The Pictures; The Betrothing: Novels

by Ludwig Tieck

Little more than half a century has passed, since Germany began to rouse herself from the state of lethargy which followed the convulsive struggles produced by the Reformation. She awoke, and found herself shorn of her strength, greatness and glory. The empire, reduced to the shadow of an august name, was hastening toward its dissolution. All sentiments of an enlarged patriotism were absorbed in particular and provincial interests and prejudices. The very idea of national union seemed to be lost with the great national recollections. There was no feeling of pride in the past, no consciousness of a glorious inheritance to inspire hope and confidence in the future. The degenerate descendant walked among the mighty monuments of the power, the genius, the art and spirit of his ancestors, with stupid unconcern or contemptuous wonder. A German school of art, a German literature were things neither believed in nor desired; that they had ever existed was forgotten; the memorials of them were left to sleep among the neglected lumber of history. The attention and patronage of the great were engrossed by productions of foreign growth; above all the language, the literature and manners of France exercised a despotic sway over the higher and educated classes. The peculiar virtues of the German character, the native strength of the German intellect, were slighted, concealed, and as far as possible suppressed, while the artificial graces of an exotic refinement were affectedly displayed, and became the only pass into good society. The well-bred mimics strutted in their borrowed plumes with all the vanity, though not quite all the ease of their originals, and prided themselves on their successful imitation, without perceiving how awkwardly the foreign frippery sat on them, and how their ungainly movements betrayed them at every step, and exposed them even to the polite ridicule of their masters. The principles and opinions which had long been prevalent in France, and now began to be loudly expressed and industriously disseminated every where, were very extensively diffused over Germany together with the literature by which they had been carried to their highest maturity and perfection. They were maintained speculatively and practically by some earnest and zealous advocates, and found a very strong predisposition in their favour among the persons and classes who were most interested in opposing them, and who, having adopted and cherished and even ostentatiously displayed them as modish distinctions, afterwards, when the inconvenient consequences stared them in the face, began, with a dissimulation too gross and palpable to attain its object, publicly to discountenance and check them. In the meanwhile they exerted a powerful and pernicious influence on the great concerns of human life, morals, politics and religion. The reign of light, liberality and common sense was every where proclaimed; objects formerly deemed great, awful and holy, were brought down by ingenious accommodations to the level of ordinary capacities, and men were surprized to find how they had been abused by imposing names, when they saw what had once appeared to them too vast and mighty for the imagination to compass reduced to dimensions which they could so easily grasp. Hopes were entertained, that an enlightened system of education might destroy the germ of such mischief for the future, and that it might be possible, if not in all cases to eradicate inveterate prejudices, yet to prevent the seeds of them from lodging in the breasts of the young, by suppressing the first feelings of wonder, faith and love; and that the rising generation, trained in the principles of a calculating morality, a cosmopolitan independence and a reflecting religion, might be effectually secured from the influence of all the bugbears and charms that had ever awed or fascinated the world.

But notwithstanding this false and unnatural tendency of the public mind, the prospect, though here and there clouded and threatening, was not absolutely cheerless and unpromising. The heart of Germany was still sound and entire, and the foreign cultivation, in spite of the activity with which it was conducted, could not find a congenial soil. Even when the moral and intellectual imbecility and dependence were at their height, the great mass of the people remained uncorrupted and unperverted. The soul of poetry and the life of religion had retreated from the crown and topmost branches toward the root of society, and there, while the sere and many-coloured leaves trembled on the boughs, preserved the hope of a coming spring. Among the middling and lower classes, particularly in situations exempt from the contagion of courtly example, the faith, the traditions and the manners of former times flourished in happy obscurity, and in proportion as they were despised and rejected by the great and the refined were held dear by the common man, and kept his heart warm, his imagination fresh, and his life pure. Even about the middle of the last century the workings of a regenerating spirit began to appear. Some great writers then took the lead in German literature, who, though themselves not wholly free from the influence of the age, yet in various ways contributed to counteract its prevailing tendencies, and to rouse and direct the dormant strength of their countrymen. Some penetrated into the deepest mysteries of Grecian art, and inspired a new, enthusiastic feeling for the beauties of classical antiquity. Some opened the treasures of many interesting but neglected fields of ancient and modern literature. Others exposed with irresistible subtilty and force of criticism, the spurious rules and blind imitations and hollow pomp of the French drama, so long an object of unsuspecting faith, and directed the public attention to the true classical and romantic models. The language itself, which in the preceding period had lost much of its grace, raciness and vigour, and had become at once weak and unwieldy, was carefully cultivated, and gradually formed into a worthy organ of high conceptions and deep speculations. The next generation grew up under happier auspices. Shakespeare began to be known, felt and enjoyed in Germany, and the young and rising spirits of the age turned from the effete and lifeless literature of France, to contemplate the eternal freshness of nature and her favorite child. The new school of poetry which they formed, and which recognized no other guide than genius, truth and feeling, was perhaps partial in its tendency and indefinite as to its objects; it produced among much that was great and beautiful some morbid extravagances and wild exaggerations; but viewed as a state of transition it was both salutary and promising; it counteracted other much more dangerous and mischievous innovations of the age; it preserved many noble minds from the contagion of cold and heartless theories, and contained within itself the fruitful elements of a still more fortunate period.

The great political events which marked the close of the century gave a new impulse to the mind of Germany. The principles and opinions which then manifested themselves with tremendous consistency in France had exerted a more or less noxious and disturbing force in the former country, but the violent crisis to which they led was there at least in the highest degree beneficial. It did not operate, as in some other countries, merely as a lesson of political experience, to regulate the external conduct of those who were interested in the maintenance of established institutions without altering their principles, and thus to produce a show of union and stability while the discordant elements continued to ferment in secret. In Germany the principles and doctrines which had become triumphant in France were subjected to the most free and vigorous discussion. The German spirit of philosophical speculation had never sunk into the dogmatical materialism of the French school. The monstrous caricatures exhibited by the understanding, when relying on its unassisted powers it undertook to build the future on the destruction of the past, drew the attention of the deepest thinkers to the fundamental errours of the moral and political theory then for the first time brought into action. To avert its immediate practical consequences was left to the vigilance of the great and the steady attachments of the people. The more important intellectual struggle against the theory itself was carried on, in every direction and with every species of literary armour, by the most powerful minds which at this critical epoch were rising to maturity.

But the exertions of individuals, however highly gifted and even closely united, are never sufficient to effect any important and durable change in the temper of a nation. They are themselves borne along with the current of the age, and may see and announce, but cannot control its course. Even the most striking lessons of foreign experience are lost upon a people; it gains wisdom and strength only by its own sufferings and actions. The moral and political regeneration of Germany was to spring out of the lowest depth of national calamity and humiliation. Under the hardest pressure of a foreign tyranny, which had grown mighty by their errours and distractions, and which applied its whole power, directed by a systematic and relentless policy, to destroy all the remains of their strength, all the links of their union, all the memorials of their greatness, the name of their country became once more dear to the Germans. They began to look back with affectionate reverence to its remote antiquity, to the early promise of its infancy, to the feats of its sportive and vigorous youth; its history, constitution and language were investigated with an ardent and indefatigable interest; the monuments and relics of its happier days were anxiously drawn out of the dust of oblivion; every fragment connecting the present with the past, which had escaped the general wreck, was attentively examined and carefully guarded. The masterpieces of native art once more received the tribute of admiration, which had been so long withheld from them and lavished upon foreign worthlessness; those which had been before known and unnoticed were more deeply studied and placed in new points of view; buried treasures were brought to light, and men began to perceive with surprize and joy the inexhaustible riches of the mine, the surface of which they had so long trodden without the hope of gaining from it more than a few sickly, exotic flowers. The national character and genius were contemplated in a spirit at once philosophical and patriotic; their peculiarities were observed and fostered; the popular feeling, which through all the variations of fashionable opinion had preserved its homely vigour and simple purity, was no longer disdained or suppressed; all its signs and forms, its dialects and expressions, as it broke forth from time to time in poetry and tradition, were watchfully treasured. The Germans became proud of their country and their ancestors.

But with this feeling of exultation were mingled others of shame and repentance and despondency. Deeds of their own, a redeeming struggle, a trial of patience, fidelity and courage were wanting, to efface the inglorious recollection of the immediate past, and to inspire confidence and hope for the future. The ordeal was vouchsafed them, and the exercise of heroic self-devotion, of all the passive and all the active virtues, had reconciled Germany with herself, even before the arduous conflict had been crowned with its glorious success. When the intolerable yoke was at length broken, and the invaders were driven within their natural limits, the conquerors felt themselves worthy of their forefathers, and believed that all errours might be retrieved and all losses repaired. An unbounded prospect opened before the eye of patriotism; and the energy which had already accomplished so much, the goodwill which had submitted to such trying tests, seemed capable of realizing the most lofty projects. The awakened consciousness of the nation found worthy organs, who announced in strains of prophetic eloquence its wants, its wishes and its destination.

But the enthusiasm, which, while its immediate object was before it, burnt with so pure, steady and beautiful a flame, displayed itself, after the first great work of deliverance was effected, in a variety of forms, and in some which were ludicrous, disgusting and possibly dangerous. It began soon to excite the jealousy of the governments, which had cherished it, and owed to it their independence and even their existence. Perhaps this jealousy, not always reasonable in its grounds or judicious in its measures, may have contributed to occasion the extravagances in which it afterwards found new motives for precaution and restriction, by checking the active spirit which might have been usefully guided into proper channels, and thus forcing it to licentious and mischievous aberrations. The circumstances too which usually accompany all revolutions of public feeling, attended likewise on this. The spirit of the times always finds in different individuals various degrees of capacity for receiving and containing it. Those who are possessed by it instead of possessing it, are apt to attach great importance to outward badges and distinctions, to attribute to them a productive power, and to substitute them for that which can alone give them value as signs and indications of its existence. These externals, which satisfy the indolent and amuse the weak and superficial, become the ready instrument and mask of imposture. The strong and glowing language, which in such seasons of general excitement gushes in a living stream out of the inmost depth of really inspired bosoms, is echoed by the imbecile without meaning, and by the designing with selfish views. Thus things in themselves innocent and even commendable become first contemptible and then suspected; the most genuine expressions of the purest and warmest feeling are profaned and abused, till they sink into unmeaning or equivocal commonplace. All this happened in Germany. In the first effervescence of patriotic rapture several violent and premature innovations were introduced or attempted in things of no moment, except so far as they are the natural and unforced expression of the inward character which produces them and by them is brought to light. Efforts were made to return to the dress, language and manners of a former age, by those who did not reflect that, until the spirit of the past had penetrated the whole mass of society, it was neither practicable nor desirable that any great change should be wrought on its surface; that it was in vain to think of improving the physiognomy without altering the disposition. The consequence was, that this imitation instead of becoming a popular habit remained a fashion confined to a few, and exhibited a strange and ludicrous contrast with that which it was meant to supplant. The fifteenth and eighteenth centuries brought side by side only put each other out of countenance.

A similar superstition displayed itself in the cultivation of the arts, particularly that of painting. The great works of the native masters, in which Germany is so rich, were deservedly admired, but they were not always studied in the same spirit in which the great Italian artists of the fifteenth century profited by the works of their predecessors. The new German school, though it has to boast many productions of genius, too often betrays by manner, affectation and caricature, its dependent and arbitrary origin. Those who least understand their models cling to the surface with indiscriminate imitation, and copy and even exaggerate defects. Their extravagances seem to justify the aversion of those who are equally partial in an opposite direction, and widen the breach between the classical and romantic schools. The conflict of opinions thus produced, intimately connected as it is with the other phenomena of the day, forms an important feature in the intellectual face of Germany, and the description of it has been woven by the author, with inimitable art and an irony that never relaxes its impartiality, into the texture of the first Novel.

One of the consequences of the vicissitudes and revolutions which Germany had undergone was the revival of religious feeling. In the last century, partly from internal causes, partly from the influence of foreign manners and opinions, it had every where begun to languish, and had been almost entirely banished from the higher and educated classes. But the disasters and reverses of so many eventful years had subdued the irreligious levity, so little congenial to the German character; the very excess of calamity which seemed to have extinguished hope, had awakened a faith which gained strength even from despair. The war too which rescued Europe from the last and most imminent danger of an universal monarchy, was in Germany essentially a religious war. It was neither the desire of revenge nor of glory, nor even of liberty itself as the ultimate end, which nourished the enthusiasm there excited; the feeling which animated all the leading spirits, and which operated instinctively on the least reflecting, was the conviction that they were engaged in the highest and holiest of causes; that the moral, as well as the political regeneration of Europe depended on the issue of that struggle. The deliverance itself was so greatly beyond hope, so rapid and complete, and attended by so many wonderful and striking circumstances, that it was hailed rather with gratitude as an interposition of Heaven, than with triumph as a victory achieved by human strength. The newly kindled religious fervour broke forth in various directions, and produced some remarkable and interesting changes. Individuals who could not find satisfaction for their religious cravings in the communion to which they belonged sought it in another. Religious societies separated from each other by slight distinctions made approaches to a closer union; those divided by an insurmountable barrier cherished and maintained more warmly than ever their distinguishing peculiarities. A new life seemed to be infused into the old observances of Catholic devotion, and the spirit of Protestant piety strove to display itself in new forms. Religion became a great public and private concern; every question relating to it excited a lively interest; every method of diffusing it was deeply studied and sedulously practised.

This good however came not unalloyed. Those in whom the religious feeling was least genuine, those who had merely caught it by contagion from others, were, as usual, the most anxious to make it prominent and conspicuous. They thought they could not exhibit too striking a contrast to the sceptical indifference and irreligious frivolity of the former age in their language and deportment. Piety, which is of a retiring nature, seldom conscious of her own actions, and never wishing them to be observed, was forced against her will into all companies upon all occasions, was made to occupy the foremost place, to study attitudes and gestures, to think aloud and deliver herself in set terms. A new kind of spiritual dialect came into fashion, and threatened to infect the whole tone of conversation and literature. It was not precisely the cant which with us is the property and badge of certain religious sects, and which to unaccustomed ears is either ludicrous or disgusting; it was a more refined compound of mysticism and sentiment, rather cloying from excess of sweet, but not without a charm for the young and inexperienced, and very easy to be caught by habit or learnt from design. In the endeavour to exclude from society all symptoms and tokens of the freethinking age, the moral taste grew alarmingly squeamish, and began to reject the most wholesome food as savouring of profaneness. As the freedom of Shakespeare scandalizes our sectaries, so among the circles, in which religion was most the mode in Germany, the unconstrained and unaffected purity of Göthe began to pass for licentiousness.

We are indeed ourselves very far gone in this distemper, and value ourselves on our superior delicacy, because we cannot see without a blush what in times less refined was not supposed to need a veil, as none suspected it could ever raise an impure thought.