And those who come to grief at the hands of the gods, are not weak passive creatures, but heaven-scaling Titans. This points to the antipodal difference between the characters of these two poets, and explains in part why Goethe did not succumb to the sickly sentimentalism of which he rid himself in "Werther." The difference between yielding and striving resulted in the difference between an acute case of Weltschmerz in the one and a healthy physical and intellectual manhood in the other.
Thus far it has been almost entirely the personal aspect of Hölderlin's Weltschmerz and its causes that has come under our notice. And since he was a lyric poet, it is perhaps natural that the sorrows which concerned him personally should find most frequent expression in his verse. But notwithstanding the fact that this personal element is very prominent in Hölderlin's writings, Scherer's judgment is correct when he states: "Die Grundstimmung war eine tiefe Verbitterung gegen die Versunkenheit des Vaterlands."[40] The reason is not far to seek, especially when we consider the impossible demands of the poet's extravagant idealism. The conditions in Germany which had called forth the terrible arraignment of petty despotism, crushing militarism, and political rottenness generally, in the works of Lenz, Klinger and Schubart, had not abated. Schubart was one of Hölderlin's earliest favorites, so that the latter was doubtless in this way imbued with sentiments which could only grow stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem "An die Demut,"[41] he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance of "Fürstenlaune" and "Despotenblut" are plainly evident. So too in "Männerjubel," 1788:
Es glimmt in uns ein Funke der Göttlichen!
Und diesen Funken soll aus der Männerbrust
Der Hölle Macht uns nicht entreissen!
Hört es, Despotengerichte, hört es![42]
Perhaps nowhere outside of his own Württemberg could he have been more unfavorably situated in this respect. Under Karl Eugen (1744-1793) the country sank into a deplorable condition. Regardless of the rights of individuals and communities alike, he sought in the early part of his reign to replenish his depleted purse by the most shameless measures, in order that he might surround himself with luxury and indulge his autocratic proclivities. Among his most reprehensible violations of constitutional rights, were his bartering of privileges and offices and the selling of troops. These things Hölderlin attacks in one of his youthful poems "Die Ehrsucht" (1788):
Um wie Könige zu prahlen, schänden
Kleine Wütriche ihr armes Land;
Und um feile Ordensbänder wenden
Räte sich das Ruder aus der Hand.[43]
Another act of gross injustice which this petty tyrant perpetrated, and which Hölderlin must have felt very painfully, was the incarceration of the poet's countryman Schubart from 1777 to 1787 in the Hohenasperg. But not only from within came tyrannous oppression. Following upon the coalition against France after the Revolution, Württemberg became the scene of bloody conflicts and the ravages of war. Under the regime of Friedrich Eugen (1795-97) the French gained such a foothold in Württemberg that the country had to pay a contribution of four million gulden to get rid of them. These were the conditions under which Hölderlin grew up into young manhood. But deeper than in the mere existence of these conditions themselves lay the cause of the poet's most abject humiliation and grief. It was the stoic indifference, the servile submission with which he charged his compatriots, that called forth his bitterest invectives upon their insensible heads. His own words will serve best to show the intensity of his feelings. In 1788 he writes, in the poem "Am Tage der Freundschaftsfeier:"
Da sah er (der Schwärmer) all die Schande
Der weichlichen Teutonssöhne,
Und fluchte dem verderblichen Ausland
Und fluchte den verdorbenen Affen des Auslands,
Und weinte blutige Thränen,
Dass er vielleicht noch lange
Verweilen müsse unter diesem Geschlecht.[44]
Ten years later he treats the Germans to the following ignominious comparison:
Spottet ja nicht des Kinds, wenn es mit Peitsch' und Sporn
Auf dem Rosse von Holz, mutig und gross sich dünkt.
Denn, ihr Deutschen, auch ihr seid
Thatenarm und gedankenvoll.[45]
With his friend Sinclair, who was sent as a delegate, he attended the congress at Rastatt in November, 1798, and here he made observations which no doubt resulted in the bitter characterization of his nation in the closing letters of Hyperion. This convention, whose chief object was the compensation of those German princes who had been dispossessed by the cessions to France on the left bank of the Rhine, afforded a spectacle so humiliating that it would have bowed down in shame a spirit even less proud and sensitive than Hölderlin's. The French emissaries conducted themselves like lords of Germany, while the German princes vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant Frenchmen. And it was the apathy of the average German, as Hölderlin conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused him to put such bitter words of contumely into the mouth of Hyperion: "Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiss und Wissenschaft und selbst durch Religion barbarischer geworden, tief unfähig jedes göttlichen Gefühls—beleidigend für jede gut geartete Seele, dumpf und harmonielos, wie die Scherben eines weggeworfenen Gefässes—das, mein Bellarmin! waren meine Tröster."[46] In another letter Hyperion explains their incapacity for finer feeling and appreciation when he writes: "Neide die Leidensfreien nicht, die Götzen von Holz, denen nichts mangelt, weil ihre Seele so arm ist, die nichts fragen nach Regen und Sonnenschein, weil sie nichts haben, was der Pflege bedürfte. Ja, ja, es ist recht sehr leicht, glücklich, ruhig zu sein mit seichtem Herzen und eingeschränktem Geiste."[47] Their work he characterizes as "Stümperarbeit," and their virtues as brilliant evils and nothing more. There is nothing sacred, he claims, that has not been desecrated by this nation. But it is chiefly his own experience which he recites, when, in speaking of the sad plight of German poets, of those who still love the beautiful, he says: "Es ist auch herzzerreissend, wenn man eure Dichter, eure Künstler sieht—die Guten, sie leben in der Welt, wie Fremdlinge im eigenen Hause."[48] Still more extravagantly does the poet caricature his own people when he writes: "Wenn doch einmal diesen Gottverlassnen einer sagte, dass bei ihnen nur so unvollkommen alles ist, weil sie nichts Reines unverdorben, nichts Heiliges unbetastet lassen mit den plumpen Händen—dass bei ihnen eigentlich das Leben schaal und sorgenschwer ist, weil sie den Genius verschmähen—und darum fürchten sie auch den Tod so sehr, und leiden um des Austernlebens willen alle Schmach, weil Höhres sie nicht kennen, als ihr Machwerk, das sie sich gestoppelt."[49]