This could not be otherwise; for was he (Lenau) not an Hungarian by birth, an Austrian by adoption, and in his professional affiliations a German? Had his interests not been divided between Vienna and Stuttgart, and had he not been possessed with an apparently uncontrollable restlessness which drove him from place to place, his patriotic enthusiasm would naturally have turned to Austria, and the poetic expression of his home sentiments would not have been confined, perhaps, to the one occasion when he had put the broad Atlantic between himself and his kin. That his brother-in-law Schurz should wish to represent him as a dyed-in-the-wool Austrian is only natural.[116] However this may be, the poet does not hesitate to state in a letter to Emilie Reinbeck: "Ein Hund in Schwaben hat mehr Achtung für mich als ein Polizeipräsident in Oesterreich."[117] And although he professes to have become hardened to the pestering interference of the authorities, as a matter of fact it was a constant source of unhappiness to him. "So aber war mein Leben seit meinem letzten Briefe ein beständiger Aerger. Die verfluchten Vexationen der hiesigen Censurbehörde haben selbst jetzt noch immer kein Ende finden können."[118] Speaking of his hatred for the censorship law, he says: "Und doch gebührt mein Hass noch immer viel weniger dem Gesetze selbst, als denjenigen legalisierten Bestien, die das Gesetz auf eine so niederträchtige Art handhaben;—und unsre Censoren stellen im Gegensatze der pflanzen- und fleischfressenden Tiere die Klasse der geistfressenden Tiere dar, eine abscheuliche, monströse Klasse!"[119] Roustan expresses the opinion that with Lenau patriotism occupied a secondary place.[120] He had too many "native lands" to become attached to any one of them.
There is something of a counterpart to Hölderlin's Hellenism and championship of Greek liberty in Lenau's espousal of the Polish cause. But here again the personal element is strongly in evidence. A chance acquaintance, which afterward became an intimate friendship, with Polish fugitives, seems to have been the immediate occasion of his Polenlieder, so that his enthusiasm for Polish liberty must be regarded as incidental rather than spontaneous. Needless to say that with a Greek cult such as Hölderlin's Lenau had no patience whatever. "Dass die Poesie den profanen Schmutz wieder abwaschen müsse, den ihr Goethe durch 50 Jahre mit klassischer Hand gründlich einzureiben bemüht war; dass die Freiheitsgedanken, wie sie jetzt gesungen werden, nichts seien als konventioneller Trödel,—davon haben nur wenige eine Ahnung."[121]
All these considerations tend to convince us that Lenau's Weltschmerz is after all of a much narrower and more personal type than Hölderlin's. Again and again he runs through the gamut of his own painful emotions and experiences, diagnosing and dissecting each one, and always with the same gloomy result. Consequently his Weltschmerz loses in breadth what through the depth of the poet's introspection it gains in intensity.
One of the most striking and, unless classed among his numerous other pathological traits, one of the most puzzling of Lenau's characteristics is the perverseness of his nature. His intimate friends were wont to explain it, or rather to leave it unexplained by calling it his "Husarenlaune" when the poet would give vent to an apparently unprovoked and unreasonable burst of anger, and on seeing the consternation of those present, would just as suddenly throw himself into a fit of laughter quite as inexplicable as his rage. He takes delight in things which in the ordinarily constructed mind would produce just the reverse feeling. Speaking once of a particularly ill-favored person of his acquaintance he says: "Eine so gewaltige Hässlichkeit bleibt ewig neu und kann sich nie abnützen. Es ist was Frisches darin, ich sehe sie gerne."[122] And in not a few of his poems we see a certain predilection for the gruesome, the horrible. So in the remarkable figure employed in "Faust:"
Die Träume, ungelehr'ge Bestien, schleichen
Noch immer nach des Wahns verscharrten Leichen.[123]
This perverseness of disposition is in a large measure accounted for by the fact that Lenau was eternally at war with himself. Speaking in the most general way, Hölderlin's Weltschmerz had its origin in his conflict with the outer world, Lenau's on the other hand must be attributed mainly to the unceasing conflict or "Zwiespalt" within his breast. In his childhood a devout Roman Catholic, he shows in his "Faust" (1833-36) a mind filled with scepticism and pantheistic ideas; "Savonarola" (1837) marks his return to and glorification of the Christian faith; while in the "Albigenser" (1838-42) the poet again champions complete emancipation of thought and belief. Only a few months elapsed between the writing of the two poems "Wanderung im Gebirge" (1830), in which the most orthodox faith in a personal God is expressed, and "Die Zweifler" (1831). The only consistent feature of his poems is their profound melancholy. But Lenau's inner struggle of soul did not consist merely in his vacillating between religious faith and doubt; it was the conflict of instinct with reason. This is evident in his relations with Sophie Löwenthal. He knows that their love is an unequal one[124] and chides her for her coldness,[125] warning her not to humiliate him, not even in jest;[126] he knows too that his alternating moods of exaltation and dejection resulting from the intensity of his unsatisfied love are destroying him.[127] "Oefter hat sich der Gedanke bei mir angemeldet: Entschlage dich dieser Abhängigkeit und gestatte diesem Weibe keinen so mächtigen Einfluss auf deine Stimmungen. Kein Mensch auf Erden soll dich so beherrschen. Doch bald stiess ich diesen Gedanken wieder zurück als einen Verräter an meiner Liebe, und ich bot mein reizbares Herz wieder gerne dar Deinen zärtlichen Misshandlungen.—O geliebtes Herz! missbrauche Deine Gewalt nicht! Ich bitte Dich, liebe Sophie!"[128] And yet, in spite of it all, he is unable to free himself from the thrall of passion: "Wie wird doch all mein Trotz und Stolz so gar zu nichte, wenn die Furcht in mir erwacht, dass Du mich weniger liebest";[129] and all this from the same pen that once wrote: "das Wort Gnade hat ein Schuft erfunden."[130]
But just as helpless as this defiant pride proved before his all-consuming love for Sophie, so strongly did it assert itself in all his other relations with men and things. A hasty word from one of his best friends could so deeply offend his spirit that, according to his own admission, all subsequent apologies were futile.[131] For Lenau, then, such an attitude of hero worship as that assumed by Hölderlin towards Schiller, would have been an utter impossibility. We have already seen the extent to which he was over-awed (?) by Goethe's views when they were at variance with their own.[132] On another occasion he writes: "Was Goethe über Ruysdael faselt, kannte ich bereits."[133] Toward his critics his bearing was that of haughty indifference: "Mag auch das Talent dieser Menschen,[TN1] mich zu insultieren, gross sein, mein Talent, sie zu verachten, ist auf alle Fälle grösser."[134] When his Frühlingsalmanach of 1835 had been received with disfavor by the critics, he professed to be concerned only for his publisher: "Ich meinerseits habe auf Liebe und Dank nie gezählt bei meinen Bestrebungen."[135] "Die (Recensenten) wissen den Teufel von Poesie."[136] Whether this real or assumed nonchalance would have stood the test of literary disappointments such as Hölderlin's, it is needless to speculate.
Hölderlin eagerly sought after happiness and contentment, but fortune eluded him at every turn. Lenau on the contrary thrust it from him with true ascetic spirit.
The mere thought of submitting to the ordinary process of negotiations and recommendations for a vacant professorship of Esthetics in Vienna is so repulsive to his pride, that the whole matter is at once allowed to drop, notwithstanding that he has been preparing for the place by diligent philosophical studies.[137] The asceticism with which he regarded life in general is expressed in a letter to Emilie Reinbeck, 1843, in which he says: "Wer die Welt gestalten helfen will, muss darauf verzichten, sie zu geniessen."[138] But more often this resignation becomes a defiant challenge: "Ich habe dem Leben gegenüber nun einmal meine Stellung genommen, es soll mich nicht hinunterkriegen. Dass mein Widerstand nicht der eines ruhigen Weisen ist, sondern viel Trotziges an sich hat, das liegt in meinen Temperament."[139]
Another characteristic difference between Lenau's Weltschmerz and Hölderlin's lies in the fact that the writings of the latter do not exhibit that absolute and abject despair which marks Lenau's lyrics. Typical for both poets are the lines addressed by each to a rose: