Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature – 3. The Reaction in France

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Георг Брандес. Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature – 3. The Reaction in France

INTRODUCTION

I. THE PIONEERS OF ROMANTICISM

II. HÖLDERLIN

III. A. W. SCHLEGEL

IV. TIECK AND JEAN PAUL

V. SOCIAL ENDEAVOURS OF THE ROMANTICISTS: LUCINDE

VI. ROMANTIC PURPOSELESSNESS

VII "LUCINDE" IN REAL LIFE

VIII. SCHLEIERMACHER'S LETTERS

IX. WACKENRODER: ROMANTICISM AND MUSIC

X. ATTITUDE OF ROMANTICISM TO ART AND NATURE

XI. ROMANTIC DUPLICATION AND PSYCHOLOGY

XII. ROMANTIC SOUL. NOVALIS

XIII. LONGING – "THE BLUE FLOWER"

XIV. ARNIM AND BRENTANO

XV. MYSTICISM IN THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

XVI. ROMANTIC LITERATURE AND POLITICS

XVII. ROMANTIC POLITICIANS

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The task of giving a connected account of the German Romantic School is, for a Dane, an arduous and disheartening one. In the first place, the subject is overwhelmingly vast; in the second, it has been treated again and again by German writers; and, lastly, these writers, in their division of labour, have entered so learnedly into every detail, that it is impossible for a foreigner, one, moreover, to whom the sources are not always accessible, to compete with them in exhaustive knowledge. From their childhood they have been familiar with a literature with which he first makes acquaintance at an age when assimilation, in any quantity, has become a much more difficult process. What the foreigner must rely on is, partly the decision with which he takes up and maintains his personal standpoint, partly the possibility that he may display qualities which are not characteristic of the native author. Such a quality in the case in point is the artistic faculty, the faculty, I mean, of representation, of externalisation. The German nature is so intense and profound that this faculty is comparatively rare. The foreigner has, moreover, this advantage over the native, that it is easier for him to detect the mark of race – that in the German author which stamps him as a German. The German critic is too apt to consider "German" synonymous with "human being," for the reason that the human beings he deals with are almost always Germans. The foreigner is struck by characteristics which are overlooked by the native, sometimes because he is so accustomed to them, more frequently because he himself possesses them.

There are many works to be criticised and classified, many personalities to describe. My aim will be to present these personalities and works in as firm and sharp outline as possible, and, without giving undue attention to detail, to throw light upon the whole in such a manner that its principal features will stand out and arrest the eye. I shall endeavour, on the one hand, to treat the history of literature as humanly as possible, to go as deep down as I can, to seize upon the remotest, innermost psychological movements which prepared for and produced the various literary phenomena; and on the other hand, I shall try to present the result in as plastic and tangible a form as possible. If I can succeed in giving shape, clear and accurate, to the hidden feeling, the idea, which everywhere underlies the literary phenomenon, my task will be accomplished. By preference, I shall always, when possible, embody the abstract in the personal.

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In this he was only following in the footsteps of his master, Schelling. Schelling, who, in marked contrast to Fichte with his clear doctrine of the Ego, dwells upon the mysterious nature of the mind, and bases not only philosophy, but also art and religion, upon the perception of genius, the so-called "intellectual intuition," displays both in his doctrine and in his want of method the arbitrariness, the lawlessness, which is the kernel of Romanticism. As early as 1802, in his Bruno, he used the significant expression and future catchword, "Christian philosophy," though he still maintained that, in genuine religious value, the Bible is not to be compared with the sacred books of India – a theory which even Görres champions in the early stage of his literary career. Having, like Novalis, at Tieck's instigation, made a close study of Jakob Böhme and the other mystics, Schelling began to philosophise mystically on the subject of "Nature in God," an expression appropriated by Martensen in his Spekulative Dogmatik. But when, shortly afterwards, a patent of nobility was conferred on him (as professor at the University of Munich), and he was made President of the Academy of Science in Catholic and clerical Bavaria, the famous "Philosophy of Revelation" (Offenbarungsphilosophie) commenced to germinate in his mind. Soon the transformation was complete; the fiery enthusiast had become a courtier, the prophet a charlatan. With his mysteries, his announcements of a marvellous science, "which had hitherto been considered impossible," his refusal to print his wisdom, to do anything but communicate it verbally, and even then not in its entirety, he qualified himself for being called, after Hegel's death, to Berlin, to lend a helping hand to State religion in the "Christian-Germanic" police-governed Prussia of the day, and to teach a State philosophy, for which, as he himself said, the only suitable name is Christology. Here it was that the young generation, the Hegelians of the Left, fell upon him and tore his mystic cobweb into a thousand pieces.

Yet Schelling is the least irrational of the Romantic philosophers. He is vehemently accused of heresy by Franz Baader, the reincarnated Jakob Böhme, the object of Kierkegaard's admiration, who reproaches him with setting the Trinity upon a logical balance-pole, and, still worse, with daring to deny the existence of a personal devil. The utterances of the others are in keeping with this. Schubert writes The Symbolism of Dreams– was not the dream the ideal of Romanticism? – occupies himself in all seriousness with interpreting them, happy in his persuasion that clairvoyance and visions are the highest sources of knowledge. The vision-seer of Prevorst, whom Strauss, characteristically enough, begins his public career by exposing, plays an important part in those days. Then there is Görres, who at the time of the great Revolution was "inspired to triumphal song by the fall of Rome and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire," and who afterwards took an active and honourable part in rousing German patriotic spirit during the struggle against Napoleon; this same Görres becomes the author of Christian Mysticism (a book which Kierkegaard read with shudders of awe), revels in the blood of martyrs, gloats over the agonies and ecstasies of the saints, enumerates the different aureoles, nail-prints, and wounds in the side by which they are distinguished, and prostrates himself in the dust, he, the old Jacobin, before the one true Catholic Church, chanting the praises of the Holy Alliance. To these add the politicians: Adam Müller, who, as Gotschall has aptly said, pursues in politics the quest of Novalis's "blue flower," who would fain fuse State, Science, Church, and Stage into one marvellous unit; Haller, who concealed his conversion to Catholicism in order to retain his appointments, and who, in his Restauration der Staatswissenschaften (Revival of the Science of Statesmanship), bases this science upon theocracy; Leo (scathingly criticised by Ruge), who, in the same spirit, inveighs against the humanity of the age and its reluctance to shed the blood of Radicals; and Stahl, who, in his Philosophy of Law, compares marriage to the relation between Christ and the Church, the family to the Trinity, and the earthly right of succession to man's right to the heavenly inheritance. Taking all this together, one feels as if Romanticism ended in a sort of witches' Sabbath, in which the philosophers play the part of the old crones, amidst the thunders of the obscurantists, the insane yells of the mystics, and the shouts of the politicians for temporal and ecclesiastical despotism, while theology and theosophy fall upon the sciences and suffocate them with their caresses.

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