"Allen Gewalten
Zum Trutz sich erhalten,
Nimmer sich beugen …"
 

– GOETHE.

"Philosophiren ist dephlegmatisiren, ist vivissciren."

– NOVALIS.

INTRODUCTION

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.

First and foremost, therefore, I everywhere trace the connection between literature and life. This is at once proved by the fact that, whereas earlier Danish literary controversies (that between Heiberg and Hauch, for example, or even the famous one between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger) were kept entirely within the domain of literature and dealt exclusively with literary principles, the controversy aroused by the first volume of this work has entailed, quite as much from the nature of the work as from the irrationality of its opponents, the discussion of a multitude of moral, social, and religious questions. The Danish reaction, feeling itself to be akin to the one I am about to depict and unmask, has attempted to suppress the movement which it recognised to be antagonistic to itself – but so far with little prospect of success. A French proverb says: Nul prince n'a tué son successeur.

When, however, the connection between literature and life is thus emphasised, the delineations and interpretations of men and their books by no means produce what we may call drawing-room history of literature. I go down to the foundations of real life, and show how the emotions which find their expression in literature arise in the human heart. And this same human heart is no still pool, no idyllic mountain lake. It is an ocean, with submarine vegetation and terrible inhabitants. Drawing-room history of literature, like drawing-room poetry, sees in human life a drawing-room, a decorated ball-room – the furniture and the people alike polished, the brilliant illumination excluding all possibility of dark corners. Let those who choose to do so look at things thus; it is not my point of view. Just as the botanist must handle nettles as well as roses, so the student of literature must accustom himself to look, with the unflinching gaze of the naturalist or the physician, upon all the forms taken by human nature, in their diversity and their inward affinity. It makes the plant neither more nor less interesting that it smells sweet or stings; but the dispassionate interest of the botanist is often accompanied by the purely human pleasure in the beauty of the flower.

As I follow the more important literary movements from country to country, studying their psychology, I attempt to condense the fluid material by showing how, from time to time, it crystallises into one or other definite and intelligible type. The attempt is attended with extraordinary difficulty in this particular period of German literature, from the fact that the chief characteristic of the period is an absence of distinctly typical forms. This literature is not plastic; it is musical. French Romanticism produces clearly defined figures; the ideal of German Romanticism is not a figure, but a melody, not definite form, but infinite aspiration. Is it obliged to name the object of its longing? It designates it by such terms as "ein geheimes Wort," "eine blaue Blume," "der Zauber der Waldeinsamkeit" (a mystic word – a blue flower – the magic of the lonely woods). These expressions are, however, definitions of moods, and each mood has a corresponding psychological condition, my task is to trace back each mood, emotion, or longing to the group of psychological conditions to which it belongs. This group in combination constitutes a soul; and such a soul, with strongly marked individuality, represents in literature the many who were unable to depict their own character, but who recognised it when thus placed before them. I may possibly succeed in proving that the type does not escape us because the author may have chosen to paint landscape after landscape in place of delineating characteristic personalities, or because he confounds literature with music to the extent of at last entitling his poems simply Allegro or Rondo; but that, on the contrary, the distinctly peculiar qualities of these landscapes and the character of this word-music are symptomatic of a psychological condition which may be determined with considerable accuracy.

In the general introduction to this work I have sketched the plan which I have proposed to myself. It is my intention to describe the first great literary movement of the century, the germinating and growing reaction, first elucidating its nature, then following it to its climax. Afterwards I shall show how this reaction was met by a breeze of liberalism blowing from the eighteenth century, which swells into a gale and sweeps away all opposition. Not that the liberal views of the nineteenth century are ever identical with those of the eighteenth, or that its literary forms or scientific ideas ever bear the eighteenth century stamp. Neither Voltaire, nor Rousseau, nor Diderot, neither Lessing nor Schiller, neither Hume nor Godwin, rise from the dead; but they are one and all avenged upon their enemies.

Regarded as a whole, German Romanticism is reaction. Nevertheless, as an intellectual, poetico-philosophical reaction, it contains many germs of new development, unmistakable productions of that spirit of progress which, by remoulding the old, creates the new, and by altering boundaries gains territory.

The older Romanticists begin, without exception, as the apostles of "enlightenment." They introduce a new tone into German poetry, give their works a new colour, and, in addition to this, revive both the spirit and the substance of the old fairy-tale, Volkslied, and legend. They exercise at first a fertilising influence upon German science; research in the domains of history, ethnography, and jurisprudence, the study of German antiquity, Indian and Greek-Latin philology, and the systems and dreams of the Naturphilosophie all receive their first impulse from Romanticism. They widened the emotional range of German poetry, though the emotions to which they gave expression were more frequently morbid than healthy. As critics, they originally, and with success, aimed at enlarging the spiritual horizon. In their social capacity they vowed undying hatred to all dead conventionality in the relations between the sexes. The best among them in their youth laboured ardently for the intensification of that spiritual life which is based upon a belief in the supernatural. In politics, when not indifferent, they generally began as very theoretical republicans; who, however, in spite of their cosmopolitanism, strove to elevate and strengthen German patriotism.

Unfortunately, their pursuit of all these worthy aims ended in comparative failure. Of all that the German Romanticists produced, little will endure – some masterly translations by A. W. Schlegel, a few of Tieck's productions, a handful of Hardenberg's and another of Eichendorff's lyrics, some of Friedrich Schlegel's essays, a few of Arnim's and Brentano's smaller works, a select number of Hoffmann's tales, and some very remarkable dramas and tales from the pen of that eccentric but real genius, Heinrich von Kleist. The rest of the life-work of the Romanticists has disappeared from the memory of the present generation. Looking back on it from this distance, most of their endeavour seems to have ended in smoke. In the matter of language, with their intangible imagery, their misuse of words in expressing the strange, weird, and mysterious, their archaisms, and their determination to be unintelligible to the ordinary reader, they rather diminished than enriched the poetic vocabulary, rather corrupted than improved literary style. In the domain of poetry, Romanticism ended in hysterical piety and vapouring. In the social domain it occupied itself with only one question, that of the relations between the sexes; and its ideas on this subject were, for the most part, so abnormal and morbidly unhealthy, that most of its passionate blows were dealt in the air. In dealing them, it was not humanity at large that the Romanticists had in view, but a few favoured, aristocratic, artistic natures. In religious matters, these men, whose moral and poetical theories were at first so revolutionary, bowed their necks to the yoke the moment they saw it. And in politics it was they who directed the proceedings of the Congress of Vienna and prepared its manifestoes, abolishing liberty of thought in the interval between a religious festival in St. Stephen's and an oyster supper with Fanny Elsler.

I shall touch but seldom and briefly upon Danish literature, only now and again piercing in the canvas of the panorama I am unrolling a hole through which the situation in Denmark may be seen. Not that I forget or lose sight of Danish literature. On the contrary, it is ever present with me. Whilst trying to present to my readers the inner history of a foreign literature, I am all the time making indirect contributions to the history of our own. I am painting the background which is required to throw its characteristics into relief. I am working at the foundation upon which, according to my conviction, the history of modern Danish literature rests. My method may be indirect, but it is the more thorough for that. I should like, however, in a few words, to indicate the general conclusion to which a comparison between Danish and foreign literature at this period has led me.

The relative positions of Germany and Denmark may be defined as follows: German literature is at this period comparatively original in its aims and its productions; Danish literature either continues the working out of a peculiarly Scandinavian vein, or builds upon German foundations. The Danish authors have, as a rule, read and assimilated the German; the German authors have neither read nor been in any way influenced by the Danes. Steffens, through whom we receive the impetus from Germany, is the devoted disciple of Schelling. Witness the following passage from one of his letters to that philosopher: "I am your pupil, absolutely and entirely your pupil. All that I produce was originally yours. This is no passing feeling; it is my firm conviction that such is the case, and I do not think the less of myself for it. Therefore, when once I have produced a really great work which I should gladly call mine, I shall, as soon as it has been recognised, publicly, enthusiastically, proclaim you to be my teacher, and hand over to you my laurel wreath."¹

In German literature there is more life, in the corresponding Danish literature more art. It is Germany which produces, which unearths, the material. That literature of which Romanticism is the first development, lives and moves and revels in intense emotions, struggles with problems, creates forms which it dashes to pieces again. Danish literature takes German material and ideas, instinct with life, and often succeeds in moulding them more artistically, giving them clearer expression than their German producers do. (Note, for example, the case of Tieck and Heiberg.) The Danes apply and remodel, or they embody kindred ideas in more favourable and more plastic material, such, or instance, as that provided by the Scandinavian mythology and legends.

The result, as I have elsewhere shown, is that Romanticism acquired more lucidity and clearer contours on Danish soil. It became less a thing of the night; it ventured, veiled, into the light of the sun. It felt that it had come to a sedate, sober-minded people, a people who were not yet quite sure that moonlight was not unnatural and sentimental. It came up from the deep mine shafts from which Novalis had been the first to conjure it, and, with Oehlenschläger's Vaulundur, hammered on the mountain-side till the mountain burst open and laid all its treasures bare to the light of day. It felt that it had come to another, a more serene and idyllic clime; it shook off all its weirdness; its thick, shapeless mists condensed into slender river nymphs; it forgot the Harz and the Blocksberg, and took up its abode one beautiful Midsummer Eve in the Deer Park near Copenhagen.²

Aladdin is a finer and more intelligible literary work than Tieck's Kaiser Oktavianus, but Oehlenschläger could not deny that Aladdin would never have been written if Oktavianus had not been in existence. Heiberg's Julespög og Nytaarslöjer is to the full as witty as Tieck's Aristophanic satires, but the whole idea – the play within the play, the literary satire, and the blending of the sentimental with the ironical – is borrowed from Tieck, and, what is worse, is only comprehensible from Tieck's standpoint. In short, there is in Oehlenschläger, Hauch, and Heiberg more form than in Novalis, Tieck, and Fr. Schlegel, but less substance – that is to say, less direct connection with real life. German literature has too often formed the connecting link. We Danes have too often refused to occupy ourselves, in literature, with the great problems of life, have simply dismissed them when we could not succeed in giving them correct literary form.