Note 458 — Chapter II

Le Temps, No du 13 Février, 1892: ‘Current literature ... is, at present, at an inconceivably low ebb in Germany. From one end of the year to the other it is becoming an impossibility to discover a novel, a drama, or a page of criticism worthy of notice. The Deutsche Rundschau itself recently admitted this in despair. It is not only the talent and the style which are deficient—all is poor, weak and flat; one might imagine one’s self in France, in the time of Bouilly.... Even the desire to rise above a certain level of ordinary writing seems wanting. One ends by being thankful to any contemporary German author who is seen to be making ... the simplest effort not to write like a crossing-sweeper.’ Every German who observes all the literary productions of his contemporaries will see that this is the opinion of a spiteful enemy. This opinion, nevertheless, is explained and justified by the fact that at the present day it is only the ‘realists’ who make enough stir to be heard in certain places abroad, and that there the natives are delighted to be able to consider them as representing all the German literature of the day.