A Divided Heart and Other Stories Part 1

A Divided Heart and Other Stories.

by Paul Heyse.

INTRODUCTION.

It occasionally happens that a reader expecting to find the customary account of an author's early struggles for bread and knowledge, his bitter disappointments, his late and almost joyless success, is surprised by the record of a singularly fortunate life; of a life which advances easily and naturally from a peaceful and promising childhood to an equally peaceful, famous old age. Goethe's was such a life; and reading it, one feels that sharp encounter with the hardest facts of existence would have lessened his greatness, would have disturbed that perfect serenity of soul which made him philosopher as well as poet, and fostered his fidelity to high ideals of life and art.

A countryman of Goethe's, Paul Heyse, born in Berlin in 1830, two years before the great poet's death, was no less fortunate in the lot to which fate a.s.signed him. Heyse's power was unlike Goethe's in kind and degree, but the opportunities for its development were equally favorable. His father was a philologist and lexicographer, whose home was comfortable and refined, and whose friends were cultured and literary. He took charge of his son's early education, and naturally laid great stress on language, inculcating the love for purity and exactness in its use, which is one of Heyse's best qualities.

Stimulated by the atmosphere of his home, and by these studies in literary _technique_, Heyse began to try his skill in original work at a very early age, and was only seventeen years old when his first book, "Jungbrunnen: New Tales by a Travelling Scholar," appeared. Although this production encouraged his friends in the belief that a great future lay before him, it made no impression whatever on the world at large, and the young author pursued his studies at the Berlin University without astounding anyone by phenomenal brilliancy or success.

Finishing at Berlin, he betook himself to Bonn, and spent a year studying Romance and philology with the famous Diez. So great was the interest in mediaeval languages which Diez succeeded in awakening in the young man, that in 1850 Heyse travelled to Italy and employed a year in examining the precious ma.n.u.scripts of the old Italian libraries. The results of these researches were afterwards published under the t.i.tle "Romanische Jnedita auf italienischen Bibliotheken gesammelt;" and a book of Italian songs was also presented to the world.

Upon his return to Germany, Heyse at once began serious literary work, and put the first rung in the traditional ladder to fame. Although his present place in literature is due to his work as a novelist, his first creations were dramas in verse. He aspired to become a poet; not a singer of songs and lyrics, but a great dramatic poet, whose lines should chant, and whose thoughts should create a new era. To this end he experimented with the various styles of dramatic composition and tried the Shakespearian, the Greek, and the late French, in rapid succession. His work was so beautiful in form and so faultless in finish that it attracted immediate attention. A master's hand was evident in every line, and albeit there was a subtle something lacking of the true poetic fire, a certain circle of fastidious and critical _literati_ found the dramas highly satisfactory and hailed Heyse as a rising poet. In 1854, King Maximilian II. of Bavaria, whose court was a veritable literary academy, called him to Munich and a.s.sured to him an audience and an income. After a time the income was discontinued, but Heyse's works were then amply remunerative, and he has lived in Munich to this day. No environment could be imagined more congenial to a man of Heyse's tastes than that of the court at Munich; and once settled there, he began to fulfil the hopeful prophecies of his friends. In 1857, his drama, "The Sabine Women," took the prize offered by the king, and was produced on the royal stage. Notwithstanding that it satisfied the literary sense of the court, it failed to please the people. There was too much finish, too much studied elegance, and too little warmth of feeling, to appeal to their sympathies. Not until "Colberg," "Elizabeth Charlotte," and "Hans Lange" had appeared, would the general public acknowledge Heyse as a great dramatist. Even then they found a flaw; for, although the characters were strong and interesting, and some of the situations were intensely dramatic, Heyse's dramas, as a whole, were lacking in one essential quality, action. They were more suitable for the study than the stage; more interesting to one appreciative reader who could enjoy the beauty of the workmanship and feel the strength of the conception, than to an indifferent audience expecting to be amused or excited by actual happenings.

In fact, they were dramatized novels, instead of true dramas, or dramatic poems. "Not deep the poet sees, but wide," and Heyse's view was not wide. He lacked a poet's objectivity, the power to create the type from the individual, the power to discern the universal and essential beyond the particular and accidental. He studied life attentively and described it vividly and truthfully, but he saw no new message, created no new thought.

Evidently, Heyse was neither a great dramatist nor a great poet; and although he was a man of unquestionable power, he reached forty years of age without having made any permanent impression on his time. But the good fortune which had attended his youth did not desert him in middle age. He lived amid congenial surroundings; wrote constantly and with increasing power; and gradually attained a self-knowledge which enabled him to recognize the true field for his exertions.

He began writing novels in verse, then short stories in prose, and at length, in 1873, he wrote his great novel, "Children of the World." In this he expressed his philosophy of life. The man Heyse, with his intense admiration of physical beauty, his love of nature, his utter disregard of conventionality, his keen insight into the uttermost corners of human hearts, looks out of every page. The reader, whoever he may be, and however strongly he may disagree with much that he reads, is spellbound from first to last. The scenes between Edwin and Toinette in the first part of the book are as idyllic and unworldly as those between Marius and Cosette in "Les Miserables." Toinette herself, so exquisitely beautiful, so courageously true to her conception of her own nature, and so pitifully mistaken in that conception, fascinates us as she does Edwin, and excites our deepest compa.s.sion. Edwin, too, grave, and thoughtful, and warm-hearted as he is, seems no mere "character," but a living man. They are all children of the world, living entirely in the present without hope or desire for a future life. The existing world supplies them with all they ask. As Edwin says: "O beloved, a world in which we may attain such triumph over fate, over our own and that of those we love; in which the tragical is glorified by a gleam of the beautiful; in which intense joy of life sweeps through us, bringing softening tears, even as we shudder in the presence of death--such a world is not desolate." It is Heyse's own creed, this of the all-sufficiency of the present life. In one of his lyrics he has expressed it more explicitly--"Kein Ernst und Druben, nur ein Jetzt und Hier!", and later on in the same poem he says:

"Das eine wissen wir: Auch wir vergehen, und das ist Trotz genug."

Since this was written at the time of his son's death, his disbelief in immortality must be at least sincere.

Having now abandoned his aspirations towards poetic and dramatic fame, Heyse worked as his own nature dictated, and soon made for himself a distinctive place in German literature. In 1876, his other long novel, "In Paradise," a story of artist life in Munich, appeared. Unlike "Children of the World," "In Paradise" is full of humor and has little philosophy.

But the short story is Heyse's favorite form of expression, and it is in the short story that his power is best revealed. With the exception of a few essays, dramas, and one-act pieces, he has written nothing but short stories for the last fifteen years, and in that time he has produced so many that they would fill several shelves in a large library.

Since Heyse believes that every story should embody some specific thought, something to distinguish it absolutely from every other, it is easily comprehensible that many of his tales are morbid and unreal. But the best of them are veritable bits of life; life viewed not only from the outside as any keen observer may see it, but life as the philosopher knows it, the inner life which gives value and purpose to this "fleeting show." He spares no detail of common experience, which may give strength and vividness to his stories, but he chooses the themes themselves from the world of ideas. His stories are not primarily character studies, though the men and women produce the impression of actual life; nor are they stories with plots and thrilling events. They are histories of crises in human lives, of strange problems and situations, of subtle influences working unexpected issues. The majority are stories of love, psychological, like most modern love tales, but picturesque and human as well.

Although the hero and heroine are separated, if separation must be, by some obstacle in their own natures rather than by any untoward circ.u.mstance of life, they are not dissected and a.n.a.lyzed till they lose all human semblance. They are as unconsciously true to themselves as living beings, and are not less difficult to comprehend. Heyse has searched human hearts to the depths; he has read the motive behind the act; he has seen the thousand thoughts and feelings which make that motive complex; but he has not made his great knowledge an excuse for writing semi-scientific treatises in the guise of fiction. His characters never lose personality; they give fascinating glimpses of their deeper selves, but they make no full confessions; they are elusive and surprising, and therefore indescribably charming and real.

All cla.s.ses of German society have contributed to enlarge Heyse's world of fiction, but it is of the educated middle cla.s.s that he most often writes. While a certain sameness in type is noticeable in his characters, there is no marked sameness in the individuals. The men are usually cultured, thoughtful, and pa.s.sionate; the women are beautiful, n.o.ble-minded and vivacious; but each man and each woman has traits which make his or her personality distinct from all others. The women are strangely captivating. Toinette, in "Children of the World," Lucile and L.'s wife in "A Divided Heart," Christel and the Governor's lady in "Rothenburg on the Tauber,"--they all claim our interest and sympathy as they do that of the people about them. In fact, Heyse always forces us to feel what he wishes to tell us. He is never guilty of writing about a character; the men and women are before us and we are left to draw our own conclusions. Yet we inevitably sympathize with him, and blame or praise as he would have us do.

Heyse uses nature merely as a background for human beings. He never indulges in long rhapsodies over sunsets and beautiful views, or in lengthy descriptions of any scenes whatever; but he has Thomas Hardy's power of making places absolutely real in a few vivid words. Nature must be very dear to him, and he must understand her very thoroughly, or he could never reproduce her charm so truly. "Rothenburg on the Tauber" is a story of the spring-time; and reading it, we breathe the cool air of spring, see her pale tints, live through her sunny days and misty, moonlit nights. In "Minka," the gloom of a sombre autumn day depresses us as it does Eugene, and lends some of its own unearthly sadness to the strange story.

All of Heyse's writings have atmosphere, that indefinable quality which no amount of mere description of places and people can give, but which comes of itself from the heart of the sympathetic writer. And Heyse is evidently deeply in sympathy with every subject which he treats.

Feeling intensely himself, he wishes his readers to share his feeling, and he is so consummate a master of his art that he is sure of this effect. From the first word it is plain that he has something important to say, and the reader has no choice but to read on to the end. Nor is it possible by reading ten of Heyse's stories to divine what the eleventh may be. He is true to his principle of making each one utterly unlike all the others. This, perhaps, is one of Heyse's greatest charms. Prolific as he is, he never wearies one with sameness; his twentieth volume is as interesting and surprising as his first.

Whether or no Heyse's works will live is a problem which must be left to its own solution. They are purely modern products, tales of nineteenth-century people, actuated by nineteenth-century thoughts and feelings; and though many of them are artistically perfect, they are saturated with the author's own personality, and have not that universal truth of application which usually characterizes the world's cla.s.sics. "L'Arabbiata," "On the Banks of the Tiber," "The Maiden of Treppi," "The Mother's Picture," "A Divided Heart," and "Rothenburg on the Tauber," are among the best of the short stories. His "Tales of the Troubadours" are very beautiful, but are somewhat marred by a freedom of speech which approaches actual vulgarity. It is this unfortunate and unnecessary frankness which has brought against Heyse the accusation of immorality, although all his stories have an "upward tendency," and are time to the highest ideals. No one reading "A Divided Heart," or "Rothenburg on the Tauber," could doubt the rect.i.tude of the writer's moral sense, or his love for the best in human nature.

Since Heyse is still living, the thousand and one interesting facts and anecdotes which come to the world's knowledge only after a great man's death are not yet told of him. His life has been even and uneventful; poor in those startling changes of fortune which make the usual attractive biography, but rich in inner experience, in the vivid impressions, intense feelings, and great thoughts, which make actual life full of interest and meaning.

A number of Heyse's works have been translated into English, but many more deserve wider popularity than their own language can give them.

Their great writer, realistic as Balzac, a.n.a.lytic as Tolstoi, picturesque as his own countryman, Ebers, should become as famous here as he is in Germany, and add one more to the increasing list of great men whose writings are precious, not alone to their own countries, but to the world. C. S. C.

A DIVIDED HEART

A DIVIDED HEART.

It was still early when I left, although the company was one of those which do not become lively until after midnight. But a gloomy uneasiness which I had brought with me, would not yield to the good wine and tolerable humor which seasoned the baccha.n.a.l; so I seized a favorable moment and took French leave. As I came out of the house and inhaled the first breaths of the pure, night air, I heard some one following me and calling my name.

It was L., the eldest and gravest of our circle. I had heard his voice scarcely twice the whole evening among the noisy chatter of the others.

I esteemed him very highly, and was usually delighted to meet him. But just then I desired no man's company.

"It has driven you out also," he said, as he caught up to me, and, stopping for breath, glanced at the starlit spring heavens. "We were neither of us at home among those hardened bachelors. When I saw you slipping out, a melancholy envy, which you must pardon, came over me.

Now, thought I, he is going home to his dear wife. She has been sleeping for some time; he steps on tip-toe to her bedside; she at once awakens from her dream, and asks--'Is it you already? Did you enjoy yourself? You must tell me about it to-morrow.' Or, she has been interesting herself in a book, and opens the door herself when she hears your footstep. To be so received means to be at home somewhere in this world. In my lonesome cell there is no one waiting for me. But I enjoyed that good fortune for twelve whole years, and am far better for it than our young friends yonder, who have no perception of the best things life can offer, and who speak of women as the blind do of colors. Are you not of my opinion, that one only half knows them when one speaks merely from hearsay, and says, with the usual irony, a 'better half'?"

He put his arm in mine, and we walked slowly along the deserted streets.

"You know, my dear friend," said I, "that I am a marriage fanatic, with good reason. If I neglected to preach its gospel to the heathen this evening, it was only from a general disinclination to speak where I am not altogether at ease. I feared, too, that my usual eloquence on the subject might leave me in the lurch. But, truly, it would not be the first time that I have argued alone against a whole gang of obstinate bachelors."

"I admire your courage," he replied. "For my part, I am always hindered from contradicting the scoffers by an absurd heart-beating; it seems to me a desecration to gossip of the school in which one learns to fathom the deepest and most beautiful secrets of human life."

"You are quite right," said I, "and I have often reproached myself for being beguiled into discussing in prose, after the manner of a scientific problem, what one may properly confess only in verse. And yet certain silly speeches always excite me to protest again. When I hear it said that marriage is the death of love; that the obligation to fidelity quenches pa.s.sion; and that, since no man can master his heart, even the best should hesitate before forming a life-tie, my vexation at the foolish babble runs away with my reason, and I begin to speak of things which one regards as mere exaggeration unless he has himself experienced them."

To this he did not reply, and we walked silently side by side. I observed that he was lost in recollections which I did not wish to disturb. I knew nothing of his marriage, except that he had lost his wife many years before, and mourned her as if it were but yesterday. An old lady who had known her told me that she was an irresistible person, with eyes which no one who had once looked into them could ever forget.

Her daughter, lately married, I had met once at a social affair; she impressed me as an amiable, but very quiet, young woman.

L. had been a military man in his younger days; but being severely wounded in the Schleswig-Holstein war, he had withdrawn to a country estate and pa.s.sed his best years there with his wife and child. After he became a widower, a spirit of unrest seemed to drive him over the earth, and it was only from time to time that he made a brief appearance among his old friends. He was a stately, handsome man even yet. His hair, although streaked with gray, stood thick and curly above his high, bronzed forehead, and in his eyes there gleamed a quiet fire which told of imperishable youth.

At the next crossing he stopped.

"My way properly leads down there," said he, "but, if you do not object, I will accompany you for a distance. My sleep has not been worth much for some time, and 'In that sleep what dreams may come'

seldom amount to anything. Besides, I am going away in a few days. Who knows when we can chat with each other again."

We set forth on our, or rather on my way, but for a long while the talk would not take the right channel.

The warm, night wind was as soothing as the murmur of a cradle-song; the stars blinked like eyes which can scarcely keep themselves open. A fine mist moved slowly across the heavens, weaving a veil over the shining firmament.

"Bear in mind," said I, "we shall be wakened from our first sleep by a spring thunder-storm."

He neither answered nor glanced at the heavens, but continued to look fixedly at the ground. Suddenly he began, "Do you know what I have always lamented? That Spinoza was never married. How that would have improved his ethics! He had no conception of certain problems; and I have always wondered how he would have regarded them if they had come under his observation."

"Which do you mean?" I asked.

"You know he was the first to deny the power of reason over our pa.s.sions, and to advance the profound thesis that a pa.s.sion can be displaced only by one stronger. But what happens if two equally strong pa.s.sions together rule the same soul?"

"Are there then two precisely similar pa.s.sions?" I asked; "I myself have never experienced anything of the kind, and am inclined to be sceptical until I see it proved in another man."