Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 6

German literature is, in short, one that possesses the typical moments of development which mark all literatures, and which Wilhelm Scherer was the first to call to our notice: that is to say, it is a complicated organism in which the most varied tendencies cross one another, the most dissimilar generations of writers meet together, and the most remarkable events occur in the most unforeseen manner.

If we should now try to get a closer view of the last and by far the most important factor of literature, namely, the individual writers themselves, this difficulty in obtaining a general view of the whole, this working of the different parts against one another, this pulling away from one another, presents itself more clearly to us here than anywhere else. The attempt to classify the development of our literature into distinct groups according to the personalities which compose them has been frequently made, since I, in spite of all the difficulties and dangers of such a hazardous enterprise, first undertook, in my German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, to give an historical and complete presentation of a literature which had as yet scarcely become historic. I can here merely refer in passing to my own efforts and to those of Bartels, Biese, Riemann, and Soergel—to name only these; for in compliance with the purpose of this introduction we must confine ourselves to giving a general comprehensive outline—although it would be easy to improve upon it if one went more into detail.

It seems to me under these conditions that the groundlines of the development of our literature from 1700–1900 would be best impressed upon us by comparing the order of its evolution with that of the most "normal" poetic genius who ever lived—namely, with that of Goethe; and thereby we should prove its development to be an essentially normal one.

Like all "natural geniuses" Goethe begins as an imitator, dependent upon others; for the poet also must first learn to speak and to walk. The earliest literary effort of his which we possess is the poem On Christ's Descent into Hell, which naturally seemed strange enough to Goethe when this long forgotten first printed specimen of his literary productiveness was laid before him again after he had grown old. In this poem traditional phrases are repeated without the addition of anything new and original; conventional feelings are expressed, usual methods are employed; all this, however, not without a certain moderation of expression constituting a first sign of the otherwise still completely concealed poetic individuality.

Such is the character that the world of virtuosos also bears about the year 1700. The poems of Rudolf von Canitz and Johann von Besser are, though in entirely different spheres, just the same kind of first attempts of an imperfect art anxiously following foreign models as Goethe's first Christian poem—though truly with the tremendous difference that they represented the utmost that Frenchified courtly art could ever attain to; while Goethe's poem, on the contrary, was the immature sprig cut away before its time from the stem of a tree soon to stand in the full glory of its bloom.

When now in the Leipzig period the young student discovers the poet within him, he first does so in the customary way: he recognizes the ability on his part to handle the language of the contemporary poets, and also perhaps to imbue it with his own personal feelings. His poems inserted in letters, which make a show of the elegant pretence of improvisation, but in reality already display a great dexterity in rhyming and in the use of imagery, may be compared to Hagedorn's poetry; but at the same time Goethe is trying to attain the serious tone of the "Pindarian" odes, just as Haller's stilted scholarly poetry conquered a place beside Hagedorn's Epicurean philosophy of life. The Book of Annette (1767) as a whole, however, presents the first attempt on the part of Goethe to reach a certain completeness in his treatment of the poetic theme. In all his subsequent collections of poems the same attempt is made, it is true with increasingly rigid interpretation of the idea of "completeness," and in so far one is reminded in this connection of the theoretic intentions and performances of Gottsched.

The "New Songs" (Neue Lieder) of 1770 give a lop-sided exhibition of the style which Leipzig and the times acts. Two great acts follow: in 1773 comes Götz; in 1774, Werther. And with Götz the great "subjects of humanity" seize possession of Goethe's poetry, as they had taken possession of the poetry of Germany with Lessing—as shown by his whole work up to Nathan: for Lessing, the strongest adversary of mere "estheticism," really accomplished what those Anacreontic poets had merely wished to do—or seemed to wish—and brought literature into close touch with life. The Sorrows of Werther lays hold of the subjective problems of the age just as the drama of liberty lays hold of the objective; in them a typical character of the times is analyzed not without zealously making use of models—both innovations of Wieland! But now indeed comes the most important of all, that which in its greatness represents something completely new, although in detail Goethe had here all his teachers to teach him—Lessing who had written Faust-scenes, and Wieland who was so fond of placing the two souls of man side by side, and Herder who had an absolutely Faust-like nature; so that people have tried, with the exaggeration of the theorist, to hold up before us the whole Faust as a kind of dramatized portrayal of Herder! And with Faust Goethe in German literature has reached his own time—"For his century bears his name!"

But in the period which followed the predominating position of the classical writers we once more find the same parallelism of development. Again with Goethe's dilettante beginnings we compare a school of weak imitators, which unhappily was protected by Goethe himself (and also by Schiller in his literary organs); again with the Strassburg period and its Storm and Stress we compare Romanticism, which is characterized by its German nationalism and its antique tendencies, which is sentimental and philosophical, critical and programmatical like the time of Götz, which latter surely must have had a strong effect on men like Tieck and Arnim. And out of the sentiment for his country, which, in Goethe's whole literary career, is peculiar only to the poetry of the Strassburg period, tendencies develop like those which manifest themselves in the literature of the Wars of Liberation, of the Swabian School, in the older poetry of political conflict—in short, like all those tendencies which we connect with Ludwig Uhland's name.

Goethe's literary satires and poems for special occasions are a prelude to the purely literary existence and the belligerent spirit of men like Platen and Immermann, who both, as it were by accident, found their way into the open of national poesy. The self-absorption in Werther, the delving after new poetical experiences and mediums of expression; the method of expression hovering between form and illusory improvisation—all this we find again in the strongest individualists, in Heine, in Annette von Droste, in Lenau. The Weimar period, however, when the poet by means of a great and severe self-discipline trains himself to the point of rigidity in order to become the instrument of his art—that period is, with Tasso, paving the way for the school of Grillparzer, while that infinite deepening of the poetic calling is a preparation for Otto Ludwig, Richard Wagner, and Friedrich Hebbel. The contemporary novel in the style of Wilhelm Meister is revived by the Young Germans, above all by Gutzkow, in the same way that tendencies found in Nathan and in Götz are brought out again in Gutzkow's and in Heinrich Laube's dramas, so rich in allusions. The national spirit of which Egmont is full also fills the novels of Willibald Alexis and Berthold Auerbach. Finally those works, besides Tasso, which we are wont to consider the crowning achievements of the Weimar period, above all, Iphigenia, have permanently served as models of the new, and in their way classical, "antiques"—for the Munich School, for the Geibels and the Heyses. But we must also remember Mörike and Stifter, and their absorption in the fullness of the inner life, which none of them could attain to without somewhat stunting the growth of life's realities—Hebbel perceived this clearly enough not only in Stifter but in Goethe himself. Above all, however, this whole epoch of the "intellectual poets" may, in a certain sense, be called the Italian Journey of German literature. Like Goethe in the years 1787–1788, the German muse in this period only feels entirely at home in Italy, or at least in the South; in her own country she feels misnamed.

Now let us consider Goethe after he had settled down in Weimar for the second time. Scientific work seems for a while to have entirely replaced poetic activity, as for a moment the scientific prose of Ranke and Helmholtz came near to being of more consequence for the German language than most of what was produced at the same time by so-called poetry. Then the Campaign in Champagne (1792), and the new employment of his time with political problems, constitutes for Goethe a temporary phase that may be compared with that recapturing of history by political-historical writers like Freytag and Treitschke, in the same way that Hermann and Dorothea (1796), in which an old historical anecdote of the time of the expulsion of the Protestants from Salzburg is transplanted to the time of the French Revolution, may be compared with the historical "Novellen" of Riehl, Scheffel, and C.F. Meyer. Goethe's ballads (1797–1798) maintain the tradition that was to be given new life by Fontane, Strachwitz, and C.F. Meyer. Goethe's later novels with their didactic tendencies, and the inclination to interpolate "Novellen" and diaries, lead up to Gottfried Keller, Wilhelm Raabe and again to Fontane. The table-songs and other convivial poetry of Goethe's old age are taken up again by Scheffel; Goethe's "Novellen" themselves were continued by all those eminent writers whom we have already named. The Divan, with its bent toward immutable relations, prepares the way for the new lyric, until finally, with the second part of Faust, mythical world-poetry and symbolism complete the circle, just as the cycle of German literature finishes with Nietzsche, Stefan George, Spitteler and Hofmannsthal. At the same time new forces are starting to form the new cycle, or, to speak like Goethe, the newest spiral: Hauptmann, Frenssen, Ricarda Huch, Enrica von Handel, to name only these. And how many others have we not previously left unnamed!

But all this has not been merely to exercise our ingenuity. By drawing this parallel, which is naturally only to be taken approximately, we have intended to make clear the comforting probability that, in spite of all the exaggerating, narrowing down, and forcing to which it has been obliged to submit, our modern and most recent German literature is essentially a healthy literature. That, in spite of all deviation caused by influential theorists—of the Storm and Stress, of the Romantic School, of the period of Goethe's old age, of the epigonean or naturalistic criticism, or by the dazzling phenomena of foreign countries—nevertheless in the essentials it obeys its own inner laws. That in spite of all which in the present stage of our literature may create a painful or confusing impression, we have no cause to doubt that a new and powerful upward development will take place, and no cause either to underrate the literature of our own day! It is richer in great, and what is perhaps more important, in serious talents than any other contemporary literature. No other can show such wealth of material, no other such abundance of interesting and, in part, entirely new productions. We do not say this in order to disparage others who in some ways were, only a short time ago, so far superior to us—as were the French in surety of form, the Scandinavians in greatness of talents, the Russians in originality, the English in cultivation of the general public; but we are inspired to utter it by the hopeful joy which every one must feel who, in the contemplation of our modern lyric poetry, our novels, dramas, epic and didactic poetry, does not allow himself to be blinded by prejudice or offended vanity. A great literature such as we possessed about 1800 we of a certainty do not have to-day. A more hopeful chaos or one more rich in fertile seeds we have not possessed since the days of Romanticism. It is surely worth while to study this literature, and in all its twists and turns to admire the heliotropism of the German ideal and the importance which our German literature has won as a mediator, an experimenter, and a model for that world-literature, the outline of which the prophetic eye of the greatest German poet was the first to discern, and his hand, equally expert in scientific and poetic creation, the first to describe.