Henry of Ofterdingen: A Romance Part 14

"Whither are we going?"

"Ever homewards."

They had now reached a roomy spot in the wood, where some decayed towers were standing beyond deep ravines. Early shrubbery wound about the old walls, like a youthful garland around the silvery head of an old man. While contemplating the gray stones, the tortuous clefts, and the tall, ghastly, shapes of rock, one looked into immensity of time, and saw the most distant events, collected in short but brilliant minutes. So appears to us the infinite s.p.a.ce of heaven, clad in dark blue; and like a milky glimmer, stainless as an infant's cheeks, appears the most distant array of its ponderous and mighty worlds. They walked through an old doorway, and the pilgrim was not a little astonished when he found himself entirely surrounded by strange plants, and saw all the charms of the most beautiful garden hidden beneath the ruins. A small stone house built in recent style, with large windows, lay in the rear. There stood an old man behind the broad-leafed shrubbery, employed in tying the drooping branches to some little props. His female guide led the pilgrim to him, and said, "Here is Henry, after whom you have inquired so often."

As the old man turned around, Henry fancied that he saw the miner before him.

"This is the physician Sylvester," said the little girl.

Sylvester was glad to see him, and said, "it is a long time since I saw your father. We were both young then. I was quite solicitous to teach him the treasures of the Fore-time, the rich legacies bequeathed to us by a world too early separated from us. I noticed in him the tokens of a great artist; his eye flashed with the desire to become a correct eye, a creative instrument; his face indicated inward constancy and persevering industry. But the present world had already taken hold of him too deeply; he would not listen to the call of his own nature. The stern hardihood of his native sky had blighted in him the tender buds of the n.o.blest plants; he became an able mechanic, and inspiration seemed to him but foolishness."

"Indeed," said Henry, "I often observed a silent sadness within him. He always labored from mere habit, and not for any pleasure. He seems to feel a want, which the peaceful quiet and comfort of his life, the pleasure of being honored and beloved by his townsmen, and consulted in all important affairs of the city, cannot satisfy. His friends consider him very happy; but they know not how weary he is of life, how empty the world appears to him, how he longs to depart from it; and that he works so industriously not so much for the sake of gain, as to dissipate such moods."

"What I am most surprised at," replied Sylvester, "is that he has committed your education entirely into the hands of your mother, and has carefully abstained from taking any part in your development, nor has ever held you to any fixed occupation. You can happily say that you have been permitted to grow up free from all parental restraints; for most men are but the relics of a feast which men of different appet.i.tes and tastes have plundered."

"I myself know not," replied Henry, "what education is, except that derived from the life and disposition of my parents, or the instruction of my teacher, the chaplain. My father with all his cool and st.u.r.dy habits of thought, which leads him to regard all relations like a piece of metal or a work of art, yet involuntarily and unconsciously exhibits a silent reverence and G.o.dly fear before all incomprehensible and lofty phenomena, and therefore looks upon the blooming growth of the child with humble self-denial. A spirit is busy here, playing fresh from the infinite fountain; and this feeling of the superiority of a child in the loftiest matters, the irresistible thought of an intimate guidance of the innocent being who is just entering on a course so critical, the impress of a wondrous world, which no earthly currents have yet obliterated, and then too the sympathizing memory of that golden age when the world seemed to us clearer, kindlier, and more unwonted, and the almost visible spirit of prophecy attended us,--all this has certainly won my father to a system the most devout and discreet."

"Let us seat ourselves upon the gra.s.s among the flowers," said the old man interrupting him. "Cyane will call us when our evening meal is ready. I pray you continue your account of your early life. We old people love much to hear of childhood's years, and it seems as if I were drinking the odor of a flower, which I had not inhaled since my infancy. Tell me first, however, how my solitude and garden please you, for these flowers are my friends; my heart is in this garden. You see nothing that loves me not, that is not tenderly beloved. I am here in the midst of my children, like an old tree from whose roots, has sprouted this merry youth."

"Happy father," said Henry, "your garden is the world. The ruins are the mothers of these blooming children; this manifold animate creation draws its support from the fragments of past time. But must the mother die, that the children may thrive? Does the father remain sitting alone at their tomb, in tears forever?"

Sylvester gave his hand to the sighing youth, and then arose to pluck a fresh forget-me-not, which he tied to a cypress branch and brought to him. The evening wind waved strangely in the tops of the pines which stood beyond the ruins, and sent over their hollow murmur. Henry hid his face bedewed with tears upon the neck of the good Sylvester, and when he looked again, the evening star arose in full glory above the forest.

After some silence, Sylvester began; "You would probably like to be at Eisenach among your friends. Your parents, the excellent countess, your father's upright neighbors, and the old chaplain make a fair social circle. Their conversation must have produced an early influence upon you, particularly as you were the only child. I also imagine the country to be very striking and agreeable."

"I learn for the first time," said Henry, "to esteem my native country properly, since my absence, and the sight of many other lands. Every plant, every tree, every hill and mountain has its own horizon, its peculiar landscape, which belongs to it, and explains its whole structure and nature. Only men and animals can visit all countries; all countries are theirs. Thus together they form one great region, one infinite horizon, whose influence upon men and animals is just as visible, as that of a more narrow circuit upon the plant. Hence men who have travelled, birds of pa.s.sage, and beasts of prey, are distinguished among other faculties, for a remarkable intelligence. Yet they certainly possess more or less susceptibility to the influence of these circles, and of their varied contents and arrangement. The attention and composure necessary to contemplate properly the alternation and connexion of things, and then to reflect upon and compare them, are in fact wanting to most men. I myself often feel how my native land has breathed upon my earliest thoughts imperishable colors, and how its image has become a peculiar feature of my mind, which I am ever better explaining to myself, the deeper I perceive that fate and mind are but names of one idea."

"Upon me," said Sylvester, "living nature, the emotive outer-garment of a landscape, has always produced a most powerful effect. Especially I am never tired of examining most carefully the different natures of plants. All productions of the earth are its primitive language; every new leaf, every particular flower, is everywhere a mystery, which presses outward; and since it cannot move itself at love and joy, nor come to words, becomes a mute, quiet plant. When we find such a flower in solitude, is it not as if everything about it were glorified, and as if the little feathered songsters loved most to linger near it? One could weep for joy, and separated from the world, plant hand and foot in the earth, to give it root, and never abandon the happy neighborhood. Over all the sterile world is spread this green, mysterious carpet of love. Every Spring it is renewed, and its peculiar writing is legible only to the loved one, like the nosegay of the East; he will read forever, yet never enough, and will perceive daily new meanings, new delightful revelations of loving nature. This infinite enjoyment is the secret charm, which the survey of the earth's surface has for me, while each region solves other riddles, and has always led me to divine whence I came and whither I go."

"Yes," said Henry, "we began to speak of childhood's years, and of education, because we are in your garden; and the revelation of childhood, the innocent world of flowers, imperceptibly brought to our thoughts and lips the recollection of old acquaintanceship. My father is also very fond of gardening, and spends the happiest hours of his life among the flowers. This has certainly kept his heart open towards children, since flowers are their counterpart. The teeming opulence of infinite life, the mighty powers of later times, the splendor of the end of the world, and the golden future which awaits all things, we here see closely entwined, but still to be most plainly and clearly in tender youthfulness. All-powerful love is already working, but does not yet enflame; it is no devouring fire, but a melting vapor; and however intimate the union of the tenderest souls may be, yet it is accompanied by no intense excitement, no consuming madness, as in brutes. Thus is childhood below here nearest to the earth; as on the other hand clouds are perhaps the types of the second, higher childhood, of the paradise regained; and hence they so beneficently shed their dew upon the first."

"There is indeed something very mysterious in the clouds," said Sylvester, "and certain overcloudings often have a wonderful influence upon us. Trailing over our heads, they would take us up and away in their cold shades; and when their form is lovely and varied, like an outbreathed wish of our soul, then the clearness and the splendid light, which reigns upon earth, is like a presage of unknown, ineffable glory. But there are also dark, solemn, and fearful overcloudings, in which all the terrors of old night appear to threaten. The sky seems as if it never would be clear again; the serene blue is hidden; and a wan copper hue upon the dark gray ground awakens fear and anxiety in every bosom. Then when the blasting beams shoot downwards, and with fiendish laughter the crashing thunder-peals fall after them, we are struck to our souls; and unless there arises the lofty consciousness of our moral superiority, we fancy that we are delivered over to the terrors of h.e.l.l and all the powers of darkness. They are echoes of the old, unhuman nature, but awakening voices too of the higher nature of divine conscience within us. The mortal totters to its base; the immortal grows more serene and recognises itself."

"Then," said Henry, "when will there be no more terror or pain, want or evil in the universe?"

"When there is but one power, the power of conscience; when nature becomes chaste and pure. There is but one cause of evil,--common frailty,--and this frailty is nothing but a weak moral susceptibility, and a deficiency in the attraction of freedom."

"Explain to me the nature of Conscience."

"I were G.o.d, could I do so; for when we comprehend it. Conscience exists. Can you explain to me the essence of poetry?"

"A personality cannot be distinctly defined."

"How much less then the secret of the highest indivisibility. Can music be explained to the deaf?"

"If so, would the sense itself be part of the new world opened by it?

Does one understand facts only when one has them?"

"The universe is separated into an infinite system of worlds, ever encompa.s.sed by greater worlds. All senses are in the end but one. One sense conducts, like one world, gradually to all worlds. But everything has its time and its mode. Only the Person of the universe can detect the relations sustained by our world. It is difficult to say, whether we, within the sensuous limits of corporeity, could really augment our world with new worlds, our sense with new senses, or whether every increase of our knowledge, every newly acquired ability, is only to be considered as the development of our present organization."

"Perhaps both are one," said Henry. "For my own part, I only know that Fable is the collective instrument of my present world. Even Conscience, that sense and world-creating power, that germ of all Personality, appears to me like the spirit of the world-poem, like the event of the eternal, romantic confluence of the infinitely mutable common life.

"Dear pilgrim," Sylvester replied, "the Conscience appears in every serious perfection, in every fashioned truth. Every inclination and ability transformed by reflection into a universal type becomes a phenomenon, a phase of Conscience. All formation tends to that which can only be called Freedom; though by that is not meant an idea, but the creative ground of all being. This freedom is that of a guild. The master exercises free power according to design, and in defined and well digested method. The objects of his art are his, and he can do with them as he pleases, nor is he fettered or circ.u.mscribed by them.

To speak accurately, this all-embracing freedom, this mastership of dominion, is the essence, the impulse of Conscience. In it is revealed the sacred peculiarity, the immediate creation of Personality, and every action of the master, is at once the announcement of the lofty, simple, evident world--G.o.d's word."

"Then is that, which I remember was once called morality, only religion as Science, the so called theology in its proper sense? Is it but a code of laws related to worship as nature is to G.o.d, a construction of words, a train of thoughts, which indicates, represents the upper world, and extends it to a certain point of progress--the religion for the faculty of insight and judgment--the sentence, the law of the solution and determination of all the possible relations which a personal being sustains?"

"Certainly," said Sylvester, "Conscience is the innate mediator of every man. It takes the place of G.o.d upon earth, and is therefore to many the highest and the final. But how far was the former science, called virtue or morality, from the pure shape of this lofty, comprehensive, personal thought! Conscience is the peculiar essence of man fully glorified, the divine archetypal man (Urmensch.) It is not this thing and that thing; it does not command in a common tongue, it does not consist of distinct virtues. There is but one virtue,--the pure, solemn Will, which, at the moment of decision chooses, resolves instantaneously. In living and peculiar oneness it dwells and inspires that tender emblem, the human body, and can excite all the spiritual members to the truest activity."

"O excellent father!" exclaimed Henry, "with what joy fills me the light which flows from your words! Thus the true spirit of Fable is the spirit of virtue in friendly disguise; and the proper spirit of the subordinate art of poetry is the emotion of the loftiest, most personal existence. There is a surprising selfness (Selbstheit) between a genuine song and a n.o.ble action. The disfranchised conscience in a smooth, unresisting world, becomes an enchaining conversation, an all-narrating fable. In the fields and halls of this old world lives the poet, and virtue is the spirit of his earthly acts and influences; and as this is the indwelling divinity among men, the marvellous reflex of the higher world, so also is Fable. How safely can the poet now follow the guidance of his inspiration, or if he possesses a lofty, transcendent sense, follow higher essences, and submit to his calling with child-like humility. The higher voice of the universe also speaks within him, and cries with enchanting words to kindlier and more familiar worlds. As religion is related to virtue, so is inspiration to mythology; and as the history of revelation is treasured in sacred writings, so the life of a higher world expresses itself in mythology in manifold ways, in poems of wonderful origin. Fable and history sustain to each other the most intimate relations, through paths the most intricate, and disguises the most extraordinary; and the Bible and mythology are constellations of one orbit."

"What you say is perfectly true," said Sylvester; "and now you can probably comprehend that all nature subsists by the spirit of virtue alone, and must ever become more permanent. It is the all-inflaming, the all-quickening light in the embrace of earth. From the firmament, that lofty dome of the starry realm, down to the ruffling carpet of the varied meadow, all things will be sustained by it, united to us and made comprehensible; and by it the unknown course of infinite nature's history will be conducted to its consummation."

"Yes; and you have often as beautifully shown, before now, the connexion between virtue and religion. Everything, which experience and earthly activity embrace, forms the province of Conscience, which unites this world with higher worlds. With a loftier sense religion appears, and what formerly seemed an incomprehensible necessity of our inmost nature, a universal law without any definite intent, now becomes a wonderful, domestic, infinitely varied, and satisfying world, an inconceivably interior communion of all the spiritual with G.o.d, and a perceptible, hallowing presence of the only One, or of his Will, of his Love in our deepest self."

"The innocence of your heart," Sylvester replied, "makes you a prophet.

All things will be revealed to you, and for you the world and its history will be transformed into holy writ, just as the sacred writings evince how the universe can be revealed in simple words, or narratives, if not directly, yet mediately by hinting at and exciting higher senses. My connexion with nature has led me to the point where the joy and inspiration of language have brought you. Art and history have made me acquainted with nature. My parents dwelt in Sicily, not far from the famous Mount aetna. Their dwelling was a comfortable house in the ancient style, hidden by old chestnut trees near the rocky sh.o.r.e of the sea, and affording the attraction of a garden stocked with various plants. Near were many huts, in which dwelt fishermen, herdsmen, and vine-dressers. Our chambers and cellar were amply provided with everything that supports and gives enjoyment to life, and by well bestowed labor, our arrangements were agreeable to the most refined senses. Moreover there was no lack of those manifold objects, whose contemplation and use elevate the mind above ordinary life and its necessities, preparing it for a more suitable condition, and seem to promise and procure for it the pure enjoyment of its full and proper nature. You might have seen there marble statues, storied vases, small stones with most distinct figures, and other articles of furniture, the relics perhaps of other and happier times. Also many scrolls of parchment lay in folds upon each other, in which were treasured, in their long succession of letters, the knowledge, sentiments, histories, and poems of that past time, in most agreeable and polished expressions. The calling of my father, who had by degrees become an able astrologer, attracted to him many inquiring visiters, even from distant lands; and as the knowledge of the future seemed to men a rare and precious gift, they were led to remunerate him richly for his communication; so that he was enabled, by the gifts he received, to defray the expenses of a comfortable and even luxurious style of life."

The author advanced no farther in the composition of this second part, which he called "The Fulfilment," as he had called the first "The Expectation," because all that was left to antic.i.p.ation in the latter was explained and fulfilled in the former. It was the design of the author to write, after the completion of Ofterdingen, six romances for the statement of his views of physical science, civil life, commerce, history, political science, and of love; as his views of poetry had been given in Ofterdingen. I need not remind the intelligent reader, that the author in this poem has not adhered very closely to the time or the person of that well known Minnesinger, though every part brings him and his time to remembrance. It is an irreparable loss, not only to the friends of the author, but to the art itself, that he could not have finished this romance, the originality and great design of which would have been better developed in the second than in the first part.

For it was by no means his object to represent this or that occurrence, to embrace one side of poetry, and explain it by figures and narrative; but it was his intention, as is plain from the last chapter of the first part, to express the real essence of poetry and explain its inmost aim.

To this end nature, history, war, and civil life, with their usual events, are all transformed to poetry, as that is the spirit which animates all things.

I shall endeavor as far as possible, from my memory of conversations with my friend, and from what I can discover in the papers he has left, to give the reader some idea of the plan and subject-matter of the second part of this work.

To the poet, who has apprehended the essence of his art at its central point, nothing appears contradictory or strange; to him all riddles are solved. By the magic of fancy he can unite all ages and all worlds; wonders vanish, and all things change to wonders. So is this book written; and the reader will find the boldest combinations, particularly in the tale which closes the first part. Here are renewed all those differences by which ages seem separated, and hostile worlds meet each other. The poet wished particularly to make this tale the transition-point to the second part, in which the narrative soars from the common to the marvellous, and both are mutually explained and restored; the spirit of the prologue in verse should return at each chapter, and this state of mind, this wonderful view of things should be permanent. By this means the invisible world remains in eternal connexion with the visible. This speaking spirit is poetry itself; but at the same time the sidereal man who is born from the love of Henry and Matilda. In the following lines, which should have their place in Ofterdingen, the author has expressed in the simplest manner the interior spirit of his works:

When marks and figures cease to be For every creature's thoughts the key, When they will even kiss or sing Beyond the sage's reckoning, When life, to Freedom will attain, And Freedom in creation reign, When Light and Shade, no longer single, In genuine splendor intermingle, And one in tales and poems sees The world's eternal histories,-- Then will our whole inverted being Before a secret word be fleeing.

The gardener, who converses with Henry, is the same old man who had formerly entertained Ofterdingen's father. The young girl, whose name is Cyane, is not his child, but the daughter of the Count of Hohenzollern. She came from the East; and though it was at an early age, yet she can recollect her home. She has long lived a strange life in the mountains, among which she was brought up by her deceased mother. She has lost in early life a brother, and has narrowly escaped death in a vaulted tomb; but an old physician rescued her in some peculiar way. She is gentle, and kind, and very familiar with the supernatural. She tells the poet her history as she had heard it once from her mother. She sends him to a distant cloister, whose monks seem to be a kind of spirit-colony; everything is like a mystic, magic lodge. They are the priests of the holy fire in youthful minds. He hears the distant chant of the brothers; in the church itself, he has a vision. With an old monk Henry converses about death and magic, has presentiment of death--and of the philosopher's stone; visits the cloister-garden and the churchyard, concerning which latter I find the following poem:--

Praise ye now our still carousals, Gardens, chambers decked so gaily, Household goods as for espousals, Our possessions praise.

Mew guests are coming daily, Some late, the others early; On the s.p.a.cious hearth forever Glimmereth a new life-blaze.

Thousand vessels wrought with cunning, Once bedewed with thousand tears, Golden rings and spurs and sabres, Are our treasury; Many gems of costly mounting Wist we of in dark recesses, None can all our wealth be counting, Counts he even ceaselessly.

Children of a time evanished, Heroes from the h.o.a.ry ages, Starry spirits high excelling, Wondrously combine, Graceful women, solemn sages, Life in all its motley stages, In one circle here are dwelling, In the olden world recline.

None is evermore molested; None who joyously hath feasted, At our sumptuous table seated, Wisheth to be gone.

Hushed is sorrow's loud complaining, Wonders are no longer greeted, Bitter tears no longer raining, Hour-gla.s.s ever floweth on.

Holy kindness deeply swelling, In blest contemplation buried, Heaven in the soul is dwelling With a cloudless breast; In our raiment long and flowing Through spring-meadows are we carried, Where rude winds are never blowing, In this land of perfect rest.

Pleasing lure of midnight hours Quiet sphere of hidden powers, Rapture of mysterious pleasure, These alone our prize; Ours alone that highest measure, Where ourselves in streamlets pouring, Then in dew-drops upward soaring, Drink we as we flow or rise.

First with us grew life from love; Closely like the elements Do we mangle Being's waves, Foaming heart with heart.

Hotly separate the waves, For the strife of elements Is the highest life of love, And the very heart of hearts.