PART II.

ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.

CHAPTER I.

WHY ARE THE FRENCH UNJUST TO GERMAN LITERATURE ?

I MIGHT answer this question in a very simple manner, by saying that very few people in France are acquainted with the German language, and that its beauties, above all in poetry, cannot be translated into French. The Teutonic languages ere easily translated into each other; it is the same with the Latin languages; but these cannot give a just idea of German poetry. Music composed for one instrument is not executed with success on another of a different sort. Besides, German literature has scarcely existed in all its originality more than forty or fifty years; and the French, for the last twenty years, have been so absorbed in political events, that all their literary studies have been suspended.

It would, however, be treating the question very superficially, merely to say that the French are unjust to German literature because they are ignorant of it: they have, it is true, strong prejudices against it; but these prejudices arise from a confused sentiment of the wide difference, both in the manner of seeing and feeling, which exists between the two nations.

In Germany there is no standard of taste on any one subject; all is independent, all is individual. They judge of a work by the impression it makes, and never by any rule, because no rule is generally admitted; every author is at liberty VOL. I.-7

to form a new sphere for himself. In France, the greater number of readers will neither be affected, nor even amused, at the expense of their literary conscience: their scruple therein finds a refuge. A German author forms his own public ; in France the public commands authors. As in France there are more people of cultivated minds than there are in Germany, the public exacts much more; while the German writers, eminently raised above their judges, govern instead of receiving the law from them. From thence it happens that their writers are scarcely ever improved by criticism: the impatience of the readers, or that of the spectators, never obliges them to shorten their works, and they scarcely ever stop in proper time, because an author, being seldom weary of his own conceptions, can be informed only by others when they cease to be interesting. From self-love, the French think and live in the opinions of others; and we perceive in the greater part of their works that their principal end is not the subject they treat, but the effect they produce. The French writers are always in the midst of society, even when they are composing; for they never lose sight of the opinion, raillery, and taste then in fashion, or, in other words, the literary authority under which we live at such or such a time.

The first requisite in writing is a strong and lively manner of feeling. Persons who study in others what they ought to experience themselves, and what they are permitted to say, with respect to literature have really no existence. Doubtless, our writers of genius (and what nation possesses more of these than France?) have subjected themselves only to those ties which were not prejudicial to their originality; but we must compare the two countries en masse, and at the present time, to know from whence arises their difficulty of understanding each other.

In France they scarcely ever read a work but to furnish matter for conversation; in Germany, where people live almost alone, the work itself must supply the place of company; and what mental society can we form with a book, which should itself be only the echo of society! In the silence of retreat,

nothing seems more melancholy than the spirit of the world. The solitary man needs an internal emotion which shall compensate for the want of exterior excitement.

Perspicuity is in France one of the first merits of a writer; for the first object of a reader is to give himself no trouble, but to catch, by running over a few pages in the morning, what will enable him to shine in conversation in the evening. The Germans, on the contrary, know that perspicuity can never have more than a relative merit: a book is clear according to the subject and according to the reader. Montesquieu cannot be so easily understood as Voltaire, and nevertheless he is as clear as the object of his meditations will permit. Without doubt, clearness should accompany depth of thought; but those who confine themselves only to the graces of wit and the play on words, are much more sure of being understood. They have nothing to do with mystery,-why then should they be obscure? The Germans, through an opposite defect, take pleasure in darkness; they often wrap in obscurity what was before clear, rather than follow the beaten. road; they have such a disgust for common ideas, that when they find themselves obliged to recur to them, they surround them with abstract metaphysics, which give them an air of novelty till they are found out. German writers are under no restraint with their readers; their works being received and commented apon as oracles, they may envelop them with as many clouds. as they like: patience is never wanting to draw these clouds aside; but it is necessary, at length, to discover a divinity; for what the Germans can least support, is to see their expectations deceived: their efforts and their perseverance render some great conclusion needful. If no new or strong thoughts are discovered in a book, it is soor disdained; and if all is pardoned in behalf of superior talent, they scarcely know how to appreciate the various kinds of address displayed in endeavoring to supply the want of it.

The prose of the Germans is often too much neglected. They attach more importance to style in France than in Gernany; it is a natural consequence of the interest excited by

words, and the value they must acquire in a country where society is the first object. Every man with a little understanding is a judge of the justness or suitableness of such and such a phrase, while it requires much attention and study to take in the whole compass and connection of a book. Besides, pleasantries find expressions much sooner than thoughts, and in all that depends on words only, we laugh before we reflect.

It must be agreed, nevertheless, that beauty of style is not merely an external advantage, for true sentiments almost always inspire the most noble and just expressions; and if we are allowed to be indulgent to the style of a philosophical writing, we ought not to be so to that of a literary composition in the sphere of the fine arts, the form in which a subject is presented to us is as essential to the mind as the subject itself.

The dramatic art offers a striking example of the distinct faculties of the two nations. All that relates to action, to intrigue, to the interest of events, is a thousand times better combined, a thousand times better conceived among the French; all that depends on the development of the impressions of the heart, on the secret storms of strong passion, is much better investigated among the Germans.

In order to attain the highest point of perfection in either country, it would be necessary for the Frenchman to be religious, and the German more a man of the world. Piety opposes itself to levity of mind, which is the defect and the grace of the French nation; the knowledge of men, and of society, would give to the Germans that taste and facility in literature which is at present wanting to them. The writers of the two countries are unjust to each other: the French, nevertheless, are more guilty in this respect than the Germans they judge without knowing the subject, and examine after they have decided: the Germans are more impartial. Extensive knowledge presents to us so many different ways of be holding the same object, that it imparts to the mind the spirit of toleration which springs from universality.

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The French would, however, gain more by comprehending German genius, than the Germans would in subjecting themselves to the good taste of the French. In our days, whenever a little foreign leaven has been allowed to mix itself with French regularity, the French have themselves applauded it with delight. J. J. Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Chateaubriand, etc., are, in some of their works, even unknown to themselves, of the German school; that is to say, they draw their talent only out of the internal sources of the soul. But if German writers were to be disciplined according to the prohibitory laws of French literature, they would not know how to steer amid the quicksands that would be pointed out to them; they would regret the open sea, and their minds would be much more disturbed than enlightened. It does not follow that they ought to hazard all, and that they would do wrong. in sometimes imposing limits on themselves; but it is of consequence to them to be placed according to their own modes of perception. In order to induce them to adopt certain necessary restrictions, we must recur to the principle of those restrictions without employing the authority of ridicule, which is always highly offensive to them.

Men of genius in all countries are formed to understand and esteem each other; but the vulgar class of writers and readers, whether German or French, bring to our recollection that fable of La Fontaine, where the stork cannot eat in the dish, nor the fox in the bottle. The most complete contrast is perceived between minds developed in solitude, and those formed by society. Impressions from external objects, and the inward recollections of the soul, the knowledge of men and abstract ideas, action and theory, yield conclusions totally opposite to each pther. The literature, the arts, the philosophy, the religion of these two nations, attest this difference; and the eternal boundary of the Rhine separates two intellectual regions, which, no less than the two countries, are foreign to each other.