The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 09 / Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig

by Unknown

ON THEODOR KÖRNER AND HEINRICH VON KLEIST (1835)

By FRIEDRICH HEBBEL
TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING

Not only in the history of the world but in the history of literature as well, we meet with strange aberrations on the part of entire epochs in their estimate of individual men, rightly or wrongly raised above their environment. Exactly what the age happens to demand, what fits in with its restless activity, that is what it rewards and values. We cannot deny, indeed, that every generation has the right to require the poet, as well as its other sons, to consult its needs so far as possible. But it is seldom satisfied with this; he must confer his benefits in the most agreeable way, and whether or not he is weak enough to humor it in this, determines, as a rule, whether it will take him fondly in its arms, or will crush him. These reflections were recently aroused in me when a volume of Heinrich von Kleist's writings came into my possession together with a volume of Theodor Körner's works, and I trust that the Scientific Society will not consider them too unimportant to be developed in some detail.

In the two poets named we see two remarkable examples of the above-mentioned aberration of an entire epoch. While the first of the two, Heinrich von Kleist, possesses all the qualities that go to make up the great poet and at the same time the true German, the other, Theodor Körner, has only enthusiasm for those qualities; but while Kleist refuses to forget his own dignity in the interests of the times, and finally strives to unite these interests with the highest mission of art, Körner prefers to throw himself submissively into the vortex. For this reason Kleist was maligned, ignored, and misjudged during his lifetime, scorned at his death, and forgotten by immediate posterity, whereas Körner was enthusiastically received and applauded, and when he descended into his early grave, was mourned by the whole world. I would gladly pass by his grave in silence, and leave him the laurels which he purchased with his death; but I see no reason why he should swell the number of our fathers' sins, and should neglect an act of justice, which will, in any case, be performed some day by our grandchildren, and then perhaps with a smile of pity for us.

Before we go farther it will be necessary to establish, so far as possible, certain conceptions of art in general, and of the branches of art cultivated by Körner and Kleist. I purposely say "so far as possible;" for it would not be easy to expound a complete conception of art before one set forth a complete conception of the human soul, of which art might be called the most comprehensive phenomenon. We must therefore infer this conception from the effects of art, so far as they appear; but as these effects are infinite the conception may be something very different from a barrier erected for the purpose of a mere provisional designation, which ceases to exist the moment that it pleases genius to overstep it. We find this possibility confirmed when we examine how the conception in question has changed in German literature alone, during the various epochs of its relatively short history.

In the day of Gessner, Bodmer, and the like, who saw a muse in every sheep and every herdsman, the imitation of nature was the gospel in which every one believed. This, at best, meant nothing at all, and closely analyzed, it is half nonsensical, in so far as this definition presupposes art to be something that exists outside the domain of nature. But man belongs within the domain of nature; he must be included within this domain, and at most can complete or enlarge it; and for this reason alone art can never imitate a whole of which it is a part.

Hereupon men went a step farther, and defined art as "imitation of the beautiful." We should have less cause to object to this definition if the question on which everything depends in this case had not been left unanswered; if they had not left undecided what it was they meant by "imitation of the beautiful." They were indeed very soon ready with an explanation, calling that "beautiful" which reveals an agreeable unity in variety. Unfortunately they could not prevail upon themselves to grant the proposition: "All is beautiful or nothing," which follows immediately from the first; for they had overlooked the fact that the word "agreeable" was superfluous, since every unity, because it gives a clear impression and permits us to look into the unviolated order of nature, appeals to us "agreeably"—I must use this word because it expresses the least badly the feeling which I would describe. Now, however, in spite of all reluctance, they had to acknowledge that in the domain of art there were many phenomena in which no such narrow-minded imitation of the beautiful, as was demanded, could be shown to exist, but which nevertheless could not be denied recognition. It was truly remarkable how they tried to find an escape from this dilemma. They admitted that ugliness could sometimes form an ingredient in a work of art, by which means it became possible for the artist to arouse certain mixed sensations in default of purely agreeable sensations. Mark well, "in default of purely agreeable sensations!" As though the incapacity or the momentary embarrassment of the artist, and the inadequacy of a chosen subject, could do away with a law of art once recognized as supreme. It is just as though the political law-giver should modify the prohibition of stealing by the clause: "if, namely, thou canst earn something in an honest manner." Striking it is, that even Lessing should cling to such definitions and employ all his ingenuity to prove their tenableness. It goes to show that the taste of a nation never—as may very well be imagined—precedes the genius, but always limps along behind him. Still more striking it is that they could feel the inadequacy of the accepted definition, that they could come so near to the real remedy, and yet could overlook it. It seems to me, namely, that everything could have been adjusted, if they had made the same demands on the artist's work that they made on the subject chosen by him. This is so plain that it needs no demonstration.

If I should be asked to state my conception of art—it is understood that here, as elsewhere, that only the art of poetry is in question—I would base it on the unconditional freedom of the artist, and say: Art should seize upon life in all its various forms, and represent it. It is obvious that this cannot be accomplished by mere copying. The artist must afford life something more than a morgue, where it is prepared for burial. We wish to see the point from which life starts and the one where it loses itself, as a single wave, in the great sea of infinite, effect. That this effect is a twofold one, and that it can turn inward as well as outward, is of course self-evident. For the rest—be it said incidentally—here is the point from which a parallel can be drawn between the phenomena of real life and those of life embodied in art.

I will now review the separate branches of art at which Körner and Kleist have tried their hand. We find that they are lyric poetry, drama, and narrative. All three have to do with the representation of life, and if a division can be made it can only be based upon the various ways in which life is wont to manifest itself. Life manifests itself either as a reaction upon outward impressions, or lacking these, directly from within. When it works directly from within, we usually designate the form under which it appears as feeling. Feeling is the element of lyric poetry; the art of limiting and representing it makes the lyric poet. Let no one object that there are feelings enough which arise in consequence of outward impressions, and that these too have been expressed sufficiently often by the poets; I am very much inclined to distinguish between the results of these impressions and the feelings which well up from the depths of the soul in consecrated moments; and in any case, these alone are a worthy subject for the lyric poet; for only in them does the whole man actually live, they only are the product of his whole being. I hate examples because they are either make-shifts or will-o'-the-wisps, but here I must add that in Uhland's song, "A short while hence I dreamed," I find such a feeling expressed.

The drama represents the thought which seeks to become a deed through action or suffering. The narrative is really not a pure form, but a combination of the lyric and dramatic elements,—a combination which differs from the drama in that it develops the outer life from the inner, whereas in the drama the inner proceeds from the outer.

Let us now examine what Theodor Körner and Heinrich von Kleist have accomplished, in the first place, as lyric poets. Kleist (unhappily) has left us very little in this field, Körner (again unhappily) all the more. Körner's war-songs have, in this stage of our investigation, the precedence over his other lyric productions, for two reasons: in the first place, they found the largest public and earned for their author, beside the royalties, the title of a German Tyrtaeus; and in the second place, Theodor Körner's soul was most ardently engrossed with the supposed and the real sufferings of his time, with the dignity and the misfortune of his people, and with the necessity and sacredness of the war. Let no one scent any bombast in all this, but, on the contrary, let him admire my cleverness in condensing into three lines, everything that Theodor Körner expressed in a whole volume, in Lyre and Sword! If, therefore, his war-songs are bad, we shall be justified in concluding that we need expect still less from his other poems, in which he is concerned with sentiments which certainly affected him more slightly than those which placed the sword in his hand. I turn over the index of his war-songs, and find Call to the German Nation, Before the Battle, Germany,—in short, titles that all point to material very often handled, and therefore grown trivial. I do not, indeed, immediately conclude therefrom that the poems are trivial, but I have the right to conclude that the man who attempts such worn out subjects must be either a very great or a very small poet. May I be permitted to analyze one of these poems? I will choose, as the most significant, the well known Battle Song of the Confederation. In this poem the poet has striven to collect everything that could serve to make the soldiers who were to take part in the battle of Danneberg more indifferent to the bullets. I should not, however, have liked to advise the commanding general actually to use it for this purpose. Mr. Körner quite forgets with what sort of people he is dealing when, in the third strophe, he expects the soldiers to let themselves be slaughtered for German art and German song. This is more than a joke, for I have the right to demand that a Battle-Song of the Confederation shall be comprehensible and intelligible to all who are to take part in the battle; and art and song are, in any case, not important enough to be named together with the causes that made the fighting of a battle necessary, together with the enslavement of a people; quite apart from the fact that both, art and song, belong to those national treasures which are most secure in the time of hostile invasion. But in order not to give my logic a bad reputation, I will begin at the beginning. Mr. Körner not only began there but even ended there—this in parenthesis. The first strophe aims to give the picture of a battle; but it is fortunate that we already know, from the superscription, with what battle we are concerned; we should scarcely find it out from this first strophe, which finishes, but does not complete the picture. In the second strophe we learn rather more; we learn that the beloved German oak is broken, that the language—thank God, not the women—has been violated, and we find it quite natural that revenge should blaze up at last, even though we cannot escape a slight feeling of surprise that dishonor, shame and such like, already lay behind those heroes, and therefore had been endured. We have already tasted of the sweets of the third strophe; in spite of this, we see there is a great deal still remaining in this strophe, a happy hope, a golden future, a whole heaven, etc., etc.—it must be the fault of my eyes that, notwithstanding, I can see nothing at all in it. In the fourth strophe courage comes along on regular seven league boots, and I wish the critic had as much reason to be satisfied with its contents, as had the Fatherland, to which a splendid vow is sworn therein. The fifth strophe contains a real human sentiment; it might exclaim with Falstaff, "Heaven send me better company!" In the sixth strophe we learn that the poet was not blustering in the fourth strophe, but that the fighting is really going to begin: at the same time it contains the principal beauty of the song, namely the end. Now, I ask, apart from the school-boyish, crude composition of the poem, which throws suspicion merely on the taste, not precisely on the power, of a poet—where is even the faintest tinge of poetry? And the muse was a battle!

We have finished, then, with the poetic part of this poem; it now remains to investigate in how far it is a real German product, that is to say, such an one as could have been produced only on German soil by a German. Every one will find that it might very easily have been written by some person from the Sultan's seraglio, and used by any people who found themselves in a like situation. Even the French, although it is directed against them, could gain inspiration from it, if their good taste did not preserve them from doing so. Let no one throw the German oaks (strophe four) in my way; I must stumble along over whole oak trees.

Let us now compare with Körner's Battle-Song of the Confederation, Kleist's poem To Germany, as I believe it is called. I am glad that I am not able to characterize the separate strophes of this poem; they are, what the divisions of a poem should be, nothing, when they are detached from the whole. "Germans," exclaims the poet—"Your forests have long been cleared, serpents and foxes ye have destroyed, only the Frenchman I still see slinking!" This is a folk song; the vast, the great, is associated with the simplest and most familiar objects, and the figures chosen are not only beautiful, but at the same time inevitable.

I will pass on to consider the achievements of Körner and Heinrich von Kleist in the field of the drama. In this both have been very active, but in order to avoid boredom for a time at least, I shall begin with the analysis of a piece by Kleist, choosing first a tragedy, his Prince of Homburg which, to be sure, is entitled simply "a drama" by its author. I do not know whether he did this because of the circumstances that the Prince, as the hero of the piece, happily escapes with his life, or, what is more likely, in order to humor the public, who think the tragic can only exist where there are rivers of blood; neither will I censure it, but only call attention to the fact that in my opinion that which makes a tragedy lies only in the struggle of the individual, never in the outcome of this struggle. The outcome is in the hands of the gods, says an old proverb, well then, acts of the gods—as events may very well be called which are the effects of fate—can never be anything else for the dramatic poet than what curtain and wings are for the stage; they limit without completing. I defined drama, above, as a representation of the thought which seeks to become a deed through action or suffering. What this thought may be like—upon that very little depends; but that it really should be there, that it should fill the entire man, so much, of a surety, is necessary. What is, then, the thought that, in the play under discussion, fills the soul of the Prince o£ Homburg, the chief hero? We find it expressed in scene two of the second act, in the place where the Prince says to Kottwitz, who reminds him, the man thirsting for deeds, of the Elector's orders:

"Orders? Eh, Kottwitz, do you ride so slow?
Have you not heard the orders of your heart?"

The thought is this: strength stands above the law, and courage recognizes no other barrier but itself. Kleist, in the fifth scene of the first act, with which the fifth scene of the fifth act corresponds, appears to have taken pains to set up as the lever of the piece, not so much this thought as rather a mere accident, namely the inattention of the Prince when the plan of battle was being dictated, but it is really only in appearance. For though he makes Hohenzollern, properly enough, lay great stress on this circumstance, that signifies little; only if the Prince himself—a thing which never happens—had laid stress upon it, could it have had an influence on the economy of the piece. Let us proceed to a more detailed development of the tragedy.

The historical part of it is based on the famous battle which the Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg fought against the Swedes at Fehrbellin. The story of the play is briefly as follows: The Prince of Homburg, to whom has been confided the commandment of the cavalry of the Mark of Brandenburg, arbitrarily disobeys the orders given him, and advances too soon. He wins the battle, but is placed on trial before a court martial by Frederick William and condemned to death for insubordination.

And truly—I should add, if I did not know that poetic enthusiasm is very ridiculous in a criticism—the action is brought before us with such power that this tragedy may very well be compared to a German oak, on which every branch flourishes luxuriantly, and whose summit is nearer to heaven than to earth. The whole play contains nothing but characters, not a single puppet—which can seldom be said of the work of even the greatest master—and I regret that I can develop in detail only the character of the Prince of Homburg, and, for the others, can merely touch upon those sides which come into contact with him.

I am not inclined, like Zimmermann, to see in the first scene simply an endeavor on the part of the poet to provide a mystic background for his picture. I do not see why a young man, who happens to be afflicted with the sleep-walking malady, should not walk in his sleep even on the night before a battle, and why a young hero who has long been nursing the most high-flown thoughts concerning glory and immortality, should not, on such a night, make himself an oak-wreath. In the day time, to be sure, an occupation of that sort would not look very well, but night is the realm of phantasy and the wreath is the emblem of glory. Then, too, I find that this first scene—the naturalness of which I hope I have proved—is of deep significance for the play. In order to explain psychologically the Prince's headstrong disobedience of the Elector's express order, a great excitement of mind was needed. Now I really do not know where Kleist could better have derived this than precisely from a half-waking dream, in which the Prince supposedly received in advance all that constituted the highest goal of his hopes, and which should have been the most valued fruit of his endeavors—the making of the wreath points to this, and the fourth scene of the first act confirms it. The absent-mindedness which this dream causes in the Prince in the fifth scene, and particularly the monologue with which the first act closes, prove that I am not mistaken in my opinion concerning the significance which the poet placed upon the scene in question.

In the second act we must first notice the second scene. In this the real action begins and ends. That which precedes and that which follows are connected with it like cause and effect. The Prince wrests the victory from the enemy, and earns for himself death. Then the eighth scene of this act is of the greatest importance; in it the Prince declares his love to Princess Nathalie of Orange. I am minded to count this scene among the most important dramatic achievements ever accomplished by the greatest poets of Germany. Let us picture the exposition that introduces it. A rumor has been spread abroad that the Elector has fallen in the battle. The Electress, with her ladies, is a prey to the greatest anxiety. Homburg arrives and confirms the rumor. Nathalie says:[6]

"Who now will lead us in this terrible war
And keep these Swedes in subjugation?—

THE PRINCE of HOMBURG (taking her hand).

I, lady, take upon myself your cause!
The Elector hoped, before the year turned tide,
To see the Marches free. So be it! I
Executor will be on that last will.

NATHALIE.
My cousin, dearest cousin!

PRINCE.
Nathalie!
What holds the future now in store for you?

NATHALIE.
Oh, I am orphaned now a second time.

PRINCE.
Oh, friend, sweet friend, were this dark hour not given
To grief, to be its own, thus would I speak:
Oh, twine your branches here about this breast!

NATHALIE.
My dear, good cousin!

PRINCE.
Will you, will you?"

I believe that during this love-scene, lovers will not be the only ones to find amusement, though this is the case as a rule. The tenth scene of this act is the turning point of the play. The Prince hastens to the Elector with the conquered flags, rejoicing in the victory and in the certitude that the latter still lives. The Elector commands that his sword be taken from him and orders a court martial to be convoked. Let us not overlook what this scene is in itself, through the contrasts presented. It is moreover the chief argument for the correctness of the opinion I have already expressed concerning the idea of the play. For the Prince is far from being sensible of the fault committed, and when Hohenzollern says to him,

"The ordinance demands obedience," he replies bitterly: "So—so, so, so!"

And later:

"My cousin Frederick hopes to play the Brutus—
By God, in me he shall not find a son
Who shall revere him 'neath the hangman's axe!" etc.

He cannot as yet be just to the Elector, because he is still too indulgent to himself.

In the first scene of the third act he has come a step nearer the truth. He calls himself a plant which has burst into bloom too swiftly and opulently. But he still says,

"Come, was it such a capital offense,
Two little seconds ere the order said,
To have laid low the stoutness of the Swede?"

The dignity of the code of war, upon which the Elector's mode of action is based, still lies too remote from his comprehension; therefore he is persuaded that:

"Ere, at a kerchief's fall, he yields this heart,
That loves him truly, to the muskets' fire,
Ere that, I say, he'll lay his own breast bare
And spill his own blood, drop by drop, in dust."

And when Hohenzollern lets fall a word about the mission of the Swedish ambassador to ask for the hand of the Princess of Orange, the Prince is even inclined to think unworthily of the Elector. He is capable of believing that the Elector will let him die because the Princess has be trothed herself to him. This is genuinely psychological, and here, where Homburg's character begins to appear in a dubious light, is actually the real touch-stone of it. That he loves and admires the Elector, he has already proved, that he has taken great trouble to find a reason for the latter's conduct that is not unworthy of him, is self-evident; for the human heart knows no greater pain than to have given admiration where it should have bestowed contempt. When, therefore, the Prince nevertheless believes that his betrothal to Nathalie has provoked the Elector's severity, he shows thereby that he has absolutely no comprehension of the dignity and necessity of the code of war, that consequently his violation of the ordinance could not have been caused by boyish petulancy, but by a grievous error, which, as an error, could be forgiven in a man. But for that very reason it is not inconsistent with his heroic character for him to exclaim "Oh, friend! Then help me! Save me! I am lost!" For a man shows himself as such when he gives up for lost a possession which is lost, not when he, like a madman, renounces everything for the sake of making fine phrases: and the Prince only does his duty when he tries in whatever way he can, to rescue his life from the despotic will of an individual. In the fifth scene, where he implores the Electress to intercede for him, he says:

"You would not speak thus, mother mine, if death
Had ever terribly encompassed you
As it doth me. With potencies of heaven,
You and my lady, these who serve you, all
The world that rings me round, seem blest to save
The very stable-boy, the meanest, least,
That tends your horses, pleading I could hang
About his neck crying: Oh, save me, thou!"

Even that is, in my opinion, fine and human, for it is the first ebullition of emotion; and when is the feeling of painful loss ever separated from the lively desire to preserve the endangered possession? I do not make this statement because I believe I am saying something new, but because I think it is something old which has not been sufficiently taken to heart. For the rest, this fifth scene is very beautiful and produces a deep effect. Who does not feel annihilated with the Prince when he exclaims:

"Since I beheld my grave, life, life, I want,
And do not ask if it be kept with honor."

And farther on,

"And tell him this, forget it not, that I
Desire Nathalie no more, for her
All tenderness within my heart is quenched."

And how wonderful, how splendid does Nathalie appear in her calm nobility! How absolutely true to nature it is that her strength first begins gently and noiselessly to unfold its wings when the man, whom she had looked upon as her ideal, from whom she had expected all things, has succumbed. And how genuinely womanly are the words with which she attempts to raise him up once more:

"Return, young hero, to your prison walls,
And, on your passage, imperturbably
Regard once more the grave they dug for you.
It is not gloomier, nor more wide at all
Than those the battle showed a thousand times!"

But poetic beauty is like the fragrance of flowers—it cannot be described, but only perceived.

Nathalie's character is rounded off in the first scene of the fourth act when she begs the Elector to liberate Homburg. She could have borne the death of the Prince, but this timorous misrepresentation of himself she cannot bear:

"I never guessed a man could sink so low
Whom history applauded as her hero.
For look—I am a woman and I shrink
From the mere worm that draws too near my foot;
But so undone, so void of all control,
So unheroic quite, though lion-like
Death fiercely came, he should not find me thus!
Oh, what is human greatness, human fame!"

It is then that the Elector decides to make the Prince himself the judge of his offense, and writes him the following letter:

"My Prince of Homburg, when I made you prisoner
Because of your too premature attack,
I thought that I was doing what was right—
No more; and reckoned on your acquiescence.
If you believe that I have been unjust,
Tell me I beg you in a word or two,
And forthwith I will send you back your sword."

He gives this letter to Nathalie for her to deliver to the Prince. I must set down the words with which she receives the letter:

"I do not know and do not seek to know
What woke your favor, liege, so suddenly.
But truly this, I feel this in my heart,
You would not make ignoble sport of me.
The letter hold whate'er it may—I trust
That it hold pardon—and I thank you for it!"

Many another writer would have believed it was not enough for Nathalie to prove herself a heroine, but that she must stride onward with seven league boots and become an Amazon as well. Kleist, however, had looked deeply into feminine nature, he knew that woman's greatness only blooms above the abyss, and that she loses her wings the moment that earth again offers her a spot where she can safely and firmly tread. Nathalie sighs only once: "Oh what is human greatness, human fame!" But she rejoices when she has the saving letter of the Elector in her possession, and, without troubling herself further about its contents, she hastens, enraptured, to the Prince of Homburg.

The Prince receives the letter. He reads it aloud while Nathalie listens. She grows pale; for she feels what a man must do who is called upon to be his own judge. Nevertheless she urges the Prince to write the words which the Elector requires; she snatches the letter from the Prince's hand; when he hesitates, she reminds him of the open grave he has already seen. But neither is the Prince any longer in doubt concerning the significance of the moment, concerning the Elector, concerning his own guilt. He says,

"I will not face the man who faces me
So nobly, with a knave's ignoble front!
Guilt, heavy guilt, upon my conscience weighs,
I fully do confess—"

He writes this to the Elector, and Nathalie embraces him exclaiming:

"And though twelve bullets made
You dust this instant, I could not resist
Caroling, sobbing, crying: 'Thus you please me!'"

I would gladly follow the great poet through the fifth act also, but it is not indispensable for the analysis of the play, as the dénouement is easy to foresee—namely that the Prince, after already suffering one death through the relinquishment of that idea which has been the guiding principle of his life hitherto, is spared a second death. Finally I must add that I have not chosen the Prince of Homburg as the subject of my criticism because this tragedy is the most successful of all Kleist's plays, but merely because it offers the best opportunity for drawing a comparison between the dramatic achievements of Kleist and those of Körner. And now, courage. We must start in with Körner and we will choose that one of his products which is universally declared the greatest, his Zriny.

In discussing the Prince of Homburg I could limit myself to a general outline, as it is not possible that any one who reads the play could ever have the least doubt whether the characters are correctly drawn. We have not such an easy task with Körner's Zriny, but rather must take the opposite way. In order not to overpass the limits of this essay, however, we will pay less attention to the play as a totality, which, indeed, can occupy our attention only if the first investigation prove favorable to the author.

The idea which kindles Zriny's enthusiasm is unconditional obedience to Emperor and Fatherland. It must be admitted that it is an idea which may have arisen in many a human breast in the year 1566, and which certainly animated the heroic Zriny. It is not sufficient, however, for the dramatic poet to give utterance to what fills the soul of his hero, for that falls to the lot of history to perform. While the historian looks upon every individual as a bomb, whose course and effect he must calculate, but with whose origin he is but slightly concerned, it is the affair of the dramatic poet—who, if he recognizes his high mission, strives to complete history—to show how the character whom he has chosen as a subject for treatment has become what he is. We find this, for example, in Shakespeare, to go back to the Bible of the playwright. Every passion which he describes we see as roots and tree at one and the same time. Theodor Körner simplified the matter, he only shows us the flame; whence it comes he leaves in doubt, and therefore has himself to thank if we are undecided whether his heroes are pursuing will-o'-the-wisps, or—to use his favorite metaphor—stars. I need not call attention to the fact that this way is by far the easier.

The plot of this play is sufficiently well known. I will therefore turn immediately to a closer examination of the several characters. Honor to whom honor is due; let Sultan Soliman advance. I will not pause at the first scene in which he appears, although even there he reveals damnable weaknesses. After all a Turk may be forgiven for losing his temper because his physician-in-ordinary does not know how long he will live. In the second scene Körner has tried to outline the hero who demands Vienna for his funeral torch. He has not succeeded as well as he might.

"Karl, Karl!"—cries Soliman in his beard—"If only thou
Thy Europe now would lie here at my feet"

[Illustration: THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE HUNS AND THE NIBELUNGS From the
Painting by Schnorr von Carolsfeld]

Every other hero would have considered that in which Soliman beheld the curse of his life to be the greatest favor fortune could have shown him. I do not expect much from the hound—this parable is very well suited to the Turks—who only fights with little yelping dogs. How far Mr. Körner has succeeded in spreading the oriental coloring over his picture is shown very plainly in the fourth scene, where Soliman receives his generals with the words:

"I greet you all, supporters of my throne,
Most welcome comrades of my victories,
I greet you all."

Seldom has the sun shone upon a politer Turk than this Soliman, who, to be sure, afterward throws around not only his oaths but his dagger. That it is no merit of Körner if we behold in his Soliman a hero and a Turk, must be evident to every one; but let us now examine whether he has succeeded any better in representing the commander-in-chief and the tyrant. We find both in the third scene of the third act. Mehmed reports to the Sultan that the assault has been repulsed.

"A curse upon thee!"

answers the latter; then he inquires who gave the order for the retreat; Mehmed answers that he did; the Janizaries had been slaughtered by the thousands, but in vain, the army was exhausted, and it had been impossible to wrest the victory from the enemy; he intended, however, to bombard the castle the next night and was persuaded that the walls must give way. Soliman flies into a passion:

"But I from them will wrest it (the victory namely), must wrest it!"

In very truth an excellent commander-in-chief, who is not to be persuaded by reasons such as Mehmed advanced, and who differs from a child who is denied his will only in that he bellows where the child screams. But—perhaps we have the tyrant before us where I thought I perceived the nullity of the commander-in-chief. Let us read on:

ALI.

"Remember Malta!

SOLIMAN.

Death and Hell! Ali!
Remind me not of Malta, if thy head
Is dear to thee. More I endure from thee
Than does befit the great lord Soliman!"

Really the beginning promises well.

ALI.

"My life is in thy hands, my Emperor!

SOLIMAN.

Since thou dost know that, yet didst freely speak
Thy heart's thought to me, I'll forgive thee.
For I love truth which knows no fear of death.
In token then of my imperial grace,
Thy council shall prevail; I'll not attack!"

I think we do not need to tremble before a tyrant whose fury could be appeased by Ali's paltry words. "My life is in thy hands, my Emperor!" which must have been said to him often enough before. Let no one reproach me if, henceforth, I keep silence on the subject of Soliman. Offenses of this kind are not mere blunders, they are the sign of complete incompetency on the part of the poet, and solely out of curiosity, not because it is necessary to demonstrate my argument, I shall continue to analyze Zriny, Helena, and the other marionettes.

Zriny is an abortive copy of Wallenstein; his originality consists in doing for the Emperor, what the latter does against him. Juranitsch is Max Piccolomini the second, but has the misfortune to stand as far below the first as other people who also happened to be seconds, as for example, Frederick the Second, Joseph the Second, etc., stood above their namesakes. In general, Zriny has made it clear to me that Körner, had he lived, would, without any doubt, have become a second Schiller, namely, by completely absorbing the first. The plagiarisms which the noble young man has indulged in, in this tragedy, as regards the disposition of the scenes as well as in whole individual speeches and sentences, surpass all belief. I shall perhaps point out some of these in the course of my investigation of the characters.

But before I investigate the claims to heroism of Körner's Zriny may I be allowed to determine what are the qualities absolutely indispensable for a hero. I will not place my demands very high, but circumspection and firmness I may at least be allowed to require, besides mere courage. Also a certain amount of modesty would not become him ill, perhaps we may even demand this of the hero of a drama; for the dramatic poet must not indeed in any sense idealize, but he should render only the genuinely human, not the purely accidental, which, because accidental, is rare. For an individual to be at the same time a hero and a braggart is, however, quite accidental, and the result merely of a deficient or a perverted education. If one wishes to find firmness in the fact that a man knows in advance what he wants, that he forms his decision before he is acquainted with the controlling circumstances, then certainly this quality cannot be denied our Zriny.

"His loyalty no nobler guerdon asks
Than to seek death, a joyful sacrifice,
For his own folk and his undying faith."

But it seems to me that a desperate resolution is only justifiable when it can no longer be avoided; whoever takes one before that, is cowardly rather than brave; for he has not the strength to make the sacrifice at the proper moment; therefore he tries, beforehand, to reason himself into being courageous. When Zriny, however, speaks the words quoted, he has already in his possession the letter of the Emperor, informing him that he need hope for no relief; but he cannot know yet how long Soliman will continue to assault Szigeth, and there is likewise no need to inspire his companions with courage by these words, in which he boasts of his own courage, for they were every one of them heroes. I fail, therefore, to find in his braggadocio the firmness that is worthy of a great man, and this is a fault which I may be permitted to charge to Mr. Körner's account; for he intended it to form part of his Zriny's character. The dear man has an even smaller share of circumspection: read but the sixth scene of the second act where he ponders the question, what he shall do with his wife and child. Truly, when he decides to leave them in the fortress, so that the garrison shall not lose courage, I cannot suppress the thought that the daughter has already had an illegitimate child and the wife has been a heroine in the wrong place; for if he had considered them worth a straw, he could not, for such a reason, have exposed them to such a danger. And is that a courageous garrison which is calm because it believes itself to be still safe? And shall its eyes never be opened simply because it sees that the danger is shared for a while by the wife and child of the commander—for whom, as Zriny himself remarks, there are secret passages which can be used in case of necessity. Mr. Zriny did not consider all this; his circumspection, therefore, is surely not very great. Just one sample of the noble simplicity and modesty of this hero:

"Thou knowest me, Maximilian,
I thank thee for thy high imperial trust,
Thou knowest Zriny, thou dost not mistake."

It is nauseating to continue, I have the impression at this moment that I am trying to prove that a soap-bubble is really only a soap-bubble. Just one word more about Helena. The tender child, who faints away at the end of the first act when Juranitsch takes leave of her to go into battle, has made such progress in bravery in the seventh scene of the second act, that she exclaims:

"Yes, father, father, send us not from thee!"

and at the conclusion of the fourth (indeed it is time, for in the next act the piece comes to an end) she even says:

"Yes, let us die! What care we for the sun!"

Spare your sympathy, reader or spectator; you must not think that you have to do with men who care anything for their lives, and who therefore are making a sacrifice—no indeed! They have nothing in common with such a weakling as you.

I hope I shall not be accused of hastiness—I must hurry on to the end, for there are just as many absurdities in Zriny as there are verses—if from all this I draw the conclusion that Theodor Körner had not the slightest talent for the drama. I promised, a while ago, to specify some plagiarisms from Schiller, but I may safely refer to the whole book. Instead I will make a few more remarks on the death-scene of Helena, scene six, act five.

This scene is not badly constructed. I will not, indeed, examine too closely how far love made it justifiable for a girl to ask of her lover to kill her. For once we will take Helena's word for it that under similar circumstances she would have done the like had Juranitsch demanded it, and then she, as well as the poet, is held excused. We will only listen to what Juranitsch answers when she has made her wish clear to him. He says:

"Thee, I must kill? Thee? no, I cannot kill thee!"

This would be human, but listen to what follows:

"—When the storm wind
O'erthrows the oak and rages 'mongst the pines,
It leaves unharmed the tender floweret,
Its thunders change to gentle whisp'ring zephyrs
And shall I wilder be than the wild storm?
Shall I destroy life's loveliest vernal wreath?
In cruelty the boisterous elements
Surpassing, shall I break this floweret
To touch which destiny's hand has yet not dared?"

I ask you is it possible to surpass such trivial nonsense?

I shall say no more concerning Körner's individual scenes. This is not committing an injustice; for it is absolutely unimportant, so far as our investigation is concerned, whether and in how far Körner had the ability to construct a tragedy, since this faculty—as Goethe's example shows us—has nothing to do with poetry in itself. There is no need for us to draw the parallel between the Prince of Homburg and Zriny; it is quite evident. One reproach, however, which might be made by an attentive reader, I must anticipate: namely, I might be asked why I have subjected the two principal characters of Körner's tragedy to a regular police examination, and, instead of accepting them in their totality, have required them to render account in how far they were heroes, commanders, tyrants, etc. But since they are, like all creations of mere talent, nothing but arrows which are shot from a certain bow-string toward a certain target, it follows that they can only be judged by the deflections from their course. Herein—be it remarked incidentally—lies the difference, often perceived but seldom explained, between the characters portrayed by Schiller and those portrayed by Goethe. Schiller's characters—to use a play on words which for once expresses the truth—are beautiful because they are self-contained; Goethe's characters because they are unrestrained. Schiller delineates the man who is complete in his own strength, and, a man of iron, is tried by circumstances; for this reason Schiller was great only in the historical drama. Goethe delineates the endless creations of the moment, the eternal modifications of the man caused by every step that he takes; this is the token by which we may recognize genius, and it seems to me that I have discovered it also in Heinrich von Kleist.

At this moment, when I would pass on to review the achievements of Körner and Kleist in the field of comedy, I remember that I was not sufficiently definite, above, when developing my conception of the drama. I should have added that I cannot, strictly speaking, count comedy as a form of drama, but must include it in the category of dialogue narrative. If one recalls to mind the purpose of high-class comedy—"to describe individual ages and classes," one must admit that I am entitled to do so. I must remark in advance that neither Körner nor Kleist has done anything for high-class comedy. But Kleist in his Broken Pitcher has drawn a comic character-picture which is so full of life that it reminds us of Shakespeare, if of any one, while Körner in his Nightwatchman has drawn nothing but a funny caricature; with the former the character shapes the situations, whereas with the latter the situations shape the characters, if I may use this expression. I should be giving myself a great deal of unnecessary trouble if I should engage in a further analysis of the two comedies which I have mentioned, since at all events I could only adduce sundry details, and such details in this case prove absolutely nothing; for the only safe criterion of the truly comic is that the picture as a whole, apart from what wit has done for it, should arouse interest as an organic adaptation of nature. With the rascally, lustful, country judge, Adam, in the Broken Pitcher, this is certainly the case; one can safely take away from him the few witty sallies which he indulges in: but what the nightwatchman Schwalbe would become if one attempted the same procedure with him, I should not like to decide; probably a clown, who has been deprived of his wooden sword and cap and bells, and whose plain, honest features show that he has only executed such droll antics for the sake of his bread and butter. Schwalbe is merely ridiculous, but Adam is comic; the difference, to define it more clearly, consists in this; every caricature, because it diverges from laws which are eternal and necessary, without standing in eternity as a peculiarly constructed whole, has a tinge of incongruity, consequently of ridiculousness; while only that caricature of nature can be comic of which the divergences are self-consistent, which shows therefore that it is founded in itself. The poet should take only the comic as a subject of treatment; for he can never lay stress upon detached separate phenomena, if he cannot prove the connection between them and the general whole, if they do not constitute for him a window through which he looks down into Nature's breast. It is easy to calculate, accordingly, how high Theodor Körner's services to the comedy should be rated, provided he has actually succeeded with his smaller things, The Nightwatchman, The Green Domino, etc., in furnishing amusing farces. To accomplish this, nothing was required but natural gaiety combined with a talent for representation, and many men who were anything but poets have been equipped with both.

It still remains for us to estimate what Körner and Kleist have achieved in narrative. In this field Körner has produced such mere trifles that it would be unjust for one to infer from them the least thing touching his characteristics, as it probably never occurred to him to consider himself a story-writer. Heinrich von Kleist's novels and stories, on the other hand, belong among the best that German literature possesses. Almost all the narratives of our writers, with the exception of a few productions by Hoffmann and Tieck, suffer, if I may say so, from the monstrousness of the subjects chosen, if they do indeed rise at all above mediocrity. There is, however, no very deep psychological insight needed in order to know how the whole man will be affected by an event which sweeps down upon him like a stormwind, and very ordinary talents may safely attempt tasks of this kind; just as, for example, every painter with some technical skill can represent despair, fear, terror, all those emotions, in short, which only permit of one expression; whereas a Rembrandt is required, if a gipsy encampment is to be pictured. Kleist, therefore, set himself other tasks; he knew and had perhaps experienced in his own person, that life's process of destruction is not a deluge but a shower, and that man is superior to every great fatality, but subject to every pettiness. He proceeded from this theory of life, when he delineated his Michael Kohlhaas, and I maintain that in no German novel have the hideous depths of life been projected upon the surface in such vivid fashion as in this, when the theft by a squire, of two miserable horses, forms the first link in a chain, which extends upward from the horse-dealer Kohlhaas to the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and crushes a world by coiling round it. I should like to analyze the novel more in detail, but am glad that the limits of my essay, or rather the patience of my readers and auditors, do not permit me to do so; for the members of the society will thus feel prompted the sooner to acquaint and familiarize themselves with the works of Heinrich von Kleist, if they have not already done so.

While hastening on to the close, I must, in accordance with the introduction to this essay, call attention to the fact that Kleist, no less than Körner, did not leave unheeded the claims that his country properly made upon him in the portentous age in which he lived. In his breast, as in that of his contemporaries, there glowed the flame of enthusiasm for the honor and freedom of his people; and the oppression that they endured, the internal and external slavery in which he beheld them sunk, placed the pistol in his hand. I mention this because it has been imputed to the poet Körner as a great merit that he was at the same time a martyr. But Kleist could behold his country unworthily treated without for that reason having unworthy thoughts of the man who was treading it in the dust; he was great enough to be able to forgive Napoleon the pain which he could not endure. He wrote no war-songs for patriotic journeymen-tailors and high-minded counter-jumpers, but he described Hermann's Battle and the battle of Fehrbellin; he called the dead to life in order to arouse the living.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: The extracts from The Prince of Homburg are taken from
Mr. Hagedorn's translation, Volume IV of THE GERMAN CLASSICS.]