Carlyle 359.

CHAPTER VI.

SURVEY OF GERMAN LITERATURE.

THERE never was a solitary Great Man. We may single one man from out the crowd, and place him on a pedestal; but, if we look attentively, we shall perceive others surrounding him also deserving pedestals, though none perhaps so eminent as he. Shakespeare, who lets few things escape his glance, has noted this in Julius Cæsar:

• When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?'

The reason is, that whenever the confluence of circumstances calls for great energies, the energies are ready to the call. Men are equal to their destiny, and, as Schiller finely says, grow with the circle wherein they move.'

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'Es wächst der Mensch mit seinem grosserem Kreise.'

Eminent as Goethe stood above his contemporaries, he did not stand alone; around him, on his first splendid entrance into the arena, were men who had already fixed the fluctuating reverence of the public - Lessing, Herder, Klopstock, Wieland, and many lesser names. These, and their works, I might presuppose the reader to be more or less familiar with; and, consulting my own ease rather than his profit, might pass on with the briefest indication.

But, in truth, it is a great mistake to presuppose such knowledge; only a few readers will possess it; the majority would by no means be grateful for a compliment which left them in darkness, and it is for the sake of these that the present chapter is written. It is a chapter, not a volume, and must therefore only touch upon leading traits. For readers who desire more detail, there is no lack of voluminous works.

Germany is a large and heterogeneous country. It is washed by the waves of the Baltic, German and Adriatic Seas; it lies between the woods of Poland and the marshes of Holland, between the Alpine ranges and the Danish plains; it shakes hands with Scandinavia, with Italy, and with France, and thus presents an area of many peoples united by a common language and a certain community of thought. As the land is, so is the literature: a vast heterogeneous mass, not easily reducible to any one distinct formula. To select a characteristic from such varieties, and say that is the spirit of German literature, must, on the face of it, be an arbitrary proceeding; whatever we select will assuredly be liable to numerous counterstatements. Nevertheless with a full consciousness of what there is of arbitrary in the attempt, it will be necessary to make one here, if only for the sake of brevity. Let us then resolutely overlook all varieties, and fix our attention solely on the dominant type — that which has persisted through history, and is never wholly obscured by the temporary tendencies of the time. This dominant and persistent characteristic, which may be taken as the spirit of German literature, is Idealism a much-abused word, which I am forced to use for want of a better. By Idealism is here understood what is often expressed by the words Spiritualism and Mysticism: the tendency to see in Nature a deeper and higher meaning than she carries in

her face; a tendency to disregard Matter or Form, as the mere body, the rude hieroglyph of Spirit; a tendency which is also characterized by the word subjective.

This Idealism is pre-eminently German. It is also essentially Christian, and is thus diametrically opposed to the tendency of the Pagan mind. A comparison of Greek and Christian Art will serve to bring both characteristics into distinct relief.

Burwys

Neythes

212

The famous Tannhäuser legend will serve us an illustration of the Christian tendency. Tannhäuser, the German knight and minstrel, is lured by Venus into her enchanted domain on the Wartburg, where she and her nymphs live a voluptuous and thoroughly Pagan life, hateful to all Christians, as a life of mere sin and sensuousness. He passes some time with her in voluptuous oblivion of C the world. Growing weary, and eager for change, he once more enters the world he had left, but finds himself under the universal ban. The mere fact of his having been in the Venusberg is tantamount to his having formally sold himself to the Evil One. Hunted by his former companions like a wild beast, and shunned by every Christian, he repairs repentant to Rome, to seek absolution from the Pope. But large as the power of absolution is, there are sins so tremendous that no absolution can remove them; and when the Pope hears what has been the sin of Tannhäuser, he refuses pardon, and drives him forth to wander, like another Cain, homeless on the earth.

Such was the German conception of Venus, the mother of Love. She was no longer the Goddess Aphrodite, but a lovely Devil luring the souls of men to everlasting perdition. Nay, Ritter Tannhäuser himself, even when under her spell, knows she is not a Goddess, but tells her plainly, 'Oh Venus, my lovely wife, you know you are but a devil.'

'O, Venus, schöne Fraue mein,

Ihr seyd eine Teufelinne!'

Nothing can be more unlike the Greek conception. In the story of Ulysses and Calypso, we have the same idea of a warrior passing years with a charmer; but when he quits her island no one thinks of shunning him; and he narrates his long residence there to Alcinous and Areta without raising one wrinkle of shocked respectability. Nay, so unlike to any Greek conception is this Tannhäuser story, that in the Legend of Phryne we have Beauty upheld as something sacred and awful. Phryne, while living at Athens in splendor, and wooed by men of rank and genius, was accused, like Aspasia, before the popular court of justice, of impiety. The judges were about to condemn her, when her defender, the orator Hyperides, bethought him of a bold stroke: he suddenly tore aside the garment which concealed the most beautiful of bosoms, and then a deisidaimonia, i. e. a religious shudder of awe,' so says an ancient writer, 'seized the judges at the sight of this unveiled beauty. They believed that they should sin against Aphrodite herself, if by their verdict they destroyed a form which the goddess had consecrated as her earthly priestess, in thus endowing it with such wondrous beauty. They declared the accused free.'

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These two typical legends aptly illustrate the two opposite modes of regarding Beauty. The one people thought that Beauty was ideal perfection-the culmination of Nature in the human form. The other people thought that Beauty was an accursed lure the cunning instrument of the Evil One. The Crotonians, we are told by Heroditus, raised an altar to Philippus, because he was beautiful.' There is no altar the Christian would have smitten to the ground with deeper scorn. This difference arises

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from the antagonism of their religious conceptions. The Pagan deified nature, the Christian diabolized nature. Where the active fancy of the Greek filled woods, streams, valleys and rocks with hamadryads, naiads, gods who lived a free and godlike life; the imagination of the Christian saw supernatural powers indeed, but powers of darkness, instruments where with Satan tempted and perplexed mankind. The early priests, who brought Christianity to the German shores, found there a mythology which as elsewhere they pronounced to belong to an Olympus of Hell. They never threw doubts on the existence of the supernatural beings, they simply declared them to be the agents of Satan.* And they were consistent. Their creed divided the powers of the world into a Good Principle and an Evil Principle, which were represented by Spirit and Matter. It is clear, therefore, that to give Satan the dominion of Matter, was to make the body hateful, and the senses tempters to a Pleasure which was Sin. The Christian reaction against the Pagan materialism was thus thoroughly spiritual; the reaction was triumphant over an enervated society, ready for a change. Whatever was of this world was pronounced worthless ; this life had only value as a preparation for the life to come. How widely opposed such a conception was to that of the Greeks need not be insisted on; it is enough to allude to the complaint of Achilles in Hades, that he would rather be a laborer on earth, toiling in the fields, than be king of Shades. This life was to the Greek what the life to come was to the Christian. Greek Art, therefore, is thoroughly realistic. But a great error is committed by those who say that Greek Art is distinguished from Christian Art by the absence of symbolism. It had

*Grimm: Deutsche Mythologie, cap. xxvi.