Ramler sings the deeds of his king in a different and most noble manner. All his poems are full of matter, and occupy us with great, heart-elevating objects, and thus already maintain an indestructible value.
For the internal matter of the subject worked is the beginning and end of art. It will not, indeed, be denied that genius, that thoroughly cultivated artistical talent, can make everything out of everything by its method of treatment, and can subdue the most refractory material. But when closely examined, the result is rather a trick of art than a work of art, which should rest upon a worthy object, that the treatment of it by skill, pains, and industry, may present to us the dignity of the subject-matter only the more happily and splendidly.
The Prussians, and with them Protestant Germany, acquired thus for their literature a treasure which the opposite party lacked, and the want of which they have been able to supply by no subsequent endeavours. Upon the great idea which the Prussian writers could well entertain of their king, they first established themselves, and the more zealously as he, in whose name they did it all, wished once for all to know nothing about them. Already before this, through the French colony, afterwards through the king's predilection for the literature of that nation, and for their financial institutions, had a mass of French civilization come into Prussia, which was highly advantageous to the Germans, since by it they were challenged to contradiction and resistance; thus the very aversion of Frederick from German was a fortunate thing for the formation of its literary character. They did everything to attract the king's attention, not indeed to be honoured, but only noticed by him; yet they did it in German fashion, from an internal conviction; they did what they held to be right, and desired and wished that the king should recognize and prize this German uprightness. That did not and could not happen; for how can it be required of a king, who wishes to live and enjoy himself intellectually, that he shall lose his years in order to see what he thinks barbarous developed and rendered palatable too late? In matters of trade and manufacture, he might indeed force upon himself, but especially upon his people, very moderate substitutes instead of excellent foreign wares; but here everything comes to perfection more rapidly, and it needs not a man's life-time to bring such things to maturity.
But I must here, first of all, make honourable mention of one work, the most genuine production of the Seven Years' War, and of perfect North German nationality; it is the first theatrical production caught from the important events of life, one of specific temporary value, and one which therefore produced an incalculable effect,—Minna von Barnhelm. Lessing, who, in opposition to Klopstock and Gleim, was fond of casting off his personal dignity, because he was confident that he could at any moment seize it and take it up again, delighted in a dissipated life in taverns and the world, as he always needed a strong counterpoise to his powerfully labouring interior; and for this reason also he had joined the suite of General Tauentzien. One easily discovers how the above-mentioned piece was generated betwixt war and peace, hatred and affection. It was this production which happily opened the view into a higher, more significant world, from the literary and citizen world in which poetic art had hitherto moved.
The intense hatred in which the Prussians and Saxons stood towards each other during this war, could not be removed by its termination. The Saxon now first felt, with true bitterness, the wounds which the upstart Prussian had inflicted upon him. Political peace could not immediately re-establish a peace between their dispositions. But this was to be brought about symbolically by the above-mentioned drama. The grace and amiability of the Saxon ladies conquer the worth, the dignity, and the stubbornness of the Prussians, and, in the principal as well as in the subordinate characters, a happy union of bizarre and contradictory elements is artistically represented.
If I have put my reader in some perplexity by these cursory and desultory remarks on German literature, I have succeeded in giving them a conception of that chaotic condition in which my poor brain found itself, when, in the conflict of two epochs so important for the literary fatherland, so much that was new crowded in upon me before I could come to terms with the old, so much that was old yet made me feel its right over me, when I believed I had already cause to venture on renouncing it altogether. I will at present try to impart, as well as possible, the way I entered on to extricate myself from this difficulty, if only step by step.
Goethe's Peculiar Tendency.
The period of prolixity into which my youth had fallen, I had laboured through with genuine industry, in company with so many worthy men. The numerous quarto volumes of manuscript which I left behind with my father might serve for sufficient witnesses of this; and what a mass of essays, rough draughts, and half-executed designs, had, more from despondency than conviction, gone up in smoke! Now, through conversation, through instruction in general, through so many conflicting opinions, but especially through my fellow-boarder Hofrath Pfeil, I learned to value more and more the importance of the subject-matter, and the conciseness of the treatment; without, however, being able to make it clear to myself where the former was to be sought, or how the latter was to be attained. For, what with the great narrowness of my situation,—what with the indifference of my companions, the reserve of the professors, the exclusiveness of the educated inhabitants, and what with the perfect insignificance of the natural objects, I was compelled to seek for everything within myself. If I now desired a true basis in feeling or reflection for my poems, I was forced to grasp into my own bosom; if I required for my poetic representation an immediate intuition of an object or an event, I could not step outside the circle which was fitted to teach me and inspire me with an interest. In this view I wrote at first certain little poems, in the form of songs or in a freer measure; they are founded on reflection, treat of the past, and for the most part take an epigrammatic turn.
And thus began that tendency from which I could not deviate my whole life through; namely, the tendency to turn into an image, into a poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied me, and to come to some certain understanding with myself upon it, that I might both rectify my conceptions of external things, and set my mind at rest about them. The faculty of doing this was necessary to no one more than to me, for my natural disposition whirled me constantly from one extreme to the other. All, therefore, that has been confessed by me, consists of fragments of a great confession, and this little book is an attempt which I have ventured on to render it complete.