Adam Homo is a weak person, whose weakness makes him faithless in love and unreliable in politics. He is not weak, however, in the same way as are so many of Goethe's principal characters, such as Weislingen, Fernando, Clavigo, or Eduard; for he is not charmingly attractive in his weakness. In common with the majority of modern authors, Goethe has often invested weakness with the charm of amiability, as in modern poetry generally it is but too frequently the secret of amiability. Nothing, however, is the object of a more scathing irony on the part of Paludan-Müller than a defence of Adam Homo, such as that of the advocates hominis, in the last canto, which is based on the amiability of the hero.
Without being directly amiable, weak people may have something attractive from a humorous point of view. There is an old method, based on the nature of the case, by means of which they are most sure of pleasing. Personal amiability can invest weakness only for a time with the lustre of freedom and the form of strength, yet it is always on the point of transforming itself into something base or odious. Against this downfall, however, it can secure itself by the acceptance of an inexorable fate; for viewed in a fatalistic light it arouses only laughter and deteriorates wholly into the comical. This general application Paludan-Müller has succeeded in making with perhaps more depth, and, from a psychological standpoint, more correctness, than has ever before been employed. His Adam is a theoretician, who always has at his command a ready supply of half-conscious sophistry, and who throughout his entire life casts the responsibility of his pitiful weakness alternately upon mere chance and upon stem necessity.
If, notwithstanding all this, the total impression be not unconditionally comical, it is because of a circumstance that Mendelssohn in his "Rhapsodien" has thus keenly and justly characterized: "We cease to laugh," said he, "at persons who are dear to us, or in any way near to us, as soon as their faults or follies begin to assume an important character." Every one, however, is his own nearest neighbor, and if a continual "Thou art the man" be hurled at us, it becomes impossible for us to laugh.
In the course of the narrative, the author of "Adam Homo" is continually telling us indirectly what he utters directly in the last canto, as follows:—
"Thou, too, shalt make one day the selfsame journey,
When thou at length with life on earth art done;
And as the actor needs initiation,
So thou must make beforehand preparation.
"In Homo's stead thyself thou well mightst be,
And words that served for Homo's just confession,
When him behind the grave's dark brink we see,
Might rouse the thought: View all with due discretion;
Whate'er applies to him, applies as well to me."
Even the most ludicrous matters in such a case cease to be wholly absurd, and absolute terror at thought of the possibilities that dwell within his own soul readily seizes the reader, especially the youthful reader, in considering passages which the author had meant to have a purely poetic effect. Thus, for instance, in the place where Homo has become lord chamberlain, we read:—
"There swayed his solitude a wondrous feeling;
His soul seemed freed from every narrowing band;
Within his heart of hearts he blessed the hand
That dealt his wounds and gave him means of healing,
That now so tenderly was balsam dealing,
That helped his spirit ruin to withstand.
A guiding Providence he saw most clearly,
And, deeply moved, his thanks he gave sincerely."
The biting satire in this gratitude for the keys of office has almost a painful effect. The poet takes the matter too gravely to be able to excite us to laughter over his hero; he does not venture to designate him as amiable, for Adam is seriously to be condemned; he will not abandon him to comedy, for Adam—in accordance with the author's views of life as a theologian—must preserve a loop-hole for mercy.
The standpoint of Paludan-Müller is not that of humor but of ethical irony, for what distinguishes irony from humor is its lack of sympathy with its object. This standpoint is not the purely artistic one that lingers with the same loving absorption over the sick and over the well, over vice and over virtue, over what the artist hates in the actual world, and over that which is dear to him. Nor is his mode of contemplation the purely humane, which, arrayed by the love of humanity, remains mild, considerate, and harmonious, and which begets a laughter that is without bitterness. Paludan-Müller's satire is cold and scathing, and thus acquires a peculiar power of its own. Just observe how the burning scorn of the poet almost imperceptibly breaks a path for itself through an adjective or an incidental remark, as often as there is occasion to deride the hero's good impulses, which are of such brief duration.
Here are a few examples: A letter from home announces to Adam that his mother, who has long been in failing health, is lying at the point of death, and in order to be able to see her once more, he tears himself away from his affianced bride and starts on the journey to Jütland. But while still under way he learns of his mother's death that has meanwhile taken place. Deeply affected, he communicates the sorrowful tidings to his sweetheart, assuring her at the same time of his faith in the future and of his unchangeable fidelity. The letter is not hypocritical, can scarcely even be called hollow; it is merely naïve. The poet, however, who knows long before the reader how Adam is to end, can scarcely wait for the moment when the change in him takes place. A long time before Adam has merited the satirical chastisement Paludan-Müller swings the scourge of mockery above his head to an accompaniment of laughter, as follows:—