Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

The goblet of bliss, drained by these personages, has seasoned their destiny with poison. Heyse, therefore, affirms for these heroic souls the right to solve the problem of a conflict of duties in a different way than is customary for "the timid Philistine whose half-way measures are circumscribed by petty customs and considerations," and in the introduction to his "Beatrice"16 he himself formulates his ethic heresy in the following words: "Genial, self-dependent natures can do much toward extending the boundary lines of the moral sphere, by permitting the measure of their inner power and magnitude to shine forth as an example, through their actions, just as genial artists can burst through those barriers of their art that have been handed down to them by tradition."

No less than through this intimately allied association with ruin and death does Heyse ennoble love, legitimate or illegitimate, as indicated above, through the nature of the self-surrender. It is always conscious. These women whom he characterizes never allow themselves to be carried away by their emotions; they give themselves up as a free gift – when they yield at all. Thus it is in works dating from Heyse's earliest youth, as "Der Kreisrichter"17 (The Circuit Judge), thus in "Rafael," in "Lottka," and in so many of the "novellen" in prose and in verse. Everywhere the self-sufficiency and the right of spontaneity of the individual is preserved. The woman gives herself as a free gift to her lover, she goes freely forth to meet her own destruction, or with her own hand inflicts death upon herself; and where the bliss of love is not ennobled by the price it costs, it is at least exalted by the pride with which it is bestowed and received. By virtue of this pride the personality, itself governed by the strongest power of nature, feels independent and regal in the assertion of its sovereign dignity. In the romance "Im Paradiese" Heyse has for the first time treated as a main problem the freedom of love in antithesis to the laws of society, and maintained its justice. The fundamental idea of this romance is none other than that the morality and dignity, of love between man and woman is independent of the outward ratification of the marriage tie. According to his wont, Heyse has provided the case here given with the most forcible motives. Jansen cannot, without putting his friend to shame, become free from his despicable wife, and without Julie all his hopes as an artist and a man would perish. Yet when Julie in the presence of the assembled friends, adorned with the myrtle-wreath, freely weds Jansen, a decided attack is aimed at the purely exterior morality of society, although the incident is not brought forward as an example for imitation. The poet who in the "Kinder der Welt" urgently impresses it upon the consciences of his contemporaries, that the morality of the individual is not dependent on his metaphysical convictions, in his "Im Paradiese," strives to teach that the purity and dignity of a union of love must not be judged by the laws of outward morality, but that love both without and within the marriage relation may be true and false, moral and immoral. Everything depends, according to Heyse's views, upon the true nobility of the heart.

V

I have already said that Heyse as a poet is originally a pupil of Eichendorf. Like the hero in his "Ein Abenteuer" (An Adventure), he appears to have chosen for the companion of his first journeyman-years the romantic "Taugenichts" (Good-for-nothing). Where, in one of his "novellen" (Lottka), he introduces himself as a youth, he sings in Eichendorf's own key, and we recognize that very early in life he has been in the habit of whistling, with rare skill, the melodies of romance. Musje Morgenroth, in the collection of romantic folk-lore tales for children, which as a student he published under the title "Der Jungbrunnen" (The Fountain of Youth), is a genuine brother of the celebrated Eichendorf hero. The book is the work of a boy, and yet it is not without a certain interest, as it marks the first standpoint of our poet. It shows also with what talents he was equipped from the outset: the boyish, yet never inelegant prose flows smoothly, and the verse, which is of a vastly higher character, with all its echoes, is unaffected, fresh, and regular in form. His song is not original, but it is pure; it is in the usual key of romance, but it is sung with youthful freshness and grace. The fact of producing naïvely during the years of boyhood is in itself a phenomenon, and the unusual amount of innate command of language secures the student author from exaggeration or mannerism. The gift of language, inherited evidently from his father, the well-known philologist, develops in the son into a fluency, a facility for handling words and rhythm, which even in his earliest youth was not far removed from virtuoso-ship. This almost Rückert-like flow of language, as a fundamental element in Heyse's natural endowments, influenced all the other peculiarities which he gradually developed. From the very beginning he sang not because he had more in his heart than the rest of mankind, but because it was far easier and more natural for him than for others to express that of which his heart was full. Since, no mighty inward revolutions or startling outward occurrences were necessary to unseal his lips, as are usually required to rouse the creative fancy of those for whom it is difficult to find form of expression, and who succeed only in moments of passion in bringing forth to the light of day the treasures of their inner being, he turned his gaze not within but without, pondered but little on his ego, his calling, and his capabilities; but fully conscious that he bore within his own soul a clear mirror, which reflected everything within his immediate surroundings that interested him, he allowed his gaze, with the keen susceptibility and true creative impulse of a plastic artist, to wander in all directions.

Of a plastic artist, I said; for he did not long continue to carol forth the music of romance. He himself has said, —

"Fair is romantic poesie,Yet what we call beauté de nuit."

True men, Heyse thinks, understand how to grasp their ideas in the light of day, and he is too thoroughly a child of the sun to be able to linger in the twilight of romance. A lyric poet he is not in the main, and the strength of romance, conformably to its nature and of necessity, lies in lyric poetry. Nor did the surroundings of nature imbue him with an independent poetic interest; such a freshness of the sea and of the landscape as is breathed for instance by the Danish novels of Blicher will not be found in his works; he is not a landscape-painter, and has always availed himself of the landscape merely as a background. What first and earliest met his gaze, as soon as he was developed enough to see with his own eyes, was man; and let it be observed, not man as an intelligence served by organs, or as a will walking on a pair of legs, or as a psychological curiosity, but man as a plastic form. Like the sculptor or the figure-painter it is his wont, according to my opinion, on closing his eyes, to see his horizon first and foremost populated with outlines and profiles. Beautiful external forms and movements, the poise of a graceful head, a charming peculiarity of carriage or walk, have occupied him in precisely the same way as they engross the attention of the plastic artist, and are reproduced by him with the same partiality, indeed, at times with technical exactness of expression. And not only the narrator, but the personages that appear on the scene, often form the same kind of conceptions. Thus, for instance, the main character in "Der Kreisrichter" (The Circuit Judge) says: "The young people here are healthy, and health constitutes half of the beauty of youth. There is also race development. Notice the refined form of their heads, and the delicate moulding of their temples, and the natural grace of their bearing in walking, dancing, and sitting down."18 A striking example of the poet's method of contemplation may be found in "Die Einsamen" (The Solitary Ones), where his dissatisfaction at being able to paint so imperfectly with the means which his art affords, breaks forth in the following words: "Only the mere outlines!" he raved to himself. "Only a few dozen lines! How she went trotting about on her little donkey, one leg thrown across the back of the animal, resting firmly and securely, the other almost grazing the ground with the tip of her foot, and her right elbow supported on the knee that was in repose, her hand playing gently with the chain about her neck, her face turned toward the sea. What a mass of black tresses on the neck! Something red lends a radiance thereto. A coral necklace? No; fresh pomegranate blossoms. The wind plays with the loosely knotted kerchief; how dark is the glow of the cheeks, and how much darker the eye!"19 Such are the pictures of plastic figures, simple, picturesque situations, with which Heyse's imagination has had to operate upon from the beginning, and which serve to form for it a starting-point. And though it may be felt ever so keenly how much more sensible it is to describe a poet than to praise him, still it were scarcely possible to restrain an outburst of admiration upon considering how exceedingly well Heyse, in every instance, has succeeded in presenting his characters, especially, however, his female characters, to the reader's eye. He does not belong to the descriptive school; he does not characterize in detail, as either Balzac or Turgenief; he describes with a few delicate strokes: yet his creations remain fixed in our memories, from the simple reason that they all have defined style. A peasant maiden from Naples or Tyrol, a servant girl, or a young fräulein from Germany, all obtain, when depicted by his hand, a higher, more visionary, and yet ever-memorable life, because they are all ennobled by strictly ideal methods and the art of representation. They are as perfect in form as statues; they have the carriage of queens. With the exception of the painter Leopold Robert, of whom some of Heyse's Italian works are reminders, no one, to my knowledge, has displayed so grand a style in the delineation of peasants and fishing people as Heyse. And as the forms of the outer person, so those of the inner being are of an exquisitely finished style. Did not the expression seem almost too daring, I should say that Heyse's descriptions of love are plastic. The romantic school always conceived love to be of a lyric nature. If Heyse's love stories be compared with the love stories of the romantic school, it will be found that while the romantic writers give their strength in analyzing their romantic transports as such, and forming a nomenclature for the rarest moods which it has usually been thought impossible to name, in Heyse's writings every psychological force is mirrored in a look or in a gesture; everything becomes with him contemplation and visible life.

VI

I remarked that the faculty of preserving and idealizing forms constituted one of the starting-points of this poet's imagination. It has, however, another. Quite as inherent as his capacity for delineating character is his fondness for experiencing and inventing "adventures." By adventures, I understand events of a peculiar and unusual nature, which – as is scarcely ever the case in real adventures – have a sure outline, and so clearly defined a beginning, middle, and end, that they appear to the imagination like a work of art enclosed in a frame. From any chance, outward or inward, observation – the fragment of a dream, an encounter on the street, the sight of a tower dating from the Middle Ages, in some ancient city, in the glow of the setting sun – there springs up for him, through the most rapid association of ideas, a history, a chain of events; and as he is by nature an artist, this series of events ever assumes a rhythmic form. Like the beings he creates, it has clear, firm outlines and inner equilibrium. It has its skeleton, its filling up of flesh; above all, its well-defined and slender shape. The faculty of relating a story in brief, concise form, of imparting to it, so to say, a harmonious rhythm, has its origin directly in Heyse's thoroughly harmonious nature.20 The "novellen" form, as he has carved it out and engraved it, is an entirely original and independent creation, his actual property. Therefore he has become especially popular through his prose "novelle." The "novelle" with him always has extremely few and simple factors, the number of the personages introduced is small, the action is concise and may be surveyed with a single glance. But his fiction does not exist for the sake of the personages alone, as in the modern French novels, which only satisfy a psychological or a physiological interest; it has its own peculiar mode of development and its independent interest. A novel like Christian Winter's "Aftenscene" (Evening Scene), whose quaint, old-fashioned grace of style renders it so fascinating, possesses the fault of having no incident. With Heyse the "novelle" is not a picture of the times, or a genre painting; something always does happen with him, and it is always something unexpected. The plot, as a rule, is so arranged that at a certain point an unforeseen change takes place; a surprise which, when the reader looks back, always proves to have had a firm and carefully prepared foundation in what went before. At this point the action sharpens; here the threads unite to form a knot from which they are spun around in an opposite direction. The enjoyment of the reader is based upon the art with which the purpose of the action is gradually more and more veiled and hidden from view, until suddenly the covering falls. His surprise is caused by the skill with which Heyse apparently strays farther and farther away from the goal which rose beyond the starting-point, until he finally discovers that he has been led through a winding path and finds himself exactly above the point where the story began.

Heyse himself, in his introduction to his "Deutscher Novellenschatz," has expressed his views on the principle to which he does homage in his "novellen" compositions. Here, as in the introduction to the "Stickerin von Treviso" (The Embroidery Woman of Treviso), he calls the attention of those who would place the entire importance on style and diction, to the fact that the narrative as a narrative, what children call the story, is unquestionably the essential foundation of the "novelle" and possesses its own peculiar beauty. He lays stress on the statement that according to his æsthetic taste, he would give the preference to that "novelle" whose main motive is most distinctly finished, and – with more or less intrinsic worth – betrays something peculiar, specific, in the original design. "A strong silhouette," he continues, "should not be lacking in what is called a 'novelle' in the proper sense of the word."21 By the term "silhouette" Heyse means the outlines of the story, as shown by a brief summary of the contents; and he illustrates his idea with a striking example and a striking description. He gives the synopsis of one of the novels of Boccaccio, as follows: —

"Frederigo degli Alberighi loves, without meeting with any return; roving in knightly fashion, he squanders all his substance, and has nothing left but one single falcon; this, when the lady whom he loves is led by chance to his house, and he has nothing else with which to prepare a meal for her, he places on the table before her. She learns what he has done, suddenly changes her resolution, and rewards his love by making him the lord of her hand and her fortune."

Heyse calls attention to the fact that in these few lines lie all the elements of a touching and delightful "novelle," in which the fate of two human beings is accomplished in the most charming manner, through an accidental turn of affairs, which, however, serves to give deeper development to the characters; and he therefore invites modern story-tellers, even when engaged on the most touching and rich materials, to ask themselves where "the falcon" is, the specific object that distinguishes this story from a thousand others.

In the demand he makes on the "novelle," he has especially characterized the task he has imposed on himself and faithfully fulfilled. He prefers eccentric to typical everyday instances. As a rule, we are quite as sure of finding "the falcon" in his prose narratives, as a certain judge was of finding a woman at the bottom of every crime. In "L' Arrabbiata," the biting of a hand is "the falcon"; in the "Bild der Mutter" (The Mother's Portrait) it is the elopement; in "Vetter [Cousin] Gabriel," it is the letter copied from the "lover's letter-writer." If the reader will himself search for the aforesaid wild bird, he will gain an insight into the poet's method of composition. It is not always so easily captured as in the cases just cited. With a power of investigation, a nimble grace, which is rare in a man who is not of Roman race, Heyse has understood how to tie the knots of events and disentangle them again, to present and solve the psychologic problem which he has isolated in the "novelle." He has the faculty of singling out exceptional, unusual cases from the general state of culture, and the condition of the society of which he is a member, and presenting them purely and sharply in the form of a "novelle," without permitting the action to play into the unreal and fabulous, as is the wont of romantic novelists, and without ever allowing it to run into a merely epigrammatic point. His "novellen" are neither brief romances nor long anecdotes. They have at the same time fulness and strictly-defined form. And circumscribed as this form may be, it has yet proved itself sufficiently flexible to be able to embrace within its limits the most diverse materials. The "novellen" of Heyse play on many strings; most abundantly on the tender and the spirituelle, but also on the comic (as in the amusing tale, "Die Wittwe von Pisa" – The Widow of Pisa), the fantastic (as in the Hoffman-like "Cleopatra"); indeed, in a single instance, the awful (in the painful nocturne, "Der Kinder Sünde der Väter Fluch" – The Sins of the Children the Curse of the Fathers). The "novelle" as it is treated by Heyse borders on the provinces of Alfred de Musset, Mérimée, Hoffman and Tieck; but has, however, its own special domain, as well as its very individual profile.

VII

Meanwhile, ready as I am to recognize the significance of this sharp profile as the individual characteristic of the Heyse "novelle," and its significance for the novel in general as a work of art, it is equally hard for me to allow this to pass as the decisive norm for the estimation of individual stories.

The novel is, indeed, as every work of art, an organism in which beautiful proportions, relatively independent of one another and of a totally dissimilar character, contribute to produce a combined impression. We have been dwelling upon the characterizations, and the action; style is the third element. According to my convictions, these three elements are not subordinate one to the other, but co-ordinate; and each one of them, when developed in a masterly way, affords the reader an equally perfect enjoyment.

It is very certain, as Heyse makes evident, that a one-sided development of diction leads to clever capriciousness without any scheme; whoever places too great importance on "the plot" is in danger, on the other hand, of retrograding into mere sensational literature.

"Spring Floods," by Turgenief, is a novel whose action moves on in an unsatisfactory manner, – of the style, in the stricter sense of the word, I cannot judge, as I have never read the story in the original, – but is this lack of much importance in such a masterwork of individual characterization? Does not the description of the Italian family, in and by itself, outweigh every imperfection in the plan of occurrences? What matters it if the reader would rather have had the end somewhat different, and cannot read it a second time, even though he may read three-quarters of the novel over and over again with unchanged enjoyment?

Blicher's "Diary of a Village Sexton" is a novel in which the action is of but little moment, and most of the characters are absolutely repellant, on account of their coarseness; but it is, nevertheless, a work of the highest artistic worth; its main strength lies in its style, in the masterly execution of the honest sexton's language, which belongs to a period of almost two hundred years past. This language is a guarantee for the cutting truth of the narrative, a truth which is not reached by the path of idealism, and which, therefore, is neither sought nor found by Heyse; I mean that truth which by the French is designated "la vérité vraie."

And cannot Heyse be attacked with his own weapons? I think he can. By the stress he lays on what the novel within the novel is, he seems to oppose alike the overestimation of style, and of ideal purport. But of all his "novellen" in verse "Der Salamander" (The Salamander) appears to me to stand the highest; of his prose works "Der letzte Centaur" (The Last Centaur) is one of my favorites. The first of these seems to me to bear off the palm on account of the diction; the last, on account of the idea.

There is no need of taking pains to seek for a "falcon" in Salamander; there is no plot in it, the characters have no development worth mentioning, and yet every reader of any susceptibility will experience such lively enjoyment under the influence of the magic of these terzettos, that it will seem to him as if this poem, in addition to its own merits, possessed also all those which it lacks. Of the epic repose, of the objective style, which is Heyse's precise ideal in the domain of the "novelle," not much will here be found. This epic repose is perhaps less adapted on the whole to the restless spirit of our time. The realization of this ideal of Heyse's has, properly speaking, only perfectly succeeded in the few prose "novellen," which do not touch upon the civilization of modern society, as in those genial pasticcios of the olden time: "Die Stickerin von Treviso" and "Geoffroy und Garcinde," where the noble, simple style of the old Italian or Provençal form of narrative is idealized, or when the materials are taken from the life of the people in Italy or Tyrol; for the people in those lands are themselves a simple piece of the Middle Ages cast in a form. Such a story as that little jewel "L' Arrabbiata," which was the foundation of Heyse's fame, actually attains its rights through its plain, rigid setting; adorned with the decorations of style, or with psychologically polished facets, it would lose its entire beauty, if not become impossible. In the same way "Die Stickerin von Treviso," which probably, next to the work just named, has reaped the greatest harvest of applause, in its touching simplicity and grandeur, is so thoroughly one with its chronicle form, that it cannot be conceived of without this. But in instances where scenes from purely modern civilization are described, the style cannot be too individual and nervous. Heyse himself cannot avoid making his aim in this respect proportionate to his materials; how feverish is the recital in the pretty invalid story in letters "Unheilbar" (Incurable.) However, it is apparently with the utmost reluctance, and without the free exercise of his will, that he permits himself to be carried away into such a passionately surging and trembling style as in "Salamander." This creation is pure style, its beauty depends wholly and entirely on the captivating charm of its metric diction, and yet throughout not a word will be found that is not to the purpose. The entire work teems with active life, every change in style is deeply felt and transparent; the struggling soul of the writer lies like an open book before the reader. The situations are insignificant and commonplace; no Bengal illumination, not even a final tableau. But these remarkable, incredibly beautiful, unnaturally easy, nervously passionate terzettos, which question and answer, jest, sing and lament, invest the theatrical, the enamored yet thoroughly composed blasé coquette, the heroine, and the passion she inspires, with such a charm that no exciting story, with crisis and pole, could be more captivating. Toward the close of the poem the glorious terzettos, which throughout have been transformed into quite a new species of metre, ring out in a manner as surprising as it is genial and bold, in the chords of a triple ritornelle, invested with all the freshness of nature. Such a poem as this will maintain its place in spite of all theories.