Wir haben lang genug geliebt,
Wir wollen endlich hassen!
But there were some poems of his which well deserved a longer life. One began with the words: “Ich möchte hingehen wie das Abendroth.” Very beautiful, but my memory does not serve me further, and my copy of his poems has vanished from my library like many other volumes which I lent to my friends.[[6]]
I well remember the pleasure which Herwegh’s poems gave me, but the words themselves are gone. It is the same with so many of our recollections. I can still feel the intense delight, the hushed reverence with which I looked the first time at Raphael’s Madonna di San Sisto, and looked at it again and again whenever I passed through Dresden. But whether the colour of the Virgin’s dress is red or blue I cannot tell. I dare say it is all there, in the treasure-house of my memory. Nay, sometimes it suddenly appears, only never when I call for it. What is forgotten, however, does not seem to be entirely forfeited; it can be gotten again, and it probably forms, though unknown, the fertile soil for new harvests: that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.
Another famous political poet whose acquaintance I made when he was an old man was Moritz Arndt. His poetry was not very great, but the effect which he produced by his “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland” has been, and is still, perfectly marvellous. If Bismarck finished the unity of Germany, Arndt laid the foundation of it, and in the grateful memory of the people his song will probably be remembered long after Bismarck’s diplomatic triumphs have been forgotten. I shall never forget old Arndt, for, old as he was, he gave me such a grip of the hand that I thought the blood would squirt from my nails.
Lesser poets and writers whom I knew at that time, while I was a student at Leipzig, were Karl Beck, of Hungarian extraction, Robert Blum (fusillé at Vienna by Windischgrätz, 9th November, 1848), Herlossohn, Kühne, Laube, and several more whose names I could find in Histories of German Literature, or the Conversations-Lexicon, but no longer in the camera obscura of my memory. And yet some of their poems were really beautiful, full of high thoughts and deep feeling. But the world does not recognise a poet of one poem, or even of ten or twenty. In order to be a poet a man must produce hundreds of poems, volume after volume, good, bad, and indifferent. Nor is there here anything like the survival of the fittest. Although ever so many of Schiller’s or Goethe’s poems have become old and antiquated—few will deny this—yet no one is satisfied with a selection of the best, few people would ever agree as to which are the best. We must take them all or none. In that respect the ancient poets are certainly much better off. What is left of Tyrtaeos or Sappho, or of Horace and Catullus, can be carried in our waistcoat pocket, nay, in the folds of our brains; and though even here sifting might increase enjoyment, yet we can take in whatever there is without sinking under the burden. But who can remember Goethe or Wordsworth or Victor Hugo, aye, who has time even to read all their verses, so as to mark, learn, and inwardly digest them?
In towns like Paris and London, if a poet once succeeds in attracting attention, and gathering some male and female admirers around him, the very atmosphere which he breathes, the wide survey of humanity which he commands, strengthen and inspire him. No one becomes an Alpine climber who has no Alps to climb, and many a poetical soul languishes and withers if confined within the walls of a small provincial town. I have known very ordinary mortals who when they came to write for a great and influential newspaper became inspired like the prophetess on the Delphic tripod, and wrote well, while their ordinary writings remain feeble. I have known poets in small provincial towns who became changed after they had changed their provincial public for the public of a large capital. I remember a dear cousin of mine at Dessau, Adolf von Basedow, who was my playfellow when we were children, and remained my true friend all through life. He had a quite exceptional gift for occasional poetry, and later in life he wrote many things without ever being able to find a proper publisher. Some of his plays were acted and proved successful on neighbouring stages, but he never received that response which inspires and nerves a poet for higher efforts. He was very modest, nay, almost shy, and in these days humility, however charming in the man, is not likely to open the road to success. Now that he is gone, there are all his poetical productions laid aside and soon to be forgotten, while some of the poetry we are asked to admire in these days is far inferior to those fallen leaves. He was an officer and went through the whole of the Franco-German war, having, like so many others, to leave his wife and children at home. He returned home safe, but his health had suffered, and he never was himself again. I have seldom known a more high-minded and truly chivalrous character, content with the small surroundings in which he had to move, but never making the smallest concession to expediency or meanness. He was proud of his name, and whatever we may think of the small nobility in Germany, their manly pride keeps up a standard of honour without which the country would not be what it is. We may laugh at their courts of honour and their duels, arising often from very trifling causes, but in our age of self-seeking and pushing we want some true knights as the salt of the earth.
While I was at the University at Leipzig I well remember meeting Robert Blum in literary circles. He certainly was not a poet, but when required he could speak very powerfully and wield his pen with great effect. Never shall I forget the horror I felt when I heard of his execution at Vienna. No doubt there was danger when the mob broke into the Kaiserburg, shouting and yelling, and when Prince Metternich said to the Emperor, who had asked him what this hideous noise could mean, “Sire, c’est que Messieurs les démocrates appellent la voix de Dieu.” But for all that, to shoot a member of the German Parliament then sitting at Frankfurt was an outrage for which Austria has had to pay dearly. Still more cruel was the execution at the same time of a little helpless Jew, Jellineck, whom I had known as belonging to a small class reading Arabic with Professor Fleischer at Leipzig. Robert Blum may have been a dangerous man in the then state of German political excitement, but Jellineck was nothing but a perfectly harmless scholar, and if he was found guilty by a court-martial, it could only have been because he could never express himself intelligibly. If he had been killed in the streets of Vienna like many others, all one could have said would have been, “Qu’allait-il faire dans cette galère?” but to shoot a harmless student after a short court-martial was no better than lynching. There has been a Nemesis for all that, as Austria knows too well, and what would the world be without that invisible Nemesis?
With every year my own work became more and more prosaic, and yet more and more absorbing. Neither at Berlin nor afterwards at Paris, had I time or inclination to make new friends or cultivate literary society. Berlin never was rich in poets or poetry; Paris also, when I was there in 1844, and again in 1847 and 1848, had no names to attract me. Lamartine had some fascination for me, and I managed to see him and hear much about him from a common friend, Baron von Eckstein. This German Baron was a well-known character in Paris between 1840 and 1850, a German settled there for many years, a Roman Catholic, much mixed up, I believe, in small political transactions, and a constant contributor to the Augsburger Zeitung, at that time the Times of Germany. He was a man of wide interests, a student of Sanskrit, chiefly attracted by the mystic philosophy of the Upanishads and the Vedânta. When he heard of my having come to Paris to attend Burnouf’s lectures and to prepare the first edition of the “Rig Veda,” he toiled up to my rooms, though they were au cinquième and he was an old man and a martyr to gout. He was full of enthusiasm, and full of kindness for a poor student. I was very poor then; I hardly know now how I managed to keep myself afloat, yet I never borrowed and never owed a penny to anybody. I disliked giving lessons, but I worked like a horse for others, copying and collating manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Royale. I lived like a Hindu Sannyâsin, but, as Heine said,
Und ich hab’ es doch ertragen—