Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature – 3. The Reaction in France

The effect of this little work is rather weakened by the introduction of supernatural agencies; the whole calamity, namely, is explained to be the result of a stepmother's foolish curse; still, the story in its simplicity is a glorification of that strong, beautiful love which has power to drive out even the devil himself.

And in this, as in several of his other tales, Arnim evinces a humane sympathy with the lower classes which becomes the aristocratic Romanticist well. It is the same feeling of affection for those who are simple of heart as that which led him to collect and publish the popular songs and ballads, and which finds expression in Dolores in the following words of the hero: "I swear to you that often, when I had to pay a couple of thalers for a few lines containing some utterly superfluous formality, I felt a furious desire to take up the inkpot and knock in the lawyer's teeth with it. I should not have been the least surprised to see a flash of lightning come straight from heaven and burn up all his musty documents. And if I feel thus, how much more grievous must such an outlay seem to the poor man who has perhaps to work a whole week from morning till late at night to scrape the money together." We come on this same idea again in his essay Von Volksliedern, where he declares that the people have come "to look on the law as they look upon a hurricane, or any other superhuman power, against which they must defend themselves, or from which they must hide, or which leaves them nothing to do but despair."

His aristocratic bias is perceptible in all his Romantic vagaries.

With Arnim's name is always coupled that of Clemens Brentano (1778-1849), his partner in the work of collecting and publishing the German popular songs and ballads. Brentano resembles Arnim in his habit of giving free rein to a vivid imagination, but differs from him in being an unstable, unreliable personality. His talent is more sparkling and supple, he is more of an intellectual prodigy; but it is as a psychological phenomenon that he awakens our interest, not as a man. His only claim upon our sympathy is, that he does not, like his spiritual kinsman, Zacharias Werner, degrade himself by sentimental obscenity. He does not act basely, but he is never truthful in the strictest sense of the word, until, intellectually dulled, he renounces the calling of poet, or even of author, and lives entirely for his religious enthusiasms. His case has a certain resemblance to that of Hölderlin, who became insane at such an early age – the last twenty-five years of his life are lost to literature.

In his young days Brentano is the jester of the Romanticists, the wayward knave and wag who cannot refrain from doing what he knows will cost him the friends he has made, nor from disturbing and destroying the emotions and illusions which he himself has skilfully produced. With the quality, rare among the Romanticists, of grace in art, he combines a certain simple pathos. Like many other men of productive intellect, when he took pen in hand he became more profound, more serious, and, above all, more warm-hearted than he was in real life. Hence he not unfrequently as an artist produces the impression of genuineness, though he was insincere as a man.

As an intellectual personality he had no backbone. Destitute of firm convictions, he could only conceive of two attitudes towards the principle of authority in matters of belief – wild revolt or unqualified submission. His intellect oscillated between these two extremes until it found rest in submission.

Of all his gifts and capacities, he, the arch-Romanticist, had only sought to develop that of imagination. Palpably true is the following confession extracted from one of his letters: "Oh, my child! we had nourished nothing but imagination, and it, in return, had half devoured us." Unbridled imagination, developed without any counterbalancing quality, is distinctly akin to mendacity; and, as a matter of fact, Brentano in his youth was an incorrigible liar, whose favourite amusement it was to move ladies to tears by accounts of his entirely imaginary woes.

He was the enfant perdu of the Romantic School. He might also be called the prodigal son of poetry. Like the young man in the New Testament, he was a spendthrift. He squandered all the many good and witty ideas that occurred to him, all the fertile situations which he invented, upon works destitute of definite plan and form, and consequently destitute of the power to withstand time, which so soon sweeps away everything formless. Before he was forty he had exhausted his intellectual capital, had squandered his substance, and was fain, like the young man of the Bible, "to fill his belly with the husks that the swine did eat" – the husks that were the food of only ignorant and superstitious human beings. In other words, he relapsed into foolish bigotry. In the year 1817 he began to go to confession again, as in the days of his earliest youth, and in the following year withdrew from all intercourse with his fellows, to pass the next six years of his life in devout contemplation by the sick-bed of the nun, Catharina Emmerich, who bore on her body the marks of the wounds of Christ. He regarded the bodily infirmities of this pious, single-minded, but perfectly hysterical girl, as so many wonderful signs of grace, believed in the miraculousness of the supposed imprints of the Saviour's wounds, and with awe-strick'en compassion watched them bleed from time to time. Catharina's words convinced him that she possessed a mysterious, supernatural gift of second-sight, and he carefully noted down every one of her visions and hallucinations. He wrote the story of her life, edited her reflections, and wrote to her dictation The Life of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. After her death, which happened in 1824, practically his only occupation was the preparing for publication of the fourteen volumes of manuscript containing her various utterances.

Brentano's life is a remarkable exemplification of the truth of the words of Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust: —

"Verachte nur Vernunft und Wissenschaft,Des Menschen aller höchste Kraft,Lass nur in Blend- und ZauberwerkenDich von dem Lügengeist bestärken,So hab' ich dich schon unbedingt."60

Hallucinations and magic played no small part in his existence, and the man who had begun by sneering at rationalism as dull and barren, fell a prey to ideas far duller and more barren than the emptiest rationalism. He was no more a hypocrite than the good soul, Catharina Emmerich, was an impostor. But the craving for some firm, external support for his weak, wavering Ego, now still farther enfeebled by remorse for the recklessness of his youth, led him to cling with all the fanatical enthusiasm of his soul to the Church and its miracles, just as he had clung in earlier days to poetry with its fairy-tales and magic.

In his later years he was possessed by a kind of religious mania, though on a rare occasion he showed a trace of his old inclination to waggery. He declared, for instance, that he had drawn the apostles who appeared to Catharina Emmerich in her visions exactly as she had described them to him; but Bettina discovered that he had been unable to resist hanging round the apostle Paul's neck, in lieu of a scrip, a curious old tobacco pouch, which had belonged to himself in former days, and about which many funny stories were in circulation among his acquaintances.

On his father's side Clemens Brentano was of Italian descent. His grandfather, a successful Frankfort merchant, was a native of Tremezzo on the Lake of Como. Through his mother he was descended from the authoress Sophie Laroche, Wieland's friend.

In personal appearance he was the popular ideal poet, handsome, pale, and slight, with a confusion of curly black hair. He had a Southern complexion and sparkling, restless brown eyes shadowed by long lashes. His voice was deep and beautiful, and he was fond of singing his own songs, accompanying himself on the guitar.

He was apprenticed to a merchant, but the experiment proved totally unsuccessful, and in 1797 he went to Jena, where he made the acquaintance of the most famous of the Romanticists, Fr. Schlegel, Steffens, and others. These friends often threatened to thrash him for his mad tricks and "not unfrequently malicious boasts and lies," and the threat was more than once actually carried out. But he could not refrain from offending; it was impossible to him to restrain a caprice. While still quite young, he fell in love with a very gifted woman, Sophie Mereau, wife of one of the Jena professors. In the course of this love affair the couple had many wonderful adventures, some of which we find reproduced in his first book, Godwi, or the Mother's Statue. When, in 1802, Fr. Tieck executed a marble bust of Brentano, Frau Mereau described the impression it produced on her in the following beautiful sonnet, inspired by genuine admiration and love: —

"Welch süsses Bild erschuf der Künstler hier?Von welchem milden Himmelsstrich erzeuget?Nennt keine Inschrift seinen Namen mir,Da diese todte Lippe ewig schweiget?Nach Hohem loht im Auge die Begier,Begeistrung auf die Stirne niedersteiget,Um die, nur von der schönen Locken ZierGeschmücket, noch kein Lorbeerkranz sich beuget.Ein Dichter ist es. Seine Lippen prangenVon Lieb' umwebt, mit wunderselgem Leben,Die Augen gab ihm sinnend die Romanze!Und schalkhaft wohnt der Scherz auf seinen Wangen;Den Namen wird der Ruhm ihm einstens geben,Das Haupt ihm schmückend mit dem Lorbeerkranze."61

Happiness came to Brentano before fame. In 1803 he married Sophie Mereau, who had been divorced from her husband, and they lived most happily together till 1806, when she died in childbirth.

In Heidelberg Brentano collaborated with Arnim in the publication of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and with Görres in Die Geschichte des Uhrmachers BOGS ("Story of Bogs, the Watchmaker"). He had already published several works on his own account —Ponce de Leon, die lustigen Musikanten ("The Merry Musicians"), Chronika eines fahrenden Schülers ("Chronicles of a Roving Student"). In Frankfort he became entangled in a love affair, which led to one of the many tragi-comic episodes in his life. He ran away with a young girl who had fallen violently in love with him, Auguste Busmann, a niece of the famous banker, Bethmann. They went to Cassel, where he married her. It is said that he tried to escape from her on the way to church, but that the energetic bride held him fast. A few days after the ceremony she threw her wedding-ring out of the window. One of her fancies was to dash through the town on horseback, the long plumes of her hat and the scarlet trappings of her horse floating in the wind. She plagued her husband in many ways. We are told that one of the worst tortures he had to endure was caused by her skill in beating a tattoo with her feet against the footboard of the bed, a performance invariably followed by a skilful pizzicato played with her toe-nails upon the sheet.62 This and other things grew so unendurable that he ran away. The valiant lady procured a divorce the same year, and was ere long married again.

Brentano settled in Berlin, and was soon in great request in social circles there, on account of his powers of conversation, his whimsicality, and his rocket-like sallies of wit. It was in Berlin that he wrote his fairy-tales and most of his Romanzen vom Rosenkranz ("Romances of the Rosary"). His play, The Founding of Prague, was written in Bohemia, where lay the family estate, Bukowan, of which the younger brother, Christian, took charge. After his return to Berlin in 1816, he wrote the famous tale, Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und der schönen Nannerl ("Story of Brave Kasperl and Fair Nannerl"), also Die mehreren Wehmüller, and Die drei Nüsse ("The Three Nuts"). Then his conversion took place, and he no longer lived for literature. The profits of anything he wrote subsequently were devoted to charitable objects.

Steffens remarks of Brentano that he is the only one of the Romanticists who seems to be thoroughly aware that he has no aim. He calls him an ironical, sportive Kronos, who fantastically demolishes every one of his definite utterances by means of its successor, in this manner devouring his own children. Still, as a lyric poet, a writer of fairy-tales, and a novelist, Brentano has produced works of art, few in number, but of permanent value.

In his poetry there is something touching, simple, and caressingly sweet. He understands the art of condensing an emotion, but he generally dilutes it again, and spoils his effect by repetitions, refrains, or the introduction of inarticulate sounds, such as "Ru, ku, ku, kuh," and the like. Almost all his poems contain single verses of great excellence, but almost all are too long. He has appropriated the diffuseness of the Volkslied. He is distinctly original in such untranslatable verses as the following, taken from the Dichters Blumenstrauss ("Poet's Garland"): —

"Ein verstimmend FühlgewächschenEin Verlangen abgewandt,Ein erstarrend Zitterhexchen,Zuckeflämmchen, nie verbrannt.Offnes Räthsel, nie zu lösen,Steter Wechsel, fest gewöhnt,Wesen, wie noch keins gewesen,Leicht verhöhnt und schwer versöhnt.* * * * * * *Auf dem Kehlchen wiegt das Köpfchen,Blumenglöckchen auf dem Stiel,Seelchen, selig Thaueströpfchen,Das hinein vom Himmel fiel."

The highly artificial style of this poem is very characteristic of Brentano. Both as lyric poet and story-teller he is artificial; but his mannerism seldom gives the impression of affectation, it only witnesses to the almost morbid sensibility of his temperament.

In Der Spinnerin Lied we have a simple and touching expression of the pain of the long separation from Sophie Mereau. It begins: —

"Es sang vor langen JahrenWohl auch die Nachtigall,Das war wohl süsser Schall,Da wir zusammen waren.Ich sing und kann nicht weinen,Und spinne so alleinDen Faden klar und rein,So lang der Mond wird scheinen.Da wir zusammen waren,Da sang die Nachtigall,Nun mahnet mich ihr SchallDass du von mir gefahren.So oft der Mond mag scheinenGedenk ich dein allein;Mein Herz ist klar und rein,Gott wolle uns vereinen."63

It is right to give Brentano all honour as the creator, in his ballad "Loreley," of a figure which, under the treatment of other poets, notably Heine, has become so living, so truly popular, that one can hardly believe that it is not a genuine legendary figure. It is wrong to do what Griesebach and Scherer have done, namely, turn this praise into a depreciation of Heine's merits, credit him only with the greater literary dexterity, Brentano with the greater capacity of invention. It seems particularly unjust when we remember that Brentano's own finest lyrics are adaptations of popular songs. Read, for example, his beautiful Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod. The poem is to be found under the name Erntelied in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and begins thus: —

"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,Hat Gewalt vom höchsten Gott,Heut wetzt er das Messer,Es schneid't schon viel besser,Bald wird er drein schneiden,Wir müssen's nur leiden;Hüte dich, schön's Blümelein!"

Brentano's lines are more polished: —

"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,Er mäht das Korn, wenn Gott's gebot,Schon wetzt er die Sense,Dass schneidend sie glänze;Bald wird er dich schneiden,Du musst es nur leiden;Musst in den Erntekranz hinein;Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

In their original form the following lines are not only simpler, but more beautiful than in Brentano's version: —

"Viel hundert Tausend ungezählt,Was nur unter die Sichel fällt,Ihr Rosen, Ihr Liljen,Euch wird er austilgen.Auch die KaiserkronenWird er nicht verschonen.Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

Brentano's run thus: —

"Viel hunderttausend ohne Zahl,Ihr sinket durch der Sense Strahl;Weh' Rosen, weh' Lilien,Weh' krause Basilien!Selbst euch KaiserkronenWird er nicht verschonen.Ihr müsst zum Erntekranz hinein.Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"

He spins out the six verses of the old song to fourteen by the aid of a long list of flowers and plants; we are out of breath before we get to the end of them. The volume of poems entitled Die Romanzen vom Rosenkranz ("Romances of the Rosary") is a romantic variation of the Faust legend, showing the evil of thirst for knowledge and pride of it. Faust himself is transformed into the Mephistophelian evil principle. In this work, as well as in "Loreley," Brentano prepares the way for Heinrich Heine. The romances are written in four-footed trochees, which in their cadence and whole character anticipate Heine's trochaic verse, especially in the droll juxtaposition of light, graceful lines and lines consisting of learned names, obscure legal matter, and scraps of mediæval mystic jargon.

As a prose writer, Brentano began, with his Godwi, in the style of Lucinde. The first part of the book assumes that true morality consists in allowing the sensual instincts free play, and immorality in repressing or ignoring them. With bacchantic wildness the heroine preaches the gospel of free love, and denounces marriage and every species of compulsory virtue. The second part, in genuine Romantic fashion, satirises the first part and the characters delineated in it. Godwi, the hero of the first volume, retires into the background, and the author himself, under the pseudonym Maria, takes his place. We learn that it was simply with the view of obtaining the hand of the daughter of one of the personages in the first part of the book, that the author managed to gain possession of the correspondence of which that first part consists. He had hoped by publishing it to attain this end. But, as the first volume is not approved of, he takes it to Godwi, the principal character, and begs him to tell what other love adventures he has had. The astounded Godwi reads his own story. Book in hand, he conducts the author round his garden, and says, pointing to a pond: "This is the pond into which I fall on page 266 of the first volume." Thus in Godwi we have Romantic sensual licence in combination with Romantic irony and selfduplication.

The revulsion from revolutionary ardour and passion was even more complete in Brentano's case than in Fr. Schlegel's; it became positive renunciation of reason. And his conversion, like Zacharias Werner's, was of the species accompanied by a tearful conviction of sin. In his Sketch of the Life of Anna Catharina Emmerich he tells, without giving a thought to any possible physiological explanation of the fact, that her longing for the Holy Sacrament was so great, that often at night, feeling herself irresistibly drawn to it, she left her cell, and was found in the morning kneeling with outstretched arms outside the locked church door. It never occurred to him that her condition might be a morbid one, not even when she told him all the particulars of the appearance of the stigmata on her body as if the whole thing had happened to another nun of the neighbourhood.

But during the middle period of his literary career, Brentano produced some prose works which are of more than merely historical literary interest; for example, the fairy-tale, Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia, which he first wrote in a pithy, condensed form, but at a later period diluted with holy water and greatly expanded. This tale gives us an idea of the inexhaustible supply of amusing and grotesque conceits to which his conversation doubtless owed its great charm. In it Brentano reveals himself as a master of the prose which, while playing with words and ideas and connecting things which have not the remotest connection, nevertheless dexterously refrains from mixing metaphors, and never breaks the link in the chain of ideas. It may be a perfect trifle, some accidental reminiscence (Brentano's remembering, for instance, that in his childhood he had heard Goethe's mother say: "Dies ist keine Puppe, sondern nur eine schöne Kunstfigur"), which sets him weaving the chain. But with the inexorable artistic severity of a contrapuntist, he holds to his fugitive motive throughout the whole length of his composition, varying and enriching it. As a specimen of this style, take the following paragraph from Gockel, Hinkelund Gackeleia, that tale in which, throughout several hundred pages, words and ideas undergo a transformation which fits them for their place in the hen-world: —

"Die Franzosen haben das Schloss so übel mitgenommen, dass sie es recht abscheulich zurückliessen. Ihr König Hahnri hatte gesagt, jeder Franzose solle Sonntags ein Huhn, und wenn keins zu haben sei, ein Hinkel in den Topf stecken und sich eine Suppe kochen. Darauf hielten sie streng, und sahen sich überall um, wie jeder zu seinem Huhn kommen könne. Als sie nun zu Haus mit den Hühnern fertig waren, machten sie nicht viel Federlesens und hatten bald mit diesem, bald mit jenem Nachbarn ein Hühnchen zu pflücken. Sie sahen die Landkarte wie einen Speisezettel an; we etwas von Henne, Huhn oder Hahn stand, das strichen sie mit rother Tinte an und giengen mit Küchenmesser und Bratspiess darauf los. So giengen sie über den Hanebach, steckten Gross- und Kleinhüningen in den Topf, und dann kamen his in das Hanauer Land. Als sie nun Gockelsruh, das herrliche Schloss der Raugrafen von Hanau, im Walde fanden, statuirten sie ein Exempel, schnitten allen Hühnern die Hälse ab, steckten sie in den Topf und den rothen Hahn auf das Dach, das heisst, sie machten ein so gutes Feuerchen unter den Topf, dass die lichte Lohe zum Dach herausschlug und Gockelsruh darüber verbrannte. Dann giengen sie weiter nach Hünefeld und Hunhaun."

This fairy-tale style, with its perpetual farcical play upon words, almost reminds one of the manner in which the young men in some of Shakespeare's plays give vent to their overflowing humour.

Much graver, if not less mannered, is the style of Brentano's most famous story, Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl ("The Story of Brave Kasperl and Fair Annerl").

The subject is taken from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In the second volume of the collection, p. 204, is to be found a short ballad, Weltlich Recht ("Earthly Justice"), which tells the tale of the execution of Fair Nanerl, who is glad to die and go to her child: —

"Der Fähndrich kam geritten und schwenket seine Fahn:'Halt still mit der schönen Nanerl, ich bringe Pardon.''Fähndrich, lieber Fähndrich, sie ist ja schon todt.'Gute nacht, meine schöne Nanerl, deine Seel ist bei Gott.'"64

In Brentano's version the whole story is told in the street, on a long summer evening, by a poor old woman of eighty-eight, the beautiful Annerl or Nanerl's grandmother. He has been so successful in reproducing this aged, pious, and very superstitious woman's language, that we seem to see her before us all the time. With consummate art, he manages to keep the reader in constant suspense by the erratic manner in which she tells her story, hurrying onward and then turning back to catch up the thread she has let fall. We are never told enough during the course of the narration to give us a clear understanding of the whole position of affairs, but always enough to keep up our interest and make us anxious to know the answer of the riddle, to get at the explanation of the story-teller's mysterious hints. Seldom have the veils concealing a series of incidents from the reader been raised so skilfully, one by one.

Another of the merits of the tale is the vigour with which its main idea, honour (the true and the false sense of honour, the shame of wounded pride and the real shame and infamy to which ambition may lead), is presented to us and developed in the actions and experiences of the two principal characters. Kasperl, the brave Uhlan, whose sense of honour is so keen that it amounts to sentimental weakness, is driven to despair by the dishonourable conduct of his father and stepbrother. He commits suicide, and is thereby saved the anguish of knowing the fate of his sweetheart, fair Annerl. Annerl's whole life has been controlled by a cruel fate. The poet, in his gloomy superstition, has taken real pleasure in driving her onwards to calamity and death with the irresistible, mysterious power of predestination. Annerl's mother in her day had loved a huntsman. This huntsman is to be executed for murder. When the child comes near the executioner, his sword trembles in its scabbard – an unmistakable sign that it thirsts for her blood. The huntsman's head, when it is cut off, flies towards her, and the teeth grip her frock. Of the power that draws her on to wrong-doing and misfortune we are constantly told: "It drew her with its teeth" ("Es hat sie mit den Zähnen dazu gerissen"). Ambition leads to disgrace; Annerl is seduced by a young officer under a false promise of marriage; in her anguish and madness she strangles her new-born child, then gives herself up to justice and pays the penalty of her crime with her young life – her seducer, the ensign, arriving too late with a pardon.