German Fiction

Keller grew to manhood in surroundings which were as nearly identical with Schiller's philosophic ideal of freedom as human conditions can well be. The Switzerland of his manhood days was the best possible justification of the ideal picture that Schiller drew in "William Tell." Therefore the optimism of Keller is so sturdy, so free from sentimentality, and so thoroughly human. His poetry is the noblest consummation of Heine's gospel of the divine beauty of life.

Keller believed with all his soul in the self-redemption of society, and used the word society in its broadest signification. And his belief was vitalized by that which he saw in Swiss life. The germs of the past were bearing fruit in the present, and in the present the germs of a future harvest were swelling. He was not one of those complacent optimists who cannot discern with critical eye and whose complacency deadens the best impulses and stands in the way of energetic striving. Swiss life in his stories is by no means a paradise. His words to B. Auerbach (June 25, 1860) betoken the attitude he took toward this life, as they also reveal the genuine democracy of his artistic striving: "Here in Switzerland we have, to be sure, many good qualities, and in respect to public character, evidently at present an honest purpose to acquire respectable and inspiriting forms of living, and the people is proving itself plastic (mobile), happy, and buoyant; but all is not gold that glitters by any means. However, I consider it the duty of a poet not merely to glorify the past, but to strengthen the present, the germs of the future, and beautify it in such a manner that people may still be able to believe: yes, we are like that, and that is the course of our life. If poets do this with a certain measure of kindly irony which deprives their productions of false pathos, then I am convinced that the people will come to be in fact and in appearance what it good-naturedly imagines itself to be and what even now it really is in its inmost disposition." – From "Studies in German Literature" (1903).

II

By Calvin Thomas

Up to a dozen years before his death Keller had received little attention in Germany; to-day there is a library of books about him, and he is universally considered a fixed star of high magnitude. While he was an ardent Swiss republican, and while the life that he depicts is almost exclusively Swiss, the Germans of the empire have pretty generally accepted him as their greatest master of prose fiction since Goethe.

Keller was a romantic realist with the soul of a poet, the eye of a man of science, and the temperament of an artist who loves life in all its manifestations. But this leaves his humour out of the account, and his humour is precisely the best part of him. In a broad sense he is didactic-like Goethe; that is, he felt that it was his mission to comprehend and describe the character of his Swiss countrymen, to the end of furthering them toward higher ideals of communal life. But this attitude never clouds his vision for the facts. He sees at every pore, as Emerson said of Goethe. He does not select ugliness for special or angry scrutiny, any more than he avoids it through excess of daintiness, but takes all things as they come. What he offers is not medicine but food-the nourishment of sane and delightful art. But no one should go to him for an exciting narrative. His spell is not in his plot. In "Green Henry," particularly, his pace is so very leisurely that one sometimes wishes there were not so many little things to be taken note of by the way. – From "A History of German Literature" (1909).

THE BANNER OF THE UPRIGHT SEVEN

Kaspar Hediger, master tailor of Zurich, had reached the age at which an industrious craftsman begins to allow himself a brief hour of rest after dinner. So it happened that one beautiful March day he was sitting not in his manual but in his mental workshop, a small, separate room which for years he had reserved for himself. He was glad that the weather was warm enough for him to occupy it again. In winter neither the old customs of his class nor his income permitted him to have an extra room heated simply that he might sit there to read. And this was at a time when there were already tailors who went shooting and rode their horses daily, so closely do the gradations of culture dovetail into one another.

Master Hediger, however, might have been proud of the appearance he presented in his neatly kept little back room. He looked almost more like an American settler than a tailor. A strong and intelligent face with heavy whiskers, surmounted by a powerful, bald dome was bending over "The Swiss Republican," while he read the leading article with a critical expression. There were at least twenty-five well-bound folio volumes of this "Republican" in a little walnut bookcase with a glass door, and they contained scarcely anything that Hediger, for twenty-five years, had not lived and fought through. The case also held Rotteck's "Universal History," a Swiss history by Johannes Müller, and a handful of political brochures and such like; a geographical atlas and a portfolio full of caricatures and pamphlets-mementoes of bitterly passionate days-lay on the lowest shelf. The wall of the little room was adorned with the portraits of Columbus, Zwingli, Hutten, Washington, and Robespierre; for Hediger was not to be trifled with and sanctioned the Reign of Terror, after it was over. Besides these world-famous heroes, there were portraits of several progressive Swiss to which were affixed in their own handwriting highly edifying and discursive inscriptions, regular little essays. Leaning against the bookcase was a well-kept, shining musket with a short side-arm hanging on it and a cartridge-pouch in which, at all times, there were thirty cartridges. That was his fowling-piece with which he went out, not for hares and partridges, but for aristocrats and Jesuits, for breakers of the constitution and traitors to the people. Until now his lucky star had kept him from shedding any blood, owing to lack of opportunity; nevertheless more than once he had seized his musket and hurried to the square. That was at the time of the riots, when he kept the gun standing between the bed and the wardrobe and would not allow it to be moved, "for," he used to say, "no government and no battalions can protect justice and liberty where a citizen is not able to step out of doors and see what is going on."

While the stout-hearted master was absorbed in his article, now nodding approvingly, now shaking his head, his youngest son Karl, a fledgling clerk in a government office, came in.

"What do you want?" asked Master Hediger harshly, for he did not like to be disturbed in his little den.

Karl, somewhat uncertain as to the success of his request, asked whether he might have his father's gun and cartridge-pouch for the afternoon as he had to go to the drill-ground.

"No use to ask, I won't hear of it!" said Hediger shortly.

"But why not? I won't hurt it," his son continued humbly and still insistently, because he simply had to have a gun if he did not want to be marched off to the detention room. But the old man only repeated in a louder tone:

"Won't hear of it! I can only wonder at the persistence of these gentlemen sons of mine who show so little persistence in other things that not one of them has stuck to the occupation which I allowed him to learn of his own free choice. You know that your three older brothers, one after another, as soon as they had to begin to drill, wanted my gun and that they none of them got it. And yet now here you come slinking along after it. You have your own fair pay, no one to support-get your own weapons, as becomes a man of honor. This gun doesn't leave its place except when I need it myself."

"But it's only for a few times. You surely don't expect me to buy an infantry rifle when I'm going to join the sharpshooters later and shall have to get myself a carbine."

"Sharpshooters! That's good too! I should only like to know why you feel it to be so necessary to join the sharpshooters when you've never yet fired a single shot. In my day a man had to have burnt a good deal of powder before he might make such an application. Nowadays a man turns sharpshooter haphazard, and there are fellows wearing the green coat who couldn't bring down a cat off the roof, but who, to be sure, can smoke cigars and act the gentleman. It's no concern of mine."

"Oh," said the boy almost whimpering, "give it to me just this once. I'll see about getting another to-morrow, but it's impossible for me to do anything today, it's too late."

"I will not give my gun to anyone," replied Master Hediger, "who does not know how to handle it. If you can take the lock off this gun and take it apart properly you can have it, otherwise it stays here."

With that he hunted in a drawer for a screwdriver, handed it to his son and pointed to the gun. In desperation Karl tried his luck and began to loosen the screws in the lock. His father watched him scornfully and it was not long before he cried:

"Don't let the screwdriver slip so; you'll spoil the whole thing. Partly loosen all the screws and then take them out, it's easier that way. There, at last!"

Karl now held the lock in his hand but didn't know what next to do with it, so he laid it down with a sigh, already, in imagination, seeing himself in the detention room. But old Hediger, once interested, now picked up the lock to give his son a lesson, explaining it as he took it apart.

"You see," he said, "first you remove the plunger-spring with this spring-hook-like this; then comes the screw of the sear-spring, you only unscrew that half way, then knock the sear-spring like this so that the pin here comes out of the hole; now you take the screw out entirely. Now the sear-spring, then the sear-pin, the sear; now then, the bridle-screw and here the bridle-hammer; next the tumbler-pin, the trigger, and finally the tumbler; this is the tumbler. Hand me the neat's-foot oil out of the little cupboard there; I'll oil the screws a bit while I have them here."

He had laid all the parts on the newspaper. Karl watched him eagerly and handed him the little bottle, thinking that the atmosphere had cleared. But after his father had wiped off the parts of the lock and oiled them afresh, instead of putting them together again he threw them promiscuously into the cover of a little box and said,

"We'll put the thing together again this evening; now I will finish reading my paper."

Disappointed and savage, Karl went out to complain to his mother. He stood in intense awe of the state authority whose school he was now to enter as a recruit. He had never been punished since he had outgrown school and not during his last years there either, and now the thing was to begin again on a higher plane, merely because he had depended upon his father's gun.

His mother said: "Your father is really quite right. All you four boys earn more than he does, and that thanks to the education he gave you; but not only do you spend all your money on yourselves, you keep on coming all the time to annoy your father by borrowing all sorts of things: his dress-coat, field-glass, drawing instruments, razor, hat, gun, and sabre. The things that he takes such good care of you borrow and bring back ruined. It seems as if the whole year round you are busy thinking up something else to borrow from him; but he, on his part, never asks anything of you, although you owe him your life and everything else. Just this once more I will help you."

Hereupon she went in to Master Hediger and said: "I forgot to tell you that Frymann the carpenter sent a message to say that the Band of Seven would meet this evening to discuss certain matters, something political, I think." He was at once pleasantly affected.

"Is that so?" he said, rose, and began to walk up and down; "I am surprised that Frymann didn't come himself to speak with me first about it, to consult me." After a few minutes he dressed quickly, put on his hat, and left with the words,

"Wife, I am going out now at once, I must find out what it's about. I haven't been out of the house this spring anyway, and it's such a beautiful day to-day. Good-bye!"

"There! Now he won't be home before ten o'clock tonight," said Mrs. Hediger laughing, and she bade Karl take the gun, be careful of it and bring it home early.

"Take it!" lamented her son, "why he's got the lock all apart and I can't put it together again."

"Well, I can," answered his mother and went into the little room with her son. She turned the parts of the lock out of the cover, sorted out the springs and screws and very skilfully began to put them together.

"Where the devil did you learn that, mother?" cried Karl, amazed.

"I learnt it in my father's house," she replied. "My father and my seven brothers used to make me clean all their guns and rifles when they had been shooting. I often cried as I did it, but I was finally able to handle them like a gunsmith's apprentice. The whole village called me 'Gunsmithy,' and I nearly always had dirty hands and a black smudge on the tip of my nose. My brothers shot and drank us out of house and home, so that I, poor child, was glad enough that your father, the tailor, married me."

While she talked her dexterous fingers had really put the lock together and fastened it to the stock. Karl hung the shining cartridge-pouch over his shoulder, took the gun and hurried off as fast as he could go to the drill-ground, where he arrived only just in time. Soon after six o'clock he brought the things back again, succeeded to taking the lock apart himself, and mixed the parts together in the box-cover.

By the time he had finished supper it had grown dark. He went to the boat-landing, hired a boat and rowed along the shore till he came to that part of the lake where carpenters and stone-cutters had their yards. It was a glorious evening; a mild south wind gently rippled the water, the full moon shone on the distant stretches of the lake and sparkled brightly on the little waves near by, and the stars burned brilliantly in the sky. The snow mountains, their presence felt rather than seen, looked down on the lake like pale spectres. All industrial litter, the petty and restless outline of the buildings, disappeared in the darkness and were transformed by the moonlight into great calm masses-in short, the landscape was appropriately set for the coming scene.

Karl Hediger rowed rapidly on until he was close to a large lumber-yard; there he softly sang the first verse of a little song a couple of times, and then rowed slowly and easily out from the shore. A slender girl rose from where she had been sitting among the piles of lumber, untied a skiff, stepped into it and rowed deliberately, making a few turns as she went, after the soft-voiced boatman. When she caught up with him the young people greeted each other and rowed on without stopping, gunwale to gunwale, far out into the liquid silver of the lake. With youthful vigor they described a wide curve with several spirals, the girl leading and the boy following with gentle strokes of his oar, without leaving her side, and one could see that the couple were not unpractised in rowing together. When they found themselves in absolute silence and solitude, the young woman pulled in her oars and stopped. That is, she shipped only one oar and continued to hold the other over the gunwale as if playing with it, but not without a purpose, for when Karl, who had also stopped, tried to approach quite close to her, to board her skiff in fact, she was most skilful in keeping his boat off by giving it a single push with her oar every now and then. Nor did this manœuvre seem to be new, for the young man soon resigned himself and sat still in his little boat.

Now they began to chat, and Karl said:

"Dear Hermine! Now I can really turn the proverb about and say: what I had in abundance in my youth I wish for in old age, but in vain. How often we used to kiss when I was ten and you were seven, and now that I am twenty I mayn't even kiss your finger-tips."

"Once for all, I never want to hear another word of those impudent lies!" cried the girl half angrily, half laughing. "You've made it all up and it's false, I certainly don't remember any such familiarity."

"Unfortunately!" cried Karl; "but I remember it so much the better. And I remember too that it was you who began it and were the temptress."

"Karl, how horrid of you!" interrupted Hermine, but he went on unrelentingly:

"You must remember how often, when we were tired helping the poor children fill their broken baskets with shavings-and how cross it always made your carpenters-I used to have to build a little hut out of ends of boards, hidden away in among the big piles of lumber, a little hut with a roof and a door and a bench in it. And then when we sat on the little bench, with the door shut, and I might at last sit idle a minute, who was it that used to throw her arms around my neck and kiss me more times than I could count?"

At these words he nearly pitched into the water, for as he had tried again to approach unnoticed as he talked, she suddenly gave his little boat such a violent push that it almost upset. Her clear laugh rang out as his left arm slipped into the water to the elbow and he swore.

"Just you wait," he said; "I'll pay you out for this some day!"

"There's time enough ahead," she replied, "you needn't be in too much of a hurry, my dear sir." Then she continued somewhat more seriously, "Father has found out about our intentions; I didn't deny them, in the main; he won't hear of such a thing, and forbids us ever to think of it again. So that is how we stand now."

"And do you intend to bow to your father's decree as dutifully and unresistingly as you seem to?"

"At least I shall never do the exact opposite of his wishes, and still less would I dare to stand in open hostility to him, for you know that he bears a grudge a long time, and is capable of a deep, slow-consuming anger. You know too, that, although he has been a widower for five years, he has not married again on my account; that is something that a daughter ought certainly to consider. And, now that we are on this subject, I must tell you too, that, under these circumstances, I don't think it proper for us to see each other so often. It's bad enough for a child to be disobedient in her heart; but there would be something hateful in our actually doing things every day that would displease our parents if they knew about them, and so I don't want to meet you alone oftener than once a month at the most, instead of nearly every day as we have been doing. And for the rest just let time go on."

"Let time go on! And you really can and will let things go like this?"