Henry of Ofterdingen: A Romance Part 15

Whispered talk of gentle wishes Hear we only, we are gazing Ever into eyes transfigured, Tasting nought but mouth and kiss; All that we are only touching, Change to balmy fruits and glowing, Change to bosoms soft and tender, Offerings to daring bliss.

The desire is ever springing, On the loved one to be clinging, Round him all our spirit flinging, One with him to be,-- Ardent impulse ever heeding To consume in turn each other, Only nourished, only feeding On each other's ecstasy.

So in love and lofty rapture Are we evermore abiding, Since that lurid life subsiding, In the day grew pale; Since the pyre its sparkles scattered, And the sod above us sinking, From around the spirit shrinking Melted then the earthly veil.

Spells around remembrance woven, Holy sorrow's trembling gladness, Tone-like have our spirits cloven, Cooled their glowing blood.

Wounds there are, forever paining; A profound, celestial sadness, Within all our hearts remaining, Us dissolveth in one flood.

And in flood we forth are gushing, In a secret manner flowing To the ocean of all living, In the One profound; And from out His heart while rushing, To our circle backward going, Spirit of the loftiest striving Dips within our eddying round.

All your golden chains be shaking Bright with emeralds and rubies, Flash and clang together making, Shake with joyous note.

From the damp recesses waking, From the sepulchres and ruins, On your cheeks the flush of heaven, To the realm of Fable float.

O could men, who soon will follow To the spirit-land, be dreaming That we dwell in all their joyance, All the bliss they taste, They would burn with glad upbuoyance To desert the life so hollow,-- O, the hours away are streaming, Come, beloved, hither haste.

Aid to fetter the Earth-spirit, Learn to know the sense of dying, And the word of life discover; Hither turn at last.

Soon will all thy power be over, Borrowed light away be flying, Soon art fettered, O Earth-spirit, And thy time of empire past.

This poem was perhaps a prologue to a second chapter. Now an entirely new period of the work would have opened; the highest life proceeding from the stillest death; he has lived among the dead and conversed with them. Now the book would have become nearly dramatic, the epic tone, as it were, uniting together and simply explaining the single scenes.

Henry suddenly finds himself in Italy, distracted, rent with wars; he sees himself the leader of an army. All the elements of war play in poetic colors. With an irregular band, he attacks a hostile city; here appears in episode the love of a n.o.ble of Pisa for a Florentine maiden.

War-songs--"a great war, like a duel, n.o.ble, philosophical, human throughout. Spirit of the old chivalry; the tournament. Spirit of baccha.n.a.lian sadness.[4] Men must fall by each other,--n.o.bler than to fall by fate. They seek death.--Honor, fame, is the warrior's joy and life. The warrior lives in death and like a shade. Desire for death is the warrior-spirit. Upon the earth is war at home; it must be upon earth."--In Pisa Henry finds the Son of Frederick the Second, who becomes his confidential friend. He also travels to Loretto. Several songs were to follow here.

The poet is cast away on the sh.o.r.es of Greece by a tempest. The old world with its heroes and treasures of art fills his mind. He converses with a Grecian about morality. Everything from ancient times is present to him; he learns to understand the old pictures and histories.

Conversation upon Grecian polity and mythology.

After becoming acquainted with the heroic age and with antiquity, he visits the Holy Land, for which he had felt so great a longing from his youth. He seeks Jerusalem, and acquaints himself with Oriental poetry.

Strange events among the infidels detain him in desert regions; he discovers the family of the eastern girl (see Part I.): the manners and life of nomadic tribes.--Persian tales, recollections of the remotest antiquity. The book during all these various events was to retain its characteristic hue, and recall to mind the blue flower: throughout, the most distant and distinct traditions were to be knit together, Grecian, Oriental, Biblical, Christian, with reminiscences of and references to both the Indian and Northern mythology.--The Crusades.--Life at sea.-- Henry visits Rome. Roman history.

Sated with his experiences, Henry at length returns to Germany. He finds his grandfather, a profound character; Klingsohr is in his society. An evening's conversation with them.

Henry joins the court of Frederick, and becomes personally acquainted with the emperor. The court would have made a worthy appearance, portraying the best, greatest, and most remarkable men, collected from the whole world, whose centre is the emperor himself. Here appears the greatest splendor, and the truly great world. German character and German history are explained. Henry converses with the emperor concerning government and the empire; obscure hints of America and the Indies. The sentiments of a prince,--the mystic emperor,--the book, "De tribus impostoribus."

Henry having now, in a new and higher method than in the Expectation, lived through and observed nature, life, and death, war, the East, history, and poetry, turns back into his mind as to an old home. Front his knowledge of the world and of himself arises the impulse for expression; the wondrous world of fable now draws the nearest, because the heart is fully open to its comprehension.

In the Manesian collection of Minnesingers, we find a rather obscure rival song of Henry of Ofterdingen and Klingsohr with other poets; instead of this, jousting, the author would have represented another peculiar poetic contest, the war of the good and evil principles in songs of religion and irreligion, the invisible world contrasted with the visible. "Out of Enthusiasm the poets in baccha.n.a.lian intoxication contend for death." The sciences are poetized; mathematics also enters the lists. The plants of India are commemorated in song; new glorification of Indian mythology.

This is Henry's last act upon the earth; the transition to his own glorification. This is the solution of the whole work, the _Fulfilment_ of the allegory which concludes the First Part. Everything is explained and completed, supernaturally and yet most naturally. The part.i.tion between Fiction and Truth, between the Past and the Present has fallen down. Faith, Fancy, and Poetry lay open the internal world.

Henry reaches Sophia's land, in Nature, such as might be allegorically painted; after having conversed with Klingsohr concerning certain singular signs and omens. These are mostly awakened by an old song which he hears by chance, and in which is described a deep water in a secluded spot. The song excites within him long forgotten recollections; he visits the water, and finds a small golden key, which a raven had stolen from him some time before, and which he had never, expected to find. An old man had given it to him soon after Matilda's death, with the injunction that he should carry it to the emperor, who would tell him what to do with it. Henry seeks the emperor, who is highly rejoiced and gives him an ancient ma.n.u.script, in which it is written that the emperor should give it to that man who ever brought him a golden key; that this man would discover in a secret place an old talisman, a carbuncle for his crown, in which a s.p.a.ce was yet left for it. The place itself is also described in the parchment. After reading the description, Henry takes the road to a mountain, and meets on the way the stranger who first told him and his parents concerning the blue flower; he converses with him about Revelation. He enters the mountain and Cyane trustingly follows him.

He soon reaches that wonderful land in which air and water, flowers and animals, differ entirely from those of earthly nature. The poem at the same time changes in many places to a play. "Men, beasts, plants, stones and stars, the elements, sounds, colors, meet like one family, act and converse like one race. Flowers and brutes converge concerning men. The world of fable is again visible; the real world is itself regarded as a fable." He finds the blue flower; it is Matilda, who sleeps and has the carbuncle. A little girl, their child, sits by a coffin, and renews his youth. "This child is the primeval world, the close of the golden time." "Here the Christian religion is reconciled with the Heathen. The history of Orpheus, of Psyche, and others are sung."

Henry plucks the blue flower, and delivers Matilda from her enchantment, but she is lost to him again; he becomes senseless through pain, and changes to a stone. "Edda (the blue flower, the Eastern Maiden, Matilda) sacrifices herself upon the stone; he is transformed to a melodious tree. Cyane hews down the tree and burns herself with him. He becomes a golden ram. Edda, Matilda, is obliged to sacrifice it. He becomes a man again. During these metamorphoses he has the very strangest conversations."

He is happy with Matilda, who is both the Eastern Maiden and Cyane. A joyous spirit-festival is celebrated. All that has past was Death, the last dream and awakening. "Klingsohr comes again as king of Atlantis.

Henry's mother is Fancy, his father, Sense. Swaning is the Moon; the miner is the antiquary and at the same time Iron. The emperor Frederick is Arcturus. The Count of Hohenzollern and the merchants also return."

Everything flows into an allegory. Cyane brings the stone to the emperor; but Henry is now himself the poet of the fabulous tale which the merchants had formerly related to him.

The blissful land suffers yet again by enchantment, while subjected to the changes of the Seasons. Henry destroys the realm of the Sun. The whole work was to close with a long poem, only the beginning of which was composed.

THE NUPTIALS OF THE SEASONS.

Deep buried in thought stood the new monarch. He was recalling Dreams of the midnight, and every wonderful tale, Which gathered he first from the heavenly flower, when stricken Gently by prophecy, love all-subduing he felt.

He thought still he heard the accents deeply impressive, Just as the guest was deserting the circle of joy; Fleeting gleams of the moon illumined the clattering window, And in the breast of the youth there raged a pa.s.sionate glow.

Edda, whispered the monarch, what is the innermost longing In the bosom that loves? What his ineffable grief?

Say it, for him would we comfort, the power is ours, and n.o.ble Be the time when thou art the joy of heaven again.-- "Were the times not so cold and morose, if were united Future with Present, and both with the holy Past time; Were the Spring linked to Autumn, and the Summer to Winter, Were into serious grace childhood with silver age fused; Then, O spouse of my heart, would dry up the fountain of sorrow, Every deep cherished wish would be secured to the soul."

Thus spake the queen, and gladsomely clasped her the radiant beloved: Thou hast uttered in sooth to me a heavenly word, Which long ago over the lips of the deep-feeling hovered, But on thine alone first pure and in season did light.

Quickly drive here the chariot, ourselves we will summon First the times of the year, then all the seasons of man.--

They ride to the sun, and first bring the Day, then the Night; then to the North, for Winter, then to the South, to find Summer; from the East they bring the Spring, from the West the Autumn. Then they hasten after Youth, next to Age, to the Past and to the Future.

This is all I have been able to give the reader from my own recollection, and from scattered words and hints in the papers of my friend. The accomplishment of this great task would have been a lasting memorial of a new poesy. In this notice I have preferred to be short and dry, rather than expose myself to the danger of adding anything from my own fancy. Perhaps many a reader will be grieved at the fragmentary character of these verses and words, as well as myself, who would not regard with any more devout sadness a piece of some ruined picture of Raphael or Corregio.

L. TIECK.

NOTES.

I.

This _rifacimento_ of Arion's story is not mere mythological twaddle.

As allegories abound, and as in fact there is a suspicion that the whole Romance may be only an allegory, an "Apotheosis of Poetry,"--the reader must keep open his internal eye.

Arion is the Spirit of Poetry as embodied in any age, whether in a single voice, or many. This the age always attempts to drown,--seldom with applause. The sailors are the exponents of an age, or its critics. In the case of Arion, they belonged to a certain tribe of Philistines,--not yet extinct.[5] There is a deep significance in the fact, that they resolutely stopped their ears against the Poet's song. The treasures of the Poet are his ideas of the good and the beautiful, which he fetches from his far home; for he comes, "not in entire forgetfulness." The fact, that Arion preferred jumping overboard to being converted into a heave-offering, is typical of the self-extinguishment and natural dissolution of the true soul, born into a humanity which is not its counterpart, which cannot answer to it.

Those providential dolphins are a grateful posterity, which preserve not only the Poet's treasures, but his memory. The conflict among the sailors, too, has a deep meaning, hidden also in that old, wonderful myth of the Kilkenny cats.

But an allegory has many sides, like a genuine symphony. Each reader will interpret all of them best from his own point of view. Should Henry himself turn out to be Arion, the feat would only be one of inverted transmigration, and not more extraordinary than the regular method.

II.

An opportunity is taken to introduce some further remarks of the author concerning History. They are found among a mult.i.tude of fragments, arranged under the three heads of Philosophical, Critical, and Moral; an amorphous heap of sayings, generally of great beauty and power. The present have little connexion with the text, but will be their own excuse. The total of his remarks will be seen to hint at a theory of History, with which most school-histories and respectable annals are in no wise infected.

'Luck or fate is talent for history. The sense for apprehending occurrences is the prophetic, and luck the divining instinct. (Hence the ancients justly considered a man's luck one of his talents.) We take delight in divination. Romance has arisen from the want of history.

'History creates itself. It first arises through the connexion of the past with the future. Men treat their recollections much too negligently.

'The historian organizes the historical Essence. The data of history are the ma.s.s, to which the historian gives form, while giving animation. Consequently history always presupposes the principles of animation and organization; and where they are not antecedent there can be no genuine historical _chef d'[oe]uvre_, but only here and there the traces of an accidental animation, where a capricious genius has ruled.

'The demand, to consider this present world the best, is exactly a.n.a.logous to that which would consider my own wedded wife the best and only woman, and life to be entirely for her and in her. Many similar demands and pretensions are there, which he who dutifully acknowledges, who has a discriminating respect for everything that has transpired, is historically religious, the absolute Believer and Mystic of history, the genuine lover of Destiny. Fate is the mysticised history. Every voluntary love, in the common signification, is a religion, which has and can have but one apostle, one evangelist and disciple, and can be, though not necessarily, an extra-religion (Wechsel-religion.)