Hyperion Part 11

He has written a great many pretty songs, in which the momentary, indefinite longings and impulses of the soul of man find an expression. Hecalls them the songs of a Wandering Horn-player. There is one among them much to our present purpose. He expresses in it, the feeling of unrest and desire of motion, which the sight and sound of running waters often produce in us. It is ent.i.tled, 'Whither?' and is worth repeating to you.

'I heard a brooklet gushing

From its rocky fountain near,

Down into the valley rushing,

So fresh and wondrous clear.

'I know not what came o'er me,

Nor who the counsel gave;

But I must hasten downward,

All with my pilgrim-stave.

'Downward, and ever farther,

And ever the brook beside;

And ever fresher murmured,

And ever clearer the tide.

'Is this the way I was going?

Whither, O brooklet, say!

Thou hast, with thy soft murmur,

Murmured my senses away.

'What do I say of a murmur?

That can no murmur be;

'T is the water-nymphs, that are singing

Their roundelays under me.

'Let them sing, my friend, let them murmur,

And wander merrily near;

The wheels of a mill are going

In every brooklet clear.'"

"There you have the poetic reverie," said Flemming, "and the dull prose commentary and explanation in matter of fact. The song is pretty; and was probably suggested by some such scene as this, which we are now beholding. Doubtless all your old national traditions sprang up in the popular mind as this song in the poet's."

"Your opinion is certainly correct," answered the Baron; "and yet all this play of poetic fancy does not prevent me from feeling the chill night air, and the pangs of hunger. Let us go back to the mill, and see what our landlady has for supper. Did you observe what a loud, sharp voice she has?"

"People always have, who live in mills, and near water-falls."

On the following morning they emerged unwillingly from the green, dark valley, and journeyed along the level highway to Frankfort, where in the evening they heard the glorious Don Giovanni of Mozart.

Of all operas this was Flemming's favorite. What rapturous flights of sound! what thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry of pa.s.sion! what a delirium of sense!--what an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with and finding a voice in those tones. Flemming and the Baron listened with ever-increasing delight.

"How wonderful this is!" exclaimed Flemming, transported by his feelings. "How the chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer!

How those pa.s.sages of mysterious import seem to wave to and fro, like the swaying branches of trees; from which anon some solitary sweetvoice darts off like a bird, and floats away and revels in the bright, warm sunshine! And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments,--of flutes, and drums, and trumpets,--this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger,--a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand."

Then came, in the midst of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under her, as a branch, when a bird alights upon it, and takes wing again. Loud and rapturous applause followed each wonderful step, each voluptuous movement; and, with a flushed cheek and burning eye, and bosom panting to be free, stood the gracefully majestic figure for a moment still, and then the winged feet of the swift dancing-girls glanced round her, and she was lost again in the throng.

"How truly exquisite this is!" exclaimed the Baron, after joining loudly in the applause. "What a n.o.ble figure! What grace! what att.i.tudes! How much soul in every motion! how much expression in every gesture! I a.s.sure you, it produces upon me the same effect as a beautiful poem. It is a poem. Every step is a word; and the whole together a poem!"

The Baron and Flemming were delighted with the scene; and at the same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul's daughter, experienced, when she looked from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his scanty garments.

"After all," said Flemming, "the old French priest was not so far out of the way, when he said, in his coa.r.s.e dialect, that the dance is the Devil's procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of the devil's sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil's grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is the pomp and ma.s.s of the Devil, and whosoever entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and ma.s.s; for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and they that look on are parishioners, and the cymbals and flutes are the bells, and the musicians that play are the ministers, of the Devil."

"No doubt this good lady near us, thinks so likewise," answered the Baron laughing; "but she likes it, for all that."

When the play was over the Baron begged Flemming to sit still, till the crowd had gone.

"I have a strange fancy," said he, "whenever I come to the theatre, to see the end of all things. When the crowd is gone, and the curtain raised again to air the house, and the lamps are all out, save here and there one behind the scenes, the contrast with what has gone before is most impressive. Every thing wears a dream-like aspect. The empty boxes and stalls,--the silence,--the smoky twilight, and the magic scene dismantled, produce in me a strange, mysterious feeling. It is like a dim reflection of a theatre in water, or in a dusty mirror; and reminds me of some of Hoffmann's wild Tales. It is a practical moral lesson,--a commentary on the play, and makes the show complete."

It was truly as he said; only tenfold more desolate, solemn, and impressive; and produced upon the mind the effect we experience, when slumber is suddenly broken, and dreams and realities mingle, and we know not yet whether we sleep or wake. As they at length pa.s.sed out through the dimly-lighted pa.s.sage, they heard a vulgar-looking fellow, with a sensual face and s.h.a.ggy whiskers, say to some persons who were standing near him, and seemed to be hangers-on of the play-house;

"I shall run her six nights at Munich, and then take her on to Vienna."

Flemming thought he was speaking of some favorite horse. He was speaking of his beautiful wife, the ballet-dancer.

CHAPTER VIII. OLD HUMBUG.

What most interested our travellers in the ancient city of Frankfort, was neither the opera nor the Ariadne of Dannecker, but the house in which Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in his childhood, and remembered in his old age. Such for example are the walks around the city, outside the moat; the bridge over the Maine, with the golden c.o.c.k on the cross, which the poet beheld and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of the Barefooted Friars, through which he stole with mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees and rose-bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and the antique leather gloves, which he annually received as Mayor on Pipers-Doomsday, representing a kind of middle personage between Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Genius! are thy foot-prints hallowed; and the star shines forever over the place of thy nativity.

"Your English critics may rail as they list," said the Baron, while he and Flemming were returning from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the moat; "but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of pa.s.sion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous, headlong;--his romantic manhood, in which pa.s.sion a.s.sumes the form of strength; a.s.siduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without rest; and his sublime old age,--the age of serene and cla.s.sic repose, where he stands like Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in the Battle of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his head, the ocean-streams hard frozen in his h.o.a.ry locks."

"A good ill.u.s.tration of what the world calls his indifferentism."

"And do you know I rather like this indifferentism? Did you never have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very 'storm and pressure period' of his indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think you will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified att.i.tude which the old philosopher a.s.sumes."

"It is a pity, that his admirers had not a little of this philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read the various epithets, which they apply to him; The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man!

The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets."