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

Dass, we sie stand, und we sie ging, auswärts, im Haus,
Auch im Concert, wenn Tongewirr die Schöpfung schuf,

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Da zaspelnd, haspelnd, heftig rauschend, nimmer still,
Ellnbogen fliegend, schlagend Seiten und Geripp,
Sie immerdar den Strickstrumpf eifrig handgehabt."[16 - "Her mind was occupied with household cares —The washing, and the china, and the cook:Did I begin to speak of endless love,She took the bristled clothes-brush in her hand,And calmly turned me round and brushed my coat.All this I bore quite placidly, but notThat, sitting, standing, everywhere we went,Yes, even at concerts, when sweet strains beguiled,Entwining, clicking, rustling, never still,Her elbows flying, thumping on her side,Her knitting-needles vigorously she plied.""The sacred hymeneal couch had received us; Luna's chaste beams illumined our chamber. Encircled by white arms I lay, praying for Aphrodite's favour, dreaming of the marvellous child that needs must be the offspring of a night like this, the mighty hero who in fulness of time shall see the light. Soft taps upon my shoulder rouse me from my dream; 'tis my sweet bride caressing me; I thank her silently, with tender, meaning smile. One moment later, and my heart is torn by hellish pangs of disillusionment; it is her knitting that is dancing on my back; worse still – she is at the turning of the heel, that point when the most skilful, despite their counting, often blunder."]

The most comical part of this satire is the passage which, whether intentionally or unintentionally on the author's part, reads like a parody of the well-known Roman Elegy in which Goethe drums the hexameter measure, "leise mit fingernder Hand," upon his mistress's back: —

"Einst als des Thorns heilig Lager uns umfing,
Am Himmel glanzvoll prangte Lunas keuscher Schein,
Der goldnen Aphrodite Gab' erwünschend mir,
Von silberweissen Armen ich umflochten lag.
Schon denkend, welch ein Wunderkind so holder Nacht,
Welch Vaterlandserretter, kraftgepanzert, soll
Dem zarten Leib entspriessen nach der Horen Tanz,
Fühl' ich am Rücken hinter mir gar sanften Schlag:
Da wähn ich, Liebsgekose neckt die Schulter mir,
Und lächle fromm die süsse Braut und sinnig an:
Bald naht mir der Enttäuschung grauser Höllenschmerz
Das Strickzeug tanzt auf meinem Rücken thätig fort;
Ja, stand das Werk just in der Ferse Beugung, wo
Der Kundigste, ob vielem Zählen, selber pfuscht."

When the cult of the useful is carried as far as this, we can understand advocacy of purposelessness.

But purposelessness and idleness are inseparable. "Only Italians," we are told, "know how to walk, and only Orientals how to lie; and where has the mind developed with more refinement and sweetness than in India? And in every clime it is idleness which distinguishes the noble from the simple, and which is, therefore, the essence of nobility."

This last assertion is outrageous, but its very audacity is significant. It shows the attitude of Romanticism towards the masses. To have the means to do nothing is, in its estimation, the true patent of nobility. Its heroes are those who cultivate the unremunerative arts, and are supported by others – kings and knights like those in Fouqué's and Ingemann's books, artists and poets like those in Tieck's and Novalis's. It separates itself from humanity, will do nothing for it, but only for the favoured few. The hero and heroine in Lucinde are the gifted artist and the woman of genius; it is not the ordinary union, but the "nature-marriage" or the "art-marriage" (Naturehe, Kunstehe) for which our interest is claimed. Observe how Julius at once asks Lucinde whether her child, if a girl, shall be trained as a portrait or as a landscape painter. Only as a member of the fraternity of artists do her parents take any interest in her. Only authors and artists have part and lot in the poetry of life.

It is not difficult to understand how it was that Lucinde was barren of any social results. But though the book had no practical outcome, though it was too feeble to effect any kind of reform, there was, nevertheless, something practical underlying it.

Let us cast a glance at the principal characters. They stand out in strong relief upon a background of the profoundest scorn for all the prose of real life and all the conventions of society. The book is in no wise ashamed of its erotic theories; in its conscious purity it feels itself elevated above the judgment of the vulgar: "It is not only the kingly eagle which dares to scorn the screaming of the ravens; the swan, too, is proud, and pays as little heed. Its only care is that its white wings shall not lose their brightness; its only desire, to cling, unruffled, to Leda's breast, and breathe forth all that is mortal in it in song."

The image is pretty and daring, but is it true? The story of Leda and the swan has been treated in so many ways.

Julius is a pessimistic (zerrissener) young man, an artist, of course. We are told in the Lehrjahre der Männlichkeit, the chapter containing what Flaubert has called l'éducation sentimentale, that it was strikingly characteristic of him that he could play faro with apparently passionate eagerness, and yet in reality be absent-minded and careless; he would dare everything in the heat of the moment, and as soon as he had lost would turn indifferently away. Such a trait may not excite our admiration, but it at all events produces a pretty distinct impression of a pleasure-loving, blasé young man, who, feeling no powerful impulse towards action, seeks for excitement while leading a life of careless, coldly despairing idleness. The history of his development is indicated, as is often the case with quite young men, simply by a succession of female names.

Of the women in question we have only very slight sketches, like the pencil-drawings in an album. One of these introductory portraits is rather more elaborated than the rest, that of a dame aux camélias sunk in Oriental indolence, who, like the original dame aux camélias, is raised above her position by a true passion, and dies when she is neither understood nor believed. She dies by her own hand, makes a brilliant exit from life, and seems to us, as she is described sitting in her boudoir with her hands in her lap, surrounded by great mirrors and inhaling perfumes, like a living image of the æsthetic stupor of self-contemplation and self-absorption, which was the final development of Romanticism. After passing through numbers of erotic experiences, all equally and exceedingly repulsive, Julius finally makes the acquaintance of his feminine counterpart, Lucinde, whose impression is never effaced. "In her he met a youthful artist" (Of course!), "who, like himself, passionately worshipped beauty and loved nature and solitude. In her landscapes one felt a fresh breath of real air. She painted not to gain a living or to perfect herself in an art" (On no account any purpose or utility!) "but simply for pleasure" (Dilettantism and irony!). "Her productions were slight water-colour sketches. She had lacked the patience and industry required to learn oil-painting." (No industry!) … "Lucinde had a decided leaning towards the romantic" (Of course she had; she is romance incarnate!). "She was one of those who do not live in the ordinary world, but in one created by themselves… With courageous determination she had broken with all conventions, cast off all bonds, and lived in perfect freedom and independence." From the time when Julius meets her, his art too becomes more fervid and inspired. He paints the nude "in a flood of vitalising light;" his figures "were like animated plants in human shapes."

With Julius and Lucinde life flows on smoothly and melodiously, "like a beautiful song," in perpetually aroused and satisfied longing. The action passes, as it were, in a studio where the easel stands close to the alcove. Lucinde becomes a mother, and their union is now the "marriage of nature" (die Naturehe). "What united us before was love and passion. Now nature has united us more closely." The birth of the child gives the parents "civic rights in the state of nature" (probably Rousseau's), the only civic rights they seem to have valued. The Romanticists were as indifferent to social and political rights as Kierkegaard's hero, who was of opinion that we ought to be glad that there are some who care to rule, thereby freeing the rest of us from the task.

VII

"LUCINDE" IN REAL LIFE

Behind this indistinct picture lay a far more definitely outlined reality. The youthful life of the hero corresponded pretty accurately, as Friedrich Schlegel's letters show, with that of the author. In those days Berlin had not yet become pious, but was, according to the evidence of contemporaries, a species of Venusberg, which none approached with impunity. The example of the throne sanctioned every species of moral licence. Enthusiasm for art and literature superseded the official morality which a short time before had been so powerful, but from which men were rapidly emancipating themselves.

In the autumn of 1799, the year in which Lucinde was published, Friedrich Schlegel wrote to Schleiermacher: "People here have been behaving so outrageously that Schelling has had a fresh attack of his old enthusiasm for irreligion, in which I support him with all my might. He has composed an epicurean confession of faith in the Hans Sachs-Goethe style." This was Der Widerporst.

"Kann es fürwahr nicht länger ertragen,
Muss wieder einmal um mich schlagen,
Wieder mich rühren mit allen Sinnen,
So mir dachten zu entrinnen
Von den hohen, überirdischen Lehren,
Dazu sie mich wollten mit Gewalt bekehren
Darum, so will auch ich bekennen
Wie ich in mir es fühle brennen,
Wie mir's in allen Adern schwillt,
Mein Wort so viel wie anderes gilt,
Da ich in bös' und guten Stunden
Mich habe gar trefflich befunden,
Seit ich gekommen in's Klare,
Die Materie sei das einzig Wahre.
Halte nichts vom Unsichtbaren,
Halt' mich allein am Offenbaren,
Was ich kann riechen, schmecken, fühlen,
Mit allen Sinnen drinnen wühlen.
Mein einzig' Religion ist die,
Dass ich liebe ein schönes Knie,
Volle Brust und schlanke Hüften,
Dazu Blumen mit süssen Düften,
Aller Lust volle Nährung,
Aller Liebe süsse Gewährung.
D'rum, sollt's eine Religion noch geben
(Ob ich gleich kann ohne solche leben),
Könnte mir vor den andern allen
Nur die katholische gefallen,
Wie sie war in den alten Zeiten,
Da es gab weder Zanken noch Streiten,
Waren alle ein Mus und Kuchen,
Thäten's nicht in der Ferne suchen,
Thäten nicht nach dem Himmel gaffen,
Hatten von Gott'nen lebend'gen Affen,
Hielten die Erde für's Centrum der Welt,
Zum Centrum der Erde Rom bestellt,
Darin der Statthalter residirt
Und der Welttheile Scepter führt,
Und lebten die Laien und die Pfaffen
Zusammen wie im Land der Schlaraffen,
Dazu sie im hohen Himmelhaus
Selber lebten in Saus und Braus,
War ein täglich Hochzeithalten
Zwischen der Jungfrau und dem Alten."[17 - Plitt: Aus Schelling's Leben, i. 282. "I can bear it no longer; I must live once more, must let my senses have free play – these senses of which I have well-nigh been robbed by the grand transcendental theories to which they have done their utmost to convert me. But I too will now confess how my heart leaps and the hot blood rushes through my veins; my word is as good as any man's; and of good cheer have I been, in fair weather and in foul, since I became persuaded that there is nothing real but matter. I care not for the invisible; I keep to the tangible, to what I can taste and smell, and feel, and satisfy all my senses with. I have no religion but this, that I love a well-shaped knee, a fair, plump bosom, a slender waist, flowers with the sweetest odours, full satisfaction of all desires, the granting of all sweet love can ask. If I am obliged to have a religion (though I can live most happily without it), then it must be the Catholic, such as it was in the olden days, when there was no scolding and quarrelling, when all were kneaded of one dough. They did not trouble about the far-off, did not look longingly up to heaven; they had a living image of God. The earth they held to be the centre of the universe, and the centre of the earth was Rome. There the great vicegerent sat enthroned, and wielded the sceptre of the world; and priests and laity lived together as they live in the land of Cocagne; and in the house of God itself high revelry was held."]

Such a poem from such a hand is a genuine proof of the spirit of the times; and it is instructive to observe that when Wilhelm Schlegel (acting upon Goethe's advice) refuses to publish the poem in the Athenæum, Novalis, against whom it was especially directed, writes: "I cannot understand why Der Widerporst should not be printed. Is it on account of its atheism? Just think of Die Götter Griechenlands!"

The fashions were revolutionary – uncovered bosoms, orientally flowing garments. The tone of the most notable young women of the day was excessively free. No one was more talked of for her beauty at this time than Pauline Wiesel. She was the wife of a highly intellectual man, whose scepticism and satirical, cynical wit made a deep and disturbing impression upon young Tieck (he was the model for Abdallah and William Lovell); and she was one of Prince Louis Ferdinand's many mistresses. The attachment of the dashing young prince, in this case a real passion, still glows in his letters. A contemporary wrote of her: "I look upon her in the light of a phenomenon of Greek mythology." Alexander von Humboldt walked more than thirty miles to see her. It is characteristic of the times that the connection by which Pauline Wiesel compromised herself roused no disapprobation among her more advanced women friends. The irreproachable Rahel, for example, has not a word of blame for it; one might almost imagine that she envied Pauline. As a young girl she writes despondently: "Every means, every possible preparation for living, and yet one must never live; I never shall, and those who dare to do so have the wretched world, the whole world, against them."