Herder's conception of "das Volk"

by Georgiana Rose Simpson

VOLK SONGS COLLECTED BY HERDER

DANISH—FOUR PIECES

Content—themes: love, marriage, fairy tales.

Form—rhythm and rhyme marked; often irregular.

Method of appeal—concrete.

GERMAN—SIXTY-TWO PIECES

Content—themes: love, war, religion, dance, court life, rural life, fairy tales, domestic life.

Form—rhythm and rhyme marked; often irregular.

Method of appeal—concrete pictures; abstract thinking.

ENGLISH AND SCOTCH—THREE PIECES

Content—themes: love, war, religion, domestic life, idyllic scenes, court life, vengeance, ghost and fairy tales.

Form—marked rhyme and rhythm; blank verse, irregular rhyme and rhythm.

Method of appeal—concrete pictures; abstract thinking; deep reflecting; dramatic presentations.

ESTHONIAN—FIVE PIECES

Content—themes: love, war, marriage, tyranny.

Form—marked rhythm and rhyme.

Method of appeal—somewhat concrete.

FRENCH—THIRTEEN PIECES

Content—themes: love, idyllic scenes, court life, domestic life, phenomena of nature, classic mythology.

Form—marked rhyme and rhythm.

Method of appeal—concrete pictures, abstract thinking.

GALLIC (OSSIAN)—SIX PIECES

Content—themes: love, war, religion, death, personified nature.

Form—little rhyme, rhythm often marked but irregular.

Method of appeal—concrete, vivid visual and auditory pictures, dramatic presentations.

GREEK—SEVEN PIECES

Content—themes: friendship, freedom, marriage, love.

Form—rhyme and rhythm, sometimes irregular.

Method of appeal—direct and concrete.

GREENLAND—ONE PIECE

Content—theme: death.

Form—parallelism.

Methods of appeal—concrete.

ITALIAN—FIVE PIECES

Content—theme: hope, care, springtime, love.

Form—rhythm regular.

Method of appeal—concrete and abstract.

LAPLAND—TWO PIECES

Content—theme: love for animals, love.

Form—rhythm regular.

Method of appeal—concrete.

LATIN—SIX PIECES

Content—theme: temptation, marriage, religion.

Form—rhythm, rhyme, sometimes irregular.

Method of appeal—concrete, abstract.

LETTIC—FIVE PIECES

Content—theme: love, marriage, springtime, lordship.

Form—rhythm and rhyme.

Method of appeal—concrete.

LITHUANIAN—NINE PIECES

Content—love, marriage, war, idyllic scenes, fairy tales.

Form—rhythm, rhyme, often irregular.

Method of appeal—concrete pictures, abstract thinking.

SKALDIC—TEN PIECES

Content—themes: mythology, battle.

Form—rhythm is regular.

Method of appeal—concrete, rugged.

PERUVIAN—TWO PIECES

Content—theme: mythological, love.

Form—rhyme irregular, rhythm.

Method of appeal—somewhat concrete.

SPANISH—THIRTY-FOUR PIECES

Content—themes: love, war, religion, court and city life.

Form—rhyme and rhythm quite regular.

Method of appeal—moralizing and abstract thinking. Few concrete pictures.

This investigation of these poems leads to the following: Each group of poems embodies an expression of personality, individuality which grows out of peculiar environment; not merely physical environment, but also social, political, and religious environment. Each, either in content, form, or in its method of appeal, sometimes in all three, bears traces of the milieu out of which it sprung.

The notes of waning glory and ancestral lament of Ossian gain their character from a different period in the life of the nation from that recorded in the Moorish battle songs in the Spanish collection.

The ruggedness of the Skaldic poetry bespeaks a roughness in climate and scenery not to be found in the French poems.

The mythology of the Scotch Highlanders and of the Norsemen, depicted in their poetry, is different indeed from the Mohammedanism of which the Spanish pieces speak.

The English and German songs which are characterized by Christian customs are colored neither by Mohammedanism, Gallic, nor Classic mythology. The deep reflective moods of the Shakespeare specimens grew out of a social and intellectual environment entirely the opposite of that in which the concrete and vivid pictures of many of Percy’s Reliques had their birth.

In all this difference, the common feature is that individuality is expressed. Individual traits appear within each group. Racial consciousness distinguishes one group from the other.

Now personality and individuality are corner stones in Herder’s system of thought. His discussion of Lessing’s “Laokoon” sets forth the principle that true art will be characterized by these.[9]

Herder’s philosophy is also emphatic in showing that all art is shaped by the environment out of which it grew. The essays “Shakespeare,” “Homer und Ossian,” and “Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie” are replete with such thought.

The art of every nation then will bear national imprint. The national stamp, this expression of personality and individuality, both products of various kinds of environment, belongs to Herder’s conception of Volk wherever the idea is identical with that of nation or race.

Now the preceding chapter has shown that however often Herder uses the term as synonymous with nation or race, he has also a distinctive and a sort of esoteric use.

The evidence that poetry has been shaped by environment and expresses the individual consciousness of a group of people cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that the group from which it emanated belongs to Herder’s Volk of the specific type, for Herder excludes from the category of Volkslieder that poetry which bears the imprint of scholastic and pedantic cultural milieu to the extent that certain primitive traits find no expression.

Another common factor, then, must be sought which is distinctive of people in this more restricted sense.

The way in which the material is presented is what I have called in my analysis of the pieces “the method of appeal.” There is no common basis on which we can place the specimens viewing them from this side. Many of them present vivid visual and auditory pictures. Many others are marked by abstract thinking or sober reflection. Some are dramatic presentations, others are simple descriptions. Some are cold moralizing; others expressions of strong emotions.

All of these selections are in some kind of rhythmic form. It may be parallelism, rhythmical blank verse, or marked feet and rhyme. But we cannot make use of this as a very definite factor, since many specimens are translations which cannot preserve the original exactly. However, we have in the original the English and Scotch, the Ossian and the German collections. All of these present a form of rhythm which is usually so irregular that it would not meet the demands for measured feet, verses, and rhyme to be found in the highly polished and formal poetry. Now in his discussion of rhythmic forms in poetry Herder indicates that the human love for rhythm has its foundations in the physiological processes and symmetry of the body: Der Pulsschlag der Natur, dies Athemholen der Empfindung ist in allen Reden des Affekts ... in der Poesie ... die doch eigentlich Rede des Affekts seyn soll.

The people who produced this poetry, then, were close to nature in their forms of rhythmical speech.

The content of these poems remains to be considered.

Among the Esthonian pieces is a little love song which Herder has heard the harvesters sing at work. It is idyllic in setting. Thoughts of love are all-abounding. Happiness amidst rural scenes is common among all nations.

“König Ludwig” is an Old High German battle song which interweaves thoughts of God and religion; subjects which never cease to engage the attention of mankind.

Wiegenlied einer unglücklichen Mutter, a Scotch mother’s song of unfaithful love; the poem has a setting in domestic life. Litthauische Daina—song of the departure of a young bride who goes to her new home; domestic life and custom are the themes. There is sadness at leaving the home of her girlhood.

These embody expressions of common, human feelings.

A number of the Spanish songs have their scenes laid in the city and at court; but they sing of love, vengeance, and jealousy—all of which are intensely human.

Erlkönigs Tochter, is a Danish piece which sings of elves. Thoughts of the supernatural are among all mankind.

Frühlingslied, is an Italian piece which rejoices at the coming of the flowers and birds and the budding of the trees. This season always awakens human happiness.

Röschen auf der Heide presents personified nature. Such personification is among all men.

Totenlied comes from Greenland. All peoples bemoan and eulogize their dead in song.

Tanzlied is German. Nearly every collection has pieces which present the rhythm and joyous emotions of the dance. This kind of pleasure is common among all races.

The songs from Ossian tell of departed ancestors and heroes. The sentiment expressed is universal.

From Shakespeare appears such things as Hamlet’s Probe einer schauderhaften Metaphysik über Tod und Leben.

Macbeths schreckliche Dolchscene; is there any human breast in which the sentiments involved in these deep reflections have not sometimes found a place?

Now it is what Herder himself says in introducing these selections from Shakespeare which justifies us in making the content, the theme of his whole collection of Volk songs, the common ground upon which they all meet.

“In Shakespear gibts von jeder kleinen Nuance der menschlichen Denkart und Stimme Proben oder vielmehr lebende Naturartungen: und so fange das berühmte Selbstgespräch Hamlets an, was man schon Prosaisch in unsrer Sprache hat.”

Herder’s collection of Volk poetry embraces as themes: love, war, religion, domestic life, idyllic scenes, vengeance, court life, ghost tales, fairy tales, marriage, mythology, phenomena of nature, death, personified nature, freedom, the dance, the seasons, and hero and ancestral veneration.

These embody sentiments universal among mankind; feelings which are fundamental in the human breast; thoughts which are innate in humanity. That which is universal, fundamental, and innate is natural. These songs find a response among the people from whom they arose because these people are products of unhampered nature. Both rhythm and content lead to this conclusion according to Herder’s conception. Volk as seen from this angle, then, are either a primitive people or a group within a people representing advanced stages of civilization, which group has still retained the methods of thinking, the feelings, the modes of expression, and the tastes of primitive people.

We get from Herder’s collection of Volkslieder, then, two conceptions of Volk: (1) Volk, a collective personality resulting from the development of individual consciousness into community individuality and consciousness; (2) Volk, a primitive people or, within a civilized nation, a section, which has maintained certain natural fundamental and primitive characteristics.

CHAPTER IV
CONCEPTIONS OF VOLK IN HERDER’S DISCUSSION OF “OSSIAN’S PEOPLE” AND OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS

Herder has discussed, in connection with two groups of poetry which he distinctly calls Volkspoesie, each race from which the particular collection arose. Both directly and indirectly he presents in each of these peoples the peculiar characteristics by which he identifies a community with his ideal conception of Volk.

In his collection of Volk songs he has presented literature from many and varied peoples of the earth, but he has discussed at length, to show the traits which stamp their Volkspoesie as such, only two of these groups.

An examination of the common factors which the author sees as essential elements of each of these races ought to give us in one form his conception of Das Volk.

The two races are: (1) Those whom he believes to be the ancient Gauls, from whom we have the collection known as “The Songs of Ossian”[10]; (2) the ancient Hebrews.[11]