The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 55

[Footnote 7: Comp. Erich Schmidt, _Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe_.

Jena, 1875.]

[Footnote 8: Remarks on several parts of Italy. London, 1761.]

[Footnote 9: Letters of Lady M. Wortley Montagu, Sept. 25, 1718.]

[Footnote 10: Friedlander, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 11: Schmidt. Moser's description of a sensitive soul in _Patriotischen Phantasien_ is most amusing.]

[Footnote 12: Laprade adduces little of importance in his book _Le Sentiment de la Nature_ (2nd edition), the first volume of which I have dealt with elsewhere. I have little in common with Laprade, although he is the only writer who has treated the subject comprehensively and historically. His standpoint is that of Catholic theology; he never separates feeling for Nature from religion, and is severe upon unbelievers. The book is well written, and in parts clever, but only touches the surface and misses much. His position is thus laid down: 'Le vrai sentiment de la Nature, le seul poetique, le seul fecond et puissant, le seul innocent de tout danger, est celui qui ne separe jamais l'idee des choses visibles de la pensee de Dieu.' He accounts for the lack of any important expressions of feeling for Nature in French cla.s.sics with: 'Le genie de la France est le genie de l'action.' and 'L'ame humaine est le but de la poesie.' He recognizes that even with Fenelon 'la Nature reste a ses yeux comme une simple decoration du drame que l'homme y joue, le poete en lui ne la regarde jamais a travers les yeux du mystique.' Of the treatment of Nature in La Fontaine's Fables, he says: 'Ce n'est pas peindre la Nature, c'est l'abolir'; and draws this conclusion: 'Le sentiment de l'infini est absent de la poesie du dix-septieme siecle aussi bien que le sentiment de la Nature'; and again: 'L'esprit general du dix-huitieme siecle est la negation meme de la poesie ... l'amour de la Nature n'etait guerre autre chose qu'une haine deguisee et une declaration de guerre a la societe et a la religion. Il n'y a pai trace du sentiment legitime et profond qui attire l'artiste et le poete vers les splendeurs de la creation, revelatrices du monde invisible. Ne demandez pas an dix-huiteme siecle la poesie de la Nature, pas plus que celle du coeur.' Buffon shews 'l'etat poetique des sciences de la Nature,' but his brilliant prose painting lacks 'la presence de Dieu, la revelation de l'infini les harmonies de l'ame et de la Nature n'existent pas pour Buffon....

plus de la rhetorique que de vrai sentiment de la Nature.']

[Footnote 13: Comp. the garden of Elysium in _La Nouvelle Heloise:_ Where the gardener's hand is nowhere to be discerned, nothing contradicts the idea of a desert island, and I cannot perceive any footsteps of men ... you see nothing here in an exact row, nothing level, Nature plants nothing by the ruler.']

[Footnote 14: _OEuvres de Jacques Bernardin Henri de Saint Pierre_.]

[Footnote 15: 'B. de S. Pierre a plus que Rousseau les facultes propres du paysagiste, l'amour meme du pittoresque, la vive curiosite des sites, des animaux, et des plants, la couleur et une certaine magie speciale du pinceau,' Laprade adds the reproof: 'Sa pensee religieuse est au-dessous de son talent d'artiste et en abaisse le niveau.']

[Footnote 16: _Voyage round the World_, 1772-1775.]

[Footnote 17: Paul Lemnius, 1597, _Landes Rugiae_; Kosegarten, 1777-1779; Rellstab, 1799, _Ausflucht noch der Insel Rugen;_ Navest, 1800, _Wanderungen durch die Insel Rugen_; Grumbke, 1805; _Indigena, Streifzuge durch das Rugenland_. J.P. Hackert in 1762, and K. D.

Friedrichs in 1792, painted the scenery. Comp. E. Boll, _Die Inset Rugen_, 1858.]

CHAPTER XII

[Footnote 1: Comp. Gottschall, _Poetik_. Breslau, 1853.]

[Footnote 2: _Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Volker_, Samtliche _Werke_, Teil 7.]

[Footnote 3: _Op. cit._, Teil 15.]

[Footnote 4: _Zur Philosophie und Gesehichte,_ 2 Teil.]

[Footnote 5: J.G. Sulzer's _Unterredungen uber die Schonheit der Natur nebst desselben moralischen Betrachtungen uber besondere Gegenstande der Naturlehre_ is typical. Charites describes his conversion to the love of Nature by his friend Eukrates. Eukrates woke him at dawn and led him to a hill close by, as the sun rose. The fresh air, the birds' songs, and the wide landscape move him, and Eukrates points out that the love of Nature is the 'most natural of pleasures,' making the labourer so happy that he forgets servitude and misery, and sings at his work. 'This pleasure is always new to us, and the heart, provided it be not possessed by vanity or stormy pa.s.sions, lies always open to it. Do you not know that they who are in trouble, and, above all, they who are in love, find their chief relief here? Is not a sick man better cheered by sunshine than by any other refreshment?' Then he points out Nature's harmonies and changes of colour, and warns Charites to avoid the storms of the pa.s.sions.

'Yonder brook is a picture of our soul; so long as it runs quietly between its banks, the water is clear and gra.s.s and flowers border it; but when it swells and flows tumultuously, all this ornament is torn away, and it becomes turbid. To delight in Nature the mind must be free.... She is a sanct.i.ty only approached by pure souls.... As only the quiet stream shews the sky and the objects around, so it is only on quiet souls that Nature's pictures are painted; ruffled water reflects nothing.' He waxes eloquent about birds' songs, flowers, and brooks, and wanders by the hour in the woods, 'all his senses open to Nature's impressions,' which are 'rays from that source of all beauty, the sight of which will one day bless the soul.' His friend is soon convinced that Nature cannot be overpraised, and that her art is endlessly great.]

[Footnote 6: _Vorn Gefuhl des Schonen und Physiologie uberhaupt._ Winter.]

[Footnote 7: Comp. _Das Fluchtigste_. 'Tadle nicht der Nachtigallen, Bald verhallend susses Lied,' oder 'Nichts verliert sich,' etc.]

[Footnote 8: Herder's _Nachla.s.s_, Duntzer und F.G. von Herder, 1857.]

[Footnote 9: Bernay's _Der junge Goethe_.]

[Footnote 10: _Die Sprodde, Die Bekehrte, Marz, l.u.s.t und Qual, Luna, Gegenwart_.]

[Footnote 11: Laprade is all admiration for the 'incomparable artiste et poete inspire du sentiment de la Nature, c'est qu'il excelle a peindre le monde exterieur et le coeur humain l'un par l'autre, qu'il mele les images de l'univers visible a l'expression des sentiments intimes, de maniere a n'en former qu'un seul tissu.... Tous les elements d'un objet d'une situation apparaissent a la fois, et dans leur harmonie, essentielle a cet incomparable esprit.' He is astonished at the symbolism in _Werthtr_: 'Chaque lettre repond a la saison ou elle est ecrite.... l'idee et l'image s'identifient dans un fait supreme, dans un cri; il se fait entre l'emotion intime et l'impression du dehors une sorte de fusion.' And despite Goethe's Greek paganism and pantheism, he declares: 'Le nom de Goethe marque une de ces grandes dates, une de ces grandes revolutions de la poesie--la plus grande, nous le croyons, depuis Homer.' ... 'Goethe est la plus haut expression poetique des tendances de notre siecle vers le monde exterieur et la philosophie de la Nature.']

[Footnote 12: Comp. _Tagebucher und Briefe Goethe's aus Italien an Frau von Stein und Herder_. E. Schmidt, Weimar, 1886.]

[Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.]

[Footnote 14: _The Lady of the Lake_ breathes a delightful freshness, the very spirit of mountain and wood, free alike from the moral preaching of Wordsworth, and from the storms of pa.s.sion.]

[Footnote 15: Laprade.]

[Footnote 16: 'Sa formule religieuse, c'est une question; sa pensee, c'est le doute ... l'artiste divinise chaque detail. Son pantheisme ne s'applique pas seulement a l'ensemble des choses; Dieu tout entier est reellement present poor lui dans chaque fragment de matiere dans le plus immonde animal ... c'est une religion aussi vieille que l'humanite decline; cela s'appelle purement et simplement le fetichisme.' (Laprade.)]

[Footnote 17: _Vorschule der aesthetik_. Compare 'With every genius a new Nature is created for us in the further unveiling of the old.' 2 Aufi. _Berlin Reimer_, 1827.]

[Footnote 18: 'Like a lily softly swaying in the hushed air, so my being moves in its elements, in the charming dream of her.' 'Our souls rush forward in colossal plans, like exulting streams rushing perpetually through mountain and forest.' 'If the old mute rock of Fate did not stand opposing them, the waves of the heart would never foam so beautifully and become mind.' 'There is a night in the soul which no gleam of starlight, not even dry wood, illuminates,' etc.]

[Footnote 19: Comp. Tieck's _Biographie von Koepke_. Brandes.]

[Footnote 20: _Franz Sternbald_, I. Berlin, 1798.]

[Footnote 21: Haym, _Die romantische Schule_. Berlin, 1870.]

[Footnote 22: _Phantasus_, i. Berlin, 1812.]

[Footnote 23: 'A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the mountains in a thoughtful mood beside his fowling-piece, while the noise of the water and the woods was sounding through the solitude ... it grew darker ... the birds of night began to shoot with fitful wing along their mazy courses ... unthinkingly he pulled a straggling root from the earth, and on the instant heard with affright a stifled moan underground, which winded downwards in doleful tones, and died plaintively away in the deep distance. The sound went through his inmost heart; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was expiring in its agony.'

(Runenberg.)]

[Footnote 24: _Hymnen an die Nacht_.]

[Footnote 25: In _Die Lehrlinge von Sais_.]

[Footnote 26: _Athenaum_, iii., 1800.]