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

But at the same time that Fouqué was embodying such originality and genius as he possessed in this little tale, he was also, under the influence of the great national movement, projecting the long series of romances of chivalry which began with Der Zauberring ("The Magic Ring"), published in 1815. To the romantic reactionaries The Magic Ring became a sort of gospel. Nobles and squires saw themselves reflected in all these old burnished shields and coats of mail, and rejoiced at the sight. But it was not a faithful historical picture which Fouqué exhibited. His age of chivalry is an imaginary age, in which stately, high-born men, clad in armour of burnished silver or of some dull metal inlaid with gold, and wearing silver helmets, plumed or unplumed, or iron helmets surmounted by golden eagles' wings, the visors sometimes raised, sometimes lowered, ride forth upon fiery chargers of all breeds and all colours, shiver each other's lances, and yet sit as if moulded in the saddle, or else fall to the earth only to rise as quick as lightning and draw a two-edged sword. The knights are proud and brave, the faithful squires give their lives for their masters, the slender demoiselles award the prizes at the tourneys, and love their knights "minniglich." Everything is ordered according to the exact prescriptions of the book of the laws of chivalry.

Everything is conventional – first and foremost, the mawkish, languishing style, supposed to be peculiarly adapted to the glorification of this high-born society. Only examples can give any idea of it. Bertha, sitting by a rivulet, sees her reflection in the water. "Bertha blushed so brightly that it seemed as if a star had been kindled in the water." "They sang a morning song so sweet and pleasurable that it seemed as though the setting sun must rise again, drawn by the yearning harmonies." There is a plentiful use of embellishing adjectives: "The youth's heart burned with charming (anmutig) curiosity." "Two crystal-clear drops fell from the eyes of the old knight." Great importance is attached to the description of splendid clothes and armour and ornaments: "He was beautiful to look upon in his armour of the darkest blue steel, magnificently chased and ornamented with gold; beautiful were his dark brown hair, his trim moustache, and the fresh young mouth smiling below it, disclosing two rows of pearly white teeth." A noble lady, pouring forth the tale of her misfortunes, takes time to interlard it with descriptions like the following: "I paced distractedly up and down my room, would hear nothing of the games in which the other noble maidens invited me to take part in the evening, and impatiently waved my maid away when she brought me a beautiful fishing-rod, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with a golden line and silver hook." It is strange that the inhabitants of a world where all utensils seem to be made of mother-of-pearl, gold, and silver, should think it necessary specially to mention that the gift offered her was composed of these peerless materials.

The emotions are of the same material, all mother-of-pearl and cloth of gold – not one breath of unrestrained natural feeling, not one action dictated by pure, unreflecting passion. All the emotions and passions are as carefully trained as the knights' chargers. We know beforehand how everything will happen. The knights talk to and treat each other with that distinguished courtesy which is peculiar to the privileged classes. One of them inadvertently lets fall a word (about a lady or a joust) which makes it necessary for another to challenge him to mortal combat. Without showing a trace of petty rancour or ill-feeling, the two combatants arm and leap on their snorting chargers; their attendants form a circle round them, holding torches if it is night, and they thrust and hew at each other with all their might. When the one sinks bleeding to the earth, the other throws himself down beside him and binds his wounds with brotherly tenderness and practised surgical skill; then he gives him his arm, and they march off together, their armour clanking bravely. – It is an attempt to resolve the whole rich life of the human soul into a few conventional elements – honour, loyalty, devout and humble love.

In combination with these fine feelings we have the greatest contempt for all except the privileged classes. The hero, Sir Otto, is at a masquerade at the house of his friend, the young merchant, Tebaldo. A troupe of mummers appear and give a performance. In one of the scenes a warrior in armour comes on the stage, bows to Plutus, the god of wealth, and repeats the following lines: —

"Für Beulen Silber, Gold für BlutHerr, gieb Dein Gut, so schlag ich gut."89

"Plutus was about to give some ingenious answer, but Otto von Trautwangen rose in wrath, laid his hand on his sword and cried: 'Yonder knave disgraces his armour, and I will prove it on his head, if so be he has the courage to meet me.' Half amused, half alarmed, the company gazed at the wrathful young knight, while Tebaldo angrily dismissed the astounded mummers, upbraiding them with the baseness of their shameful inventions, and forbidding them to enter his house again. Hereupon, blushing with shame, he returned to Otto, and in well-chosen, courtly words prayed his guest not to lay it to his charge that the scurvy crew had thought to flatter the rich merchant by thus outrageously comparing his calling with that of arms." The same evening Otto meets at his inn a certain Sir Archimbald, and is seized by the fancy to exchange armour with him, "which, methinks, we may readily do, since we are both of the old High-German heroic stature." In exchange for his coat of silver mail Otto receives a black one. An entire change comes over him with the change of armour, which does not surprise us when we remember the important part dress plays throughout. As a matter of fact, these knights are not much more than stuffed suits of armour. They affect one much as do the figures one sees riding upon armoured wooden horses in the Tower of London or the great armoury in Dresden.

From the description of one of Otto's earliest single combats we gain an idea of the extraordinary influence attributed to attire. His opponent, Sir Heerdegen, wears a rusty suit of armour, and his rusty voice shouts from behind the bars of his rusty helmet: "Bertha! Bertha!" while from Otto's silver helmet comes in silvery tones the cry: "Gabriele! Gabriele!" When Otto goes back to Tebaldo in his new armour, he has become so much handsomer and more manly, that the young merchant, who happens at the moment to be measuring costly fabrics in his storehouse, is almost ashamed to appear before him. "Then Otto von Trautwangen raised his visor. Tebaldo, half affrighted, fell back, exclaiming: 10 heavens! how you have gained in dignity even since yesterday! And here must I stand before you with an ell-wand in my hand!' Thereupon he flung his beautiful measuring rod against a pillar, shattering it into fragments. It was made of ivory and gold, and his servants could not but believe that this had happened by mischance." They attempt to console their master, but he does not listen to them; all his desire now is to give up his merchant's calling and be allowed to follow Otto as his squire. May not something very like all this be observed to-day in the mutual feelings and demeanour of a Prussian cavalry officer and a Prussian merchant?

This literature is really literature for cavalry officers. The horses are the only creatures in the book whose psychology Fouqué has successfully mastered, and this for the same reason that he was successful with Undine, namely, that it is elementary psychology. In the romances of our Danish author, Ingemann, the milk-white palfrey and the steel-clad black charger also play important parts. When the Lord High Constable is shown us attired in a scarlet cloak edged with ermine and a white-plumed hat, mounted on a tall iron-grey stallion, his swarthy little squire standing beside him holding the bridle of a nimble, restless Norwegian pony, the author has exhausted all his capacity of character drawing. In the description of the tall iron-grey stallion and the nimble little Norwegian pony we have life-like portraits of the Lord High Constable and his squire.

It is exactly the same with Fouqué. Sir Folko's horse is described as a slender-necked, light-footed, silver-grey stallion. "At a signal from his rider he approached Gabriele and bent his forelegs, then leaped into the air and caracoled so lightly back to his place that he seemed to be flying, the golden bells on his harness ringing sweet chimes. Perfectly still and obedient he stood, only turning his beautiful head, under its rich trappings, to look caressingly and inquiringly at his master, as if asking: 'Have I done well?'" – Gallantry, sense of honour, loyalty! What more is there in the knights themselves?

"Sir Archimbald's steed presented a strange contrast. Flecked with white foam, rearing and kicking, he seemed to be about to break the silver chain by which two men-at-arms were holding him back with all their might. His eyes flamed so fiercely that they might well be likened to burning torches, and with his right forefoot he pawed the earth as though he were digging a grave for his master's enemies." – Audacious valour, ardent longing for the fight, indomitable strength! What is there more in the knights?

Sir Otto's father presents him with a horse. "The youth, hastening down, saw a crowd of men-at-arms collected round a bright brown horse with golden trappings. 'Mount,' said his father, 'and make essay if so noble an animal is content to be your property.' Then the young knight Otto von Trautwangen, controlling the animal with a powerful hand, put him through his paces in such a manner that the soldiers, filled with astonishment, felt assured that the noble steed must recognise his destined master, and that in the knight's power over him there lay some strange significance. Sir Otto sprang from his horse and threw himself into his father's arms. Then the charger snorted and kicked wildly at the retainers who grasped at his bridle, and, breaking away from them, followed his young master and laid his head caressingly upon his shoulder." – Invincibility until the destined master, he whose power over the heart is felt to be "of strange significance," appears, and from that moment onwards absolute devotion and the most tender caresses! What else, what more is there in Fouqué's young maidens of high degree?

It was the fault of the sea-king Arinbjörn that, at the critical moment, Otto lost his beloved and the magic ring. Arinbjörn is riding along a solitary road. A wild bay stallion comes galloping up and makes a furious attack upon the sea-king's horse, and throws him down before his rider can spring from the saddle. Man and horse, lying in a confused heap, are mercilessly kicked by the furious stallion. When we know that the following extraordinary speech of Otto's is made of so sagacious and devoted a horse as this, it does not astonish us so much as it otherwise might: "My horse's colour makes him specially dear to me. For this bright brown is in my eyes a colour of angelic beauty; my blessed mother had great, bright brown eyes, and, as all heaven looked out of them, the colour has always seemed to me like a greeting from heaven."

Thus does the psychology of the romance of chivalry culminate – psychology of the patrician, or psychology of the horse, call it which you will. In its portraiture of knights hailing from all the ends of the earth, The Magic Ring, as Gottschall aptly remarks, confines itself to primary types of humanity and the colouring produced by the sun – we are able to distinguish a Moor from a Finn. This book was followed by many others of the same description, amongst which Die Fahrten Thiodolfs des Isländers ("The Expeditions of Thiodolf the Icelander") is the best known. Thiodolf had been forecast by an earlier work of Fouqué's, the great trilogy, Der Held des Nordens ("The Hero of the North"), which consists of Sigurd the Serpent Slayer, Sigurd's Revenge, and Aslauga. Der Held des Nordens is dedicated to Fichte, and is evidently inspired by the enthusiasm which he had aroused for the olden days of Germany, and for everything characteristically national. The three lyrical-rhetorical "reading-dramas" of which it consists are written in iambics; and where the language becomes particularly impressive or impassioned, short lines are employed, the rhythm and alliteration of which are intended to recall the old Northern metre. The general impression is much the same as that produced by the texts of such of Richard Wagner's operas as deal with the legends of the North.

The verse, though sometimes laboured, generally rings well, the sentiments are noble and chivalrous, the greatness portrayed is superhuman, yet puerile, the light is not the light of day. The hero's bodily strength and endurance are prodigious. He splits an anvil with one blow; he climbs the outer wall of a high tower, and, when he has looked in at the topmost casement and seen all that he wishes to see, jumps lightly down again. Intellectually he is less remarkable.

Of this dramatised version of the Volsung Saga Heine writes: "Sigurd the Serpent Slayer is a spirited work, in which the old Scandinavian Saga, with its giants and its witchcraft, is reflected. The hero, Sigurd, is a mighty figure. He is as strong as the Norwegian cliffs, and as wild as the sea that breaks upon them. He has the courage of a hundred lions and the wit of two asses." We may take this last remark as applying to all Fouqué's knightly figures. They are all national portraits, like those we read of in Brentano's story, Die Mehreren Wehmüller, those thirty-nine Hungarian types, painted by the artist before he went to Hungary, from amongst which every one afterwards selected his own portrait. In Arnim's and Brentano's writings everything is specialised and characteristic, the situations as well as the personalities; here everything is generalised. A king is always a hero or a stage-king; a queen is either dark and haughty or gentle and fair, &c., &c. The general type is there once for all; the individual features of the "national portraits" are added later.

The national type, of course, varies with the country. In Denmark, under Frederick VI., the romance of chivalry is patriotic and loyal. In Germany, after the War of Liberation, it is patriotic and aristocratic. In The Magic Ring we read: "The Stranger had seen much of the world, but had remained a true, pious German; nay, it was in foreign lands that he had become one; for distance had revealed to him what a glorious country that old Germany was."

In both countries the political tendency of Romanticism is the same.

XVII

ROMANTIC POLITICIANS

In his Christian Mysticism (ii. 39) Görres tells us that one of the most noticeable characteristics of a body which, through regeneration, has attained to higher harmony, is the fragrance it exhales. "Just as a foul odour is indicative of diseased and discordant organic life, so inward harmony is revealed by the fragrance which proceeds from it. Therefore the expression, 'the odour of sanctity' is by no means merely figurative; it is derived from countless well-established instances of sweet odour emanating from persons who lead a holy life." And he quotes numbers of authentic examples of this.

If Görres is right – and I cast no doubt on his assertion – then the personages to whom, in conclusion, I would direct attention for a moment must have exhaled a most fragrant odour, for they are personages with whom both he and the Church were well pleased. All that is now wanting to complete the picture of the Romantic group, is a characterisation of the men who transferred the principles of Romanticism from the domain of literature into that of practical life and politics. Görres himself may be taken as the representative of Romantic ecclesiasticism, and Friedrich Gentz as in all respects the most interesting of the politicians proper.

Joseph Görres was born in the Rhine district in 1776. He sat on the same school-bench with Clemens Brentano. At the time when the French armies overran Germany he was completely carried away by the revolutionary movement. Before he had even begun his university studies, he became a member of the Jacobin Club in his native town, Coblentz, distinguished himself by his championship of the ideas of liberty, and, in Das rothe Blatt ("The Red Journal"), provided the German revolutionary party with an organ. To him the past was detestable, France the promised land, and the rest of the world the domain of slavery.

When, in 1798, the French army marched into Rome, Görres was loud in his rejoicings over the fall of the city and the collapse of the temporal power of the Pope. He writes in The Red Journal: "We will tear the mask from ecclesiasticism, and set healthy ideas in circulation everywhere. We too have sworn eternal hatred to priestcraft and monasticism, and work for the good of the people. We at the same time work for the monarchs, by proving their inutility and helping to relieve them from the burden of government."

His style is youthfully audacious and witty, a genuine demagogue and journalist style. But in his scorn we distinguish a certain fanaticism, which, like all fanaticism, is significant of the possibility of a complete revulsion. When the transactions of the Congress of Rastadt had made it easy to forecast the abolition of the three spiritual electorates, of bishoprics, abbacies, &c., Görres advertised in his paper, under the heading of "For Sale," the following wares: "A whole cargo of seed of the tree of liberty, the flowers of which make the best bouquets for princes and princesses… 12,000 human cattle, well broken in, who can shoot, cut and thrust, wheel to the right and wheel to the left. A splendid drilling with cudgel and lash, for twelve years, has brought them to the point of allowing themselves to be shot dead for their masters without so much as a grumble… Three electoral mitres of finely tanned buffalo hide. The croziers belonging to the same are loaded with lead, conceal daggers, and are decorated with artificial serpents. The eye of God on the top is blind."

In December 1799 the French occupied Mayence for the second time. When the news reached Coblentz, Görres wrote his wild song of triumph over the collapse of the Roman-German Empire: "At three o'clock in the afternoon of the 30th December 1799, the day of the crossing of the Maine, the Holy Roman Empire, of ever foolish memory, passed peacefully away at the advanced age of 955 years, 5 months, and 28 days; the cause of death was apoplexy and complete exhaustion, but the illustrious deceased departed in full consciousness and comforted with all the sacraments of the Church… The deceased was born in Verdun, in June 842 (843). At the moment of his birth a comet (Perrückenkomet), pregnant with disaster, was flaming in the zenith. The boy was brought up at the courts of Charles the Simple, Louis the Child, and their successors… But his inclination to a sedentary life, combined with an excess of religious ardour, weakened his already feeble constitution … and at the age of about 250, at the time of the Crusades, he became quite imbecile," &c., &c.

Görres here strikes the note which we hear again a generation later in Börne's Letters from Paris.

He contemptuously opens and reads the will of the deceased, according to which the French Republic inherits the left bank of the Rhine, His Excellency, General Bonaparte, being appointed executor.

This was Görres' stormy youthful period. By the year 1800 he was beginning to withdraw from active politics, a visit to Paris having cured him of his sympathy with Frenchmen. But he was still an ardent progressionist, dreading nothing so much as a return to the past, which would mean a crushing tyranny (harsher after long abeyance and partly justified by existing circumstances), the rehabilitation of the priesthood, and combined political and religious reaction. The oppression of foreign rule aroused his patriotic feeling. At the university of Heidelberg he entered upon his Romantic period. He lectured on the nature of poetry and philosophy, waxed enthusiastic over the Nibelungenlied, studied ancient German history, poetry, and legend. He met his old schoolfellow, Clemens Brentano, became intimate with Arnim, and came into contact with Tieck and the brothers Schlegel and Grimm. It was at Heidelberg that he published his Kindermythen ("Child Myths"), Die Deutschen Volksbücher ("The National Literature of Germany"), and his collection of old German Volkslieder and Meisterlieder.

It was not only national feeling which the Romantic movement aroused in Görres; it induced an almost equally strong feeling of cosmopolitanism, under the influence of which he took up the study of Persian, a hitherto neglected language, and, almost unassisted, attained such proficiency in it that he was able to produce a tasteful prose translation of Firdusi's epic poetry.

In 1818 he went to Berlin as spokesman of a deputation from the town of Coblentz. He boldly urged the king to fulfil the promise of a constitution given at the time of the War of Liberation, and his daring was rewarded with disgrace and several years of exile.

Until 1824 Görres continued to be, to all intents and purposes, the Romantic German patriot. From that year until his death in 1848, he is the champion of the clerical reaction. In his Deutschland und die Revolution (1820) the tendency to Catholicism is already distinct; in it he characterises the Reformation as "a second Fall." He became absorbed in the study of the history of the Middle Ages, and began to regard the Church as the only power capable of satisfactorily defending the liberty of the people from the encroachments of absolutism. Soon, under the influence of Brentano and Franz Baader, he became a believer in visions and bigotedly religious. Clemens Brentano was at this time, like Apollonius of Tyana in days of old, exercising a powerful influence upon a generation predisposed to theosophical extravagances; and Mme. de Krüdener was founding the Holy Alliance.

As early as 1826, Joseph de Maistre declares that Görres, as author of Der Kampf der Kirchenfreiheit mit der Staatsgewalt in der Katholischen Schweiz ("The Struggle of the Church with State Despotism in Catholic Switzerland"), has championed the cause of the Church with both genius and justice, and yet more boldly and effectually than it has ever been done before. Such praise from such lips carries weight; it indicates, moreover, that we have reached the point at which German Romanticism passes into French, or rather, general European reaction.

In 1827 Görres published a work which is of interest as forming a prelude to his Mysticism, namely, Emanuel Swedenborg, his Visions and his Relations to the Church.

In 1833 Clemens Brentano moved to Munich, where Görres had already settled. The old school friends met once more, and Brentano's influence over Görres was great. Brentano was now entirely given over to superstitious fanaticism. Even Schelling's new philosophy of revelation was not pious enough for him. Talking with some young theologians, he shouted: "It is of no use praising it to me! One drop of holy water is more precious to me than the whole of Schelling's philosophy." He had brought all his memoranda of Catharina Emmerich's visions and outpourings to Munich with him; he no longer needed the Gospels; from her he had learned more of Christ's sayings and journeyings than is to be found in the Scriptures. The saint had even revealed a map of Palestine to him. Görres was soon as firm a believer in miracles and myths as Brentano. Between 1836 and 1842 he wrote the four volumes of his Mysticism, the most insane book produced by German Romanticism.

The farther Görres penetrated into the mysteries of witchcraft and sorcery, the more fanciful and peculiar did he himself become. He believed that he was possessed by an evil spirit. On one occasion he complained that the devil, provoked by his interference in Satanic affairs, had stolen one of his manuscripts; it was, however, found some time afterwards in his bookcase.

When the religious disturbances broke out in Cologne, Görres came forward as the spokesman of the Ultramontanes in their dispute with the Prussian Ministry. His passionate diatribes against Protestantism were couched in Biblical language – his opponents were a brood of vipers, the Prussian State was possessed by an evil spirit, &c. This particular demon he describes as a horrible ghost, "whom it is honouring too much to call a spirit;" it is, he says, the ghost of the demon which in the Prussian army of our grandfathers' days handled the whip which flogged seven backs at a time.