The German Cla.s.sics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
Volume I.
by Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke.
PREFACE
It is surprising how little the English-speaking world knows of German literature of the nineteenth century. Goethe and Schiller found their herald in Carlyle; Fichte"s idealistic philosophy helped to mold Emerson"s view of life; Amadeus Hoffmann influenced Poe; Uhland and Heine reverberate in Longfellow; Sudermann and Hauptmann appear in the repertory of London and New York theatres--these brief statements include nearly all the names which to the cultivated Englishman and American of to-day stand for German literature.
THE GERMAN CLa.s.sICS OF THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES has been planned to correct this narrow and inadequate view. Here for the first time English readers will find a panorama of the whole of German literature from Goethe to the present day; here for the first time they will find the most representative writers of each period brought together and exhibited by their most representative works; here for the first time an opportunity will be offered to form a just conception of the truly remarkable literary achievements of Germany during the last hundred years.
For it is a grave mistake to a.s.sume, as has been a.s.sumed only too often, that, after the great epoch of Cla.s.sicism and Romanticism in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Germany produced but little of universal significance, or that, after Goethe and Heine, there were but few Germans worthy to be mentioned side by side with the great writers of other European countries. True, there is no German Tolstoy, no German Ibsen, no German Zola--but then, is there a Russian Nietzsche, or a Norwegian Wagner, or a French Bismarck? Men like these, men of revolutionary genius, men who start new movements and mark new epochs, are necessarily rare and stand isolated in any people and at all times. The three names mentioned indicate that Germany, during the last fifty years, has contributed a goodly share even of such men. Quite apart, however, from such men of overshadowing genius and all-controlling power, can it be truly said that Germany, since Goethe"s time, has been lacking in writers of high aim and notable attainment?
It can be stated without reservation that, taken as a whole, the German drama of the nineteenth century has maintained a level of excellence superior to that reached by the drama of almost any other nation during the same period. Schiller"s _Wallenstein_ and _Tell_, Goethe"s _Iphigenie_ and _Faust_, Kleist"s _Prinz Friedrich von Homburg_, Grillparzer"s _Medea_, Hebbel"s _Maria Magdalene_ and _Die Nibelungen_, Otto Ludwig"s _Der Erbforster_, Freytag"s _Die Journalisten_, Anzengruber"s _Der Meineidbauer_, Wilbrandt"s _Der Meister von Palmyra_, Wildenbruch"s _Konig Heinrich_, Sudermann"s _Heimat_, Hauptmann"s _Die Weber_ and _Der arme Heinrich_, Hofmannsthal"s _Elektra_, and, in addition to all these, the great musical dramas of Richard Wagner--this is a century"s record of dramatic achievement of which any nation might be proud. I doubt whether either the French or the Russian or the Scandinavian stage of the nineteenth century, as a whole, comes up to this standard.
Certainly, the English stage has nothing which could in any way be compared with it.
That German lyric verse of the last hundred years should have been distinguished by beauty of structure, depth of feeling, and wealth of melody, is not to be wondered at if we remember that this was the century of the revival of folk-song, and that it produced such song-composers as Schubert and Schumann and Robert Franz and Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss. But it seems strange that, apart from Heine, even the greatest of German lyric poets, such as Platen, Lenau, Morike, Annette von Droste, Geibel, Liliencron, Dehmel, Munchhausen, Rilke, should be so little known beyond the borders of the Fatherland.
The German novel of the past century was, for a long time, unquestionably inferior to both the English and the French novel of the same epoch. But in the midst of much that is tiresome and involved and artificial, there stand out, even in the middle of the century, such masterpieces of characterization as Otto Ludwig"s _Zwischen Himmel und Erde_ or Wilhelm Raabe"s _Der Hungerpastor_, such delightful revelations of genuine humor as Fritz Reuter"s _Ut mine Stromtid_, such penetrating studies of social conditions as Gustav Freytag"s _Soll und Haben_. And during the last third of the century there has clearly developed a new, forcible, original style of German novel writing. Seldom has the short story been handled more skilfully and felicitously than by such men as Paul Heyse, Gottfried Keller, C.
F. Meyer, Theodor Storm. Seldom has the novel of tragic import and pa.s.sion been treated with greater refinement and delicacy than in such works as Fontane"s _Effi Briest_, Ricarda Huch"s _Ludolf Ursleu_, Wilhelm von Polenz"s _Der b.u.t.tnerbauer_, or Ludwig Thoma"s _Andreas Vost_. And it may be doubted whether, at the present moment, there is any country where the novel is represented by so many gifted writers or exhibits such exuberant vitality, such st.u.r.dy truthfulness, such seriousness of purpose, or such a wide range of imagination as in contemporary Germany.
All these dramatists, lyric poets, and novelists, and with them not a few essayists, philosophers, orators, and publicists,[1] of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will speak in the following volumes to America and other countries of the English language. They have been arranged, in the main, chronologically. The first three volumes have been given to the mature work of Goethe and Schiller--time-tested and securely niched. Volumes IV and V contain the princ.i.p.al Romanticists, including Fichte and Sch.e.l.ling; Volume VI brings Heine, Grillparzer, and Beethoven to view;
Volume VII, Hegel and Young Germany; Volume VIII, Auerbach, Gotthelf, and Fritz Reuter; Volume IX, Hebbel and Ludwig; Volume X, Bismarck, Moltke, La.s.salle. Of the second half of the collection there might be singled out: Volume XIV (Gottfried Keller and C.F. Meyer); Volume XV (Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche, Emperor William II.); Volume XVIII (Gerhart Hauptmann, Detlev von Liliencron, Richard Dehmel). The last two volumes will be devoted to the most recent of contemporary authors.
The editors have been fortunate in a.s.sociating with themselves a notable number of distinguished contributors from many universities and colleges in this country and abroad. A general introduction to the whole series has been written by Professor Richard M. Meyer of the University of Berlin. The last two volumes will be in charge of Professor Julius Petersen of the University of Basel. The introductions to Goethe and Schiller have been prepared by Professor Calvin Thomas, of Columbia University; that to the Romantic Philosophers by Professor Frank Thilly, of Cornell University; that to Richard Wagner by Professor W. R. Spalding, of Harvard University.
And, similarly, every important author in this collection will be introduced by some authoritative and well known specialist.
The crux of the whole undertaking lies in the correctness and adequacy of the translations. How difficult, if not impossible, a really satisfactory translation is, especially in lyric poetry, no one realizes more clearly than the editors. Their only comfort is that they have succeeded in obtaining the a.s.sistance of many well trained and thoroughly equipped scholars, among them such names of poets as Hermann Hagedorn, Percy MacKaye, George Sylvester Viereck, and Martin Schutze.
Kuno Francke.
General Introduction
By Richard M. Meyer, Ph.D. Professor of German Literature, University of Berlin.
Men formerly pictured the origin and development of a literature as an order less play of incalculable forces; out of a seething chaos forms more or less definite arose, and then, one day, behold! the literary earth was there, with sun and moon, water and mountains, animals and men. This conception was intimately connected with that of the origin of individual literary compositions. These likewise--since the new "theory of genius," spreading from England, had gained recognition throughout the whole of Europe, especially in those countries speaking the Germanic languages--were imagined to be a mere succession of inspirations and even of improvisations. This view of the subject can no longer be held either wholly or in part, though in the origin and growth of literature, as in every other origin and development, much manifestly remains that is still incomprehensible and incalculable.
But even as regards the individual literary work, writers themselves--as latterly Richard Dehmel--have laid almost too strong an emphasis on the element of conscious deliberation. And concerning the whole literary product of an individual, which seems to offer the most instructive a.n.a.logies to the literary achievement of a people, we received a short time ago a remarkable opinion from Carl Spitteler. He a.s.serts that he is guided in his choice of definite styles and definite forms by an absolutely clear purpose; that he has, for example, essayed every kind of metre which could possibly be suited to his "cosmic" epic, or that he has written a novelette solely in order to have once written a novelette. Although in these confessions, as well as in Edgar Allen Poe"s celebrated _Poet"s Art_, self-delusion and pleasure in the paradoxical may very likely be mingled, it still remains true that such dicta as these point to certain peculiarities in the development of literatures. Experiments with all kinds of forms, imitation of certain literary _genres_ without intrinsic necessity, and deliberate selection of new species, play a larger part in the history of modern German literature than people for a long time wished to admit. It is true, however, that all this experimenting, imitating, and speculating, in the end serves a higher necessity, as well in the poet of genius as in a great literature.
Three kinds of forces virtually determine the general trend of all artistic development as, indeed, of all other forms of evolution--forces which const.i.tute the sum total of those that we comprehend under the joint name of _tradition_, a sum total of progressive tendencies which we will designate as _esthetic ideals_, and, mediating between the two, the _typical development of the individuals themselves_--above all, naturally, individuals of genius who really create literature.
These powers are present everywhere, but in very different proportion.
Characteristic of Romance literatures and also of the English, is the great predominance of the conservative elements. Thus not only is the literature of the const.i.tutional mother-country democratic, but also the literature of France, otherwise so decidedly aristocratic: a majority dictates its laws to the distinguished individual and is inclined to ostracize him, if too headstrong, and exile him from the "Republic of Letters." This, for instance, is what happened to Lord Byron among the British. On the other hand, German literature, like Germanic literatures in general, is disposed to concede, at least at times, a dictatorial leadership to the individual, even at the cost of tradition--as, for example, to a Klopstock, a Goethe, or a Richard Wagner. But, in exchange, the leader is often forced to uphold his power, no matter how much it may have been due to his achievements, by coercive measures--as, again for example, by means of a praetorian guard of partisans, such as Klopstock first created for himself in the Gottinger "Hain," but which was most effectively organized by Wagner, and such as Victor Hugo, imitating the German model, possessed in the Young Guard which applauded _Hernani_. Another method of enforcing his mastery is the organization of a systematic reign of terror, consisting of bitter satires, such as Schiller and Goethe (after the model of Pope) founded in the _Xenien_, and the Romanticists established in many different forms--satires much more personal and much better aimed than was the general sort of mockery which the Romance or Romanized imitators of Horace flung at Bavius and Maevius.
In saying all this, however, we have at the same time made it clear that the power and influence of the individual of genius receives much more positive expression in German literature than in those which produced men like Corneille, Calderon, yes, even Dante and Shakespeare. German literary history is, more than any other, occupied with the _Individual_.
If we now try rapidly to comprehend to what extent each one of the already enumerated literary forces has partic.i.p.ated in the development of modern German literature, we must, first of all, emphasize the fact that here the question is, intrinsically, one of construction--of a really new creation.
German literature since 1700 is not simply the continuation of former literature with the addition of radical innovations, as is the case with the literature of the same period in England, but was systematically constructed on new theories--if it may be said that nature and history systematically "construct." A destruction, a suspension of tradition, had taken place, such as no other civilized nation has ever experienced in a like degree--in which connection the lately much-disputed question as to whether the complete decay dates from the time of the Thirty Years" War or the latter merely marks the climax of a long period of decadence may be left to take care of itself. In any event, about the year 1700 the literature of Germany stood lower than that of any other nation, once in possession of a great civilization and literature, has ever stood in recent times.
Everything, literally everything, had to be created _de novo_; and it is natural that a nation which had to struggle for its very existence, for which life itself had become a daily questioning of fate, could at first think of renovation only through its conservative forces. Any violent commotion in the religious or political, in the economic or social, sphere, as well as in the esthetic, might prove fatal, or at least appear to be so.
The strongest conservative factor of a literature is the language.
Upon its relative immutability depends, in general, the possibility of literary compositions becoming the common possession of many generations--depends absolutely all transmission. Especially is poetic language wont to bear the stamp of constancy; convenient formulas, obvious rhymes, established epithets, favorite metaphors, do not, in periods of exhaustion, afford much choice in the matter of phraseology. On the other hand, however, a new tenor of thought, often enough a new tenor of feeling, is continually pressing forward to demand a medium of expression. This battle between the established linguistic form and the new content gives rise to charming, but at the same time alarming, conflicts. In the seventeenth century it was felt strongly how much the store of linguistic expression had diminished, partly on account of a violent and careless "working of the mine,"
which made prodigal use of the existing medium, as was the case in the prose of Luther and, above all, of Johann Fischart and his contemporaries; partly on account of a narrow confinement to a small number of ideas and words, as in the church hymns.
This impoverishment of the language the century of the great war tried to remedy in two opposite ways. For the majority the easiest solution was to borrow from their richer neighbors, and thus originated that affectation of all things foreign, which, in speaking, led to the most variegated use and misuse of foreign words. Patriotically-minded men, on the contrary, endeavored to cultivate the purity of their mother tongue the while they enriched it; this, above all, was the ambition of the various "Linguistic Societies." Their activity, though soon deprived of a wide usefulness by pedantry and a clannish spirit, prepared the way for great feats of linguistic reorganization. Through Christian Wolff a philosophic terminology was systematically created; from Pietism were received new mediums of expression for intimate conditions of the soul; neither must we quite overlook the fact that to some extent a new system of German t.i.tles and official designations was a.s.sociated with the new inst.i.tutions of the modern state. More important, however, than these details--which might have been accomplished by men like Johann Gottfried Herder, Immanuel Kant and Goethe; like the statesman, Heinrich Freiherr von Stein; and the warrior, General von Scharnhorst--was this fact that, in general, an esthetic interest had been again awakened in the language, which too long had served as a mere tool. Also the slowly developing study of language was of some help; even the falsest etymology taught people to look upon words as organisms; even the most superficial grammar, to observe broad relationships and parallel formations. So, then, the eighteenth century could, in the treatment of the mother tongue, enter upon a goodly heritage, of which for a long time Johann Christoph Gottsched might not unjustly be counted the guardian. It was a thoroughly conservative linguistic stewardship, which received gigantic expression in Adelung"s Dictionary--with all its deficiencies, the most important German dictionary that had been compiled up to that time. Clearness, intelligibleness, exact.i.tude were insisted upon. It was demanded that there should be a distinct difference between the language of the writer and that in everyday use, and again a difference between poetic language and prose; on the other hand, great care had to be taken that the difference should never become too great, so that common intelligibility should not suffer. Thus the new poetic language of Klopstock, precisely on account of its power and richness, was obliged to submit to the bitterest mockery and the most injudicious abuse from the partisans of Gottsched. As the common ideal of the pedagogues of language, who were by no means merely narrow-minded pedants, one may specify that which had long ago been accomplished for France--namely, a uniform choice of a stock of words best suited to the needs of a clear and luminous literature for the cultivated cla.s.s, and the stylistic application of the same. Two things, above all, were neglected: they failed to realize (as did France also) the continual development of a healthy language, though the ancients had glimpses of this; and they failed (this in contrast to France) to comprehend the radical differences between the various forms of literary composition. Therefore the pre-cla.s.sical period still left enough to be done by the cla.s.sical.
It was Klopstock who accomplished the most; he created a new, a lofty poetic language, which was to be recognized, not by the use of conventional metaphors and swelling hyperboles, but by the direct expression of a highly exalted mood. However, the danger of a forced overstraining of the language was combatted by Christoph Martin Wieland, who formed a new and elegant narrative prose on Greek, French, and English models, and also introduced the same style into poetic narrative, herein abetted by Friedrich von Hagedorn as his predecessor and co-worker. Right on the threshold, then, of the great new German literature another mixture of styles sprang up, and we see, for example, Klopstock strangely transplanting his pathos into the field of theoretical researches on grammar and metrics, and Wieland not always keeping his irony aloof from the most solemn subjects. But beside them stood Gotthold Ephraim Lessing who proved himself to be the most thoughtful of the reformers of poetry, in that he emphasized the divisions--especially necessary for the stylistic development of German poetry--of literary categories and the arts. The most far-reaching influence, however, was exercised by Herder, when he preached that the actual foundation of all poetic treatment of language was the individual style, and exemplified the real nature of original style, i. e., inwardly-appropriate modes of expression, by referring, on the one hand, to the poetry of the people and, on the other, to Shakespeare or the Bible, the latter considered as a higher type of popular poetry.
So the weapons lay ready to the hand of the dramatist Lessing, the lyric poet Goethe, and the preacher Herder, who had helped to forge them for their own use; for drama, lyrics, and oratory separate themselves quite naturally from ordinary language, and yet in their subject matter, in the antic.i.p.ation of an expectant audience, in the unavoidable connection with popular forms of speech, in singing, and the very nature of public a.s.semblies, they have a basis that prevents them from becoming conventional. But not quite so favorable was the condition of the different varieties of narrative composition. Here a peculiarly specific style, such as the French novel especially possesses, never reached complete perfection. The style of Wieland would necessarily appear too light as soon as the subject matter of the novel became more intimate and personal; that of the imitators of Homer necessarily too heavy. Perhaps here also Lessing"s sense of style might have furnished a model of permanent worth, in the same way that he furnished one for the comedy and the didactic drama, for the polemic treatise and the work of scientific research. For is not the tale of the three rings, which forms the kernel of _Nathan the Wise_, numbered among the great standard pieces of German elocution, in spite of all the contradictions and obscurities which have of late been pointed out in it, but which only the eye of the microscopist can perceive? In general it is the "popular philosophers" who have, more than any one else, produced a fixed prose style; as a reader of good but not exclusively cla.s.sical education once acknowledged to me that the German of J.J. Engel was more comprehensible to him and seemed more "modern" than that of Goethe. As a matter of fact, the narrator Goethe, in the enchanting youthful composition of _Werther_, did venture very close to the lyrical, but in his later novels his style at times dangerously approached a dry statement of facts, or a rhetorically inflated declamation; and even in _The Elective Affinities_, which stands stylistically higher than any of his other novels, he has not always avoided a certain stiltedness that forms a painful contrast to the warmth of his sympathy for the characters. On the other hand, in scientific compositions he succeeded in accomplishing what had hitherto been unattainable--just because, in this case, the new language had first to be created by him.
Seldom are even the great writers of the following period quite free from the danger of a lack-l.u.s.tre style in their treatment of the language, above all in narrative composition. It is only in the present day that Thomas Mann, Jacob Wa.s.sermann, and Ricarda Huch are trying along different lines, but with equal zeal, to form a fixed individual style for the German prose-epic. The great exceptions of the middle period, the writers of prose-epics Jeremias Gotthelf and Gottfried Keller, the novelists Paul Heyse and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, the narrator of anecdotes Ludwig Anzengruber, with his greater predecessor Johann Peter Hebel, and his lesser contemporary Peter Rosegger, the portrayer of still-life Adalbert Stifter and a few others, have, more by a happy instinct than anything else, hit upon the style proper to their form of composition, lack of which prevents us from enjoying an endless number of prose works of the nineteenth century, which, as far as their subject matter goes, are not unimportant. In this connection I will only mention Karl Gutzkow"s novels describing his own period, or, from an earlier time, Clemens Brentano"s fairy tales, Friedrich Hebbel"s humoresques, or even the rhetorically emotional historical compositions of Heinrich von Treitschke, found in certain parts of his work. But this lack of a fixed specific style spread likewise to other forms of composition; Schiller"s drama became too rhetorical; Friedrich Ruckert"s lyric poetry too prosaically didactic; that of Annette von Droste-Hulshoff often too obscure and sketchy.
If, therefore, the struggle with the language was fought out successfully by modern German literature only on the battleground of the lyric (and even there, as we have seen, not without exceptions), on the other hand a second conservative force was placed at the service of the literary development with more uniform success, namely _Metrics_. To be sure, here again this applies only to verse, for the corresponding art of prose rhythm has been as good as lost to the Germans, in contrast to the French, and almost more so to the English.
In prose also a conscious and systematic attempt to make an artistic division into paragraphs, chapters, and books, has only been made in recent times, above all in and since the writings of Nietzsche. For as far as the treatment of language in itself is concerned, German literature has hardly yet fully developed an artistic form; writers still continue to treat it far too much as a mere tool. But verse is felt to be an object for artistic molding, although here too the naturalistic dogmas of the Storm and Stress writers, of the Romanticists, Young Germans and Ultra-Moderns, have often shaken the theories upon which the artistic perfection of our poetry is based.
In this regard, likewise, there was, in the seventeenth century, a great difficulty to be overcome. Changes in language, the effect of French and Italian style, the influence of music, had weakened the foundations of the German art of verse, which were already partly broken down by mechanical wear and tear. The comparatively simple regulation contrived by an ordinary, though clever, poet, Martin Opitz, proved capable of enduring for centuries; a connection was established between the accent of verse and natural accent, which at the same time, by means of more stringent rules, created barriers against variable accent. It was merely a question of arranging the words in such fashion that, without forming too great a contradiction to the common-place order of words, the way in which the accents were placed upon them should result in a regularly alternating rise and fall. On the whole, this principle was found to be sufficient until the enthusiasm of the new poetic generation demanded a closer connection between the poetic form and the variable conditions of the soul; they found a way out of the difficulty by carrying a rhythmical mood through a variety of metrical divisions, and thus came upon the "free rhythms." From whatever source these were derived, either from the misunderstood poems of Pindar, from the language of the Bible or of the enthusiastic mystics, or from the poetic half-prose of the pastoral poet Salomon Gessner, they were, in any case, something new and peculiar, and their nature has not been grasped in the least degree by the French in their "vers libres," or at any rate only since the half-Germanic Fleming Verhaeren. They received an interesting development through Goethe and Heinrich Heine, while most of the other poets who made use of them, even the greatest one, Novalis, often deteriorated either into a regular, if rhymeless, versification, or into a pathetic, formless prose.
Another method of procuring new metrical mediums of expression for the new wealth of emotions was to borrow. Klopstock naturalized antique metres, or rather made them familiar to the school and to cultivated poets, while on the other hand Heine"s derision of August von Platen"s set form of verse was welcomed in many circles, and even the elevated poems of Friedrich Holderlin, which approached the antique form, remained foreign to the people, like the experiments of Leconte de Lisle in France; in Italy it fared otherwise with Carducci"s _Odi barbare_. Only one antique metre became German, in the same sense that Shakespeare had become a German poet; this was the hexameter, alone or in connection with the pentameter; for the ratio of its parts to one another, on which everything depends in higher metrics, corresponded, to some extent, to that of the German couplets. For the same reason the sonnet--not, however, without a long and really bitter fight--was able to win a secure place in German reflective lyric poetry; indeed it had already been once temporarily in our possession during the seventeenth century. Thus two important metres had been added to German poetry"s treasure house of forms: first, the hexameter for a continuous narrative of a somewhat epic character, even though without high solemnity--which Goethe alone once aspired to in his _Achilleis_--and also for shorter epigrammatic or didactic observations in the finished manner of the distich; second, the sonnet for short mood-pictures and meditations. The era of the German hexameter seems, however, to be over at present, while, on the contrary, the sonnet, brought to still higher perfection by Platen, Moritz von Strachwitz and Paul Heyse, still exercises its old power of attraction, especially over poets with a tendency toward Romance art.
However, both hexameter or distich and sonnet have become, in Germany, pure literary forms of composition. While in Italy the sonnet is still sung, we are filled with astonishment that Brahms should have set to music a distich--_Anacreon_. Numerous other forms, taken up princ.i.p.ally by the Romantic school and the closely related "Exotic School," have remained mere literary playthings. For a certain length of time the ghasel seemed likely to be adopted as a sh.e.l.l to contain scattered thoughts, wittily arranged, or (almost exclusively by Platen) also for mood-pictures; but without doubt the undeservedly great success of Friedrich von Bodenstedt"s _Mirza Schaffy_ has cast permanent discredit on this form. The favorite stanza of Schiller is only one of the numerous strophe forms of our narrative or reflective lyric; it has never attained an "ethos" peculiar to itself.
Incidentally, the French alexandrines were the fashion for a short time after Victor Hugo"s revival of them was revivified by Ferdinand Freiligrath, and were recently used with variations by Carl Spitteler (which, however, he denies) as a foundation for his epic poems. So, too, the "Old German rhymed verse" after the manner of Hans Sachs, enjoyed a short popularity; and one saw virtuosos playing with the canzone or the makame. On the whole, however, German lyric poetry is rather made up of simple formations in the style of the folk-song, especially since the important rhythmic transformation of this material by Heine created new possibilities for accommodating the inner form to new subject matter without conspicuously changing the outer form. For two great simplifying factors have, since Goethe, been predominant in protecting our lyric poetry from unfruitful artificiality; the influence of the folk-song and the connection with music have kept it more full of vital energy than the too literary lyric poetry of the French, and richer in variety than the too cultivated lyric of the English. Whoever shut the door on the influences spoken of, as did Franz Grillparzer or Hebbel, and, in a different way, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff or Heinrich Leuthold, at the same time nullified a good part of his efficiency.
The drama almost exclusively a.s.sumed a foreign, though kindred, form as a garb for the more elevated styles of composition: namely, the blank verse of the English stage, which Lessing"s _Nathan the Wise_ had popularized and A.W. Schlegel"s Shakespeare had rendered omnipotent, and which Schiller forced upon his successors. The Romanticists, by playing unsuccessfully with different forms, as in Ludwig Tieck"s _Octavia.n.u.s_, or Immerman"s _Alexis_, or by adopting pure antique or Spanish metres, attempted in vain to free themselves from the restraint of form, the great danger of which consisted in its similarity to common-place sentence construction, so that the verse ran the risk either of becoming prosaic, or else, in trying forcibly to avoid this, of growing bombastic. An escape was provided by inserting, in moments of emotion, a metre of a more lyrical quality into the uniform structure of the usual vehicle of dramatic dialogue, particularly when partaking of the nature of a monologue; as Goethe did, for example, in the "Song of the Fates" in _Iphigenia_, that most metrically perfect of all German dramatic poems, and as Schiller continued to do with increased boldness in the songs introduced into _Mary Stuart_. Perhaps the greatest perfection in such use of the principle of the "free rhythm" as applied to the drama, was reached by Franz Grillparzer in the _Golden Fleece_, on the model of certain fragments by Goethe, such as the _Prometheus_. On the other hand, the interesting experiments in the _Bride of Messina_ are of more importance for the development of the opera into a work of art complete in itself, than for that of the drama. In general, however, it is to be remarked as a peculiarity of modern German drama, that it seeks to escape from monotony, which the French cla.s.sical theatre hardly ever succeeded in avoiding, by calling in the aid of the other arts. Plastic art is often employed for scenic arrangement, and music to produce effects on and behind the stage. Both were made use of by Schiller; and it was under his influence that they were tried by Goethe in his later period--though we find a remarkable sporadic appearance of them even as early as _Gotz_ and _Klavigo_. The mastery which Grillparzer also attained in this respect has been striven after by his fellow countrymen with some degree of success: as, for example, by Ferdinand Raimund, by Ludwig Anzengruber, and also by Friedrich Halm and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Besides blank verse, the only other garb in vogue for the serious drama was prose: this was not only used for realistic pictures of conditions of a decidedly cheerful type (since Lessing had introduced the _bourgeois_ dramas of Diderot into Germany), but also for pathetic tragedies, the vital power of which the lack of stylistic disguising of language was supposed to increase. This was the form employed in the Storm and Stress drama, and therefore in the prison scene of _Faust_, as also in Schiller"s youthful dramas, and again we find it adopted by Hebbel and the Young Germans, and by the naturalistic school under the leadership of Ibsen. The Old German rhymed verse found only a temporary place between these two forms. It was glorified and made almost sacrosanct by having been used for the greatest of our dramas, Goethe"s _Faust_; Wildenbruch in particular tried to gain new effects with it. Other attempts also went hand in hand with deeper-reaching efforts to reconstruct the inner form of the drama; thus the tendency to a veiled polyphony of language in the folk-scenes of Christian Dietrich Grabbe and in all the plays of Heinrich von Kleist; this in Hofmannsthal"s _Oedipus_ led to regular choruses, of quite a different type, however, from those of the _Bride of Messina_.
Gerhart Hauptmann"s _Weavers_ and _Florian Geyer_ may be considered the culminating points of this movement, in spite of their apparently entirely prosaic form.
Modern German drama, which in its peculiar style is still largely unappreciated because it has always been measured by its real or supposed models, is, together with the free-rhythm lyric, the greatest gift bestowed upon the treasure of forms of the world-literature by the literature of Germany which has so often played the part of recipient.
On the other hand, when speaking of the development of narrative prose, we should remember what we have already accomplished in that line. The "Novelle" alone has attained a fixed form, as a not too voluminous account of a remarkable occurrence. It is formally regulated in advance by the absolute domination of a decisive incident--as, for example, the outbreak of a concealed love in Heyse, or the moment of farewell in Theodor Storm. All previous incidents are required to a.s.sist in working up to this climax; all later ones are introduced merely to allow its echo to die away. In this austerity of concentration the German "Novelle," the one rigidly artistic form of German prose, is related to the "Short Story" which has been so eagerly heralded in recent times, especially by America. The "Novelle"
differs, however, from this form of literary composition, which Maupa.s.sant cultivated with the most masterly and unrivaled success, by its subordination to a climax; whereas the Short Story, in reality, is usually a condensed novel, that is to say, the history of a development concentrated in a few incidents. Our literature also possesses such short "sketches," but the love of psychological detail in the development of the plot nearly always results in the greater diffuseness of the novel. The real "Novelle" is, however, at least as typical of the Germans as the Short Story is of the Americans, and in no other form of literary composition has Germany produced so many masters as in this--and in the lyric. For the latter is closely related to the German "Novelle" because it loves to invest the way to and from the culminating point with the charm produced by a certain mood, as the half-German Bret Harte loves to do in similar artistic studies, but the Russian Tschechow never indulges himself in, and the Frenchman Maupa.s.sant but seldom. On this account our best writers of "Novellen" have also been, almost without exception, eminent lyric poets; such were Goethe, Tieck, Eichendorff, Morike, Keller, Heyse, Theodor Storm and C.F. Meyer; whereas, in the case of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, who otherwise would form an exception, even what appears to be a "Novelle" is in reality a "small novel."
The novel, on the contrary, still enjoys in Germany the dangerous privilege of formlessness. In its language it varies from the vague lyric of romantic composition to the bureaucratic sobriety of mechanically-compiled studies of real life. In its outline, in the rhythm of its construction, in the division of its parts and the way in which they are brought into relief, it has, in spite of masterly individual performances, never attained a specific literary form, such as has long been possessed by the English and the French novels.
Likewise the inclination, sanctioned by Goethe and the Romantic school, to interpolate specimens of the least formed half-literary _genres_--namely, letters and diaries--worked against the adoption of a fixed form, notwithstanding that this expedient augmented the great--often indeed too great--inner richness of the German novel.
Thus the German novel, as well as the so justly favorite form of letters and diaries, is of infinitely more importance as a human or contemporary "doc.u.ment" than as a direct work of art. We have, however, already drawn attention to the fact that the never-failing efforts to clothe the novel in a more esthetically pure form have, in our own day, happily increased.
The traditional _material_ of literary compositions is, however, also a conservative power, just as are language and form. The stock of dominating motives naturally undergoes just as many transformations as language or metrics; but, in both cases, what already exists has a determining influence on everything new, often going so far as to suppress the latter entirely. Customary themes preferably claim the interest of the reader; as, for example, in the age of religious pictures it would have been exceedingly hard to procure an order for a purely worldly painting. The artists themselves unconsciously glide into the usual path, and what was intended to be a world-poem flows off into the convenient worn channel of the love-story. But the vivifying and deepening power of the Germanic spirit has here, more than in any other domain, destroyed the opposing force of inertia.
The oldest poetry is confined to such subjects as are of universal interest--one could also say of universal importance. War and the harvest, the festivals of the G.o.ds and the destinies of the tribe, are the subjects of song. These things retain their traditional interest even where a healthy communal life no longer exists. Epochs which are absolutely wanting in political understanding still cultivate the glory of Brutus in an epic or dramatic form; or those ages which can scarcely lay claim to a living religious interest still join in choruses in honor of Apollo or in honor of the Christian religion.
Every literature carries with it a large and respectable ballast of sensations that are no longer felt, of objects that are no longer seen, culminating in the spring-songs of poets confined to their room, and the wine-songs of the water-drinkers. A stagnating literature, as that of the seventeenth century was essentially, always has an especially large amount of such rubbish. Poems composed for certain occasions, in the worst sense--that is to say, poems of congratulation and condolence written for money, trivial reflections and mechanical devotion, occupy an alarmingly large s.p.a.ce in the lyric of this period. Drama is entirely confined, and the novel for the greater part, to the dressing up in adopted forms of didactic subject matter of the most general type. Men of individuality are, however, not altogether lacking: such were lyric poets like Andreas Gryphius and Paul Fleming, gnomologists like Johann Scheffler, and narrators like J.J. Christoffel von Grimmelshausen; but even with them the personal note does not dare to sound openly. The first to give free expression again to intimate sensations is Christian Gunther, and he arouses thereby contradiction, together with admiration. The court poets about the year 1700 work more in a negative way, i. e., by that which they did not express in their verses. The great merit of the pre-cla.s.sical writers is to have created s.p.a.ce, on the one hand, for personal sensations, and, on the other, for the great new thoughts of the age.
Hagedorn, with the elegant frivolity of the man of the world, continued the necessary sifting of antiquated material; Albrecht von Haller, with the deep seriousness of the great student of nature, once more squarely faced the eternal problems. But the entire wealth of inner experience, in its most exclusively individual sense, was first revealed, not only to the literature of Germany but to modern literature in general, by Klopstock. Along this path Goethe pressed forward gloriously, his whole poetic work presenting, according to his own testimony, a single great confession. From Haller, on the contrary, proceeds the effort to develop a poetical style that would enable individuals to share in the great thoughts of the age. Lessing strides onward from _Minna von Barnhelm_--the first drama of contemporary history since the _Persians_ of aeschylus--to _Nathan the Wise_, herein following the lead of the "literature with a distinct purpose" (_Tendenz-Dichtung_) of France, and especially of Voltaire, otherwise antipathetic to Lessing. Lessing"s great dramatic heir is Schiller, whose tradition is in turn carried on by Kleist, the latter allowing his personality to penetrate the subject matter far more even than either of his predecessors.
But the utmost was done by Goethe, when in _Werther_ and _Gotz_, in _Prometheus_ or _Satyros_, but above all eventually in _Faust_, he lived through in advance--or, as he himself said, he "antic.i.p.ated"
(_vorfuhlte_)--the peculiar experience of the age with such intensity that, in the work which resulted, the individual experience became the direct experience of the whole generation.
Out of the "reverence for nature" (_Naturfrommigkeit_) with which he contemplated all created things--from "the Cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop which grows on the wall," from the mighty movement of the stream in _Mahomet_ to the bit of cheese that is weighed by the old woman in _Die Geschwister_--out of all comes a widening of the poetic horizon, the like of which had never before been seen in any age. The Romanticists in reality only made a watchword out of this practice of Goethe"s when they demanded "progressive universal poetry," by which they meant that the poet should live through the whole experience of creation in his own person. In demanding this, they--as the aging Goethe had himself done--formed too narrow a conception of the personal, and rejected too absolutely the problems of politics and of science, so that once more a narrowing process ensued. But even in their own ranks this tendency was offset by the exigency of the times; after the wars of liberation, political and in general, poetry written with a purpose was actually in the ascendency. The poetry of the mood, like that of a Morike, remained for a long time almost unknown on account of its strictly intimate character. In the success of Ernst von Wildenbruch we see provisionally the last victory of this sort of literature--which directly proclaims what is worth striving for--at least in its loftier form. For the contemporary novel constantly takes for its subject the emanc.i.p.ation of woman, or the fight for culture, the protection of the Ostmark, or the fight against alcohol.
On the other hand the Romantic school has also broadened the realm of poetic material in a very important manner, by adding to it the provinces of the phantastic, the visionary, the fairy-like, and by giving to the symbolical an undreamed-of expansion.