And it was not only metres that the Romanticists borrowed from the Spaniards and Italians, but all kinds of technical tricks. They naively set to work to produce a lyrical picture with the assistance of assonances and tragic vowel sounds. Every vowel and consonant in the alphabet was pressed into the service in turn. Forty sonorous as in succession are supposed to induce a cheerful frame of mind in the reader, and a score or so of sombre, mournful us make his flesh creep. Take as an example Tieck's melancholy U-Romance of old Sir Wulf, who is carried off by the devil. In it he goes the length of using begunnte instead of begann for the sake of tragic effect. When the reader's nerves have been narcotised for half-an-hour by such terminations as Unke—Sturme—hinunter—begunnte—verdunkeln —verschlungen—Wulfen—Münze gulden—grossen Kluften-rucke, Drucke—thuen, Zünften—lugen—bedunken—tiefen Brünsten—vielen Unken, die heulten und wunken—zu dem Requiem des todten Wulfen, den der dunkle Satan mit vielen Wunden—erschlüge—when nothing but u-tu-tu is sounding in his ears, he has reached the climax, language has become music, and he floats off on the stream of an emotional mood. It is in drama that this vowel-music is most comical. In Friedrich Schlegel's Alarkos, that arsenal of assonances and alliterations, the hero sometimes for two or three pages in succession ends every line with the same vowel:—
"Ihr Männer all', Pilaster dieser alten Burg,
Genossen, Tapfre! die umkränzt mein Ritterthum,
Dess Glorie wir oft neu gefärbt mit hoher Lust
In unsres kühnen Herzens eignem heissen Blut—
Die alte Ehr' in tiefer Brust, der lichte Ruhm,
Dem festen Aug' in Nacht der einzig helle Punkt,
So folgten Einem Stern wir all' vereint im Bund;
Der Bund ist nun zerschlagen durch den herben Fluch,
Der mich im Strudel fortreisst fremd' und eigner Schuld.—
Mich zwingt, von hier zu eilen, ein geheimer Ruf,
Nach fernen Orten muss ich in drei Tagen, muss
Ein gross Geschäft vollenden, und die Frist ist kurz."
And on it goes—Burg, Lust, Muth, Schutz, Kund, Brust, Furcht, und, Ruhms, thun, Bund, uns, &c., &c. One derives quite as much satisfaction from the assonances alone as from the complete lines. When Alarkos was performed in Weimar and the audience burst into uproarious laughter, Goethe rose from his place in the stalls, cried in a voice of thunder: "Man lache nicht!" and signalled to the police that all who continued to laugh were to be turned out. We who read Alarkos now, are thankful that no one has the right to turn us out.
The reason why the Romanticists subjected themselves to all this metrical restraint is not far to seek. These compulsory, cold metres exactly suit writers in whom metrical skill is combined with a complete lack of inventive power. But terza rima, ottava rima, and sonnets are an insufficient disguise for the formlessness of their matter. When the mist is so thick that it can be cut with a knife, the Romanticists cut it into fourteen pieces and call it a sonnet.
In the unrestricted metres, formlessness and prosiness reach a climax. What, for instance, can be said for such lines as the following, from Tieck's Römische Reise?—
"Weit hinter uns liegt Rom,
Auch mein Freund ist ernst,
Der mit mir nach Deutschland kehrt,
Der mit allen Lebens Kräften
Sich in alte und neue Kunst gesenkt,
Der edle Rumohr,
Dess Freundschaft ich in mancher kranken Stunde
Trost und Erheiterung danke."[4]
That well-known drastic critic of the Romanticists, Arnold Ruge, supplied an appendix to this, which runs:—
"Hochgeehrter Herr Hofrath!
Dieser unmittelbaren Lyrik,
Das verzeihn Sie gütigst, weiss ich
Mit dem besten Willen,
Sowohl in alter als in neuer Poesie,
Nichts zur Seite zu stellen,
Als etwa diesen
Schwachen Versuch einer freien Nachbildung."[5]
But the attempt to make away with language in favour of music reaches a climax when Tieck goes so far as to endow music itself, or musical instruments, with the power of speech. Occasionally the result is comical, as in Sternbald (first edition), where the instruments all talk, the flute saying:—
"Unser Geist ist himmelblau,
Führt Dich in die blaue Ferne.
Zarte Klänge locken Dich,
Ein Gemisch von andern Tönen.
Lieblich sprechen wir hinein,
Wenn die ändern munter singen,
Deuten blaue Berge, Wolken,
Lieben Himmel sänftlich an,
Wie der letzte leise Grund
Hinter grünen frischen Baümen."[6]