite of praise from many competent judges, success did not come immediately. Keller once more sat at home a dreamer, although now in intellectual correspondence with the best minds; still, it was a bold resolution when, in 1861, the writer, who had never followed any definite avocation, was chosen by his canton as Staatsschreiber, or Secretary to the Canton, and an important and well remunerated office was entrusted to an untried man. However, he proved a thorough success, and felt the acceptance of the post a deliverance from the occupation of "writing-man" so much despised by the Romantics. He filled this office for seventeen years (till 1878); a period during which his imaginative productivity unavoidably slackened. Then when, with the well merited recognition of the authorities, he had retired into private life, or had begun to prepare for retiral, there appeared, in addition to a noble volume of poems, the collection of stories, "Zurich Tales" (1877), the cycle of stories in novel-form, "The Epigram" (1882), and the novel, "Martin Salander" (1886), which continued the paedagogic purpose of his earlier writings in almost too pronounced a fashion. Meanwhile Keller's reputation had at last been established, a consummation to which the zealous endeavours of writers and critics, such as Fr. Th. Vischer, Berthold Auerbach and Theodor Storm, had contributed in no small degree. His seventieth birthday was celebrated with affectionate interest. But the writer, who lived with his eccentric old sister in deadening domestic loneliness, and whom evenings with good friends in an inn could not compensate for the total lack of comforts, had early turned old and ailing; although any great question always found him armed and at his post. He died 15th July, 1890.

None of Gottfried Keller's works seems better suited to secure him admirers among foreign readers than the charming collection of the "Seven Legends." True, it offers peculiar difficulties to the translator, since it afforded Keller an opportunity, such as he met with nowhere else, of indulging the (for him) convenient fondness for very individual modes of expression. At the same time, these little, highly finished works of art imposed a check on his unbounded passion for fabulizing, and are not so likely to bewilder the foreign reader by sheer overabundance of invention as, say, "Seldwyla People," or even the inexhaustible "Green Henry." Yet even they shew his wealth, and that to an astonishing degree.

In his preface to this little masterpiece of his fiction, Gottfried Keller very justifiably draws attention to "the traces of an older and more profane art of fiction" which are to be found in the old Legends. No doubt their primary purpose was edification; but at the same time psychological interest in the famous saints had to be gratified, and mere human curiosity was eager to hear tales of wonder. Very special interest was devoted to "conversion," that inward process which transforms a dweller in the "world" into a citizen of the heavenly city. The history of the conversion of the apostle St. Paul had already indicated its course, along which, still earlier, among Christ's own parables, that of the Prodigal Son runs. After long-continued contempt of the "priestly lie-gends," Herder brought this religious fiction once more to the light of day; but delight in this popular form of story-telling was his immediate motive for presenting a few of them in a modern shape. The Lutheran preacher Kosegarten, however, when he followed with whole volumes of retold legends, was largely influenced by interest in their matter. Romanticism went into ecstasies over their childish tone and their believing spirit, as it had done over folk-songs and chap-books. Kosegarten's book fell into Keller's hands in 1854, when he was seeking subjects for his collection of stories "The Epigram"; but he allowed his scheme of modern legends to drop for the time being. It was not until 1871, when a publisher asked him for manuscript, that he returned to his happy thought and speedily put it into execution. The little volume appeared in 1872, and had a great success, both with the general public and with the foremost German critics of the day, such as Ferdinand Kuernberger and Wilhelm Scherer.

Even from this sketch of its origin, the fact emerges that the "Kulturkampf" mood of those years had little or nothing to do with this little work, as was readily acknowledged, even by the Liberal Catholics Kuernberger and Scherer. Keller had absolutely no intention of caricaturing the Catholic adoration of saints, like Wilhelm Busch, for example, in his "St. Antony" (1870). On the contrary, when sometimes he turns the faces of the figures of the Church Legends "to another quarter of the heavens than that towards which they looked in their extant forms," this positive confession is the important thing to his mind; for the great Swiss writer has no more intention of denying a paedagogic purpose here than anywhere else in his epic work. Gottfried Keller, like his friends Storm and Heyse, regarded asceticism as a tendency detrimental to the healthy development of humanity. And with this conviction he accordingly devoted himself to the conversion of the converted. Like his Naughty Saint Vitalis, he makes a point of seeking out the most difficult cases, self-sacrificing devotion even unto death: Eugenia who flees from worldly success into the rigorous quiet of the cloister, Vitalis who, in glad self-humiliation, accepts the disgrace of evil repute, are safely piloted by him into the everyday contentment of happy wedlock. For this is the author's meaning, that on this very account they become the more worthy of our honour. Just as he relates how a beautiful ancient statue of the goddess Juno was fitted with a golden nimbus and set up as an image of Mary, so he himself now endeavours to take the nimbus off again, that the pure marble beauty of simple humanity may be restored once more. It cannot be denied that his unflinching adherence to this point of view is not maintained without poking a good deal of fun at piety and asceticism, but it is always good-tempered and likeable. After all, the principal thing is the edifying admonition:

Arise! Arise! Shake free thyself From dumpish, idle sorrow.

Even the Virgin Mary has become above all things an active, warlike, and resourceful woman, more like Frau Salander in Keller's last novel than the far-off, heavenly Virgin; and one has the feeling that it is not without regret that she refrains from the worldly doings of Beatrix or Bertrade. But highest of all is represented a joyous piety, at once declaring for and surrendering the world, represented, more realistically in "Dorothea's Flower-Basket," and more symbolically in the wonderful "Legend of the Dance," the crown of the collection; for this last tale contains the writer's own confession veiled in the most recondite allegory. As the Muses' singing, so splendid and upbuilding to earlier generations, sounded "dismal, almost defiant and harsh, yet so wistful and mournful," so, in the heaven of the present day as Gottfried Keller built it up for himself, the saints' devout hymn of praise to the laud and honour of the Most Holy Trinity sounds gloomy and melancholy, even defiant. And Keller retorts to it with his own song:

To thee, thou wondrous World, Thou beauty without end, I also have my vows of love Upon this parchment penned.

It is this world which is the source of his joys and sorrows. The Devil is introduced as he is on earth: "A silly devil is the rogue, for he is cheated in the end!" And just because Keller reconquers this world whole and entire, full of strange adventures and transformations, for the earth and human understanding, he revels merrily here, because it is here, in the luxuriant opulence of his imaginings great and small, from that Heavenly concerto of the Muses to the nose-pigtails of the doughty knight. His language plays in a kindly, roguish way with the human blunders of the saintly beings who take a loving and loveable human child for a very "Devil's tit-bit," yet find it offered to themselves as a savoury "pasty." His style ranges from the playful picture of the rococo angel-minstrels to the serious painting of the knight riding up to the church with his eight noble sons; and, despite the difference of his conception of life, his sympathies find something congenial in Dorothea's Christian heroism. For these reasons, Keller in this Legendary, most wisely restricted in number, and grouped in most masterly fashion, has surpassed all those who have ventured on to the same enticing ground since him. Even Anatole France equals him but seldom; for Keller has sought to overcome piety with another piety, with that "world-piety" of which Goethe is our greatest prophet.

RICHARD M. MEYER.

Berlin, 27/1/11.

SEVEN LEGENDS

PREFACE

During his perusal of a number of legends, the author of this little book was pleased to imagine that, in the bulk of the tales which have been handed down to us, not only the art of the churchly fabulist, but also, upon attentive consideration, traces of a more primitive and more profane love of story-telling, or art of fiction, are perceptible.

As the painter is incited by a fragmentary patch of cloud, an outline of a mountain, an etched scrap by some forgotten master, to fill a whole canvas, so the author experienced a desire to reproduce those broken, elusive images; although it must be owned that in the process their faces have often been turned to another quarter of the heavens than that towards which they looked in their extant forms.

The huge mass of material available would have made it possible to spin the book out to very great length; but it could only hope to be granted the modest space which it demands if the innocent pleasantry was kept within very moderate limits.

EUGENIA

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.

Deut. xxii. 5.

When women renounce their ambition of beauty, grace, and womanly charm in order to distinguish themselves in other directions, it often ends in their disguising themselves in men's clothes and disappearing from the scene.

The desire to ape the man often emerges even in the pious legendary world of early Christianity, and more than one female saint of those days was impelled by the desire to free herself from the common round of home and society.

The refined Roman maiden Eugenia offers an example of this kind, with, it must be owned, the not unusual result, that, reduced to the greatest extremity by her masculine predilections, she was forced after all to summon up the resources of her proper sex in order to save herself.

She was the daughter of a Roman gentleman who resided with his family at Alexandria, a city which swarmed with philosophers and learned men of every description. Accordingly, Eugenia was very carefully educated and instructed, and this was so much to her taste that, as soon as ever she began to grow up, she frequented all schools of philosophers, grammarians and rhetoricians as a student. In those visits she was always attended by a body-guard of two good-looking lads of her own age. They were the sons of two of her father's freedmen, who had been brought up in her company and made to share in all her studies.

Meanwhile she became the fairest maiden that could be found, and her youthful companions, who, strangely enough, were both named Hyacinth, grew likewise to two graceful flowers of youth. Wherever the lovely rose Eugenia appeared, the two Hyacinths were always to be seen rustling along on her right hand and her left, or following gracefully in her train while their mistress maintained a discussion with them as they followed.

Never were there two better bred companions of a blue-stocking; for they were never of a different opinion from Eugenia, and they always kept a shade behind her in learning, so that she was in the right in every instance, and was never uneasy lest she should say something less clever than her companions.

All the bookworms of Alexandria composed elegies and epigrams on this apparition of the Muses, and the good Hyacinths had to inscribe these verses carefully in golden tablets, and carry them after her.

Every season she became more beautiful and more accomplished, and she had even begun to stray in the mysterious labyrinths of Neoplatonic doctrines, when the young proconsul Aquilinus became enamoured of Eugenia and demanded her of her father to wife. But the latter entertained such a respect for his daughter that, despite his authority as a Roman father, he did not venture to make the slightest suggestion to her, but referred the suitor to her own decision, although no son-in-law could have been more welcome to him than Aquilinus.

But Eugenia herself had had her eye upon him secretly for many a long day; for he was the most stately, most illustrious, and most gallant man in Alexandria, and, what was more, had the reputation of a man of intelligence and heart.

Yet she received the enamoured consul in complete calm and dignity, with her parchment rolls about her, and her Hyacinths behind her chair. The one wore an azure-blue, the other a rose-red, robe, and she herself one of dazzling white. A stranger would have been uncertain whether he saw three fair, tender boys, or three fresh, blooming maidens before him.

Before this tribunal the manly Aquilinus now came in the simple toga of his rank. He would much rather have uttered his passion in more intimate and tender fashion; but, when he saw that Eugenia did not dismiss the young men, he took his seat on a chair facing her, and made his request for her hand in words which it cost him an effort to make few and simple, for he kept his eyes fixed immovably upon her, and beheld her great beauty.

Eugenia smiled imperceptibly, and never even blushed, so tightly had learning and culture fettered all the finer impulses of ordinary life in her. Instead, she assumed a serious, profound expression, and made answer to him, "Thy wish, O Aquilinus, to have me for thy wife, honours me in a high degree, but is powerless to induce me to an act of unwisdom; and such it would justly be termed, if we were to follow the first crude impulse without examining ourselves. The first condition which I have to demand from a husband, whoever he be, is that he understand and honour and participate in my intellectual life and aims. So thou wilt be welcome to me if thou choosest to be often in my society, and to exercise thyself in emulation with these my young companions in the investigation of the highest things along with me. By this means we shall not fail to ascertain whether we are suited for each other or not, and, after a period of intellectual activity in common, we shall know each other so as beseems god-created beings who are meant to walk not in the darkness, but in the light."

To this high-flown demand Aquilinus answered, not without secret indignation, but still with proud tranquillity, "If I did not know thee, Eugenia, I would not desire thee for my wife; and, as to myself, great Rome knows me, as well as this province. If thy learning does not suffice to recognize what I am by this time, I fear it will never suffice. Besides, I did not come here to go to school again, but to find a helpmeet; and, as for these two children, my first request, if thou gavest me thy hand, would be that thou wouldest let them go and restore them to their parents at last, that they might help them and be of use to them. Now I entreat thee, give me thy decision, not as a person of learning, but as a woman of flesh and blood!"

This time the fair she-philosopher had indeed turned red, red as a carnation, and said with fast-beating heart, "My answer is soon given, for I gather from thy words that thou dost not love me, Aquilinus. That might be a matter of indifference to me, were it not an outrage for the daughter of a noble Roman to be lied to!"

"I never lie!" said Aquilinus coldly. "Farewell!"

Eugenia turned her back without returning his farewell, and Aquilinus walked slowly out of the house to his own abode. She tried to take up her books as if nothing had happened; but the letters grew blurred before her eyes, and the two Hyacinths had to read to her while she, full of hot indignation, wandered with her thoughts elsewhere.

For, although up to that day she had regarded the consul as the only one among all her suitors whom she might have taken for a husband, supposing she had been so inclined, he was now become a stone of stumbling which she could not get over.

Aquilinus for his part attended calmly to his affairs of state, and sighed in secret over his strange folly, which would not suffer him to forget the pedantic beauty.

Almost two years passed, during which Eugenia became, if possible, more and more notable and a positively brilliant personage, while the two Hyacinths were now two sturdy rustic figures with growing beards. Although people everywhere began to take notice of this strange attachment, and, instead of the admiring epigrams, others in a more satiric vein began to appear, still she could not bring herself to part with her body-guard; for Aquilinus, who had presumed to order her to do so, was still there. He went quietly on his own way, and appeared to concern himself no more about her; but he looked at no other woman, and no other wooing was heard of, so that he also came in for censure, because, being so high an official, he remained unmarried.

Eugenia refrained all the more obstinately from offering any outward sign of reconciliation by dismissing her obnoxious companions. Besides, she was charmed to set ordinary custom and public opinion at defiance and be responsible to herself alone, and to preserve the consciousness of a pure life in circumstances which would have been perilous and impossible for any other woman.

Such eccentricities were in the air just at that time.

All the time Eugenia felt herself anything but well and happy. Her well-trained servitors must needs philosophize through heaven and earth and hell, only to be suddenly interrupted and forced to wander about in the country with her for hours together without being favoured with a single word. One day she was seized with the desire to make an excursion to a country-seat. She herself drove the carriage, and was in an amiable mood, for it was a bright spring day, and the air was full of balmy fragrance. The Hyacinths were delighted at her good humour. So they made their way through a country suburb where the Christians were permitted to hold their worship. They were in the act of celebrating Sunday; from the chapel of a monastery came the tones of a devout hymn. Eugenia checked her horses to listen, and caught the words of the psalm, "Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for the living God."

At the sound of these words, sung by humble pious lips, her artificial life was made simple at last; her heart was touched, and seemed to realize what it desired; and slowly, without a word, she went on her way to the country-house. There she secretly put on men's clothes, signed to the two Hyacinths to come with her, and left the house unobserved by the menials. She went back to the convent, knocked at the door, and presented herself and her companions to the abbot as three young men who desired to be received into the convent that they might bid farewell to the world and live for eternity. Thanks to her good training, she was able to answer the abbot's searching questions so cleverly that he received all three, whom he could not help taking for refined and distinguished persons, into the convent, and permitted them to assume the monastic habit.

Eugenia made a beautiful, almost angelic, monk, and was called Brother Eugenius, while the two Hyacinths found themselves transformed for better or worse into monks; for they were never even consulted, and they had long been accustomed only to live according to the will of their female paragon. Still, they did not find the monkish life amiss; they enjoyed incomparably more peaceful days, did not require to study any more, and found no difficulty in surrendering themselves entirely to a passive obedience.