The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 51

Its present intensity is due to the growth of science, for although feeling has become more realistic and matter-of-fact in these days of electricity and the microscope, love for Nature has increased with knowledge. Science has even become the investigator of religion, and the pantheistic tendency of the great poets has pa.s.sed into us, either in the idea of an all-present G.o.d, or in that of organic force working through matter--the indestructible active principle of life in the region of the visible. Our explorers combine enthusiasm for Nature with their tireless search for truth--for example, Humboldt, Haeckel, and Paul Gussfeldt; and though, as the shadow side to this light, travelling and admiration of Nature have become a fashion, yet who nowadays can watch a great sunset or a storm over the sea, and remain insensible to the impression?

Landscape painting and poetry shew the same deviations from the straight line of development as in earlier times. Our garden craft, like our architecture, is eclectic; but the English park style is still the most adequate expression of prevalent taste: s.p.a.ces of turf with tree groups, a view over land or sea, gradual change from garden to field; to which has been added a wider cultivation of foreign plants. In landscape painting the zigzag course is very marked: landscapes such as Bocklin's, entirely projected by the imagination and corresponding to nothing on earth, hang together in our galleries with the most faithful studies from Nature. It is the same with literature. In fiction, novels which perpetuate the sentimental rhapsodies of an early period, and open their chapters with forced descriptions of landscape, stand side by side with the masterly work of great writers--for example, Spielhagen, Wilhelmine von Hillern, and Theodore Storm.

In poetry, the lyric of Nature is inexhaustible. Heine, the greatest lyrist after Goethe, though his poetry has, like the Nixie, an enchantingly fair body with a fish's tail, wrote in the _Travels in the Harz_: 'How infinitely blissful is the feeling when the outer world of phenomena blends and harmonizes with the inner world of feeling; when green trees, thoughts, birds' songs, sweet melancholy, the azure of heaven, memory, and the perfume of flowers, run together and form the loveliest of arabesques.'

But his delight in Nature was spoilt by irony and straining after effect--for example, in _The Fig Tree_; and although _The Lotos Flower_ is a gem, and the _North Sea Pictures_ shew the fine eye of a poet who, like Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, can create myths, his personifications as a whole are affected, and his personal feeling is forced upon Nature for the sake of a witty effect.

Every element of Nature has found skilled interpreters both in poetry and painting, and technical facility and truth of representation now stand on one level with the appreciation of her charms.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

[Footnote 1: _Kritische Gange_. Comp. Vischer, _Ueber den optischen Formsinn,_ and Carl du Prel, _Psychologie der Lyrik_.]

[Footnote 2: As in elegy _Ghatarkarparam_.]

[Footnote 3: Comp. Humboldt, _Cosmos_. Schnaase, _Geschichte der bildenden Kunste_.]

[Footnote 4: See _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuhls bei den Griechen und Romern_, Biese.]

CHAPTER I

[Footnote 1: Lucos ac nemora consecrant deorumque nominibus adpellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident, Tac. Germ. Comp. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_.]

[Footnote 2: Grimm. Simrock, _Handbuch der Mythologie_.]

[Footnote 3: Grimm.]

[Footnote 4: Grimm.]

[Footnote 5: Grimm.]

[Footnote 6: _Geschichte der bildenden Kunste_. Comp. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsaltertumer_.]

[Footnote 7: Grimm.]

[Footnote 8: Carriere, _Die Poesie_.]

CHAPTER II

[Footnote 1: Clement of Rome, i _Cor._ 19, 20. Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_.]

[Footnote 2: Comp. _Vita S. Basilii_.]

[Footnote 3: _Basilii opera omnia_. Parisus, 1730.]

[Footnote 4: _Cosmos_.]

[Footnote 5: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuhls bei den Griechen und Romern_.]

[Footnote 6: _Melanges philosophiques, historiques, et litteraires_.]

[Footnote 7: _Homily_ 4.]

[Footnote 8: _Homily_ 6.]

[Footnote 9: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuhls bei den Griechen und Romern_.

'In spring the Cydmian apple trees give blossom watered by river streams in the hallowed garden of the nymphs; in spring the buds grow and swell beneath the leafy shadow of the vine branch. But my heart knoweth no season of respite; nay, like the Thracian blast that rageth with its lightning, so doth it bear down from Aphrodite's side, dark and fearless, with scorching frenzy in its train, and from its depths shaketh my heart with might.']

[Footnote 10: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 11: _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1879.]

[Footnote 12: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 13: Chrysostom was not only utilitarian, but praised and enjoyed the world's beauty. From the fifth to third century, Greek progress in feeling for Nature can be traced from unconscious to conscious pleasure in her beauty.]

[Footnote 14: _De Mortalitate_, cap. 4.]

[Footnote 15: _Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Literatur_.]

[Footnote 16: When one thinks of Sappho, Simonides, Theocritus, Meleager, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace, it cannot be denied that this is true of Greek and Roman lyric.]

[Footnote 17: As in the Homeric time, when each sphere of Nature was held to be subject to and under the influence of its special deity.

But it cannot be admitted that metaphor was freer and bolder in the hymns; on the contrary, it was very limited and monotonous.]

[Footnote 18: In _Cathemerinon_.]

[Footnote 19: Comp. fragrant gardens of Paradise, Hymn 3.

In Hamartigenia he says that the evil and ugly in Nature originates in the devil.]

[Footnote 20: Ebert.]

[Footnote 21: The Robinsonade of the hermit Bonosus upon a rocky island is interesting.]

[Footnote 22: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 23: Comp. _ad Paulinum_, epist. 19, _Monum. German._ v. 2.]

[Footnote 24: _Carm. nat. 7._]