II THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN GERMANY (continued 7)

In November 1809, after paying a visit at Coppet, he went to Rome, where he spent several years. His conversion took place in 1810. During his years of wandering he had led the maddest of lives, dividing each day between low debauchery and religious excitement, between gross sensual indulgence and solemn intercourse with the Deity. The fragments of his diary, published in two small volumes by Schütz, betray a coarse immorality, an obscenity of thought, and a shamelessness of expression, which are rendered only the more repulsive by the outbursts of miserable remorse and self-accusation which interrupt the detailed descriptions of erotic experiences.

In a testamentary epistle to his friends (dated September 1812) he mentions the two motives which withhold him from a public confession. "The one is, that to open a plague pit is dangerous to the health of the still uninfected bystanders; the other, that, in my writings (for which God forgive me), among a wilderness of poisonous fungi and noxious weeds there is to be found here and there a healing herb, from which the poor sick people to whom it might be useful would assuredly shrink back in horror if they knew the pestilential spot in which it had grown."

When Werner had (characteristically enough after his conversion) studied theology and made himself acquainted with the Catholic ritual, he was ordained priest. It was in Vienna, in 1814, at the time of the Congress, that he made his first appearance as a preacher. He was most successful. People were impressed by his tall, spare, ascetic figure and his long thin face, with the prominent nose and the dark brown eyes gleaming under heavy eyebrows. He preached to enormous crowds sermons of which the Monk's sermon in Wallenstein's Lager may serve to give a faint idea. They were full of high-flown bombast and disgusting obscenities, united wit and wisdom with ascetic nonsense and tiresome twaddle, overflowed with denunciations of heretics and eulogies of the rosary.[19]

Werner died in Vienna in 1823. He is the representative-in-chief of mysticism in literature. His life is the key to his works—works which profoundly impressed his contemporaries, but which interest us chiefly from the pathological point of view. He undoubtedly possessed considerable poetic gifts.

His verse is melodious and falls caressingly on the ear, like the church music of southern lands. His characters are generally well planned (take, for example, Franz von Brienne in the first and second acts of Die Templer auf Cypern—"The Knights Templar in Cyprus"), and the action interests and keeps us in suspense; but the core and kernel of it all, the threefold kernel of sensuality, religion, and cruelty, is ill-flavoured and unwholesome.

His first important work, Die Söhne des Thals, which is in two parts, of six acts each, deals with the Order of the Templars. He was obviously inspired to it by the ideas of freemasonry, ideas which had impressed Schubert, had played a part in Wilhelm Meister, and had considerably influenced his own private life.

In this work the encasing of one idea within another—from the very beginning a favourite device of the Romanticists—takes the form of everything circling round a central mystery, the mystery of the secret society; we penetrate ever farther and farther in, but as we do so, it seems to retreat from us. The Order of the Templars has its own particular mysteries, and we witness every detail of the initiation of the neophytes into these—in gloomy vaults, with all the paraphernalia of colossal skeletons, cryptic books, curtains, swords, palms, &c., &c. The meaning underlying it all is: "Aus Blut und Dunkel quillt Erlösung" (From blood and darkness issues redemption). But the order of Knights Templar is only a branch order; the great mother-order, "das Thal" (the Vale), is in possession, as we learn in the second part of the work, of all the higher mysteries and the higher power. But its inmost mystery, too, is only the purely negative idea of renunciation and sacrifice. Hidden voices proclaim "in a hollow, chanting tone"—

"Alles ist zum Seyn erkoren, Alles wird durch Tod geboren, Und kein Saatkorn geht verloren. "Wer durch Blut und Nacht geschwommen, Ist den Aengsten bald entnommen, Blutiger, sei uns willkommen!"[20]

We gain some idea of the extent to which the mysteries are utilised in the elaboration of stage decoration and costumes from the fact that in the twelfth scene of the fifth act, which consists of sixty-four lines, only six are dialogue, the remainder being devoted to directions regarding "a great burial mound, covered with roses, with transparencies of an angel, a lion, a bull, and an eagle, disposed at the four corners"—the costumes to be worn by the dignitaries of the "Vale," of which some are to be cloth of gold, some silver, some sky blue, some blood red—and the incense, the harps, the bells, the crowns and crowns of thorns, the banners, and the "colossal statue of Isis," required in the scene.

The Order of Knights Templar has degenerated. The mother-order determines to abolish it altogether, and condemns its Grand Master, the noble and heroic Molay, to be burned, although he is entirely guiltless of the decadence of his order—has, in fact, striven hard to arrest it. The Archbishop, who tries him, is convinced of the injustice of the accusations brought against him, and loves and admires him, but is compelled to obey orders. Molay faces death with as great calm as Paludan-Müller's Kalanus; in fact, he longs for the "purifying flames." The bystanders sympathise with him, and cry to him to make his escape; but, like Kalanus, he resists all entreaties. The Archbishop's feeling for him is shared by every one; he is surrounded by a crowd of sentimental executioners, who consign him to the flames with expressions of the utmost admiration and esteem. They are cruel, sentimental fanatics, like Werner himself. Every character in the play is tainted with repulsive sentimentality. Molay's old comrade in arms, when prevented from rescuing him, says:—

"Du böser Jakob Du!—Pfui! sterben will er, Verlassen seinen Waffenbruder!—Jakob! Du musst nicht sterben! hörst Du?"[21]

But the guiltless Molay dies. There is the same play upon the Christian mystery here as in Kleist's drama. Molay is venerated like a second Christ, even by his executioners. After his death a miracle happens. "Sunlight gilds the scene. Above the entrance to the Vale cavern, below the brightly illuminated name 'Jesus' there appear the names 'John,' 'J. B. Molay,' and 'Andrew,' also in bright transparencies." All the crusaders fall upon their knees. "Long, solemn pause, during which there come from the interior of the cavern the muffled sounds of the 'Holy! Holy! Holy!' sung by the elders of the Order of the Vale to the usual tune, with an accompaniment of harps and bells."

Martyrdom is Werner's specialty. He is at home in such subjects as beating to death with clubs, boiling in oil, and the tortures of the rack. He revels in agonies, as does Görres, whose satisfaction we almost seem to feel as we read of all the mysteries of martyrdom in the first part of his Christian Mysticism. "The sacrificial victims are stretched upon the rack or the wheel, and all their limbs are twisted out of joint by means of screws ... while the lictors scorch their sides with torches or tear them with iron claws. Chains are sometimes drawn round their bodies until their ribs are broken; their chests and eyes are pierced with pointed reeds; their jaws are broken with heavy blows of the torturer's fist; and, though the victims are now hardly drawing breath, nails are hammered through their feet and red-hot iron rods are laid upon their tenderest parts and allowed to burn themselves in," &c., &c.

In Werner's drama, Attila, a young man whom Attila loves is accused of perjury and confesses his guilt. Attila, who is an emotional, sentimental enthusiast, embraces him, shedding burning tears, and then orders him to be torn asunder by horses. Cruel sentimentality, fanatic brutality, is Romantic wont. Along with Attila we have Pope Leo, another character who seems to have escaped from the pages of Görres' Mysticism—this time undoubtedly from the chapter treating of the height from the ground to which the enthusiast in his religious rapture is at times raised; for, while he is praying, Leo "raises himself higher and higher, until he is resting only on the tips of his toes." He sympathises with Attila, and has a sort of magnetic influence over him.

In Martin Luther, oder die Weihe der Kraft ("The Consecration of Strength"), the mystery of religious consecration is the subject. The play opens significantly with a scene of the Novalis type, miners going down into and being drawn up from a mine. The representation of Luther is more suggestive of a Catholic saint than of the Protestant reformer. Of Katharina von Bora, too, a saintly character is made. Luther and she are accompanied throughout the play by guardian angels, Luther by the boy Theobald, who is really art in the shape of a seraph, and Katharina by a girl named Therese, who represents faith. A few years after Werner had thus sung the praises of the Reformation, he was converted; whereupon he wrote a poem, Die Weihe der Unkraft, full of such sentiments regarding his drama as: "Durch dies Gaukelblendwerk sprach ich der Wahrheit Hohn!" (With this delusive mummery I set at nought the truth.)

The subject of his last tragedy, Die Mutter der Makkabäer, offered glorious opportunities for introducing all the tortures described in the legends of the martyrs; it abounds in physical suffering and religious ecstasies. The sons of Salome must either eat of the flesh of the sacrifice offered to Jupiter or die the most cruel death. The comical idea of its being a matter of life and death whether children taste certain food or not, is treated with the most overwhelming solemnity. In a state of supernatural excitement, Salome entreats her children, one by one, to allow themselves to be impaled, flayed, burned, &c. The sentimental chief torturer, Antiochus, admires Salome intensely; he actually falls upon his knees before her, crying—

"Du bist kein irdisch Weib!—Solch Opfer spendet Kein menschlich Wesen!—Segne mich, Du, vom Olymp gesendet!"[22]

And the equally sentimental Salome blesses him. Her son Benoni, too, blesses his murderer, immediately after which his hands and feet are cut off, and he is boiled in oil. Presently two loud axe-strokes are heard—Abir's feet have been cut off. Juda is tortured next; and so on it goes. Antiochus, the barbarous king, or Werner, the equally barbarous poet, has the children broken on the wheel joint by joint, and their limbs torn off. The mother, who is compelled to witness it all, feels nothing but the rapturous bliss of martyrdom; and when Antiochus, in his insane sentimentality, bows before her a second time, "deeply moved," crying: "Willst, grosse Niobe, Du Dich von mir im Zorne trennen?" ("And must thou part from me in wrath, great Niobe?"), she lays her right hand on his head, and says "very solemnly": "Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebt!—Lern' sterbend ihn erkennen!" ("I know that my Redeemer liveth!—Ere death come, mayst thou know him too!").

In the last scene the background opens, and we see the instruments of torture and the huge copper full of boiling oil, in which Benoni lies. His wife is staring down into it. The flames of the stake are still blazing. Salome's spirit appears above them and extinguishes them.

And there was a time when this was considered poetry! Goethe took a warm interest in Werner, and had several of his plays performed in the court theatre at Weimar. In 1808 he wrote of him to Jacobi: "It seems strange to an old pagan like me, that I can see the cross planted on my own territory, and hear Christ's blood and wounds preached poetically, without its being actually offensive to me. The standpoint to which philosophy has raised us makes this degree of tolerance obligatory. We have learned to value the ideal, even when it manifests itself in the strangest forms."

Few educated men will be inclined to take so mild and tolerant a view of the matter to-day. The development is utterly repugnant to us. For we have seen to what it led. We have seen that this "Christian poetry" helped to bring about the worst intellectual reaction of modern times. Men played so long with the idea of the purifying flames of the stake that they began to extol them in sober earnest. It is but a step from Werner to Görres, who ardently defends exorcism of evil spirits and punishment of witchcraft; and the distance is no greater between Görres and Joseph de Maistre, who writes: "In many a well-governed country in Europe they say of a man who has set fire to an inhabited house and been burned with it: 'It is only what he deserved.' Is a human being who has been guilty of any amount of theoretical and practical (i.e. religious) evil-doing less deserving of being burned? When one reflects that it was undoubtedly in the power of the Inquisition to have prevented the French Revolution, one cannot feel certain that the sovereign who calmly discarded such a weapon did not deal a fatal blow to humanity."

If Romantic Christianity is, as Ruge says, the Christianity which cannot be resolved into humanitarianism, then Joseph de Maistre is a genuine Romanticist.

The whole history of Romanticism substantiates Ruge's famous definition: "A Romanticist is an author who, aided by all the intellectual advantages of our day, assails the periods of 'enlightenment' and of revolution, and reprobates and combats the principle of pure humanitarianism in the domains of science, art, morality, and politics."

XVI

ROMANTIC LITERATURE AND POLITICS

In its first period, Romanticism is distinctly non-political. It exalts the established order of things (vide Novalis), it submissively acknowledges the authority of the king and of the Church, but in its purely literary productions it is, generally speaking, politically colourless.

Take Tieck's satiric comedies. In their outward form there is something Aristophanic; but their satire is never directed against any political character or tendency. It is aimed at "enlightenment;" and from Tieck's biographer we learn exactly what the poet understood by this word. At that time, says Köpke, the most prominent and respected men in Berlin, those who were still the leaders of public opinion, were of the school of Frederick the Great. The prevailing opinions of the eighteenth century had become their second nature. They were moral, conscientious men, who, in all the different departments of administration, science, and literature, devoted themselves zealously, and often with extraordinary industry, to their duties. Whether government officials, theologians, teachers, critics, popular philosophers, or poets, they all aimed at making religion and science useful, and at educating mankind by external provisions and rules. Intelligibility and popularity being to them all-important, they naturally diluted and levelled everything to one general plane of mediocrity. A certain blameless philistinism became their moral ideal, an ideal which seemed poor and tame in comparison with the old fervour of faith. Lessing was their prophet, and they believed themselves to be perpetuating his tradition. We can readily understand that they fell foul of Goethe, which indeed Lessing himself had done, and that they had a narrow conception of the significance and value of imagination. To them it was only the handmaid of utility, and of no value except as an instrument in the service of morality.

Everywhere throughout Tieck's writings we come upon mockery of this moral literary tendency. Take, for instance, Der Gestiefelte Kater ("Puss in Boots").—Hinze, the cat, is taking an evening walk, absorbed in melancholy thought. He begins to sing a hunting song. A nightingale strikes up in a bush close at hand. "She sings magnificently, this songstress of the groves," says Hinze; "but think how delicious she must taste! Happy indeed are the great of the earth; they can eat as many nightingales and larks as they fancy. We poor common people have to be content with the song, with the beauty, with the indescribably sweet harmony.—It is terrible that I cannot hear anything sing without wanting to eat it."

Hisses from the pit. The worthy audience is shocked by the cat's ignoble train of thought. So Hinze lets the nightingale alone; but presently, when a rabbit comes bounding by, he catches him adroitly and puts him into his bag. It is his intention, by the gift of this rabbit, to win the king's heart for his master. "The creature," he reflects aloud, "is a sort of cousin of mine; but it's the way of the world nowadays—kinsman against kinsman, brother against brother!" He is presently strongly tempted to eat the rabbit himself, but overcomes the desire, and cries: "Fie! for shame, Hinze! Is it not the duty of the truly noble to sacrifice themselves and their inclinations to the happiness of their fellow-creatures? It is the end for which we were created, and he who cannot do it—oh! it were better for him that he had never been born!" He is about to retire, but loud applause and cries of Da Capo! oblige him to repeat the last speech, after which he bows, and goes off with the rabbit. The audience is in the seventh heaven of delight—Hinze's speech is as effective as one of Iffland's tirades.

The satire in Tieck's Däumling ("Hop o' my Thumb") is also of a literary nature, being directed against the neo-classic tendency, and in particular against Goethe. Such a theme, treated, as it was in part, in the dignified metre of Greek tragedy, afforded many opportunities for drollery. All the incidents of the medieval fairy-tale are viewed from the antique standpoint. Of the seven-league boots, for instance, we read: "Trust me; I see quite well that these boots have come down to us from old Greek times. No man in our day produces work like that—so strong, so simple, such noble lines, such stitching! No, no! this is the work of Phidias, there is no doubt about it. Look! When I place the one in this position—how noble, how plastic, how grand in its simplicity! No superfluity, no ornament, no Gothic detail, none of the romantic medley of our days—when sole, leather, flaps, folds, blacking, varnish, must all contribute to produce variety, brilliancy, a dazzling resplendence in which there is nothing ideal. Nowadays the leather must shine, the sole must creak when one sets one's foot down: wretched rhyming trickery of which the ancients knew nothing." Several of Goethe's favourite words are employed in this more sarcastic than witty description.

Tieck shows most wit in defending himself against the accusation of exaggerated sentimentality. His satire might quite well apply to the modern admirers of Prosper Mérimée. He revenges himself upon his critics by placing their objections in the mouth of Leidgast, the cannibal, who comes home, smells human flesh, and determines to eat Hop o' my Thumb and his brothers and sisters for breakfast next morning. In the meantime they are to be kept in the garret. "But what if your own three little ones should awake?" objects his wife. "Well, what then?" "The strange children would not be safe. Yours are so eager for human flesh that they have lately actually tried to suck my blood." "You don't say so? I should never have credited them with so much sense and understanding." His wife weeps. "Be done with this sentimentality, wife. I cannot bear an effeminate education. I have strictly forbidden them all these prejudices, superstitions, and enthusiasms. Untutored, unadulterated nature! that's the thing for me."

However varied the objects of Tieck's satire may be, it is always literary satire; it never crosses the boundary between literature and life. Iffland and Kotzebue, the bombastic classic style and narrow-minded philistine criticism, the text of The Magic Flute, Nicolai's travellers' tales, academic pedantry and the Litteraturzeitung—these are the unfailing scapegoats.

Occasionally, in striking at "enlightenment" and everything thereto pertaining, he has a half accidental thrust at the powers that be. The king in Puss in Boots, for instance, who places the court scientist on the same level with the court fool, who lives for military parades, loves to listen to repetitions of the figures arrived at in astronomical calculations, and bestows his favour in return for a tasty rabbit, certainly does not represent royalty in the most advantageous light. But this happened half accidentally. In the same play the law goes by the name of Popanz (the bogey-man), is changed into a mouse, creeps into a mouse-hole, and is eaten by Hinze, who, not long after, shouts: 'Long live the Tiers Etat!' But this is no more nor less than a specimen of real Romantic nonsense, with no meaning in it at all. The only trace of real political satire to be found, is in one of Tieck's early works, Hanswurst als Emigrant, Hanswurst being no other than the Prince d'Artois, who, in his character of poor, stupid emigrant, has to ride on his servant's back for want of a horse. But this work remained unpublished during Tieck's lifetime.

It does not surprise us that Kotzebue failed in his attempts to get Tieck into disgrace for writing political satire. Having succeeded, in 1802, in gaining admission to the court, he, Kotzebue, endeavoured to revenge himself on his adversary by reading the parade scene from Zerbino to the king, interspersing malicious hints. It was an ineffectual endeavour, for the king took no notice. And Tieck was pleased and proud to be able to prove his innocence—the play had been written in 1790, under totally different conditions, and was founded entirely upon youthful impressions. His satisfaction was so far justifiable; for abusive personal satire is out of place in art. Nevertheless, the anecdote affects us tragi-comically. The poetry was harmless enough, heaven knows. There was no cause for any king or government in the world to be in the least disturbed by such satire. Unluckily, the best satirical poetry is not of the kind that leaves every one unscathed. The comedies of Aristophanes, with which Tieck's admirers thought his worthy of comparison, were considerably less innocent and innocuous; and all the really great satirical works of later days, such as Molière's Tartuffe or Beaumarchais' Figaro, have one characteristic in common—their action does not take place in the moon; they make war on something besides inept poets and moralising poetry.

Romanticism, however, did not long maintain this aloofness from life and politics.

The year 1806 was a critical year for Prussia and Germany.[1] The country was entirely in the power of the foreign conqueror. But this is the very reason why all the great reforms trace their origin to this year. The depth of adversity reached was so great that an energetic upward struggle had become imperative. The indefatigable Baron von Stein began the reorganisation of Prussian public institutions; Scharnhorst remodelled the army; the state of the universities was inquired into; and as one result of this last proceeding Fichte was called to Berlin in 1807. The appointment was a remarkable one in many respects. It was intended to show that henceforth a new and different spirit was to rule. When, in 1792, Fichte wrote his first work, Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung ("An Attempt at a Criticism of all Revelation"), he was afraid to publish it otherwise than anonymously. When, somewhat later, he brought out his Zurückforderung der Denkfreiheit ("Demand for the Restoration of Freedom of Thought"), he dared not even name the town in which the book was printed. It was published in "Heliopolis"—also anonymously. From his post of professor at Jena he was dismissed on a charge of atheism. But now that the day of need had come, he was suddenly appealed to, to rouse the youth of Germany. As every one is aware, his Reden an die Deutsche Nation ("Addresses to the German Nation") surpassed all expectation. It had been no bad idea, this thrusting of the German flag into the hand of the persecuted philosopher. At the University of Berlin, with French bayonets gleaming outside the windows and French drums drowning his words, he delivered the memorable addresses which sounded the réveille in the ears of Germany, and did their part in driving those drums and bayonets out of the country. For from these lectures a general and powerful revulsion of feeling may be dated. In them Fichte's philosophy became a kind of national poetry. And what wonder that this poetry proved a torch, at which many other poetical torches were kindled—Körner's, Schenkendorf's, and Arndt's among the rest?

The long-prepared-for war broke out in 1813, and ended, after various vicissitudes, in the downfall of foreign rule. But the War of Liberation, as it was called, has two aspects. It was a revolt against a monstrous tyranny, but a tyranny which represented many of the ideas of the Revolution. It was a war for hearth and home, but waged at the command of the old dynasties. The revolutionary tyranny was opposed in the interest of reactionary princes. Moreover, even in the ardour with which the struggle was maintained, there were two very different elements, which were so closely commingled that in the beginning it occurred to no one to distinguish between them, but which soon betrayed their opposite characters. The one element was national hatred of the French people—the national prejudice which seems to be inseparably connected with patriotism, and which led in this case to enthusiasm for everything German and contempt for everything French. The other element was pure love of freedom—the determination to attain political independence, to fight, not only in the name of Germany, but in the name of humanity, for human rights and privileges.

This dual feeling may be traced even in Fichte's addresses. He affirmed that only a people that had been a people from of old, a people that understood the depths of its own spirit, its own language, i.e. itself, could be free, and the liberators of the world; "and" he added, "the Germans are such a people." Teutonic national arrogance lay dormant in these words. And the seed soon began to grow. The young, healthy love of freedom found expression in Theodor Körner's bold lyrics. It was Schiller's lyre that he touched, but the genius of a new era had tuned its strings in a new key. The patriotism of a whole group of other poets took the form of enthusiasm for the German Empire and a German Emperor, that is to say, for the Germany of the Middle Ages; and these made the glories of the past their theme. Max von Schenkendorf sang mournfully and longingly of the days when—

"Die hohen adligen Gestalten Am Rheinstrom auf und nieder wallten,"[2]

and when predatory nobles ruled town and country from their fortified castles. He wrote odes to the old cathedrals, groped with tremulous awe among the skeletons of saints and knights buried in their chapels.

One of the most famous of the patriotic poets was Ernst Moritz Arndt. With Arndt hatred of everything French became a fixed idea. His Geist der Zeit ("Spirit of the Times"), the first part of which appeared in 1806, had a very powerful influence on the minds of his countrymen. And while he was writing his manly, vigorous songs in praise of freedom, he was also occupied in attacking the French language and French fashions; he even went the length of attempting to introduce a German national dress. At this same moment, Jahn, the famous introducer of gymnastics, the "Turnvater," as he is called, was earnestly engrossed with the idea of making the whole youth of Germany fit for war by means of physical exercises. In 1811, at Hasenhaide, near Berlin, he started his school of gymnastics; but previous to this, following Arndt's example, he had published writings, in which, in affectedly violent language, he tried to inflame the spirit of patriotism. The old German mythology and heroic sagas, Hermann and the Teutoburgerwald, Wodan and the Druids, the sacred oaks, the divine primitive German warrior in his boldness and uncouthness, his unkempt hair flowing over his shoulders and a club grasped in his gigantic fists, were anew elevated to the place of honour. German uncouthness was supposed to testify to German morality.

It was not long till all these patriotic ideas and enterprises were pressed into the service of reaction. The object of worship became, not the freedom that was to be won, but Germany's vanished past. Men began to study the history of their country with an ardour with which it had never been studied before, and a keen eye for all peculiarly German traits. With the brothers Grimm at their head, they turned their attention to the history and grammar of their own language, and in this domain, as in every other, fell foolishly in love with the past and its childish naïveté. Important as the results of these investigations have been to science, it is certain that in Germany they produced some of the worst enemies of liberty, men who sided with the past against the present.

The patriotic and the religious party soon made common cause. French immorality had been confronted with a peculiarly German morality; now French free-thought was confronted with a peculiarly German Christianity. Because the religion of Germany's enemies paid homage to the human mind, with its lucidity and freedom, the religion of Germany was to be ecclesiastical Christianity, with its obscurity and tyranny. Believing that they were becoming more religious, they in reality became less so. For it is an indisputable truth, one that holds good in all ages and all countries, that, true religion being enthusiasm for the living spirit and idea of the times, as yet unrealised by the many, he who is filled with that living spirit will seem irreligious, but really be religious, whilst he who is filled with the spirit or faith of a bygone, a defunct age, will be most irreligious, but seem and be called religious.

The immature intellects of the War of Liberation were caught in the snares of Romanticism. It is significant that men who, like Arndt and Görres, were regarded as the champions of liberty, soon began to express most anti-liberal opinions. Arndt made a bitter attack upon what he called industrialism, i.e., modern industrial conditions, as opposed to the old guild system, and was loud in his condemnation of machinery and steam, which robbed human feet of their right (to walk), the labourer of his work, and mountain and valley of their meaning. He was anxious that any future additions to the ranks of the aristocracy should be prevented by the inscription of all noble names in a final roll, a "golden book;" and he advocated entail and primogeniture as the one sure defence against the general break-up of society by an inundation of the proletariat. Görres, who for a time retained some remembrance of the days when he edited Das rothe Blatt, ultimately became the author of Christian Mysticism, and such a fierce reactionary that he attacked the pietistic policy of Prussia as not sufficiently thorough-going, and brought on himself a reproof from Leo XII.

The Christian-Germanic reaction which was one of the results of the War of Liberation found very characteristic literary expression in a series of tales by a nobleman who had fought in the war as a cavalry officer, Baron de la Motte Fouqué. Fouqué is principally known to the reading world at large by his charming little story, Undine. As a specimen of Romantic "Naturpoesie" at its best, this tale is only inferior to Tieck's Elfenmärchen ("The Elves"). But Undine is the one really living figure which Fouqué has produced. The cause of his success in this case probably lay in the fact that he was depicting a being who was only half human, half an element of nature—a wave, spray, the cool freshness and wild movement of water—a being without a soul. Until Undine has given herself to the Knight, she stands in some magic relationship to the restless, soulless sea; it is she who flings its spray against the window, and makes it rise until the peninsula is changed into an island, and the Knight is a captive in the fisherman's hut. Fouqué, who was a poet without being a psychologist, found a subject exactly suited to his imaginative talent in this being, which corresponded to one of the elements, and hence itself consisted of but one life-element. (It was in Undine's image that Hans Christian Andersen created "The Little Mermaid.") The bridal night brings a soul to Undine, and she is changed into the model German wife, obedient, tender, and sentimental. Her husband's harshness kills her. In her magnanimity she has caused the castle well to be covered with an enormous stone, in order to block up the only way by which her uncle, the water-spirit, Kühleborn, can enter the castle and avenge her. When, despite every warning, the Knight is faithless and marries again, and his arrogant bride has the stone removed from the well, inexorable fate compels Undine to rise out of its depths and bring him death in a kiss. Although the theme is genuinely medieval (borrowed, in fact, from Paracelsus, whose theory of the elemental spirits is founded upon old popular beliefs), and although in the course of its elaboration the author often relapses into sentimental piety, yet, to its decided advantage, a fresh pagan note is predominant in the story. Undine's originality lies in her pagan nature, as it reveals itself before she is baptized; and there is something genuinely Greek in the idea of its not being the skeleton with the scythe which comes for the dying man, but an elemental spirit which brings him death in a loving kiss.

But at the same time that Fouqué was embodying such originality and genius as he possessed in this little tale, he was also, under the influence of the great national movement, projecting the long series of romances of chivalry which began with Der Zauberring ("The Magic Ring"), published in 1815. To the romantic reactionaries The Magic Ring became a sort of gospel. Nobles and squires saw themselves reflected in all these old burnished shields and coats of mail, and rejoiced at the sight. But it was not a faithful historical picture which Fouqué exhibited. His age of chivalry is an imaginary age, in which stately, high-born men, clad in armour of burnished silver or of some dull metal inlaid with gold, and wearing silver helmets, plumed or unplumed, or iron helmets surmounted by golden eagles' wings, the visors sometimes raised, sometimes lowered, ride forth upon fiery chargers of all breeds and all colours, shiver each other's lances, and yet sit as if moulded in the saddle, or else fall to the earth only to rise as quick as lightning and draw a two-edged sword. The knights are proud and brave, the faithful squires give their lives for their masters, the slender demoiselles award the prizes at the tourneys, and love their knights "minniglich." Everything is ordered according to the exact prescriptions of the book of the laws of chivalry.

Everything is conventional—first and foremost, the mawkish, languishing style, supposed to be peculiarly adapted to the glorification of this high-born society. Only examples can give any idea of it. Bertha, sitting by a rivulet, sees her reflection in the water. "Bertha blushed so brightly that it seemed as if a star had been kindled in the water." "They sang a morning song so sweet and pleasurable that it seemed as though the setting sun must rise again, drawn by the yearning harmonies." There is a plentiful use of embellishing adjectives: "The youth's heart burned with charming (anmutig) curiosity." "Two crystal-clear drops fell from the eyes of the old knight." Great importance is attached to the description of splendid clothes and armour and ornaments: "He was beautiful to look upon in his armour of the darkest blue steel, magnificently chased and ornamented with gold; beautiful were his dark brown hair, his trim moustache, and the fresh young mouth smiling below it, disclosing two rows of pearly white teeth." A noble lady, pouring forth the tale of her misfortunes, takes time to interlard it with descriptions like the following: "I paced distractedly up and down my room, would hear nothing of the games in which the other noble maidens invited me to take part in the evening, and impatiently waved my maid away when she brought me a beautiful fishing-rod, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with a golden line and silver hook." It is strange that the inhabitants of a world where all utensils seem to be made of mother-of-pearl, gold, and silver, should think it necessary specially to mention that the gift offered her was composed of these peerless materials.

The emotions are of the same material, all mother-of-pearl and cloth of gold—not one breath of unrestrained natural feeling, not one action dictated by pure, unreflecting passion. All the emotions and passions are as carefully trained as the knights' chargers. We know beforehand how everything will happen. The knights talk to and treat each other with that distinguished courtesy which is peculiar to the privileged classes. One of them inadvertently lets fall a word (about a lady or a joust) which makes it necessary for another to challenge him to mortal combat. Without showing a trace of petty rancour or ill-feeling, the two combatants arm and leap on their snorting chargers; their attendants form a circle round them, holding torches if it is night, and they thrust and hew at each other with all their might. When the one sinks bleeding to the earth, the other throws himself down beside him and binds his wounds with brotherly tenderness and practised surgical skill; then he gives him his arm, and they march off together, their armour clanking bravely.—It is an attempt to resolve the whole rich life of the human soul into a few conventional elements—honour, loyalty, devout and humble love.

In combination with these fine feelings we have the greatest contempt for all except the privileged classes. The hero, Sir Otto, is at a masquerade at the house of his friend, the young merchant, Tebaldo. A troupe of mummers appear and give a performance. In one of the scenes a warrior in armour comes on the stage, bows to Plutus, the god of wealth, and repeats the following lines:—

"Für Beulen Silber, Gold für Blut Herr, gieb Dein Gut, so schlag ich gut."[3]

"Plutus was about to give some ingenious answer, but Otto von Trautwangen rose in wrath, laid his hand on his sword and cried: 'Yonder knave disgraces his armour, and I will prove it on his head, if so be he has the courage to meet me.' Half amused, half alarmed, the company gazed at the wrathful young knight, while Tebaldo angrily dismissed the astounded mummers, upbraiding them with the baseness of their shameful inventions, and forbidding them to enter his house again. Hereupon, blushing with shame, he returned to Otto, and in well-chosen, courtly words prayed his guest not to lay it to his charge that the scurvy crew had thought to flatter the rich merchant by thus outrageously comparing his calling with that of arms." The same evening Otto meets at his inn a certain Sir Archimbald, and is seized by the fancy to exchange armour with him, "which, methinks, we may readily do, since we are both of the old High-German heroic stature." In exchange for his coat of silver mail Otto receives a black one. An entire change comes over him with the change of armour, which does not surprise us when we remember the important part dress plays throughout. As a matter of fact, these knights are not much more than stuffed suits of armour. They affect one much as do the figures one sees riding upon armoured wooden horses in the Tower of London or the great armoury in Dresden.

From the description of one of Otto's earliest single combats we gain an idea of the extraordinary influence attributed to attire. His opponent, Sir Heerdegen, wears a rusty suit of armour, and his rusty voice shouts from behind the bars of his rusty helmet: "Bertha! Bertha!" while from Otto's silver helmet comes in silvery tones the cry: "Gabriele! Gabriele!" When Otto goes back to Tebaldo in his new armour, he has become so much handsomer and more manly, that the young merchant, who happens at the moment to be measuring costly fabrics in his storehouse, is almost ashamed to appear before him. "Then Otto von Trautwangen raised his visor. Tebaldo, half affrighted, fell back, exclaiming: 10 heavens! how you have gained in dignity even since yesterday! And here must I stand before you with an ell-wand in my hand!' Thereupon he flung his beautiful measuring rod against a pillar, shattering it into fragments. It was made of ivory and gold, and his servants could not but believe that this had happened by mischance." They attempt to console their master, but he does not listen to them; all his desire now is to give up his merchant's calling and be allowed to follow Otto as his squire. May not something very like all this be observed to-day in the mutual feelings and demeanour of a Prussian cavalry officer and a Prussian merchant?

This literature is really literature for cavalry officers. The horses are the only creatures in the book whose psychology Fouqué has successfully mastered, and this for the same reason that he was successful with Undine, namely, that it is elementary psychology. In the romances of our Danish author, Ingemann, the milk-white palfrey and the steel-clad black charger also play important parts. When the Lord High Constable is shown us attired in a scarlet cloak edged with ermine and a white-plumed hat, mounted on a tall iron-grey stallion, his swarthy little squire standing beside him holding the bridle of a nimble, restless Norwegian pony, the author has exhausted all his capacity of character drawing. In the description of the tall iron-grey stallion and the nimble little Norwegian pony we have life-like portraits of the Lord High Constable and his squire.

It is exactly the same with Fouqué. Sir Folko's horse is described as a slender-necked, light-footed, silver-grey stallion. "At a signal from his rider he approached Gabriele and bent his forelegs, then leaped into the air and caracoled so lightly back to his place that he seemed to be flying, the golden bells on his harness ringing sweet chimes. Perfectly still and obedient he stood, only turning his beautiful head, under its rich trappings, to look caressingly and inquiringly at his master, as if asking: 'Have I done well?'"—Gallantry, sense of honour, loyalty! What more is there in the knights themselves?

"Sir Archimbald's steed presented a strange contrast. Flecked with white foam, rearing and kicking, he seemed to be about to break the silver chain by which two men-at-arms were holding him back with all their might. His eyes flamed so fiercely that they might well be likened to burning torches, and with his right forefoot he pawed the earth as though he were digging a grave for his master's enemies." —Audacious valour, ardent longing for the fight, indomitable strength! What is there more in the knights?

Sir Otto's father presents him with a horse. "The youth, hastening down, saw a crowd of men-at-arms collected round a bright brown horse with golden trappings. 'Mount,' said his father, 'and make essay if so noble an animal is content to be your property.' Then the young knight Otto von Trautwangen, controlling the animal with a powerful hand, put him through his paces in such a manner that the soldiers, filled with astonishment, felt assured that the noble steed must recognise his destined master, and that in the knight's power over him there lay some strange significance. Sir Otto sprang from his horse and threw himself into his father's arms. Then the charger snorted and kicked wildly at the retainers who grasped at his bridle, and, breaking away from them, followed his young master and laid his head caressingly upon his shoulder."—Invincibility until the destined master, he whose power over the heart is felt to be "of strange significance," appears, and from that moment onwards absolute devotion and the most tender caresses! What else, what more is there in Fouqué's young maidens of high degree?

It was the fault of the sea-king Arinbjörn that, at the critical moment, Otto lost his beloved and the magic ring. Arinbjörn is riding along a solitary road. A wild bay stallion comes galloping up and makes a furious attack upon the sea-king's horse, and throws him down before his rider can spring from the saddle. Man and horse, lying in a confused heap, are mercilessly kicked by the furious stallion. When we know that the following extraordinary speech of Otto's is made of so sagacious and devoted a horse as this, it does not astonish us so much as it otherwise might: "My horse's colour makes him specially dear to me. For this bright brown is in my eyes a colour of angelic beauty; my blessed mother had great, bright brown eyes, and, as all heaven looked out of them, the colour has always seemed to me like a greeting from heaven."

Thus does the psychology of the romance of chivalry culminate—psychology of the patrician, or psychology of the horse, call it which you will. In its portraiture of knights hailing from all the ends of the earth, The Magic Ring, as Gottschall aptly remarks, confines itself to primary types of humanity and the colouring produced by the sun—we are able to distinguish a Moor from a Finn. This book was followed by many others of the same description, amongst which Die Fahrten Thiodolfs des Isländers ("The Expeditions of Thiodolf the Icelander") is the best known. Thiodolf had been forecast by an earlier work of Fouqué's, the great trilogy, Der Held des Nordens ("The Hero of the North"), which consists of Sigurd the Serpent Slayer, Sigurd's Revenge, and Aslauga. Der Held des Nordens is dedicated to Fichte, and is evidently inspired by the enthusiasm which he had aroused for the olden days of Germany, and for everything characteristically national. The three lyrical-rhetorical "reading-dramas" of which it consists are written in iambics; and where the language becomes particularly impressive or impassioned, short lines are employed, the rhythm and alliteration of which are intended to recall the old Northern metre. The general impression is much the same as that produced by the texts of such of Richard Wagner's operas as deal with the legends of the North.

The verse, though sometimes laboured, generally rings well, the sentiments are noble and chivalrous, the greatness portrayed is superhuman, yet puerile, the light is not the light of day. The hero's bodily strength and endurance are prodigious. He splits an anvil with one blow; he climbs the outer wall of a high tower, and, when he has looked in at the topmost casement and seen all that he wishes to see, jumps lightly down again. Intellectually he is less remarkable.

Of this dramatised version of the Volsung Saga Heine writes: "Sigurd the Serpent Slayer is a spirited work, in which the old Scandinavian Saga, with its giants and its witchcraft, is reflected. The hero, Sigurd, is a mighty figure. He is as strong as the Norwegian cliffs, and as wild as the sea that breaks upon them. He has the courage of a hundred lions and the wit of two asses." We may take this last remark as applying to all Fouqué's knightly figures. They are all national portraits, like those we read of in Brentano's story, Die Mehreren Wehmüller, those thirty-nine Hungarian types, painted by the artist before he went to Hungary, from amongst which every one afterwards selected his own portrait. In Arnim's and Brentano's writings everything is specialised and characteristic, the situations as well as the personalities; here everything is generalised. A king is always a hero or a stage-king; a queen is either dark and haughty or gentle and fair, &c., &c. The general type is there once for all; the individual features of the "national portraits" are added later.

The national type, of course, varies with the country. In Denmark, under Frederick VI., the romance of chivalry is patriotic and loyal. In Germany, after the War of Liberation, it is patriotic and aristocratic. In The Magic Ring we read: "The Stranger had seen much of the world, but had remained a true, pious German; nay, it was in foreign lands that he had become one; for distance had revealed to him what a glorious country that old Germany was."

In both countries the political tendency of Romanticism is the same.

XVII

ROMANTIC POLITICIANS

In his Christian Mysticism (ii. 39) Görres tells us that one of the most noticeable characteristics of a body which, through regeneration, has attained to higher harmony, is the fragrance it exhales. "Just as a foul odour is indicative of diseased and discordant organic life, so inward harmony is revealed by the fragrance which proceeds from it. Therefore the expression, 'the odour of sanctity' is by no means merely figurative; it is derived from countless well-established instances of sweet odour emanating from persons who lead a holy life." And he quotes numbers of authentic examples of this.

If Görres is right—and I cast no doubt on his assertion—then the personages to whom, in conclusion, I would direct attention for a moment must have exhaled a most fragrant odour, for they are personages with whom both he and the Church were well pleased. All that is now wanting to complete the picture of the Romantic group, is a characterisation of the men who transferred the principles of Romanticism from the domain of literature into that of practical life and politics. Görres himself may be taken as the representative of Romantic ecclesiasticism, and Friedrich Gentz as in all respects the most interesting of the politicians proper.

Joseph Görres was born in the Rhine district in 1776. He sat on the same school-bench with Clemens Brentano. At the time when the French armies overran Germany he was completely carried away by the revolutionary movement. Before he had even begun his university studies, he became a member of the Jacobin Club in his native town, Coblentz, distinguished himself by his championship of the ideas of liberty, and, in Das rothe Blatt ("The Red Journal"), provided the German revolutionary party with an organ. To him the past was detestable, France the promised land, and the rest of the world the domain of slavery.

When, in 1798, the French army marched into Rome, Görres was loud in his rejoicings over the fall of the city and the collapse of the temporal power of the Pope. He writes in The Red Journal: "We will tear the mask from ecclesiasticism, and set healthy ideas in circulation everywhere. We too have sworn eternal hatred to priestcraft and monasticism, and work for the good of the people. We at the same time work for the monarchs, by proving their inutility and helping to relieve them from the burden of government."

His style is youthfully audacious and witty, a genuine demagogue and journalist style. But in his scorn we distinguish a certain fanaticism, which, like all fanaticism, is significant of the possibility of a complete revulsion. When the transactions of the Congress of Rastadt had made it easy to forecast the abolition of the three spiritual electorates, of bishoprics, abbacies, &c., Görres advertised in his paper, under the heading of "For Sale," the following wares: "A whole cargo of seed of the tree of liberty, the flowers of which make the best bouquets for princes and princesses.... 12,000 human cattle, well broken in, who can shoot, cut and thrust, wheel to the right and wheel to the left. A splendid drilling with cudgel and lash, for twelve years, has brought them to the point of allowing themselves to be shot dead for their masters without so much as a grumble.... Three electoral mitres of finely tanned buffalo hide. The croziers belonging to the same are loaded with lead, conceal daggers, and are decorated with artificial serpents. The eye of God on the top is blind."

In December 1799 the French occupied Mayence for the second time. When the news reached Coblentz, Görres wrote his wild song of triumph over the collapse of the Roman-German Empire: "At three o'clock in the afternoon of the 30th December 1799, the day of the crossing of the Maine, the Holy Roman Empire, of ever foolish memory, passed peacefully away at the advanced age of 955 years, 5 months, and 28 days; the cause of death was apoplexy and complete exhaustion, but the illustrious deceased departed in full consciousness and comforted with all the sacraments of the Church.... The deceased was born in Verdun, in June 842 (843). At the moment of his birth a comet (Perrückenkomet), pregnant with disaster, was flaming in the zenith. The boy was brought up at the courts of Charles the Simple, Louis the Child, and their successors.... But his inclination to a sedentary life, combined with an excess of religious ardour, weakened his already feeble constitution ... and at the age of about 250, at the time of the Crusades, he became quite imbecile," &c., &c.

Görres here strikes the note which we hear again a generation later in Börne's Letters from Paris.

He contemptuously opens and reads the will of the deceased, according to which the French Republic inherits the left bank of the Rhine, His Excellency, General Bonaparte, being appointed executor.

This was Görres' stormy youthful period. By the year 1800 he was beginning to withdraw from active politics, a visit to Paris having cured him of his sympathy with Frenchmen. But he was still an ardent progressionist, dreading nothing so much as a return to the past, which would mean a crushing tyranny (harsher after long abeyance and partly justified by existing circumstances), the rehabilitation of the priesthood, and combined political and religious reaction. The oppression of foreign rule aroused his patriotic feeling. At the university of Heidelberg he entered upon his Romantic period. He lectured on the nature of poetry and philosophy, waxed enthusiastic over the Nibelungenlied, studied ancient German history, poetry, and legend. He met his old schoolfellow, Clemens Brentano, became intimate with Arnim, and came into contact with Tieck and the brothers Schlegel and Grimm. It was at Heidelberg that he published his Kindermythen ("Child Myths"), Die Deutschen Volksbücher ("The National Literature of Germany"), and his collection of old German Volkslieder and Meisterlieder.

It was not only national feeling which the Romantic movement aroused in Görres; it induced an almost equally strong feeling of cosmopolitanism, under the influence of which he took up the study of Persian, a hitherto neglected language, and, almost unassisted, attained such proficiency in it that he was able to produce a tasteful prose translation of Firdusi's epic poetry.

In 1818 he went to Berlin as spokesman of a deputation from the town of Coblentz. He boldly urged the king to fulfil the promise of a constitution given at the time of the War of Liberation, and his daring was rewarded with disgrace and several years of exile.

Until 1824 Görres continued to be, to all intents and purposes, the Romantic German patriot. From that year until his death in 1848, he is the champion of the clerical reaction. In his Deutschland und die Revolution (1820) the tendency to Catholicism is already distinct; in it he characterises the Reformation as "a second Fall." He became absorbed in the study of the history of the Middle Ages, and began to regard the Church as the only power capable of satisfactorily defending the liberty of the people from the encroachments of absolutism. Soon, under the influence of Brentano and Franz Baader, he became a believer in visions and bigotedly religious. Clemens Brentano was at this time, like Apollonius of Tyana in days of old, exercising a powerful influence upon a generation predisposed to theosophical extravagances; and Mme. de Krüdener was founding the Holy Alliance.

As early as 1826, Joseph de Maistre declares that Görres, as author of Der Kampf der Kirchenfreiheit mit der Staatsgewalt in der Katholischen Schweiz ("The Struggle of the Church with State Despotism in Catholic Switzerland"), has championed the cause of the Church with both genius and justice, and yet more boldly and effectually than it has ever been done before. Such praise from such lips carries weight; it indicates, moreover, that we have reached the point at which German Romanticism passes into French, or rather, general European reaction.

In 1827 Görres published a work which is of interest as forming a prelude to his Mysticism, namely, Emanuel Swedenborg, his Visions and his Relations to the Church.

In 1833 Clemens Brentano moved to Munich, where Görres had already settled. The old school friends met once more, and Brentano's influence over Görres was great. Brentano was now entirely given over to superstitious fanaticism. Even Schelling's new philosophy of revelation was not pious enough for him. Talking with some young theologians, he shouted: "It is of no use praising it to me! One drop of holy water is more precious to me than the whole of Schelling's philosophy." He had brought all his memoranda of Catharina Emmerich's visions and outpourings to Munich with him; he no longer needed the Gospels; from her he had learned more of Christ's sayings and journeyings than is to be found in the Scriptures. The saint had even revealed a map of Palestine to him. Görres was soon as firm a believer in miracles and myths as Brentano. Between 1836 and 1842 he wrote the four volumes of his Mysticism, the most insane book produced by German Romanticism.

The farther Görres penetrated into the mysteries of witchcraft and sorcery, the more fanciful and peculiar did he himself become. He believed that he was possessed by an evil spirit. On one occasion he complained that the devil, provoked by his interference in Satanic affairs, had stolen one of his manuscripts; it was, however, found some time afterwards in his bookcase.

When the religious disturbances broke out in Cologne, Görres came forward as the spokesman of the Ultramontanes in their dispute with the Prussian Ministry. His passionate diatribes against Protestantism were couched in Biblical language—his opponents were a brood of vipers, the Prussian State was possessed by an evil spirit, &c. This particular demon he describes as a horrible ghost, "whom it is honouring too much to call a spirit;" it is, he says, the ghost of the demon which in the Prussian army of our grandfathers' days handled the whip which flogged seven backs at a time.

Görres won the admiration of Count Montalembert, the leader of the French Catholics, by his polemical feats. In Catholic Germany he was regarded as a father of the Church, and called "the Catholic Luther." He succeeded in drawing the Bavarian Government into the movement; the opponents of the Protestant Prussian Government were allowed to publish their lucubrations unchecked in the Bavarian press, and it was Görres' hope that Bavaria, as an important Catholic power, would openly take up the contest.

No expression of politico-religious fanaticism was too outrageous for him. He went the length of declaring that the Government, by permitting mixed marriages, compelled the Catholic parent to bring up "twofold bastards"—and this in the face of the fact that the King of Bavaria was the son of a Protestant mother and had married a Protestant wife.

At the time of the violent dispute as to the authenticity of the coat of the Saviour preserved at Trèves, Görres was highly delighted with the success of a pilgrimage to Trèves, which was promptly organised, and in which the Rhinelanders, to the number of a million, took part, in order to annoy the Protestant Prussians. To him this pilgrimage was "the triumph of the victorious Church." The argument that the holy garment could not be genuine, seeing that several other places possessed similar coats, he dismissed with a reference to the miraculous multiplication of loaves recorded in the New Testament.[1]

The Romantic literary theory that manner is something absolutely independent of matter, was a theory put into practice in politics by Friedrich von Gentz. We called Kleist the German Mérimée; for several reasons Gentz might be called the German Talleyrand. In his mature years he might, like Metternich, have written under his own portrait: "Nur kein Pathos!" ("Anything except pathos!") He is the very embodiment of Romantic irony, the incarnate spirit of Lucinde. He does not, however, become a typical figure until he is over forty, at the time when a period of diplomatic activity succeeded to revolutionary upheavals and the Napoleonic wars, the time when the watchword was reaction, that is to say, quiet—quiet at any price, extinction of all the European conflagrations, and rest, profound rest for the sick, the weary, and the convalescent peoples; when consequently, as in a sick room, the great aim was to get rid as quietly as possible of disturbers of the peace and prevent all noise and uproar. "Gentz," says Gottschall, "understood how to give to the official publications that indescribable polish, that classic smoothness, that Olympian dignity which, untouched by the fate of mortals, allows no drop of nectar and ambrosia to be spilled from the cup of the gods, though blood may be flowing in torrents in the regions below. This distinguished manner of passing lightly over the small shocks by which nations were shattered into fragments, gave a complexion of mildness and grace to the despotic policy of the day. One heard only a puff, not a report; it was the noiseless slaughter of the air-gun."

To outward seeming, Legitimist principles were being vindicated; in point of fact, their vindicators were not Legitimists when their interests bade them be the reverse. In them Goethe's words were fulfilled: "None are so Legitimist as those who can legitimise themselves." The cause Gentz championed was a bad cause, but even the champion of a bad cause is interesting if possessed of remarkable talent. And Gentz was talented in an extraordinary degree. Varnhagen rightly said of him: "Never has the dust of German scholarship been stirred up with greater éclat; never has learning been displayed to such advantage."

Friedrich von Gentz was born in Breslau in 1764. Both his parents belonged to the middle classes; his future exalted position in society he owed entirely to his own ability. At the University of Königsberg he applied himself seriously to the study of Kant's philosophy, at the same time cultivating an enthusiastic Platonic friendship for an unhappy young married woman, Elisabeth Graun. In 1786 he went to Berlin, obtained a Government appointment, and made a mariage de convenance with the daughter of a high official in the finance department. He plunged into a course of unbridled dissipation, and took part in all the foolish pleasures of a court "in which a repulsive assemblage of roués and bigoted women surrounded the old king, Frederick William II."

In the midst of such a life as this he was surprised by the French Revolution. Its first effect was to fire him with youthful enthusiasm. "If this revolution were to fail," he wrote, "I should deem it one of the greatest misfortunes which has befallen mankind. It is the first practical triumph of philosophy, the first example of a form of government founded upon principles and a coherent system. It is hope and comfort for our race, which is groaning under so many ancient evils. Should this revolution fail, these evils will be more irremediable than before. I can picture so clearly to myself how the silence of despair would acknowledge, in defiance of reason, that men can only be happy as slaves, and how all tyrants, great and small, would take advantage of this dreadful acknowledgment to avenge themselves for the terror caused them by the awakening of the French nation."

But the horrors which the French Revolution brought in its train soon caused him to change his mind. He suddenly became the ardent champion of the good old days. To combat the supremacy of public opinion and the follies of the masses became the object of his life. He was incapable of seeing in the French Revolution the necessary outcome of centuries of wrong and ferment; he declared the cause of its lawlessness to be "enlightenment," the inordinate cultivation of cold reason—a characteristically Romantic theory.

No doubt there was a species of real development at the root of this change. The "rights of humanity," which he had so warmly defended in his treatise Ueber den Ursprung und die obersten Prinzipien des Rechts ("On the Origin and Main Principles of Rights"), now seemed to him only of importance to the statesman as "elementary preparatory studies." The theory of these rights appeared to him to stand in much the same relation to statecraft as the mathematical theory of projectiles does to bomb-throwing. And now, by slow degrees, he arrives at the narrow view that it is not the people, but the Government, which is the chief power in the state. He regards the co-operation of the people in legislation as a mere form; liberty has shrunk into willing, glad obedience.

Intercourse with Wilhelm von Humboldt, and the influence of the æsthetic ideas of the period on the need for harmony between private and public life, somewhat softened the severity of these principles, and the English constitution became Gentz's ideal. When Frederick William III. ascended the throne, he actually felt impelled to present a petition to his Majesty, in which, in eloquent language, he called upon him to concede liberty of the press—the very liberty which he described a few years later as the source of all evil. The loyal Goethe was astounded by this attempt "to coerce" the sovereign, and as the King took no notice of the appeal, Gentz at once let the matter drop, and did his best to bury it in oblivion. From this time onward he was in the pay of England; he did not exactly sell himself, but he accepted regular and considerable monetary rewards for his political activity in English interests. And Gentz needed money. He gambled for high stakes, and lived a life of perpetual dissipation and revelry with actresses and ballet-dancers. At times this was interrupted by fits of extreme sentimentality, when, as he writes, he lived "a pleasant, but still wild life" with his own wife. In April 1801 he notes in his diary: "Profound emotion over the death of a dog." During a visit to Weimar, where he met all the literary notabilities of the day, he became desperately enamoured of the poetess, Amalie von Imhoff, and made determined resolutions to lead a better life. But he had hardly returned to Berlin before he wrote: "Result of my Weimar resolutions —on December 23rd lost all I possessed at hazard." For a time he went on writing letters of six or eight sheets to Amalie von Imhoff; then he fell madly in love with the actress, Christel Eigensatz, and forgot everything else. "Maintenant c'est le délire complet," he writes in his diary. In the midst of all this, his wife leaves him and applies for a divorce. The evening she leaves, Gentz tries to forget the unpleasantness in playing trente et quarante. When Berlin had for many reasons become disagreeable, nay, impossible, he accepted the offer of an Austrian Government appointment in Vienna. Here he gradually surrendered all independence and became the tool of Metternich.

But before this happened, Gentz had had his period of greatness. The apathy with which the Viennese accommodated themselves to French supremacy, to defeats and humiliations without end, roused all that there was of energy and genius in him. The burning hatred of Napoleon by which he was inspired made him for a short time, during their misfortunes and deep depression, the Demosthenes of the German people. But it was only independence that he so passionately desired, not liberty. In Napoleon the whole Revolution seemed to him to be concentrated. Against him he would not have hesitated to employ even such a means as assassination. He strove with all his might to bring about a union between the German powers and to rouse the German people. But, true to his character, he appealed less to the people than to the chosen few in whose hands it seemed to him that the destiny of the people lay. His preface to the Political Fragments, his manifestoes and proclamations of war, are written with passionate vigour, in a fluent, magniloquent, and yet manly style, the rhetorical flourish of which is never in bad taste. Even the defeats of Ulm and Austerlitz did not crush him; but it was with deep dejection that he observed the miserable condition of affairs in Prussia before the battle of Jena. When Johannes von Müller, and others upon whom he had relied, allowed themselves to be flattered and won over by Napoleon, Gentz remained immovably firm. In the famous letter to Müller he makes scathing allusion to those "whose lives are an incessant capitulation." But when Austria gave up the struggle, and, as generally happens in such cases, frivolity and pleasure-seeking increased in proportion to the defeats and humiliations suffered by the country, Gentz too was soon so deeply entangled in the wild whirl of stupefying dissipations that, in his terrible pecuniary difficulties, he caught at an alliance with Metternich as a drowning man at a plank. The influence on a character like his of the man whom Talleyrand called the "weekly politician," because his range of vision never extended beyond that period, and whom a distinguished Russian called "varnished dust," was no happy one.

Henceforward Gentz's letters are full of complaints of "such mental lassitude, despondency, emptiness, and indifference" as he had hitherto neither known nor imagined, and which he aptly describes as a "sort of intellectual consumption." He calls himself "damnably blasé." "Believe me," he writes to Rahel, "I am damnably blasé. I have seen and enjoyed so much of the world that I am no longer influenced by its illusive grandeur and rewards." "Nothing delights me; I am cold, blasé, contemptuous, thoroughly persuaded of the folly of almost every one else, unduly certain of my own—not wisdom—but clear-sightedness, and inwardly devilish glad that the so-called great doings are coming to such a laughable end." So indifferent has he become, that Napoleon's downfall, which he had formerly so ardently desired, arouses no deeper feeling in him than this. "I have become terribly old and bad," he himself confesses with an amiable effrontery which reminds us of Friedrich Schlegel, and which never deserted him.

It is about this time that he begins to be persistently haunted by the fear of death; he now regularly notes in his diary the exact degree to which the feeling is weighing upon him. His letters betray all the weaknesses of a nervous woman. The correspondence between him and Adam Müller is particularly ludicrous. We are never allowed to forget that they are both afraid of thunder. But even a letter is sometimes more than Gentz can bear. He writes to Müller: "Your letters shatter my tender nerves." His fear of death most frequently took the form of fear of being murdered. After the assassination of Kotzebue by Sand, his terror lest he also might fall a victim to the hatred of the Liberal youth of Germany reached such a climax that the sight of a sharp knife was sometimes enough, as he himself confesses, to bring on a fainting-fit. In 1814 he writes to Rahel: "Now, God be praised, all is at an end in Paris. I am, thank God, very well. I live sometimes at Baden, sometimes in Vienna, have sometimes brioches with exquisite butter for breakfast, sometimes other heavenly cakes. I have come into possession of furniture that makes my heart leap for joy, and I am far less afraid of death."

He now looks to Görres as the only person who can write, he himself being incapable of any kind of production. Yet at this very time he occupies such an exalted position in society that he can deny himself to crowned heads. On the 31st of October, 1814, he writes in his diary: "Refusé le prince royal de Bavière, le roi de Danemark," &c. He meets Talleyrand, and admires him excessively. To give this admiration a practical direction, the astute French diplomatist presents him with 24,000 florins in the name of the King of France. At the close of 1814 Gentz writes in his diary: "The aspect of public affairs is melancholy.... But, since I have nothing to reproach myself with, my accurate knowledge of the pitiful doings of all these petty beings who rule the world, so far from distressing, only serves to amuse me; I enjoy it all like a play given for my private delectation." Is not this like a speech of Jean Paul's Roquairol? Tired of life, whatever disturbs his peace is objectionable to him. It is now his object to maintain the existing condition of things at any price. In 1815, in argument with Görres, he actually defends the Peace of Paris. He was too sagacious and cold, too great a hater of phrases, not to sneer at the "Burschenschaften" (students' leagues), the agitation for a national German dress, the Teutoburgerwald enthusiasm, and others of the same description; nevertheless, the assassination of Kotzebue was made a pretext for forbidding the formation of patriotic societies, as further assassinations and crimes were feared. It was owing to Gentz's exertions that the universities were placed under control and that the press was gagged. Of the liberty of the press he now writes: "I hold to my opinion, that, to prevent abuse of the press, nothing should be printed for a certain number of years. This as the rule, with a very few exceptions permitted by a thoroughly competent court, would in a short time lead us back to God and the truth."

His utterances on the occasion of the Greek war of liberation prove that, in spite of his reactionary ardour, he had too much sense to believe, like Adam Müller and the rest, in the principle of legitimacy and the divine right of kings as revealed truths. He had written to Müller in 1818: "You are the only man in Germany of whom I say: He writes divinely when he chooses; and nothing in our audacious days astonishes and exasperates me more than the audacity of those who dare to measure themselves with you.... Your system is a completed, rounded whole. It would be vain to attack it from any side. One can only be entirely in it or entirely outside of it. If you can prove to us, make comprehensible to us, that all real knowledge, all true understanding of nature, all good laws and social regulations, nay, even history itself (as you somewhere assert), are, and can only be, communicated to us by divine revelation, then (as far as I am concerned at least) you have gained the day. As long as you do not succeed in doing this, we stand afar off, admire you, love you, but are separated from you by an impassable gulf." It must be remembered that Adam Müller had gone the length of asserting that the existence of the Holy Trinity sufficiently proves that any national economical system based upon one single principle must be a wrong system. It even proves to him the necessity of the "Dreifelderwirthschaft" (triennal rotation of crops). Now, when Greece revolts, Gentz writes that the principle of legitimacy, being the production of time, must be modified by time, and makes the following noteworthy assertion: "I have always been aware that, in spite of the majesty and power of my employers, and in spite of all the single victories gained by us, the spirit of the times would in the long-run prove stronger than we are; that the press, contemptible as it is in its excesses, would prove its superiority to all our wisdom; and that neither diplomatic art nor violence would be able to hold back the wheel of the world."

In his sixty-fifth year, the worn-out, gouty, suffering old man was taken possession of by two passions strangely out of keeping with his age and the bent of his mind. It was a momentary return of youth. The one was for the famous ballet-dancer, Fanny Elsler, at that time a girl of nineteen. His infatuation for her knew no bounds. He writes: "I have won her simply and solely by the magic power of my love. Until she knew me she did not know that such love existed.... Think of the bliss of daily undisturbed intercourse with a being whose every attribute enraptures me ... in whose eyes, and hands, and every separate charm I can absorb myself for hours, whose voice bewitches me, and with whom I can carry on endless conversations; for I am educating her with fatherly solicitude, and she is the aptest of pupils, a pupil who is at once my beloved and my child."

The other surprising passion was for Heine's Buch der Lieder, then just published. It was all very well for the old reactionary to call the audacious poet a "crazy adventurer;" he could not resist his sorcery. "I am still," he writes, "refreshing myself with the Buch der Lieder. Like Prokesch, I bathe for hours in these melancholy waters. Even the poems which verge upon actual blasphemy I cannot read without the most profound emotion; I sometimes blame myself that I so often and gladly return to them." His receptive nature could not withstand them. He has rightly described himself as a woman. In a strain which reminds us of the hermaphroditic traits in Lucinde, he writes to Rahel: "Do you know the reason why the relation between us is such a perfect one? I will tell you. It is because you are an infinitely productive and I am an infinitely receptive being: you are a great man; I am the first of all the women who have ever lived."

He was now so nervous that a vigorous handclasp would alarm him; even the sight of a martial moustache was enough to disquiet him. In well-intentioned travellers who came to make his acquaintance he saw assassins in disguise. In the last year of his life his back was bent, his gait timorous and unsteady. The clear, sagacious eyes, for which he had been remarkable as a youth, were now, as it were, veiled by their furtive expression. In company he fortified himself by wearing large black spectacles.

One day at a fête, Fanny Elsler, presenting him with a foaming glass of champagne which she had tasted, said teasingly: "Der Krug geht so lange zu Wasser, his er bricht" (German proverb—The pitcher goes often to the well, but comes home broken at last). Gentz replied: "It will anyhow last out my time and Metternich's." His standpoint is indicated and judged in these words.

In religious matters Gentz was extraordinarily vacillating. At one time he would declare that religion was to him simply a matter of politics; at another, though he never actually went over to Catholicism, he would, in Romantic fashion, make great concessions to it. He prostrated himself at the feet of the Catholic mystic, Adam Müller, who literally took Napoleon to be the devil incarnate (writing, for instance, to Gentz in July 1806, that "as Christians we must subdue the Bonaparte within us"); and, when petitioning the Emperor for an appointment in Austria, he gave as one of his reasons for leaving Prussia, "my long-felt enmity to Protestantism, in the original character and increasingly evil tendencies of which I believe I have discovered, after much and careful proving of the matter, the root of all the corruption of our times, and one of the main causes of the decay of Europe."

In politics he is the representative of unequivocal, conscious reaction, and he does not, like some other hypocritical reactionaries, fight shy of the word. In a letter written at Verona in 1822, he relates that at a dinner-party at Metternich's he has just met Chateaubriand, who has been extremely amiable and complimentary to him. "In the course of conversation he mentioned it as a remarkable phenomenon, one which could not possibly escape the notice of the historian, that four or five years ago, when the condition of Europe seemed quite hopeless, a mere handful of men—not more than could be counted on one's fingers—had determined to combat the Revolution, and that these men had been so successful that to-day they were taking the field, with Governments and armies supporting them, against the common enemy. As marking the most important moments in this bold reaction, he mentioned the founding of Le Conservateur, and the Congress of Karlsbad. He looks forward to the future with sanguine courage, regarding the victory of the good cause as certain. All true power and real talent are upon our side, contained in some ten or twelve heads. Nothing could be more dangerous for us than to attach too much importance to the attacks of the Revolutionaries, or to be in any way afraid of these said Revolutionaries, who, for all their uproar, are mere babblers. I could scarcely conceive, he added, how such men as Benjamin Constant, Guizot, and Royer-Collard had sunk in the public estimation. This and more he said, not with any fire and eagerness, but calmly and coldly."

Gentz was far from guessing, when he penned these words, how great a surprise this same man held in store for him. Two years later the event occurred which forms the turning-point, the watershed, as it were, in the spiritual history of the first half of the century, namely, Chateaubriand's dismissal from the Ministry and entrance into the ranks of the Liberal opposition, whose leader he became. It was this event in combination with Byron's death, which happened about the same time, that called Liberalism throughout the whole world to arms.

Gentz could not control his wrath. After the appearance of Chateaubriand's article in the Journal des Débats on the abolition of the censorship, he wrote to a friend: "I subscribe to every word you say about Chateaubriand. It is long since anything has agitated and incensed me in the manner this really villainous article has done. It is the work of a man who, because he has not succeeded in disturbing the peace of his enemies with drums and pipes, grasps a torch and sets fire to the roof over their heads. Not that there is anything incomprehensible in such a performance, for Frenchmen are now at liberty to do whatever they please; and the man who, in his vindictive antagonism, could immediately violate every sense of duty, honour, and decorum, as this monster did on the third day after his dismissal, was bound in the end, irritated by the feeling of his own impotence, to go as far as he could without running the risk of imprisonment—a risk practically non-existent in his country." But all Gentz's wrath could not check the current of events, and before long the reaction which he represents was struggling in its death throes.

In a letter to Pilat, written in 1820, he writes: "What is Duller, what is La Mennais, what (with the exception of Bonald) are all the writers of our day in comparison with Maistre? His book On the Pope is, to my mind, the greatest and most important of the last half century. You have not read it, or you could not have failed to mention it. Take my advice—do not read it à batons rompus, amidst the noise and distractions with which you are constantly surrounded, but keep it for a time when you have unbroken quiet and can concentrate your thoughts. Your so-called friends must know the book, but not a word do they say of it. Such meat is too strong for these lukewarm, critical souls. It has cost me some sleepless nights, but what enjoyment have they not purchased me! Profundity of thought in combination with astonishing erudition and with political insight superior to Montesquieu's, the eloquence of a Burke, and an enthusiasm which at times rises to the height of genuine poetry—to this add the characteristics of the man of the world, adroitness, refinement, the knack of sparing the feelings of the individual whilst treading his doctrines and opinions under foot, a prodigious knowledge of men and things—and think of it all employed in such a cause, to produce such results! Yes; now I fully and firmly believe that the Church will never fall. If such a star made its appearance in her sky but once in a century, she would not only stand, but prevail. The book has some weak points! I say this in order that my admiration may not seem blind—but they are lost like spots in the sun. Others before Maistre may have felt what the Pope is, but no other writer has expressed it as he has done. This extraordinary book, which the contemptible generation of to-day barely condescends to notice, represents the labour of half a lifetime. The author, now a man of more than seventy, has evidently been engaged upon it for twenty years. A monument should be erected to him in one of the great churches of Rome. Kings should take counsel with him. As a matter of fact, after he has exhausted his private means, all that he has obtained from his Government, and that not without difficulty, is the title of Minister, and an income sufficient to live upon in Turin with the greatest economy. Never has a human being had a better right to say to his children:—

'Disce puer virtutem ex me, verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis!'

What a man! and how few of our contemporaries even know that he exists!"

Here, again, we are at a point where the German reaction passes, as it were, into the French.[2]

The German reaction is in its essence literary, the French political and religious. The former gradually glides into Catholicism, the latter is openly and consistently Catholic. In every domain, indeed, the French reaction upholds the principle of traditional authority, and De Maistre is its most earnest and most high-minded, as well as one of its most gifted representatives. The witty and vigorous panegyrist of the headsman and champion of the auto da fé is the conscientious, ardent antagonist of enlightenment and humanitarian ideals.

The German Romanticists loved twilight and moonshine. The blazing daylight of rationalism and the lightning flashes of the French Revolution had driven them to seek comfort in the dusk. But what is even Novalis's love of night in comparison with Joseph de Maistre's glorification of darkness!

Ancient legend tells that Phaëton, the son of Apollo, being allowed one day to drive his father's chariot, guided it so carelessly that the sun scorched the whole earth and set many of its cities on fire. The fable adds, that a whole race of men were so terrified that they with one accord cried to the gods to grant them eternal darkness. De Maistre is a descendant of that race, and a man who has some claim to greatness because of his gifts, his faith in Providence, and his contempt for his fellow-men. And to this day there exist descendants of the race; but these have degenerated into dwarfish figures, who assert themselves the more the more insignificant and timid they are. Their cry, too, is "Darkness! more darkness!" The more devoid they are of ideas and aims, the louder they cry, and their only faith is faith in the power of darkness.

Those who, in studying the history of German Romanticism, pay special attention to the growth of the reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century, are struck by the inferiority of the German Romanticists in single-minded strength of character to such a reactionary as De Maistre. It is to be remembered, however, that they were not statesmen and politicians, but authors; even those among them who, like Gentz, represent the transition from literature to politics, have no real significance except as writers.

From the purely literary point of view the Romantic School in Germany possesses permanent interest. One has but to compare it with the equivalent groups in other lands to be fully impressed by the originality and intellectual importance of its members.

A Romantic current is perceptible in the first decades of this century in almost every country in Europe; but only in Germany, England, and France is the movement a distinctly original and important one; only in those countries is it a European "main current." What we observe in the Slavonic countries is more or less an echo of English Romanticism.

The Romantic literature of Scandinavia is strongly influenced by that of Germany.

In Sweden, where Romanticism was known by the name of "Phosphorism," or "new school," it attacked (as was its wont) French taste in literature, in this instance represented by the Swedish Academy. In 1807 the "Aurora Society" was founded by Atterbom, Hammarsköld, and Palmblad. The principles it proclaimed were in all essentials those of the German Romantic School. Atterbom's symbolism reminds us of Tieck's; Stagnelius has a certain resemblance to Novalis. The movement has, nevertheless, distinctly national characteristics.

In Norway the lonely Wergeland, in spite of his highly susceptible, enthusiastic temperament, is a living protest against the German Romantic spirit; but Andreas Munch is a pronounced Romanticist of the German type. And such undertakings as the re-writing and publication of the Norwegian fairy tales (Asbjörnson and Moe) and the collecting of the Norwegian national songs (Landstad) are due to the impulse which the Romanticists' predilection for everything national communicated to the minds of the men of the North.

In Denmark the connection between German and native Romanticism is of a very complex nature. As a rule, the Danish poets receive their first impulse from Germany, but afterwards strike out paths for themselves. Oehlenschläger was awakened by Steffens and strongly influenced in the early years of the century by Tieck. It was under the influence of German Romanticism that Grundtvig renounced his youthful rationalism; and his patriotism and nationalism have strong points of correspondence with Arndt's and Jahn's. The influence of Fouqué and Hoffmann is apparent in Ingemann; Hauch is an enthusiastic admirer of Novalis; J. L. Heiberg, as the dramatiser of fairy tales, is a pupil of Tieck; Hans Christian Andersen, as the fantastic story-teller, the pupil of Hoffmann. Shack Staffeldt, German born, is a full-blown Romanticist, a devout worshipper of "the blue flower."

But though foreign influence, as this work sufficiently shows, is everywhere traceable, the independent, national and Scandinavian characteristics of Danish Romanticism are, nevertheless, unmistakable and strong.

MAIN CURRENTS IN

NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE

By GEORGE BRANDES

In Six Vols, illustrated

I.THE EMIGRANT LITERATURE.

II.THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN GERMANY.

III.THE REACTION IN FRANCE.

IV.NATURALISM IN ENGLAND.

V.THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN FRANCE.

VI.YOUNG GERMANY.