The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Vii Part 6

SUMMARY

Such, then, is the organic totality of the several arts the external art of architecture, the objective art of sculpture, and the subjective arts of painting, music, and poetry. The higher principle from which these are derived we have found in the types of art, the symbolic, the cla.s.sical, and the romantic, which form the universal phases of the idea of beauty itself. Thus symbolic art finds its most adequate reality and most perfect application in architecture, in which it is self-complete, and is not yet reduced, so to speak, to the inorganic medium for another art. The cla.s.sical form of art, on the other hand, attains its most complete realization in sculpture, while it accepts architecture only as forming an inclosure round its products and is as yet not capable of developing painting and music as absolute expressions of its meaning. The romantic type of art, finally, seizes upon painting, music, and poetry as its essential and adequate modes of expression.

Poetry, however, is in conformity with all types of the beautiful and extends over them all, because its characteristic element is the esthetic imagination, and imagination is necessary for every product of art, to whatever type it may belong.

Thus what the particular arts realize in individual artistic creations are, according to the philosophic conception, simply the universal types of the self-unfolding idea of beauty. Out of the external realization of this idea arises the wide Pantheon of art, whose architect and builder is the self-developing spirit of beauty, for the completion of which, however, the history of the world will require its evolution of countless ages.

THE LIFE OF BETTINA VON ARNIM

BY HENRY WOOD, PH.D. Professor of German, Johns Hopkins University

The ten years succeeding the publication of _Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde_ (1835) coincided in point of time with the awakening in England, through Thomas Carlyle, and in America as well, of an intense if not yet profound interest in German Literature. It must remain a tribute to the ideal enthusiasm of the movement that, among the first German works to receive a permanent welcome and become domiciled in American literary circles, was that strange and glittering ma.s.s, flotsam of a great poet's life dislodged and jettisoned from his personality by the subtle arts of the "Child" who had now gathered it up again and was presenting it to the astonished world. At a time when the _Foreign Quarterly Review_ in England (1838) was vainly endeavoring to persuade "Madame von Arnim" not to undertake the translation of her work, "whose unrestrained effusions far exceed the-bounds authorized by English decorum," Margaret Fuller was preparing in Boston to translate Bettina's _Gunderode_, and soon felt herself in a position to state[3] that "_Goethe's Correspondence with a Child_ is as popular here as in Germany." In one respect, indeed, Bettina's vogue in America remained for the rest of her lifetime more secure than in her own country, where the publication of her later politico-sociological works, _Dies Buch gehort dem Konig_ (1843) and _Gesprache mit Damonen_ (1852), was followed by a temporary eclipse of her popularity, and where also her fate, in persistently a.s.sociating her with Rahel, the wife of Varnhagen, as a foil for Rahel's brilliant but transitory glitter, had tarnished her own fame.[4]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BETTINA VON ARNIM]

For these things American readers of the _Correspondence_ seem to have cared but little. While German critics were deliberating as to what grouping of characteristics could best express Bettina as a type, the American public had already discovered in her a rare personality--the recipient and custodian of Frau Rat's fondest memories of Goethe's childhood; the "mythological nurse-maid,"[5] to whom, though in her proper name as well as to her first-born son, successive editions of Grimm's _Fairy Tales_ had been dedicated; the youthful friend of Beethoven, from whom she had received treasured confidences as to the influence exerted by Goethe's verse upon his mind and art; at times the haunting Muse of Germany's greatest poet and, since 1811, the wife of the most chivalrous of German poets, Achim von Arnim. If we add to these characteristics the circ.u.mstance that, as Arnim's wife and as the mother of their rarely endowed children, she had become the centre of a distinguished and devoted circle in the Mark Brandenburg and in the Prussian capital, the distance separating us from Ben Jonson's att.i.tude in his Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke is no longer very great: "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother."[6]

It is, nevertheless, not through the aid of Ben Jonson's line, "fair and wise and good as she," that Bettina may be described. She suggests far rather an electrical, inspired, lyrical nature. The spokesman of this literary estimate of Bettina was Margaret Fuller, and it is interesting to note that this best of American critics at once inst.i.tuted a comparison between Bettina and Karoline von Gunderode, in which the former was made to stand for Nature and the latter for Art. But it appears to have escaped notice that Margaret Fuller, in presenting her example of the artistic type, has, with no express intention, given us a picture of herself.[7] The subtle harmonies, the soft aerial grace, the multiplied traits, the soul delicately appareled, the soft dignity of each look and gesture, the silvery spiritual clearness of an angel's lyre, drawing from every form of life its eternal meaning--these are all lineaments of the Countess of Pembroke type, and these characteristics Margaret Fuller herself shared. How different is her description of Bettina!

"Bettina, hovering from object to object, drawing new tides of vital energy from all, living freshly alike in man and tree, loving the breath of the damp earth as well as the flower which springs from it, bounding over the fences of society as well as over the fences of the field, intoxicated with the apprehension of each new mystery, never hushed into silence by the highest, flying and singing like a bird, sobbing with the hopelessness of an infant, prophetic, yet astonished at the fulfilment of each prophecy, restless, fearless, clinging to love, yet unwearied in experiment--is not this the pervasive vital force, cause of the effect which we call Nature?"

On the part of both Goethe and Bettina, there was always a recognition of such a natural force operating in her. As Gunderode once put it, "Bettina seems like clay, which a divine artificer, preparing to fashion it into something rare, is treading with his feet." On the 13th of August, 1807, Bettina wrote: "Farewell, glorious one, thou who dost both dazzle and intimidate me. From this steep cliff [Goethe] upon which my love has risked the climb, there is no possible path down again. That is not to be thought of; I should simply break my neck." Goethe's reply, in this as in other cases, was characteristic: "What can one say or give to thee, which thou hast not after thy own fashion already appropriated?

There is nothing left for me but to keep still, and let thee have thy way." In this pa.s.sage-at-arms, the whole of the _Correspondence_, though not its charm, is concentrated. Goethe was intent on keeping the relationship within its first limitations, that is to say, as a friendship in which his mother, Frau Rat, was included as a necessary third party. The impetuous young _confidante_ was already transmitting to Goethe chapters from the history of his childhood, as seen through the communications of his mother to her. These had given the poet the purest pleasure, and he intended making use of them for his Autobiography.[8] But, on the other hand, as soon as Bettina risked independent judgments on his creations, as in the case of the _Elective Affinities_ (1809), her inadequacy and her presumption in claiming for herself the role of a better Ottilie were both painfully apparent. Her att.i.tude toward the adored object was a combination of meekness and pretension, the latter predominating as time went on. "It was sung at my cradle, that I must love a star that should always remain apart. But thou [Goethe] hast sung me a cradle song, and to that song, which lulls me into a dream on the fate of my days, I must listen to the end of my days." To this humility succeeded the self-deception of the so-called later Diary. Under date of March 22, 1832, Bettina relates that Goethe, at their last interview in the early days, had called her his Muse.

Hence, on learning of his death, she reproached herself for ever having left him--"the tree of whose fame, with its eternally budding shoots, had been committed to my care. Alas for the false world, which separated us, and led me, poor blind child, away from my master!" Margaret Fuller[9] called Goethe "my parent." But how sharp is the contrast between her tone of reverent affection and the umbrageous jealousy of Bettina!

And Goethe? While the poet safeguarded his fatherly relation to Bettina, up to the break in 1811, in a hundred ways, we find him already, in 1807, inclosing in a letter to his mother the text of Sonnet I., which had been inspired, in the first instance, by his friendship with Minna Herzlieb. Bettina, left to draw her own conclusions, at once identified herself with "Oreas" in the sonnet, and reproached herself for having plunged, like a mountain avalanche, into the broad, full current of the poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration was, in a sense, necessary to Goethe's fame. In her fond, mystical interpretation of the sonnets, her heart seems to her the fruitful furrow, the earth-womb, in which Goethe's songs are sown, and out of which, accompanied by birth-pangs for her, they are destined to soar aloft as heavenly poems. She closes with a partial application to herself of the Biblical text (Luke 1. 40): "Blessed art thou among women."

Goethe's detractors, particularly among the literary school called Young Germany, were fond of repeating the insinuation of f.a.n.n.y Tarnow (1835), that the poet prized in Bettina only her capacity for idolizing him. But Goethe's att.i.tude toward the "Child" was far removed from that of poet-pasha, and Bettina had nothing of the vacuous odalisque in her composition. G. von Loper has well said of her composite traits: "The tender radiance of first youth hovers over her descriptions; but, while one is beholding, Bettina suddenly changes into a mischievous elf, and, if we reach out to grasp the kobold, lo! a sibyl stands before us!"

Behind all Bettina's mobility there is a force of individuality, as irresistible and as recurrent as the tides. Her brother Clemens and her brother-in-law Savigny tried in vain to temper the violence of her enthusiasm for the insurgent Tyrolese, of her flaming patriotism, of her hatred of philistinism in every form, of her scorn for the then fashionable neutrality and moderation in the expression of political opinion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GOETHE MONUMENT (BY BETTINA NON ARNIM)]

She was by nature and choice the advocate of the oppressed, whenever and wherever met with. The aristocratic _elegant_ Rumohr was obliged to put up with the following from her: "Why are you not willing to exchange your boredom, your melancholy caprices, for a rifle? With your figure, slender as a birch, you could leap over abysses and spring from rock to rock; but you are lazy and infected with the disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the enemy? On, on, for G.o.d, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero, fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they must lack thee awhile."

The end of poets' friendships with literary women is not always marked by an anticlimax. Of Margaret Fuller, Emerson wrote in the privacy of his Journal: "I have no friend whom I more wish to be immortal than she.

An influence I cannot spare, but would always have at hand for recourse." Words like these Bettina was continually listening for from her poet-idol, but she heard instead only the disillusioning echo of her own enthusiasms. Possessing neither stability of mind nor any consistent roundness of character, she was incapable of rendering herself necessary to Goethe. In her case, however, the gifts that were denied at her cradle seem to have been more than made up to her. Her ardent and aspiring soul, shutting out "all thoughts, all pa.s.sions, all delights"

else, was distilled into longing to share in the unending life of Goethe's poesy.[10]

Through the possession of this quality, Bettina, though not herself of heroic mold, enters the society of the great heroines and speaks to posterity. Ariadne on the island of Naxos lives not more truly in Ovid's poetical _Epistles_, than Bettina in the _Correspondence_. But Bettina has not, like Ariadne, had immortality conferred upon her through the verses of two great poets. She has rather taken it for herself, as Goethe said she was wont to do, in antic.i.p.ating every gift. It is accordingly not in the _Elegiacs_ of Ovid, flowing as a counter-stream to Lethe, that we may discern Bettina's gesture of immortal repose as a metamorphosed heroine. She is a type of the inspired lyrical nature, a belated child of the Renaissance. A graceful English song-writer of the Elizabethan period, Thomas Campion, who was as fond as Bettina of the figure of the flower and the sun, through which she symbolized her relation to Goethe, has in his verses antic.i.p.ated her pose and her tone of agitated expectancy:

"Is [he] come? O how near is [he]?

How far yet from this friendly place?

How many steps from me?

When shall I [him] embrace?

These armes I'll spread, which only at (his) sight shall close, Attending, as the starry flower that the sun's noone-tide knowes."

Campion termed his verses _Light Conceits of Lovers_. It is difficult to weigh Bettina's fancies, for she has, as it were, taken the scales with her when she closed the _Correspondence:_ but it is only just to say of her Letters, that they realize, as a whole, Ta.s.so's description of the permanent state of the true lover: "Brama a.s.sai, poco spera e nulla chiede" (Desire much, hope little and nothing demand).

GOETHE'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH A CHILD (1835)

BY BETTINA VON ARNIM TRANSLATED BY WALLACE SMITH MURRAY

LETTERS TO GOETHE'S MOTHER

May 11, 1807.

Dear Frau Rat:

I have been lying in bed for some time, but shall get up now to write you all about our trip. I wrote you that we pa.s.sed through the military lines in male attire. Just before we reached the city gate my brother-in-law made us get out, because he wanted to see how becoming the clothes were. Lulu looked very well in them, for she has a splendid figure and the fit was perfect, whereas all my clothes were too loose and too long and looked as if I had bought them at a rag fair. My brother-in-law laughed at me and said I looked like a Savoyard boy and could be of great service to them. The coachman had driven us off the road through a forest, and when we came to a cross-road he didn't know which way to turn. Although it was only the beginning of the four weeks'

trip, I was afraid we might get lost and then arrive in Weimar too late.

I climbed up the highest pine and soon saw where the main road lay. I made the whole trip on the driver's box, with a fox-skin cap on my head and the brush hanging down my back. Whenever we arrived at a station, I would unharness the horses and help hitch up the fresh ones, and would speak broken German with the postilions as though I were a Frenchman. At first we had beautiful weather, just as though spring were coming; but soon it turned very cold and wintry. We pa.s.sed through a forest of huge pines and firs all covered with frost; everything was spotless, for not a soul had driven along the road, which was absolutely white. Moreover the moon shone upon this deserted paradise of silver; a death-like stillness reigned-only the wheels creaked from the cold. I sat up on the box and wasn't a bit cold; winter weather strikes sparks from me! Along toward midnight we heard some one whistling in the forest. My brother-in-law handed me a pistol out of the carriage and asked whether I should have the courage to shoot in case robbers came along. I said "Yes," and he answered, "But don't shoot too soon." Lulu, who was inside the carriage, was frightened nearly to death, but where I was, out under the open sky, with my pistol c.o.c.ked and my sabre buckled on, countless stars twinkled above me, the glistening trees casting their gigantic shadows on the broad, moon-lit way--all that made me brave away up on my lofty seat! Then I thought of _him_ and wondered, if he had met me under such circ.u.mstances in his youthful years, whether it would not have made so poetic an impression on him that he would have composed sonnets to me and never have forgotten me. Now perhaps he thinks differently, and has probably risen above such a magic impression. It may be that higher qualities--how shall I ever attain them?--will maintain a right over him, unless eternal fidelity, cleaving to his threshold, finally wins _him_ for me! Such was my mood on that cold, clear, winter night, in which I found no occasion to shoot off my pistol. Not until daybreak did I receive permission to fire it. The carriage stopped and I ran into the forest and bravely shot it off into the dense solitude, in honor of your son. In the meantime our axle had broken; we felled a tree with an axe we had with us and bound it securely with ropes; then my brother-in-law discovered how handy I was and complimented me. Thus we went on to Magdeburg. Precisely at seven o'clock in the evening the fortress gates are closed; we arrived just a minute late and had to wait outside till seven the next morning. It wasn't very cold, and the two inside the chaise went to sleep. In the night it began to snow; I had pulled my cloak over my head and sat quietly in my exposed seat. In the morning they peeped out of the carriage at me and beheld a snow man; but before they could get thoroughly frightened I threw off the cloak under which I had kept quite warm. In Berlin I was like a blind man in a throng and was so absent-minded that I could take no interest in anything. I only longed for a dark place where I shouldn't be disturbed and could think of the future that was so near at hand. Oh, mother, mother, think of your son! If you knew you were to see him in a short time, you too would be like a lightning-rod attracting every flash of lightning. When we were only a few miles from Weimar, my brother-in-law said he did not wish to make the detour through Weimar, but would rather take another road. I remained silent, but Lulu would not hear of it; she said it had been promised me and he would have to keep his word. Oh, mother, the sword hung by a hair over my head, but I managed to escape from under it.

We reached Weimar at twelve o'clock and sat down to dinner, but I couldn't eat. The other two lay down on the sofa and went to sleep, for we hadn't slept in three nights. "I advise you," said my brother-in-law, "to take a rest too; it won't make much difference to Goethe whether you go to see him or not, and there's nothing remarkable to see in him anyway." Can you imagine how these words discouraged me? Oh, I didn't know what to do, all alone in a strange town. I had changed my dress and stood at the window and looked at the town clock; it was just striking half-past two. It seemed to me, too, that Goethe wouldn't care particularly about seeing me; I remembered that people called him proud.

I compresses my heart to quell its yearning. Suddenly the clock struck three, and then it seemed exactly as though he had called me. I ran down for the servant, but there was no carriage to be found. "Will a sedan chair do?" "No," I said, "that's an equipage for the hospital"--and we went on foot. There was a regular chocolate porridge in the streets and I had to have myself carried over the worst bogs. In this way I came to Wieland, not to your son. I had never seen Wieland, but I pretended to be an old acquaintance. He thought and thought, and finally said, "You certainly are a dear familiar angel, but I can't seem to remember when and where I have seen you." I jested with him and said, "Now I know that you dream of me, for you can't possibly have seen me elsewhere!" I had him give me a note to your son which I afterwards took with me and kept as a souvenir. Here's a copy of it: "Bettina Brentano, Sophie's sister, Maximilian's daughter, Sophie La Roche's granddaughter wishes to see you, dear brother, and pretends that she's afraid of you and that a note from me would serve as a talisman and give her courage. Although I am pretty certain that she is merely making sport of me, I nevertheless have to do what she wants and I shall be astonished if you don't have the same experience. W.

April 23, 1807."

With this note I sallied forth. The house lies opposite the fountain--how deafening the waters sounded in my ears! I ascended the simple staircase; in the wall stand plaster statues which impose silence--at any rate I couldn't utter a sound in this sacred hallway.

Everything is cheery and yet solemn! The greatest simplicity prevails in the rooms, and yet it is all so inviting! "Do not fear," said the modest walls, "he will come, and he will be, and he will not claim to be _more_ than you." And then the door opened and there he stood, solemnly serious, with his eyes fixed upon me. I stretched out my hands toward him, I believe, and soon I knew no more. Goethe caught me up quickly to his heart. "Poor child, did I frighten you?"--those were the first words through which his voice thrilled my heart. He led me into his room and placed me on the sofa opposite him. There we sat, both mute, until at last he broke the silence. "You have doubtless read in the paper that we suffered a great bereavement a few days ago in the death of the d.u.c.h.ess Amalia."

"Oh," I said, "I do not read the papers."

"Why, I thought everything that goes on in Weimar interests you."

"No, nothing interests me but you alone, and therefore I'm far too impatient to pore over the papers."

"You are a kind child." A long pause--I, glued in such anxiety to the odious sofa; you know how impossible it is for me to sit up in such well-bred fashion. Oh, mother, is it possible for any one to forget herself thus?

Suddenly I said, "I can't stay here on this sofa any longer," and jumped up.

"Well," said he, "make yourself comfortable;" and with that I flew into his arms. He drew me on his knee and pressed me to his heart. Everything was quiet, oh, so quiet, and then all vanished. I hadn't slept for so long--years had pa.s.sed in longing for him--and I fell asleep on his breast. When I awoke a new life began for me. I'll not write you more this time.

BETTINA.

May, 1807.

* * * Yes, man has a conscience; it exhorts him to fear nothing and to leave no demand of the heart unsatisfied. Pa.s.sion is the only key to the world and through it the spirit learns to know and feel everything, for how could he enter the world otherwise? And so I feel that only through my love for him am I born into the spirit, that only through him the world is opened to me where the sun shines and day becomes distinct from night. The things I do not learn through this love, I shall never comprehend. I wish I were a poor beggar girl and might sit at his door-step, and take a morsel of bread from him, and that in my glance my soul would be revealed to him. Then he would draw me close to him and wrap me in his cloak, that I might grow warm. Surely he would not bid me depart; I could remain, wandering on and on in his home. And so the years would roll by and no one would know who I am and no one would know what had become of me, and thus the years and life itself would go by.

The whole world would be mirrored in his face, and I should have no need of learning anything more.* * *