Part 31
Political verse, of which there had been occasional specimens among the work of Platen and Lenau, Uhland and Heine, now concentrates and crystallises itself into a separate species of poetry, a separate form of art. Political song of every variety is heard throughout the land. It is a time of growth; men of talent come to the surface in crowds--Hoffmann and Herwegh, Dingelstedt and Prutz, Freiligrath and Max Waldau, Karl Beck and Mofitz Hartmann--such a rich and fragant bloom as had never been seen in this domain before. Old Romanticists expressed their contempt for prose (_i.e._ political) poetry, dogmatic æsthetes declared these poets to be possessed of rhetoric and not of lyric talent; but all to no purpose; the very number of them, and the way in which they spontaneously fell into position as a group, showed that they had the very best, the only unchallengeable reason for coming into existence, namely, that they could not help it, that the spirit of the times was making its voice heard through them; and soon they also proved that they possessed the one and only right to exist, for they were able to hold their ground, they took their position as literary men, and gained the popular ear.
They had had a single forerunner in the Thirties, the above-mentioned Austrian poet, Alexander Auersperg. His verse was imposing, somewhat overloaded with imagery, at times wanting in taste; nevertheless it had the true ring, and his pathos was genuine. Joseph II. is Auersperg's hero, and it is from the "enlightenment" standpoint that he regards that political liberty which he so eagerly desires. It is the power of the priesthood that specially arouses his wrath; but he distinguishes between _Pfaffen_ and _Priester_, attacks the worthless and sings the praises of the high-minded among the clergy. Upon lines like:
"Stoss in's Horn, Herold des Krieges: Zu den Waffen, zu den Waffen! Kampf und Krieg der argen Horde heuchlerischer, dummer Pfaffen!"[1]
follow others which extol the virtues of the really saintly priests. Still we feel that in his opinion more of the former than of the latter are to be found in his own day. He regards it as one of the signs of the times that the fat, animal priest has been succeeded by the lean, intelligent, ambitious one:
_Die Dicken und die Dünnen._
"Fünfzig Jahre sind's, da riefen unsere Aeltern zu den Waffen, Krieg und Kampf den dicken, kugelrunden, feisten Pfaffen! Auch in Waffen stehn wir Enkel; jetzt doch muss die Lösung sein: Krieg und Kampf den dünnen, magern, spindelhagern Pfäffelein!"[2]
In spirited verse the courageous poet attacked now Metternich, now the detective police, now the censorship. His poems display a frank, vigorous spirit of opposition, no hatred, no wild resentment; one feels that they are animated by anticipation of a glorious future and enthusiasm for the great men of the past. But Auersperg's plastic power is slight; he too often loses himself in a maze of allegory. The best of the political poetry of the Forties is, both intellectually and artistically, much superior to his.
About a year after his famous journey, from the effects of which he had completely recovered, Georg Herwegh published a second volume of _Gedichte eines Lebendigen_ ("Poems of a Living Man"), in which some new and valuable qualities are combined with those characterising the first. There is more confidence and more fire, and both enthusiasms and animosities are less vague. We have fewer illusions, and a clearer understanding of ends and means; no more appeals to a king to lead the onward march of his people, or to God to give freedom and happiness to all the nations of the earth. Frederick William IV. had extinguished Herwegh's faith in princes, and Ludwig Feuerbach his faith in God. But we gain the impression that the dawning light in men's minds has broadened into the light of day.
In the old dawn-songs, which Shakespeare has imitated in _Romeo and Juliet_, the young girl always tries to keep her lover with her by declaring that it is not sunlight but moonlight that he sees, not the lark but the nightingale that he hears. This idea is cleverly reversed in the poem _Morgenzuruf_ ("Cry of the Morning"):
"Die Lerche war's, nicht die Nachtigall, Die eben am Himmel geschlagen: Schon schwingt er sich auf, der Sonnenball, Vom Winde des Morgens getragen. Der Tag, der Tag ist erwacht! Die Nacht, Die Nacht soll blutig verenden. Heraus wer an's ewige Licht noch glaubt, Ihr Schläfer, die Rosen der Liebe vom Haupt, Und ein flammendes Schwert um die Lenden!"[3]
_Unglückliche Liebe_ ("Unhappy Love") is an epigram pointed against kings:
"Nicht an den Königen liegt's--die Könige lieben die Freiheit, Aber die Freiheit liebt leider die Könige nicht."[4]
The tone of Herwegh's previous volume, even in its apparently irreligious utterances, had been theistic. On the adjuration to tear the crosses from the graves and use them as swords, follows the line: "God forgives the deed ye do." But in this new volume we find a poem in which Feuerbach's praises are sung because he has attacked the doctrine of immortality, and a Song of the Heathen, which is more daring in its mockery than any similar poem of Heine's:
"Die Heiden--'s ist doch Schade um solch Ingenium. Sie hiessen Vier gerade und nahmen Fünf für krumm. Auch hatt' die Jungfernschaft ein End, sobald die Magd ein Kind gebar, Dieweil das neue Testament noch nicht erfunden war."
And, unlike Auersperg, who makes a distinction between the good and the bad priest, Herwegh holds the whole brotherhood in derision, mocks at Catholic and Protestant, shorn and unshorn, in the witty, untranslatable epigram:
"Ob sie katholisch geschoren, ob protestantisch gescheitelt, Gleichviel--immer geräth man den Gesellen in's Haar."
He had pricked before, now he stung; the singer of liberty had developed into a herald and preparer of the approaching revolution.
If these powerful poems did not greatly move men's minds, it is to be ascribed to the fact that the deficiencies of Herwegh's personal character were subtly influencing his verse. They betray themselves in a certain straining after effect, in his evident satisfaction with his own witty sallies, and in his intellectual barrenness in every domain except that of polemics. This second volume of poems is not a collection which suggests that its author has any store of ideas, of imagination, to draw upon. When we read it, we understand his life; and his life helps us to understand this book, with which his career as a poet practically came to a close. All that he subsequently wrote, and he lived for thirty-two years longer, is contained in one small volume, published after his death. The poems of this last collection are full of wit and full of enthusiasm for liberty; they are written--hardly four in the year--by a man who to the day of his death remained faithful to his revolutionary youth.
Though faithful enough to his past, Herwegh was no worker in the service of liberty. The latter part of his life was spent in idleness. His career as a poet and critic began in 1839[5] and culminated with _Gedichte eines Lebendigen_. He married a rich young Jewess, an enthusiastic admirer of his poetry. After the Revolution of February he took up the position of a leader in Paris, and invaded Baden at the head of a body of republican German and French workmen; on the 27th of April they were defeated by Würtembergian troops; thanks to his wife's courage, Herwegh escaped. Heine has given a bitingly sarcastic, but very unfair description of this campaign in _Simplicissimus I._ The simple, truthful account which Herwegh's wife has published since, of all the incidents of the revolt, and of the part which her husband played in it, proves that, even if he lacked the tactical skill which he laid no claim to possessing, he was a brave man. Herwegh now became a member of the emigrant colony in London, and lived the emigrants' perniciously idle life; they had literally nothing to do but concoct futile plans for new revolutions and fall in love with one another's wives. He afterwards lived in Paris and Zürich, always the same inactive life, persistently dissatisfied with the progress of events in Germany. Like Kinkel and like Moritz Hartmann, Herwegh was unable to the day of his death (1875) to reconcile himself to the great development of power attained by Germany at the expense of liberty. He never relinquished the ideals of his youth; retained a manly admiration even for Heine, who had held him up to derision.
Being such as he was, it was only natural that Herwegh should from the very first be on the watch in the matter of his brother poets' fidelity to their flag and the genuineness of their liberalism. His attacks on Geibel and Freiligrath have already been noticed. He next turned upon Anastasius Grün (Auersperg), who had gone to Vienna in hopes of obtaining the appointment and rank of Chamberlain; his wife, by birth a Countess Attems, was invested with the Order of the Star of the Cross, and he wished to be able to accompany her to court. In stirring words Herwegh entreated him to retrace his steps:
"Darf man den Tempel um ein Weib entweih'n, Mit einem Weib um goldne Götzen tanzen," &c[6]
Dingelstedt retorted, defending Count Auersperg in a pretty poem:
"O, sie will es nie begreifen, ihre Prosa und Gemeinheit, Das ein Geist wie Du, ein Name, bürgt für der Gesinnung Reinheit, Nur das Schlechte glaubt sie willig," &c.[7]
The retort evaded the attack instead of repulsing it. No one seriously believed in a man like Auersperg having changed his convictions; the ground of Herwegh's attack was that, holding such convictions, he had solicited a court appointment. It was his own future position that Dingelstedt defended; he was the next poet upon whom Herwegh turned, with a satire that was all the fiercer because it was silent, or at least only indirectly expressed.
Dingelstedt, like Herwegh, had been obliged to leave Germany to escape the consequences of writing political poems. The two poets met in Paris. There they one evening amused themselves by trying which could write the better verses on the subject of his own imaginary political conversion. Herwegh wrote the poem "Wohlgeboren" the burden of which is: What is the use of all this talk of liberty and fatherland, of all this enthusiasm, all this meddling with politics? What good has it done me? No, no! for the future I will be a quiet, respectable citizen:
"Du sollst, verdammte Freiheit, mir Die Ruhe fürder nicht gefährden; Lisette, noch ein Gläschen Bier! Ich will ein guter Bürger werden."[8]
This last line forms the refrain of all the verses. To outbid his friend, Dingelstedt wrote the poem "Hochwohlgeboren," which begins:
"Ein guter Bürger willst du werden? Pfui Freund!--Ein guter, Bürger--Du? Das also war dein Ziel auf Erden, Dem stürmten deine Lieder zu? O nimm's zurück, das ekle Wort, Wer mag sich so gemein geberden! Nein, nein, mich reisst es weiter fort: Ich muss Geheimer Hofrath werden!"[9]
In this poem, too, the last line of the first verse serves as refrain to all the others.
Two years later Dingelstedt was Privy Councillor, librarian, and reader at the court of the King of Würtemberg. Herwegh contented himself with reprinting the two poems side by side.
Franz Dingelstedt (born in 1814) represents one of the most curious types of the day. He is a revolutionary who ought to have been born in the purple, a Prince Pückler in the guise of a poor schoolmaster, a satirist who cannot dispense with appearances, a man of first-rate abilities with neither serious vices nor serious enthusiasm, but with ready wit and frequent poetic inspiration; early _blasé_, he retains a certain practical activity of mind to the last. He was born in the worst-governed country in Germany, Hesse-Cassel, under the hated administration of Hassenpflug, became master at one of its grammar-schools, aroused dissatisfaction by his emancipated opinions and conduct and the liberal tone of his poetry, was transferred and perpetually interfered with, and sent in his resignation in 1841, when he was twenty-seven. Only one year after Herwegh he published his first collection of political poetry, _Lieder eines kosmopolitischen Nachtwächters_ ("Songs of a Cosmopolitan Night-Watchman"). Good verse, clever poems, a good idea. The watchman in his uniform, armed with his spiked mace, his horn in his hand, goes his nightly round, and, pausing outside the houses, tells us what he sees and imagines within.
He is a genuine night-watchman--thoroughly weary of the old woman at home, who is so ugly and so wrinkled, yet with whom he manages to live peaceably, for she sleeps by night and he by day; a genuine night-watchman, who sings the watchman's song about lights and fires; looks up at the prisoners, the political prisoners, peering through the iron bars and shaking them; shudders as he passes the cathedral with all its relics, where the wind is howling so loud in the organ pipes; and then laughs at himself for shuddering. It is twenty years since he was inside the building, he is none of your seat-holding church-goers.
And yet he is not a genuine night-watchman. He has feelings and opinions which are not those of a man in his station. In one house a ball is going on; he listens to the music, and describes the dancing and the behaviour of the fashionable company. What a sensation it would create if he, lantern and mace in hand, snow on his cloak and cap, his cheeks burning and frost on his beard, were suddenly to appear among all these shadows! Outside another house stands the carriage of the great, the all-powerful, Minister of State. The coachman is wrapped in furs, but the poor uncovered horses are trembling with cold whilst their master is playing cards within--just as if they could not revenge themselves when he comes:
"Ich rathe dir, lass die Karten ruhn, Und hüte dich fein, Ministerlein! Du hast es mit vier Hengsten zu thun, Bedenk', dass es keine Bürger sein."[10]
There are many pathetic passages. In one of the suburbs the watchman passes a house where a poor wretch lies in his last agonies; he passes the lunatic asylum, and the dread of madness that always seizes him here is mingled with a strange feeling of attraction; he passes the cemetery, where his poor father, who took his own life, lies in a disdained, neglected corner; and on his way back he passes the palace, where the prince tosses sleeplessly on his pillow of down, while the sentry sleeps soundly standing in his box.
A night-watchman might easily have had some of these feelings--he would never have expressed them thus; the mask is perpetually falling off. There are one or two most masterly and natural expressions of popular indignation, for example the tirade occasioned by the sight of light in the sickroom of a cringing courtier whose extortions have impoverished his country:
"Warum er nicht schläft? warum er in Wuth die Spitzen am Hemde zerissen? Ein gutes Gewissen schläft überall gut, und nirgends ein schlechtes Gewissen. Er hat an des Landes Mark, die Schlang', sich voll gefressen, gesogen, Er hat--ein Menschenleben lang!--gestohlen, gelogen, betrogen."[11]
But there are also expressions of hatred and exasperation which we feel belong to another class of society. We actually find the watchman giving frivolous advice to a beautiful young lady who has been married to an old reprobate, telling her how she may best revenge herself upon him. At times his thoughts and reveries take a higher flight. He is leaning on an old cannon, which stands on the rampart, shining and dumb. Once its wheels rolled over dead and living on the field of victory; once it gave the signal for the dread onslaught, for beside the touch-hole there is an N. surmounted by the imperial crown. Now its voice is only heard when some wretched prisoner has escaped from his dungeon, or on the occasion of his Majesty's birthday, or when a princess is born. "Patience!" cries the watchman to the cannon; "it may be that ere long thou wilt once more pour thy balls upon the enemy; but keep silent in the meantime, old veteran, or they will spike thee as they are gagging us." Here the mask is completely thrown off.
After Dingelstedt had left Hesse-Cassel, he published _Nachtwächters Weltgang_ ("The Night-Watch man's World Patrol"), in which the poet is no longer the unsophisticated night-watchman--but the cultivated revolutionary. He falls foul of bad kings, of the governments of Hesse-Cassel, Prussia, and Hanover, and of false German patriotism: "What, gentlemen, is a German patriot?--A man who serves the Lord on Sunday and the king on week-days. What are the objects of his desire?--Office, a title, and a ribbon for himself, bread for his lawful offspring, and legitimate sovereigns for his country.--Away with you, German patriot! The temple is no place for you! You are a Judas, whose treacherous kiss has been the death of liberty!"
A few months later Dingelstedt was a Privy Councillor and Councillor of Legation--held office, had a title, wore a ribbon. Naturally no one believed in any genuine conversion, and it is not surprising that his conduct was severely, and in some quarters spitefully, judged. The numerous documents relating to his character and life which have been published of late years (especially Julius Rodenberg's articles in the _Deutsche Rundschau_ of 1889-90) throw a more favourable light upon his action than that in which his contemporaries saw it. There was a want of fine feeling about it, it was unseemly, but it was not base. There was nothing wrong in the actual fact of his accepting the post of reader to a cultivated and amiable sovereign, the fault lay in his having so shortly beforehand proclaimed all sorts of democratic and radical principles which he was not prepared to stand by.
He had the true artist's temperament, and yet was distinctly practical; he was pleasure-loving and ambitious, unable to bear permanently the humiliation of being poor and consequently ignored; he was above all else impressed, strongly impressed, by the belief that in following the path he had entered upon he was pursuing a _métier de dupe_. What did he gain by refusing, because of his principles, to accept good appointments and influential positions! What did the world gain by clever men on principle leaving titles, money, office, orders, and posts of honour to the stupid men! Was this the best way to improve matters? His great desire was to play the sovereign in some domain of art, to solve great scenic problems, to direct great theatres, to be the favoured of beautiful women. Was he at all likely to attain it as the exiled schoolmaster, the correspondent of the _Allgemeine Zeitung?_ Who would permanently hold in esteem the poor, independent journalist? who would not, in course of time, esteem the influential courtier? Of course there would be an outcry when he accepted the call--if only he had not written that wretched poem to Herwegh!--but what was needed was cool courage, ironical impenetrability, smiling indifference, and the calm superiority which allows one's opponents to bawl till they are tired; and these gifts he possessed.
He became, as every one knows, not only a courtier, but in course of time manager of one court theatre after another--Stuttgart, Munich, Weimar--ending his career as the influential director of the Burgtheater in Vienna.
Heine, who was not strict, but witty, wrote the incomparable poem "Verhofrätherei," which begins:
"Verschlechtert sich nicht dein Herz und dein Stil, So magst du treiben jedwedes Spiel, Mein Freund, ich werde dich nie verkennen, Und soll ich dich auch Herr Hofrath nennen,"[12]
It expresses a mournful understanding of Dingelstedt's conduct, and bitter contempt for the public to whom both he and Dingelstedt addressed themselves.
Any one who desires to get a distinct and correct idea of Dingelstedt's intellectual personality should compare the clever, graphic account of his life, entitled _Münchener Bilderbuch_, with his own cyclus of poems entitled _Ein Roman_. These poems show us far more of his inmost nature than the verses of his early youth. But he had early experienced the mingled feeling of attraction to the great world and contempt for it. In the poem "Krähwinkel," he wrote of fashionable society:
"Sie lügen, sie krakehlen, sie hassen sich bis auf's Blut, Zum Morden oder Stehlen fehlt ihnen nur der Muth. Sie möchten gern und wagen's nicht, das heisst denn Recht und Pflicht; Die denken können, sagen's nicht. Die Meisten denken nicht."[13]
Now he tells the story of a society amour. In England, at a ball, the poet meets a lady of Hindoo blood, but English in every other respect. She is spiritually akin to himself, gloomy and cold and weary of life. They fall in love:
"Wir klammerten uns, ob aus Zeitvertreib, Ob aus Verzweiflung, an einander an, Sie, ein verlornes, neugebornes Weib, Ich, ein verlorner, neugeborner Mann."[14]
The word "Zeitvertreib" (pastime) is a little too weak, the word "Verzweiflung" (despair) is a shade too strong. There is German puerility in this insistence upon fashionable frivolity and blank despair. So much is certain; the two fall in love. We have plenty of passion, hot and wild--more of sensuality in it than love, voluptuous nights, secret pleasures, and coldly cynical front shown to the world; then separation, farewell, and oblivion; until one day in a conservatory in Amsterdam the decaying smell of a dead lotus-plant makes him feel faint. He is reminded of her, and presses one of the dead leaves to his lips as if it were the hand of a corpse.
Such characters as Dingelstedt significantly illustrate their age, they do not create it. They are not the builders of the palace, they are its gilders. No doubt the work of the gilder first attracts the eye, and attracts far more eyes than the work of the builder, who in laying the foundation of the palace determines its whole construction; but there is also no doubt as to whose work is of the more importance.
These pleasure-loving poets, often disillusioned so young, with no principles except the political convictions of which they sing and boast, and to which they generally prove unfaithful, are of social importance from the fact that they create the opinion of the moment, general political opinion, and thereby accelerate the slow reorganisation of society. But this outward reorganisation is not itself the principal matter; political opinion is not the prime mover. The outward revolution is a result of movements going on much deeper below the surface. Perhaps the most powerful impulse is given by philosophy with its quiet revolutionising of the religious view of life.
In this domain of philosophic agitation there appeared in the summer of 1841 (the year in which Dingelstedt's first book was published, the year following the publication of Herwegh's first) an epoch-making thinker. In the work entitled _Das Wesen des Christenthums_ ("The Nature of Christianity") he formulates great thoughts, founds and expounds a philosophy of life which makes its influence felt in the spoken and written words of all who come after him, all at least whose minds attain their fullest development. Ludwig Feuerbach is the foundation-stone upon which for the next twenty years every one builds, everything is built.