Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature – 3. The Reaction in France

Das war wohl süsser Schall,
Da wir zusammen waren.

Ich sing und kann nicht weinen,
Und spinne so allein
Den Faden klar und rein,
So lang der Mond wird scheinen.

Da wir zusammen waren,
Da sang die Nachtigall,
Nun mahnet mich ihr Schall
Dass du von mir gefahren.

So oft der Mond mag scheinen
Gedenk ich dein allein;
Mein Herz ist klar und rein,
Gott wolle uns vereinen."[63 - "Long years ago the nightingale sang as she sings now. How sweet it sounded! We were together then. I sit alone and spin and sing, and cannot weep; clean and strong I spin my thread, as long as the moon shines. The nightingale sang when we were together; now she but reminds me that you have gone from me. It is of you alone that I think in the moonlight; my heart is clean and strong as the thread I spin; may God unite us again."]

It is right to give Brentano all honour as the creator, in his ballad "Loreley," of a figure which, under the treatment of other poets, notably Heine, has become so living, so truly popular, that one can hardly believe that it is not a genuine legendary figure. It is wrong to do what Griesebach and Scherer have done, namely, turn this praise into a depreciation of Heine's merits, credit him only with the greater literary dexterity, Brentano with the greater capacity of invention. It seems particularly unjust when we remember that Brentano's own finest lyrics are adaptations of popular songs. Read, for example, his beautiful Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod. The poem is to be found under the name Erntelied in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and begins thus: —

"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,
Hat Gewalt vom höchsten Gott,
Heut wetzt er das Messer,
Es schneid't schon viel besser,
Bald wird er drein schneiden,
Wir müssen's nur leiden;
Hüte dich, schön's Blümelein!"

Brentano's lines are more polished: —

"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,
Er mäht das Korn, wenn Gott's gebot,
Schon wetzt er die Sense,
Dass schneidend sie glänze;
Bald wird er dich schneiden,
Du musst es nur leiden;
Musst in den Erntekranz hinein;
Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

In their original form the following lines are not only simpler, but more beautiful than in Brentano's version: —

"Viel hundert Tausend ungezählt,
Was nur unter die Sichel fällt,
Ihr Rosen, Ihr Liljen,
Euch wird er austilgen.
Auch die Kaiserkronen
Wird er nicht verschonen.
Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

Brentano's run thus: —

"Viel hunderttausend ohne Zahl,
Ihr sinket durch der Sense Strahl;
Weh' Rosen, weh' Lilien,
Weh' krause Basilien!
Selbst euch Kaiserkronen
Wird er nicht verschonen.
Ihr müsst zum Erntekranz hinein.
Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

He spins out the six verses of the old song to fourteen by the aid of a long list of flowers and plants; we are out of breath before we get to the end of them. The volume of poems entitled Die Romanzen vom Rosenkranz ("Romances of the Rosary") is a romantic variation of the Faust legend, showing the evil of thirst for knowledge and pride of it. Faust himself is transformed into the Mephistophelian evil principle. In this work, as well as in "Loreley," Brentano prepares the way for Heinrich Heine. The romances are written in four-footed trochees, which in their cadence and whole character anticipate Heine's trochaic verse, especially in the droll juxtaposition of light, graceful lines and lines consisting of learned names, obscure legal matter, and scraps of mediæval mystic jargon.

As a prose writer, Brentano began, with his Godwi, in the style of Lucinde. The first part of the book assumes that true morality consists in allowing the sensual instincts free play, and immorality in repressing or ignoring them. With bacchantic wildness the heroine preaches the gospel of free love, and denounces marriage and every species of compulsory virtue. The second part, in genuine Romantic fashion, satirises the first part and the characters delineated in it. Godwi, the hero of the first volume, retires into the background, and the author himself, under the pseudonym Maria, takes his place. We learn that it was simply with the view of obtaining the hand of the daughter of one of the personages in the first part of the book, that the author managed to gain possession of the correspondence of which that first part consists. He had hoped by publishing it to attain this end. But, as the first volume is not approved of, he takes it to Godwi, the principal character, and begs him to tell what other love adventures he has had. The astounded Godwi reads his own story. Book in hand, he conducts the author round his garden, and says, pointing to a pond: "This is the pond into which I fall on page 266 of the first volume." Thus in Godwi we have Romantic sensual licence in combination with Romantic irony and selfduplication.

The revulsion from revolutionary ardour and passion was even more complete in Brentano's case than in Fr. Schlegel's; it became positive renunciation of reason. And his conversion, like Zacharias Werner's, was of the species accompanied by a tearful conviction of sin. In his Sketch of the Life of Anna Catharina Emmerich he tells, without giving a thought to any possible physiological explanation of the fact, that her longing for the Holy Sacrament was so great, that often at night, feeling herself irresistibly drawn to it, she left her cell, and was found in the morning kneeling with outstretched arms outside the locked church door. It never occurred to him that her condition might be a morbid one, not even when she told him all the particulars of the appearance of the stigmata on her body as if the whole thing had happened to another nun of the neighbourhood.

But during the middle period of his literary career, Brentano produced some prose works which are of more than merely historical literary interest; for example, the fairy-tale, Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia, which he first wrote in a pithy, condensed form, but at a later period diluted with holy water and greatly expanded. This tale gives us an idea of the inexhaustible supply of amusing and grotesque conceits to which his conversation doubtless owed its great charm. In it Brentano reveals himself as a master of the prose which, while playing with words and ideas and connecting things which have not the remotest connection, nevertheless dexterously refrains from mixing metaphors, and never breaks the link in the chain of ideas. It may be a perfect trifle, some accidental reminiscence (Brentano's remembering, for instance, that in his childhood he had heard Goethe's mother say: "Dies ist keine Puppe, sondern nur eine schöne Kunstfigur"), which sets him weaving the chain. But with the inexorable artistic severity of a contrapuntist, he holds to his fugitive motive throughout the whole length of his composition, varying and enriching it. As a specimen of this style, take the following paragraph from Gockel, Hinkelund Gackeleia, that tale in which, throughout several hundred pages, words and ideas undergo a transformation which fits them for their place in the hen-world: —

"Die Franzosen haben das Schloss so übel mitgenommen, dass sie es recht abscheulich zurückliessen. Ihr König Hahnri hatte gesagt, jeder Franzose solle Sonntags ein Huhn, und wenn keins zu haben sei, ein Hinkel in den Topf stecken und sich eine Suppe kochen. Darauf hielten sie streng, und sahen sich überall um, wie jeder zu seinem Huhn kommen könne. Als sie nun zu Haus mit den Hühnern fertig waren, machten sie nicht viel Federlesens und hatten bald mit diesem, bald mit jenem Nachbarn ein Hühnchen zu pflücken. Sie sahen die Landkarte wie einen Speisezettel an; we etwas von Henne, Huhn oder Hahn stand, das strichen sie mit rother Tinte an und giengen mit Küchenmesser und Bratspiess darauf los. So giengen sie über den Hanebach, steckten Gross- und Kleinhüningen in den Topf, und dann kamen his in das Hanauer Land. Als sie nun Gockelsruh, das herrliche Schloss der Raugrafen von Hanau, im Walde fanden, statuirten sie ein Exempel, schnitten allen Hühnern die Hälse ab, steckten sie in den Topf und den rothen Hahn auf das Dach, das heisst, sie machten ein so gutes Feuerchen unter den Topf, dass die lichte Lohe zum Dach herausschlug und Gockelsruh darüber verbrannte. Dann giengen sie weiter nach Hünefeld und Hunhaun."

This fairy-tale style, with its perpetual farcical play upon words, almost reminds one of the manner in which the young men in some of Shakespeare's plays give vent to their overflowing humour.

Much graver, if not less mannered, is the style of Brentano's most famous story, Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl ("The Story of Brave Kasperl and Fair Annerl").

The subject is taken from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In the second volume of the collection, p. 204, is to be found a short ballad, Weltlich Recht ("Earthly Justice"), which tells the tale of the execution of Fair Nanerl, who is glad to die and go to her child: —

"Der Fähndrich kam geritten und schwenket seine Fahn:
'Halt still mit der schönen Nanerl, ich bringe Pardon.'

'Fähndrich, lieber Fähndrich, sie ist ja schon todt.
'Gute nacht, meine schöne Nanerl, deine Seel ist bei Gott.'"[64 - "The ensign came riding, his white flag he waved;'Stop! here is the pardon – fair Nanerl is saved.''O ensign, good ensign, fair Nanerl is dead.''Thy soul is with God! Good night, Nanerl!' he said."]

In Brentano's version the whole story is told in the street, on a long summer evening, by a poor old woman of eighty-eight, the beautiful Annerl or Nanerl's grandmother. He has been so successful in reproducing this aged, pious, and very superstitious woman's language, that we seem to see her before us all the time. With consummate art, he manages to keep the reader in constant suspense by the erratic manner in which she tells her story, hurrying onward and then turning back to catch up the thread she has let fall. We are never told enough during the course of the narration to give us a clear understanding of the whole position of affairs, but always enough to keep up our interest and make us anxious to know the answer of the riddle, to get at the explanation of the story-teller's mysterious hints. Seldom have the veils concealing a series of incidents from the reader been raised so skilfully, one by one.

Another of the merits of the tale is the vigour with which its main idea, honour (the true and the false sense of honour, the shame of wounded pride and the real shame and infamy to which ambition may lead), is presented to us and developed in the actions and experiences of the two principal characters. Kasperl, the brave Uhlan, whose sense of honour is so keen that it amounts to sentimental weakness, is driven to despair by the dishonourable conduct of his father and stepbrother. He commits suicide, and is thereby saved the anguish of knowing the fate of his sweetheart, fair Annerl. Annerl's whole life has been controlled by a cruel fate. The poet, in his gloomy superstition, has taken real pleasure in driving her onwards to calamity and death with the irresistible, mysterious power of predestination. Annerl's mother in her day had loved a huntsman. This huntsman is to be executed for murder. When the child comes near the executioner, his sword trembles in its scabbard – an unmistakable sign that it thirsts for her blood. The huntsman's head, when it is cut off, flies towards her, and the teeth grip her frock. Of the power that draws her on to wrong-doing and misfortune we are constantly told: "It drew her with its teeth" ("Es hat sie mit den Zähnen dazu gerissen"). Ambition leads to disgrace; Annerl is seduced by a young officer under a false promise of marriage; in her anguish and madness she strangles her new-born child, then gives herself up to justice and pays the penalty of her crime with her young life – her seducer, the ensign, arriving too late with a pardon.

This epitome of the tale shows to what extent Brentano, in this particular case, has done homage to the doctrines of Romanticism. Supernatural warnings play an important part. The career of the heroine is regarded from the standpoint of Oriental fatalism; but at the same time, and without any attempt to smooth away the contradiction, we have the genuinely Catholic persuasion that a sin is being punished, the sin committed by the chief character in setting the purely human principle of honour above the Church's doctrine of heavenly grace. Nevertheless, the little tale has both artistic style and a genuine popular ring. The spirit of the popular ballad from which its theme is borrowed hovers over it. And, what is still more worthy of note, it is in so far an epoch-making work in German literature, that, long before the appearance of Immermann's Der Oberhof it heralds the age of the peasant-story, striking in its naïve if somewhat artificial style the chord of which we hear the echo so long afterwards in Auerbach and others.

XV

MYSTICISM IN THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

There is one form of literature in which men and women are, for the most part, portrayed as essentially intellectual beings, endowed with freedom of will and action. That form is the drama. In lyric poetry emotion reigns; in epic the character is partly lost sight of in the broad painting of the circumstances and powers which determine it; but the subject of the drama is action; and because the human character, acting and willing, is in itself something absolutely definite, it compels the author to give clear, well-defined form to his production. The drama demands lucidity and intellect; in it, where there is a reason for everything, the forces of nature must be either the servants or the masters of the mind; but, above all, they must be comprehended; they cannot appear as dark, mysterious despots, who are not expected to give any explanation of their nature or business. Tieck's two Romantic dramas, the tragedy, Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva ("Life and Death of St. Genevieve"), and the ten act comedy, Kaiser Octavianus, are really only dramas in name. His admiration of Shakespeare's Pericles and Winter's Tale and Calderon's lyrical and musical interludes betrayed him into a lyric-epic formlessness unequalled in the history of literature. It would be difficult to find dramatic works more destitute of plan and style. All their author's care is lavished upon what he calls the "climate" of events, their atmosphere and fragrance, tone and colour, the mood they inspire, the shadow they cast, the light in which they are seen, which is invariably that of the moon. His medieval characters are possessed by the spirit which the study of old legends has induced in himself. It was a kind of religious impression which imparted this tendency to his productivity. Schleiermacher's Reden über Religion ("Lectures on Religion") had had a profound influence on him. He had begun to read Jakob Böhme's Morgenröthe ("Dawn"), expecting to find it a perfect mine of absurdities, and from a scoffer had turned into an enthusiastic disciple. It was about this time, too, that he met Novalis and fell under his influence.

Nevertheless, if we read Genoveva observantly, we soon find what Tieck himself admits, that its religion, the pious emotion which was intended to give it artistic unity, is no more than the Romantic longing for religion. Many traces of this longing are to be found in the play. The old days, the days of faith, are represented as sighing, like Tieck's own, for still older, far more believing days; their religion, too, is but a longing for religion. Golo says to Sir Wolf, who to him represents the good old times: "How could I dream of jeering at thy childlike spirit!" Genoveva looks back to the past; like Tieck himself, she spends her time reading old legends. She says, with a touch of genuine Romanticism: —

"Drum ist es nicht so Andacht, die mich treibt,
Wie inn'ge Liebe zu den alten Zeiten,
Die Rührung, die mich fesselt, dass wir jetzt
So wenig jenen grossen Gläub'gen gleichen."[65 - "It is not, then, so much religion that influences me, as strong affection for the olden times, and grief that we of to-day are so unlike those heroes of the faith."]