There at last—we recognize him by his picture—is Mirza Schaffy, our dear correspondent-friend Bodenstedt. He hastens to us and sits down with us. Then follow new reminiscences of the Caucasus; it was there that the poet spent the most joyous years of his youthful activity. And he tells of Tiflis, of the forests of Mingrelia, of the roofs of the Oriental houses on which in the moonlight beautiful women play the lute and dance, and to which in the silence of the night a young German poet is summoned for a tryst; of the Platonic passion which the beautiful wife of a Russian general inspired in the same youth, and which even to-day gleams as the most magical recollection in the poems of the gray-haired man.
Not only on that evening but during the whole session of the Authors’ Congress, Friedrich Bodenstedt was our constant companion; we could not weary of telling one another of the Caucasus.
On the next day the business meetings began. It was the first session of a Union that I had ever attended. The whole affair—the green table standing on the lofty podium, the members of the directorate sitting around it, each with a pile of paper in front of him, the president in the midst—made a solemn impression on me. It aroused in my mind the comprehension of a thing which is destined to assume ever deeper and more widely inclusive dimensions in the humanity of the future; that is to say, the consciousness of solidarity. This is a consciousness which works even more efficaciously than the command “Love your neighbor as yourself”; for in the right kind of solidarity your neighbor is identical with yourself to begin with. That the interests of all are at the same time the interests of each, and vice versa, gives to each individual such a heightened feeling of existence as if he were the whole: he can no longer separate his ego from the collectivity, since this is—as the word Union signifies—one, and therefore inseparable. Of course that is only the ideal conception of a Union; in practice the thing often lacks its own life principle, unity.
This is not the place to tell of the matters dealt with and the course that the business took, although I find these stated in my notebook. Let me only sketch two or three more features of the convention.
At the Rathaus, greetings by the Bürgermeister, and addresses following. An address by Max Nordau was on the programme, but unfortunately this fell through. The Lord Mayor of Berlin, in gala attire, welcomed the guests and said all the flattering things that can be said to “the laborers of the mind,” “the bearers of civilization,” those who embody “the progress of the idea of our time” and constitute “the pride of the nation.” After the perfunctory speech of thanks for the “honor of such a reception” in “the Metropolis of the Intellect,” and the like, begin the promised addresses,—addresses in connection with which the New York Staats-Zeitung later made the remark that “the association of literary Freelunchers, instead of discussing arrangements for furthering the interests of their profession, talked about the relation of Old Fritz to German literature and about the Goethe House.”
On the sixth and last day, banquet and ball in the hall of the “Harmonie.” Again Hermann Heiberg stands at the entrance and welcomes his colleagues and numerous guests from Berlin society. The great hall, made as light as day, is speedily filled; the guests take their places at table, and when the roast comes in the toasts and speeches begin. The first speaker is Karl Emil Franzos, who in the name of the Danube states says all sorts of friendly things to the capital of the German Empire. Then Julius Wolff. The speakers mount a tribune so that they may be better heard. Among them there are women. It is incomprehensible to me ... how can one have the courage to talk so in public? A young Russian woman with a foreign accent praises ger’manische poetry. An elderly authoress also ascends the tribune. Her voice is so weak that only those quite close to her can hear what she says; although conversation is resumed throughout the hall, she goes on haranguing indefatigably in a plea—as we afterwards come to learn—for putting up a memorial tablet on the house of Gutzkow. With all zeal—especially with sweeping movements of her arms, the only part of the address that the audience can make out—she explains the imperative necessity for this memorial tablet, until some one at the foot of the tribune cries out, “It was put up long ago.”
Now Oskar Justinus recites a poetical toast to the women that write, and points out that even in the most ancient times there were bluestockings, for it is well known that Leda was not averse to taking a quill in her hand.
The last address is delivered by Hermann Heiberg, in bringing the banquet to an end. Raising his glass, he says: “May that be fulfilled which each one wishes in the bottom of his heart, be it right or be it—according to the world’s ideas—wrong.... The world’s ideas are often false, and what is warmly wished has a right to be granted.—So I drink to the fulfillment of our warmest wishes!”
“A strange toast,” remarked some one at the end of our table; “Heiberg seems to be talking in a fever.”
“That would be nothing to wonder at,” said my husband; “the ungrateful task of taking charge of a festival brings with it so much annoyance and worry that—as he himself told me a little while ago—it is only with quinine that he keeps himself up.... And then he is one who understands everything, forgives everything, and would be willing that everybody should have a bit of happiness, whether what they wish is right or—in the opinion of the world—wrong. I am one who have had fulfilled a warm wish which other people condemned—and it was my happiness.”