Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century - Georg Brandes 4 стр.

All? That is saying too much. Heyse has indeed sometimes, as in the instances cited, shown a tendency, reminding one of Kleist, for all purely pathological erotic problems; but his nature is entirely too harmonious, too mature, and by far too typically German, to admit of his describing passion as bursting all the law and order of society. He is developed enough to see clearly that the laws of passion and the laws of society are two wholly dissimilar things, which have very little in common; yet he pays the latter the respect it deserves, that is, a conditional one. From his earliest youth it has interested and pleased him to show how relative is the truth, and how limited the worth of these laws; to bring forward in his poetic creations instances where their boundaries are overstepped in such a way that the exceptions to the rule seem right, and even the most hardened and narrow-minded person would hesitate to condemn them. In his anxiety to do full, incontestible justice to the exceptional cases, Heyse has sometimes as in his first drama, "Francesca von Rimini," which is not included in his "Gesammelte Werke" sought out extremely quaint exceptions; but it is his universal endeavor so to enclose the case with palisades, that no assault of usual morality can cause the downfall of the barricade. When Goethe brings together Egmont and Clärchen, he does not present the case as though it required an apology; the beauty of the relationship is its defence. Heyse, the less grand poet, whose caution is quite equal to his daring, has always fixed an eye on conventional morality, and has continually endeavored to conciliate it, either by ceding the point to it, so to say, in all other cases but just this one where its infringement was unavoidable, or by so atoning for the offence that the individual who is guilty of it is allowed to purchase the forbidden happiness, with his eyes fully open, and of his own free will, at so high a price that it appears too costly to be alluring to any Philistine.

In "Francesca von Rimini" the circumstances are as follows: Lanciotto is ugly, coarse, and corrupt; his brother, Paolo, noble and handsome. Lanciotto is inflamed with passion for Francesca. Misguided by brotherly love for the thoroughly unworthy Lanciotto, Paolo has allowed himself to be deluded not only into playing the part of suitor, but even disguised as bridegroom on the wedding day, to take the place of his brother, who feared that with his hideous person he could never obtain the maiden's consent. Not until shrouded by the darkness of the bridal chamber, does Lanciotto dare approach his bride. Now Paolo also loves Francesca, as she loves him in return. Therefore, it is no wonder that the young wife, upon discovering this gross deception, the victim of which she has become, feels dishonored by the caresses of her husband, and far from viewing her love for Paolo as a sin, she regards it as justified and sacred.

In order to make his intrenchment as solid as possible, it will thus be seen that the poet, in this naïve work of his youth, has constructed the most improbable, most far-fetched, case in the world; for what can be more preposterous than for Paolo out of pure, simple-hearted kindliness to a despicable brother, to expose the woman he loves to the basest deception, which, moreover, annihilates his own life-happiness. But in this exaggerated example will, nevertheless, be found the type according to which, in Heyse's numerous later "novellen," with their plentiful tact and exquisite delicacy, the moral collision is constructed. Let me single out at random several examples. In "Beatrice" it is legal marriage which breaks up the love romance, a forced marriage, as unholy as the marriage of Francesca, although stronger reasons are given for it. In "Cleopatra" the young German resists the love of the fair Egyptian, as stubbornly as Kleist's Count Wetter von Strahl resists the passion of Kätchen von Heilbronn. Not until her yearning for him brings Cleopatra to the brink of the grave, is the liaison between them formed. The proud Gabrielle in the work "Im Grafenschlosse" does not allow herself to be persuaded into the "conscience marriage" with the Count, until he has jeopardized his life for her sake. The young wife in "Rafael" purchases a few hours of companionship with her lover through a lifelong incarceration in the cloister; the self-surrender of Garcinde and Lottka is ennobled by the fact that the outwardly fettered but inwardly free ego was unable to conceive of a self-surrender, forbidden by circumstances, under any other conditions than those whose consequences are death. The right to the happiness of a fleeting moment is purchased by suicide.

The goblet of bliss, drained by these personages, has seasoned their destiny with poison. Heyse, therefore, affirms for these heroic souls the right to solve the problem of a conflict of duties in a different way than is customary for "the timid Philistine whose half-way measures are circumscribed by petty customs and considerations," and in the introduction to his "Beatrice"16 he himself formulates his ethic heresy in the following words: "Genial, self-dependent natures can do much toward extending the boundary lines of the moral sphere, by permitting the measure of their inner power and magnitude to shine forth as an example, through their actions, just as genial artists can burst through those barriers of their art that have been handed down to them by tradition."

No less than through this intimately allied association with ruin and death does Heyse ennoble love, legitimate or illegitimate, as indicated above, through the nature of the self-surrender. It is always conscious. These women whom he characterizes never allow themselves to be carried away by their emotions; they give themselves up as a free gift when they yield at all. Thus it is in works dating from Heyse's earliest youth, as "Der Kreisrichter"17 (The Circuit Judge), thus in "Rafael," in "Lottka," and in so many of the "novellen" in prose and in verse. Everywhere the self-sufficiency and the right of spontaneity of the individual is preserved. The woman gives herself as a free gift to her lover, she goes freely forth to meet her own destruction, or with her own hand inflicts death upon herself; and where the bliss of love is not ennobled by the price it costs, it is at least exalted by the pride with which it is bestowed and received. By virtue of this pride the personality, itself governed by the strongest power of nature, feels independent and regal in the assertion of its sovereign dignity. In the romance "Im Paradiese" Heyse has for the first time treated as a main problem the freedom of love in antithesis to the laws of society, and maintained its justice. The fundamental idea of this romance is none other than that the morality and dignity, of love between man and woman is independent of the outward ratification of the marriage tie. According to his wont, Heyse has provided the case here given with the most forcible motives. Jansen cannot, without putting his friend to shame, become free from his despicable wife, and without Julie all his hopes as an artist and a man would perish. Yet when Julie in the presence of the assembled friends, adorned with the myrtle-wreath, freely weds Jansen, a decided attack is aimed at the purely exterior morality of society, although the incident is not brought forward as an example for imitation. The poet who in the "Kinder der Welt" urgently impresses it upon the consciences of his contemporaries, that the morality of the individual is not dependent on his metaphysical convictions, in his "Im Paradiese," strives to teach that the purity and dignity of a union of love must not be judged by the laws of outward morality, but that love both without and within the marriage relation may be true and false, moral and immoral. Everything depends, according to Heyse's views, upon the true nobility of the heart.

V

I have already said that Heyse as a poet is originally a pupil of Eichendorf. Like the hero in his "Ein Abenteuer" (An Adventure), he appears to have chosen for the companion of his first journeyman-years the romantic "Taugenichts" (Good-for-nothing). Where, in one of his "novellen" (Lottka), he introduces himself as a youth, he sings in Eichendorf's own key, and we recognize that very early in life he has been in the habit of whistling, with rare skill, the melodies of romance. Musje Morgenroth, in the collection of romantic folk-lore tales for children, which as a student he published under the title "Der Jungbrunnen" (The Fountain of Youth), is a genuine brother of the celebrated Eichendorf hero. The book is the work of a boy, and yet it is not without a certain interest, as it marks the first standpoint of our poet. It shows also with what talents he was equipped from the outset: the boyish, yet never inelegant prose flows smoothly, and the verse, which is of a vastly higher character, with all its echoes, is unaffected, fresh, and regular in form. His song is not original, but it is pure; it is in the usual key of romance, but it is sung with youthful freshness and grace. The fact of producing naïvely during the years of boyhood is in itself a phenomenon, and the unusual amount of innate command of language secures the student author from exaggeration or mannerism. The gift of language, inherited evidently from his father, the well-known philologist, develops in the son into a fluency, a facility for handling words and rhythm, which even in his earliest youth was not far removed from virtuoso-ship. This almost Rückert-like flow of language, as a fundamental element in Heyse's natural endowments, influenced all the other peculiarities which he gradually developed. From the very beginning he sang not because he had more in his heart than the rest of mankind, but because it was far easier and more natural for him than for others to express that of which his heart was full. Since, no mighty inward revolutions or startling outward occurrences were necessary to unseal his lips, as are usually required to rouse the creative fancy of those for whom it is difficult to find form of expression, and who succeed only in moments of passion in bringing forth to the light of day the treasures of their inner being, he turned his gaze not within but without, pondered but little on his ego, his calling, and his capabilities; but fully conscious that he bore within his own soul a clear mirror, which reflected everything within his immediate surroundings that interested him, he allowed his gaze, with the keen susceptibility and true creative impulse of a plastic artist, to wander in all directions.

Of a plastic artist, I said; for he did not long continue to carol forth the music of romance. He himself has said,

True men, Heyse thinks, understand how to grasp their ideas in the light of day, and he is too thoroughly a child of the sun to be able to linger in the twilight of romance. A lyric poet he is not in the main, and the strength of romance, conformably to its nature and of necessity, lies in lyric poetry. Nor did the surroundings of nature imbue him with an independent poetic interest; such a freshness of the sea and of the landscape as is breathed for instance by the Danish novels of Blicher will not be found in his works; he is not a landscape-painter, and has always availed himself of the landscape merely as a background. What first and earliest met his gaze, as soon as he was developed enough to see with his own eyes, was man; and let it be observed, not man as an intelligence served by organs, or as a will walking on a pair of legs, or as a psychological curiosity, but man as a plastic form. Like the sculptor or the figure-painter it is his wont, according to my opinion, on closing his eyes, to see his horizon first and foremost populated with outlines and profiles. Beautiful external forms and movements, the poise of a graceful head, a charming peculiarity of carriage or walk, have occupied him in precisely the same way as they engross the attention of the plastic artist, and are reproduced by him with the same partiality, indeed, at times with technical exactness of expression. And not only the narrator, but the personages that appear on the scene, often form the same kind of conceptions. Thus, for instance, the main character in "Der Kreisrichter" (The Circuit Judge) says: "The young people here are healthy, and health constitutes half of the beauty of youth. There is also race development. Notice the refined form of their heads, and the delicate moulding of their temples, and the natural grace of their bearing in walking, dancing, and sitting down."18 A striking example of the poet's method of contemplation may be found in "Die Einsamen" (The Solitary Ones), where his dissatisfaction at being able to paint so imperfectly with the means which his art affords, breaks forth in the following words: "Only the mere outlines!" he raved to himself. "Only a few dozen lines! How she went trotting about on her little donkey, one leg thrown across the back of the animal, resting firmly and securely, the other almost grazing the ground with the tip of her foot, and her right elbow supported on the knee that was in repose, her hand playing gently with the chain about her neck, her face turned toward the sea. What a mass of black tresses on the neck! Something red lends a radiance thereto. A coral necklace? No; fresh pomegranate blossoms. The wind plays with the loosely knotted kerchief; how dark is the glow of the cheeks, and how much darker the eye!"19 Such are the pictures of plastic figures, simple, picturesque situations, with which Heyse's imagination has had to operate upon from the beginning, and which serve to form for it a starting-point. And though it may be felt ever so keenly how much more sensible it is to describe a poet than to praise him, still it were scarcely possible to restrain an outburst of admiration upon considering how exceedingly well Heyse, in every instance, has succeeded in presenting his characters, especially, however, his female characters, to the reader's eye. He does not belong to the descriptive school; he does not characterize in detail, as either Balzac or Turgenief; he describes with a few delicate strokes: yet his creations remain fixed in our memories, from the simple reason that they all have defined style. A peasant maiden from Naples or Tyrol, a servant girl, or a young fräulein from Germany, all obtain, when depicted by his hand, a higher, more visionary, and yet ever-memorable life, because they are all ennobled by strictly ideal methods and the art of representation. They are as perfect in form as statues; they have the carriage of queens. With the exception of the painter Leopold Robert, of whom some of Heyse's Italian works are reminders, no one, to my knowledge, has displayed so grand a style in the delineation of peasants and fishing people as Heyse. And as the forms of the outer person, so those of the inner being are of an exquisitely finished style. Did not the expression seem almost too daring, I should say that Heyse's descriptions of love are plastic. The romantic school always conceived love to be of a lyric nature. If Heyse's love stories be compared with the love stories of the romantic school, it will be found that while the romantic writers give their strength in analyzing their romantic transports as such, and forming a nomenclature for the rarest moods which it has usually been thought impossible to name, in Heyse's writings every psychological force is mirrored in a look or in a gesture; everything becomes with him contemplation and visible life.