The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine Part 7

But some time must yet elapse ere the deeply-significant prophecy of that poem will be fulfilled as regards the German people, and the spirit itself, comprehending the usurpation of spiritualism, become the champion of the rights of the flesh. That will be the Revolution, the great daughter of the Reformation.

Less known in France than _Faust_ is Goethe's _West-Ostlichen Divan_, a later work with which Madame de Stael was unacquainted, and which demands especial notice. It reveals the peculiar thoughts and feelings of the Orient in graceful ballads and pithy proverbs, which exhale an atmosphere of fragrance and pa.s.sion, like a harem of love-sick odalisques, with the dark eyes of gazelles, and amorous white arms. The reader is filled with a mixed sensation of shuddering and desire, like lucky Caspar Debureau, when he stood at the top of a ladder in Constantinople, and beheld _de haut en bas_ what the Commander of the Faithful is wont to see only _de bas en haut_. At times a feeling steals o'er the reader as if he lay comfortably stretched upon a Persian carpet, smoking a long Turkish pipe, filled with the yellow tobacco of Turkestan, while a negress slave gently waves over him a variegated fan of peac.o.c.k feathers, and a handsome boy serves a cup of Mocha coffee--the sweetest and most blissful sense of life and its pleasures has Goethe expressed in these verses--in verses so dainty, so felicitous, so airy, so ethereal, that one is lost in astonishment that such things are possible in the German language. In addition to all this, the book contains the most beautiful prose descriptions and explanations of the customs and manners of the Orient, the patriarchal life of the Arabs; and withal Goethe is as easy, merry, and harmless as a child, and yet as full of wisdom as a greybeard. Goethe's prose in this work is as translucent as the green sea, when, on a bright, calm summer afternoon, we can look far down into the depths below, and catch glimpses of ancient drowned cities, and all their fabulous splendours.

Then, at times, that prose is as magical and as mysterious as the firmament, when the darkness of twilight has lifted, and the grand Goethean thoughts appear, pure and golden, like the stars. The charm of this book is indescribable; it is a salaam sent by the Occident to the Orient, and many a quaint and curious flower is gathered there; pa.s.sionate red roses, snowdrops white as a maiden's bosom, comical dandelions, purple digitalis like long human fingers, contorted crocuses, and peeping slyly forth, in the midst, modest German violets.

The meaning of this salaam is that the Occident, grown weary of its frigid, meagre spiritualism, seeks again to refresh itself amid the wholesome physical pleasures of the Orient. After Goethe had expressed in _Faust_ his aversion to abstract spiritualism, and his desire for realistic enjoyments, in writing the _West-Ostlichen Divan_ he threw himself with his whole soul, as it were, into the arms of sensualism.

Hence it is of the utmost significance that this work appeared soon after _Faust_. It was the last phase of Goethe's genius, and his example was of the greatest influence upon literature. The Orient was now the theme of our lyric poets. It may be worthy of mention, that while Goethe so rapturously celebrated Persia and Arabia in his verses, he expressed the most decided aversion to India. The bizarre and confused characteristics of that country were repugnant to him, and perhaps this dislike originated in the suspicion that some Catholic stratagem was at the bottom of the Sanscrit studies of the Schlegels and their friends.

These men regarded Hindostan as the cradle of Catholicism; they claimed to have discovered there the model of the Catholic hierarchy, the doctrine of the trinity, of the incarnation, of penance, of atonement, of the maceration of the flesh, and all their other favourite crotchets.

Goethe's antipathy towards India nettled these people not a little, and A. W. Schlegel, with transparent malice, called him "a heathen converted to Mahometanism."

Amongst the most noteworthy writings on Goethe which have appeared this year is a posthumous work by Johannes Falk, ent.i.tled _Goethe aus Personlichen Umgange Dargestellt_. With the exception of a detailed treatise on _Faust_, which, of course, must not be omitted, the author of this book has given us most excellent sketches of Goethe; he has depicted him in all the walks of life, naturally, impartially, with all his virtues and all his failings. In this book we behold Goethe in his relations to his mother, whose temperament was so wonderfully reflected in that of her son; we see him as the naturalist, watching a caterpillar developing into a b.u.t.terfly; we see the great Herder expostulating with him against the indifferentism with which he let the development of humanity itself pa.s.s before him, unregarded; we behold him at the court of the Grand Duke of Weimar, seated among the blonde court dames, making merry improvisations, like Apollo guarding the flocks of King Admetus; again we see him, with the haughtiness of a Dalai-Lama, refusing to recognise Kotzebue; then we see the latter giving a public celebration in honour of Schiller, in order thereby to depreciate Goethe; we see him in all things, wise, handsome, amiable, a blessed and inspiring figure, like the eternal G.o.ds.

In fact, that harmony of personal appearance with genius, which we demand in eminent men, existed in its fullest degree in Goethe. His outward appearance was as impressive as the thoughts that live in his writings. His figure was symmetrical and majestic, and in that n.o.ble form Grecian art might be studied as in an ancient statue. That stately form was never bent in Christian humility; the features of that n.o.ble countenance were never distorted with Christian self-reproach; those eyes were never downcast with Christian remorse, nor turned devoutly and tremulously towards heaven. No, his eyes had a G.o.dlike steadfastness, for it is in general the distinctive mark of a G.o.d, that his look is unmoved. Hence when Agni, Varuna, Yama, and Indra a.s.sume the form of Nala at Damayanti's wedding, the latter recognises her lover by the twitching of his eyes, for, as I have said, the eyes of a G.o.d are always steadfast and unmoved.

Napoleon's eyes possessed this peculiarity, and hence I am convinced that he also was a G.o.d. Goethe's eyes, even at an advanced age, remained just as G.o.dlike as in his youth, and although time could whiten, it could not bow that n.o.ble head. He always bore himself proudly and majestically, and when he spoke he seemed to grow statelier still, and when he stretched out his hand it seemed as though he could prescribe to the stars the paths they should traverse. It is said that a cold, egotistic twitching might be observed around the corners of his mouth.

But this trait is also peculiar to the eternal G.o.ds, and especially to the father of G.o.ds, great Jupiter, to whom I have already likened Goethe. When I visited him at Weimar I involuntarily glanced around to see if I might not behold at his side the eagle with the thunderbolt in its beak. I was about to address him in Greek, but, as I noticed that he understood German, I told him in the latter language that the plums along the roadside from Jena to Weimar were excellent. Many a long winter's night I had pondered on the exalted and profound remarks I should make to Goethe if I should ever see him. And now that I did at last see him face to face, I told him that the plums of Saxony were delicious. And Goethe smiled. He smiled with the same lips with which he had once kissed the beautiful Leda, Europa, Danae, Semele, and many another princess or ordinary nymph.

_Les Dieux s'en vont._ Goethe is dead. He died on March 22nd, last year, that memorable year in which the world lost its greatest celebrities. It is as if death had become suddenly aristocratic, and sought to designate particularly the great ones of this earth by sending them contemporaneously to the grave. Perhaps death wished to found a _pairie_ in the shadowy realms of Hades, in which case its _fournee_ were well chosen. Or, perhaps, on the contrary, death sought during the past year to favour democracy by destroying these great celebrities, and their authority over the minds of men, and thus to bring about an intellectual equality. Was it out of respect or from irreverence that death spared the crowned heads during the past year? In a fit of abstraction death did raise his scythe over the King of Spain, but he recollected himself in time, and spared his life. During the past twelve months not a single king has died. _Les Dieux s'en vont_--but the kings are still with us.

Sch.e.l.ling's influence on the romantic school was chiefly of a personal nature, but in addition to this, by the philosophy of nature which came into vogue through him, the poets have elevated themselves to much more profound conceptions of nature. One portion let themselves be absorbed with all their human emotions into nature; others remembered a few magic formulas, with which to conjure out of nature something that possessed human form and speech. The former were the genuine mystics, and resembled in many respects the devotees of India, who dissolve in nature, and at last begin to feel as if they and nature were one. The latter were rather sorcerers, who by their own will summoned forth even hostile spirits; they resembled those Arabian magicians, who, at their caprice, could endow stones with life, and turn living beings into stone. Novalis belonged to the first cla.s.s, Hoffman to the latter.

Novalis saw marvels in everything, and charming marvels they were. He listened to the language of the plants, he knew the secret of every young rose, finally he identified himself with all nature, and when autumn came and the leaves began to fall, then he died. Hoffman, on the contrary, saw spectres in everything; they nodded to him from every Chinese tea-pot, and from under each Berlin periwig. He was a sorcerer who transformed human beings into beasts, and beasts into human beings, even into royal Prussian court-counsellors. He would raise the dead from their graves, but life itself turned away from him, as from some gloomy spectre. He realised this; he felt that he himself had become a ghost.

All nature was to him an imperfect mirror, in which he saw, distorted in a thousand ways, the cast of his own dead face; and his works are naught else than a horrible shriek of terror in twenty volumes.

Hoffman does not belong to the romantic school. He did not come into contact with the Schlegels, and was in no way affected by their tendencies. I only mention him in contrast to Novalis, who was peculiarly a poet of that school. Novalis is less known here than Hoffman, who has been introduced to the French public by Loeve-Veimars in a very attractive form, and thus has acquired a great reputation in France. In Germany, Hoffman is by no means _en vogue_, but he was so formerly. In their time his works were much read, but only by persons whose nerves were either too strong or too weak to be affected by less violent accords. The minds that were really intellectual, and the natures that were truly poetical, would have nothing to do with him.

Such as these much preferred Novalis. But frankly confessed, Hoffman was a much greater poet than Novalis, for the latter with his idealistic pictures ever floats in the blue skies; while Hoffman, notwithstanding all his grotesque bogies, still clings fast to earthly realities. Just as the giant Anteus remained strong and invincible so long as his feet rested on mother earth, and lost his strength the moment Hercules held him aloft; so also the poet is strong and mighty as long as he does not forsake the _terra firma_ of reality, but becomes powerless as soon as he attempts to float enraptured in the blue ether.

The great resemblance between these two poets lies in the fact that their poetry was really a disease. It has been said that it does not come within the province of the critic, but of the physician, to pa.s.s judgment on their writings. The rosy glow in Novalis's poems is not the hue of health, but the hectic flush of consumption; and the brilliant light in Hoffman's fantastic conceptions is not the flame of genius, but of fever.

But have we a right thus to criticise--we, who are ourselves not blest with robust health? and especially now, when all literature appears like one vast hospital? or is poetry, perhaps, a disease of humanity, as the pearl is the morbid matter of the diseased oyster?

Novalis was born May 2nd, 1772. His real name was Hardenberg. He loved a young lady who was afflicted with consumption, and died of that dread disease. This sad experience left its impress upon all his writings. His life was but a dreamy, lingering death, and he also died of consumption in 1801, before he had completed his twenty-ninth year, or his romance.

This romance, in its present shape, is only the fragment of a great allegorical poem, which, like the divine comedy of Dante, was to embrace all earthly and celestial matters. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the celebrated poet, is the hero of this romance. We see him as a youth in Eisenach, the pretty little village which lies at the foot of the ancient Wartburg, which has been the scene of some of the greatest, as well as some of the most stupid, deeds; for here Luther translated his Bible, and here, also, a few silly Teuto-maniacs burned Kamptz's _Gendarmerie-Codex_. At this burg was held the famous tournament of minstrelsy, at which, among other poets, Heinrich von Ofterdingen met Klingsohr of Hungary in the perilous duel of poetry, an account of which has been handed down to us in the Manessa collection. The head of the vanquished was to be forfeited to the executioner, and the Landgraf of Thuringia was the judge. Wartburg, the scene of his later glory, towers ominously over the hero's cradle, and we behold him, in the beginning of Novalis's romance, under the paternal roof at Eisenach. "The parents are abed and asleep, the old clock on the wall keeps up its monotonous ticking, the wind howls and the windows rattle; ever and anon the room is lit up by fitful glimpses of the moon.

"The youth lay tossing restlessly on his couch, thinking of the stranger and his narratives. 'It is not the treasures that have awakened within me such an unspeakable longing,' said he to himself; 'far from me is all avarice; but I yearn to behold the blue flower. It is always in my thoughts, and of nought else can I think or muse. I never felt so strangely before. It is as if until now I had been dreaming, or as if in my sleep I had pa.s.sed into another world; for in the world in which I formerly dwelt, who would there have concerned themselves about flowers?

And so strange a pa.s.sion for a flower, I never heard of there.'"

These are the opening words of _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_, and the whole romance is full of the fragrance and the radiance of the blue flower. It is remarkable and significant that the most fabulous personages in this book seem as well known to us, as though in earlier times we had lived in friendly, confidential intercourse with them. Old memories awaken, Sophia's features are so familiar, and memory brings back long avenues of beech trees, the scene of so many promenades and tender caresses. But all this lies dimly back of us, like some half-forgotten dream.

The muse of Novalis was a fair and slender maiden, with earnest blue eyes, golden hyacinthine tresses, smiling lips, and a small mole on the left side of the chin, for I imagine his muse to be the self-same maid through whom I first became acquainted with his works, as I saw the red morocco-bound, gilt-edged volume, containing _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_, in her dainty fingers. She always dressed in blue, and her name was Sophia. She lived a few stations from Gottingen with her sister, the postmistress--a merry, buxom, ruddy-cheeked dame, whose full bust, surmounted with stiff white lace, resembled a fortress. This fortress, however, was impregnable; the good dame was a very Gibraltar of virtue.

She was an industrious, practical housewife, and yet her only pleasure consisted in reading Hoffman's romances. Hoffman was just the writer who could agitate her coa.r.s.e-grained nature and awaken pleasant emotions.

But her pale, delicate sister was disagreeably affected at the mere sight of one of Hoffman's books, and if she accidentally laid hands on one, she shrank from the touch. She was as delicate as a sensitive plant, and her words were so fragrant and melodious, that, taken together, they were poetry. I have written down some of her sayings, and they are poems wholly after the manner of Novalis, only more tuneful and ethereal. One of them, which she recited to me as I bade her farewell ere setting out on my travels to Italy, is an especial favourite of mine. The time is autumn; the scene, a garden wherein there had been an illumination, and we hear the conversation between the last glimmering taper, the last rose, and a wild swan. The morning mists approach, the solitary light flickers and dies out, the rose leaves fall, and the swan unfolds its white wings and flies away to the south.

For Hanover abounds with wild swans that seek the warm south in autumn, and return again in summer. They probably spend the winter in Africa, for in the breast of a dead swan an arrow was once found, which Professor Blumenbach recognised as of African origin. The poor bird, with the arrow in its breast, had returned to its northern nest to die.

But many a swan, when pierced by such an arrow, may not have the strength for such a journey, and is left helpless in the burning deserts, or with wearied pinions is perched on some Egyptian pyramid, gazing with longing eyes towards the north, towards the cool summer home in Hanover.

Late in the autumn of 1828, as I returned from the south, also with a burning arrow in my heart, my route led through the vicinity of Gottingen, and I stopped over at the dwelling-place of my old friend, the postmistress, in order to change horses. A long time had elapsed since I last saw her, and a woeful change had taken place in the good dame. Her buxom form still resembled a fortress,--but a ruined and dismantled fortress. The bastions were razed, no sentinels were on guard, and her heart, the citadel, was broken. The postillion, Pieper, informed me that she had even lost her relish for Hoffman's novels, but, as a subst.i.tute, she indulged all the more freely in brandy at bedtime.

The latter is a much simpler plan, for the brandy is always at hand, whereas the novels must be procured at the Deurlich circulating library at Gottingen, at some hours' distance. Postillion Pieper was quite diminutive, and looked as sour as if the contraction in his size was the result of drinking vinegar. When I asked the fellow concerning the postmistress's sister, he answered, "She will soon die; she is already an angel," How good a being must she have been to draw from such a churlish person the remark, "She is an angel." While saying this, he was driving off the fluttering, cackling poultry, by kicking at them with his high top-boots. The house, once so white and cheerful, had changed for the worse, like its mistress; its colour was now a sickly yellow, and the walls were wrinkled with fissures. In the court-yard lay broken vehicles, and a postillion's scarlet mantle, soaking wet, was hanging on a post to dry. Mademoiselle Sophia stood by the window, reading, and when I approached her, I found it was a gilt-edged volume, bound in red morocco; it was Novalis's _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_. She had read and re-read this book, until its pages had inoculated her with consumption, and now she looked like a luminous shadow. But her beauty was now so ethereal, that the sight of it touched me most painfully. I took both of her pale, thin hands in mine, and looked steadily into her blue eyes, and then I asked, "Mademoiselle Sophia, how are you?" "I am well," she answered, "and I shall soon be still better!" Then she pointed out of the window to a little hillock, in the new churchyard, not far from the house. On this barren mound stood a small, thin, solitary poplar, almost leafless, and it swayed to and fro in the autumn winds, not like a living plant, but like the ghost of a tree.

Mademoiselle Sophia now lies under that poplar, and the gilt-edged, red morocco volume, Novalis's _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_, which she left me as a souvenir, lies on the desk before me as I write. I have used it in the composition of this chapter.

Jean Paul Richter antic.i.p.ated the Young Germany school in its most marked tendency. The latter, however, occupied with practical questions, avoided the abstract intricacies, the abrupt mannerisms, and the unenjoyable style of Jean Paul Richter. No Frenchman with a clear, well-regulated mind can form a conception of that peculiar style. Jean Paul's style is a structure consisting entirely of very small compartments, which are sometimes so narrow that when one thought encounters another, their heads collide and bruise each other. From the ceiling are suspended hooks, on which Jean Paul hangs all sorts of ideas, and the walls are full of secret drawers, in which he conceals emotions. No German author is so rich as Jean Paul in ideas and in emotions; but he never permits them to ripen; and, notwithstanding his wealth of mind and heart, he excites more astonishment than pleasure.

Thoughts and sentiments which would grow into colossal trees, if permitted to strike root properly and develop all their branches, blossoms, and leaves--these he uproots while they are still insignificant shrubs, mere sprouts even; and whole intellectual forests are thus served up to us as an ordinary dish. Now, although curious, this is decidedly unpalatable fare, for not every stomach can digest such a mess of young oaks, cedars, palms, and banana trees. Jean Paul is a great poet and philosopher; but no one can be more inartistic than he in his modes of thought and work, In his romances he has brought to light some truly poetical creations, but all his offspring carry with them a long umbilical cord in which they become entangled and choke.

Instead of thought he gives us his thinking itself. We see the material activity of his brain; he gives us, as it were, more brain than thought, and meanwhile the flashes of his wit skip about, like the fleas of his heated imagination. He is the merriest, and, at the same time, the most sentimental of authors. In fact, sentimentality always finally overcomes him, and his laughter abruptly turns into tears. He sometimes disguises himself as a gross, beggarly fellow; but then, like stage princes, he suddenly unb.u.t.tons the coa.r.s.e overcoat and reveals the glittering insignia of his rank.

In this respect Jean Paul resembles Laurence Sterne, with whom he has been often compared. The author of _Tristram Shandy_, when apparently sunk in the most vulgar trivialities, possesses the art of rising by sudden transitions to the sublime, reminding us that he is of princely rank and the countryman of Shakespeare. Jean Paul, like Laurence Sterne, reveals in his writings his own personality, and lays bare his own human frailties; but yet with a certain awkward bashfulness, especially in s.e.xual matters. Laurence Sterne parades before the public entirely unrobed, quite naked; but Jean Paul has only holes in his trousers. A few critics erroneously believe that Jean Paul possessed more true feeling than Sterne, because the latter, whenever the subject under treatment reaches a tragic elevation, suddenly a.s.sumes a merry, jesting tone. Jean Paul, on the contrary, if the subject verges in the least towards the serious, gradually becomes lachrymose, and composedly lets his tears trickle. Sterne probably felt more deeply than Jean Paul, for he is a greater poet. Laurence Sterne, like Shakespeare, was fostered by the muses on Parna.s.sus. After the manner of women, they early spoiled him with their caresses. He was the special pet of the pale G.o.ddess of Tragedy. Once, in a paroxysm of fierce tenderness, she kissed him so pa.s.sionately, with such fervour, with so ardent a pressure of her lips, that his young heart began to bleed, and at once understood all earthly sorrows, and was filled with a boundless compa.s.sion. Poor young poet-heart! But the younger sister, the rosy G.o.ddess of Mirth, sprang quickly to his side, took the suffering lad into her arms, and sought to cheer him with song and merriment. She gave him as playthings the mask of comedy and the jingling bells, and pressed a soothing kiss upon his lips; and with that kiss she imbued him with all her levity, all her frolicsome mirth, all her sportive wit.

And since then Sterne's heart and Sterne's lips have drifted into a strange contradiction. Sometimes, when his soul is most deeply agitated with tragic emotion, and he seeks to give utterance to the profound sorrows of his bleeding heart, then, to his own astonishment, the merriest, most mirth-provoking words will flutter from his lips.

The Baron de la Motte-Fouque was formerly a major in the Prussian military service, and is one of the most conspicuous of those poet-heroes, or hero-poets, whose lyre and sword won renown during the so-called war of liberation.

His laurels are of the genuine kind. He is a true poet, and the inspiration of poetry is on his brow. Few authors receive such universal homage as did our good Fouque. Now his readers consist only of the patrons of the circulating libraries. But that public is still large enough, and Fouque may boast that he was the only one of the romantic school who was also received with favour by the lower cla.s.ses. At the time when at the aesthetic tea-gatherings in Berlin it was the fas.h.i.+on to sneer at the fallen knight, in a little Hartz village I became acquainted with a lovely maiden, who spoke of Fouque with a charming enthusiasm, and blus.h.i.+ngly confessed that she would gladly give a year of her life if she might but once kiss the author of "Undine"--and this maiden had the prettiest lips that I have ever seen.

"Undine" is indeed a charming poem. This poem is itself a kiss! The genius of poetry kissed the sleeping spring, and as it opened its laughing eyes all the roses exhaled their sweetest perfumes, and all the nightingales sang; and the fragrance of the roses and the songs of the nightingales, all this did our good Fouque clothe in words, and called it "Undine."

I know not if this novel has been translated into French. It is the story of a lovely water-fairy who has no soul, and who only acquires one by falling in love with an earthly knight. But, alas! with this soul she also learns human sorrows. Her knightly spouse becomes faithless, and she kisses him dead. For in this book death also is only a kiss.

This "Undine" may be regarded as the muse of Fouque's poetry. Although she is indescribably beautiful, although she suffers as we do, and earthly sorrows weigh full heavily upon her, she is yet no real human being. But our age turns away from all fairy-pictures, no matter how beautiful. It demands the figures of actual life; and least of all will it tolerate water-fays who fall in love with n.o.ble knights. This reactionary tendency, this continual praise of the n.o.bility, this incessant glorification of the feudal system, this everlasting knight-errantry balderdash, became at length distasteful to the educated portion of the German middle cla.s.ses, and they turned their backs on the minstrel who sang so out of time. In fact, this everlasting sing-song of armours, battle-steeds, high-born maidens, honest guild-masters, dwarfs, squires, castles, chapels, minnesingers, faith, and whatever else that rubbish of the middle ages may be called, wearied us; and as the ingenuous hidalgo Friedrich de la Motte-Fouque became more and more immersed in his books of chivalry, and, wrapped up in the reveries of the past, he ceased to understand the present, and then even his best friends were compelled to turn away from him with dubious head-shakings.

His later writings are unenjoyable. The faults of his earlier works are repeated, only more glaringly. His knights are combinations of iron and sentimentality; they have neither flesh nor common-sense. His heroines are mere semblances of women; they are dolls, whose golden tresses daintily curl over features that are as pretty and as expressionless as flowers. Like the works of Walter Scott, so also do Fouque's romances of chivalry remind us of the fantastic tapestries known as gobelins, whose rich texture and brilliant colours are more pleasing to our eyes than edifying to our souls. We behold knightly pageantry, shepherds engaged in festive sports, hand to hand combats, and ancient customs, charmingly intermingled. It is all very pretty and picturesque, but shallow, brilliant superficiality. Among the imitators of Fouque, as among the imitators of Walter Scott, this mannerism of portraying--not the inner nature of men and things, but merely the outward garb and appearance--was carried to still greater extremes. This shallow art and frivolous style is still in vogue in Germany, as well as in England and France. Even if the portrayal no longer attempts to glorify the age of chivalry, but is directed to our modern affairs, it is still the same mannerism, which grasps not the essential points of phenomena, but merely the superficial and the accidental. In lieu of a knowledge of mankind, our recent novelists evince a profound acquaintance with clothes; they perhaps justify themselves by the old saying: "The tailor makes the man." How different from the older, especially the English, novelists! Richardson gives us the anatomy of the emotions. Goldsmith treats of the affections of his heroes pragmatically. The author of _Tristram Shandy_ reveals to us the profoundest depths of the human soul; he opens, as it were, a crevice of the soul; permits us to take one glance into its abysses, into its paradise and into its filthiest recesses; then quickly lets the curtain fall over it. We have had a front view of that marvellous theatre, the soul; the arrangements of lights and the perspective have not failed in their effects, and while we imagined that we were gazing upon the infinite, our own hearts have been exalted with a sense of infinity and poetry. Fielding at once takes us behind the scenes, and there shows us all the emotions covered with deceitful rouge; the gross motives that underlie the most generous deeds; the colophony that is afterwards to blaze aloft into enthusiasm; the ba.s.s drum, while on it repose the drumsticks, which are destined to sound the furious thunder of pa.s.sion. In short, he shows us the whole interior machinery by which theatrical effects are produced; he exposes the colossal deceit by which men a.s.sume an appearance far different from the reality, and through which the truth and gladness of life are lost.

But what need to cite the English as an example, since our own Goethe has given us in his _Wilhelm Meister_ the best model of a novel?

Fouque's romances are a legion in number; he is one of the most prolific of authors. _The Magic Ring_ and _Thiodolph the Icelander_ merit a specially favourable mention. His metrical dramas, which were not intended for the stage, contain great beauties. _Sigurd the Serpent-slayer_ is a bold work, in which the ancient Scandinavian mythology is mirrored with all its gigantesque and magical characteristics. Sigurd, the chief personage of the drama, is a colossal creation. He is as strong as the rocky crags of Norway, and as fierce as the sea that beats around their base. He has as much courage as a hundred lions, and as much sense as two a.s.ses.

Herr Ludwig Uhland is the true lyric poet. He was born in Tubingen in 1787, and is now an advocate at Stuttgard. This author has written a volume of poems, two tragedies, and two treatises on Walther von der Vogelweide, and on the French troubadours. The latter are two small historical researches, and give evidence of a diligent study of the middle ages. The tragedies are ent.i.tled _Louis the Bavarian_, and _Duke Ernest of Suabia_. I have not read the former, nor is it considered the better of the two. The latter, however, contains many beauties, and pleases by its n.o.ble and exalted sentiments. It is fragrant with the sweet breath of poetry, such as we fail to find in the pieces that reap so much applause on the stage at the present day. German fidelity is the theme of the drama, and we see it here strong as an oak, defying all storms. German love blossoms, scarcely visible, in the far distance, but its violet-perfume appeals the more touchingly to our hearts. This drama, or rather this poem, contains pa.s.sages which are among the most precious pearls of our literature; notwithstanding which, the theatre-going public received, or rather rejected, the piece with indifference. I will not censure the good people of the pit too severely for that. These people have certain needs, which they demand that the poet shall gratify. The poet's productions must not merely express the sympathies of his own heart, but must accord with the desires of the audience. The latter resembles the hungry Bedouin in the desert, who thinks he has found a sack of peas, and opens it eagerly, but, alas! they are only pearls.

...Twenty years ago I was a lad, and what overflowing enthusiasm would I then have lavished upon Uhland! At that time I could better appreciate his merits than now; we were then more akin in modes of thought and feeling. But so much has happened since then! What then seemed to me so grand: all that chivalry and Catholicism; those cavaliers that hack and hew at each other in knightly tournaments; those gentle squires and virtuous dames of high degree; the Norseland heroes and minnesingers; the monks and nuns; ancestral tombs thrilling with prophetic powers; colourless pa.s.sion, dignified by the high-sounding t.i.tle of renunciation, and set to the accompaniment of tolling bells; a ceaseless whining of the Miserere; how distasteful all that has become to me since then! But once, it was, oh! so different. How often have I sat on the ruins of the old castle at Dusseldorf on the Rhine, declaiming the loveliest of all Uhland's poems:--

A wandering shepherd, young and fair, Beneath the royal castle strayed; And when the princess saw him there, Love's longing thrilled the maid.

And then with accents sweet, she said, "Oh! would that I might come to thee!

How white the lambkins there; how red The flowerets on the lea."

The youth made answer from below, "If thou would'st but come down to me!

How rosy red thy cheeks do glow, How white those arms I see."

And every morn, with silent pain, He drove his flock the castle by, And gazed aloft, until again His love appeared on high.

"Oh, welcome! welcome! princess sweet!"

His joyous tones rang bright and clear.

Then softly she in turn did greet, "Kind thanks, my shepherd dear."