“The genius of Germany,” says Lamartine, “is deep and austere.” The characteristics of German literature bear the impress of that national genius. The German mind is one which inquires and ponders. The German is, above all things, a deep and earnest thinker. Philosophy and learning, investigation in history, language, physical science, these belong to the Germans more than to any other people. We shall expect, therefore, to find German literature full of reflection and original thought, more concerned with the pursuit of the truth of that thought and reflection than with the form of expression. Heine, indeed, cannot be classed with the other great writers in this respect. Humour, wit, grace, music, all these he has in abundance. But he is apt to be reckless in his brilliancy; he is the incarnation of cleverness, but scarcely of sober and sincere thought. But Heine, though a German, was not a Teuton. He was a Jew. He wrote in German words in a German atmosphere, but hardly from a Teutonic mind.
Truth and earnestness are essentials of German writing. And therefore it is difficult to find in German literature mere writing for writing’s sake. Its prose is the prose of discussion, argument, reflection, criticism, philosophy, analysis: its poetry is poetry of earnest meditation, real pathos, and real sentiment. Above all things German poetry is lyrical, and its lyric note rings true.
For German “literary” influence on ourselves we cannot point to much that is very definite. The influence of German philosophy in Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Schopenhauer, is one of thought in the scientific, not in the literary, aspect. We cannot say how great that philosophic influence has been. Nor are we under any obligation here to attempt the task. Neither are we concerned with the immense theological influence—which is also one of philosophy—that came to us from Luther. We are only concerned with the literary subject matter, the forms, and the principles which we may owe to Germany. Our conception of how history should be written owes much to Niebuhr, Ranke, and Mommsen; our aesthetic criticism to Lessing and Winckelmann; and our literary criticism to the brothers Schlegel. So long as there is intercommunication between countries by reading and by travel we necessarily expect ideas to pass in some shape and measure from one to the other. But it is only when great writers look abroad for formative influences that we can perceive and demonstrate a positive literary debt. English literature, and especially Shakespeare, has, in this respect, exercised much more influence on Germany than German literature upon ours.
In the sixteenth century we may find German legends like those concerning Bishop Hatto or the Piper of Hamelin transferred to England; we may find the story of Dr. Faustus producing Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Greene’s Friar Bacon; we may see Brandt’s Narrenschiff translated as Barclay’s Ship of Fools, and producing other satirical “Ships” of a similar kind. We may trace the thoughts of Pope’s Essay on Man back through Bolingbroke’s prose to the philosophic writings of Leibnitz. Yet instances like these are but scattered, and are intrinsically not of the first importance. A really large and steady influence begins for us with the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century, with Lessing and Goethe in Germany, and thence with Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley in England. Coleridge and De Quincey were much read in German literature and philosophy; Byron and Goethe were mutual admirers; Shelley read Goethe along with the ancient classics; Scott practically commenced writing by translating Goethe’s Götz into Goetz of the Iron Hand. Carlyle admired Goethe with an entirety which he refuses to any but the greatest; English thinkers and essayists are constantly quoting him. In our own day, when the knowledge of German is increasing, we all absorb more or less of the thought of Germany. Yet the influence is one of thought. It has not yet developed into an influence which can be seen to determine the form and tone of poetry or prose, as was the case with French and with Italian. The fact seems to be that German literature is naturally too much like our own to exert such clear and palpable effect.
BRIEF CONSPECTUS OF GERMAN LITERATURE.
Transcriber’s Note: An image of the original table is available by downloading the HTML version of the book from Project Gutenberg.
| DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE. | CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE OR WORK. | DATES. | SOME REMARKS. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poetry (other than drama): | |||
| (a) Satirical (didactic) Tales | Reineke Fuchs | circa 1150 | Formulation of Germanic Tales already taken up in France (Roman de Renart). |
| Sebastian Brandt (Narrenschiff) | 1494 | Translated by Barclay (Ship of Fools). Other “Ships” followed. | |
| (b) Romantic (chivalric) poems | e.g., Rolandslied | Later twelfth century | The influence was inward from France. |
| (c) Epic | Nibelungenlied | Shaped about 1200 | |
| Klopstock (Messias) | 1773 | Influence from Milton. | |
| Wieland (Oberon) | 1780 | ||
| (d) Lyric | The Minnesänger | 1150-1300 | Influence inward from France. |
| The Meistersänger (Hans Sachs flor. 1550.) | 1300-1550 | ||
| Volkslieder | Fourteenth to sixteenth century | ||
| Luther (Hymns) | 1524 | A chief influence on the Goostly Songs of Coverdale. | |
| Göttingen Dichterbund (1772). Bürger (Lenore, etc.). | |||
| Goethe | 1749-1832 | The influence of German ballads and lyrics becomes clear in Scott and Coleridge, and has affected all English work in this kind during the nineteenth century. Translations have been numerous. | |
| Schiller | 1759-1805 | ||
| Heine | 1799-1856 | ||
| Uhland | 1787-1862 | ||
| Drama | Lessing (Minna von Barnhelm, Nathan der Weise) | 1729-1781 | |
| Schiller (Wallenstein, Wilhelm Tell) | |||
| Goethe (Faust, Egmont) | The influence of Goethe is not calculable. The effect of his Faust begins most clearly in Byron (Manfred). | ||
| Legends, Novels, and Tales | Eulenspiegel | Printed 1515 | Translated by Copland (Owlglasse), 1550. References were frequent in sixteenth century. Cf. the French derivative espiègle. |
| Stories of Bishop Hatto, Fortunatas, etc. | Sixteenth century | Familiarized in England in the same century. | |
| Stories of Doctor Faustus | 1587 | Source of Greene’s Friar Bacon, and Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. | |
| Baron Münchhausen (partly by Bürger) | |||
| Goethe, Sorrows of Werther (1774) | Influenced by Rousseau, but itself the source of “Wertherism.” | ||
| ” Wilhelm Meister | Translated by Carlyle. | ||
| Philosophy, Theology, etc. | Luther (Pamphlets, Transl. of Bible, 1534) | 1483-1546 | Wide reaching effect on Protestant thought in England. |
| Leibnitz (Théodicée, etc.) | 1646-1716 | Pope’s Essay on Man is derived, through Bolingbroke, from thoughts of Leibnitz. | |
| Kant (Critique of Pure Reason, 1781) | |||
| Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer | Nineteenth century | German philosophy has dominated England since the age of Coleridge (who borrowed from Schelling), De Quincey, etc. | |
| Criticism | Lessing (Laocoon, 1776) | ||
| Winckelmann (Hist. of Ancient Art, 1764) | |||
| A. W. Schlegel (Lectures on Dramatic Art) | 1767-1845 |
(c) Celtic Literature and English
We are apt to forget how considerable a substratum of the “English” people is Celtic. The first historical inhabitants of Britain were mainly Celts. They filled England and Scotland as they now fill Wales; they still occupy most of Ireland and of the Caledonian Highlands. The conquering Romans with their settlers and legionaries affected the population very little. When the Anglo-Saxons and Danes came in their successive waves, and occupied the southern, eastern, and northern portions of Great Britain, they did not arrive in numbers so great as absolutely to sweep away the existing people, that blend of little Roman with much Celt. They simply laid thicker strata on the ethnological concretion. The Celtic strain was much thinned, particularly in England, but it was by no means eliminated. The subsequent Norman invaders count numerically for little in the mass. If, therefore, we take the whole body of English literature, and think of the men who have produced it in Great Britain and Ireland, we cannot but recognize that in those writers there were probably certain Celtic elements, which must have had some potency in determining their capacity for thought and feeling. Englishmen may call themselves Anglo-Saxons, and we may be mostly made of Anglo-Saxon clay, but we do not know how much of us is, after all, the contribution of a Celtic strain, with its characteristic tendencies, the melancholy sentiment and the chivalrous but inconstant ardour which mark the Celtic race. Nevertheless it is one matter to speak of the Celtic spirit in our literature, and another to display the influence of Celtic literature upon our own. Celtic literature properly means the literature of peoples speaking Celtic, and to that literature some debts are due, at least to the Cymry of Wales and Brittany.