Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Volume I

by Margaret Fuller

III.

STUDIES.

"Nur durch das Morgenthor des Schönen
Drangst du in der Erkenntniss Land;
An höhen Glanz sich zu gewöhnen
Uebt sich, am Reize der Verstand.
Was bei dem Saitenklang der Musen
Mit süssem Beben dich, durchdrang,
Erzog die Kraft in deinem Busen,
Die sich dereinst zum Weltgeist schwang."

SCHILLER.

"To work, with heart resigned and spirit strong;
Subdue, with patient toil, life's bitter wrong,
Through Nature's dullest, as her brightest ways,
We will march onward, singing to thy praise."

E.S., in the Dial.

"The peculiar nature of the scholar's occupation consists in this,—that science, and especially that side of it from which he conceives of the whole, shall continually burst forth before him in new and fairer forms. Let this fresh spiritual youth never grow old within him; let no form become fixed and rigid; let each sunrise bring him new joy and love in his vocation, and larger views of its significance."

FICHTE.

* * * * *

Of Margaret's studies while at Cambridge, I knew personally only of the German. She already, when I first became acquainted with her, had become familiar with the masterpieces of French, Italian and Spanish literature. But all this amount of reading had not made her "deep-learned in books and shallow in herself;" for she brought to the study of most writers "a spirit and genius equal or superior."—so far, at least, as the analytic understanding was concerned. Every writer whom she studied, as every person whom she knew, she placed in his own class, knew his relation to other writers, to the world, to life, to nature, to herself. Much as they might delight her, they never swept her away. She breasted the current of their genius, as a stately swan moves up a stream, enjoying the rushing water the more because she resists it. In a passionate love-struggle she wrestled thus with the genius of De Staël, of Rousseau, of Alfieri, of Petrarch.

The first and most striking element in the genius of Margaret was the clear, sharp understanding, which keenly distinguished between things different, and kept every thought, opinion, person, character, in its own place, not to be confounded with any other. The god Terminus presided over her intellect. She knew her thoughts as we know each other's faces; and opinions, with most of us so vague, shadowy, and shifting, were in her mind substantial and distinct realities. Some persons see distinctions, others resemblances; but she saw both. No sophist could pass on her a counterfeit piece of intellectual money; but also she recognized the one pure metallic basis in coins of different epochs, and when mixed with a very ruinous alloy. This gave a comprehensive quality to her mind most imposing and convincing, as it enabled her to show the one Truth, or the one Law, manifesting itself in such various phenomena. Add to this her profound faith in truth, which made her a Realist of that order that thoughts to her were things. The world of her thoughts rose around her mind as a panorama,—the sun-in the sky, the flowers distinct in the foreground, the pale mountain sharply, though faintly, cutting the sky with its outline in the distance,—and all in pure light and shade, all in perfect perspective.

Margaret began to study German early in 1832. Both she and I were attracted towards this literature, at the same time, by the wild bugle-call of Thomas Carlyle, in his romantic articles on Richter, Schiller, and Goethe, which appeared in the old Foreign Review, the Edinburgh Review, and afterwards in the Foreign Quarterly.

I believe that in about three months from the time that Margaret commenced German, she was reading with ease the masterpieces of its literature. Within the year, she had read Goethe's Faust, Tasso, Iphigenia, Hermann and Dorothea, Elective Affinities, and Memoirs; Tieck's William Lovel, Prince Zerbino, and other works; Körner, Novalis, and something of Richter; all of Schiller's principal dramas, and his lyric poetry. Almost every evening I saw her, and heard an account of her studies. Her mind opened under this influence, as the apple-blossom at the end of a warm week in May. The thought and the beauty of this rich literature equally filled her mind and fascinated her imagination.

* * * * *

But if she studied books thus earnestly, still more frequently did she turn to the study of men. Authors and their personages were not ideal beings merely, but full of human blood and life. So living men and women were idealized again, and transfigured by her rapid fancy,—every trait intensified, developed, ennobled. Lessing says that "The true portrait painter will paint his subject, flattering him as art ought to flatter,—painting the face not as it actually is, but as creation designed, omitting the imperfections arising from the resistance of the material worked in." Margaret's portrait-painting intellect treated persons in this way. She saw them as God designed them,—omitting the loss from wear and tear, from false position, from friction of untoward circumstances. If we may be permitted to take a somewhat transcendental distinction, she saw them not as they actually were, but as they really were. This accounts for her high estimate of her friends,—too high, too flattering, indeed, but justified to her mind by her knowledge of their interior capabilities.

* * * * *

The following extract illustrates her power, even at the age of nineteen, of comprehending the relations of two things lying far apart from each other, and of rising to a point of view which could overlook both:—

'I have had,—while staying a day or two in Boston,—some of Shirley's, Ford's, and Hey wood's plays from the Athenæum. There are some noble strains of proud rage, and intellectual, but most poetical, all-absorbing, passion. One of the finest fictions I recollect in those specimens of the Italian novelists,—which you, I think, read when I did,—noble, where it illustrated the Italian national spirit, is ruined by the English novelist, who has transplanted it to an uncongenial soil; yet he has given it beauties which an Italian eye could not see, by investing the actors with deep, continuing, truly English affections.'

* * * * *

The following criticism on some of the dialogues of Plato, (dated June 3d, 1833,) in a letter returning the book, illustrates her downright way of asking world-revered authors to accept the test of plain common sense. As a finished or deliberate opinion, it ought not to be read; for it was not intended as such, but as a first impression hastily sketched. But read it as an illustration of the method in which her mind worked, and you will see that she meets the great Plato modestly, but boldly, on human ground, asking him for satisfactory proof of all that he says, and treating him as a human being, speaking to human beings.

'June 3, 1833.—I part with Plato with regret. I could have wished to "enchant myself," as Socrates would say, with him some days longer. Eutyphron is excellent. Tis the best specimen I have ever seen of that mode of convincing. There is one passage in which Socrates, as if it were aside,—since the remark is quite away from the consciousness of Eutyphron,—declares, "qu'il aimerait incomparablement mieux des principes fixes et inébranlables à l'habilité de Dédale avec les tresors de Tantale." I delight to hear such things from those whose lives have given the right to say them. For 'tis not always true what Lessing says, and I, myself, once thought,—

"F.—Von was fur Tugenden spricht er denn?
MINNA.——Er spricht von keiner; denn ihn fehlt keine."

For the mouth sometimes talketh virtue from the overflowing of
the heart, as well as love, anger, &c.

'"Crito" I have read only once, but like it. I have not got it in my heart though, so clearly as the others. The "Apology" I deem only remarkable for the noble tone of sentiment, and beautiful calmness. I was much affected by Phaedo, but think the argument weak in many respects. The nature of abstract ideas is clearly set forth; but there is no justice in reasoning, from their existence, that our souls have lived previous to our present state, since it was as easy for the Deity to create at once the idea of beauty within us, as the sense which brings to the soul intelligence that it exists in some outward shape. He does not clearly show his opinion of what the soul is; whether eternal as the Deity, created by the Deity, or how. In his answer to Simmias, he takes advantage of the general meaning of the words harmony, discord, &c. The soul might be a result, without being a harmony. But I think too many things to write, and some I have not had time to examine. Meanwhile I can think over parts, and say to myself, "beautiful," "noble," and use this as one of my enchantments.'

* * * * *

'I send two of your German books. It pains me to part with Ottilia. I wish we could learn books, as we do pieces of music, and repeat them, in the author's order, when taking a solitary walk. But, now, if I set out with an Ottilia, this wicked fairy association conjures up such crowds of less lovely companions, that I often cease to feel the influence of the elect one. I don't like Goethe so well as Schiller now. I mean, I am not so happy in reading him. That perfect wisdom and merciless nature seems cold, after those seducing pictures of forms more beautiful than truth. Nathless, I should like to read the second part of Goethe's Memoirs, if you do not use it now.'

* * * * *

1832.—I am thinking how I omitted to talk a volume to you about the "Elective Affinities." Now I shall never say half of it, for which I, on my own account, am sorry. But two or three things I would ask:—

'What do you think of Charlotte's proposition, that the accomplished pedagogue must be tiresome in society?

'Of Ottilia's, that the afflicted, and ill-educated, are oftentimes singled out by fate to instruct others, and her beautiful reasons why?

'And what have you thought of the discussion touching graves and monuments?

'I am now going to dream of your sermon, and of Ottilia's china-asters. Both shall be driven from my head to-morrow, for I go to town, allured by despatches from thence, promising much entertainment. Woe unto them if they disappoint me!

'Consider it, I pray you, as the "nearest duty" to answer my questions, and not act as you did about the sphinx-song.'

* * * * *

'I have not anybody to speak to, that does not talk common-place, and I wish to talk about such an uncommon person,—about Novalis! a wondrous youth, and who has only written one volume. That is pleasant! I feel as though I could pursue my natural mode with him, get acquainted, then make my mind easy in the belief that I know all that is to be known. And he died at twenty-nine, and, as with Körner, your feelings may be single; you will never be called upon to share his experience, and compare his future feelings with his present. And his life was so full and so still.

Then it is a relief, after feeling the immense superiority of Goethe. It seems to me as if the mind of Goethe had embraced the universe. I have felt this lately, in reading his lyric poems. I am enchanted while I read. He comprehends every feeling I have ever had so perfectly, expresses it so beautifully: but when I shut the book, it seems as if I had lost my personal identity; all my feelings linked with such an immense variety that belong to beings I had thought so different. What can I bring? There is no answer in my mind, except "It is so," or "It will be so," or "No doubt such and such feel so." Yet, while my judgment becomes daily more tolerant towards others, the same attracting and repelling work is going on in my feelings. But I persevere in reading the great sage, some part of every day, hoping the time will come, when I shall not feel so overwhelmed, and leave off this habit of wishing to grasp the whole, and be contented to learn a little every day, as becomes a pupil.

'But now the one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow, of a mind like that of Novalis, seem refreshingly human to me. I have wished fifty times to write some letters giving an account, first, of his very pretty life, and then of his one volume, as I re-read it, chapter by chapter. If you will pretend to be very much interested, perhaps I will get a better pen, and write them to you.' * *