Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany. Georg Brandes

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.

      Looked at from the psychological point of view, the position may be described as follows. The Danish Romantic authors have, generally speaking, been the superiors of the Germans as regards art, their inferiors as regards intellect. As a rule, every production of the German author, however small, though it be formless, weak, nay, actually a failure, yet expresses a whole philosophy of life, and that no fanciful philosophy, but one evolved and matured by personal experience, and stamped with the whole astonishingly many-sided culture which distinguishes the educated German. A poem by Novalis, a tale by Tieck or Hoffmann, or a play by Kleist, contains a poetico-philosophical theory of life; and it is the theory not only of a poet, but of a man. A tragedy by