Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry Part 2

Schubart was one of Holderlin's earliest favorites, so that the latter was doubtless in this way imbued with sentiments which could only grow stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem "An die Demut,"[41]

he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance of "Furstenlaune" and "Despotenblut" are plainly evident. So too in "Mannerjubel," 1788:

Es glimmt in uns ein Funke der Gottlichen!

Und diesen Funken soll aus der Mannerbrust Der Holle Macht uns nicht entreissen!

Hort es, Despotengerichte, hort es![42]

Perhaps nowhere outside of his own Wurttemberg could he have been more unfavorably situated in this respect. Under Karl Eugen (1744-1793) the country sank into a deplorable condition. Regardless of the rights of individuals and communities alike, he sought in the early part of his reign to replenish his depleted purse by the most shameless measures, in order that he might surround himself with luxury and indulge his autocratic proclivities. Among his most reprehensible violations of const.i.tutional rights, were his bartering of privileges and offices and the selling of troops. These things Holderlin attacks in one of his youthful poems "Die Ehrsucht" (1788):

Um wie Konige zu prahlen, schanden Kleine Wutriche ihr armes Land; Und um feile Ordensbander wenden Rate sich das Ruder aus der Hand.[43]

Another act of gross injustice which this petty tyrant perpetrated, and which Holderlin must have felt very painfully, was the incarceration of the poet's countryman Schubart from 1777 to 1787 in the Hohenasperg. But not only from within came tyrannous oppression. Following upon the coalition against France after the Revolution, Wurttemberg became the scene of b.l.o.o.d.y conflicts and the ravages of war. Under the regime of Friedrich Eugen (1795-97) the French gained such a foothold in Wurttemberg that the country had to pay a contribution of four million gulden to get rid of them. These were the conditions under which Holderlin grew up into young manhood. But deeper than in the mere existence of these conditions themselves lay the cause of the poet's most abject humiliation and grief. It was the stoic indifference, the servile submission with which he charged his compatriots, that called forth his bitterest invectives upon their insensible heads. His own words will serve best to show the intensity of his feelings. In 1788 he writes, in the poem "Am Tage der Freundschaftsfeier:"

Da sah er (der Schwarmer) all die Schande Der weichlichen Teutonssohne, Und fluchte dem verderblichen Ausland Und fluchte den verdorbenen Affen des Auslands, Und weinte blutige Thranen, Da.s.s er vielleicht noch lange Verweilen musse unter diesem Geschlecht.[44]

Ten years later he treats the Germans to the following ignominious comparison:

Spottet ja nicht des Kinds, wenn es mit Peitsch' und Sp.o.r.n Auf dem Rosse von Holz, mutig und gross sich dunkt.

Denn, ihr Deutschen, auch ihr seid Thatenarm und gedankenvoll.[45]

With his friend Sinclair, who was sent as a delegate, he attended the congress at Rastatt in November, 1798, and here he made observations which no doubt resulted in the bitter characterization of his nation in the closing letters of Hyperion. This convention, whose chief object was the compensation of those German princes who had been dispossessed by the cessions to France on the left bank of the Rhine, afforded a spectacle so humiliating that it would have bowed down in shame a spirit even less proud and sensitive than Holderlin's. The French emissaries conducted themselves like lords of Germany, while the German princes vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant Frenchmen. And it was the apathy of the average German, as Holderlin conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused him to put such bitter words of contumely into the mouth of Hyperion: "Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiss und Wissenschaft und selbst durch Religion barbarischer geworden, tief unfahig jedes gottlichen Gefuhls--beleidigend fur jede gut geartete Seele, dumpf und harmonielos, wie die Scherben eines weggeworfenen Gefa.s.ses--das, mein Bellarmin!

waren meine Troster."[46] In another letter Hyperion explains their incapacity for finer feeling and appreciation when he writes: "Neide die Leidensfreien nicht, die Gotzen von Holz, denen nichts mangelt, weil ihre Seele so arm ist, die nichts fragen nach Regen und Sonnenschein, weil sie nichts haben, was der Pflege bedurfte. Ja, ja, es ist recht sehr leicht, glucklich, ruhig zu sein mit seichtem Herzen und eingeschranktem Geiste."[47] Their work he characterizes as "Stumperarbeit," and their virtues as brilliant evils and nothing more.

There is nothing sacred, he claims, that has not been desecrated by this nation. But it is chiefly his own experience which he recites, when, in speaking of the sad plight of German poets, of those who still love the beautiful, he says: "Es ist auch herzzerreissend, wenn man eure Dichter, eure Kunstler sieht--die Guten, sie leben in der Welt, wie Fremdlinge im eigenen Hause."[48] Still more extravagantly does the poet caricature his own people when he writes: "Wenn doch einmal diesen Gottverla.s.snen einer sagte, da.s.s bei ihnen nur so unvollkommen alles ist, weil sie nichts Reines unverdorben, nichts Heiliges unbetastet la.s.sen mit den plumpen Handen--da.s.s bei ihnen eigentlich das Leben schaal und sorgenschwer ist, weil sie den Genius verschmahen--und darum furchten sie auch den Tod so sehr, und leiden um des Austernlebens willen alle Schmach, weil Hohres sie nicht kennen, als ihr Machwerk, das sie sich gestoppelt."[49]

But we should get an extremely unjust and one-sided idea of Holderlin's att.i.tude toward his country from these quotations alone. The point which they ill.u.s.trate is his growing estrangement from his own people, which in the very nature of the case must have had an important bearing upon his Weltschmerz. But his feelings in regard to Germany and the Germans were not all contempt. In many of his poems there is the true patriotic ring. It is true, we can nowhere find any clear political program, neither could we expect one from a poet who was so absorbed in his own feelings, and whose ideals soared so high above the sphere of practical politics. In this too Holderlin was the product of previous influences.

With all their clamor for political upheavals, the "Sturmer und Dranger"

never arrived at any serious or practical plan of action.

Notwithstanding all this, the word Vaterland was always an inspiration to Holderlin, and it is especially gratifying to note that the calumny which he heaps upon the devoted heads of the Germans is not his last word on the subject. Nor did he ever lose sight of his lofty ideal of liberty for his degraded fatherland or cease to hope for its realization. In this strain he concludes the "Hymne an die Freiheit"

(1790) with a splendid outburst of patriotic enthusiasm:

Dann am sussen, heisserrung'nen Ziele, Wenn der Ernte grosser Tag beginnt, Wenn verodet die Tyrannenstuhle, Die Tyrannenknechte Moder sind, Wenn im Heldenbunde meiner Bruder Deutsches Blut und deutsche Liebe gluht, Dann, O Himmelstochter! sing ich wieder, Singe sterbend dir das letzte Lied.[50]

What a remarkable change is noticeable in the tone which the poet a.s.sumes toward his country in the lines "Gesang des Deutschen," written in 1799, probably after the completion of his "Hyperion":

O heilig Herz der Volker, O Vaterland!

Allduldend gleich der schweigenden Muttererd'

Und allverkannt, wenn schon aus deiner Tiefe die Fremden ihr Bestes haben.

Du Land des hohen, ernsteren Genius!

Du Land der Liebe! bin ich der Deine schon, Oft zurnt' ich weinend, da.s.s du immer Blode die eigene Seele leugnest.[51]

How much the reproach has been softened, and with what tender regard he strives to mollify his former bitterness! To this change in his feelings, his sojourn in strange places and the attendant discouragements and disappointments seem to have contributed not a little, for in the poem "Ruckkehr in die Heimat," written in 1800, the contempt of "Hyperion" has been replaced by compa.s.sion. He sees himself and his country linked together in the sacred companions.h.i.+p of suffering, consequently it can no longer be the object of his scorn.

Wie lange ist's, O wie lange! des Kindes Ruh'

Ist hin, und hin ist Jugend, und Lieb' und Gluck, Doch du, mein Vaterland! du heilig Duldendes! siehe, du bist geblieben.[52]

But the fact remains, nevertheless, that Holderlin from his early youth felt himself a stranger in his own land and among his own people. Some of the causes of this circ.u.mstance have already been discussed. The fact itself is important because it establishes the connection between his Weltschmerz and his most noteworthy characteristic as a poet, namely, his h.e.l.lenism. No other German poet has allowed himself to be so completely dominated by the Greek idea as did Holderlin. And in his case it may properly be called a symptom of his Weltschmerz, for it marks his flight from the world of stern reality into an imaginary world of Greek ideals. An imaginary Greek world, because in spite of his h.e.l.lenic enthusiasm he entertained some of the most un-h.e.l.lenic ideas and feelings.

That the poet should take refuge in Greek antiquity is not surprising, when we consider the conditions which prevailed at that time in the field of learning. It was not many decades since the study of Latin and Roman inst.i.tutions had been forced to yield preeminence of position in Germany to the study of Greek. Furthermore, his own Suabia had come to be recognized as a leader in the study of Greek antiquity, and in his contemporaries Schiller, Hegel, Sch.e.l.ling, who were all countrymen and acquaintances of his, he found worthy compet.i.tors in this branch of learning. His fondness for the language and literature of Greece goes back to his early school days, especially at Denkendorf and Maulbronn.

On leaving the latter school, he had the reputation among his fellow-students of being an excellent h.e.l.lenist, according to the report of Schwab, his biographer. It was while there that Holderlin as a boy of seventeen first made use of the Alcaic measure in which he subsequently wrote so many of his poems.

A full discussion of the technic of Holderlin's poems would have so remote a connection with the main topic under consideration that its introduction here would be entirely out of place. It will suffice, therefore, merely to indicate along broad lines the extent to which the Greek idea took and held possession of the poet.

Out of his 168 shorter poems, 126, exactly three-fourths, are written in the unrhymed Greek measures.[53] Those forms which are native are confined almost entirely to his juvenile and youthful compositions, and after 1797 he only once employs the rhymed stanza, namely, in the poem "An Landauer."[54] As a boy of sixteen, he wrote verses in the Alcaic and Asclepiadeian measures,[55] and soon acquired a considerable mastery over them. At seventeen he composed in the latter form his poem "An meine Freundinnen:"

In der Stille der Nacht denket an euch mein Lied, Wo mein ewiger Gram jeglichen Stundenschlag, Welcher naher mich bringt dem Trauten Grabe, mit Dank begrusst.[56]

While not exhibiting the finish of expression and musical qualities of his more mature Alcaic lyrics, still it is not bad poetry for a boy of seventeen, and the reader feels what the boy was not slow to learn, that the stately movement of the Greek stanzas lends an added dignity to the expression of sorrow, which was to const.i.tute so large a part of his poetic activity. As already stated, the Alcaic measure was of all the Greek verse-forms Holderlin's favorite, and the one most frequently and successfully employed by him. He is very fond of introducing Germanic alliteration into these unrhymed stanzas, as the following example will ill.u.s.trate:

Und wo sind Dichter, denen der Gott es gab, Wie unsern Alten, freundlich und fromm zu sein, Wo Weise, wie die unsern sind, die Kalten und Kuhnen, die unbestechbarn?[57]

The Asclepiadeian stanza he employs much less frequently, the Sapphic only once, and that with indifferent success. It was the ode, dithyramb and hymn, the serious lyric, which Holderlin selected as the models for his poetic fas.h.i.+on. In this purpose he was not alone, for his friend Neuffer writes to him in 1793, with an enthusiasm which in the intensity of expression common at the time, seems almost like an inspiration: "Die hohere Ode und der Hymnus, zwei in unsern Tagen, und vielleicht in allen Zeitaltern am meisten vernachla.s.sigte Musen! in ihre Arme wollen wir uns werfen, von ihren Kussen beseelt uns aufraffen. Welche Aussichten! Dein Hymnus an die Kuhnheit mag Dir zum Motto dienen! Mir gehe die Hoffnung voran."[58]

But it was in the form much more than in the contents of his poems, that Holderlin carried out the Greek idea. Most of his lyrics are occasional poems, or have abstract subjects, as for example, "An die Stille," "An die Ehre," "An den Genius der Kuhnheit," and so on. Only here and there does he take a cla.s.sic subject or introduce cla.s.sic references. The truth of the matter is, that with all his fervid enthusiasm for h.e.l.lenic ideals, and with all his Greek cult, Holderlin was not the genuine h.e.l.lenist he thought himself to be. This is due to the fact that his turning to Greece was in its final a.n.a.lysis attributable rather to selfish than to altruistic motives. He wanted to get away from the deplorable realities about him, the things which hurt his tender soul, and so he constructed for himself this idealized world of ancient and modern Greece, and peopled it with his own creations.

In Holderlin's "Hyperion," we have the first poetic work in German which takes modern Greece as its locality and a modern h.e.l.lene as its hero.

Holderlin calls it "ein Roman," but it would be rather inaccurately described by the usual translation of that term. It is not only the poetic climax of his h.e.l.lenism, but also the most complete expression of his Weltschmerz in its various phases. It must naturally be both, for the poet and the hero are one. He speaks of it as "mein Werkchen, in dem ich lebe und webe."[59] Its subject is the emanc.i.p.ation of Greece. What little action is narrated may be very briefly indicated. Russia is at war with Turkey and calls upon h.e.l.las to liberate itself. The hero and his friend Alabanda are at the head of a band of volunteers, fighting the Turks. After several minor successes Hyperion lays siege to the Spartan fortress of Misitra. But at its capitulation, he is undeceived concerning the h.e.l.lenic patriots; they ravage and plunder so fiercely that he turns from them with repugnance and both he and Alabanda abandon the cause of liberty which they had championed. To his bride Hyperion had promised a redeemed Greece--a lament is all that he can bring her.

She dies, Hyperion comes to Germany where his aesthetic Greek soul is severely jarred by the sordidness, apathy and insensibility of these "barbarians." Returning to the Isthmus, he becomes a hermit and writes his letters to Bellarmin, no less "thatenarm und gedankenvoll" himself than his unfortunate countrymen whom he so characterizes.[60]

"Hyperion," though written in prose, is scarcely anything more than a long drawn out lyric poem, so thoroughly is action subordinated to reflection, and so beautiful and rhythmic is the dignified flow of its periods. But having said that the locality is Greece and its hero is supposed to be a modern Greek, that in its scenic descriptions Holderlin produces some wonderfully natural effects, and that the language shows the imitation of Greek turns of expression--Homeric epithets and similes--having said this, we have mentioned practically all the Greek characteristics of the composition. And there is much in it that is entirely un-h.e.l.lenic. To begin with, the form in which "Hyperion" is cast, that of letters, written not even during the progress of the events narrated, but after they are all a thing of the past, is not at all a Greek idea. Moreover Weltschmerz, which const.i.tutes the "Grundstimmung" of all Holderlin's writings, and which is most plainly and persistently expressed in "Hyperion," is not h.e.l.lenic. Not that we should have to look in vain for pessimistic utterances from the cla.s.sical poets of Greece--for does not Sophocles make the deliberate statement: "Not to be born is the most reasonable, but having seen the light, the next best thing is to go to the place whence we came as soon as possible."[61] Nevertheless, this sort of sentiment cannot be regarded as representing the spirit of the ancient Greeks, which was distinctly optimistic. They were happy in their wors.h.i.+p of beauty in art and in nature, and above all, happy in their creativeness. The question suggests itself here, whether a poet can ever be a genuine pessimist, since he has within him the everlasting impulse to create. And to create is to hope. Hyperion himself says: "Es lebte nichts, wenn es nicht hoffte."[62] But we have already distinguished between pessimism as a system of philosophy, and Weltschmerz as a poetic mood.[63] It is certainly un-h.e.l.lenic that Holderlin allows Hyperion with his alleged Greek nature to sink into contemplative inactivity. In the poem "Der Lorbeer," 1789, he exclaims:

Soll ewiges Trauern mich umwittern, Ewig mich toten die bange Sehnsucht?[64]

which gives expression to the fact that in his Weltschmerz there was a very large admixture of "Sehnsucht," an entirely un-h.e.l.lenic feeling.

Nor is there to be found in his entire make-up the slightest trace of Greek irony, which would have enabled him to overcome much of the bitterness of his life, and which might indeed have averted its final catastrophe.

Undeniably Grecian is Holderlin's idea that the beautiful is also the good. Long years he sought for this combined ideal. In Diotima, the muse of his "Hyperion," whose prototype was Susette Gontard, he has found it--and now he feels that he is in a new world. To his friend Neuffer, from whom he has no secrets, he writes: "Ich konnte wohl sonst glauben, ich wisse, was schon und gut sei, aber seit ich's sehe, mocht' ich lachen uber all mein Wissen. Lieblichkeit und Hoheit, und Ruh und Leben, und Geist und Gemut und Gestalt ist Ein seeliges Eins in diesem Wesen."[65] And six or eight months later: "Mein Schonheitsinn ist nun vor Storung sicher. Er orientiert sich ewig an diesem Madonnenkopfe....

Sie ist schon wie Engel! Ein zartes, geistiges, himmlisch reizendes Gesicht! Ach ich konnte ein Jahrtausend lang mich und alles vergessen bei ihr--Majestat und Zartlichkeit, und Frohlichkeit und Ernst--und Leben und Geist, alles ist in und an ihr zu einem gottlichen Ganzen vereint."[66] It would be difficult to conceive of a more complete and sublime eulogy of any object of affection than the words just quoted, and yet they do not conceal their author's etherial quality of thought, his "Uebersinnlichkeit." Even his boyish love-affairs seem to have been largely of this character, and were in all likelihood due to the necessity which he felt of bestowing his affection somewhere, rather than to irresistible forces proceeding from the objects of his regard.

Lack of self-restraint, so often characteristic of the poet of Weltschmerz, was not Holderlin's greatest fault. And yet if his intense devotion to Susette remained undebased by sensual desires, as we know it did, this was not solely due to the practice of heroic self-restraint, but must be attributed in part to the fact that that side of his nature was entirely subordinate to his higher ideals; and these were always a stronger pa.s.sion with Holderlin than his love. So that Diotima's judgment of Hyperion is correct when she says: "O es ist so ganz naturlich, da.s.s Du nimmer lieben willst, weil Deine grossern Wunsche verschmachten."[67] This consideration at once compels a comparison with Lenau, which must be deferred, however, until the succeeding chapter.

Undoubtedly this year and a half at Frankfurt was the happiest period of his whole life. It brought him a serenity of mind which he had never before known. Ardent was the response called forth by his devotion, but its influence was wholesome--it was soothing to his sensitive nerves.

And because it was altogether more a sublime than an earthly pa.s.sion, he indulged himself in it with a conscience void of offence. Doubtless he correctly describes the influence of his relations with Diotima upon his life when he writes: "Ich sage Dir, lieber Neuffer! ich bin auf dem Wege, ein recht guter Knabe zu werden.... mein Herz ist voll l.u.s.t, und wenn das heilige Schicksal mir mein glucklich Leben erhalt, so hoff' ich kunftig mehr zu thun als bisher."[68] But the happy life was not to continue long. Rudely the cup was dashed from his lips, and the poet's pain intensified by one more disappointment--the bitterest of all he had experienced. It filled him with thoughts of revenge, which he was powerless to execute. There can be no question that if his love for Susette had been of a less etherial order, less a thing of the soul, he would have felt much less bitterly her husband's violent interference.

But returning to the poem "Hyperion," for as such we may regard it, we find in it the most complete expression of the att.i.tude which the poet, in his Weltschmerz, a.s.sumed toward nature. Nature is his constant companion, mother, comforter in sorrow, in his brighter moments his deity. This nature-wors.h.i.+p, which speedily develops into a more or less consistent pantheism, Holderlin expresses in Hyperion's second letter, in the following creed: "Eines zu sein mit allem, was lebt, in seliger Selbstvergessenheit wiederzukehren ins All der Natur, das ist der Gipfel der Gedanken und Freuden, das ist die heilige Bergeshohe, der Ort der ewigen Ruhe."[69] And so nature is to Holderlin always intensely real and personal. The sea is youthful, full of exuberant joy; the mountain-tops are hopeful and serene; with shouts of joy the stream hurls itself like a giant down into the forests. Here and there his personification of nature becomes even more striking: "O das Morgenlicht und ich, wir gingen uns entgegen, wie versohnte Freunde."[70] Still more intense is this feeling of personal intimacy, when he exclaims: "O selige Natur! ich weiss nicht, wie mir geschiehet, wenn ich mein Auge erhebe von deiner Schone, aber alle l.u.s.t des Himmels ist in den Thranen, die ich weine vor dir, der Geliebte vor der Geliebten."[71] It is important for purposes of comparison, to note that notwithstanding his intense Weltschmerz, in his treatment of nature Holderlin does not select only its gloomy or terrible aspects. Light and shade alternate in his descriptions, and only here and there is the background entirely unrelieved. The thunderstorm is to him a dispenser of divine energies among forest and field, even the seasons of decline and decay are not left without suns.h.i.+ne: "auf der stummen entblatterten Landschaft, wo der Himmel schoner als je, mit Wolken und Sonnenschein um die herbstlich schlafenden Baume spielte."[72] One pa.s.sage in "Hyperion" bears so striking a resemblance, however, to Lenau's characteristic nature-pictures, that it shall be given in full--although even here, when the gloom of his sorrow and disappointment was steadily deepening, he does not fail to derive comfort from the warm suns.h.i.+ne, a thought for which we should probably look in vain, had Lenau painted the picture: "Ich sa.s.s mit Alabanda auf einem Hugel der Gegend, in lieblich warmender Sonn', und um uns spielte der Wind mit abgefallenem Laube. Das Land war stumm; nur hie und da ertonte im Wald ein sturzender Baum, vom Landmann gefallt, und neben uns murmelte der vergangliche Regenbach hinab ins ruhige Meer."[73]

In spite of his deep and persistent Weltschmerz, Holderlin rarely gives expression to a longing for death. This forms so prominent a feature in the thought of other types of Weltschmerz, for instance of Lenau and of Leopardi, that its absence here cannot fail to be noticed. It is true that in his dramatic poem "Der Tod des Empedokles," which symbolizes the closing of his account with the world, Holderlin causes his hero to return voluntarily to nature by plunging into the fiery crater of Mount Etna. But Empedokles does this to atone for past sin, not merely to rid himself of the pain of living; and thus, even as a poetic idea, it impresses us very differently from the continual yearning for death which pervades the writings of the two poets just mentioned. Leopardi declared that it were best never to see the light, but denounced suicide as a cowardly act of selfishness; and yet at the approach of an epidemic of cholera, he clung so tenaciously to life that he urged a hurried departure from Naples, regardless of the hards.h.i.+ps of such a journey in his feeble condition, and took refuge in a little villa near Vesuvius. Holderlin's Weltschmerz was absolutely sincere.

Numerous pa.s.sages might be quoted to show that Holderlin's mind was intensely introspective. This is true also of Lenau, even to a greater extent, and may be taken as generally characteristic of poets of this type. The fact that this introspection is an inevitable symptom in many mental derangements, hypochondria, melancholia and others, indicates a not very remote relation of Weltschmerz to insanity. In Holderlin's poems there are not a few premonitions of the sad fate which awaited him. One ill.u.s.tration from the poem "An die Hoffnung," 1801, may suffice:

Wo bist du? wenig lebt' ich, doch atmet kalt Mein Abend schon. Und stille, den Schatten gleich, Bin ich schon hier; und schon gesanglos Schlummert das schau'rende Herz im Busen.[74]

It is impossible to read these lines without feeling something of the cold chill of the heart that Holderlin felt was already upon him, and which he expresses in a manner so intensely realistic and yet so beautiful.

Having thus attempted a review of the growth of Holderlin's Weltschmerz and of its chief characteristics, it merely remains to conclude the chapter with a brief resume. We have then in Friedrich Holderlin a youth peculiarly predisposed to feel himself isolated from and repelled by the world, growing up without a strong fatherly hand to guide, giving himself over more and more to solitude and so becoming continually less able to cope with untoward circ.u.mstances and conditions. Growing into manhood, he was unfortunate in all his love-affairs and as though doomed to unceasing disappointments. Early in life he devoted himself to the study of antiquity, making Greece his hobby, and thus creating for himself an ideal world which existed only in his imagination, and taking refuge in it from the buffetings of the world about him. He was a man of a deeply philosophical trend of mind, and while not often speaking of it, felt very keenly the humiliating condition of Germany, although his patriotic enthusiasm found its artistic expression not with reference to Germany but to Greece. As a poet, finally, his intimacy with nature was such that nature-wors.h.i.+p and pantheism became his religion.

In reviewing the whole range of Holderlin's writings, we cannot avoid the conclusion, that in him we have a type of Weltschmerz in the broadest sense of the term; we might almost term it Byronism, with the sensual element eliminated. He shows the hypersensitiveness of Werther, fanatical enthusiasm for a vague ideal of liberty, vehement opposition to existing social and political conditions; there is, in fact, a breadth in his Weltschmerz, which makes the sorrows of Werther seem very highly specialized in comparison. Bearing in mind the distinction made between the two cla.s.ses, we must designate Holderlin's Weltschmerz as cosmic rather than egoistic; the egoistic element is there, but it is outweighed by the cosmic and finds its poetic expression not so frequently nor so intensely with reference to the poet himself, as with reference to mankind at large.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: _Anz. f. d. Alt._, vol. 22, p. 212-218.]