Heyse, creator in the art of poetry, fiction, and the drama, is opposed to the new materialism.
First known as one of Germany’s most original writers of narrative poetry, he gradually worked his way into the short story. Brandes, most influential of living critics, once said of these “Novellen” of Heyse’s: “The Novelle, as he has made it, is an entirely original and independent creation, his actual property.”
Heyse was born in Berlin in 1830. After devoting himself to the study of languages, he settled in Munich, and with a collection of “Märchen” began that remarkable series of tales which he has brought, as Robert König says, to such genuine artistic perfection. Popular as they all are, the two best are thought to be “L’Arrabiata” and “The Young Girl of Treppi,” in which his peculiar talent, the portrayal of strong, passionate feminine nature, is signally displayed.
Heyse’s style has been called the most perfect of modern Germany.
THE YOUNG GIRL OF TREPPI
BY PAUL HEYSE
Translated by R. W. Howes,
3d. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.
On a height of the Apennines where the mountains rise between Tuscany and the northern part of the Papal States stands a lonely village of herdsmen called Treppi. The paths that lead up to it are none of them accessible by wagon. The road for post and vetturino, away toward the south, many an hour’s travel, goes winding in and out over the mountains in a wide, roundabout course. By way of Treppi pass only the peasants who have business with the herdsmen, and occasionally a painter or pedestrian who wishes to avoid the highways, and during the night-time the contrabbandieri, or smugglers, with their pack-horses that know better than any of them the way over the rocky passes leading to the desolate village.
It was about the middle of October, a time when the evenings on these heights usually grow clearer. But now, after the heat of the day, a fine mist had rolled up out of the ravines and was spreading itself slowly over the bare, rocky outlines of the majestic highlands. It was perhaps nine o’clock at night. In the lowly, scattered huts of stone, which by day were guarded only by the very old women and the very young children, still feebly glimmered the lights of their hearth-fires. Around the hearths, over which the big kettle swung, the herdsmen and their families lay sleeping; the dogs stretched themselves beside the ashes; on a heap of hides some sleepless old grandmother was still sitting up, perhaps, mechanically plying her spindle back and forth while she mumbled prayers or rocked a child that slept restlessly in its cradle. Through holes in the walls, as big as your hand, the night air oozed damp and earthy, and from the hearth-fire that was quickly burning out, smothered by the fog, the smoke choked thickly back and rolled along the ceiling of the huts without seeming to trouble the old woman in the least. After a while she, too, slept as well as she could, with her eyes wide open.