Laurence Sterne in Germany Part 19

Timme insists that his attack is only on Yorick's mistaken followers and not on Sterne himself. He contrasts the man and his imitators at the outset sharply by comments on a quotation from the novel, "Fragmente zur Geschichte der Zartlichkeit"[49] as typifying the outcry of these petty imitators against the heartlessness of their misunderstanding critics,--"Sanfter, dultender Yorick," he cries, "das war nicht deine Sprache! Du priesest dich nicht mit einer pharisaischen Selbstgenugsamkeit und schimpftest nicht auf die, die dir nicht ahnlich waren, 'Doch! sprachst Du am Grabe Lorenzos, doch ich bin so weichherzig wie ein Weib, aber ich bitte die Welt nicht zu lachen, sondern mich zu bedauern!' Ruhe deinem Staube, sanfter, liebevoller Dulter! und nur einen Funken deines Geistes deinen Affen."[50] He writes not for the "gentle, tender souls on whom the spirit of Yorick rests,"[51] for those whose feelings are easily aroused and who make quick emotional return, who love and do the good, the beautiful, the n.o.ble; but for those who "bei dem wonnigen Wehen und Anhauchen der Gottheithaltenden Natur, in huldigem Liebessinn und himmelsussem Frohsein dahin schmelzt . . die ihr vom Sang der Liebe, von Mondschein und Tranen euch nahrt," etc., etc.[52] In these few words he discriminates between the man and his influence, and outlines his intentions to satirize and chastise the insidious disease which had fastened itself upon the literature of the time. This pa.s.sage, with its implied sincerity of appreciation for the real Yorick, is typical of Timme's att.i.tude throughout the book, and his concern lest he should appear at any time to draw the English novelist into his condemnation leads him to reiterate this statement of purpose and to insist upon the contrast.

Brukmann, a young theological student, for a time an intimate of the Kurt home, is evidently intended to represent the soberer, well-balanced thought of the time in opposition to the feverish sentimental frenzy of the Kurt household. He makes an exception of Yorick in his condemnation of the literary favorites, the popular novelists of that day, but he deplores the effects of misunderstood imitation of Yorick's work, and argues his case with vehemence against this sentimental group.[53]

Brukmann differentiates too the different kinds of sentimentalism and their effects in much the same fashion as Campe in his treatise published two years before.[54] In all this Brukmann may be regarded as the mouth-piece of the author. The clever daughter of the gentleman who entertains Pank at his home reads a satirical poem on the then popular literature, but expressly disclaims any attack on Yorick or "Siegwart,"

and a.s.serts that her bitterness is intended for their imitators. Lotte, Pank's sensible and unsentimental, long-suffering fiancee, makes further comment on the "apes" of Yorick, "Werther," and "Siegwart."

The unfolding of the story is at the beginning closely suggestive of Tristram Shandy and is evidently intended to follow the Sterne novel in a measure as a model. As has already been suggested, Timme's own narrative powers balk the continuity of the satire, but aid the interest and the movement of the story. The movement later is, in large measure, simple and direct. The hero is first introduced at his christening, and the discussion of fitting names in the imposing family council is taken from Walter Shandy's hobby. The narrative here, in Sterne fashion, is interrupted by a Shandean digression[55] concerning the influence of clergymen's collars and neck-bands upon the thoughts and minds of their audiences. Such questions of chance influence of trifles upon the greater events of life is a constant theme of speculation among the pragmatics; no petty detail is overlooked in the possibility of its portentous consequences. Walter Shandy's hyperbolic philosophy turned about such a focus, the exaltation of insignificant trifles into mainsprings of action. Shandy bristles with such discussions.

In Shandy fashion the story doubles on itself after the introduction and gives minute details of young Kurt's family and the circ.u.mstances prior to his birth. The later discussion[56] in the family council concerning the necessary qualities in the tutor to be hired for the young Kurt is distinctly a borrowing from Shandy.[57] Timme imitates Sterne's method of ridiculing pedantry; the requirements listed by the Diaconus and the professor are touches of Walter Shandy's misapplied, warped, and undigested wisdom. In the nineteenth chapter of the third volume[58] we find a Sterne pa.s.sage a.s.sociating itself with Shandy rather more than the Sentimental Journey. It is a playful thrust at a score of places in Shandy in which the author converses with the reader about the progress of the book, and allows the mechanism of book-printing and the vagaries of publishers to obtrude themselves upon the relation between writer and reader. As a reminiscence of similar promises frequent in Shandy, the author promises in the first chapter of the fourth volume to write a book with an eccentric t.i.tle dealing with a list of absurdities.[59]

But by far the greater proportion of the allusions to Sterne a.s.sociate themselves with the Sentimental Journey. A former acquaintance of Frau Kurt, whose favorite reading was Shandy, Wieland's "Sympatien" and the Sentimental Journey, serves to satirize the influence of Yorick's a.s.s episode; this gentleman wept at the sight of an ox at work, and never ate meat lest he might incur the guilt of the murder of these sighing creatures.[60]

The most constantly recurring form of satire is that of contradiction between the sentimental expression of elevated, universal sympathy and broader humanity and the failure to seize an immediately presented opportunity to embody desire in deed. Thus Frau Kurt,[61] buried in "Siegwart," refuses persistently to be disturbed by those in immediate need of a succoring hand. Pankraz and his mother while on a drive discover an old man weeping inconsolably over the death of his dog.[62]

The scene of the dead a.s.s at Nampont occurs at once to Madame Kurt and she compares the sentimental content of these two experiences in deprivation, finding the palm of sympathy due to the melancholy dog-bewailer before her, thereby exalting the sentimental privilege of her own experience as a witness. Quoting Yorick, she cries: "Shame on the world! If men only loved one another as this man loves his dog!"[63]

At this very moment the reality of her sympathy is put to the test by the approach of a wretched woman bearing a wretched child, begging for a.s.sistance, but Frau Kurt, steeped in the delight of her sympathetic emotion, repulses her rudely. Pankraz, on going home, takes his Yorick and reads again the chapter containing the dead-a.s.s episode; he spends much time in determining which event was the more affecting, and tears flow at the thought of both animals. In the midst of his vehement curses on "unempfindsame Menschen," "a curse upon you, you hard-hearted monsters, who treat G.o.d's creatures unkindly," etc., he rebukes the gentle advances of his pet cat Riepel, rebuffs her for disturbing his "Wonnegefuhl," in such a heartless and cruel way that, through an accident in his rapt delight at human sympathy, the ultimate result is the poor creature's death by his own fault.

In the second volume[64] Timme repeats this method of satire, varying conditions only, yet forcing the matter forward, ultimately, into the grotesque comic, but again taking his cue from Yorick's narrative about the a.s.s at Nampont, acknowledging specifically his linking of the adventure of Madame Kurt to the episode in the Sentimental Journey. Frau Kurt's ardent sympathy is aroused for a goat drawing a wagon, and driven by a peasant. She endeavors to interpret the sighs of the beast and finally insists upon the release of the animal, which she a.s.serts is calling to her for aid. The poor goat's parting bleat after its departing owner is construed as a curse on the latter's hardheartedness.

Frau Kurt embraces and kisses the animal. During the whole scene the neighboring village is in flames, houses are consumed and poor people rendered homeless, but Frau Kurt expresses no concern, even regarding the catastrophe as a merited affliction, because of the villagers' lack of sympathy with their domestic animals. The same means of satire is again employed in the twelfth chapter of the same volume.[65] Pankraz, overcome with pain because Lotte, his betrothed, fails to unite in his sentimental enthusiasm and persists in common-sense, tries to bury his grief in a wild ride through night and storm. His horse tramples ruthlessly on a poor old man in the road; the latter cries for help, but Pank, buried in contemplation of Lotte's lack of sensibility, turns a deaf ear to the appeal.

In the seventeenth chapter of the third volume, a sentimental journey is proposed, and most of the fourth volume is an account of this undertaking and the events arising from its complications. Pankraz's adventures are largely repet.i.tions of former motifs, and ill.u.s.trate the fate indissolubly linked with an imitation of Sterne's related converse with the fair s.e.x.[66]

The journey runs, after a few adventures, over into an elaborate practical joke in which Pankraz himself is burlesqued by his contemporaries. Timme carries his poignancy and keenness of satire over into bluntness of burlesque blows in a large part of these closing scenes. Pankraz loses the sympathy of the reader, involuntarily and irresistibly conceded him, and becomes an inhuman freak of absurdity, beyond our interest.[67]

Pankraz is brought into disaster by his slavish following of suggestions aroused through fancied parallels between his own circ.u.mstances and those related of Yorick. He finds a sorrowing woman[68] sitting, like Maria of Moulines, beneath a poplar tree. Pankraz insists upon carrying out this striking a.n.a.logy farther, which the woman, though she betrays no knowledge of the Sentimental Journey, is not loath to accede to, as it coincides with her own nefarious purposes. Timme in the following scene strikes a blow at the abjectly sensual involved in much of the then sentimental, unrecognized and unrealized.

Pankraz meets a man carrying a cage of monkeys.[69] He buys the poor creatures from their master, even as Frau Kurt had purchased the goat.

The similarity to the Starling narrative in Sterne's volume fills Pankraz's heart with glee. The Starling wanted to get out and so do his monkeys, and Pankraz's only questions are: "What did Yorick do?" "What would he do?" He resolves to do more than is recorded of Yorick, release the prisoners at all costs. Yorick's monolog occurs to him and he parodies it. The animals greet their release in the thankless way natural to them,--a point already enforced in the conduct of Frau Kurt's goat.

In the last chapter of the third volume Sterne's relationship to "Eliza"

is brought into the narrative. Pankraz writes a letter wherein he declares amid exaggerated expressions of bliss that he has found "Elisa," his "Elisa." This is significant as showing that the name Eliza needed no further explanation, but, from the popularity of the Yorick-Eliza letters and the wide-spread admiration of the relation, the name Eliza was accepted as a type of that peculiar feminine relation which existed between Sterne and Mrs. Draper, and which appealed to Sterne's admirers.

Pankraz's new Order of the Garter, born of his wild frenzy[70] of devotion over this article of Elisa's wearing apparel, is an open satire on Leuchsenring's and Jacobi's silly efforts noted elsewhere. The garter was to bear Elisa's silhouette and the device "Orden vom Strumpfband der empfindsamen Liebe."

The elaborate division of moral preachers[71] into cla.s.ses may be further mentioned as an adaptation from Sterne, cast in Yorick's mock-scientific manner.

A consideration of these instances of allusion and adaptation with a view to cla.s.sification, reveals a single line of demarkation obvious and unaltered. And this line divides the references to Sterne's sentimental influence from those to his whimsicality of narration, his vagaries of thought; that is, it follows inevitably, and represents precisely the two aspects of Sterne as an individual, and as an innovator in the world of letters. But that a line of cleavage is further equally discernible in the treatment of these two aspects is not to be overlooked. On the one hand is the exaggerated, satirical, burlesque; on the other the modified, lightened, softened. And these two lines of division coincide precisely.

The slight touches of whimsicality, suggesting Sterne, are a part of Timme's own narrative, evidently adapted with approval and appreciation; they are never carried to excess, satirized or burlesqued, but may be regarded as purposely adopted, as a result of admiration and presumably as a suggestion to the possible workings of sprightliness and grace on the heaviness of narrative prose at that time. Timme, as a clear-sighted contemporary, certainly confined the danger of Sterne's literary influence entirely to the sentimental side, and saw no occasion to censure an importation of Sterne's whimsies. Pank's ode on the death of Riepel, written partly in dashes and partly in exclamation points, is not a disproof of this a.s.sertion. Timme is not satirizing Sterne's whimsical use of typographical signs, but rather the Germans who misunderstood Sterne and tried to read a very peculiar and precious meaning into these vagaries. The sentimental is, however, always burlesqued and ridiculed; hence the satire is directed largely against the Sentimental Journey, and Shandy is followed mainly in those sections, which, we are compelled to believe, he wrote for his own pleasure, and in which he was led on by his own interest.

The satire on sentimentalism is purposeful, the imitation and adaptation of the whimsical and original is half-unconscious, and bespeaks admiration and commendation.

Timme's book was sufficiently popular to demand a second edition, but it never received the critical examination its merits deserved. Wieland's _Teutscher Merkur_ and the _Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften_ ignore it completely. The _Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen_ announces the book in its issue of August 2, 1780, but the book itself is not reviewed in its columns. The _Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen_ accords it a colorless and unappreciative review in which Timme is reproached for lack of order in his work (a censure more applicable to the first volume), and further for his treatment of German authors then popular.[72] The latter statement stamps the review as unsympathetic with Timme's satirical purpose. In the _Erfurtische gelehrte Zeitung_,[73] in the very house of its own publication, the novel is treated in a long review which hesitates between an acknowledged lack of comprehension and indignant denunciation. The reviewer fears that the author is a "Pasquillant oder gar ein Indifferentist" and hopes the public will find no pleasure (Geschmack) in such bitter jesting (Schnaken). He is incensed at Timme's contention that the Germans were then degenerate as compared with their Teutonic forefathers, and Timme's attack on the popular writers is emphatically resented. "Aber nun kommt das Schlimme erst," he says, "da fuhrt er aus Schriften unserer grossten Schenies, aus den Lieblings-buchern der n.a.z.ion, aus Werther's Leiden, dem Siegwart, den Fragmenten zur Geschichte der Zartlichkeit, Muller's Freuden und Leiden, Klinger's Schriften u.s.w. zur Bestatigung seiner Behauptung, solche Stellen mit solcher Bosheit an, da.s.s man in der That ganz verzweifelt wird, ob sie von einem Schenie oder von einem Affen geschrieben sind."

In the number for July 6, 1782, the second and third volumes are reviewed. Pity is expressed for the poor author, "denn ich furchte es wird sich ein solches Geschrey wider ihn erheben, wovon ihm die Ohren gallen werden." Timme wrote reviews for this periodical, and the general tone of this notice renders it not improbable that he roguishly wrote the review himself or inspired it, as a kind of advertis.e.m.e.nt for the novel itself. It is certainly a challenge to the opposing party.

The _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_[74] alone seems to grasp the full significance of the satire. "We acknowledge gladly," says the reviewer, "that the author has with accuracy noted and defined the rise, development, ever-increasing contagion and plague-like prevalence of this moral pestilence; . . . that the author has penetrated deep into the knowledge of this disease and its causes." He wishes for an engraving of the Sterne hobby-horse cavalcade described in the first chapter, and begs for a second and third volume, "aus deutscher Vaterlandsliebe." Timme is called "Our German Cervantes."

The second and third volumes are reviewed[75] with a brief word of continued approbation.

A novel not dissimilar in general purpose, but less successful in accomplishment, is Wezel's "Wilhelmine Arend, oder die Gefahren der Empfindsamkeit," Dessau and Leipzig, 1782, two volumes. The book is more earnest in its conception. Its author says in the preface that his desire was to attack "Empfindsamkeit" on its dangerous and not on its comic side, hence the book avoids in the main the lighthearted and telling burlesque, the Hudibrastic satire of Timme's novel. He works along lines which lead through increasing trouble to a tragic _denouement_.

The preface contains a rather elaborate cla.s.sification of kinds of "Empfindsamkeit," which reminds one of Sterne's mock-scientific discrimination. This cla.s.sification is according to temperament, education, example, custom, reading, strength or weakness of the imagination; there is a happy, a sad, a gentle, a vehement, a dallying, a serious, a melancholy, sentimentality, the last being the most poetic, the most perilous.

The leading character, Wilhelmine, is, like most characters which are chosen and built up to exemplify a preconceived theory, quite unconvincing. In his foreword Wezel a.n.a.lyzes his heroine's character and details at some length the motives underlying the choice of attributes and the building up of her personality. This insight into the author's scaffolding, this explanation of the mechanism of his puppet-show, does not enhance the aesthetic, or the satirical force of the figure. She is not conceived in flesh and blood, but is made to order.

The story begins in letters,--a method of story-telling which was the legacy of Richardson's popularity--and this device is again employed in the second volume (Part VII). Wilhelmine Arend is one of those whom sentimentalism seized like a maddening pestiferous disease. We read of her that she melted into tears when her canary bird lost a feather, that she turned white and trembled when Dr. Braun hacked worms to pieces in conducting a biological experiment. On one occasion she refused to drive home, as this would take the horses out in the noonday sun and disturb their noonday meal,--an exorbitant sympathy with brute creation which owes its popularity to Yorick's a.s.s. It is not necessary here to relate the whole story. Wilhelmine's excessive sentimentality estranges her from her husband, a weak brutish man, who has no comprehension of her feelings. He finds a refuge in the debasing affections of a French opera-singer, Pouilly, and gradually sinks to the very lowest level of degradation. This all is accomplished by the interposition and active concern of friends, by efforts at reunion managed by benevolent intriguers and kindly advisers.

The advice of Drs. Braun and Irwin is especially significant in its sane characterization of Wilhelmine's mental disorders, and the observations upon "Empfindsamkeit" which are scattered through the book are trenchant, and often markedly clever. Wilhelmine holds sentimental converse with three kindred spirits in succession, Webson, Dittmar, and Geissing. The first reads touching tales aloud to her and they two unite their tears, a sentimental idea dating from the Maria of Moulines episode. The part which the physical body, with its demands and desires unacknowledged and despised, played as the unseen moving power in these three friendships is clearly and forcefully brought out. Allusion to Timme's elucidation of this principle, which, though concealed, underlay much of the sentimentalism of this epoch, has already been made. Finally Wilhelmine is persuaded by her friends to leave her husband, and the scene is shifted to a little Harz village, where she is married to Webson; but the unreasonableness of her nature develops inordinately, and she is unable ever to submit to any reasonable human relations, and the rest of the tale is occupied with her increasing mental aberration, her retirement to a hermit-like seclusion, and her death.

The book, as has been seen, presents a rather pitiful satire on the whole sentimental epoch, not treating any special manifestation, but applicable in large measure equally to those who joined in expressing the emotional ferment to which Sterne, "Werther" and "Siegwart" gave impulse, and for which they secured literary recognition. Wezel fails as a satirist, partly because his leading character is not convincing, but largely because his satirical exaggeration, and distortion of characteristics, which by a process of selection renders satire efficient, fails to make the exponent of sentimentalism ludicrous, but renders her pitiful. At the same time this satirical warping impairs the value of the book as a serious presentation of a prevailing malady. The book falls between two stools.

A precursor of "Wilhelmine Arend" from Wezel's own hand was "Die ungluckliche Schwache," which was published in the second volume of his "Satirische Erzahlungen."[76] In this book we have a character with a heart like the sieve of the Danaids, and to Frau Laclerc is attributed "an exaggerated softness of heart which was unable to resist a single impression, and was carried away at any time, wherever the present impulse bore it." The plot of the story, with the intrigues of Graf. Z., the Pouilly of the piece, the separation of husband and wife, their reunion, the disasters following directly in the train of weakness of heart in opposing sentimental attacks, are undoubtedly children of the same purpose as that which brought forth "Wilhelmine Arend."

Another satirical protest was, as one reads from a contemporary review, "Die Tausend und eine Masche, oder Yoricks wahres Shicksall, ein blaues Mahrchen von Herrn Stanhope" (1777, 8vo). The book purports to be the posthumous work of a young Englishman, who, disgusted with Yorick's German imitators, grew finally indignant with Yorick himself. The _Almanach der deutschen Musen_ (1778, pp. 99-100) finds that the author misjudges Yorick. The book is written in part if not entirely in verse.

In 1774 a correspondent of Wieland's _Merkur_ writes, begging this authoritative periodical to condemn a weekly paper just started in Prague, ent.i.tled "Wochentlich Etwas," which is said to be written in the style of Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey, M . . . R . . .

and "die Beytrage zur Geheimen Geschichte des menschlichen Herzens und Verstandes," and thereby is a shame to "our dear Bohemia."

In this way it is seen how from various sources and in various ways protest was made against the real or distorted message of Laurence Sterne.

[Footnote 1: I, p. 103, Lemgo.]

[Footnote 2: 1772, July 7.]

[Footnote 3: See Erich Schmidt's "Heinrich Leopold Wagner, Goethe's Jugendgenosse," 2d edition, Jena, 1879, p. 82.]

[Footnote 4: Berlin, 1779, pp. 86.]

[Footnote 5: XLIV, 1, p. 105.]

[Footnote 6: Probably Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay, the poet and fable-writer (1727-1820). The references to the _Deutsches Museum_ are respectively VI, p. 384; VIII, pp. 220-235; X, pp. 464 ff.]

[Footnote 7: "Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Vermischte Schriften,"

edited by Ludwig Christian Lichtenberg and Friedrich Kries, new edition, Gottingen, 1844-46, 8 vols.]

[Footnote 8: "Geschichte des geistigen Lebens in Deutschland,"

Leipzig, 1862, II, p. 585.]

[Footnote 9: See also Gervinus, "Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung," 5th edition, 1874, V. p. 194. "Ein Original selbst und mehr als irgend einer befahigt die humoristischen Romane auf deutschen Boden zu verpflanzen." Gervinus says also (V, p. 221) that the underlying thought of Musaus in his "Physiognomische Reisen" would, if handled by Lichtenberg, have made the most fruitful stuff for a humorous novel in Sterne's style.]

[Footnote 10: I, p. 184 f.]

[Footnote 11: III, p. 112.]

[Footnote 12: II, 11-12: "Im ersten Fall wird er nie, nach dem die Stelle voruber ist, seinen Sieg plotzlich aufgeben. So wie bei ihm sich die Leidenschaft kuhlt, kuhlt sie sich auch bei uns und er bringt uns ab, ohne da.s.s wir es wissen. Hingegen im letztern Fall nimmt er sich selten die Muhe, sich seines Sieges zu bedienen, sondern wirft den Leser oft mehr zur Bewunderung seiner Kunst, als seines Herzens in eine andere Art von Verfa.s.sung hinein, die ihn selbst nichts kostet als Witz, den Leser fast um alles bringt, was er vorher gewonnen hatte."]

[Footnote 13: V, 95.]

[Footnote 14: I, p. 136.]