AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.
Joseph Victor Scheffel was born in the year 1826, at Karlsruhe, in Baden, where his father, a veteran officer, had taken up his residence. He received his first instruction in the 'Lyceum' of his native place, a high school which enjoyed at the time a splendid reputation, and was considered the best in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Whatever may have been said against one or the other of the professors, the majority were remarkable men, knowing how to awaken the mental activity of their pupils. The social life of the 'Lyceists' was free from ordinary constraints; and the merry youths enjoyed many privileges, which at other places were strictly reserved for University students.
Nor did they lack any opportunities for intellectual improvement in the capital of Baden. The theatre was then excellent, and the 'Lyceists' visited it regularly. Eyen politics agitated the mind of this young generation. It must be remembered that thirty years ago Baden was the focus of political life, to which the eyes of every German patriot was directed; and although Mannheim was the seat of the agitation, the chamber united at Karlsruhe a number of men, whose names will ever be held in respect in Baden: Itzstein, Welcker, Bassermann, Hecker, Mathy, Soiron.
Joseph Victor passed with all the honours, and as one of the best pupils, all the classes of the Lyceum, and then devoted himself to the study of law at the University of Heidelberg. There he joined a so-called academical society of progress, without, however, taking part in the Baden revolution, which drove so many of his comrades into exile.
After having passed the Government examination we find our young poet as 'Rechtspractikant' (practitioner of law) in the little town of Säckingen. Well might the little provincial place appear dull to a student coming from the liveliest university of Germany. Still the splendid scenery of the environs of Säckingen compensated for many shortcomings. With the numerous friends he won there, Scheffel made frequent excursions through the valleys which stretch in all directions from the Feldberg and the Rhine. He proved to be a bold and even reckless swimmer, passing many a time through the bridge of Säckingen, saluting the bystanders as he accomplished this daring feat.
In the office of his court, located in an old convent of nuns, Scheffel found a number of old documents and MSS., and there his first poem was written, based on one of them: 'Der Trompeter von Säckingen. Ein Sang vom Oberrhein.'
The success of this first production was complete. It was published at the time when the 'incense perfume of the pious soul,' as Scheffel calls the poems of Oskar von Redwitz, had its firmest hold on the misguided taste of the public. In comparison with this sickly, effeminate poetry, the simple, natural, and yet intensely poetic production of Scheffel afforded something like the enjoyment of fresh mountain air after that of a hot-house. It is true, Scheffel was at first entirely ignored by the Berlin and Leipzig critics who assume to sit in judgment over modern German literature (he has, up to the present day, not even found a place in Brockhaus's Conversations-Lexicon), but the unsophisticated public recognized the kernel of pure poetry in Scheffel's unpretentious verses; and his 'Trompeter' is at present the most popular poem in Germany. Its story is told with extreme simplicity and humour, in blank trochees with interspersed rhymed poems; it leads us to the forest-town of Säckingen during the second half of the 17th century, and into the neighbouring castle of a baron, whose only daughter is wooed and, at last, won by a young musician, a merry youth, who had been expelled from the University of Heidelberg on account of his noisy behaviour.
Nothing can be more humorous than the account of the ex-student's life at Heidelberg, of his duels and his libations beneath the big tun of the castle,
Bei dem Wunder unserer Tage,
Bei dem Kunstwerk deutschen Denkens,
Bei dem Heidelberger Fass,
or the historical episode of the foundation of Säckingen by Saint Fridolin, an Irish apostle, sent by Chlodwig with the following message to convert the Allemannic Germans:
Hatt' sonst nicht die grösste Vorlieb
Für die Kutten, für die Heil'gen,
Aber seit mir die verfluchten
Scharfen Alemannenspiesse
Allzunah um's Ohr gepfiffen,
Seit der schweren Schlacht bei Zülpich,
Bin ich and'rer Ansicht worden,
--Noth lehrt auch die Könige beten.
Schutz drum geb' ich, wo ihr hinzieht.
Und empfehl' hauptsächlich Euch am
Oberrhein die Alemannen.
Diese haben schwere Schädel,
Diese sind noch trotz'ge Heiden,
Macht mir diese fromm und artig--
or the meditations of the cat of the castle, which, as silent witness of the caresses of the two lovers, thus broods over the enigma of the kiss:
Warum küssen sich die Menschen?
S'ist nicht Hass, sie beissen sich nicht,
Hunger nicht, sie fressen sich nicht.
S'kann auch kein zweckloser blinder
Unverstand sein, denn sie sind sonst
Klug und selbstbewusst im Handeln;
Warum, also, frag' umsonst ich,
Warum küssen sich die Menschen?
Warum meistens nur die Jüngern?
Warum diese meist im Frühling?
Ueber diese Punkte werd' ich
Morgen auf des Daches Giebel
Etwas naher meditiren.
In the delineations of the various characters of the 'Trompeter' Scheffel exhibits a gift of true poetical conception, a warmth of feeling, and a power of description, equalled by few of our modern poets; indeed, the characters rise before our mind with such truthfulness, as the idealized types of the people in that corner of Germany, that one might almost believe one had met all of them during one's wanderings in the Black Forest, whether it be Werner, the merry trumpeter, or the crusty old baron, or Anton, the respectable 'Hausknecht.'
Scheffel did not remain long in Säckingen. He quitted the Government service, and, after passing some time in travels in South Germany, settled at Donaueschingen as Keeper of the Archives of Prince Fürstenberg. This town is likewise exceedingly small, the environs are bare and not to be compared with the romantic scenery of the Upper Rhine; but at the court of the refined princes of Fürstenberg there were at all times remarkable men, and the library afforded, in MSS. and documents, ample means for the study of Old German history, language, and literature.
To this study Scheffel now devoted himself, and, in combining his qualities as a poet with that of an historian, created his famous novel Ekkehard. Based chiefly on the Chronicles of the Monastery of St. Gallen, it gives us a faithful picture of the social life in South Western Germany--the most ancient seat and nucleus of German civilization during the tenth century,--in retaining and reproducing all the naïveté, freshness, and simple-minded views which are the charms of these celebrated chronicles, whilst the poet's figures are marked with that distinct individuality which raises the dry chronicle to a skilful and poetical tale of human passions and conflicts. Ekkehard may be compared with the best of Sir Walter Scott's novels. Another fruit of Scheffel's researches in mediæval literature is his charming little volume 'Frau Aventiure,' and likewise, although published much later, 'Juniperus,' the history of a German Crusader, and his most recent work, 'Die Bergpsalmen.' Both these latter works (the last one is written in verse) exhibit the same merits as Ekkehard, but they are laid out on a smaller scale, and are of a more fragmentary character. 'Frau Aventiure' is a collection of songs, partly jocose, partly inspired by the most tender feelings, in the spirit of the poems of the Minnesinger and wandering scholars of the Middle Ages, and is based on a subtle knowledge of mediæval culture and poetry.
But to his second residence in Heidelberg we must trace the origin of his most popular work, the collection of songs known under the title of 'Gaudeamus.' A small circle of friends, who met every Wednesday evening at a supper in the Holländer Hof, near the bridge (and amongst whose most conspicuous members were the celebrated historian Ludwig Haeusser, and the venerable pastor of Ziegelhausen, Fr. Schmezer), kindled those sparks of unequalled humour and merriment--the Rodensteiner, 'Im Schwarzen Wallfisch zu Askalon,' and the geological songs, which delighted readers of every class, and found their way into every student's songbook of Germany. The geological songs owe their origin to a course of lectures on geology which Pastor Schmezer delivered at the time. Scheffel regularly attended these lectures of his friend, and the latter was certain to find as regularly on the following morning of his lecture a poetical resumé of it on his desk, in the form of a humorous poem.
What gives such a high value to these songs, and indeed to all the poetry of Scheffel, is the fact that they, in depicting the joyous vein in human nature, set forth a faithful abstract, a true poetical substratum, of the popular life and thought of South-Western Germany. If any one should fail to comprehend the spirit of Scheffel's poetry let him go to the 'joyful Palatinate,' and to its ancient capital, Heidelberg. There he will find the frank, merry, and humorous characters of Scheffel's poems, and especially the prototypes of that thirsty soul, the Rodensteiner who pawned his three villages during the revelries 'Zu Heidelberg im Hirschen,' and finally bequeathed his thirst to the students. And looking from the ruins of the castle over the beautiful valleys of the Neckar and the Rhine, he will perhaps understand the enthusiasm which our poet has for this blessed spot, in singing:
Und stechen mich die Dornen,
Und wird mir's draus zu kahl;
Geb' ich dem Pferd die Spornen,
Und reit' in's Neckarthal.
[GRANITE.]
In unterirdischer Kammer
Sprach grollend der alte Granit:
'Da droben den wäss'rigen Jammer
Den mach' ich jetzt länger nicht mit.'
In his lair subterranean, grumbling
Old Granite said: 'One thing is sure,
That slopping and slippery tumbling
Up yonder, no more I'll endure.
So wearily wallows the water
His billows of brine o'er the land,
'Stead of prouder and fairer and better
All is turning to slime and to sand.
'That would be a nice limestony cover,
A sweet geological swash,
If the coat of the wide world all over
Were one sedimentary wash.
By and by 'twill be myth and no true thing
What were hills--what was high or was low.
The deuce take their drifting and smoothing;
Hurrah! far eruption I go!'
So he spoke, and to aid him, pro rata,
The brave-hearted Porphyry flew,
The weak-hearted crystalline strata
He scornfully shattered in two.
With flashing and crashing and bellow,
As though the world's end were to dread,
Even Graywack, that decent old fellow,
In terror stood up on his head.
Also Stonecoal and Limestone and Trias
Fast vanished, internally mined.
Loud wailed in the Jura, the Lias,
That the wild fire had scorched him behind.
And Limestone, the marl-plot of chalkers,
Said later, in deep earnest chimes,
'Was there no one, to stop, 'mong you talkers,
This wild revolution betimes?'
But upwards through strata and fountains
Passed the conquering hero with heat,
Until from the sunniest mountains
He gazed on the world at his feet.
Then he shouted with yodling and singing,
'Hurrah! 'Twas courageously done,
Even we can be doing and bringing
What it only needs pluck to be won.'
[THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.]
Es rauscht in den Schachtelhalmen,
Verdächtig leuchtet das Meer,
Da schwimmt mit Thränen im Auge
Ein Ichthyosaurus daher.
The rushes are strangely rustling,
The ocean uncannily gleams,
As with tears in his eyes down gushing,
An Ichthyosaurus swims.
He bewails the frightful corruption
Of his age, for an awful tone
Has lately been noticed by many
In the Lias formation shown.
'The Plesiosaurus, the elder,
Goes roaring about on a spree;
The Plerodactylus even
Comes flying as drunk as can be.
'The Iguanodon, the blackguard,
Deserves to be publicly hissed,
Since he lately in open daylight
The Ichthyosaura kissed.
'The end of the world is coming,
Things can't go on long in this way;
The Lias formation can't stand it,
Is all that I've got to say!'
So the Ichthyosaur went walking
His chalks in an angry mood;[[1]]
The last of his sighs extinguished
In the roar and the rush of the flood.
And all of the piggish Saurians[[2]]
Died, too, on that dreadful day;
There were too many chalks against them,
And of course they'd the devil to pay.
And this petrifideal ditty?[[3]]
Who was it this song did write?
'Twas found as a fossil album leaf
Upon a coprolite.
[THE TAZZELWORM.]
Als noch ein Bergsee klar und gross
In dieser Thäler Tiefen floss,
Hab'ich allhier in grober Pracht
Gelebt, geliebt und auch gedracht
Als Tazzelwurm.
Tazzelworm is a provincial German word for a dragon. This was a song sung at the fête of hanging up the sign of the Fiery Tazzelworm at a little mountain tavern in Rehau, on the road over the Audorfen mountain meadows, in the Tyrol.
When yet a lake from mountains grand
Ran down yon valleys through the land,
Here I a great flash vulgar thing
Lived, loved, and went a-dragoning
As Tazzelworm,
From Pentling unto Wendelstein,
Were rock and air and water mine,
I walked and flew, and kicked and rolled,
And 'stead of hay I slept on gold,
As Tazzelworm.
My scaly skin was all of horn,
And fire I spit since I was born;
Whatever up the mountain came,
I killed and gobbled it for game,
As Tazzelworm.
But when I so forgot God's law,
And ate up shepherd maidens raw,
Came Noah's food, with all its fogs,
And knocked my business to the dogs,
As Tazzelworm.
And now you see me painted, shine
On Schweinesteiger's bran-new sign.
The shepherd maidens laugh in choir,
And not a mortal fears the fire
Of Tazzelworm.
And oft some learned chap will shout
Before my eyes: 'His games played out!
He lived before the flood washed round,
But men of science never found
A Tazzelworm.'
Weak-minded sceptic! enter here,
Mix up Tyróler wine and beer,
But ere you come to Kuffstein--whew!
You'll find that I have breathed on you,
As Tazzelworm.
And Klausen's landlord sad will say,
'By Jove--whence did those fellows stray?
Their legs are loose--their heads arn't firm,
They all have seen the Tazzelworm,
The Tazzelworm.'
[THE MEGATHERIUM.]
Was hängt denn dort bewegungslos
Zum Knaul zusammgeballt
So riesenfaul und riesengross
Im Ururururwald?
Dreifach so wuchtig als ein Stier,
Dreifach so schwer und dumm--
Ein Kletterthier, ein Krallenthier:
Das Megatherium!
Vide Cuvier, Ossemens fossiles, v. 1, p. 174. tab. 61. The Megatherium was a gigantic sloth.
What hangs there like a frozen pig,
Or knot all twisted rude?
So giant lazy, giant big,
In the prim--rim--æval wood?
Thrice bigger than a bull--at least
Thrice heavier, and dumb--
A climbing and a clawing beast,
The Megatherium!
All dreamily it opes its jaws
And glares so lazily,
Then digs with might its cutting claws
In the Embahuba tree.
It eats the fruit, it eats the leaf,
Soft, happy, grunting 'Ai!'
And when they're gone, as if with grief,
Occasionally goes 'Wai!'
But from the tree it never crawls.
It knows a shorter way;
For like a gourd adown it falls,
And will not hence away.
With owly eyes awhile it hums,
Smiles wondrously and deep;
For after good long feeding comes
Its main hard work--to sleep.
Oh, sceptic mortal--brassy, bold,
Wilt thou my words deride?
Go to Madrid and there behold
His bones all petrified.
And if thou hast before them stood,
Remember these my rhymes.
Such laziness held only good
In antdiluvian times.
Thou art no Megatherium,
Thy soul has aims divine,
Then mind your studies, all and some,
And eat not like a swine.
Use well your time--'tis money worth,
Yea, work till death you see.
And should you yield to sloth and mirth,
Do it not sloath--somely![[4]]
[THE BASALT.]
Mag der basaltene Mohrenstein
Zum Schreck es erzählen im Lande,
Wie er gebrodelt in Flammenschein
Und geschwärzt entstiegen dem Brande:
Brenn's drunten noch Jahr aus Jahr ein
Beim Wein soll uns nicht bange sein,
Nein, nein!
Soll uns nicht bange sein!
F. v. Kobell. Urzeit der Erde, p. 33.
Es war der Basalt ein jüngerer Sohn
Aus altvulcanischem Hause,
Er lebte lang verkannt und gedrückt
In erdtief verborgener Clause.
Sir basalt was a younger son
Of that oldest race, the Vulcanian,
And he lived for ages oppressed and unknown
In a cavern deep subterranean.
So they goaded and jeered the lover forlorn,--
'Art thou yearning for rainy weather?
You will get but a mitten, and the scorn
Of all the formations together.
'Uncle Rocksalt said to the Lime and smiled,
And the billows sneer it higher,
"How can the Ocean's third-born child
Be a bride to this scum of Fire?"'
What happened next was never known;
But at once into madness crashing,
In a fiery blaze he was upwards thrown,
His wild veins glaring and flashing.
Loud raving he sprang to the air in haste,
And scorching all, fast hurried;
Bursting the strata's mountain waste
Beneath which he long was buried.
And she whom he once had worshipped, broke,
And was crushed as a mere obstruction;
He laughed in scorn, and whirling in smoke,
Stormed on to fresh destruction.
And blow on blow--a terrible roar
Of thousands of storms wild crashing;
The earth burst open and trembled all o'er.
With a shaking and breaking and dashing.
Till in majesty the fiery flood
Flew up from the rifts in fountains,
And scattered with ruins land and flood
Bowed down to the columned mountains.
There he stood and gazed on the blue air free,
And the sun with its sweet attraction,
Then heavily sighed--it blew cool from the sea--
And he sank in petrifaction.
Yet still in the rock may be heard in rhyme
A wondrous tuning and ringing,
As though he would from his youthful time
A song of love be singing.
And a gold yellow drop of natrolite
From the dark stone oft comes peeping;
Those are the tears which Sir Basált
For his crushed love ever is weeping.
[THE BOULDER.]
Einst ziert' ich, den Aether durchspähend,
Als Spitze des Urgebirg's Stock,
Ruhm, Hoheit und Stellung verschmähend,
Ward ich zum erratischen Block.
Once high on the mountain-peak rising,
In sunlight I shone like a flame;
But height and position despising,
A wandering boulder became.
They say of a thinker's bold sallies,
He goes where the ice will not bear;
I was beckoned to false hollow valleys,
By snow maids, seductive and fair.
Thus driven by furious fancies,
I went down the hill with a shout;
But atoned for my youthful romances
By a thousand years rolling about.
Cried the Glacier, his teeth sharply showing,
Here, my blade, you'll be polished right well,
And from my moraine-offal going,
As a stranger be borne from the dell.
Then be scratched and be scraped and be driven,
I rolled to a rock that was cracked,
But with blows was knocked upward to heaven,
Be twisted, be puffed, and be whacked.
Just try to be proper and decent
In chaotic upheavals of mud!
Down I sunk, down to periods recent,
When the ice wall went off in the flood.
And rough is the rôle he unravels
Who plays in an ice part--ah, me!
On a flake I set out on my travels,
And the ice cake soon melted at sea.
Plimp, plump! down I went to the bottom,
For ages lay sleeping in clay,
Until the heat finally caught 'em,
And Glacier and Flood dried away.
Then the Sun, with a hotter light blazing,
Shone down where the billows once played;
And with the rhinoceros grazing,
The mammoth was seen in the glade.
Now we from the driving ice fast-time
Are useful, although it be late,
And to heathen and Christian for pastime
Give stones for the Church and the State.
* * * * *
Two geologists made up this ditty
In the vale between Aaré and Reuss;
And the inn where they sang it, so witty,
Was all built of boulders of gneiss.
They sang with deep feeling dramatic,
To the landscape of Findling so fine;
Then went like two boulders erratic,
Both tumbling and stumbling with wine.
[THE COMET.]
Ich armer Komet in dem himmlischen Feld
Wie ist's doch so windig mit mir bestellt!
Ich leb' in steten Sorgen,
Mein Licht selbst muss ich borgen ...
Ich erscheine nur von Zeit zu Zeit
Dann muss ich wieder fort in die Dunkelheit.
I a poor comet on high, you see,
How windy and wild is my destiny!
I live in constant sorrow,
My light e'en I must borrow;
I only appear from time to time,
Then must wander away in gloom and grime.
By lady Sun I'm ever distracted,
And to her by power magnetic attracted;
Yet she will not endure
That I should rise up to her,
I must long for her from flights afar,
For, alas! I'm in fact an eccentric star.
The fixed stars all in bitter fun
Declare I'm a lost and prodigal son.
They say I still go tottering
Here, there, among them pottering,
And where I once on my way have been
Nothing but dimness and darkness are seen.
The planets regard me with scorn, and say
That I always come bothering in their way.
Dame Venus and her sisters
Call me one of those crazy twisters,
'His tail is too great, and his nucleus too small.
Such an ill-made night stroller's worth nothing at all.'
That I'm a scandal they cry or lisp,
And call me a dreamer or Will-o'-the-wisp.
And down on earth a-squinting,
I see the learned ones printing,
'He's neither firm nor settled, nor would be,
Though he should spin to all eternity.'
E'en Humboldt, who handles nothing lightly,
Treats me in his Cosmos far from politely,
And should he write--I ask all--
And am I such a rascal?--
'The wandering comet, much thinner than foam,
With the smallest corps takes up the greatest room.'
But bide yon star-gazing spitefuls!--bide?
You don't know me yet from the innermost side.
Some day I'll catch you--curse ye?
And make you cry for mercy?
Then you'll go through me, and I'll meet your hope,
For with meteors I'll smash up your telescope.
[GUANO SONG.]
Ich weiss eine friedliche Stelle
Im schweigenden Ocean,
Krystallhell schäumet die Welle
Zum Felsengestade hinan.
I know of a peaceful island
Afar in the silent sea,
Where around the rocky highland
Pure billows are foaming free.
In the harbour no ship is resting,
No sailor is on the strand;
And thousands of white birds nesting,
Are the guards of the lonely land.
Ever pondering pious questions,
They labour right faithfully,
For blessed are their digestions,
And flowing like poetry.
For the birds are all 'Philosophen,'
To the principal precept inclined;
If the body be properly open,
Then all will go well with the mind.
And the children pursue more enlightened
What their fathers in silence begun.
To a mountain it rises, and whitened
By rays of a tropical sun.
In the rosiest light these sages
Look down at the future and say,
In the course of historical ages
We shall fill up the ocean some day.
And the recognition of merit
Is theirs in these later days,
For in Suabian land we hear it
When the Böblinger Rapsbauer[[5]] says:
'God bless you--guano sea-gull,
Of the far away coast of the west:
In spite of my countryman Hegel,
The stuff which you make is the best.'
[ASPHALTUM.]
Bestreuet aie Häupter mit Asche,
Verhaltet die Nasen euch bang,
Heut giebt's bei trübfliessender Flasche
Einen bituminösen Gesang.
Strew, strew all your heads with ashes,
Hold your noses firmly and long;
I sing by the lightning's pale flashes
A wild and bituminous song.
The wind of the desert is sweeping,
Like fire by the dead Dead Sea;
There a Dervish appointment is keeping,
With a maiden from Galilee.
'Twas ever a salty engulpher,
In horrors excessively rich;
In Lot's time there were lots of sulphur,
And to-day it is piteous on pitch.
No washwoman comes with a bucket,
No thirsty man comes with a mug;
For the one who would venture to suck it
Would wish that his grave had been dug.
Not a breath of a breeze is blowing,
No waves on the waters fall,
Though a strong smell of naphtha is flowing,
They said, 'We don't mind it at all.'
Two dark brown lumps were lying
Like rocks on the Dead Sea shore,
And while tenderly loving and sighing
They sat down there--to rise no more.
For the rock was pitch-naphtha which would not
Allow them to stir e'en a stitch,
And seated in concert, they could not
Rise up above concert pitch.
Then all the disaster comprising,
They wailed aloud: 'Allah is great!
We stick and we stick--there's no rising,
We stick and forever must wait!'
There they sat like a lost pot and kettle,
Their wails o'er the wilderness passed;
They mummified little by little,
And were turned to Asphaltum at last.
A little bird flew for assistance,
Away to the townlet of Zoar;
But benumbed it fell down in the distance,
It smelt so, it fluttered no more.
And shuddering and pale as if flurried,
A pilgrim procession went in--
From the smell of the benzine it hurried
So fast you'd not say 't had been seen.