May your eyes ne'er grow dim, nor your smiles fade away!
LITERARY NOTICES.
Levana; or, The Doctrine of Education. Translated from the German of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Author of 'Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, 'Titan,' 'Walt and Vult,' etc., etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
The mere annunciation of a book, as yet unknown to the American public, from the pen of Jean Paul Richter, will be sufficient to awaken the attention of all cultivated readers. He who has read and loved one book of this marvellous writer, will not easily rest until he has read them all. He is known in Germany as Jean Paul der Einzige,—Jean Paul, the Only—and it is true that he is the unimitated and the inimitable. He is utterly unlike Shakspeare, and yet more like him in his grand charities and breadth of range than like any other author. He is the 'Only,' the genial, the humorous, the pathetic, the tender, the satiric, the original, the erudite, the creative—the poet, sage, and scholar. But we might exhaust ourselves in expletives, and yet fail to give any idea of his rich imagery, his wonderful power, his natural and tender pathos. Besides, who does not already know him as a really great writer, through the appreciative criticisms of Thomas Carlyle?
'Levana' is a work on Education, written as Jean Paul alone could write it. In order to give our readers some idea of the nature of the subjects treated therein, we place before them a part of the table of contents: Importance of Education; Proof that Education Effects Little; Spirit and Principle of Education; To Discover and Appreciate the Individuality of the Ideal Man; On the Spirit of the Age; Religious Education; The Beginning of Education; The Joyousness of Children; Games of Children; Children's Dances; Music; Commands, Prohibitions, Punishments, and Crying; Screaming and Crying of Children; On the Trustfulness of Children; On Physical Education; On the Destination of Women; Nature of Women; Education of Girls; Education of the Affections; On the Development of the Desire for Intellectual Progress; Speech and Writing; Attention and the Power of Adaptive Combination; Development of Wit; Development of Reflection, Abstraction, and Self-Knowledge; On the Education of the Recollection—not of the Memory; Development of the Sense of Beauty; Classical Education, etc., etc.
We have often wondered why this book was not given to American readers; it was published in England, in its English dress, at least ten years ago. It addresses itself to parents, treating neither of national nor congregational education; it elevates neither state nor priest into educator; but it devolves that duty where the interest ought ever to be, on the parents, and particularly on the mother. In closing the preface to this book, Baireuth, May 2, 1806, Jean Paul says: 'It would be my greatest reward if, at the end of twenty years, some reader, as many years old, should return thanks to me, that the book which he is then reading was read by his parents.'
May this work find many readers, and true, appreciative admiration.
Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces; or, The Married Life, Death, and Wedding of the Advocate of the Poor, Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkäs. By Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. Translated from the German by Edward Henry Noel. With a Memoir of the Author by Thomas Carlyle. Ticknor & Fields: Boston. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
Scarcely had we finished our few remarks on the 'Levana' of Jean Paul, when we were called upon to welcome another work from the same loved hand. We have long known and prized 'Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces.' The writings of Richter have humanity for their text, and it has always been a matter of astonishment to us that they were not more widely known in this country. His style is peculiar, it is true, but it is the peculiarity of originality, never of affectation. His illustrations are drawn from every source, from science, art, history, biography, national manners, customs, civilized and savage; his imagery is varied, exquisite, and natural, and his religion embraces all creeds and sects. He is the preacher of immortal hopes, of love to God, and all-embracing human charities. His plots are merely threads to string his pearls, opals, and diamonds upon. We prefer him greatly to the cold, worldly, and classic Goethe. His works always have a meaning, for he was a lofty and original thinker. He was colossal and magnanimous both as man and writer. Carlyle says of him: 'His intellect is keen, impetuous, far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest materials, and extort from them their most hidden and refractory truth. In his Humor he sports with the highest and lowest; he can play at bowls with the Sun and Moon. His Imagination opens for us the Land of Dreams; we sail with him through the boundless Abyss; and the secrets of Space, and Time, and Life, and Annihilation hover round us in dim, cloudy forms; and darkness, and immensity, and dread encompass and overshadow us. Nay, in handling the smallest matter, he works it with the tools of a giant. A common truth is wrenched from its old combinations, and presented to us in new, impassable, abysmal contrast with its opposite error. A trifle, some slender character, some jest, quip, or spiritual toy, is shaped into the most quaint, yet often truly living form; but shaped somehow as with the hammer of Vulcan, with three strokes that might have helped to forge an Ægis. The treasures of his mind are of a similar description with the mind itself; his knowledge is gathered from all the kingdoms of Art, and Science, and Nature, and lies round him in huge unwieldy heaps. His very language is Titanian; deep, strong, tumultuous; shining with a thousand hues, fused from a thousand elements, and winding in labyrinthic masses.' We recommend Jean Paul to universal study; he will, in spite of all his grotesque and broken arabesques, amply repay it.