It still remains for us to estimate what Körner and Kleist have achieved in narrative. In this field Körner has produced such mere trifles that it would be unjust for one to infer from them the least thing touching his characteristics, as it probably never occurred to him to consider himself a story-writer. Heinrich von Kleist's novels and stories, on the other hand, belong among the best that German literature possesses. Almost all the narratives of our writers, with the exception of a few productions by Hoffmann and Tieck, suffer, if I may say so, from the monstrousness of the subjects chosen, if they do indeed rise at all above mediocrity. There is, however, no very deep psychological insight needed in order to know how the whole man will be affected by an event which sweeps down upon him like a stormwind, and very ordinary talents may safely attempt tasks of this kind; just as, for example, every painter with some technical skill can represent despair, fear, terror, all those emotions, in short, which only permit of one expression; whereas a Rembrandt is required, if a gipsy encampment is to be pictured. Kleist, therefore, set himself other tasks; he knew and had perhaps experienced in his own person, that life's process of destruction is not a deluge but a shower, and that man is superior to every great fatality, but subject to every pettiness. He proceeded from this theory of life, when he delineated his Michael Kohlhaas, and I maintain that in no German novel have the hideous depths of life been projected upon the surface in such vivid fashion as in this, when the theft by a squire, of two miserable horses, forms the first link in a chain, which extends upward from the horse-dealer Kohlhaas to the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and crushes a world by coiling round it. I should like to analyze the novel more in detail, but am glad that the limits of my essay, or rather the patience of my readers and auditors, do not permit me to do so; for the members of the society will thus feel prompted the sooner to acquaint and familiarize themselves with the works of Heinrich von Kleist, if they have not already done so.
While hastening on to the close, I must, in accordance with the introduction to this essay, call attention to the fact that Kleist, no less than Körner, did not leave unheeded the claims that his country properly made upon him in the portentous age in which he lived. In his breast, as in that of his contemporaries, there glowed the flame of enthusiasm for the honor and freedom of his people; and the oppression that they endured, the internal and external slavery in which he beheld them sunk, placed the pistol in his hand. I mention this because it has been imputed to the poet Körner as a great merit that he was at the same time a martyr. But Kleist could behold his country unworthily treated without for that reason having unworthy thoughts of the man who was treading it in the dust; he was great enough to be able to forgive Napoleon the pain which he could not endure. He wrote no war-songs for patriotic journeymen-tailors and high-minded counter-jumpers, but he described Hermann's Battle and the battle of Fehrbellin; he called the dead to life in order to arouse the living.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: The extracts from The Prince of Homburg are taken from
Mr. Hagedorn's translation, Volume IV of THE GERMAN CLASSICS.]
LUDOLF WIENBARG'S "THE DRAMATISTS OF THE PRESENT DAY"
A REVIEW (1839)
By FRIEDRICH HEBBEL
TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING
It is probable that no German who is able to appreciate the power of the theatre, its silent influence on the people, and the consequent reaction on the development of dramatic talent, has looked on indifferently at the decay and complete ruin of our stage. The drama of a nation, conceived in a worthy sense, represents that nation in its self-consciousness; it is the burning-mirror which receives the separate rays of the nation's innermost being while passing history is enticing them out of the depths, which condenses and concentrates them and thus kindles one century by means of another, and calls to life one glorious deed by means of another. Tragedy represents a people in its relation to the most important problems, its own as well as those of humanity in general. Comedy paints it in its natural aberrations and abnormalities, in its tendencies and endeavors which are directed earthward. Both must subsist together, in common development, and on an equal elevation, if we are to sum up the entire life of a nation, and give a true, eternal picture of its will-power and capacity, of its vacillations and defeats. This is the object which dramatic literature must always keep in view if it would be effectual. To be sure, it is possible to conceive a still higher species of drama, a tragedy which deals with man only in the abstract, with man in himself, in his mysterious relation to God and Nature; a comedy which lays nationalities themselves in their coffin and gaudily dresses up the corpse. But it is still an open question whether, under such a general domination of the idea of humanity as is presupposed in that case, art can continue to exist at all; and at any rate the time of this spirit-like domination is still far off, although literature has witnessed the production of many dramatic poems which seem to be designed for it.
It was many years ago that Tieck, on the subject of some wretched stuff by Clauren, made the remark that we had at last reached the cellar and must begin to ascend again. He was right in his remark, but, unhappily, not in the hope with which he accompanied it. Very far from hastening to leave the cellar, we have found it very comfortable down there; we have made ourselves at home as well as we could, and are hideously satisfied! Instead of the heroic spirit of our past ages, Jack Pudding now staggers out of the wings in a torn jacket and shows us what kind of humor is engendered by stupidity and brandy, when they have a rendezvous in the head of a porter. If Schiller and Goethe dare once to come out of their exile, then Nestroy's plum-pudding jinnee steps in their path, and they of course modestly give way to him. The magic worlds of Shakespeare and Calderon are already suffocated in their birth by the head-shaking of the stage-manager who must keep his machinery together for Raimund's bedlam hocus-pocus. Let us be just, however, let us remember that our theatre, in spite of the great talents which have been dedicated to it, was not what it should have been, even in its most brilliant period, and this perhaps not quite through its own fault. We have never had a real comedy; farces and absurdities take its place, and the critics themselves, if we except Schlegel, never seemed to divine that tragedy and comedy sprout from one and the same root, and that the former absolutely cannot unfold in all its greatness if the latter remains behind it. Confining the conception of comedy to the narrow etymological meaning of its name, and inferring the intrinsic impossibility of the poem from the accidental lack of a poet, we have imagined that we could not have a comedy, when on the contrary we, precisely, should and ought to have the very best, for reasons which cannot be developed thus in passing. Our tragedy, on the other hand, wished to take the second step before the first; it was not satisfied to start out to conquer the world from our own territory; it preferred to wander about as a homeless vagabond among all the peoples of the earth; and only when it had fully persuaded itself that one cannot grow fat off begged bread did it return in shame to its mother's breast. But, in Germany, in the meantime, the enthusiasm which can seldom or never be re-awakened had evaporated, and when Wallenstein and William Tell, when Hermann's Battle and the Prince of Homburg appeared, the fusion of the theatre with life, which might perhaps have still been possible at the time of Iphigenia, was no longer to be thought of. People had become used to looking upon the stage as a source of amusement, and, as a rule, whatever sinks to the level of a pastime is forever degraded. This was the cause of all the evil; this was the reason why for a long time dogs and monkeys, prestidigitators and modern athletes, celebrated their triumphs where art should have proclaimed her most profound oracles, and where a people should have found refreshment and elevation in quiet self-enjoyment, in the mild exertion of all their powers, and in the sensation of arousing their most secret sympathies and antipathies.