Henry of Ofterdingen: A Romance Part 16

'There is a series of ideal occurrences running parallel with reality.

They seldom coincide. Men and chances usually modify the ideal occurrence, so that it appears imperfect, and its results likewise.

Thus it was in the Reformation. Instead of Protestantism appeared Lutheranism.

'What fashions the man, but his _Life-History_? In like manner nothing fashions great men, but the _World's-History_.

'Many men live better in the past and future time, than in the present.

'The Present indeed is not at all comprehensible without the Past, and without a high degree of culture, an impregnation with the highest products, with the pure spirits of the present and of previous ages; all which a.s.similating guides and strengthens the human prophetic glance, which is more indispensable to the human historian, to the active, ideal elaborator of historic facts, than to the grammatical and rhetorical annalist.'

III.

Novalis seems here to rehea.r.s.e his whole poetic creed; or rather, he seems to be reviewing his own poems. What he deprecates, are the faults he most avoids. He is distinguished for extreme simplicity, both in style and language; and the thoughts, though lofty and sometimes vast, are yet fresh, chaste, and comprehensible. They have a domestic sublimity. They indicate simply an infinite expansion of the poet's heart, whose mild and primeval denizens are undisturbed by the forced, the foreign, or the shadowy. They have a oneness of design, and are finished and luminous to the most minute criticism. If we say that Novalis wrote as he was inspired, never attempting to superinduce what was only galvanic upon the true life, and never daring to write when he was not inspired, we both describe his genius and discover the secret of his beauty.

With one or two exceptions, the present romance is an unfavorable specimen of his poetic powers. The subjects of most of the songs require only that luminous simplicity alluded to, and are only fine examples of a lyrical style, with a few glimpses of his true genius.

"Astralis," the poem that introduces the second part, is unlike the rest of the volume, being an irregular, mystic embodyment of the hero's destinies,--a recapitulation of the past and a presentiment of the future. The romance is unfavorable, excepting one or two prose pa.s.sages of great sublimity, much resembling the "Hymns to the Night," one or two of which are given below. The dream at the close of the sixth chapter may be particularly designated. "The image of Death, and of the River being the Sky in that other and eternal Country, seems to us a fine and touching one: there is in it a trace of that simplicity, that soft, still pathos, which are characteristics of Novalis, and doubtless the highest of his specially poetic gifts." But it is in his Spiritual Songs that we gain a glimpse of his true genius. They are eminently devotional, and indiscriminately addressed to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Virgin. A translation of the ma.s.s of them would form a most desirable hymn book for the Christian, though, to be sure, it would be very graceless to supplant worthy old Dr. Watts. But they are very sweet and touching, and full of pious fervor. We have been struck with the similarity of their tone to those of George Herbert, who stands with the Father and the Son at the very door of his heart, with tearful and familiar supplication for them to enter.

"Geusz, Vater, Ihn gewaltig aus, Gib Ihn aus deinem Arm heraus: _Nur Unschuld, Lieb' und susze Scham_ _Hielt Ihn, dasz er nicht langst schon kam_.

"Treib' Ihn von dir in unsern Arm, _Dasz er von deinem Hauch noch warm_; In schweren Wolken sammle ihn, Und lasz Ihn so hernieder ziehn."

Among his promiscuous poems is a beautiful lyric, representing the triumph of Faith over Sorrow, under the symbol of a beautiful child bringing to him a wand, beneath whose touch the Queen of Serpents yields to him the "precious jewel."

The following is the first Hymn to the Night:

"What living, sense-endowed being loves not, before all the prodigies of the far extending s.p.a.ce around him, the all-rejoicing light with its colors, its beams and billows, its mild omnipresence, as waking day?

The restless giant-world of the stars, swimming with dancing motion in its azure flood. Inhales it as its life's inmost soul; the sparkling, ever-resting stone, the sensitive, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning, many-shaped animal, inhale it; but before all, the glorious stranger, with the speaking eyes, the uncertain gait, and the gently closed, melodious lips. Like a king of earthly nature, it summons each power to countless transformations, ratifies and dissolves treaties in infinite number, and suspends its heavenly image on every earthly being. Its presence alone reveals the wondrous splendor of creation's realms.

"I turn aside to the holy, ineffable, mysterious Night. Far away lies the world, sunk in a depth profound waste and lonely is its place. O'er the chords of the bosom waveth deep sadness. I will dissolve into dew drops, and mingle myself with the ashes. Distance of memory, wishes of youth, dreams of childhood, the short joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, flit by me in robes of gray, like evening clouds after sunset. In other s.p.a.ces Light has pitched its merry tents. Will it never return to its children, who are waiting for it with the trusting faith of innocence?

"What swells now so forebodingly beneath the heart, and swallows up the soft air of sadness? Hast thou also a pleasure in us, sombre Night?

What bringest thou beneath thy mantle, that with viewless power winds its way to my soul? A costly balsam is dripping from thy hand, from thy bunch of poppy. The drooping pinions of the mind thou bearest upward.

Dimly and ineffably we feel ourselves moved; a solemn countenance do I see, in pleasing terror, that gently and full of devotion bendeth towards me, and showeth dear youth hid in the infinite locks of the mother. How poor and childish Light now appears to me! How welcome and blessed the farewell of day! Only for this, because Night alienates from thee thy servants, didst thou sow in the regions of s.p.a.ce the luminous b.a.l.l.s, to proclaim thy omnipotence, thy return, in the times of thy absence. More heavenly than yonder twinkling stars appear the infinite eyes that Night opens in us. Their sight extends farther than the palest of that numberless host; unbeholden to Light, they gaze through the depths of a loving spirit, which fills a loftier s.p.a.ce with unspeakable rapture. Praised be the Queen of the world, the high announcer of holy spheres, the nurse of blessed love! She sends me thee, O dearly beloved, lovely sun of the Night. Now I awake, for I am Thine and Mine; thou hast announced to me Night as my life, thou hast made me a man. Consume my body with a spirit-glow, that in ether I may mingle more closely with thee, and be thou my bridal night forever."

The Beloved was Sophia; concerning whom he writes as follows:--

"Weissenfels, March 22d, 1797.

"It is for me a mournful duty to inform you that Sophia is no more.

After unspeakable sufferings, borne with exemplary resignation, she died on the 10th of March, at half past nine in the morning. She was born on the 17th of March, 1783, and on the 15th of March, 1795, I gained from her the a.s.surance, that she would be mine. She has suffered since the 7th of November, 1795. Eight days before her death I left her with the strongest conviction, that I should never see her again. I could not have endured to look impotently upon the terrible struggle of blooming youth down-stricken, the fearful anguish of the heavenly creature. Fate have I never feared. For three previous weeks I saw its menaces. It has become evening about me, whilst I was yet gazing into the morning-red. My sorrow is boundless, like my love. For three years had she been my hourly thought. She alone has bound me to life, to my country, and to my occupations. With her loss I am separated from everything, for I scarcely have myself any longer. But it has become evening, and it seems to me, as if I soon were about to depart, and so would I gladly be tranquil, and see around me only kind, friendly faces, and live entirely in her spirit, gentle and kindhearted, as she was.

"Cherished by me, as my own immortal Sophia, will be the friendship, the a.s.siduity with which you strove to render her last days serene.

Sophia still treasures your kindnesses with the warmest grat.i.tude, and I have felt a silent impulse to express to you this grat.i.tude, united with my own. You will pardon it to my love, when I tell you, that your attention to Sophia's wishes, and that half year's residence with her, now first has made you really dear to me.... I must cling to the past, as I have nothing more to expect from the future. Farewell, and be happier than

Your friend, HARDENBERG."

But how soon does his grief become holy, and therefore a joy! The letter is chiefly valuable as an introduction to the third Hymn to the Night:--

"Once as I shed bitter tears, when my hope dissolved into pain flowed away, and I stood alone by the barren hillock, which hid in a dark, narrow s.p.a.ce the form of my life; alone, as none had been before, driven by unspeakable anguish, powerless, nothing left but a thought of misery;--as I then looked about after aid, could neither move forward nor backward, but clung to a fleeting, extinguished life, with infinite longing,--then came from the blue distance, from the heights of my old blessedness, a breath as of twilight, and at once the tie of birth, the chain of Light, was rent asunder. Away flew the glory of earth, and with it my sorrow; the sadness rushed together into a new, unfathomable world; thou, Night's-inspiration, slumber of heaven, camest over me.

Gently the scene rose aloft; above it floated my unfettered, new-born Spirit The hillock became a dust-cloud, and through it I saw the transfigured features of my Beloved. Eternity lay in her eyes; I grasped her hands, and the tears became a glittering, indissoluble tie.

Thousands of years flew away in the distance, like tempest-clouds. Upon her neck I wept enrapturing tears at the thought of this new life.--It was the first and only dream, and since then do I feel an eternal, unchangeable faith in the heaven of Night, and its Sun my Beloved."

Such is the melting tenderness, which is a chief element of his poetry, such the cunning drug that embalms his genius!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Mahrchen.]

[Footnote 2: _Mutter_ or _Metallmutter_ is the gang or matrix that contains the ore.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahrchen._]

[Footnote 4: _Bacchischen Wehmuth_; the sadness that drives to dissipation, not the Elysium of the morning after.]

[Footnote 5: The word _Critic_ is derived from the Hebrew word [Hebrew: krty] _executioner_; collectively, _executioners and runners_, from the root [Hebrew: krt], _to cut_. Thus it gradually came to mean, to cut and run. It is somewhat remarkable that the secondary meaning of the noun is _Philistine_. See Gesenius in voc.; who also adds, "the conjecture is not improbable that the Philistines sprang from Crete, and that _Caphtor_ signifies [Greek: Krete]. Comp. Michaelis Spicil. J.

1. p. 292-308. Supplemm. p. 1328." The proverbial character of the Cretans is well known.

The Rabbi Ben Hillel, who was of the tribe of Onagrites, defended the oral traditions of the Jews against certain persons, who were disposed to sniff somewhat. In his writings, the venerable Rabbi was accustomed to designate them as Philistines--_mais nous avons change tout cela_--and, in a felicitous allusion to the ancient narrative, insinuated that the extraordinary discomfiture of so many Philistines by a certain jaw-bone was explained upon the well known principle in Hom[oe]opathy, whereby any nuisance is abated by the application of h.o.m.ogeneous substances. This was in the infancy of that science. But the learned Rabbi in his strictures did not antic.i.p.ate the retort of his opponent Judas Haggadosh, who called Ben Hillel "_the would-be jaw-bone._"]

THE END.