Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany

by Georg Brandes

What a man! and how few of our contemporaries even know that he exists!"

Here, again, we are at a point where the German reaction passes, as it were, into the French.[2]

The German reaction is in its essence literary, the French political and religious. The former gradually glides into Catholicism, the latter is openly and consistently Catholic. In every domain, indeed, the French reaction upholds the principle of traditional authority, and De Maistre is its most earnest and most high-minded, as well as one of its most gifted representatives. The witty and vigorous panegyrist of the headsman and champion of the auto da fé is the conscientious, ardent antagonist of enlightenment and humanitarian ideals.

The German Romanticists loved twilight and moonshine. The blazing daylight of rationalism and the lightning flashes of the French Revolution had driven them to seek comfort in the dusk. But what is even Novalis's love of night in comparison with Joseph de Maistre's glorification of darkness!

Ancient legend tells that Phaëton, the son of Apollo, being allowed one day to drive his father's chariot, guided it so carelessly that the sun scorched the whole earth and set many of its cities on fire. The fable adds, that a whole race of men were so terrified that they with one accord cried to the gods to grant them eternal darkness. De Maistre is a descendant of that race, and a man who has some claim to greatness because of his gifts, his faith in Providence, and his contempt for his fellow-men. And to this day there exist descendants of the race; but these have degenerated into dwarfish figures, who assert themselves the more the more insignificant and timid they are. Their cry, too, is "Darkness! more darkness!" The more devoid they are of ideas and aims, the louder they cry, and their only faith is faith in the power of darkness.

Those who, in studying the history of German Romanticism, pay special attention to the growth of the reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century, are struck by the inferiority of the German Romanticists in single-minded strength of character to such a reactionary as De Maistre. It is to be remembered, however, that they were not statesmen and politicians, but authors; even those among them who, like Gentz, represent the transition from literature to politics, have no real significance except as writers.

From the purely literary point of view the Romantic School in Germany possesses permanent interest. One has but to compare it with the equivalent groups in other lands to be fully impressed by the originality and intellectual importance of its members.

A Romantic current is perceptible in the first decades of this century in almost every country in Europe; but only in Germany, England, and France is the movement a distinctly original and important one; only in those countries is it a European "main current." What we observe in the Slavonic countries is more or less an echo of English Romanticism.

The Romantic literature of Scandinavia is strongly influenced by that of Germany.

In Sweden, where Romanticism was known by the name of "Phosphorism," or "new school," it attacked (as was its wont) French taste in literature, in this instance represented by the Swedish Academy. In 1807 the "Aurora Society" was founded by Atterbom, Hammarsköld, and Palmblad. The principles it proclaimed were in all essentials those of the German Romantic School. Atterbom's symbolism reminds us of Tieck's; Stagnelius has a certain resemblance to Novalis. The movement has, nevertheless, distinctly national characteristics.