The poet who writes under the pseudonym of Dr. Owlglass proposed a new ideal for Germany, on the seventieth anniversary of the birth of Nietzsche (October 15th): not the superman, but at least—man. And Franz Werfel realizes this ideal in poems thrilling with a mournful humanity, which takes part in the sacrament of misery and death:[{157}]
"We are bound together not only by our common words and deeds, but still more by the dying glance, the last hours, the mortal anguish of the breaking heart. And whether you bow down before the tyrant, or gaze trembling into the beloved's countenance, or mark down your enemy with pitiless glance, think of the eye that will grow dim, of the failing breath, the parched lips and clenched hands, the final solitude, and the brow that grows moist in the last agony.... Be kind.... Tenderness is wisdom, kindness is reason[31].... We are strangers all upon this earth, and die but to be reunited."[32]
But the one German poet who has written the serenest and loftiest words, and preserved in the midst of this demoniacal war an attitude worthy of Goethe, is Hermann Hesse. He continues to live at Berne, and, sheltered there from the moral contagion, he has deliberately kept aloof from the combat. All will remember his noble article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of November 3rd, "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!" in which he implored the artists and thinkers of Europe "to save what little peace" might yet be saved, and not to join with their pens in destroying the future of Europe.[{158}] Since then he has written some beautiful poems, one of which, an Invocation to Peace, is inspired with deep feeling and classical simplicity, and will find its way to many an oppressed heart.
| Jeder hat's gehabt | |
| Keiner hat's geschätzt. | |
| Jeden hat der süsse Quell gelabt. | |
| O wie klingt der Name Friede jetzt! | |
| Klingt so fern und zag, | |
| Klingt so tränenschwer, | |
| Keiner weiss und kennt den Tag, | |
| Jeder sehnt ihn vol Verlangen her.... |
("Each one possessed it, but no one prized it. Like a cool spring it refreshed us all. What a sound the word Peace has for us now!
"Distant it sounds, and fearful, and heavy with tears. No one knows or can name the day for which all sigh with such longing.")
* * *
The attitude of the younger reviews is curious: for whereas the older, traditional reviews (those which correspond to our Revue des Deux Mondes or our Revue de Paris) are more or less affected by military fervor—thus, for instance, the Neue[{159}] Rundschau, which printed Thomas Mann's notorious vagaries on Culture and Civilization (Gedanken im Kriege)—many of the younger ones affect a haughty detachment from actual events.
That impassive publication, Blätter für die Kunst, over which broods the invisible personality of Stefan George, published at the end of 1914 a volume of poems of 156 pages, which did not contain a single line referring to the war. A note at the end affirms that the points of view of the various authors have not changed on account of recent events, and anticipates the objection that "this is not the time for poetry," by the saying of Jean Paul: "No period has so much need of poetry, as the one which thinks it can do without it."
Die Aktion, a vibrating, audacious Berlin review, with an ultra-modern point of view, totally different from the calm impersonality of Blätter für die Kunst, stated in its issue of August 15, 1914, that it would not concern itself with politics, but would contain only literature and art. And if it finds room in its literary columns for the war poems sent from the field of battle by the military doctors, Wilhelm Klemm and Hans Kock, it is in consideration of their value as art, and not for the vivacity of their patriotic sentiments; for it scoffs mercilessly at the[{160}] ridiculous bards of German Chauvinism, at Heinrich Vierordt, the author of Deutschland, hasse, at the criminal poets who stir up hatred with their false stories, and at Professor Haeckel. The dilettantism of this review is extreme. Its weekly issues contain translations from the French of André Gide, Péguy, and Léon Bloy, and reproductions of the works of Daumier, Delacroix, Cézanne, Matisse, and R. de la Fresnaye: (cubism flourishes in this Berlin review). The issue of October 24th is devoted to Péguy, and contains, as frontispiece, Egon Schiele's portrait of the man, who is honored by Franz Pfemfert, the editor, as "the purest and most vigorous moral force in French literature of today." Let us hasten to add, however, that, as is often the case on the other side of the Rhine, they are carried away by their zeal in deploring his death as of one of their countrymen, and in proclaiming themselves his heirs. But the pride which admires is at least superior to the pride which disparages.