Soul of the Age (9 page)

I'm glad that you keep a place for my letters alongside those of your dear bride, and I regard this with delight as a sign that my rough edges won't deter you from being my closest friend and counsel—thank you! As for my rough edges, think of the beautiful verse:

The earth is round, and that is neat,

For had it corners and peaks

Where would we rest our feet?

But since it's round and we are tall,

For fear there is no call at all;

Were we of similar stature,

We'd be hurtling through nature.

God preserve us from that! Amen. Yours, from your currently rather whimsical

 

TO HIS SISTER ADELE

[
May 1896
]

But sleep did not rest on the king: he rose in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill, to behold the flame of Starno's tower. The flame was dim and distant; the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, on its wings was the spirit of Loda.
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I'm reading some of the Ossian poems. They're an odd mixture of robust humanity and sentimental pathos, and taste like a delicate pancake garnished with raw chives. Malwina sits on a craggy outlook perched above a brownish-black moor; the black wind ruffling her curls carries snatches of a song from a battle raging in the distance. But she lifts up her white hands; the storm entices songs from her harp, and her soul is mournful. Her hero and beloved has fallen; the shimmering moonlight lingers over his torn shield, and his last, incomplete song has been cut off and is now a mere plaything of the dark winds. Malwina surrenders her curls to the storm, and sings a lament for her nobly fallen beloved. His spirit is a whitish mist hovering above his grave.

It goes on like this for pages, and often sounds ridiculous, but there are some felicitous, even gripping passages, as for instance when Ossian, the blind bard, sings of his blind old age: “Why does Ossian still sing? He will soon be lying in the narrow house.”

A reading of Ossian will convert anybody who knows a little Homer and isn't an overly sentimental oddball into a lifelong lover of antiquity. Ossian is not one for smiles or jokes, and he cannot describe any battle in which men are killed; the moist and desolate autumn mists of the gloomy north of Scotland and Ireland waft around everywhere; there is no light, warmth, color, shape, and above all, no sun. This image could be quite captivating: the ancient bard sits on a mossy hill above the foaming waters, his blind head is sunk as he contemplates past deeds, and he holds a crude, three-stringed harp. However, we have Homer too, who not only smiles and even laughs but also sings in a more serious, genuine vein about a man's steadfast love for his wife and country, the solemn mystery of death, and the dark world of the shades. Moreover, Homer knows all about the sun, which he loves with a passion; it's a warm, southern sun and a golden-blue sky; artfully but unobtrusively, he conjures up colorful, sunny images before our eyes: we see towering, shimmering cities and solid, well-constructed ships sailing on the gleaming sea; we also see gods doling out advice and inflamed men rushing into battle, their shields clanking. And when he describes a character, let's say Helen, she appears before us as flesh and blood, a powerful and radiant figure, a source of joy even to the old men in the assembly. It's impossible to imagine what Ossian's women are like: they have white hands, are expert harpists, and have windswept curls; the only other thing we know about them is that they are delicate creatures, whose inner woes cause them to die off remarkably quickly, preferably on the graves of their fallen sweethearts. Well, that can certainly suit individual heroes very well—even Shakespeare had his Hamlet—but if entire peoples turn moist-eyed and are enveloped in mist, the overall impression will be of a giant tear-jerking enterprise, so vast that it can afford to dismiss lachrymose heroes like Werther and Siegwart
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as mere schoolboys. These Ossianic heroes weep so copiously that, if their tears didn't flow all the way downhill into the roaring stream—and fortunately they do—they would drown in them. And their tears flow like little brooks in the meadows—that line of verse often comes to mind. Maybe the youths are always weeping “encores” to stave off that great flood.

Enough of that! The only reason I'm writing this down is to prove that I haven't allowed myself to get totally absorbed in Goethe. I read some Sudermann recently to keep up with the times, and found more than I had expected.
Dame Care
is no masterpiece, but the
At Twilight
novellas impressed me; they are well constructed and as elegantly linked as Persian fairy tales, virtually all of them are technically perfect. Sudermann writes very fine German when he really wants to, but often he just couldn't be bothered.[ … ]

TO JOHANNES AND MARIE HESSE

[
September 13–19, 1896
]

[ … ] I'm always running into the Sunday God of churchgoing Christians and cannot help noticing that he doesn't help out much on weekdays. There are some Christians like that among our own acquaintances. I must admit that my gods—my ideals in life, my poetry, even my little cult of Goethe—are better and more faithful than that Sunday God. They support me fully when things seem altogether dismal and hopeless, but there's the rub: they suffer and complain along with me, but since they are creations of mine, they don't have the requisite strength to pull me up and rescue me. And what will happen when the evil hour arrives that I have long dreaded, when all my work and dreams are finished, when the hand with which I work, write, and play around is all cold and shriveled, and these eyes, so avid for light, cloud over and go blind. None of my gods or my lyrics will accompany me then.

While out on a walk with the Reverend Strauss and dear Mr. Huppenbauer on my last evening in Freudenstadt, I felt as if a door were opening in front of me; I heard the person I'm looking for pass by, and I lay awake the whole night, praying that he would stay with me, take everything I had in exchange for an assurance that he would help me. And I had nights like that again and again; and now often feel as empty as a dried-up well, and poorer than heretofore.

I'm scanning the heavens again for the stars that represent my previous ideals, and am again trying through a form of poetic pantheism to uncover the secret to peace and health. Once again I feel that I can read the revelations of the poets better than those of the Bible. But I now know, even though no revelation has been vouchsafed me, that the Christian faith is not just a form or parable, it has a palpable, living presence; there exists no other power capable of creating and preserving such a holy sense of community and love.

Forgive me! But why not be open about the only things that really matter? I haven't found a God yet, but I'm grateful that I was able to find some revelation. You may regard the world of my ideas as nothing but a little kindergarten, but since I haven't found anything better, I want to remain faithful to an aesthetic world whose ultimate boundaries are invisible to our eyes. I realize that even the highest achievements of our poets are just patchwork, and I sometimes feel that our entire literature is quite puny and impoverished; but the “world of poetry” that I have in mind is utterly magnificent, and when compared to its splendor, all existing works, even the
Iliad
and
Hamlet
and
Faust,
seem but a shabbily designed forecourt.[ … ]

TO KARL ISENBERG

Tübingen, June 12, 1897

Thanks for your kind and clever letter. I have a free hour right now, so I can pick up the thread again.

I have founded my “center” on a belief in beauty, which is virtually the same thing as a belief in art. You are a pedagogue, so you're professionally more or less hostile to art, since whenever the concept of art crops up in the classroom, you have to start thinking about that ugly essay question on “Art and Morality.”

I certainly have no desire for a morality based on aesthetics, since art (“the beautiful”) would only suffer because it is too good for 90 out of 100 people. Aesthetics as an educator—legislation without criminal law. This “center” of mine has developed from a passing fancy, a mere plaything, into a religion. As a university graduate and teacher, you may dismiss this religion as a kind of unscientific aestheticism. But it is rich in consolation, rich in the diversity of lived experience, rich in secrets and revelations. I have discovered for the first time what religion is, and since then treat every “belief” unbelievably gently, for I believe firmly that I'm now at a higher stage of existence.

For me, Beauty in Nature and Beauty in Art (also literature) are of approximately equal value, although I'm perhaps a bit more sensitive to the latter. I don't regard Nature as the mother of all Art and the primary mode of being for all Beauty, but rather, just like Art, as an image, a symbol, an attempt to represent ideal Beauty. No work of art or scene from nature ever encompasses within itself all the laws and possibilities of aesthetics that may be valid within its frame. So, e.g., I consider many landscapes to be to some extent subjective creations, marked with the stamp of an artistic personality.

You may think my love for Chopin is characteristic of my taste—but that's only the case in music. Although I admire rhythm and euphony, when it comes to literature I love the beat produced by individual words and the meaningful individual sounds more than the perfect, complex tonal technique that impresses me in Chopin.

TO JOHANNES AND MARIE HESSE

Tübingen, September 25, 1897

[ … ] God help art now that the Swiss are discovering female folk poets. That is a flourishing industry. Not to mention religious poetry! That is the most ticklish and, on the whole, least artful genre I have ever come across. The more lyrical, the less pious—and vice versa! It was the Moravians who really slit the genre's throat.

Do forgive me! It's just that there is something tragicomical from the outset about the religious and, more specifically, nonliturgical verse of Protestant Pietism—and the gems by Gerhardt and Claudius don't necessarily gainsay this.[ … ]

I understand why my Chopin lyric didn't appeal to you.
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It's not great. But what Wagner was to Nietzsche, Chopin is to me—perhaps even more so. There is a relationship between the very essence of my intellectual and spiritual life and the warm, lively melodies, the piquant, lascivious, nervous harmony, and all the other qualities of Chopin's remarkably intimate music.

And I frequently marvel at the elegance, reserve, and accomplished sovereignity of Chopin as a person. Everything about him is noble, although he can be degenerate.

One other thing! Over the past few weeks I have written a couple of little essays, which are not intended for publication but for use in personal letters, etc. These are more or less ready now; they were intended for Mother's birthday—as a substitute for my unsatisfactory correspondence. All are quite personal and written for you alone. But now I hesitate once again and don't know whether I should send them to you. They certainly won't be any great success—no doubt we shall always be going around in circles searching for mutual understanding.[ … ]

Much love and many kisses, gratefully yours

TO HELENE VOIGT-DIEDERICHS
47

Tübingen, August 27, 1898

I'm putting aside Mundt's
Literary History,
Sehlegel's
Reviews,
and Novalis's
Hymns
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in order to visit you for a few moments.

As you can see, I'm making steady progress with the Romantics. I'm studying a lot, and am gradually acquiring an overview plus some firm opinions. Romanticism! It has all the mystery and youthfulness of the German heart, all its excess energy as well as its sickness, and above all that longing for intellectual heights, that gift for youthful, ingeniously speculative thought, which our age absolutely lacks. The religion of art: to me that is the essence and goal of Romanticism at its most naïve and refined. I find the amateurish, halfhearted cult of Nietzsche in our recent literature sad and ridiculous. How few understand him, how gloomy and pitiful they seem in comparison to him, and how little there is to show for all the adulation and quotation! The dark, feverish verses of Dehmel
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have the most life. The era of the Schlegels, Hardenberg, Steffens, Schelling, and Schleiermacher was far richer! If Novalis had been a bit more prolific—a not uncommon talent—if he had been better at putting books together, he would have surpassed all the literati of his time and those of subsequent eras. Anyhow, I love him the way he is. He is one of the few who know more than they say, who are richer than their poems, bigger than their words.

But forgive me for lecturing. That's what happens to people who don't keep a diary. It's not easy for me to find the right conversational tone, since I'm wearing my work clothes and the study lamp is on. I would like to be with you today, asking you all sorts of things, and listening to your answers, which I already know. I would like to hear you speak or discuss one of our favorites together.

Some time ago I heard little Pauer playing Chopin's Scherzo in B Minor. It was my first chance since Sarasate
50
to hear a brilliantly virtuoso performance, and it did me a world of good. I've never heard Chopin played so finely, elegantly and fleetingly, with all the charm of his mysteries and twilights. The shrill high point of the scherzo, which few performers succeed in doing well, sounded pure and captivating.

A few weeks ago I spent an enjoyable day here with my two sisters. I brought them and some friends up the Lichtenstein—it was a beautiful, happy day, full of good cheer, lively conversations, forest fragrances, and mountain light. Since then we have had a succession of hot summer days and humid, sleepless nights; a daily swim in the Neckar was the only way to cool off, and there was a lot of work too, so in the evenings I was glad to get to bed at last, and yet I would start off the next day feeling impatient and not in the least bit refreshed. Then, finally, the day before yesterday, we had some rain and a storm. I lay at the window listening half the night. Now I can use the evenings again to work and read. Besides theoretical works, Novalis and also Tieck, his friend and counterpart. Am reading some things by Tieck for the first time, and understanding others better now. I often find his sense of color delightful; it's interesting to watch his cheerful and often quite daring games with both theme and form; besides, there are some marvelous pieces in his fairy tales and novellas.