The Project Gutenberg EBook of Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry, by
Wilhelm Alfred Braun
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Title: Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry
Author: Wilhelm Alfred Braun
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Language: English
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TYPES OF WELTSCHMERZ IN GERMAN POETRY
BY
WILHELM ALFRED BRAUN, Ph.D.
SOMETIME FELLOW IN GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES, COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY
AMS PRESS, INC. NEW YORK 1966
Copyright 1905, Columbia University Press, New York
Reprinted with the permission of the Original Publisher, 1966
AMS PRESS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003 1966
Manufactured in the United States of America
NOTE
The author of this essay has attempted to make, as he himself phrases
it, "a modest contribution to the natural history of Weltschmerz." What
goes by that name is no doubt somewhat elusive; one can not easily
delimit and characterize it with scientific accuracy. Nevertheless the
word corresponds to a fairly definite range of psychical reactions which
are of great interest in modern poetry, especially German poetry. The
phenomenon is worth studying in detail. In undertaking a study of it Mr.
Braun thought, and I readily concurred in the opinion, that he would do
best not to essay an exhaustive history, but to select certain
conspicuously interesting types and proceed by the method of close
analysis, characterization and comparison. I consider his work a
valuable contribution to literary scholarship.
CALVIN THOMAS.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, June, 1905
PREFACE
The work which is presented in the following pages is intended to be a
modest contribution to the natural history of Weltschmerz.
The writer has endeavored first of all to define carefully the
distinction between pessimism and Weltschmerz; then to classify the
latter, both as to its origin and its forms of expression, and to
indicate briefly its relation to mental pathology and to contemporary
social and political conditions. The three poets selected for
discussion, were chosen because they represent distinct types, under
which probably all other poets of Weltschmerz may be classified, or to
which they will at least be found analogous; and to the extent to which
such is the case, the treatise may be regarded as exhaustive. In the
case of each author treated, the development of the peculiar phase of
Weltschmerz characteristic of him has been traced, and analyzed with
reference to its various modes of expression. Hölderlin is the idealist,
Lenau exhibits the profoundly pathetic side of Weltschmerz, while Heine
is its satirist. They have been considered in this order, because they
represent three progressive stages of Weltschmerz viewed as a
psychological process: Hölderlin naïve, Lenau self-conscious, Heine
endeavoring to conceal his melancholy beneath the disguise of
self-irony.
It is a pleasure to tender my grateful acknowledgments to my former
Professors, Calvin Thomas and William H. Carpenter of Columbia
University, and Camillo von Klenze and Starr Willard Cutting of the
University of Chicago, under whose stimulating direction and
never-failing assistance my graduate studies were carried on.
CONTENTS
Chapter I--Introduction 1
Chapter II--Hölderlin 9
Chapter III--Lenau 35
Chapter IV--Heine 59
Chapter V--Bibliography 85
CHAPTER I
=Introduction=
The purpose of the following study is to examine closely certain German
authors of modern times, whose lives and writings exemplify in an
unusually striking degree that peculiar phase of lyric feeling which has
characterized German literature, often in a more or less epidemic form,
since the days of "Werther," and to which, at an early period in the
nineteenth century, was assigned the significant name "Weltschmerz."
With this side of the poet under investigation, there must of necessity
be an enquiry, not only into his writings, his expressed feelings, but
also his physical and mental constitution on the one hand, and into his
theory of existence in general on the other. Psychology and philosophy
then are the two adjacent fields into which it may become necessary to
pursue the subject in hand, and for this reason it is only fair to call
attention to the difficulties which surround the student of literature
in discussing philosophical ideas or psychological phenomena. Intrepid
indeed would it be for him to attempt a final judgment in these bearings
of his subject, where wise men have differed and doctors have disagreed.
Although sometimes loosely used as synonyms, it is necessary to note
that there is a well-defined distinction between Weltschmerz and
pessimism. Weltschmerz may be defined as the poetic expression of an
abnormal sensitiveness of the feelings to the moral and physical evils
and misery of existence--a condition which may or may not be based upon
a reasoned conviction that the sum of human misery is greater than the
sum of human happiness. It is usually characterized also by a certain
lack of will-energy, a sort of sentimental yielding to these painful
emotions. It is therefore entirely a matter of "Gemüt." Pessimism, on
the other hand, purports to be a theory of existence, the result of
deliberate philosophic argument and investigation, by which its votaries
have reached the dispassionate conclusion that there is no real good or
pleasure in the world that is not clearly outweighed by evil or pain,
and that therefore self-destruction, or at least final annihilation is
the consummation devoutly to be wished.
James Sully, in his elaborate treatise on Pessimism,[1] divides it,
however, into reasoned and unreasoned Pessimism, including Weltschmerz
under the latter head. This is entirely compatible with the definition
of Weltschmerz which has been attempted above. But it is interesting to
note the attitude of the pessimistic school of philosophy toward this
unreasoned pessimism. It emphatically disclaims any interest in or
connection with it, and describes all those who are afflicted with the
malady as execrable fellows--to quote Hartmann--: "Klageweiber
männlichen und weiblichen Geschlechts, welche am meisten zur
Discreditierung des Pessimismus beigetragen haben, die sich in ewigem
Lamento ergehen, und entweder unaufhörlich in Thränen schwimmen, oder
bitter wie Wermut und Essig, sich selbst und andern das Dasein noch mehr
vergällen; eine jämmerliche Situation des Stimmungspessimismus, der sie
nicht leben und nicht sterben lässt."[2] And yet Hartmann himself does
not hesitate to admit that this very condition of individual
Weltschmerz, or "Zerrissenheit," is a necessary and inevitable stage in
the progress of the mind toward that clarified universal Weltschmerz
which is based upon theoretical insight, namely pessimism in its most
logical sense. This being granted, we shall not be far astray in
assuming that it is also the stage to which the philosophic pessimist
will sometimes revert, when a strong sense of his own individuality
asserts itself.
If we attempt a classification of Weltschmerz with regard to its
essence, or, better perhaps, with regard to its origin, we shall find
that the various types may be classed under one of two heads: either as
cosmic or as egoistic. The representatives of cosmic Weltschmerz are
those poets whose first concern is not their personal fate, their own
unhappiness, it may be, but who see first and foremost the sad fate of
humanity and regard their own misfortunes merely as a part of the common
destiny. The representatives of the second type are those introspective
natures who are first and chiefly aware of their own misery and finally
come to regard it as representative of universal evil. The former
proceed from the general to the particular, the latter from the
particular to the general. But that these types must necessarily be
entirely distinct in all cases, as Marchand[3] asserts, seems open to
serious doubt. It is inconceivable that a poet into whose personal
experience no shadows have fallen should take the woes of humanity very
deeply to heart; nor again could we imagine that one who has brooded
over the unhappy condition of mankind in general should never give
expression to a note of personal sorrow. It is in the complexity of
motives in one and the same subject that the difficulty lies in making
rigid and sharp distinctions. In some cases Weltschmerz may arise from
honest conviction or genuine despair, in others it may be something
entirely artificial, merely a cloak to cover personal defects. Sometimes
it may even be due to a desire to pose as a martyr, and sometimes
nothing more than an attempt to ape the prevailing fashion. To these
types Wilhelm Scherer adds "Müssiggänger, welche sich die Zeit mit übler
Laune vertreiben, missvergnügte Lyriker, deren Gedichte nicht mehr
gelesen werden, und Spatzenköpfe, welche den Pessimismus für besonderen
Tiefsinn halten und um jeden Preis tiefsinnig erscheinen wollen."[4]
But it is with Weltschmerz in its outward manifestations as it finds
expression in the poet's writings, that we shall be chiefly concerned in
the following pages. And here the subdivisions, if we attempt to
classify, must be almost as numerous as the representatives themselves.
In Hölderlin we have the ardent Hellenic idealist; Lenau gives
expression to all the pathos of Weltschmerz, Heine is its satirist, the
misanthrope, while in Raabe we even have a pessimistic humorist.
This brief list needs scarcely be supplemented by other names of poets
of melancholy, such as Reinhold Lenz, Heinrich von Kleist, Robert
Southey, Byron, Leopardi, in order to command our attention by reason of
the tragic fate which ended the lives of nearly all of these men, the
most frequent and the most terrible being that of insanity. It is of
course a matter of common knowledge that chronic melancholy or the
persistent brooding over personal misfortune is an almost inevitable
preliminary to mental derangement. And when this melancholy takes root
in the finely organized mind of genius, it is only to be expected that
the result will be even more disastrous than in the case of the ordinary
mind. Lombroso holds the opinion that if men of genius are not all more
or less insane, that is, if the "spheres of influence" of genius and
insanity do not actually overlap, they are at least contiguous at many
points, so that the transition from the former to the latter is
extremely easy and even natural. But genius in itself is not an abnormal
mental condition. It does not even consist of an extraordinary memory,
vivid imagination, quickness of judgment, or of a combination of all of
these. Kant defines genius as the talent of invention. Originality and
productiveness are the fundamental elements of genius. And it is an
almost instinctive force which urges the author on in his creative work.
In the main his activity is due less to free will than to this inner
compulsion.
"Ich halte diesen Drang vergebens auf,
Der Tag und Nacht in meinem Busen wechselt.
Wenn ich nicht sinnen oder dichten soll,
So ist das Leben mir kein Leben mehr,"
says Goethe's Tasso.[5] If this impulse of genius is embodied in a
strong physical organism, as for example in the case of Shakespeare and
Goethe, there need be no detriment to physical health; otherwise, and
especially if there is an inherited tendency to disease, there is almost
sure to be a physical collapse. Specialists in the subject have pointed
out that violent passions are even more potent in producing mental
disease than mere intellectual over-exertion. And these are certainly
characteristic in a very high degree of the mind of genius. It has often
been remarked that it is the _corona spinosa_ of genius to feel all pain
more intensely than do other men. Schopenhauer says "der, in welchem der
Genius lebt, leidet am meisten." It is only going a step further then,
when Hamerling writes to his friend Möser: "Schliesslich ist es doch nur
der Kranke, der sich das Leid der ganzen Welt zu Herzen nimmt."
Radestock, in his study "Genie und Wahnsinn," mentions and elaborates
among others the following points of resemblance between the mind of
genius and the insane mind: an abnormal activity of the imagination,
very rapid succession of ideas, extreme concentration of thought upon a
single subject or idea, and lastly, what would seem the cardinal point,
a weakness of will-energy, the lack of that force which alone can serve
to bring under control all these other unruly elements and give balance
to what must otherwise be an extremely one-sided mechanism. Here again
the exception may be taken to prove the rule. It is not too much, I
think, to assert that Goethe could never have become so uniquely great,
not even through the splendid versatility of his genius, but for that
incomparable self-control, which he made the watchword of his life. And
in the case of the poet of Weltschmerz the presence or absence of this
quality may even decide whether he shall rise superior to his beclouded
condition or perish in the gloom. The conclusion at which Radestock
arrives is that genius, as the expression of the most intense mental
activity, occupies the middle ground, as it were, between the normal
healthy state on the one hand, and the abnormal, pathological state on
the other, and has without doubt many points of contact with mental
disease; and that although the elements which genius has in common with
insanity may not be strong enough in themselves to induce the transition
from the former to the latter state, yet when other aggravating causes
are added, such as physical disease, violent emotions or passions,
overwork, the pressure or distress of outward circumstances, the highly
gifted individual is much more liable to cross the line of demarkation
between the two mental states than is the average mind, which is more
remote from that line. If this can be asserted of genius in general, it
must be even more particularly and widely applicable in reference to a
combination of genius and Weltschmerz. We shall find pathetic examples
in the first two types selected for examination.
Having thus introduced the subject in its most general bearings and
aspects, it remains for us to review briefly its historical background.
Weltschmerz is essentially a symptom of a period of conflict, of
transition. The powerful reaction which marks the eighteenth century--a
reaction against all traditional intellectual authority, and a struggle
for the emancipation of the individual, of research, of inspiration and
of genius--reached its high-water mark in Germany in the seventies. But
with the unrestrained outbursts of the champions of Storm and Stress the
problem was by no means solved; there remained the basic conflict
between the idea of personal liberty and the strait-jacket of
Frederician absolutism, the conflict between the dynastic and the
national idea of the state. Should the individual yield a blind,
unreasoned submission to the state as to a divinely instituted arbitrary
authority, good or bad, or was the state to be regarded as the conscious
and voluntary coöperation of its subjects for the general good? It was,
moreover, a time not only of open and active revolt, as represented by
the spirit of Klinger, but also of great emotional stirrings, and
sentimental yearnings of such passive natures as Hölty. Rousseau's plea
for a simplified and more natural life had exerted a mighty influence.
And what has a most important bearing upon the relation between these
intellectual currents and Weltschmerz--these minds were lacking in the
discipline implied in our modern scientific training. Scientific
exactness of thinking had not become an integral part of education.
Hence the difference between the pessimism of Ibsen and the romantic
Weltschmerz of these uncritical minds.
In accounting for the tremendous effect produced by his "Werther,"
Goethe compares his work to the bit of fuse which explodes the mine, and
says that the shock of the explosion was so great because the young
generation of the day had already undermined itself, and its members
now burst forth individually with their exaggerated demands, unsatisfied
passions and imaginary sufferings.[6] And in estimating the influences
which had prepared the way for this mental disposition, Goethe
emphasizes the influence of English literature. Young's "Night
Thoughts," Gray's "Elegy," Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," even "Hamlet"
and his monologues haunted all minds. "Everyone knew the principal
passages by heart, and everyone believed he had a right to be just as
melancholy as the Prince of Denmark, even though he had seen no ghost
and had no royal father to avenge." Finally Ossian had provided an
eminently suitable setting,--under the darkly lowering sky the endless
gray heath, peopled with the shadowy forms of departed heroes and
withered maidens. To quote the substance of Goethe's criticism:[7] Amid
such influences and surroundings, occupied with fads and studies of this
sort, lacking all incentive from without to any important activity and
confronted by the sole prospect of having to drag out a humdrum
existence, men began to reflect with a sort of sullen exultation upon
the possibility of departing this life at will, and to find in this
thought a scant amelioration of the ills and tedium of the times. This
disposition was so general that "Werther" itself exerted a powerful
influence, because it everywhere struck a responsive chord and publicly
and tangibly exhibited the true inwardness of a morbid youthful
illusion.[8]
Nor did the dawning nineteenth century bring relief. No other period of
Prussian history, says Heinrich von Treitschke,[9] is wrapped in so deep
a gloom as the first decade of the reign of Frederick William III. It
was a time rich in hidden intellectual forces, and yet it bore the stamp
of that uninspired Philistinism which is so abundantly evidenced by the
barren commonplace character of its architecture and art. Genius there
was, indeed, but never were its opportunities for public usefulness more
limited. It was as though the greatness of the days of the second
Frederick lay like a paralyzing weight upon this generation. And this
oppressing sense of impotence was followed, after the Napoleonic Wars,
by the bitterness of disappointment, all the more keenly felt by reason
of this first reawakening of the national consciousness. Great had been
the expectations, enormous the sacrifice; exceedingly small was the gain
to the individual.[10] And the resultant dissonance was the same as that
to which Alfred de Musset gave expression in the words: "The malady of
the present century is due to two causes; the people who have passed
through 1793 and 1814 bear in their hearts two wounds. All that was is
no more; all that will be is not yet. Do not hope to find elsewhere the
secret of our ills."[11]
This then in briefest outline is the transition from the century of
individualism and autocracy to the nineteenth century of democracy.
Small wonder that the struggle claimed its victims in those individuals
who, unable to find a firm basis of conviction and principle, vacillated
constantly between instinctive adherence to old traditions, and
unreasoned inclination to the new order of things.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "Pessimism, a History and a Criticism," London, 1877.]
[Footnote 2: Ed. von Hartmann: "Zur Geschichte und Begründung des
Pessimismus," Leipzig, Hermann Haacke, p. 187.]
[Footnote 3: "Les Poètes Lyriques de l'Autriche," Paris, 1886, p. 293.]
[Footnote 4: "Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Geschichte des geistigen Lebens
in Deutschland und Oesterreich," Berlin, 1874, p. 413.]
[Footnote 5: Act 5, Sc. 2.]
[Footnote 6: "Goethes Werke," Weimar ed. Vol. 28, p. 227 f.]
[Footnote 7: _Ibid._, p. 216 f.]
[Footnote 8: In view of Goethe's own words, then, the caution of a
recent critic (Felix Melchior in _Litt. Forsch._ XXVII Heft, Berlin,
1903) against applying the term Weltschmerz to "Werther," would seem to
miss the mark entirely. Werther is a type, just as truly as is Faust,
though in a smaller way, and the malady which he typifies has its
ultimate origin in the development of public life,--the very condition
which this critic insists upon as a mark of Weltschmerz in the proper
application of the term.]
[Footnote 9: "Historische und politische Aufsätze," Leipzig, 1897. Vol.
4.]
[Footnote 10: As early as 1797 Hölderlin's Hyperion laments: "Mein
Geschäft auf Erden ist aus. Ich bin voll Willens an die Arbeit gegangen,
habe geblutet darüber, und die Welt um keinen Pfennig reicher gemacht."
("Hölderlin's gesammelte Dichtungen, herausgegeben von B. Litzmann,"
Stuttgart, Cotta, undated. Vol. II, p. 68.) Several decades later Heine
writes: "Ich kann mich über die Siege meiner liebsten Ueberzeugungen
nicht recht freuen, da sie mir gar zu viel gekostet haben. Dasselbe mag
bei manchem ehrlichen Manne der Fall sein, und es trägt viel bei zu der
grossen düsteren Verstimmung der Gegenwart." (Brief vom 21 April, 1851,
an Gustav Kolb; Werke, Karpeles ed. Vol. IX, p. 378.)]
[Footnote 11: "Confession d'un enfant du siècle." Oeuvres compl. Paris,
1888 (Charpentier). Vol. VIII, p. 24.]
CHAPTER II
=Hölderlin=
A case such as that of Hölderlin, subject as he was from the time of his
boyhood to melancholy, and ending in hopeless insanity, at once suggests
the question of heredity. Little or nothing is known concerning his
remote ancestors. His great-grandfather had been administrator of a
convent at Grossbottwar, and died of dropsy of the chest at the age of
forty-seven. His grandfather had held a similar position as
"Klosterhofmeister und geistlicher Verwalter" at Lauffen, to which his
son, the poet's father, succeeded. An apoplectic stroke ended his life
at the early age of thirty-six. In regard to Hölderlin's maternal
ancestors, our information is even more scant, though we know that both
his grandmother and his mother lived to a ripe old age. From the poet's
references to them we judge them to have been entirely normal types of
intelligent, lovable women, gifted with a great deal of good practical
sense. The only striking thing is the premature death of Hölderlin's
great-grandfather and father. But in view of the nature of their
stations in life, in which they may fairly be supposed to have led more
than ordinarily sober and well-ordered lives, there seems to be no
ground whatever for assuming that Hölderlin's Weltschmerz owed its
inception in any degree to hereditary tendencies, notwithstanding
Hermann Fischer's opinion to the contrary.[12] There is no sufficient
reason to assume "erbliche Belastung," and there are other sufficient
causes without merely guessing at such a possibility.
But while there are no sufficient historical grounds for the supposition
that he brought the germ of his subsequent mental disease with him in
his birth, we cannot fail to observe, even in the child, certain
natural traits, which, being allowed to develop unchecked, must of
necessity hasten and intensify the gloom which hung over his life. To
his deep thoughtfulness was added an abnormal sensitiveness to all
external influences. Like the delicate anemone, he recoiled and withdrew
within himself when touched by the rougher material things of life.[13]
He himself poetically describes his absentmindedness when a boy, and
calls himself "ein Träumer"; and a dreamer he remained all his life. It
seems to have been this which first brought him into discord with the
world:
Oft sollt' ich stracks in meine Schule wandern,
Doch ehe sich der Träumer es versah,
So hatt' er in den Garten sich verirrt,
Und sass behaglich unter den Oliven,
Und baute Flotten, schifft' ins hohe Meer.
* * * * *
Dies kostete mich tausend kleine Leiden,
Verzeihlich war es immer, wenn mich oft
Die Klügeren, mit herzlichem Gelächter
Aus meiner seligen Ekstase schreckten,
Doch unaussprechlich wehe that es mir.[14]
If ever a boy needed a strong fatherly hand to guide him, to teach him
self-reliance and practical sense, it was this dreamy, tender-spirited
child.[15] The love and sympathy which his mother bestowed upon him was
not calculated to fit him for the rugged experiences of life, and while
probably natural and pardonable, it was nevertheless extremely
unfortunate that the boy was unconsciously encouraged to be and to
remain a "Muttersöhnchen." But even with his peculiar trend of
disposition, the result might not have been an unhappy one, had the
course of his life not brought him more than an ordinary share of
misfortune. This overtook him early in life, for when but two years of
age his father died. His widowed mother now lived for a few years in
complete retirement with her two children--the poet's sister Henrietta
having been born just a few weeks after his father's demise. But it was
not long before death again entered the household and robbed it of
Hölderlin's aunt, his deceased father's sister, who was herself a widow
and the faithful companion of the poet's mother. When the latter found
herself again alone with her two little ones, whose care was weighing
heavily upon her, she consented to become the wife of her late husband's
friend, Kammerrat Gock, and accompanied him to his home in the little
town of Nürtingen on the Neckar. But this re-established marital
happiness was to be of brief duration, for in 1779 her second husband
died, and the mother was now left with four little children to care and
provide for.
The frequency with which death visited the family during his childhood
and youth, familiarized him at an early age with scenes of sorrow and
grief. No doubt he was too young when his father died to comprehend the
calamity that had come upon the household, but it was not many months
before he knew the meaning of his mother's tears, not only for his
father, but also for his sister, who died in her infancy. Referring to
his father's death, he writes in one of his early poems, "Einst und
Jetzt":[16]
Einst schlugst du mir so ruhig, empörtes Herz!
* * * * *
Einst in des Vaters Schoosse, des liebenden
Geliebten Vaters,--aber der Würger kam,
Wir weinten, flehten, doch der Würger
Schnellte den Pfeil, und es sank die Stütze.
At his tenderest and most impressionable age, the boy was thus made
sadly aware of the fleetingness of human life and the pains of
bereavement. We cannot wonder then at finding these impressions
reflected in his most juvenile poetic attempts. His poem "Das
menschliche Leben," written at the age of fifteen, begins:
Menschen, Menschen! was ist euer Leben,
Eure Welt, die thränenvolle Welt!
Dieser Schauplatz, kann er Freude geben
Wo sich Trauern nicht dazu gesellt?[17]
But a time of still greater unhappiness was in store for him when he
left his home at the age of fourteen to enter the convent school at
Denkendorf, where he began his preparation for a theological course. A
more direct antithesis to all that his body and soul yearned for and
needed for their proper development could scarcely have been devised
than that which existed in the chilling atmosphere and rigorous
discipline of the monastery. He had not even an incentive to endure
hardships for the sake of what lay beyond, for it was merely in passive
submission to his mother's wish that he had decided to enter holy
orders. And now, clad in a sombre monkish gown, deprived of all freedom
of thought or movement and forced into companionship with twenty-five or
thirty fellows of his own age, who nearly all misunderstood him,
Hölderlin felt himself wretched indeed. "Wär' ich doch ewig ferne von
diesen Mauern des Elends!" he writes in a poem at Maulbronn in 1787.[18]
There was for him but one way of escape. It was to isolate himself as
much as possible from the world of harsh reality about him, to be alone,
and there in his solitude to construct for himself an ideal world of
fancy, a poetic dreamland. This mental habit not only remained with him
as he grew into manhood, it may be said to have been through life one of
his most distinguishing characteristics. It would be impossible to make
room here for all the passages in his poems and letters of this period,
which reflect his love of solitude and his habit of retreating into a
world of his own imagining. His letters to his friend Nast almost
invariably contain some expression of his heart-ache. "Bilfinger ist
wohl mein Freund, aber es geht ihm zu glücklich, als dass er sich nach
mir umsehen möchte. Du wirst mich schon verstehen--er ist immer lustig,
ich hänge immer den Kopf."[19] Another letter begins: "Wieder eine
Stunde wegphantasiert!--dass es doch so schlechte Menschen giebt, unter
meinen Cameraden so elende Kerls--wann mich die Freundschaft nicht
zuweilen wieder gut machte, so hätt' ich mich manchmal schon lieber an
jeden andern Ort gewünscht, als unter Menschengesellschaft.--Wann ich
nur auch einmal etwas recht Lustiges schreiben könnte! Nur Gedult! 's
wird kommen--hoff' ich, oder--oder hab' ich dann nicht genug getragen?
Erfuhr ich nicht schon als Bube, was den Mann seufzen machen würde? und
als Jüngling, geht's da besser?--Du lieber Gott! bin ich's denn allein?
jeder andre glücklicher als ich? Und was hab' ich dann gethan?"[20]
There is a world of pathos in this helpless cry of pain, with its
suggestion of retributive fate. A poem of 1788, "Die Stille," written at
Maulbronn, epitomizes almost everything that we have thus far noted as
to Hölderlin's nature. He goes back in fancy to the days of his
childhood, describing his lonely rambles, from which he would return in
the moonlight, unmindful of his lateness for the evening meal, at which
he would hastily eat of that which the others had left:
Schlich mich, wenn ich satt gegessen,
Weg von meinem lustigen Geschwisterpaar.
O! in meines kleinen Stübchens Stille
War mir dann so über alles wohl,
Wie im Tempel war mir's in der Nächte Hülle,
Wann so einsam von dem Turm die Glocke scholl.
Als ich weggerissen von den Meinen
Aus dem lieben elterlichen Haus
Unter Fremden irrte, we ich nimmer weinen
Durfte, in das bunte Weltgewirr hinaus,
O wie pflegtest du den armen Jungen,
Teure, so mit Mutterzärtlichkeit,
Wann er sich im Weltgewirre müd gerungen,
In der lieben, wehmutsvollen Einsamkeit.[21]
This love of solitude is carried to the extreme in his contemplation of
a hermit's life. In a letter to Nast he says: "Heute ging ich so vor
mich hin, da fiel mir ein, ich wolle nach vollendeten Universitäts
Jahren Einsiedler werden--und der Gedanke gefiel mir so wohl, eine
ganze Stunde, glaub' ich, war ich in meiner Fantasie Einsiedler."[22]
And although he never became a hermit, this is the final disposition
which he makes of himself in his "Hyperion."
These habits of thought and feeling, formed in boyhood, could lead to
only one result. He became less and less qualified to comprehend and to
grapple with the practical problems and difficulties of life, and
entered young manhood and the struggle for existence at a tremendous
disadvantage.
Another trait of his character which served to intensify his subsequent
disappointments, was the strong ambition which early filled his soul. He
aspired to high achievements in his chosen field of art. In a letter to
Louise Nast, written probably about the beginning of 1790, he makes the
confession: "Der unüberwindliche Trübsinn in mir ist wohl nicht ganz,
doch meist--unbefriedigter Ehrgeiz."[23] The mere lad of seventeen had
scarcely learned to admire Klopstock, when he speaks of his own
"kämpfendes Streben nach Klopstocksgrösse," and exclaims: "Hinan den
herrlichen Ehrenpfad! Hinan! im glühenden kühnen Traum, sie zu
erreichen!"[24] It is remarkable to note how this fancy of a dream-life
becomes fixed in Hölderlin's mind and reappears in almost every poem.
Closely allied to this idea is that of a "glückliche Trunkenheit," and
expressions like "wie ein Göttertraum das Alter schwand,"
"liebetrunken," "Wie ein Traum entfliehen Ewigkeiten," "siegestrunken,"
"süsse, kühne Trunkenheit," "trunken dämmert die Seele mir," can be
found on almost every page of his shorter poems. Hyperion expresses
himself on one occasion in the words: "O ein Gott ist der Mensch, wenn
er träumt, ein Bettler, wenn er nachdenkt, und wenn die Begeisterung hin
ist, steht er da, wie ein missrathener Sohn, den der Vater aus dem Hause
stiess, und betrachtet die ärmlichen Pfennige, die ihm das Mitleid auf
den Weg gab,"[25] which further illustrates the extravagant idealism by
which he allowed himself to be carried away, and the etherial and
thoroughly unpractical trend of his mind. The flights of fancy of which
Hölderlin is capable are well illustrated by another passage in
"Hyperion." Referring to Hyperion's conversation with Alabanda, he says:
"Ich war hingerissen von unendlichen Hoffnungen, Götterkräfte trugen wie
ein Wölkchen mich fort."[26] These facts have a direct bearing upon
Hölderlin's Weltschmerz, inasmuch as it was just this unequal and
unsuccessful struggle of the idealist with the stern realities of life
that brought about the catastrophe which wrought his ruin.
And just as his ideals are vague and abstract, so too are the
expressions of his Weltschmerz. It needs no concrete idea to arouse his
enthusiasm to its highest pitch. Thus Hyperion exclaims: "Der Gott in
uns, dem die Unendlichkeit zur Bahn sich öffnet, soll stehen und harren,
bis der Wurm ihm aus dem Wege geht? Nein! nein! man frägt nicht, ob ihr
wollt! ihr wollt ja nie--ihr Knechte und Barbaren! Euch will man auch
nicht bessern, denn es ist umsonst! Man will nur dafür sorgen, dass ihr
dem Siegeslauf der Menschheit aus dem Wege geht!"[27] It is in the form
of lofty generalities such as these, and seldom with reference to
practical details, that Hölderlin's longings find expression.
Entirely consistent with this idealism is the nature of his love,
ardent, but etherial, "übersinnlich." This is reflected also in his
lyrics, which are statuesque and beautiful, but lacking in passion and
sensuous charm. Hölderlin's earliest love-affair, that with Louise Nast,
is important for his Weltschmerz only in its bearing upon the
development of his general character. This influence was a twofold one:
in the first place his sweetheart was herself inclined to a sort of
visionary mysticism, and therefore had an unwholesome influence upon the
youth, who had already been carried too far in that direction. She too
was a lover of solitude and wrote her letters to him in the stillness of
the night, when all others were asleep. There can be no doubt that she
had at least some share in determining his mental activity, especially
his reading. In one of his earliest letters to her he writes: "Weil Du
den Don Carlos liest, will ich ihn auch lesen."[28] It was during this
time too that that he became so ardent an admirer of Schubart and
Ossian. "Da leg' ich meinen Ossian weg und komme zu Dir," he writes in
1788 to his friend Nast. "Ich habe meine Seele geweidet an den Helden
des Barden, habe mit ihm getrauert, wann er trauert über sterbende
Mädchen."[29] There is not a sensuous note in all Hölderlin's poems or
letters to Louise. Typical are the lines which he addresses to her on
his departure from Maulbronn:
Lass sie drohen, die Stürme, die Leiden,
Lass trennen--der Trennung Jahre
Sie trennen uns nicht!
Sie trennen uns nicht!
Denn mein bist du! Und über das Grab hinaus
Soll sie dauren, die unzertrennbare Liebe.
O! wenn's einst da ist
Das grosse selige Jenseits,
Wo die Krone dem leidenden Pilger,
Die Palme dem Sieger blinkt,
Dann Freundin--lohnet auch Freundschaft--
Auch Freundschaft der Ewige.[30]
The second bearing which his relations to Louise have upon his
Weltschmerz lies in the fact that his love ended in disappointment. This
is true not only of this particular episode, not only of all his
love-affairs, but it may even be said that disappointment was the fate
to which he found himself doomed in all his aspirations. And in the
persistency with which this evil angel pursued his footsteps through
life may be found one of the chief causes of the early collapse of his
faculties. What David Müller[31] and Hermann Fischer[32] have said in
their essays in regard to this point--that Hölderlin did not become
insane because his life was a succession of unsatisfactory situations
and painful disappointments, but because he had not the strength to work
himself out of these situations into more favorable ones--states only
half the case. True, a stronger mental organization might have overcome
these or even greater difficulties; Schiller, Herder, Fichte are
examples; but not all of Hölderlin's failures and disappointments were
the result of his weakness, and so while it is right to state that a
stronger and more robust nature would have conquered in the fight, it is
also fair to say that Hölderlin would have had a good chance of winning,
had fortune been more kind. For this reason these external influences
must be reckoned with as an important cause of his Weltschmerz and
subsequently of his insanity.
This suggests an interesting point of comparison--if I may be permitted
to anticipate somewhat--with Lenau, the second type selected. Hölderlin
earnestly pursued happiness and contentment, but it eluded him at every
step. Lenau on the contrary reached a point in his Weltschmerz where he
refused to see anything in life but pain, wilfully thrusting from him
even such happiness as came within his reach.
We may postpone any detailed reference to Hölderlin's relations with
Susette Gontard, which were vastly more important in their influence
upon the poet's character and Weltschmerz, until we come to the
discussion of his "Hyperion," of which Susette, under the pseudonym of
Diotima, forms one of the central figures.
To speak of all the disappointments which fell to Hölderlin's lot would
practically require the writing of his biography from the time of his
graduation from Tübingen to his return from Bordeaux, almost the entire
period of his sane manhood. Unsuccessful in his first position as a
tutor, and unable, after having abandoned this, to provide even a meagre
living for himself with his pen, his migration to Frankfort to the house
of the merchant Gontard at last gave him a hope of better things, but a
hope which soon proved vain. Following close upon these disappointments
was his failure to carry out a project which he had long cherished, of
establishing a literary journal; then came his dismissal from a
situation which he had just entered upon in Switzerland. On his return
he wrote to Schiller for help and advice, and his failure to receive a
reply grieved him deeply. We can only surmise that it was a cruel
disappointment, finally, which caused his sudden departure from
Bordeaux, and brought him back a mental wreck to his mother's home. Even
as early as 1788 Hölderlin complains bitterly in the poem "Der Lorbeer,"
in which he eulogizes the poets Klopstock and Young and expresses his
own ambition to aspire to their greatness:
Schon so manche Früchte schöner Keime
Logen grausam mir ins Angesicht.[33]
As the years passed, this feeling of disappointment and disillusion
became more and more intense and bitter. A stanza from one of his more
mature poems (1795) "An die Natur," will serve to illustrate the
sentiment which pervades almost all his writings:
Tot ist nun, die mich erzog und stillte,
Tot ist nun die jugendliche Welt,
Diese Brust, die einst ein Himmel füllte,
Tot und dürftig wie ein Stoppelfeld;
Ach es singt der Frühling meinen Sorgen
Noch, wie einst, ein freundlich tröstend Lied,
Aber hin ist meines Lebens Morgen,
Meines Herzens Frühling ist verblüht.[34]
In close causal connection with Hölderlin's Weltschmerz is his belief
that his life is ruled by an inexorable fate whose plaything he is.
"Wenn hinfort mich das Schicksal ergreift, und von einem Abgrund in den
andern mich wirft, und alle Kräfte in mir ertränkt und alle Gedanken,"
Hyperion exclaims.[35] He goes even further, and conceives the idea of a
sacrifice to Fate. Thus he makes Alabanda say near the close of
"Hyperion:" "Ach! weil kein Glück ist ohne Opfer, nimm als Opfer mich, o
Schicksal an, und lass die Liebenden in ihrer Freude."[36] Wilhelm
Scherer calls attention to Gervinus' remark that new intellectual
tendencies which call for unaccustomed and unusual mental effort often
prove disastrous to single individuals, and says: "Hölderlin war also
ein Opfer der Erneuerung des deutschen Lebens--seltsam, wie der Gedanke
des Opfers als ein hoher und herrlicher ihn in allen seinen Gedichten
viel beschäftigt hat."[37] But the poet does not apply this fatalism
only to himself, to the individual; he widens its influence to humanity
in general. "Wir sprechen von unserm Herzen, unsern Planen, als wären
sie unser," says Hyperion, "und es ist doch eine fremde Gewalt, die uns
herumwirft und ins Grab legt, wie es ihr gefällt, und von der wir nicht
wissen, von wannen sie kommt, noch wohin sie geht:"[38] Perhaps nowhere
better than in Hyperion's "Schicksalslied" does he give poetic
expression to this thought. Omitting the first stanza it reads thus:
Schicksallos wie der schlafende
Säugling atmen die Himmlischen;
Keusch bewahrt
In bescheidener Knospe,
Blühet ewig
Ihnen der Geist,
Und die seligen Augen
Blicken in stiller
Ewiger Klarheit.
Doch uns ist gegeben,
Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn,
Es schwinden, es fallen
Die leidenden Menschen
Blindlings von einer
Stunde zur andern,
Wie Wasser von Klippe
Zu Klippe geworfen,
Jahrlang ins Ungewisse hinab.[39]
The fundamental difference between Hölderlin's "Anschauung" and Goethe's
is at once apparent when we recall the "Lied der Parzen" from
"Iphigenie." Hölderlin does not bring the blessed Genii into any
relation with mortals, but merely contrasts their free and blissful
existence, emphasizing their immunity from Fate, to which suffering
humanity is subject. But this humanity is represented by Hölderlin
characteristically as helpless, passive--"schwinden," "fallen,"
"blindlings von einer Stunde zur andern." Whereas the opening lines of
Goethe's "Parzen" strike the keynote of _conflict_ between the gods and
men:
Es fürchte die Götter
Das Menschengeschlecht!
Sie halten die Herrschaft
In ewigen Händen
Und können sie brauchen
Wie's ihnen gefällt.
Der fürchte sie doppelt,
Den je sie erheben!
And those who come to grief at the hands of the gods, are not weak
passive creatures, but heaven-scaling Titans. This points to the
antipodal difference between the characters of these two poets, and
explains in part why Goethe did not succumb to the sickly sentimentalism
of which he rid himself in "Werther." The difference between yielding
and striving resulted in the difference between an acute case of
Weltschmerz in the one and a healthy physical and intellectual manhood
in the other.
Thus far it has been almost entirely the personal aspect of Hölderlin's
Weltschmerz and its causes that has come under our notice. And since he
was a lyric poet, it is perhaps natural that the sorrows which concerned
him personally should find most frequent expression in his verse. But
notwithstanding the fact that this personal element is very prominent in
Hölderlin's writings, Scherer's judgment is correct when he states: "Die
Grundstimmung war eine tiefe Verbitterung gegen die Versunkenheit des
Vaterlands."[40] The reason is not far to seek, especially when we
consider the impossible demands of the poet's extravagant idealism. The
conditions in Germany which had called forth the terrible arraignment of
petty despotism, crushing militarism, and political rottenness
generally, in the works of Lenz, Klinger and Schubart, had not abated.
Schubart was one of Hölderlin's earliest favorites, so that the latter
was doubtless in this way imbued with sentiments which could only grow
stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and
experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem "An die Demut,"[41]
he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which
his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance
of "Fürstenlaune" and "Despotenblut" are plainly evident. So too in
"Männerjubel," 1788:
Es glimmt in uns ein Funke der Göttlichen!
Und diesen Funken soll aus der Männerbrust
Der Hölle Macht uns nicht entreissen!
Hört es, Despotengerichte, hört es![42]
Perhaps nowhere outside of his own Württemberg could he have been more
unfavorably situated in this respect. Under Karl Eugen (1744-1793) the
country sank into a deplorable condition. Regardless of the rights of
individuals and communities alike, he sought in the early part of his
reign to replenish his depleted purse by the most shameless measures, in
order that he might surround himself with luxury and indulge his
autocratic proclivities. Among his most reprehensible violations of
constitutional rights, were his bartering of privileges and offices and
the selling of troops. These things Hölderlin attacks in one of his
youthful poems "Die Ehrsucht" (1788):
Um wie Könige zu prahlen, schänden
Kleine Wütriche ihr armes Land;
Und um feile Ordensbänder wenden
Räte sich das Ruder aus der Hand.[43]
Another act of gross injustice which this petty tyrant perpetrated, and
which Hölderlin must have felt very painfully, was the incarceration of
the poet's countryman Schubart from 1777 to 1787 in the Hohenasperg. But
not only from within came tyrannous oppression. Following upon the
coalition against France after the Revolution, Württemberg became the
scene of bloody conflicts and the ravages of war. Under the regime of
Friedrich Eugen (1795-97) the French gained such a foothold in
Württemberg that the country had to pay a contribution of four million
gulden to get rid of them. These were the conditions under which
Hölderlin grew up into young manhood. But deeper than in the mere
existence of these conditions themselves lay the cause of the poet's
most abject humiliation and grief. It was the stoic indifference, the
servile submission with which he charged his compatriots, that called
forth his bitterest invectives upon their insensible heads. His own
words will serve best to show the intensity of his feelings. In 1788 he
writes, in the poem "Am Tage der Freundschaftsfeier:"
Da sah er (der Schwärmer) all die Schande
Der weichlichen Teutonssöhne,
Und fluchte dem verderblichen Ausland
Und fluchte den verdorbenen Affen des Auslands,
Und weinte blutige Thränen,
Dass er vielleicht noch lange
Verweilen müsse unter diesem Geschlecht.[44]
Ten years later he treats the Germans to the following ignominious
comparison:
Spottet ja nicht des Kinds, wenn es mit Peitsch' und Sporn
Auf dem Rosse von Holz, mutig und gross sich dünkt.
Denn, ihr Deutschen, auch ihr seid
Thatenarm und gedankenvoll.[45]
With his friend Sinclair, who was sent as a delegate, he attended the
congress at Rastatt in November, 1798, and here he made observations
which no doubt resulted in the bitter characterization of his nation in
the closing letters of Hyperion. This convention, whose chief object was
the compensation of those German princes who had been dispossessed by
the cessions to France on the left bank of the Rhine, afforded a
spectacle so humiliating that it would have bowed down in shame a spirit
even less proud and sensitive than Hölderlin's. The French emissaries
conducted themselves like lords of Germany, while the German princes
vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant
Frenchmen. And it was the apathy of the average German, as Hölderlin
conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused
him to put such bitter words of contumely into the mouth of Hyperion:
"Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiss und Wissenschaft und selbst durch
Religion barbarischer geworden, tief unfähig jedes göttlichen
Gefühls--beleidigend für jede gut geartete Seele, dumpf und harmonielos,
wie die Scherben eines weggeworfenen Gefässes--das, mein Bellarmin!
waren meine Tröster."[46] In another letter Hyperion explains their
incapacity for finer feeling and appreciation when he writes: "Neide die
Leidensfreien nicht, die Götzen von Holz, denen nichts mangelt, weil
ihre Seele so arm ist, die nichts fragen nach Regen und Sonnenschein,
weil sie nichts haben, was der Pflege bedürfte. Ja, ja, es ist recht
sehr leicht, glücklich, ruhig zu sein mit seichtem Herzen und
eingeschränktem Geiste."[47] Their work he characterizes as
"Stümperarbeit," and their virtues as brilliant evils and nothing more.
There is nothing sacred, he claims, that has not been desecrated by this
nation. But it is chiefly his own experience which he recites, when, in
speaking of the sad plight of German poets, of those who still love the
beautiful, he says: "Es ist auch herzzerreissend, wenn man eure Dichter,
eure Künstler sieht--die Guten, sie leben in der Welt, wie Fremdlinge im
eigenen Hause."[48] Still more extravagantly does the poet caricature
his own people when he writes: "Wenn doch einmal diesen Gottverlassnen
einer sagte, dass bei ihnen nur so unvollkommen alles ist, weil sie
nichts Reines unverdorben, nichts Heiliges unbetastet lassen mit den
plumpen Händen--dass bei ihnen eigentlich das Leben schaal und
sorgenschwer ist, weil sie den Genius verschmähen--und darum fürchten
sie auch den Tod so sehr, und leiden um des Austernlebens willen alle
Schmach, weil Höhres sie nicht kennen, als ihr Machwerk, das sie sich
gestoppelt."[49]
But we should get an extremely unjust and one-sided idea of Hölderlin's
attitude toward his country from these quotations alone. The point which
they illustrate is his growing estrangement from his own people, which
in the very nature of the case must have had an important bearing upon
his Weltschmerz. But his feelings in regard to Germany and the Germans
were not all contempt. In many of his poems there is the true patriotic
ring. It is true, we can nowhere find any clear political program,
neither could we expect one from a poet who was so absorbed in his own
feelings, and whose ideals soared so high above the sphere of practical
politics. In this too Hölderlin was the product of previous influences.
With all their clamor for political upheavals, the "Stürmer und Dränger"
never arrived at any serious or practical plan of action.
Notwithstanding all this, the word Vaterland was always an inspiration
to Hölderlin, and it is especially gratifying to note that the calumny
which he heaps upon the devoted heads of the Germans is not his last
word on the subject. Nor did he ever lose sight of his lofty ideal of
liberty for his degraded fatherland or cease to hope for its
realization. In this strain he concludes the "Hymne an die Freiheit"
(1790) with a splendid outburst of patriotic enthusiasm:
Dann am süssen, heisserrung'nen Ziele,
Wenn der Ernte grosser Tag beginnt,
Wenn verödet die Tyrannenstühle,
Die Tyrannenknechte Moder sind,
Wenn im Heldenbunde meiner Brüder
Deutsches Blut und deutsche Liebe glüht,
Dann, O Himmelstochter! sing ich wieder,
Singe sterbend dir das letzte Lied.[50]
What a remarkable change is noticeable in the tone which the poet
assumes toward his country in the lines "Gesang des Deutschen," written
in 1799, probably after the completion of his "Hyperion":
O heilig Herz der Völker, O Vaterland!
Allduldend gleich der schweigenden Muttererd'
Und allverkannt, wenn schon aus deiner
Tiefe die Fremden ihr Bestes haben.
Du Land des hohen, ernsteren Genius!
Du Land der Liebe! bin ich der Deine schon,
Oft zürnt' ich weinend, dass du immer
Blöde die eigene Seele leugnest.[51]
How much the reproach has been softened, and with what tender regard he
strives to mollify his former bitterness! To this change in his
feelings, his sojourn in strange places and the attendant
discouragements and disappointments seem to have contributed not a
little, for in the poem "Rückkehr in die Heimat," written in 1800, the
contempt of "Hyperion" has been replaced by compassion. He sees himself
and his country linked together in the sacred companionship of
suffering, consequently it can no longer be the object of his scorn.
Wie lange ist's, O wie lange! des Kindes Ruh'
Ist hin, und hin ist Jugend, und Lieb' und Glück,
Doch du, mein Vaterland! du heilig
Duldendes! siehe, du bist geblieben.[52]
But the fact remains, nevertheless, that Hölderlin from his early youth
felt himself a stranger in his own land and among his own people. Some
of the causes of this circumstance have already been discussed. The fact
itself is important because it establishes the connection between his
Weltschmerz and his most noteworthy characteristic as a poet, namely,
his Hellenism. No other German poet has allowed himself to be so
completely dominated by the Greek idea as did Hölderlin. And in his case
it may properly be called a symptom of his Weltschmerz, for it marks his
flight from the world of stern reality into an imaginary world of Greek
ideals. An imaginary Greek world, because in spite of his Hellenic
enthusiasm he entertained some of the most un-Hellenic ideas and
feelings.
That the poet should take refuge in Greek antiquity is not surprising,
when we consider the conditions which prevailed at that time in the
field of learning. It was not many decades since the study of Latin and
Roman institutions had been forced to yield preëminence of position in
Germany to the study of Greek. Furthermore, his own Suabia had come to
be recognized as a leader in the study of Greek antiquity, and in his
contemporaries Schiller, Hegel, Schelling, who were all countrymen and
acquaintances of his, he found worthy competitors in this branch of
learning. His fondness for the language and literature of Greece goes
back to his early school days, especially at Denkendorf and Maulbronn.
On leaving the latter school, he had the reputation among his
fellow-students of being an excellent Hellenist, according to the report
of Schwab, his biographer. It was while there that Hölderlin as a boy
of seventeen first made use of the Alcaic measure in which he
subsequently wrote so many of his poems.
A full discussion of the technic of Hölderlin's poems would have so
remote a connection with the main topic under consideration that its
introduction here would be entirely out of place. It will suffice,
therefore, merely to indicate along broad lines the extent to which the
Greek idea took and held possession of the poet.
Out of his 168 shorter poems, 126, exactly three-fourths, are written in
the unrhymed Greek measures.[53] Those forms which are native are
confined almost entirely to his juvenile and youthful compositions, and
after 1797 he only once employs the rhymed stanza, namely, in the poem
"An Landauer."[54] As a boy of sixteen, he wrote verses in the Alcaic
and Asclepiadeian measures,[55] and soon acquired a considerable mastery
over them. At seventeen he composed in the latter form his poem "An
meine Freundinnen:"
In der Stille der Nacht denket an euch mein Lied,
Wo mein ewiger Gram jeglichen Stundenschlag,
Welcher näher mich bringt dem
Trauten Grabe, mit Dank begrüsst.[56]
While not exhibiting the finish of expression and musical qualities of
his more mature Alcaic lyrics, still it is not bad poetry for a boy of
seventeen, and the reader feels what the boy was not slow to learn, that
the stately movement of the Greek stanzas lends an added dignity to the
expression of sorrow, which was to constitute so large a part of his
poetic activity. As already stated, the Alcaic measure was of all the
Greek verse-forms Hölderlin's favorite, and the one most frequently and
successfully employed by him. He is very fond of introducing Germanic
alliteration into these unrhymed stanzas, as the following example will
illustrate:
Und wo sind Dichter, denen der Gott es gab,
Wie unsern Alten, freundlich und fromm zu sein,
Wo Weise, wie die unsern sind, die
Kalten und Kühnen, die unbestechbarn?[57]
The Asclepiadeian stanza he employs much less frequently, the Sapphic
only once, and that with indifferent success. It was the ode, dithyramb
and hymn, the serious lyric, which Hölderlin selected as the models for
his poetic fashion. In this purpose he was not alone, for his friend
Neuffer writes to him in 1793, with an enthusiasm which in the intensity
of expression common at the time, seems almost like an inspiration: "Die
höhere Ode und der Hymnus, zwei in unsern Tagen, und vielleicht in allen
Zeitaltern am meisten vernachlässigte Musen! in ihre Arme wollen wir uns
werfen, von ihren Küssen beseelt uns aufraffen. Welche Aussichten! Dein
Hymnus an die Kühnheit mag Dir zum Motto dienen! Mir gehe die Hoffnung
voran."[58]
But it was in the form much more than in the contents of his poems, that
Hölderlin carried out the Greek idea. Most of his lyrics are occasional
poems, or have abstract subjects, as for example, "An die Stille," "An
die Ehre," "An den Genius der Kühnheit," and so on. Only here and there
does he take a classic subject or introduce classic references. The
truth of the matter is, that with all his fervid enthusiasm for Hellenic
ideals, and with all his Greek cult, Hölderlin was not the genuine
Hellenist he thought himself to be. This is due to the fact that his
turning to Greece was in its final analysis attributable rather to
selfish than to altruistic motives. He wanted to get away from the
deplorable realities about him, the things which hurt his tender soul,
and so he constructed for himself this idealized world of ancient and
modern Greece, and peopled it with his own creations.
In Hölderlin's "Hyperion," we have the first poetic work in German which
takes modern Greece as its locality and a modern Hellene as its hero.
Hölderlin calls it "ein Roman," but it would be rather inaccurately
described by the usual translation of that term. It is not only the
poetic climax of his Hellenism, but also the most complete expression of
his Weltschmerz in its various phases. It must naturally be both, for
the poet and the hero are one. He speaks of it as "mein Werkchen, in dem
ich lebe und webe."[59] Its subject is the emancipation of Greece. What
little action is narrated may be very briefly indicated. Russia is at
war with Turkey and calls upon Hellas to liberate itself. The hero and
his friend Alabanda are at the head of a band of volunteers, fighting
the Turks. After several minor successes Hyperion lays siege to the
Spartan fortress of Misitra. But at its capitulation, he is undeceived
concerning the Hellenic patriots; they ravage and plunder so fiercely
that he turns from them with repugnance and both he and Alabanda abandon
the cause of liberty which they had championed. To his bride Hyperion
had promised a redeemed Greece--a lament is all that he can bring her.
She dies, Hyperion comes to Germany where his aesthetic Greek soul is
severely jarred by the sordidness, apathy and insensibility of these
"barbarians." Returning to the Isthmus, he becomes a hermit and writes
his letters to Bellarmin, no less "thatenarm und gedankenvoll" himself
than his unfortunate countrymen whom he so characterizes.[60]
"Hyperion," though written in prose, is scarcely anything more than a
long drawn out lyric poem, so thoroughly is action subordinated to
reflection, and so beautiful and rhythmic is the dignified flow of its
periods. But having said that the locality is Greece and its hero is
supposed to be a modern Greek, that in its scenic descriptions Hölderlin
produces some wonderfully natural effects, and that the language shows
the imitation of Greek turns of expression--Homeric epithets and
similes--having said this, we have mentioned practically all the Greek
characteristics of the composition. And there is much in it that is
entirely un-Hellenic. To begin with, the form in which "Hyperion" is
cast, that of letters, written not even during the progress of the
events narrated, but after they are all a thing of the past, is not at
all a Greek idea. Moreover Weltschmerz, which constitutes the
"Grundstimmung" of all Hölderlin's writings, and which is most plainly
and persistently expressed in "Hyperion," is not Hellenic. Not that we
should have to look in vain for pessimistic utterances from the
classical poets of Greece--for does not Sophocles make the deliberate
statement: "Not to be born is the most reasonable, but having seen the
light, the next best thing is to go to the place whence we came as soon
as possible."[61] Nevertheless, this sort of sentiment cannot be
regarded as representing the spirit of the ancient Greeks, which was
distinctly optimistic. They were happy in their worship of beauty in art
and in nature, and above all, happy in their creativeness. The question
suggests itself here, whether a poet can ever be a genuine pessimist,
since he has within him the everlasting impulse to create. And to create
is to hope. Hyperion himself says: "Es lebte nichts, wenn es nicht
hoffte."[62] But we have already distinguished between pessimism as a
system of philosophy, and Weltschmerz as a poetic mood.[63] It is
certainly un-Hellenic that Hölderlin allows Hyperion with his alleged
Greek nature to sink into contemplative inactivity. In the poem "Der
Lorbeer," 1789, he exclaims:
Soll ewiges Trauern mich umwittern,
Ewig mich töten die bange Sehnsucht?[64]
which gives expression to the fact that in his Weltschmerz there was a
very large admixture of "Sehnsucht," an entirely un-Hellenic feeling.
Nor is there to be found in his entire make-up the slightest trace of
Greek irony, which would have enabled him to overcome much of the
bitterness of his life, and which might indeed have averted its final
catastrophe.
Undeniably Grecian is Hölderlin's idea that the beautiful is also the
good. Long years he sought for this combined ideal. In Diotima, the muse
of his "Hyperion," whose prototype was Susette Gontard, he has found
it--and now he feels that he is in a new world. To his friend Neuffer,
from whom he has no secrets, he writes: "Ich konnte wohl sonst glauben,
ich wisse, was schön und gut sei, aber seit ich's sehe, möcht' ich
lachen über all mein Wissen. Lieblichkeit und Hoheit, und Ruh und
Leben, und Geist und Gemüt und Gestalt ist Ein seeliges Eins in diesem
Wesen."[65] And six or eight months later: "Mein Schönheitsinn ist nun
vor Störung sicher. Er orientiert sich ewig an diesem Madonnenkopfe....
Sie ist schön wie Engel! Ein zartes, geistiges, himmlisch reizendes
Gesicht! Ach ich könnte ein Jahrtausend lang mich und alles vergessen
bei ihr--Majestät und Zärtlichkeit, und Fröhlichkeit und Ernst--und
Leben und Geist, alles ist in und an ihr zu einem göttlichen Ganzen
vereint."[66] It would be difficult to conceive of a more complete and
sublime eulogy of any object of affection than the words just quoted,
and yet they do not conceal their author's etherial quality of thought,
his "Uebersinnlichkeit." Even his boyish love-affairs seem to have been
largely of this character, and were in all likelihood due to the
necessity which he felt of bestowing his affection somewhere, rather
than to irresistible forces proceeding from the objects of his regard.
Lack of self-restraint, so often characteristic of the poet of
Weltschmerz, was not Hölderlin's greatest fault. And yet if his intense
devotion to Susette remained undebased by sensual desires, as we know it
did, this was not solely due to the practice of heroic self-restraint,
but must be attributed in part to the fact that that side of his nature
was entirely subordinate to his higher ideals; and these were always a
stronger passion with Hölderlin than his love. So that Diotima's
judgment of Hyperion is correct when she says: "O es ist so ganz
natürlich, dass Du nimmer lieben willst, weil Deine grössern Wünsche
verschmachten."[67] This consideration at once compels a comparison with
Lenau, which must be deferred, however, until the succeeding chapter.
Undoubtedly this year and a half at Frankfurt was the happiest period of
his whole life. It brought him a serenity of mind which he had never
before known. Ardent was the response called forth by his devotion, but
its influence was wholesome--it was soothing to his sensitive nerves.
And because it was altogether more a sublime than an earthly passion, he
indulged himself in it with a conscience void of offence. Doubtless he
correctly describes the influence of his relations with Diotima upon his
life when he writes: "Ich sage Dir, lieber Neuffer! ich bin auf dem
Wege, ein recht guter Knabe zu werden.... mein Herz ist voll Lust, und
wenn das heilige Schicksal mir mein glücklich Leben erhält, so hoff' ich
künftig mehr zu thun als bisher."[68] But the happy life was not to
continue long. Rudely the cup was dashed from his lips, and the poet's
pain intensified by one more disappointment--the bitterest of all he had
experienced. It filled him with thoughts of revenge, which he was
powerless to execute. There can be no question that if his love for
Susette had been of a less etherial order, less a thing of the soul, he
would have felt much less bitterly her husband's violent interference.
But returning to the poem "Hyperion," for as such we may regard it, we
find in it the most complete expression of the attitude which the poet,
in his Weltschmerz, assumed toward nature. Nature is his constant
companion, mother, comforter in sorrow, in his brighter moments his
deity. This nature-worship, which speedily develops into a more or less
consistent pantheism, Hölderlin expresses in Hyperion's second letter,
in the following creed: "Eines zu sein mit allem, was lebt, in seliger
Selbstvergessenheit wiederzukehren ins All der Natur, das ist der Gipfel
der Gedanken und Freuden, das ist die heilige Bergeshöhe, der Ort der
ewigen Ruhe."[69] And so nature is to Hölderlin always intensely real
and personal. The sea is youthful, full of exuberant joy; the
mountain-tops are hopeful and serene; with shouts of joy the stream
hurls itself like a giant down into the forests. Here and there his
personification of nature becomes even more striking: "O das Morgenlicht
und ich, wir gingen uns entgegen, wie versöhnte Freunde."[70] Still more
intense is this feeling of personal intimacy, when he exclaims: "O
selige Natur! ich weiss nicht, wie mir geschiehet, wenn ich mein Auge
erhebe von deiner Schöne, aber alle Lust des Himmels ist in den Thränen,
die ich weine vor dir, der Geliebte vor der Geliebten."[71] It is
important for purposes of comparison, to note that notwithstanding his
intense Weltschmerz, in his treatment of nature Hölderlin does not
select only its gloomy or terrible aspects. Light and shade alternate in
his descriptions, and only here and there is the background entirely
unrelieved. The thunderstorm is to him a dispenser of divine energies
among forest and field, even the seasons of decline and decay are not
left without sunshine: "auf der stummen entblätterten Landschaft, wo der
Himmel schöner als je, mit Wolken und Sonnenschein um die herbstlich
schlafenden Bäume spielte."[72] One passage in "Hyperion" bears so
striking a resemblance, however, to Lenau's characteristic
nature-pictures, that it shall be given in full--although even here,
when the gloom of his sorrow and disappointment was steadily deepening,
he does not fail to derive comfort from the warm sunshine, a thought for
which we should probably look in vain, had Lenau painted the picture:
"Ich sass mit Alabanda auf einem Hügel der Gegend, in lieblich wärmender
Sonn', und um uns spielte der Wind mit abgefallenem Laube. Das Land war
stumm; nur hie und da ertönte im Wald ein stürzender Baum, vom Landmann
gefällt, und neben uns murmelte der vergängliche Regenbach hinab ins
ruhige Meer."[73]
In spite of his deep and persistent Weltschmerz, Hölderlin rarely gives
expression to a longing for death. This forms so prominent a feature in
the thought of other types of Weltschmerz, for instance of Lenau and of
Leopardi, that its absence here cannot fail to be noticed. It is true
that in his dramatic poem "Der Tod des Empedokles," which symbolizes the
closing of his account with the world, Hölderlin causes his hero to
return voluntarily to nature by plunging into the fiery crater of Mount
Etna. But Empedokles does this to atone for past sin, not merely to rid
himself of the pain of living; and thus, even as a poetic idea, it
impresses us very differently from the continual yearning for death
which pervades the writings of the two poets just mentioned. Leopardi
declared that it were best never to see the light, but denounced suicide
as a cowardly act of selfishness; and yet at the approach of an
epidemic of cholera, he clung so tenaciously to life that he urged a
hurried departure from Naples, regardless of the hardships of such a
journey in his feeble condition, and took refuge in a little villa near
Vesuvius. Hölderlin's Weltschmerz was absolutely sincere.
Numerous passages might be quoted to show that Hölderlin's mind was
intensely introspective. This is true also of Lenau, even to a greater
extent, and may be taken as generally characteristic of poets of this
type. The fact that this introspection is an inevitable symptom in many
mental derangements, hypochondria, melancholia and others, indicates a
not very remote relation of Weltschmerz to insanity. In Hölderlin's
poems there are not a few premonitions of the sad fate which awaited
him. One illustration from the poem "An die Hoffnung," 1801, may
suffice:
Wo bist du? wenig lebt' ich, doch atmet kalt
Mein Abend schon. Und stille, den Schatten gleich,
Bin ich schon hier; und schon gesanglos
Schlummert das schau'rende Herz im Busen.[74]
It is impossible to read these lines without feeling something of the
cold chill of the heart that Hölderlin felt was already upon him, and
which he expresses in a manner so intensely realistic and yet so
beautiful.
Having thus attempted a review of the growth of Hölderlin's Weltschmerz
and of its chief characteristics, it merely remains to conclude the
chapter with a brief resume. We have then in Friedrich Hölderlin a youth
peculiarly predisposed to feel himself isolated from and repelled by the
world, growing up without a strong fatherly hand to guide, giving
himself over more and more to solitude and so becoming continually less
able to cope with untoward circumstances and conditions. Growing into
manhood, he was unfortunate in all his love-affairs and as though doomed
to unceasing disappointments. Early in life he devoted himself to the
study of antiquity, making Greece his hobby, and thus creating for
himself an ideal world which existed only in his imagination, and taking
refuge in it from the buffetings of the world about him. He was a man
of a deeply philosophical trend of mind, and while not often speaking of
it, felt very keenly the humiliating condition of Germany, although his
patriotic enthusiasm found its artistic expression not with reference to
Germany but to Greece. As a poet, finally, his intimacy with nature was
such that nature-worship and pantheism became his religion.
In reviewing the whole range of Hölderlin's writings, we cannot avoid
the conclusion, that in him we have a type of Weltschmerz in the
broadest sense of the term; we might almost term it Byronism, with the
sensual element eliminated. He shows the hypersensitiveness of Werther,
fanatical enthusiasm for a vague ideal of liberty, vehement opposition
to existing social and political conditions; there is, in fact, a
breadth in his Weltschmerz, which makes the sorrows of Werther seem very
highly specialized in comparison. Bearing in mind the distinction made
between the two classes, we must designate Hölderlin's Weltschmerz as
cosmic rather than egoistic; the egoistic element is there, but it is
outweighed by the cosmic and finds its poetic expression not so
frequently nor so intensely with reference to the poet himself, as with
reference to mankind at large.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: _Anz. f. d. Alt._, vol. 22, p. 212-218.]
[Footnote 13: In a letter to his mother he writes: "Freilich ist's mir
auch angeboren, dass ich alles schwerer zu Herzen nehme." ("Friedrich
Hölderlins Leben, in Briefen von und an Hölderlin, von Carl C.T.
Litzmann," Berlin, 1890, p. 27. Hereafter quoted as "Briefe.").]
[Footnote 14: "Hölderlins gesammelte Dichtungen, herausgegeben von B.
Litzmann," Stuttgart, Cotta (hereafter quoted as "Werke"). Vol. II, p.
9.]
[Footnote 15: It is a reminiscence of Hölderlin's boyhood which finds
expression in the words of Hyperion: "Ich war aufgewachsen, wie eine
Rebe ohne Stab, und die wilden Ranken breiteten richtungslos über dem
Boden sich aus." Werke, Vol. II, p. 72.]
[Footnote 16: Werke, Vol. I, p. 86.]
[Footnote 17: Werke, Vol. I, p. 36.]
[Footnote 18: "Auf einer Heide geschrieben," Werke, Vol. I, p. 44.]
[Footnote 19: Briefe, p. 27.]
[Footnote 20: Briefe, p. 29.]
[Footnote 21: Werke, Vol. I, p. 53 f.]
[Footnote 22: Briefe, p. 36.]
[Footnote 23: Briefe, p. 120.]
[Footnote 24: "Mein Vorsatz," Werke, Vol. I, p. 44.]
[Footnote 25: Werke, Vol. II, p. 69.]
[Footnote 26: Werke, Vol. II, p. 90.]
[Footnote 27: Werke, Vol. II, p. 86.]
[Footnote 28: Briefe, p. 49.]
[Footnote 29: Briefe, p. 50.]
[Footnote 30: Werke, Vol. I, p. 74.]
[Footnote 31: "Friedrich Hölderlin, Eine Studie," _Preuss. Jahrb._,
1866, p. 548-568.]
[Footnote 32: _Anz. f. d. Altertum_, Vol. 22, p. 212-218.]
[Footnote 33: Werke, Vol. I, p. 75.]
[Footnote 34: Werke, Vol. I, p. 146.]
[Footnote 35: Werke, Vol. II, p. 107.]
[Footnote 36: Werke, Vol. II, p. 188.]
[Footnote 37: "Vorträge und Aufsätze," 1874, Fried. Hölderlin, p. 354.]
[Footnote 38: Werke, Vol. II, p. 96.]
[Footnote 39: Werke, Vol. II, p. 189.]
[Footnote 40: Cf. op. cit., p. 352.]
[Footnote 41: Werke, Vol. I, p. 51.]
[Footnote 42: Werke, Vol. I, p. 50.]
[Footnote 43: Werke, Vol. I, p. 49.]
[Footnote 44: Werke, Vol. I, p. 66.]
[Footnote 45: Werke, Vol. I, p. 165.]
[Footnote 46: Werke, Vol. II, p. 198.]
[Footnote 47: Werke, Vol. II, p. 97.]
[Footnote 48: Werke, Vol. II, p. 200.]
[Footnote 49: Werke, Vol. II, p. 200 f.]
[Footnote 50: Werke, Vol. I, p. 105.]
[Footnote 51: Werke, Vol. I, p. 196.]
[Footnote 52: Werke, Vol. I, p. 214.]
[Footnote 53: Werke, Vol. I.]
[Footnote 54: Werke, Vol. I, p. 234.]
[Footnote 55: "An die Nachtigall," "An meinen Bilfinger," Werke, Vol. I,
p. 42f.]
[Footnote 56: Werke, Vol. I, p. 43.]
[Footnote 57: Werke, Vol. I, p. 197.]
[Footnote 58: Briefe, p. 160.]
[Footnote 59: Briefe, p. 162.]
[Footnote 60: Cf. _supra_, p. 22.]
[Footnote 61: "Oedipus Coloneus," 1225 seq.]
[Footnote 62: Werke, Vol. II, p. 81.]
[Footnote 63: Cf. Introduction, p. 1 f.]
[Footnote 64: Werke, Vol. I, p. 89.]
[Footnote 65: Briefe, p. 382 f.]
[Footnote 66: Briefe, p. 403-405.]
[Footnote 67: Werke, Vol. II, p. 175.]
[Footnote 68: Briefe, p. 404.]
[Footnote 69: Werke, Vol. II, p. 68.]
[Footnote 70: Werke, Vol. II, p. 100.]
[Footnote 71: Werke, Vol. II, p. 68.]
[Footnote 72: Werke, Vol. II, p. 85.]
[Footnote 73: Werke, Vol. II, p. 181.]
[Footnote 74: Werke, Vol. I, p. 253.]
CHAPTER III
=Lenau=
If Hölderlin's Weltschmerz has been fittingly characterized as
idealistic, Lenau's on the other hand may appropriately be termed the
naturalistic type. He is par excellence the "Pathetiker" of Weltschmerz.
Without presuming even to attempt a final solution of a problem of
pathology concerning which specialists have failed to agree, there seems
to be sufficient circumstantial as well as direct evidence to warrant
the assumption that Lenau's case presents an instance of hereditary
taint. Notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Karl Weiler[75] discredits the
idea of "erbliche Belastung" and calls heredity "den vielgerittenen
Verlegenheitsgaul," the conclusion forces itself upon us that if the
theory has any scientific value whatsoever, no more plausible instance
of it could be found than the one under consideration. The poet's
great-grandfather and grandfather had been officers in the Austrian
army, the latter with some considerable distinction. Of his five
children, only Franz, the poet's father, survived. The complete lack of
anything like a systematic education, and the nomadic life of the army
did not fail to produce the most disastrous results in the wild and
dissolute character of the young man. Even before the birth of the poet,
his father had broken his marriage vows and his wife's heart by his
abominable dissipations and drunkenness. Lenau was but five years old
when his father, not yet thirty-five, died of a disease which he is
believed to have contracted as a result of these sensual and senseless
excesses. To the poet he bequeathed something of his own pathological
sensuality, instability of thought and action, lack of will-energy, and
the tears of a heartbroken mother, a sufficient guarantee, surely, of a
poet of melancholy. Even though we cannot avoid the reflection that the
loss of such a father was a blessing in disguise, the fact remains that
Lenau during his childhood and youth needed paternal guidance and
training even more than did Hölderlin. He became the idol of his mother,
who in her blind devotion did not hesitate to show him the utmost
partiality in all things. This important fact alone must account to a
large extent for that presumptuous pride, which led him to expect
perhaps more than his just share from life and from the world.
Lenau's aimlessness and instability were so extreme that they may
properly be counted a pathological trait. It is best illustrated by his
university career. In 1819 he went to Vienna to commence his studies.
Beginning with Philosophy, he soon transferred his interests to Law,
first Hungarian, then German; finding the study of Law entirely unsuited
to his tastes, he now declared his intention of pursuing once more a
philosophical course, with a view to an eventual professorship. But this
plan was frustrated by his grandmother, the upshot of it all being that
Lenau allowed himself to be persuaded to take up the study of
agriculture at Altenburg. But a few months sufficed to bring him back to
Vienna. Here his legal studies, which he had resumed and almost
completed, were interrupted by a severe affection of the throat which
developed into laryngitis and from which he never quite recovered. This
too, according to Dr. Sadger,[76] marks the neurasthenic, and often
constitutes a hereditary taint. Lenau thereupon shifted once more and
entered upon a medical course, this time not absolutely without
predilection. He did himself no small credit in his medical
examinations, but the death of his grandmother, just before his intended
graduation, provided a sufficient excuse for him to discontinue the
work, which was never again resumed or brought to a conclusion. But not
only in matters of such relative importance did Lenau exhibit this
vacillation. There was a spirit of restlessness in him which made it
impossible for him to remain long in the same place. Of this condition
no one was more fully aware than he himself. In one of his letters he
writes: "Gestern hat jemand berechnet, wieviel Poststunden ich in zwei
Monaten gefahren bin, und es ergab sich die kolossale Summe von 644, die
ich im Eilwagen unter beständiger Gemütsbewegung gefahren bin."[77] That
this habit of almost incessant travel tended to aggravate his nervous
condition is a fair supposition, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Karl
Weiler[78] skeptically asks "what about commercial travellers?" Lenau
himself complains frequently of the distressing effect of such journeys:
"Ein heftiger Kopfschmerz und grosse Müdigkeit waren die Folgen der von
Linz an unausgesetzten Reise im Eilwagen bei schlechtem Wetter und
abmüdenden Gedanken an meine Zukunft."[79] Many similar Statements might
be quoted from his letters to show that it was not merely the ordinary
process of traveling, though that at best must have been trying enough,
but the breathless haste of his journeys, combined with mental anxiety,
which usually characterized them, that made them so detrimental to his
health.
It is as interesting as it is significant to note in this connection the
fact that while on a journey to Munich, just a short time before the
light of his intellect failed, Lenau wrote the following lines, the last
but one of all his poems:
's ist eitel nichts, wohin mein Aug' ich hefte!
Das Leben ist ein vielbesagtes Wandern,
Ein wüstes Jagen ist's von dem zum andern,
Und unterwegs verlieren wir die Kräfte.
Doch trägt uns eine Macht von Stund zu Stund,
Wie's Krüglein, das am Brunnenstein zersprang,
Und dessen Inhalt sickert auf den Grund,
So weit es ging, den ganzen Weg entlang,--
Nun ist es leer. Wer mag daraus noch trinken?
Und zu den andern Scherben muss es sinken.[80]
Hölderlin also uses the striking figure contained in the last line, not
however as here to picture the worthlessness of human life in general,
but to stigmatize the Germans, whom Hyperion describes as "dumpf und
harmonielos, wie die Scherben eines weggeworfenen Gefässes."[81]
That Lenau was a neurasthenic seems to be the consensus of opinion, at
least of those medical authorities who have given their views of the
case to the public.[82] This fact also has an important bearing upon our
discussion, since it will help to show a materially different origin for
Lenau's Weltschmerz and Hölderlin's.
Much more frequent than in the case of the latter are the ominous
forebodings of impending disaster which characterize Lenau's poems and
correspondence. In a letter to his friend Karl Mayer he writes: "Mich
regiert eine Art Gravitation nach dem Unglücke. Schwab hat einmal von
einem Wahnsinnigen sehr geistreich gesprochen.... Ein Analogon von
solchem Dämon (des Wahnsinns) glaub' ich auch in mir zu
beherbergen."[83] He is continually engaged in a gruesome
self-diagnosis: "Dann ist mir zuweilen, als hielte der Teufel seine Jagd
in dem Nervenwalde meines Unterleibes: ich höre ein deutliches
Hundegebell daselbst und ein dumpfes Halloh des Schwarzen. Ohne Scherz;
es ist oft zum Verzweifeln."[84] This process of self-diagnosis may be
due in part to his medical studies, but much more, we think, to his
morbid imagination, which led him, on more than one occasion, to play
the madman in so realistic a manner that strangers were frightened out
of their wits and even his friends became alarmed, lest it might be
earnest and not jest which they were witnessing.
Lenau was not without a certain sense of humor, grim humor though it
was, and here and there in his letters there is an admixture of levity
with the all-pervading melancholy. An example may be quoted from a
letter to Kerner in Weinsberg, dated 1832: "Heute bin ich wieder bei
Reinbecks auf ein grosses Spargelessen. Spargel wie Kirchthürme werden
da gefressen. Ich allein verschlinge 50-60 solcher Kirchthürme und
komme mir dabei vor, wie eine Parodie unserer politisch-prosaischen,
durchaus unheiligen Zeit, die auch schon das Maul aufsperrt, um alles
Heilige, und namentlich die guten gläubigen Kirchthürme wie
Spargelstangen zu verschlingen." The letter concludes with the
signature: "Ich umarme Dich, bis Dir die Rippen krachen. Dein
Niembsch."[85] Not infrequently this humor was at his own expense,
especially when describing an unpleasant condition or situation, as for
example in a letter to Sophie Löwenthal in the year 1844: "Jetzt lebe
ich hier in Saus und Braus,--d. h. es saust und braust mir der Kopf von
einem leidigen Schnupfen."[86] Again, on finding himself on one occasion
very unwell and uncomfortable in Stuttgart, he writes as follows:
"Beständiges Unwohlsein, Kopfschmerz, Schlaflosigkeit, Mattigkeit,
schlechte Verdauung, Rhabarber, Druckfehler, und Aerger über den trägen
Fortschlich meiner Geschäfte, das waren die Freuden meiner letzten
Woche. Emilie will es nicht gelten lassen, dass die Stuttgarter Luft
nichts als die Ausdünstung des Teufels sei.--Ich schnappe nach Luft, wie
ein Spatz unter der Luftpumpe.--In vielen der hiesigen Strassen riecht
es am Ende auch lenzhaft, nämlich pestilenzhaft, und die guten
Stuttgarter merken das gar nicht; 'süss duftet die Heimat.'"[87] In his
fondness for bringing together the incongruous, for introducing the
element of surprise, and in the fact that his humor is almost always of
the impatient, disgruntled, cynical type, Lenau reminds us not a little
of Heine in his "Reisebilder" and some other prose works. Hölderlin, on
the other hand, may be said to have been utterly devoid of humor.
Lack of self-control, perhaps the most characteristic trait among men of
genius, was even more pronounced in Lenau than in Hölderlin. This shows
itself in the extreme irregularity of his habits of life. For instance,
it was his custom to work long past the midnight hour, and then take his
rest until nearly noon. He could never get his coffee quite strong
enough to suit him, although it was prepared almost in the form of a
concentrated tincture and he drank large quantities of it. He smoked to
excess, and the strongest cigars at that; in short, he seems to have
been entirely without regard for his physical condition. Or was it
perverseness which prompted him to prefer close confinement in his room
to the long walks which he ought to have taken for his health? Even his
recreation, which consisted chiefly in playing the violin, brought him
no nervous relaxation, for it is said that he would often play himself
into a state of extreme nervous excitement.
All these considerations corroborate the opinion of those who knew him
best, that his Weltschmerz, and eventually his insanity, had its origin
in a pathological condition. Indeed this was the poet's own view of the
case. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Anton Schurz, dated 1834, he
says: "Aber, lieber Bruder, die Hypochondrie schlägt bei mir immer
tiefere Wurzel. Es hilft alles nichts. Der gewisse innere Riss wird
immer tiefer und weiter. Es hilft alles nichts. Ich weiss, es liegt im
Körper; aber--aber--"[88] In its origin then, Lenau's Weltschmerz
differs altogether from that of Hölderlin, who exhibits no such symptoms
of neurasthenia.
Lenau's nervous condition was seriously aggravated at an early date by
the outcome of his unfortunate relations with the object of his first
love, Bertha, who became his mistress when he was still a mere boy. His
grief on finding her faithless was doubtless as genuine as his conduct
with her had been reprehensible, for he cherished for many long years
the memory of his painful disappointment. The general statement, "Lenau
war stets verlobt, fand aber stets in sich selbst einen Widerstand und
unerklärliche Angst, wenn die Verbindung endgiltig gemacht werden
sollte,"[89] is inaccurate and misleading, inasmuch as it fails to take
into proper account the causes, mediate and immediate, of his hesitation
to marry. Lenau was only once "verlobt," and it was the stroke of facial
paralysis[90] which announced the beginning of the end, rather than any
"unerklärliche Angst," that convinced him of the inexpediency of that
important step.
Beyond a doubt his long drawn out and abject devotion to the wife of his
friend Max Löwenthal proved the most important single factor in his
life. It was during the year 1834, after his return from America, that
Lenau made the acquaintance of the Löwenthal family in Vienna.[91]
Sophie, who was the sister of his old comrade Fritz Kleyle, so attracted
the poet that he remained in the city for a number of weeks instead of
going at once to Stuttgart, as he had planned and promised. What at
first seemed an ideal friendship, increased in intensity until it
became, at least on Lenau's part, the very glow of passion. We have
already alluded to the poet's premature erotic instinct, an impulse
which he doubtless inherited from his sensual parents. In his numerous
letters and notes to Sophie, he has left us a remarkable record of the
intensity of his passion. Not even excepting Goethe's letters to Frau
von Stein, there are no love-letters in the German language to equal
these in literary or artistic merit; and never has any other German poet
addressed himself with more ardent devotion to a woman. A characteristic
difference between Hölderlin and Lenau here becomes evident: the former,
even in his relations with Diotima, supersensual; the latter the very
incarnation of sensuality. Lenau was fully conscious of the tremendous
struggle with overpowering passion, and once confessed to his clerical
friend Martensen that only through the unassailable chastity of his
lady-love had his conscience remained void of offence. Almost any of his
innumerable protestations of love taken at random would seem like the
most extravagant attempt to give utterance to the inexpressible: "Gottes
starke Hand drückt mich so fest an Dich, dass ich seufzen muss und
ringen mit erdrückender Wonne, und meine Seele keinen Atem mehr hat,
wenn sie nicht Deine Liebe saugen kann. Ach Sophie! ach, liebe, liebe,
liebe Sophie!"[92] "Ich bete Dich an, Du bist mein Liebstes und
Höchstes."[93] "Am sechsten Juni reis' ich ab, nichts darf mich halten.
Mir brennt Leib und Seele nach Dir. Du! O Sophie! Hätt' ich Dich da! Das
Verlangen schmerzt, O Gott!"[94] Instead of experiencing the soothing
influences of a Diotima, Lenau's fate was to be engaged for ten long
years in a hot conflict between principle and passion, a conflict which
kept his naturally oversensitive nerves continually on the rack. He
himself expresses the detrimental effect of this situation: "So treibt
mich die Liebe von einer Raserei zur andern, von der zügellosesten
Freude zu verzweifeltem Unmut. Warum? Weil ich am Ziel der höchsten, so
heiss ersehnten Wonne immer wieder umkehren muss, weil die Sehnsucht nie
gestillt wird, wird sie irr und wild und verkehrt sich in
Verzweiflung,--das ist die Geschichte meines Herzens."[95] It would seem
from the tone of many of his letters that there was much deliberate and
successful effort on the part of Sophie to keep Lenau's feelings toward
her always in a state of the highest nervous tension. So cleverly did
she manage this that even her caprices put him only the more hopelessly
at her mercy. One day he writes: "Mit grosser Ungeduld erwartete ich
gestern die Post, und sie brachte mir auch einen Brief von Dir, aber
einen, der mich kränkt."[96] For a day or two he is rebellious and
writes: "Ich bin verstimmt, missmutig. Warum störst Du mein Herz in
seinen schönen Gedanken von innigem Zusammenleben auch in der
Ferne?"[97] But only a few days later he is again at her feet: "Ich habe
Dir heute wieder geschrieben, um Dich auch zum Schreiben zu treiben. Ich
sehne mich nach Deinen Briefen. Du bist nicht sehr eifrig, Du bist es
wohl nie gewesen. Und kommt endlich einmal ein Brief, so hat er meist
seinen Haken--O liebe Sophie! wie lieb' ich Dich!"[98] Her attitude on
several occasions leaves room for no other inference than that she was
extremely jealous of his affections. When in 1839 a mutual regard sprang
up between Lenau and the singer Karoline Unger, a regard which held out
to him the hope of a fuller and happier existence, we may surmise the
nature of Sophie's interference from the following reply to her: "Sie
haben mir mit Ihren paar Zeilen das Herz zerschmettert,--Karoline liebt
mich und will mein werden. Sie sieht's als ihre Sendung an, mein Leben
zu versöhnen und zu beglücken.--Es ist an Ihnen Menschlichkeit zu üben
an meinem zerrissenen Herzen.--Verstosse ich sie, so mache ich sie elend
und mich zugleich.--Entziehen Sie mir Ihr Herz, so geben Sie mir den
Tod; sind Sie unglücklich, so will ich sterben. Der Knoten ist
geschürzt. Ich wollte, ich wäre schon tot!"[99] Not only was this
proposed match broken off, but when some five years later Lenau made the
acquaintance of and became engaged to a charming young girl, Marie
Behrends, and all the poet's friends rejoiced with him at the prospect
of a happy marriage, a "Musterehe," as he fondly called it, Sophie wrote
him the cruel words: "Eines von uns muss wahnsinnig werden."[100] Only a
few months were needed to decide which of them it should be.
The foregoing illustrations are ample to show what sort of influence
Sophie exerted over the poet's entire nature, and therefore upon his
Weltschmerz. Whereas in their hopeless loves, Hölderlin and to an even
greater extent Goethe, struggled through to the point of renunciation,
Lenau constantly retrogrades, and allows his baser sensual instincts
more and more to control him. He promises to subdue his wild outbursts a
little,[101] and when he fails he tries to explain,[102] to
apologize.[103] If with Hölderlin love was to a predominating degree a
thing of the soul, it was with Lenau in an equal measure a matter of
nerves, and as such, under these conditions, it could not but contribute
largely to his physical, mental and moral disruption. With Hölderlin it
was the rude interruption from without of his quiet and happy
intercourse with Susette, which embittered his soul. With Lenau it was
the feverish, tumultuous nature of the love itself, that deepened his
melancholy.
The charge of affectation in their Weltschmerz would be an entirely
baseless one, both in the case of Hölderlin and Lenau. But this
difference is readily discovered in the impressions made upon us by
their writings, namely that Hölderlin's Weltschmerz is absolutely naïve
and unconscious, while that of Lenau is at all times self-conscious and
self-centered. Mention has already been made, in speaking of Lenau's
pathological traits,[104] of his confirmed habit of self-diagnosis. This
he applied not only to his physical condition but to his mental
experiences as well. No one knew so well as he how deeply the roots of
melancholy had penetrated his being. "Ich bin ein Melancholiker" he once
wrote to Sophie, "der Kompass meiner Seele zittert immer wieder zurück
nach dem Schmerze des Lebens."[105] Innumerable illustrations of this
fact might be found in his lyrics, all of which would repeat with
variations the theme of the stanza:
Du geleitest mich durch's Leben
Sinnende Melancholie!
Mag mein Stern sich strebend heben,
Mag er sinken,--weichest nie![106]
The definite purpose with which the poet seeks out and strives to keep
intact his painful impressions is frankly stated in one of his diary
memoranda, as follows: "So gibt es eine Höhe des Kummers, auf welcher
angelangt wir einer einzelnen Empfindung nicht nachspringen, sondern sie
laufen lassen, weil wir den Blick für das schmerzliche Ganze nicht
verlieren, sondern eine gewisse kummervolle Sammlung behalten wollen,
die bei aller scheinbaren Aussenheiterkeit recht gut fortbestehen
kann."[107] Hölderlin, as we have noted,[108] not infrequently pictures
himself as a sacrifice to the cause of liberty and fatherland, to the
new era that is to come:
Umsonst zu sterben, lieb' ich nicht; doch
Lieb' ich zu fallen am Opferhügel
Für's Vaterland, zu bluten des Herzens Blut,
Für's Vaterland....[109]
Lenau, on the other hand, is anxious to sacrifice himself to his muse.
"Künstlerische Ausbildung ist mein höchster Lebenszweck; alle Kräfte
meines Geistes, meines Gemütes betracht' ich als Mittel dazu. Erinnerst
Du Dich des Gedichtes von Chamisso,[110] wo der Maler einen Jüngling ans
Kreuz nagelt, um ein Bild vom Todesschmerze zu haben? Ich will mich
selber ans Kreuz schlagen, wenn's nur ein gutes Gedicht gibt."[111] And
again: "Vielleicht ist die Eigenschaft meiner Poesie, dass sie ein
Selbstopfer ist, das Beste daran."[112] The specific instances just
cited, together with the inevitable impressions gathered from the
reading of his lyrics, make it impossible to avoid the conclusion that
we are dealing here with a _virtuoso_ of Weltschmerz; that Lenau was not
only conscious at all times of the depth of his sorrow, but that he was
also fully aware of its picturesqueness and its poetic possibilities. It
is true that this self-consciousness brings him dangerously near the
bounds of insincerity, but it must also be granted that he never
oversteps those bounds.
Regarded as a psychological process, Lenau's Weltschmerz therefore
stands midway between that of Hölderlin and Heine. It is more
self-centred than Hölderlin's and while the poet is able to diagnose the
disease which holds him firmly in its grasp, he lacks those means by
which he might free himself from it. Heine goes still further, for
having become conscious of his melancholy, he mercilessly applies the
lash of self-irony, and in it finds the antidote for his Weltschmerz.
Fichte, says Erich Schmidt, calls egoism the spirit of the eighteenth
century, by which he means the revelling, the complete absorption, in
the personal. This will naturally find its favorite occupation in
sentimental self-contemplation, which becomes a sort of fashionable
epidemic. It is this fashion which Goethe wished to depict in "Werther,"
and therefore Werther's hopeless love is not wholly responsible for his
suicide. "Werther untergräbt sein Dasein durch Selbstbetrachtung," is
Goethe's own explanation of the case.[113] And it is in this light only
that Werther's malady deserves in any comprehensive sense the term
Weltschmerz. Here, then, Lenau and Werther stand on common ground. Other
traits common to most poets of Weltschmerz might here be enumerated as
characteristic of both, such as extreme fickleness of purpose,
supersensitiveness, lack of definite vocation, and the like; all of
which goes to show that while for artistic purposes Goethe required a
dramatic cause, or rather occasion, for Werther's suicide, he
nevertheless fully understood all the symptoms of the prevailing disease
with which his sentimental hero was afflicted.
While the personal elements in Lenau's Weltschmerz are much more intense
in their expression than with Hölderlin, its altruistic side is
proportionately weaker. So far as we may judge from his lyrics, very
little of Lenau's Weltschmerz was inspired by patriotic considerations.
There is opposition, it is true, to the existing order, but that
opposition is directed almost solely against that which annoyed and
inconvenienced him personally, for example, against the stupid as well
as rigorous Austrian censorship. Against this bugbear he never ceases to
storm in verse and letters, and to it must be attributed in a large
measure his literary alienation from the land of his adoption. That we
must look to his lyrics rather than to his longer epic writings, in
order to discover the poet's deepest interests, is nowhere more clearly
evidenced than in the following reference to his "Savonarola," in a
letter to Emilie Reinbeck during the progress of the work: "Savonarola
wirkte zumeist als Prediger, darum muss ich in meinem Gedicht ihn
vielfach predigen und dogmatisieren lassen, welches in vierfüssigen
doppeltgereimten Iamben sehr schwierig ist. Doch es freut mich, Dinge
poetisch durchzusetzen, an deren poetischer Darstellbarkeit wohl die
meisten Menschen verzweifeln. Auch gereicht es mir zu besonderem
Vergnügen, mit diesem Gedicht gegen den herrschenden Geschmack unseres
Tages in Opposition zu treten."[114] The inference lies very near at
hand that his opposition to the prevailing taste was after all a
secondary consideration, and that the poet's first concern was to win
glory by accomplishing something which others would abandon as an
impossibility. While recognizing the fact that Lenau's "Faust" and "Don
Juan" are largely autobiographical, it is, I think, obvious that an
entirely adequate impression of his Weltschmerz may be gained from his
letters and lyrics alone, in which the poet's sincerest feelings need
not be subordinated for a moment to artistic purposes or demands. And
nowhere, either in lyrics or letters, do we find such spontaneous
outbursts of patriotic sentiment as greet us in Hölderlin's poems:
Glückselig Suevien, meine Mutter![115]
This could not be otherwise; for was he (Lenau) not an Hungarian by
birth, an Austrian by adoption, and in his professional affiliations a
German? Had his interests not been divided between Vienna and Stuttgart,
and had he not been possessed with an apparently uncontrollable
restlessness which drove him from place to place, his patriotic
enthusiasm would naturally have turned to Austria, and the poetic
expression of his home sentiments would not have been confined, perhaps,
to the one occasion when he had put the broad Atlantic between himself
and his kin. That his brother-in-law Schurz should wish to represent him
as a dyed-in-the-wool Austrian is only natural.[116] However this may
be, the poet does not hesitate to state in a letter to Emilie Reinbeck:
"Ein Hund in Schwaben hat mehr Achtung für mich als ein Polizeipräsident
in Oesterreich."[117] And although he professes to have become hardened
to the pestering interference of the authorities, as a matter of fact it
was a constant source of unhappiness to him. "So aber war mein Leben
seit meinem letzten Briefe ein beständiger Aerger. Die verfluchten
Vexationen der hiesigen Censurbehörde haben selbst jetzt noch immer kein
Ende finden können."[118] Speaking of his hatred for the censorship law,
he says: "Und doch gebührt mein Hass noch immer viel weniger dem Gesetze
selbst, als denjenigen legalisierten Bestien, die das Gesetz auf eine so
niederträchtige Art handhaben;--und unsre Censoren stellen im Gegensatze
der pflanzen- und fleischfressenden Tiere die Klasse der
geistfressenden Tiere dar, eine abscheuliche, monströse Klasse!"[119]
Roustan expresses the opinion that with Lenau patriotism occupied a
secondary place.[120] He had too many "native lands" to become attached
to any one of them.
There is something of a counterpart to Hölderlin's Hellenism and
championship of Greek liberty in Lenau's espousal of the Polish cause.
But here again the personal element is strongly in evidence. A chance
acquaintance, which afterward became an intimate friendship, with Polish
fugitives, seems to have been the immediate occasion of his Polenlieder,
so that his enthusiasm for Polish liberty must be regarded as incidental
rather than spontaneous. Needless to say that with a Greek cult such as
Hölderlin's Lenau had no patience whatever. "Dass die Poesie den
profanen Schmutz wieder abwaschen müsse, den ihr Goethe durch 50 Jahre
mit klassischer Hand gründlich einzureiben bemüht war; dass die
Freiheitsgedanken, wie sie jetzt gesungen werden, nichts seien als
konventioneller Trödel,--davon haben nur wenige eine Ahnung."[121]
All these considerations tend to convince us that Lenau's Weltschmerz is
after all of a much narrower and more personal type than Hölderlin's.
Again and again he runs through the gamut of his own painful emotions
and experiences, diagnosing and dissecting each one, and always with the
same gloomy result. Consequently his Weltschmerz loses in breadth what
through the depth of the poet's introspection it gains in intensity.
One of the most striking and, unless classed among his numerous other
pathological traits, one of the most puzzling of Lenau's characteristics
is the perverseness of his nature. His intimate friends were wont to
explain it, or rather to leave it unexplained by calling it his
"Husarenlaune" when the poet would give vent to an apparently unprovoked
and unreasonable burst of anger, and on seeing the consternation of
those present, would just as suddenly throw himself into a fit of
laughter quite as inexplicable as his rage. He takes delight in things
which in the ordinarily constructed mind would produce just the reverse
feeling. Speaking once of a particularly ill-favored person of his
acquaintance he says: "Eine so gewaltige Hässlichkeit bleibt ewig neu
und kann sich nie abnützen. Es ist was Frisches darin, ich sehe sie
gerne."[122] And in not a few of his poems we see a certain predilection
for the gruesome, the horrible. So in the remarkable figure employed in
"Faust:"
Die Träume, ungelehr'ge Bestien, schleichen
Noch immer nach des Wahns verscharrten Leichen.[123]
This perverseness of disposition is in a large measure accounted for by
the fact that Lenau was eternally at war with himself. Speaking in the
most general way, Hölderlin's Weltschmerz had its origin in his conflict
with the outer world, Lenau's on the other hand must be attributed
mainly to the unceasing conflict or "Zwiespalt" within his breast. In
his childhood a devout Roman Catholic, he shows in his "Faust" (1833-36)
a mind filled with scepticism and pantheistic ideas; "Savonarola" (1837)
marks his return to and glorification of the Christian faith; while in
the "Albigenser" (1838-42) the poet again champions complete
emancipation of thought and belief. Only a few months elapsed between
the writing of the two poems "Wanderung im Gebirge" (1830), in which the
most orthodox faith in a personal God is expressed, and "Die Zweifler"
(1831). The only consistent feature of his poems is their profound
melancholy. But Lenau's inner struggle of soul did not consist merely in
his vacillating between religious faith and doubt; it was the conflict
of instinct with reason. This is evident in his relations with Sophie
Löwenthal. He knows that their love is an unequal one[124] and chides
her for her coldness,[125] warning her not to humiliate him, not even in
jest;[126] he knows too that his alternating moods of exaltation and
dejection resulting from the intensity of his unsatisfied love are
destroying him.[127] "Oefter hat sich der Gedanke bei mir angemeldet:
Entschlage dich dieser Abhängigkeit und gestatte diesem Weibe keinen so
mächtigen Einfluss auf deine Stimmungen. Kein Mensch auf Erden soll dich
so beherrschen. Doch bald stiess ich diesen Gedanken wieder zurück als
einen Verräter an meiner Liebe, und ich bot mein reizbares Herz wieder
gerne dar Deinen zärtlichen Misshandlungen.--O geliebtes Herz!
missbrauche Deine Gewalt nicht! Ich bitte Dich, liebe Sophie!"[128] And
yet, in spite of it all, he is unable to free himself from the thrall of
passion: "Wie wird doch all mein Trotz und Stolz so gar zu nichte, wenn
die Furcht in mir erwacht, dass Du mich weniger liebest";[129] and all
this from the same pen that once wrote: "das Wort Gnade hat ein Schuft
erfunden."[130]
But just as helpless as this defiant pride proved before his
all-consuming love for Sophie, so strongly did it assert itself in all
his other relations with men and things. A hasty word from one of his
best friends could so deeply offend his spirit that, according to his
own admission, all subsequent apologies were futile.[131] For Lenau,
then, such an attitude of hero worship as that assumed by Hölderlin
towards Schiller, would have been an utter impossibility. We have
already seen the extent to which he was over-awed (?) by Goethe's views
when they were at variance with their own.[132] On another occasion he
writes: "Was Goethe über Ruysdael faselt, kannte ich bereits."[133]
Toward his critics his bearing was that of haughty indifference: "Mag
auch das Talent dieser Menschen,[TN1] mich zu insultieren, gross sein,
mein Talent, sie zu verachten, ist auf alle Fälle grösser."[134] When
his Frühlingsalmanach of 1835 had been received with disfavor by the
critics, he professed to be concerned only for his publisher: "Ich
meinerseits habe auf Liebe und Dank nie gezählt bei meinen
Bestrebungen."[135] "Die (Recensenten) wissen den Teufel von
Poesie."[136] Whether this real or assumed nonchalance would have stood
the test of literary disappointments such as Hölderlin's, it is needless
to speculate.
Hölderlin eagerly sought after happiness and contentment, but fortune
eluded him at every turn. Lenau on the contrary thrust it from him with
true ascetic spirit.
The mere thought of submitting to the ordinary process of negotiations
and recommendations for a vacant professorship of Esthetics in Vienna is
so repulsive to his pride, that the whole matter is at once allowed to
drop, notwithstanding that he has been preparing for the place by
diligent philosophical studies.[137] The asceticism with which he
regarded life in general is expressed in a letter to Emilie Reinbeck,
1843, in which he says: "Wer die Welt gestalten helfen will, muss darauf
verzichten, sie zu geniessen."[138] But more often this resignation
becomes a defiant challenge: "Ich habe dem Leben gegenüber nun einmal
meine Stellung genommen, es soll mich nicht hinunterkriegen. Dass mein
Widerstand nicht der eines ruhigen Weisen ist, sondern viel Trotziges an
sich hat, das liegt in meinen Temperament."[139]
Another characteristic difference between Lenau's Weltschmerz and
Hölderlin's lies in the fact that the writings of the latter do not
exhibit that absolute and abject despair which marks Lenau's lyrics.
Typical for both poets are the lines addressed by each to a rose:
Ewig trägt im Mutterschosse,
Süsse Königin der Flur,
Dich und mich die stille, grosse,
Allbelebende Natur.
Röschen unser Schmuck veraltet,
Sturm entblättert dich und mich,
Doch der ew'ge Keim entfaltet
Bald zu neuer Blüte sich![140]
Unmistakable as is the melancholy strain of these verses, they are not
without a hopeful afterthought, in which the poet turns from
self-contemplation to a view of a larger destiny. Not so in Lenau's
poem, "Welke Rosen":
In einem Buche blätternd, fand
Ich eine Rose welk, zerdrückt,
Und weiss auch nicht mehr, wessen Hand
Sie einst für mich gepflückt.
Ach mehr und mehr im Abendhauch
Verweht Erinn'rung; bald zerstiebt
Mein Erdenlos; dann weiss ich auch
Nicht mehr, wer mich geliebt.[141]
The intensely personal note of the last stanza is in marked contrast
with the corresponding stanza of Hölderlin's poem just quoted. Further
evidence that Lenau's Weltschmerz was constitutional, while Hölderlin's
was the result of experience, lies in this very fact, that nowhere do
the writings of the former exhibit that stage of buoyant expectation,
youthful enthusiasm, or hopeful striving, which we find in some of the
earlier poems of the latter. In Hölderlin's ode "An die Hoffnung," he
apostrophizes hope as "Holde! gütig Geschäftige!"
Die du das Haus der Trauernden nicht verschmähst.[142]
Lenau, in his poem of the same title, tells us he has done with hope:
All dein Wort ist Windesfächeln;
Hoffnung! dann nur trau' ich dir,
Weisest du mit Trosteslächeln
Mir des Todes Nachtrevier.[143]
Even his Faust gives himself over almost from the outset to abject
despair.
Logically consequent upon this state of mind is the poet's oft-repeated
longing for death. The persistency of this thought may be best
illustrated by a few quotations from poems and letters, arranged
chronologically:
1831. Mir wird oft so schwer, als ob ich einen Todten in mir
herumtrüge.[144]
1833. Und mir verging die Jugend traurig,
Des Frühlings Wonne blieb versäumt,
Der Herbst durchweht mich trennungsschaurig,
Mein Herz dem Tod entgegenträumt.[145]
1837. Heute dachte ich öfter an den Tod, nicht mit bitterem Trotz
und störrischem Verlangen, sondern mit freundlichem Appetit.[146]
1837. Soll ich Dir alles sagen? Wisse, dass ich wirklich daran
dachte, mir den Tod zu geben.[147]
1838. Der Gedanke des Todes wird mir immer freundlicher, und ich
verschwende mein Leben gerne.[148]
1838. Durchs Fenster kommt ein dürres Blatt
Vom Wind hereingetrieben;
Dies leichte offne Brieflein hat
Der Tod an mich geschrieben.[149]
1840. Oft will mich's gemahnen, als hätte ich auf Erden nichts
mehr zu thun, und ich wünschte dann, Gervinus möchte
recht haben, indem er, wie Georg mir erzählte, mir einen
baldigen Zusammenbruch und Tod prophezeite.[150]
1842. Ich habe ein wollüstiges Heimweh, in Deinen Armen zu
sterben.[151]
1843. Selig sind die Betäubten! noch seliger sind die Toten![152]
1844. In dieses Waldes leisem Rauschen
Ist mir, als hör' ich Kunde wehen,
Dass alles Sterben und Vergehen
Nur heimlichstill vergnügtes Tauschen.[153]
If we should seek for the Leit-motif of Lenau's Weltschmerz, we should
unquestionably have to designate it as the _transientness of life_. Thus
in the poem "Die Zweifler," he exclaims:
Vergänglichkeit! wie rauschen deine Wellen
Durch's weite Labyrinth des Lebens fort![154]
Ten per cent, of all Lenau's lyrics bear titles which directly express
or suggest this thought, as for example, "Vergangenheit,"
"Vergänglichkeit," "Das tote Glück," "Einst und Jetzt," "Aus!," "Eitel
Nichts," "Verlorenes Glück," "Welke Rose," "Vanitas," "Scheiden,"
"Scheideblick," and the like; while in not less than seventy-one per
cent of his lyrics there are allusions, more or less direct, to this
same idea, which shows beyond a doubt how large a component it must have
been of the poet's characteristic mood.
If Hölderlin, the idealist, judges the things which are, according to
his standard of things as they _ought to be_, Lenau, on the other hand,
measures them by the things which _have been_.
Friedhof der entschlafnen Tage,
Schweigende Vergangenheit!
Du begräbst des Herzens Klage,
Ach, und seine Seligkeit![155]
Nowhere is this mental attitude of the poet toward life in all its forms
more clearly defined than in his views of nature. That this is an
entirely different one from Hölderlin's goes without saying. Lenau has
nothing of that naïve and unsophisticated childlike nature-sense which
Hölderlin possessed, and which enabled him to find comfort and
consolation in nature as in a mother's embrace. So that while for
Hölderlin intercourse with nature afforded the greatest relief from his
sorrows, Lenau's Weltschmerz was on the contrary intensified thereby.
For him the rose has no fragrance, the sunlight no warmth, springtime no
charms, in a word, nature has neither tone nor temper, until such has
been assigned to it by the poet himself. And as he is fully aware of the
artistic possibilities of the mantle of melancholy "um die wunde Brust
geschlungen,"[156] it follows consistently that he should select for
poetic treatment only those aspects of nature which might serve to
intensify the expression of his grief.
Among the titles of Lenau's lyrics descriptive of nature are "Herbst,"
"Herbstgefühl" (twice), "Herbstlied," "Ein Herbstabend,"
"Herbstentschluss," "Herbstklage," and many others of a similar kind,
such as "Das dürre Blatt," "In der Wüste," "Frühlings Tod," etc. If we
disregard a few quite exceptional verses on spring, the statement will
hold that Lenau sees in nature only the seasons and phenomena of
dissolution and decay. So in "Herbstlied":
Ja, ja, ihr lauten Raben,
Hoch in der kühlen Luft,
's geht wieder ans Begraben,
Ihr flattert um die Gruft![157]
"Je mehr man sich an die Natur anschliesst," the poet writes to Sophie
Schwab, "je mehr man sich in Betrachtungen ihrer Züge vertieft, desto
mehr wird man ergriffen von dem Geiste der Sehnsucht, des schwermütigen
Hinsterbens, der durch die Natur auf Erden weht."[158] Characteristic is
the setting which the poet gives to the "Waldkapelle":
Der dunkle Wald umrauscht den Wiesengrund,
Gar düster liegt der graue Berg dahinter,
Das dürre Laub, der Windhauch gibt es kund,
Geschritten kommt allmählig schon der Winter.
Die Sonne ging, umhüllt von Wolken dicht,
Unfreundlich, ohne Scheideblick von hinnen,
Und die Natur verstummt, im Dämmerlicht
Schwermütig ihrem Tode nachzusinnen.[159]
The sunset is represented as a dying of the sun, the leaves fall sobbing
from the trees, the clouds are dissolved in tears, the wind is described
as a murderer. We see then that Lenau's treatment of nature is
essentially different from Hölderlin's. The latter explains man through
nature; Lenau explains nature through man. Hölderlin describes love as a
heavenly plant,[160] youth as the springtime of the heart,[161] tears as
the dew of love;[162] Lenau, on the other hand, characterizes rain as
the tears of heaven, for him the woods are glad,[163] the brooklet
weeps,[164] the air is idle, the buds and blossoms listen,[165] the
forest in its autumn foliage is "herbstlich gerötet, so wie ein
Kranker, der sich neigt zum Sterben, wenn flüchtig noch sich seine
Wangen färben."[166] A remarkable simile, and at the same time
characteristic for Lenau in its morbidness is the following:
Wie auf dem Lager sich der Seelenkranke,
Wirft sich der Strauch im Winde hin und her.[167]
Hölderlin speaks of a friend's bereavement as "ein schwarzer
Sturm";[168] when he had grieved Diotima he compares himself to the
cloud passing over the serene face of the moon;[169] gloomy thoughts he
designates by the common metaphor "der Schatten eines Wölkchens auf der
Stirne."[170] Lenau turns the comparison and says:
Am Himmelsantlitz wandelt ein Gedanke,
Die düstre Wolke dort, so bang, so schwer.[171]
Where Hölderlin finds delight in the incorporeal elements of nature,
such as light, ether, and ascribes personal qualities and functions to
them, Lenau on the contrary always chooses the tangible things and
invests them with such mental and moral attributes as are in harmony
with his gloomy state of mind. Consequently Lenau's Weltschmerz never
remains abstract; indeed, the almost endless variety of concrete
pictures in which he gives it expression is nothing short of remarkable,
not only in the sympathetic nature-setting which he gives to his
lamentations, but also in the striking metaphors which he employs. Of
the former, probably no better illustration could be found in all
Lenau's poems than his well-known "Schilflieder"[172] and his numerous
songs to Autumn. One or two examples of his incomparable use of
nature-metaphors in the expression of his Weltschmerz will suffice:
Hab' ich gleich, als ich so sacht
Durch die Stoppeln hingeschritten,
Aller Sensen auch gedacht,
Die ins Leben mir geschnitten.[173]
Auch mir ist Herbst, und leiser
Trag' ich den Berg hinab
Mein Bündel dürre Reiser
Die mir das Leben gab.[174]
Der Mond zieht traurig durch die Sphären,
Denn all die Seinen ruhn im Grab;
Drum wischt er sich die hellen Zähren
Bei Nacht an unsern Blumen ab.[175]
The forceful directness of Lenau's metaphors from nature is aptly shown
in the following comparison of two passages, one from Hölderlin's "An
die Natur," the other from Lenau's "Herbstklage," in which both poets
employ the same poetic fancy to express the same idea.
Tot ist nun, die mich erzog und stillte,
Tot ist nun die jugendliche Welt,
Diese Brust, die einst ein Himmel füllte,
Tot und dürftig wie ein Stoppelfeld.[176]
If we compare the simile in the last line with the corresponding
metaphor used by Lenau in the following stanza,--
Wie der Wind zu Herbsteszeit
Mordend hinsaust in den Wäldern,
Weht mir die Vergangenheit
Von des Glückes Stoppelfeldern,[177]
the greater artistic effectiveness of the latter figure will be at once
apparent.
The idea that nature is cruel, even murderous, as suggested in the
opening lines of the stanza just quoted, seems in the course of time to
have become firmly fixed in the poet's mind, for he not only uses it for
poetic purposes, but expresses his conviction of the fact on several
occasions in his conversations and letters. Tossing some dead leaves
with his stick while out walking, he is said to have exclaimed: "Da
seht, und dann heisst es, die Natur sei liebevoll und schonend! Nein,
sie ist grausam, sie hat kein Mitleid. Die Natur ist erbarmungslos!"[178]
It goes without saying that in such a conception of nature the poet
could find no amelioration of his Weltschmerz.[179]
In summing up the results of our discussion of Lenau's Weltschmerz, it
would involve too much repetition to mention all the points in which it
stands, as we have seen, in striking contrast to that of Hölderlin.
Suffice it to recall only the most essential features of the comparison:
the predominance of hereditary and pathological traits as causative
influences in the case of Lenau; the fact that whereas Hölderlin's
quarrel was largely with the world, Lenau's was chiefly within himself;
the passive and ascetic nature of Lenau's attitude, as compared with the
often hopeful striving of Hölderlin; the patriotism of the latter, and
the relative indifference of the former; Lenau's strongly developed
erotic instinct, which gave to his relations with Sophie such a vastly
different influence upon his Weltschmerz from that exerted upon
Hölderlin by his relations with Diotima; and finally the marked
difference in the attitude of these two poets toward nature.
A careful consideration of all the points involved will lead to no other
conclusion than that whereas in Hölderlin the cosmic element
predominates, Lenau stands as a type of egoistic Weltschmerz. To quote
from our classification attempted in the first chapter, he is one of
"those introspective natures who are first and chiefly aware of their
own misery, and finally come to regard it as representative of universal
evil." Nowhere is this more clearly stated than in the poet's own words:
"Es hat etwas Tröstliches für mich, wenn ich in meinem Privatunglück den
Familienzug lese, der durch alle Geschlechter der armen Menschen geht.
Mein Unglück ist mir mein Liebstes,--und ich betrachte es gerne im
verklärenden Lichte eines allgemeinen Verhängnisses."[180]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 75: _Euphorion_, 1899, p. 791.]
[Footnote 76: "Nicolaus Lenau," _Neue Fr. Pr._, Nr. 11166-7]
[Footnote 77: Schurz, Vol. II, p. 212.]
[Footnote 78: Cf. _Euphorion_, 1899, p. 795.]
[Footnote 79: Anton Schurz: "Lenau's Leben," Cotta, 1855 (hereafter
quoted as "Schurz"), Vol. II, p. 199.]
[Footnote 80: "Lenaus Werke," ed Max Koch, in Kürschner's DNL.
(hereafter quoted as "Werke"), Vol. I, p. 525 f.]
[Footnote 81: Cf. _supra_, p. 22.]
[Footnote 82: Cf. among others Sadger, Weiler. _Infra_, p. 88.]
[Footnote 83: "Nicolaus Lenau's Briefe an einen Freund," Stuttgart,
1853, p. 68 f.]
[Footnote 84: "Nicolaus Lenau's sämmtliche Werke," herausgegeben von G.
Emil Barthel, Leipzig, Reclam, p. CI.]
[Footnote 85: Schurz, Vol. I, p. 169.]
[Footnote 86: Schurz, Vol. II, p. 144.]
[Footnote 87: Schurz, Vol. II, p. 152f.]
[Footnote 88: Schurz, Vol. I, p. 275.]
[Footnote 89: Ricarda Huch: "Romantische Lebensläufe." _Neue d.
Rundschau_, Feb. 1902, p. 126.]
[Footnote 90: Sept. 29, 1844. Cf. Schurz, Vol. II, p. 223.]
[Footnote 91: L. A. Frankl: "Lenau und Sophie Löwenthal," Stuttgart,
1891 (hereafter quoted as "Frankl") p. 189, incorrectly states the date
as 1838. Possibly it is a misprint.]
[Footnote 92: Frankl, p. 155.]
[Footnote 93: Frankl, p. 151.]
[Footnote 94: Frankl, p. 164.]
[Footnote 95: Frankl, p. 102.]
[Footnote 96: Frankl, p. 149.]
[Footnote 97: Frankl, p. 150.]
[Footnote 98: Frankl, p. 150.]
[Footnote 99: Schurz, Vol. II, p. 7.]
[Footnote 100: Cf. Lenau's Sämmtl. Werke, herausg. von G. Emil Bartel,
Leipzig, ohne Jahr. Introd., p. clxv.]
[Footnote 101: Frankl, p. 32.]
[Footnote 102: Frankl, p. 14.]
[Footnote 103: Frankl, p. 30.]
[Footnote 104: Cf. _supra_, p. 38.]
[Footnote 105: Frankl, p. 15.]
[Footnote 106: Werke, I, p. 89.]
[Footnote 107: Frankl, p. 114.]
[Footnote 108: Cf. _supra_, p. 18.]
[Footnote 109: Hölderlins Werke, Vol. 1, p. 195.]
[Footnote 110: "Das Kruzifix, Eine Künstlerlegende," 1820.]
[Footnote 111: Schurz, Vol. I, p. 158f.]
[Footnote 112: Schurz, Vol. II, p. 6.]
[Footnote 113: Cf. Breitinger: "Studien und Wandertage;" Frauenfeld,
Huber, 1870.]
[Footnote 114: Schlossar: "Nicolaus Lenaus Briefe an Emilie von
Reinbeck," Stuttgart, 1896 (hereafter quoted as "Schlossar"), p. 98.]
[Footnote 115: Werke, Vol. II, p. 260.]
[Footnote 116: Schurz, Vol. II, p. 193.]
[Footnote 117: Schlossar, p. 109.]
[Footnote 118: Schlossar, p. 111.]
[Footnote 119: Schlossar, p. 112 f.]
[Footnote 120: "Lenau et son Temps," Paris, 1898, p. 351.]
[Footnote 121: Schlossar, p. 103.]
[Footnote 122: Schlossar, p. 154.]
[Footnote 123: Werke, Vol. II, p. 183.]
[Footnote 124: Frankl, p. 99.]
[Footnote 125: Frankl, p. 90.]
[Footnote 126: Frankl, p. 90.]
[Footnote 127: Frankl, p. 192.]
[Footnote 128: Frankl, p. 173.]
[Footnote 129: Frankl, p. 103.]
[Footnote 130: Schlossar, p. 55.]
[Footnote 131: Cf. Schlossar, p. 93 f.]
[Footnote 132: Cf. _supra_, p. 48.]
[Footnote 133: Schlossar, p. 46.]
[Footnote 134: Schlossar, p. 85.]
[Footnote 135: Schlossar, p. 83.]
[Footnote 136: Schurz, Vol. I, p. 176.]
[Footnote 137: Cf. Schlossar, p. 173.]
[Footnote 138: Schlossar, p. 184.]
[Footnote 139: Schlossar, p. 87.]
[Footnote 140: Hölderlin, "An eine Rose," Werke, Vol. I, p. 142.]
[Footnote 141: Werke, Vol. I, p. 389.]
[Footnote 142: Hölderlins Werke, Vol. I, p. 253.]
[Footnote 143: Werke, Vol. I, p. 99.]
[Footnote 144: Schurz, Vol. I, p. 132.]
[Footnote 145: Werke, Vol. I, p. 82.]
[Footnote 146: Frankl, p. 79.]
[Footnote 147: Frankl, p. 102.]
[Footnote 148: Frankl, p. 127.]
[Footnote 149: Werke, Vol. I, p. 267.]
[Footnote 150: Schlossar, p. 144.]
[Footnote 151: Frankl, p. 169.]
[Footnote 152: Schlossar, p. 188.]
[Footnote 153: Werke, Vol. I, p. 405.]
[Footnote 154: Werke, Vol. I, p. 130.]
[Footnote 155: Werke, Vol. I, p. 62.]
[Footnote 156: Werke, Vol. I, p. 102.]
[Footnote 157: Werke, Vol. I, p. 299.]
[Footnote 158: Cf. Farinelli, in _Verhandlungen des 8. deutschen
Neuphilologentages_, Hannover, 1898, p. 58.]
[Footnote 159: Werke, Vol. I, p. 137.]
[Footnote 160: Höld. Werke, Vol. I, p. 167.]
[Footnote 161: Höld. Werke, Vol. I, p. 143.]
[Footnote 162: Höld. Werke, Vol. I, p. 140.]
[Footnote 163: Len. Werke, Vol. I, p. 258.]
[Footnote 164: Len. Werke, Vol. I, p. 250.]
[Footnote 165: Len. Werke, Vol. I, p. 260.]
[Footnote 166: Len. Werke, Vol. I, p. 249.]
[Footnote 167: Len. Werke, Vol. I, p. 147.]
[Footnote 168: Höld. Werke, Vol. I, p. 144.]
[Footnote 169: Höld. Werke, Vol. I, p. 164.]
[Footnote 170: Höld. Werke, Vol. II, p. 117.]
[Footnote 171: Len. Werke, Vol. I, p. 147.]
[Footnote 172: Werke, Vol. I, p. 51 f]
[Footnote 173: "Der Kranich," Werke, Vol. I, p. 328.]
[Footnote 174: "Herbstlied," Werke, Vol. I, p. 299.]
[Footnote 175: "Mondlied," Werke, Vol. I, p. 310.]
[Footnote 176: Höld. Werke, Vol. I, p. 146.]
[Footnote 177: Werke, Vol. I, p. 299.]
[Footnote 178: Schurz, Vol. II, p. 104.]
[Footnote 179: For an exhaustive discussion of Lenau's nature-sense cf.
Prof. Camillo von Klenze's excellent monograph on the subject, "The
Treatment of Nature in the Works of Nikolaus Lenau," Chicago, University
Press, 1902.]
[Footnote 180: Frankl, p. 116.]
CHAPTER IV
=Heine=
Heine was probably the first German writer to use the term Weltschmerz
in its present sense. Breitinger in his essay "Neues über den alten
Weltschmerz"[181] endeavors to trace the earliest use of the word and
finds an instance of it in Julian Schmidt's "Geschichte der
Romantik,"[182] 1847. He seems to have entirely overlooked Heine's use
of the word in his discussion of Delaroche's painting "Oliver Cromwell
before the body of Charles I." (1831).[183] The actual inventor of the
compound was no doubt Jean Paul, who wrote (1810): "Diesen Weltschmerz
kann er (Gott) sozusagen nur aushalten durch den Anblick der Seligkeit,
die nachher vergütet."[184]
But although Heine may have been the first to adapt the word to its
present use, and although we have fallen into the habit of thinking of
him as the chief representative of German Weltschmerz, it must be
admitted that there is much less genuine Weltschmerz to be found in his
poems than in those of either Hölderlin or Lenau. The reason for this
has already been briefly indicated in the preceding chapter. Hölderlin's
Weltschmerz is altogether the most naïve of the three; Lenau's, while it
still remains sincere, becomes self-conscious, while Heine has an
unfailing antidote for profound feeling in his merciless self-irony. And
yet his condition in life was such as would have wrung from the heart of
almost any other poet notes of sincerest pathos.
In Lenau's case we noted circumstances which point to a direct
transmission from parent to child of a predisposition to melancholia. In
Heine's, on the other hand, the question of heredity has apparently only
an indirect bearing upon his Weltschmerz. To what extent was his long
and terrible disease of hereditary origin, and in what measure may we
ascribe his Weltschmerz to the sufferings which that disease caused him?
The first of these questions has been answered as conclusively as seems
possible on the basis of all available data, by a doctor of medicine, S.
Rahmer, in what is at this time the most recent and most authoritative
study that has been published on the subject.[185] Stage by stage he
follows the development of the disease, from its earliest indications in
the poet's incessant nervous headaches, which he ascribes to
neurasthenic causes. He attempts to quote all the passages in Heine's
letters which throw light upon his physical condition, and points out
that in the second stage of the disease the first symptoms of paralysis
made their appearance as early as 1832, and not in 1837 as the
biographers have stated. To this was added in 1837 an acute affection of
the eyes, which continued to recur from this time on. In addition to the
pathological process which led to a complete paralysis of almost the
whole body, Rahmer notes other symptoms first mentioned in 1846, which
he describes as "bulbär" in their origin, such as difficulty in
controlling the muscles of speech, difficulty in chewing and swallowing,
the enfeebling of the muscles of the lips, disturbances in the functions
of the glottis and larynx, together with abnormal secretion of saliva.
He discredits altogether the diagnosis of Heine's disease as consumption
of the spinal marrow, to which Klein-Hattingen in his recent book on
Hölderlin, Lenau and Heine[186] still adheres, dismisses as
scientifically untenable the popular idea that the poet's physical
dissolution was the result of his sensual excesses, finally diagnoses
the case as "die spinale Form der progressiven Muskelatrophie"[187] and
maintains that it was either directly inherited, or at least developed
on the basis of an inherited disposition.[188] He finds further
evidence in support of the latter theory in the fact that the first
symptoms of the disease made their appearance in early youth, not many
years after puberty, and concludes that, in spite of scant information
as to Heine's ancestors, we are safe in assuming a hereditary taint on
the father's side.
The poet himself evidently would have us believe as much, for in his
Reisebilder he says: "Wie ein Wurm nagte das Elend in meinem Herzen und
nagte,--ich habe dieses Elend mit mir zur Welt gebracht. Es lag schon
mit mir in der Wiege, und wenn meine Mutter mich wiegte, so wiegte sie
es mit, und wenn sie mich in den Schlaf sang, so schlief es mit mir ein,
und es erwachte, sobald ich wieder die Augen aufschlug. Als ich grösser
wurde, wuchs auch das Elend, und wurde endlich ganz gross und
zersprengte mein.... Wir wollen von andern Dingen sprechen...."[189]
And yet Heine's disposition was not naturally inclined to hypochondria.
In his earlier letters, especially to his intimate friends, there is
often more than cheerfulness, sometimes a decided buoyancy if not
exuberance of spirits. A typical instance we find in a letter to Moser
(1824): "Ich hoffe Dich wohl nächstes Frühjahr wiederzusehen und zu
umarmen und zu necken und vergnügt zu sein."[190] Only here and there,
but very rarely, does he acknowledge any influence of his physical
condition upon his mental labors. To Immermann he writes (1823): "Mein
Unwohlsein mag meinen letzten Dichtungen auch etwas Krankhaftes
mitgeteilt haben."[191] And to Merkel (1827): "Ach! ich bin heute sehr
verdriesslich. Krank und unfähig, gesund aufzufassen."[192] In the main,
however, he makes a very brave appearance of cheerfulness, and
especially of patience, which seems to grow with the hopelessness of his
affliction. To his mother (1851): "Ich befinde mich wieder krankhaft
gestimmt, etwas wohler wie früher, vielleicht viel wohler; aber grosse
Nervenschmerzen habe ich noch immer, und leider ziehen sich die Krämpfe
jetzt öfter nach oben, was mir den Kopf zuweilen sehr ermüdet. So muss
ich nun ruhig aushalten, was der liebe Gott über mich verhängt, und ich
trage mein Schicksal mit Geduld.... Gottes Wille geschehe!"[193] Again a
few weeks later: "Ich habe mit diesem Leben abgeschlossen, und wenn ich
so sicher wäre, dass ich im Himmel einst gut aufgenommen werde, so
ertrüge ich geduldig meine Existenz."[194] Not only to his mother, whom
for years he affectionately kept in ignorance of his deplorable
condition, does he write thus, but also to Campe (1852): "Mein Körper
leidet grosse Qual, aber meine Seele ist ruhig wie ein Spiegel und hat
manchmal auch noch ihre schönen Sonnenaufgänge und Sonnenuntergänge."[195]
1854: "Gottlob, dass ich bei all meinem Leid sehr heiteren Gemütes bin,
und die lustigsten Gedanken springen mir durchs Hirn."[196] Much of this
sort of thing was no doubt nicely calculated for effect, and yet these
and similar passages show that he was not inclined to magnify his
physical afflictions either in his own eyes or in the eyes of others.
Nor is he absolutely unreconciled to his fate: "Es ist mir nichts
geglückt in dieser Welt, aber es hätte mir doch noch schlimmer gehen
können."[197]
In his poems, references to his physical sufferings are remarkably
infrequent. We look in vain in the "Buch der Lieder," in the "Neue
Gedichte," in fact in all his lyrics written before the "Romanzero," not
only for any allusion to his illness, but even for any complaint against
life which might have been directly occasioned by his physical
condition. What is there then in these earlier poems that might fitly be
called Weltschmerz? Very little, we shall find.
Their inspiration is to be found almost exclusively in Heine's
love-affairs, decent and indecent. Now the pain of disappointed love is
the motive and the theme of very many of Hölderlin's and Lenau's lyrics,
poems which are heavy with Weltschmerz, while most of Heine's are not.
To speak only of the poet's most important attachments, of his
unrequited love for his cousin Amalie, and his unsuccessful wooing of
her sister Therese,--there can be no doubt that these unhappy loves
brought years of pain and bitterness into his life, sorrow probably as
genuine as any he ever experienced, and yet how little, comparatively,
there is in his poetry to convince us of the fact. Nearly all these
early lyrics are variations of this love-theme, and yet it is the
exception rather than the rule when the poet maintains a sincere note
long enough to engender sympathy and carry conviction. Such are his
beautiful lyrics "Ich grolle nicht,"[198] "Du hast Diamanten und
Perlen."[199] Let us see how Lenau treats the same theme:
Die dunklen Wolken hingen
Herab so bang und schwer,
Wir beide traurig gingen
Im Garten hin und her.
So heiss und stumm, so trübe,
Und sternlos war die Nacht,
So ganz wie unsre Liebe
Zu Thränen nur gemacht.
Und als ich musste scheiden
Und gute Nacht dir bot,
Wünscht' ich bekümmert beiden
Im Herzen uns den Tod.[200]
We believe implicitly in the poet's almost inexpressible grief, and
because we are convinced, we sympathize. And we feel too that the poet's
sorrow is so overwhelming and has so filled his soul that it has
entirely changed his views of life and of nature, or has at least
contributed materially to such a change,--that it has assumed larger
proportions and may rightly be called Weltschmerz. Compare with this the
first and third stanzas of Heine's "Der arme Peter:"
Der Hans und die Grete tanzen herum,
Und jauchzen vor lauter Freude.
Der Peter steht so still und stumm,
Und ist so blass wie Kreide.
* * * * *
Der Peter spricht leise vor sich her
Und schauet betrübet auf beide:
"Ach! wenn ich nicht zu vernünftig wär',
Ich thät' mir was zu leide."[201]
It is scarcely necessary to cite further examples of this mannerism of
Heine's, for so it early became, such as his "Erbsensuppe,"[202] "Ich
wollte, er schösse mich tot,"[203] "Doktor, sind Sie des Teufels;"[204]
"Madame, ich liebe Sie!"[205] and many other glaring instances of the
"Sturzbad," in order to show how the poet himself deliberately
attempted, and usually with success, to destroy the traces of his grief.
This process of self-irony, which plays such havoc with all sincere
feeling and therefore with his Weltschmerz, becomes so fixed a habit
that we are almost incapable, finally, of taking the poet seriously. He
makes a significant confession in this regard in a letter to Moser
(1823): "Aber es geht mir oft so, ich kann meine eigenen Schmerzen nicht
erzählen, ohne dass die Sache komisch wird."[206] How thoroughly this
mental attitude had become second nature with Heine, may be inferred
from a statement which he makes to Friederike Roberts (1825): "Das
Ungeheuerste, das Ensetzlichste, das Schaudervollste, wenn es nicht
unpoetisch werden soll, kann man auch nur in dem buntscheckigen Gewände
des Lächerlichen darstellen, gleichsam versöhnend--darum hat auch
Shakespeare das Grässlichste im "Lear" durch den Narren sagen lassen,
darum hat auch Goethe zu dem furchtbarsten Stoffe, zum "Faust," die
Puppenspielform gewählt, darum hat auch der noch grössere Poet (der
Urpoet, sagt Friederike), nämlich Unser-Herrgott, allen Schreckensszenen
dieses Lebens eine gute Dosis Spasshaftigkeit beigemischt."[207]
In not a few of his lyrics Heine gives us a truly Lenauesque
nature-setting, as for instance in "Der scheidende Sommer:"
Das gelbe Laub erzittert,
Es fallen die Blätter herab;
Ach, alles, was hold und lieblich
Verwelkt und sinkt ins Grab.[208]
This is one of the comparatively few instances in Heine's lyrics in
which he maintains a dignified seriousness throughout the entire poem.
It is worth noting, too, because it touches a note as infrequent in
Heine as it is persistent in Lenau--the fleeting nature of all things
lovely and desirable.[209] This is one of the characteristic differences
between the two poets,--Heine's eye is on the present and the future,
much more than on the past; Lenau is ever mourning the happiness that is
past and gone. Logically then, thoughts of and yearnings for death are
much more frequent with Lenau than with Heine.[210]
Reverting to the point under consideration: even in those love-lyrics in
which Heine does not wilfully destroy the first serious impression by
the jingling of his harlequin's cap, as he himself styles it,[211] he
does not succeed,--with the few exceptions just referred to,--in
convincing us very deeply of the reality of his feelings. They are
either trivially or extravagantly stated. Sometimes this sense of
triviality is caused by the poet's excessive fondness for all sorts of
diminutive expressions, giving an artificial effect, an effect of
"Tändelei" to his verses. For example:
Du siehst mich an wehmütiglich,
Und schüttelst das blonde Köpfchen,
Aus deinen Augen schleichen sich
Die Perlenthränentröpfchen.[212]
Sometimes this effect is produced by a distinct though unintended
anti-climax. Nowhere has Heine struck a more truly elegiac note than in
the stanza:
Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht,
Das Leben ist der schwüle Tag.
Es dunkelt schon, mich schläfert,
Der Tag hat mich müde gemacht.[213]
There is the most profound Weltschmerz in that. But in the second stanza
there is relatively little:
Ueber mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum,
Drin singt die junge Nachtigall;
Sie singt von lauter Liebe,
Ich hör' es sogar im Traum.
Lenau's lyrics have shown that much Weltschmerz may grow out of
unsatisfied love; Heine's demonstrate that mere love sickness is not
Weltschmerz. The fact is that Heine frequently destroys what would have
been a certain impression of Weltschmerz by forcing upon us the
immediate cause of his distemper,--it may be a real injury, or merely a
passing annoyance. What a strange mixture of acrimonious, sarcastic
protest and Weltschmerz elements we find in the poem "Ruhelechzend"[214]
of which a few stanzas will serve to illustrate. Again he strikes a full
minor chord:
Las bluten deine Wunden, lass
Die Thränen fliessen unaufhaltsam;
Geheime Wollust schwelgt im Schmerz,
Und Weinen ist ein süsser Balsam.
This in practice rather than in theory is what we observe in Lenau,--his
melancholy satisfaction in nursing his grief,--and we have promise of a
poem of genuine Weltschmerz. Even through the second and third stanzas
this feeling is not destroyed, although the terms "Schelm" and "Tölpel"
gently arouse our suspicion:
Des Tages Lärm verhallt, es steigt
Die Nacht herab mit langen Flöhren.
In ihrem Schosse wird kein Schelm,
Kein Tölpel deine Ruhe stören.
But the very next stanza brings the transition from the sublime to the
ridiculous:
Hier bist du sicher vor Musik,
Vor des Pianofortes Folter,
Und vor der grossen Oper Pracht
Und schrecklichem Bravourgepolter.
* * * * *
O Grab, du bist das Paradies
Für pöbelscheue, zarte Ohren--
Der Tod ist gut, doch besser wär's,
Die Mutter hätt' uns nie geboren.
It is scarcely necessary to point out that the specific cause which the
poet confides to us of his "wounds, tears and pains" is ridiculously
unimportant as compared with the conclusion which he draws in the last
two lines.
Evidently then, he does not wish us to take him seriously, nor could we,
if he did. Thus in their very attitude toward the ills and vexations of
life, there appears a most essential difference between Lenau and Heine.
Auerbach aptly remarks: "Spott und Satire verkleinern, Zorn und Hass
vergrössern das Object."[215] And Lenau knew no satire; where Heine
scoffed and ridiculed, he hated and scorned, with a hatred that only
contributed to his own undoing. With Heine the satire's the thing,
whether of himself or of others, and to this he willingly sacrifices the
lofty sentiments of which he is capable. Indeed he frequently introduces
these for no other purpose than to make the laugh or grimace all the
more striking. And with reference to his love affair with Amalie, while
the question as to the reality and depth of his feelings may be left
entirely out of discussion, this much may be safely asserted, that in
comparatively few poems do those feelings find expression in the form of
Weltschmerz. Now there is something essentially vague about Weltschmerz;
it is an atmosphere, a "Stimmung" more or less indefinable, rather than
the statement in lyric form of certain definite grievances with their
particular and definite causes. And that is exactly what we find in
Lenau, even in his love-songs. His love-sorrow is blended with his many
other heart-aches, with his disappointments and regrets, with his
yearning for death. He sings of his pain rather than of its immediate
causes, and the result is an atmosphere of Weltschmerz.
Turning to Heine's later poems, especially to the "Romanzero," we find
that atmosphere much more perceptible. But even here the poet is for the
most part specific, and his method concrete. So for instance in "Der
Dichter Firdusi"[216] in which he tells a story to illustrate his belief
that merit is appreciated and rewarded only after the death of the one
who should have reaped the reward. So also in "Weltlauf,"[217] the first
stanza of which suggests a poetic rendering of Matth. 13:12, "For
whosoever hath, to him shall be given and he shall have more abundance;
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he
hath,"--to which the poet adds a stanza of caustic ironical comment:
Wenn du aber gar nichts hast,
Ach, so lasse dich begraben--
Denn ein Recht zum Leben, Lump,
Haben nur, die etwas haben.
And again, the poem "Lumpentum"[218] presents an ironical eulogy of
flattery. His failure to realize the hopes of his youth is made the
subject of "Verlorne Wünsche"[219] which maintains throughout a strain
of seriousness quite unusual for Heine, and concludes:
Goldne Wünsche! Seifenblasen!
Sie zerrinnen wie mein Leben--
Ach ich liege jetzt am Boden,
Kann mich nimmermehr erheben.
Und Ade! sie sind zerronnen,
Goldne Wünsche, süsses Hoffen!
Ach, zu tötlich war der Faustschlag,
Der mich just ins Herz getroffen.
A number of these lyrics from the Romanzero show very strikingly Heine's
objective treatment of his poems of complaint. Such selections as "Sie
erlischt,"[220] in which he compares his soul to the last flicker of a
lamp in the darkened theater, or "Frau Sorge,"[221] which gives us the
personification of care, represented as a nurse watching by his bedside,
bring his objective method into marked contrast with Hölderlin's
subjective Weltschmerz. The same may be said of his autobiography in
miniature, "Rückschau,"[222] which catalogues the poet's experiences,
pleasant and adverse, with evident sincerity though of course with a
liberal admixture of witty irony. Needless to say there is no real
Weltschmerz discoverable in such a pot pourri as the following:
Die Glieder sind mir rheumatisch gelähmt,
Und meine Seele ist tief beschämt.
* * * * *
Ich ward getränkt mit Bitternissen,
Und grausam von den Wanzen gebissen, etc.
It would scarcely be profitable to attempt to estimate the causes and
development of this self-irony, which plays so important a part in
Heine's poetry. Its possibility lay no doubt in his native mother-wit,
with its genial perception of the incongruous, combined, it must be
admitted, with a relatively low order of self-respect. Its first
incentive he may have found in his unrequited love for Amalie. Had it
been like that of Hölderlin for Diotima, or Lenau for Sophie,
reciprocated though unsatisfied, we could not easily imagine the
ironical tone which pervades most of his love-songs. And so he uses it
as a veil for his chagrin, preferring to laugh and have the world laugh
with him, rather than to weep alone. But the incident in Heine's life
which probably more than any other experience fostered this habit of
making himself the butt of his witty irony was his outward renunciation
of Judaism. Little need be said concerning this, since the details are
so well known. He himself confesses that the step was taken from the
lowest motives, for which he justly hated and despised himself. To Moser
he writes (1825): "Ich weiss nicht, was ich sagen soll, Cohen versichert
mich, Gans predige das Christentum und suche die Kinder Israels zu
bekehren. Thut er dieses aus Ueberzeugung, so ist er ein Narr; thut er
es aus Gleissnerei, so ist er ein Lump. Ich werde zwar nicht aufhören,
Gans zu lieben; dennoch gestehe ich, weit lieber wär's mir gewesen, wenn
ich statt obiger Nachricht erfahren hätte, Gans habe silberne Löffel
gestohlen.... Es wäre mir sehr leid, wenn mein eigenes Getauftsein Dir
in einem günstigen Lichte erscheinen könnte. Ich versichere Dich, wenn
die Gesetze das Stehlen silberner Löffel erlaubt hätten, so würde ich
mich nicht getauft haben."[223] But in addition to the loss of
self-respect came his disappointment and chagrin at the non-success of
his move, since he realized that it was not even bringing him the
material gain for which he had hoped. Instead, he felt himself an object
of contempt among Christians and Jews alike. "Ich bin jetzt bei Christ
und Jude verhasst. Ich bereue sehr, dass ich mich getauft hab'; ich sehe
gar nicht ein, dass es mir seitdem besser gegangen sei; im Gegenteil,
ich habe seitdem nichts als Unglück."[224] He is so unhappy in
consequence of this step that he earnestly desires to leave Germany. "Es
ist aber ganz bestimmt, dass es mich sehnlichst drängt, dem deutschen
Vaterlande Valet zu sagen. Minder die Lust des Wanderns als die Qual
persönlicher Verhältnisse (z. B. der nie abzuwaschende Jude) treibt mich
von hinnen."[225]
In his tragedy "Almansor," written during the years 1820 and 1821,[226]
his deep-rooted antipathy to Christianity finds strong expression
through Almansor, although the countervailing arguments are eloquently
stated by the heroine. Prophetic of the poet's own later experience is
the representation of the hero, who is beguiled by his love for Zuleima
into vowing allegiance to the Christian faith, only to find that the
sacrifice has failed to win for him the object for which it was made. In
the character of Almansor, more than anywhere else, Heine's
"Liebesschmerz" and "Judenschmerz" have combined to produce in him an
inner dissonance which expresses itself in lyric lines of real
Weltschmerz:
Ich bin recht müd
Und krank, und kranker noch als krank, denn ach,
Die allerschlimmste Krankheit ist das Leben;
Und heilen kann sie nur der Tod....[227]
But here too, as in "Ratcliff," such passages are exceptional. In the
main these tragedies are nothing more than vehicles for the poet's
stormy protest, much of it after the Storm and Stress pattern;[228] and
mere protest, however acrimonious, cannot be called Weltschmerz.
Certain it is that during these early years numerous disappointments
other than those of love contributed to produce in the poet a gloomy
state of mind. A reflection of the unhappiness which he had experienced
during his residence in Hamburg is found in many passages in his
correspondence which express his repugnance for the city and its people.
To Immanuel Wohlwill (1823): "Es freut mich, dass es Dir in den Armen
der aimablen Hammonia zu behagen beginnt; mir ist diese Schöne zuwider.
Mich täuscht nicht der goldgestickte Rock, ich weiss, sie trägt ein
schmutziges Hemd auf dem gelben Leibe, und mit den schmelzenden
Liebesseufzern 'Rindfleisch[3] Banko!' sinkt sie an die Brust des
Meistbietenden.... Vielleicht thue ich aber der guten Stadt Hamburg
unrecht; die Stimmung, die mich beherrschte, als ich dort einige Zeit
lebte, war nicht dazu geeignet, mich zu einem unbefangenen Beurteiler zu
machen; mein _inneres_ Leben war brütendes Versinken in den düsteren,
nur von phantastischen Lichtern durchblitzten Schacht der Traumwelt,
mein _äusseres_ Leben war toll, wüst, cynisch, abstossend; mit einem
Worte, ich machte es zum schneidenden Gegensatz meines inneren Lebens,
damit mich dieses nicht durch sein Uebergewicht zerstöre."[229] To Moser
(1823): "Hamburg? sollte ich dort noch so viele Freuden finden können,
als ich schon Schmerzen dort empfand? Dieses ist freilich
unmöglich--"[230] "Hamburg!!! mein Elysium und Tartarus zu gleicher
Zeit! Ort, den ich detestiere und am meisten liebe, wo mich die
abscheulichsten Gefühle martern und we ich mich dennoch
hinwünsche."[231] Another letter to Moser is dated: "Verdammtes Hamburg,
den 14. Dezember, 1825."[232] The following year he writes, in a letter
to Immermann: "Ich verliess Göttingen, suchte in Hamburg ein
Unterkommen, fand aber nichts als Feinde, Verklatschung und
Aerger."[233] And to Varnhagen von Ense (1828): "Nach Hamburg werde ich
nie in diesem Leben zurückkehren; es sind mir Dinge von der äussersten
Bitterkeit dort passiert, sie wären auch nicht zu ertragen gewesen, ohne
den Umstand, dass nur ich sie weiss."[234] To his mother's insistent
pleading he replies (1833): "Aber ich will, wenn Du es durchaus
verlangst, diesen Sommer auf acht Tage nach Hamburg kommen, nach dem
schändlichen Neste, wo ich meinen Feinden den Triumph gönnen soll, mich
wiederzusehen und mit Beleidigungen überhäufen zu können."[235]
His several endeavors to establish himself on a firm material footing in
life had failed,--he had sought for a place in a Berlin high school,
then entertained the idea of practising law in Hamburg, then aspired to
a professorship in Munich, but without success. But more than by all
these reverses, more even than by the circumstances and consequences of
his Hebrew parentage, was the poet wrought up by the family strife over
the payment of his pension, which followed upon the death of his uncle
in December, 1844, and which lasted for several years. From the very
beginning he had had much intermittent annoyance through his dealings
with his sporadically generous uncle Salomon Heine. As early as 1823
Heine writes to Moser: "Auch weiss ich, dass mein Oheim, der sich hier
so gemein zeigt, zu andern Zeiten die Generosität selbst ist; aber es
ist doch in mir der Vorsatz aufgekommen, alles anzuwenden, um mich so
bald als möglich von der Güte meines Oheims loszureissen. Jetzt habe ich
ihn freilich noch nötig, und wie knickerig auch die Unterstützung ist,
die er mir zufliessen lässt, so kann ich dieselbe nicht entbehren."[236]
And again in the same year: "Es ist fatal, dass bei mir der ganze Mensch
durch das Budget regiert wird. Auf meine Grundsätze hat Geldmangel oder
Ueberfluss nicht den mindesten Einfluss, aber desto mehr auf meine
Handlungen. Ja, grosser Moser, der H. Heine ist sehr klein."[237] And
when, after his uncle's demise, the heirs of the latter threatened to
cut off the poet's pension, he writes to Campe[238] and to Detmold,[239]
in a frenzy of wrath and excitement, and shows what he is really capable
of under pressure of circumstances. Perhaps it is only fair to suppose
that his long years of suffering, both from his physical condition and
from the unscrupulous attacks of his enemies, had had a corroding effect
upon his moral sensibilities. In his request to Campe to act as mediator
in the disagreeable affair he says: "Sie können alle Schuld des
Missverständnisses auf mich schieben, die Grossmut der Familie
hervorstreichen, kurz, mich sacrificiren." And all this to be submitted
to the public in print! "Ich gestehe Ihnen heute offen, ich habe gar
keine Eitelkeit in der Weise andrer Menschen, mir liegt am Ende gar
nichts an der Meinung des Publikums; mir ist nur eins wichtig, die
Befriedigung meines inneren Willens, die Selbstachtung meiner Seele."
But how he was able to preserve his self-respect, and at the same time
be willing to employ any and all means to attain his end, perhaps no one
less unscrupulous than he could comprehend. He intimates that he has
decided upon threats and public intimidation as being probably more
effective than a servile attitude, which, he allows us to infer, he
would be quite willing to take if advisable. "Das Beste muss hier die
Presse thun zur Intimidation, und die ersten Kotwürfe auf Karl Heine und
namentlich auf Adolf Halle werden schon wirken. Die Leute sind an Dreck
nicht gewöhnt, während ich ganze Mistkarren vertragen kann, ja diese,
wie auf Blumenbeeten, nur mein Gedeihen zeitigen."[240]
It is quite evident that this long drawn out quarrel aroused all that
was mean and vindictive, all that was immoral in the man, and that the
nervous excitement thereby induced had a most baneful effect upon his
entire nature, physical as well as mental. In a number of poems he has
given expression to his anger and has masterfully cursed his
adversaries, for example, "Es gab den Dolch in deine Hand,"[241] "Sie
küssten mich mit ihren falschen Lippen,"[242] and several following
ones. But here, too, his fancy is altogether too busy with the suitable
characterization of his enemies and the invention of adequate tortures
for them, to leave room for even a suggestion of the Weltschmerz which
we might expect to result from such painful emotions.
It is scarcely necessary to theorize as to what would have been the
attitude and conduct of a sensitive Hölderlin or a proud-spirited Lenau
in a similar position. Lenau is too proud to protest, preferring to
suffer. Heine is too vain to appear as a sufferer, so he meets
adversity, not in a spirit of admirable courage, but in a spirit of
bravado. In giving lyric utterance to his resentment, Heine is conscious
that the world is looking on, and so he indulges, even in the expression
of his Weltschmerz, in a vain ostentation which stands in marked
contrast to Lenau's dignified pride. He is quite right when he says in a
letter to his friend Moser: "Ich bin nicht gross genug, um Erniedrigung
zu tragen."[243]
As an illustration of the vain display which he makes of his sadness,
his poem "Der Traurige" may be quoted in part:
Allen thut es weh in Herzen,
Die den bleichen Knaben sehn,
Dem die Leiden, dem die Schmerzen
Auf's Gesicht geschrieben stehn.[244]
A similar impression is made by the concluding numbers of the
Intermezzo, "Die alten, bösen Lieder."[245] And here again the
comparison,--even if merely as to size,--of a coffin with the
"Heidelberger Fass" is most incongruous, to say the least, and tends
very effectually to destroy the serious sentiment which the poem, with
less definite exaggerations, might have conveyed. Similarly overdone is
his poetic preface to the "Rabbi" sent to his friend Moser:[246]
Brich aus in lauten Klagen
Du düstres Märtyrerlied,
Das ich so lang getragen
Im flammenstillen Gemüt!
Es dringt in alle Ohren,
Und durch die Ohren ins Herz;
Ich habe gewaltig beschworen
Den tausendjährigen Schmerz.
Es weinen dir Grossen und Kleinen,
Sogar die kalten Herrn,
Die Frauen und Blumen weinen,
Es weinen am Himmel die Stern.
It is not necessary, even if it were to the point, to adduce further
evidence of Heine's vanity as expressed in his prose writings, or in
poems such as the much-quoted
Nennt man die besten Namen,
So wird auch der meine genannt.[247]
It cannot be denied that this element of vanity, of showiness, only
serves to emphasize our impression of the unreality of much of Heine's
Weltschmerz.
With the reference to this element of ostentation in Heine's Weltschmerz
there is suggested at once the question of the Byronic pose, and of
Byron's influence in general upon the German poet. On the general
relationship between the two poets much has been written,[248] so that
we may confine ourselves here to the consideration of certain points of
resemblance in their Weltschmerz.
Julian Schmidt names Byron as the constellation which ruled the heavens
during the period from the Napoleonic wars to the "Völkerfrühling,"
1848, as the meteor upon which at that time the eyes of all Europe were
fixed. Certainly the English poet could not have wished for a more
auspicious introduction and endorsation in Germany, if he had needed
such, than that which was given him by Goethe himself, whose subsequent
tribute in his Euphorion in the second part of "Faust" is one of Byron's
most splendid memorials. The enthusiasm which Lord Byron aroused in
Germany is attested by Goethe: "Im Jahre 1816, also einige Jahre nach
dem Erscheinen des ersten Gesanges des 'Childe Harold,' trat englische
Poesie und Literatur vor allen andern in den Vordergrund. Lord Byrons
Gedichte, je mehr man sich mit den Eigenheiten dieses ausserordentlichen
Geistes bekannt machte, gewannen immer grössere Teilnahme, so dass
Männer und Frauen, Mägdlein und Junggesellen fast aller Deutschheit und
Nationalität zu vergessen schienen."[249]
It is important to note that this first period of unrestrained Byron
enthusiasm coincides with the formative and impressionable years of
Heine's youth. In his first book of poems, published in 1821, he
included translations from Byron, in reviewing which Immermann pointed
out[250] that while Heine's poems showed a superficial resemblance to
those of Byron, the temperament of the former was far removed from the
sinister scorn of the English lord, that it was in fact much more
cheerful and enamored of life.[251] There is plenty of evidence,
however, to show that it was exceedingly gratifying to the young Heine
to have his name associated with that of Byron; and although he had no
enthusiasm for Byron's philhellenism, he was pleased to write, June 25,
1824, on hearing of the Englishman's death: "Der Todesfall Byrons hat
mich übrigens sehr bewegt. Es war der einzige Mensch, mit dem ich mich
verwandt fühlte, und wir mögen uns wohl in manchen Dingen geglichen
haben; scherze nur darüber, soviel Du willst. Ich las ihn selten seit
einigen Jahren; man geht lieber um mit Menschen, deren Charakter von dem
unsrigen verschieden ist. Ich bin aber mit Byron immer behaglich
umgegangen, wie mit einem völlig gleichen Spiesskameraden. Mit
Shakespeare kann ich gar nicht behaglich umgehen, ich fühle nur zu
sehr, dass ich nicht seinesgleichen bin, er ist der allgewaltige
Minister, und ich bin ein blosser Hofrat, und es ist mir, als ob er mich
jeden Augenblick absetzen könnte."[252] Significant is the allusion in
this same letter to a proposition which the writer seems to have made to
his friend in a previous one: " ... ich darf Dir Dein Versprechen in
Hinsicht des 'Morgenblattes' durchaus nicht erlassen. Robert besorgt
gern den Aufsatz. Byron ist jetzt tot, und ein Wort über ihn ist jetzt
passend. Vergiss es nicht; Du thust mir einen sehr grossen
Gefallen."[253] We shall probably not be far astray in assuming that the
"Gefallen" was to have been the advertising of Heine as the natural
successor of Byron in European literature. Three months later he once
more urges the request: "Auch fände ich es noch immer angemessen, ja
jetzt mehr als je, dass Du Dich über Byron und Komp. vernehmen
liessest."[254]
But it was not long before Heine, with an increasing sense of literary
independence, reinforced no doubt by the reaction of public opinion
against Byron, and influenced also by his friend Immermann's judgment in
particular,[255] was no longer willing to be considered a disciple of
the English master. Several unmistakable references betoken this change
of heart, for example, the following from his "Nordsee" III (1826):
"Wahrlich in diesem Augenblicke fühle ich sehr lebhaft, dass ich kein
Nachbeter, oder, besser gesagt, Nachfrevler, Byrons bin, mein Blut ist
nicht so spleenisch schwarz, meine Bitterkeit kömmt nur aus den
Galläpfeln meiner Dinte, und wenn Gift in mir ist, so ist es doch nur
Gegengift, Gegengift wider jene Schlangen, die im Schutte der alten Dome
und Burgen so bedrohlich lauern."[256] Byron, instead of being regarded
as "kindred spirit" and "cousin," is now characterized as a ruthless
destroyer of venerable forms, injuring the most sacred flowers of life
with his melodious poison, or as a mad harlequin who thrusts the steel
into his heart, in order that he may teasingly bespatter ladies and
gentlemen with the black spurting blood. In remarkable contrast with his
former views, he now writes: "Von allen grossen Schriftstellern ist
Byron just derjenige, dessen Lektüre mich am unleidigsten berührt."
Perhaps the most interesting passage in this connection, because so
thoroughly characteristic of the Byronic pose in Heine, occurs in the
"Bäder von Lucca": "Lieber Leser, gehörst du vielleicht zu jenen frommen
Vögeln, die da einstimmen in das Lied von Byronischer Zerrissenheit, das
mir schon seit zehn Jahren in allen Weisen vorgepfiffen und
vorgezwitschert worden ...? Ach, teurer Leser, wenn du über jene
Zerrissenheit klagen willst, so beklage lieber, dass die Welt selbst
mitten entzwei gerissen ist. Denn da das Herz des Dichters der
Mittelpunkt der Welt ist, so musste es wohl in jetziger Zeit jämmerlich
zerrissen werden. Wer von seinem Herzen rühmt, es sei ganz geblieben,
der gesteht nur, dass er ein prosaisches, weitabgelegenes Winkelherz
hat. Durch das meinige ging aber der grosse Weltriss, und eben deswegen
weiss ich, dass die grossen Götter mich vor vielen andern hoch begnadigt
und des Dichtermärtyrtums würdig geachtet haben."[257] Here while
vociferously disclaiming all kinship or sympathy with Byron, he pays him
the flattering compliment of imitation. Probably nowhere in Byron could
we find a more pompous display of egoism under the guise of Weltschmerz.
Byron's Weltschmerz, like Heine's, had its first provocation in a purely
personal experience. "To a Lady"[258] and "Remembrance"[259] both give
expression in passionate terms to the poet's disappointed love for Mary
Chaworth, the parallel in Heine's case being his infatuation for his
cousin Amalie. The necessity for defending himself against a public
opinion actively hostile to his earliest poems,[260] largely diverted
Byron from this first painful theme, so that from this time on until he
left England, he is almost incessantly engaged in a bitter warfare
against the injustice of critics and of society. To this second period
Heine's development also shows a general resemblance. Thus far both
poets exhibit a purely egoistic type of Weltschmerz. But with his
separation from his wife in 1816, and his final departure from England,
that of Byron enters upon a third period and becomes cosmic. Ostracized
by English society, his relations with it finally severed, he disdains
to defend himself further against its criticism, and espouses the cause
of unhappy humanity. No longer his own personal woes, but rather those
of the nations of the earth are nearest his heart:
What are our woes and sufferance?...
................................ Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.[261]
And in contemplating the ruins of the Palatine Hill:
..................... Upon such a shrine
What are our petty griefs? Let me not number mine.[262]
Here we have the essential difference between these two types of
Weltschmerz. Heine does not, like Byron, make this transition from the
personal to the universal stage. Instead of becoming cosmic in his
Weltschmerz, he remains for ever egoistic.
Numerous quotations might be adduced from the writings of both poets,
which would seem to indicate that Heine had borrowed many of his ideas
and even some forms of expression from Byron. Except in the case of the
most literal correspondence, this is generally a very unsafe deduction.
Such passages as a rule prove nothing more than a similarity, possibly
quite independent, in the trend of their pessimistic thought. Compare
for example Byron's lines in the poem "And wilt thou weep when I am
low?"
Oh lady! blessed be that tear--
It falls for one who cannot weep;
Such precious drops are doubly dear
To those whose eyes no tear may steep,[263]
with Heine's stanza:
Seit ich sie verloren hab',
Schafft' ich auch das Weinen ab;
Fast vor Weh das Herz mir bricht,
Aber weinen kann ich nicht.[264]
Or again, "Childe Harold," IV, 136:
From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few--
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,[265]
with the first lines of Heine's ninth sonnet:
Ich möchte weinen, doch ich kann es nicht;
Ich möcht' mich rüstig in die Höhe heben,
Doch kann ich's nicht; am Boden muss ich kleben,
Umkrächzt, umzischt von eklem Wurmgezücht,[266]
a thought which in one of his letters (1823) he paraphrases thus: "Der
Gedanke an Dich, liebe Schwester, muss mich zuweilen aufrecht halten,
wenn die grosse Masse mit ihrem dummen Hass und ihrer ekelhaften Liebe
mich niederdrückt."[267] There can be no doubt that Heine for a time
studied diligently to imitate this fashionable model, pose, irony and
all. So diligently perhaps, that he himself was sometimes unable to
distinglish between imitation and reality. So at least it would appear
from No. 44 of "Die Heimkehr:"
Ach Gott! im Scherz und unbewusst
Sprach ich, was ich gefühlet:
Ich hab mit dem Tod in der eignen Brust
Den sterbenden Fechter gespielet.[268]
In summing up our impressions of the two poets we shall scarcely escape
the feeling that while Byron is pleased to display his troubles and his
heart-aches before the curious gaze of the world, they are at least in
the main real troubles and sincere heart-aches, whereas Heine, on the
other hand, does a large business in Weltschmerz on a very small
capital.
Nor is Heine the man more convincing as to his sincerity than Heine the
poet. No more striking instance of this fact could perhaps be found than
his letter to Laube on hearing the news of Immermann's death.[269]
"Gestern Abend erfuhr ich durch das _Journal des Debats_ ganz zufällig
den Tod von Immermann. Ich habe die ganze Nacht durch geweint. Welch ein
Unglück!... Welch einen grossen Dichter haben wir Deutschen verloren,
ohne ihn jemals recht gekannt zu haben! Wir, ich meine Deutschland, die
alte Rabenmutter! Und nicht nur ein grosser Dichter war er, sondern auch
brav und ehrlich, und deshalb liebte ich ihn. Ich liege ganz darnieder
vor Kummer." But scarcely has he turned the page with a short
intervening paragraph, when he continues: "Ich bin, sonderbar genug,
sehr guter Laune," and concludes the letter with some small talk. Now if
he was sincere, as we may assume he was, in the asseveration of his
grief at the death of his friend, then either that grief must have been
anything but profound, or we have the clearest sort of evidence of the
poet's incapacity for serious feeling of more than momentary duration.
It is safe to assert that Heine never set himself a high artistic task,
and remained true to his purpose until the task was accomplished. In
other words, Heine betrays a lack of will-energy along artistic lines,
which in the case of Hölderlin and Lenau was more evident in their
attitude toward the practical things of life.
But the fact that Heine never created a monumental literary work of
enduring worth is not attributable solely to a fickleness of artistic
purpose or lack of will-energy. We find its explanation rather in the
poet's own statement: "Die Poesie ist am Ende doch nur eine schöne
Nebensache."[270] and to this principle, consciously or unconsciously,
Heine steadily adhered. Certain it is that he took a much lower view of
his art than did Hölderlin or Lenau. Hence we find him ever ready to
degrade his muse by making it the vehicle for immoral thoughts and
abominable calumnies.[271]
The question of Heine's patriotism has always been a much-debated one,
and must doubtless remain so. But whatever opinion we may hold in regard
to his real attitude and feelings toward the land of his birth, this we
shall have to admit, that there are exceedingly few traces of
Weltschmerz arising from this source. Genuine feeling is expressed in
the two-stanza poem "Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland"[272] and
also in "Lebensfahrt,"[273] although this latter poem illustrates a
characteristic of so many of his writings, namely that he himself is
their central figure. It is the sublime egoism which characterizes Heine
and all his works. No wonder, then, that one of his few
"Freiheitslieder" refers to his own personal liberty.[274] For the
failings of his countrymen he is ever ready with scathing satire,[275]
he grieves over his separation from them only when he thinks of his
mother;[276] and in regard to the future of Germany he is for the most
part sceptical.[277] In a word, Heine's lyric utterances in regard to
his fatherland are of so mixed a character, that altogether aside from
the question of the sincerity of his feeling toward the land of his
birth, certainly none but the blindest partisan would be able to
discover more than a negligible quantity of Weltschmerz directly
attributable to this influence.
Heine's conscience is at best a doubtful quantity. Where Byron with a
sincere sense and acknowledgment of his guilt writes:
"My injuries came down on those who loved me--
On those whom I best loved: . . . . . .
But my embrace was fatal."[278]
Heine sees it in quite another light: "War ich doch selber jetzt das
lebende Gesetz der Moral und der Quell alles Rechtes und aller Befugnis;
die anrüchigsten Magdalenen wurden purifiziert durch die läuternde und
sühnende Macht meiner Liebesflammen,"[279] a moral aberration which he
attributes to an imperfect interpretation of the difficult philosophy of
Hegel. If further evidence were necessary to show the perversity of
Heine's moral sense, the following paragraph from a letter to Varnhagen
would suffice, in its way perhaps as remarkable a contribution to the
theory of ethics as has ever been penned: "In Deutschland ist man noch
nicht so weit, zu begreifen, dass ein Mann, der das Edelste durch Wort
und That befördern will, sich oft einige kleine Lumpigkeiten, sei es aus
Spass oder aus Vorteil, zu schulden kommen lassen darf, wenn er nur
durch diese Lumpigkeiten (d. h. Handlungen, die im Grunde ignobel sind,)
der grossen Idee seines Lebens nichts schadet, ja dass diese
Lumpigkeiten oft sogar lobenswert sind, wenn sie uns in den Stand
setzen, der grossen Idee unsres Lebens desto würdiger zu dienen."[280]
Scarcely less remarkable is the poet's confession to his friend Moser
that he has a rubber soul: "Ich kann Dir das nicht oft genug
wiederholen, damit Du mich nicht misst nach dem Massstabe Deiner eigenen
grossen Seele. Die meinige ist Gummi elastic, zieht sich oft ins
Unendliche und verschrumpft oft ins Winzige. Aber eine Seele habe ich
doch. I am positive, I have a soul, so gut wie Sterne. Das genüge Dir.
Liebe mich um der wunderlichen Sorte Gefühls willen, die sich bei mir
ausspricht in Thorheit und Weisheit, in Güte und Schlechtigkeit. Liebe
mich, weil es Dir nun mal so einfällt, nicht, weil Du mich der Liebe
wert hältst.... Ich hatte einen Polen zum Freund, für den ich mich bis
zu Tod besoffen hätte, oder, besser gesagt, für den ich mich hätte
totschlagen lassen, und für den ich mich noch totschlagen liesse, und
der Kerl taugte für keinen Pfennig, und war venerisch, und hatte die
schlechtesten Grundsätze--aber er hatte einen Kehllaut, mit welchem er
auf so wunderliche Weise das Wort 'Was?' sprechen konnte, dass ich in
diesem Augenblick weinen und lachen muss, wenn ich daran denke."[281]
Taking him all in all then, Heine is not a serious personality, a fact
which we need to keep constantly in mind in judging almost any and every
side of his nature.
As a matter of fact, Heine's Weltschmerz, like his whole personality, is
of so complex and contradictory a nature, that it would be a hopeless
undertaking to attempt to weigh each contributing factor and estimate
exactly the amount of its influence. All the elements which have been
briefly noted in the foregoing pages, and probably many minor ones which
have not been mentioned, combined to produce in him that "Zerrissenheit"
which finds such frequent expression in his writings. But it must be
remembered that this "Zerrissenheit" does not always express itself as
Weltschmerz. In Heine it often appears simply as pugnacity; and where
wit, satire, self-irony or even base calumny succeeds in covering up all
traces of the poet's pathos we are no longer justified on sentimental or
sympathetic grounds in taking it for granted. In looking for pathos in
Heine's verse we shall not have to look in vain, it is true, but we
shall find much less than his popular reputation as a poet of
Weltschmerz would lead us to expect; and we frequently gain the
impression that his disposition and his personal experiences are after
all largely the excuse for rather than the occasion of his Weltschmerz.
Plümacher maintains: "Der Weltschmerz ist entweder die absolute
Passivität, und die Klage seine einzige Aeusserung, oder aber er
verpufft seine Kräfte in rein subjectivistischen, eudämonischen
Anstrengungen,"[282]--a characterization which certainly holds good in
the case of Lenau and Hölderlin respectively. Hölderlin, although in a
visionary, idealistic way, remains, en in his Weltschmerz, altruistic
and constructive. Lenau is passive, while Heine is solely egoistic and
destructive.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 181: "Studien und Wandertage," Frauenfeld, Huber, 1884.]
[Footnote 182: Vol. II, p. 265.]
[Footnote 183: "Französische Maler. Gemälde-Ausstellung in Paris, 1831."
Heines Sämmtliche Werke, mit Einleitung von E. Elster. Leipzig,
Bibliogr. Inst., 1890. (Hereafter quoted as "Werke.") Vol. IV, p. 61.]
[Footnote 184: "Selina, oder über die Unsterblichkeit," II, p. 132.]
[Footnote 185: "Heinrich Heines Krankheit und Leidensgeschichte." Eine
kritische Studie, von S. Rahmer, Dr. Med., Berlin, 1901.]
[Footnote 186: "Das Liebesleben Hölderlin's, Lenaus, Heines." Berlin,
1901.]
[Footnote 187: Rahmer, op. cit. p. 45.]
[Footnote 188: Rahmer, p. 46.]
[Footnote 189: Werke, Vol. III, p. 194.]
[Footnote 190: Karpeles ed. Werke (2. Aufl.) VIII, p. 441.]
[Footnote 191: _Ibid._, p. 378.]
[Footnote 192: _Ibid._, p. 520.]
[Footnote 193: Karpeles ed. Werke, IX, p. 371.]
[Footnote 194: _Ibid._, p. 374.]
[Footnote 195: _Ibid._, p. 459 ff.]
[Footnote 196: _Ibid._, p. 513.]
[Footnote 197: _Ibid._, p. 475.]
[Footnote 198: Werke, Vol. I, p. 72, Nos. 18 and 19.]
[Footnote 199: Werke, Vol. I, p. 123, No. 62.]
[Footnote 200: Lenaus Werke, Vol. I, p. 257 ff.]
[Footnote 201: Werke, Vol. I, p. 37.]
[Footnote 202: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 11.]
[Footnote 203: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 97.]
[Footnote 204: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 177.]
[Footnote 205: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 197.]
[Footnote 206: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 408.]
[Footnote 207: _Ibid._, p. 468.]
[Footnote 208: Karpeles ed. Werke, Vol. II, p. 31.]
[Footnote 209: A few other examples of this same coloring in Heine's
lyrics are to be found in the "Neuer Frühling," Nos. 40, 41 and 43.]
[Footnote 210: Werke, Vol. II, p. 89, No. 55, "O Gott, wie hässlich
bitter ist das Sterben!" etc.]
[Footnote 211: Engel: "Heine's Memoiren," p. 133.]
[Footnote 212: Werke, Vol. I, p. 87.]
[Footnote 213: Werke, Vol. I, p. 134.]
[Footnote 214: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 102.]
[Footnote 215: "Nicolaus Lenau. Erinnerung und Betrachtung." Wien,
1876.]
[Footnote 216: Werke, Vol. I, p. 367f.]
[Footnote 217: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 415.]
[Footnote 218: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 48.]
[Footnote 219: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 42 f.]
[Footnote 220: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 428.]
[Footnote 221: Werke, Vol. I, p. 424.]
[Footnote 222: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 416.]
[Footnote 223: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 473.]
[Footnote 224: Cf. Heine's letter to Moser, Jan. 9, 1826, in Karpeles'
Autob. p. 191.]
[Footnote 225: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 491.]
[Footnote 226: Cf. Werke, Einleitung, Vol. II, p. 241.]
[Footnote 227: Werke, Vol. II, p. 293.]
[Footnote 228: Cf. Almansor's Speech, Werke, Vol. II, p. 288 f.]
[Footnote 229: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 363.]
[Footnote 230: _Ibid._, p. 384.]
[Footnote 231: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 391.]
[Footnote 232: _Ibid._, p. 472.]
[Footnote 233: _Ibid._, p. 503.]
[Footnote 234: _Ibid._, p. 540.]
[Footnote 235: _Ibid._, IX, p. 25.]
[Footnote 236: _Ibid._, VIII, p. 392.]
[Footnote 237: Karpeles ed. VIII, p. 396.]
[Footnote 238: _Ibid._, IX, p. 308 ff.]
[Footnote 239: _Ibid._, p. 316.]
[Footnote 240: Letter to Detmold, Jan. 9, 1845, Werke (Karpeles ed.),
Vol. IX, p. 310.]
[Footnote 241: Werke, Vol. II, p. 104.]
[Footnote 242: _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 105.]
[Footnote 243: Cf. Karpeles' Autob. p. 164.]
[Footnote 244: Werke, Vol. I, p. 35.]
[Footnote 245: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 92.]
[Footnote 246: Werke, Vol. II, p. 164.]
[Footnote 247: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 102.]
[Footnote 248: One of the most exhaustive monographs on the subject is
that of Felix Melchior (Cf. bibliography, _infra_ p. 90), to whom I am
indebted for several of the parallels suggested.]
[Footnote 249: Weimar Ausg. I Abt. Bd. 36, p. 128.]
[Footnote 250: In the _Rheinisch-westfälischer Anzeiger_, May 31, 1822,
No. 23.]
[Footnote 251: Cf. Strodtmann, "H. Heines Leben und Werke," 3. ed.,
Hamburg, 1884. Vol. I, p. 200.]
[Footnote 252: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 434.]
[Footnote 253: _Ibid._, p. 433.]
[Footnote 254: _Ibid._, p. 441.]
[Footnote 255: In discussing the first volume of Heine's "Reisebilder,"
Immermann had said: "Man hat Heinen beim Beginn seiner dichterischen
Laufbahn mit Byron vergleichen wollen. Diese Vergleichung scheint nicht
zu passen. Der Brite bringt mit ungeheuren Mitteln nur massige poetische
Effekte hervor, während Heine eine Anlage zeigt, sich künstlerisch zu
begrenzen und den Stoff gänzlich in die Form zu absorbieren."
(_Jahrbücher f. wissenschaftliche Kritik_, 1827, No. 97, p. 767.)]
[Footnote 256: Werke, III, p. 116.]
[Footnote 257: Werke, Vol. Ill, p. 304.]
[Footnote 258: Byron's Works, Coleridge ed., London and New York, 1898.
Vol. I, p. 189 ff.]
[Footnote 259: _Ibid._, p. 211.]
[Footnote 260: Cf. the poems "To a Knot of Ungenerous Critics," "English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and others.]
[Footnote 261: Coleridge ed., Vol. II, p. 388 f.]
[Footnote 262: _Ibid._, p. 406.]
[Footnote 263: Coleridge ed., Vol. I, p. 266 f.]
[Footnote 264: Werke, Vol. I, p. 78.]
[Footnote 265: Coleridge ed., Vol. II, p. 429.]
[Footnote 266: Werke, Vol. I, p. 61.]
[Footnote 267: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 411.]
[Footnote 268: Werke, I, p. 117.]
[Footnote 269: Werke, Karpeles ed. Vol. IX, p. 162 f.]
[Footnote 270: Letter to Immermann, Werke (Karpeles ed.), Vol. VIII, p.
354.]
[Footnote 271: Cf. his vulgar prognostication of Germany's future, Kaput
XXVI of the "Wintermärchen," Werke, Vol. II, p. 488 ff.]
[Footnote 272: Werke, Vol. I, p. 263.]
[Footnote 273: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 308.]
[Footnote 274: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 301, "Adam der erste."]
[Footnote 275: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 316, "Zur Beruhigung."]
[Footnote 276: _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 320, "Nachtgedanken."]
[Footnote 277: Cf. _supra_, note 1.]
[Footnote 278: "Manfred," Coleridge ed., IV, p. 101.]
[Footnote 279: Werke VI, p. 48.]
[Footnote 280: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 541.]
[Footnote 281: Karpeles ed. Werke, VIII, p. 399.]
[Footnote 282: Plümacher: "Der Pessimismus." Heidelberg, 1888, p. 103.]
CHAPTER V
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
[Note TN1: Correction of the original, which has
'Menchen' here.]
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