The Rudolf Steiner Archive

M. E. delle Grazie

The principle of modern naturalism is to depict people and their fates as they are. With this aesthetic commonplace, many a so-called critic believes himself justified today when he brazenly praises literary products that are only capable of being given a temporary illusory grandeur by the savagery of our times. At present, a "love drama" is being performed daily in a large theater in Berlin, which is nothing more than a few excellent lyrical scenes set in a dramatic plot that is actually stupid and which is also carried by a stupid person. "Youth" is the name of the thing, it could also be called "imbecility". Because an imbecile ensures the continuation of the constantly faltering plot, the same imbecile brings about the conflict and the catastrophe. Fate itself has become imbecile in this drama, because it becomes reality in the person of an imbecile. I am well aware that there will be "very clever" people who will say to me: I just didn't understand the whole thing in its poignant tragedy, in its character copied from reality. But I also know that today people make judgments about the real character of artistic creations whose eye for real conditions barely exceeds the length of their nose tenfold. Every philistine who has acquired a few aesthetic phrases and who sees nothing more in every human being and every human destiny than the imprint of the template that his dozen brains have turned, speaks today of "figures and relationships copied from reality". I have often heard it said that the old and young pastors in Max Halbe's "Youth" are portrayed entirely in accordance with real life. I have only been able to see that Mr. Halbe has portrayed two clergymen, as the assessor X and the grammar school teacher Y portray themselves. That is why I am not surprised when Assessor X and secondary school teacher Y take pleasure in the "youth". Of course, they only do so if they are "exceptional people" for whom moral indignation is a reactionary prejudice. Overcoming moral indignation is pretty much the only thing that modern naturalistic philistinism can achieve. "Modernism" does not get beyond this abc.

The fact that there are moving forces in the human soul and in the social organism that derive their origin from things other than tickled nerves, that there is a truth that does not have its regulators on the surface of the body: Messrs Bahr and Hartleben, etc., etc., know very little about this. I am bored when a "poet" presents me with people in three acts who would not interest me for a moment in life.

That's why I perk up when, amidst the dull chatter of modern authors, I see a work of art in which a whole person introduces me to people and circumstances that only those whose eyes are not clouded by a slavish attachment to the everyday can see through. And such works of art are the two stories by M. E. delle Grazie that I want to talk about here. Delle Grazie does not portray people as if someone were walking around them, taking pictures of them, but creates figures in such a way that we see the individual soul forces that determine their lives. "The Rebel" is the title of the first story. It centers on a Hungarian gypsy from the Tisza region, where no Western European culture has made people's brains so rigid that we can pretty much guess their character from their title and office. Of course, Lajos the Gypsy did not earn a doctorate in philosophy, but neither did school, his time in office, social chatter and philistine reading determine his feelings and thoughts. And Lajos has risen to the heights of humanity; he has acquired a view of life that is capable of making [him] recognize existence in its true form, that makes him a wise man among fools and that allows [him] to see the truth where others only worship hypocritical masks. Lajos is a personality who has been cheated of his happiness by the world, but who is strong enough to do without this happiness, which he could only have owed to lies. Lajos loved a girl, the natural daughter of a count. A nobleman tries to steal his beloved away from him. She leaves the poor gypsy for the sake of the nobleman's seducer. The gypsy is seized by an almost infinite feeling of revenge against the latter. He seeks out all the places where he suspects the robber of his fortune in order to kill him. He searches in vain for a long time, but finally finds him sleeping by the road, his shotgun beside him. It would be easy to kill the enemy with his own weapon. At that moment, Lajos' revenge turns to contempt; he finds that the wretch's life is not worth being destroyed by him.

Lajos describes the feelings that seized him at the moment when his opponent's life was in his power with the words: "He turned pale to the lips, his knees trembled as if he had caught the Danube fever, and suddenly he pulled down his hat and saluted me deeply ... and smiled like a fool ... Then I felt so well, so well, I tell you, for now I knew that one could do even worse to one's enemy than murder him, and that my torment was over, because I could no longer hate the one standing before me; it came into my throat like disgust - I spat out against him, threw the shotgun back into the reeds, took my fiddle and left ..." And then he says of the man he has humiliated: "Wherever he can, he rants at me to the people, and would love to set the pandurs and the magistrate on my neck, but he can't say anything right against me, and he won't even say that he was too bad to kill me! But he is like air to me; even if I have to breathe it in, I can always give it back - there! That's how indifferent he is to me!" The experience with the nobleman became a source of great insight for Lajos. He realized how to look at the world without hate and love. "What happened to my love, what happened to my hatred?" he says. "It's all over, and back then I thought I was going to die! Anyone who has experienced something like this in himself becomes calm and cannot do wrong even to his enemy!" "If I have bad eyesight and bump my head on a post - is it the post's fault or mine? The post is there and has its right, and I am there and would also have my right if my eyes weren't bad - I could avoid it, couldn't I? And if I could like a good-for-nothing and hate a scoundrel, wasn't I just so blind? They weren't, and that's why I had to bang my heart and skull against them like the post! But who am I to believe when I can deceive myself like that, when every man is twice: as he was born and as I think he is? And do I know what I am like? Many people avoid me - they do me no harm, but they want to do me even less good!

Why is that? Have I done something wrong? Well, they're right too! I think to myself, because everyone who lives only wants themselves, even if they think they like someone else so much!" These are words of wisdom that only a life to which existence has revealed itself without veil can give birth to. There are two ways of speaking such words. On the one hand, they appear to us like distilled products from the retort of scholarship: ethereal, fleeting, abstract, as pure thoughts. At other times they approach us like fate itself, which is embodied in language. Then they are not merely expressed thoughts, but forces that act on us like life itself. And then we feel towards the one who expresses them, as delle Grazie describes the tramp: "His simple figure gradually grew into the infinite for me, and he strode over my native earth like a shadow of the one who taught thousands of years ago in distant India what the tramp only felt darkly and expressed unclearly: "From life is born suffering, from suffering is born fear; he who is redeemed from life knows no suffering - where would fear come from?" People call Lajos a "rebel" because he despises them. And the nobleman says of him: "He is capable of anything." But these words mean nothing more than that the nobleman is incapable of recognizing how the poor gypsy's independent soul can express itself. For him, it is an element that is moved by forces that work from depths of which the average brain has no idea. The unknown, the dark forces in the gypsy's head and heart fill the nobleman with a feeling of dread. He only feels safe with people who, like himself, have inherited their character from their forefathers, or with those who have had their sense of slavery beaten out of them. Aesthetes of experience and slaves to facts will deny me the right to say: I find this gypsy drawn with deep psychological truth. For I will be honest and confess that I have never met a gypsy of this kind. But you don't need to have met a real-life original for every artistic education in order to form an opinion about the truth of the depiction. You only need to have an eye for what is possible in life. The gypsy in delle Grazie's story is true to life, which is possible in every course. In this work in particular, the artist proves herself to be a fine connoisseur of secret soul moods. No idea of the nature of the "gypsy" type obscures her ability to characterize an individuality that is quite unique and different from any other. Anyone who raises the question in the face of this characterization: can a Gypsy be like this, is incapable of understanding the narrative. Only those who have discovered the secret of individuality can characterize it. It is a completely empty saying of people without any artistic sensibility: the great poet does not portray individuals, but "types". In life, too, a person only begins to interest us when he ceases to be a type. A person who is only portrayed according to his typical characteristics is not much more than a puppet. What the real artist depicts is always the individual. But most people's imagination fails where the individual in the other person confronts them. That is why the far too many do not feel the "uniqueness" of genuine fantasy creations at all.

Two other "rebels" stand opposite the gypsy, the rebel of thought and feeling, in delle Grazie's story: Istvän, the former political rebel and hero of freedom, who, at the side of his "practical" Susi, has risen to the much-admired heights of the "real politician", and Bändi, whose rebel soul unleashes itself in the wildest curses, but without the revolutionary fire in his chest preventing him for the time being from serving as a coachman for the nobleman, whom he would like to sic all the devils on. The last two "rebels" are put up with by the society of comfort-seekers, for the Istväns are harmless if their Susis have the opportunity to put on fat comfortably, and the Bändis may grumble, but they make useful beasts of burden. These rebels are not feared, as they integrate themselves into society, albeit reluctantly; but the rebels of the Lajos type are shunned like a mountain that has once acted as a volcano and then closed again. One fears a new eruption at any moment. The average people have no idea that the fire materials pushing outwards have turned into precious substances on the inside.

The second story, "Bozi", is satirical. The subject matter is taken from that part of Hungary where people, buffaloes, pigs and chair judges live so close to each other, are eternally in each other's way and yet cannot leave each other alone; this milieu, which unites the fatalism of half-Asia with Christian beliefs and Turkish legal practice with the theories of the corpus juris and the tripartium so peacefully and unchallenged! "Bozi" is a buffalo. But a very special kind of buffalo. Not a herd buffalo, but a master buffalo. He does not conform to the rules that God and the people in his habitat have given to the buffalo; he leaves his home when he pleases in order to spread fear and terror among the people. He particularly likes it when he can appear among a large crowd of people on festive occasions and wreak havoc. However, he had to pay for such an undertaking with his freedom. He was kept behind strictly locked doors and was only allowed outside at night when people were asleep. But this made things even worse. For if he had previously filled people with horror as a buffalo, now he was a... Devil. Because anyone who encountered the animal at night thought it was the prince of hell incarnate. The "enlightened" village doctor, who owns Meyer's Dictionary of Conversations and can look everything up in it, was no more protected from this by his scientific education than Mr. du Prel was protected from spiritualism by his philosophical education. The good doctor believes for so long that it was a "supernatural" being that attacked him at night, until his coat, which he lost while fleeing from the ghost, is brought to him and he is told that the buffalo has brought home the protective wrapping wrapped around his horns. Another time, part of the village community, led by the mayor and the churchwarden with the holy water at his side, go out because the "devil" has appeared again and even taken one of the village residents. The devil is to be fought. The whole village community can't do anything because they tremble with terror when they come to the place where the "evil one" is raging; only one foolish man, who is also there and believes in neither God nor the devil, sees what is really there - the buffalo, strikes at it and wounds it. The others go away with long noses.

The story is written with the kind of humor that testifies not only to a complete mastery of the art medium, but also to a firm world view. Hypocritical religiosity, undigested enlightenment, the modern superstition of the "clever people" is hit and exposed in this short story. We are dealing with an artist who hits the mark with the arrows of mockery because she has a sure and sharp eye for the targets she is aiming for.

I

In the ninth edition of his "Natural History of Creation", Ernst Haeckel speaks of the new paths and broad perspectives that open up to art from the point of view of the scientific world view. Among the works filled with the spirit of this world view, he mentions "the many interesting poems of the brilliant Viennese poet Eugenie delle Grazie, especially the modern epic "Robespierre". It is now more than fifteen years since the name Marie Eugenie delle Grazie first appeared in a circle within the German intellectual life in Austria. A small collection of poems, a story "The Gypsy Woman", an epic "Hermann" and a drama "Saul" were published by her in quick succession. These were the creations of a lady not yet twenty years old. The intellectual, distinguished Austrian philosopher B. Carneri was not alone in his feelings about the poet, which he summarized in 1894 in the following sentences: "Given the magnificence of the subject matter and its happy mastery (Hermann) is a huge achievement for such a young age. Much of the praiseworthy can also be emphasized in 'Saul', but we would only like to speak of actual genius in the 'Gypsy'. Through her descriptions of nature, vivid sculpture and the passion that breaks through in full, this short story offers us a masterpiece whose melodious prose proves that Fräulein delle Grazie is also naturally gifted with what Friedrich Nietzsche calls 'the third ear'."

A great, unique personality announced itself in these poems. A life, young in years, rich in content, rich above all in those sufferings that lead to the gates of knowledge with a demanding mind, spoke out. There was no doubt that delle Grazie had the great passion that leads from the personal lot into the comprehensive mysteries of the fate of the world and that perceives the questions of the world as problems of one's own heart. Ten years passed before the poetess published any more. Then a collection of poems "Italische Vignetten", "Rebell" and "Bozi", two short stories, the great epic "Robespierre" and a third volume of poetry appeared in quick succession. The basic mood of delle Grazie's first creations is once again expressed; her viewpoint has become that of the modern world view in the highest sense of the word. There is probably no other personality who has experienced the pain of the collapse of an old ideal world and a new world of knowledge so deeply, so shatteringly as Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. Her feelings go in two directions, and in both directions they are great. What Schiller consoled himself with at all times: that man could flee from the common reality into the noble realm of ideals, this consolation was not granted to delle Grazie. The new natural science has directed its gaze to the real, which appears to it as the only thing that exists. The poet cannot believe in an eternal divine order that only uses nature to realize an ideal realm and goal; she is completely filled with the knowledge that the eternal mother, nature, indiscriminately conjures up creatures from her dark womb to satisfy the infinite lust that she has in creating and is unconcerned about the fate of her children. Whatever beautiful, great and sublime things arise in the world: they did not arise for the sake of beauty, greatness and sublimity, they arose because nature has the lustful urge to create. And they were all enthusiasts, the idealists who dreamed of the great goals of life. They owe their existence to the cunning of voluptuous nature. What would people's existence be if a Buddha, a Socrates, a Christ did not come from time to time and tell people that they were born for higher things. But no ideal can deceive those who look deeper. Mankind should only be incited from time to time by its idealists to believe something other than what the omnipotence of nature really accomplishes. Nature is voluptuous and demonic at the same time: it wants to satisfy itself by giving birth to people, and it tricks the poor creatures into believing in the dream and foam of ideals so that they are distracted from the true content of existence.

What a proud, profoundly comfortable nature has to suffer from such sentiments can be seen in delle Grazie's poetry. Anyone who is unable to empathize with the greatness of these poems must lack one of the feelings that have cut so deeply into the heart of contemporary man. Either he has never felt the great longing within himself as a personal destiny, which the mighty ideals of mankind, the urge to go beyond and the belief in the gods have brought forth and kept alive again and again, or the modern world view, which has broken over our intellectual life like a mighty earthquake, must have passed him by more or less without a trace. I have no doubt that this modern view of the world contains within it germs of higher spiritual spheres, more beautiful, more sublime than all the old ideals; but I do not believe that joys will ever fully triumph over suffering; I do not believe that hope will ever conquer renunciation. It seems to me as certain as that light is born of darkness: that the bright satisfaction of knowledge must arise from the deepest pain of existence. And the great pain of existence, that is the lifeblood of delle Grazie's existence, that is the lifeblood of delle Grazie's art. We have this element in our lives as an opponent of the worst thing that can consume us: superficiality. The regions in which delle Grazie walks are those through which anyone who wants to reach the heights of life must pass. Only the dearly bought knowledge, only that which has risen from the abyss, has value. Delle Grazie's poems show the price that every recognizer must pay. No matter where we end up. Delle Grazie's path is rooted in the depths of the human soul. It is true: her poems exude a weariness of the present and a hopelessness for the future. But I don't want to be one of those in whom none of this resonates.

II

There was a point in Rome's development where human greatness coincided most closely with human nothingness. Caesaric power was combined with weakness, artistic height with ethical rottenness. The mouth that commanded nations greedily craved the kiss of the most wretched woman; a master's mind became a slave's mind when the embraces of high-ranking prostitutes subdued it. These "Vignettes" by Marie Eugenie delle Grazie (Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel [1892]) reveal how this is still fossilized in the remnants of the old days, but still clearly visible to the clairvoyant eye:

Divine dignity and divine rights
Have you boldly arrogated to yourselves,
Spirit and virtue became servants,
Where the arbitrariness splashed great.

She sings of the Roman Caesars. She expresses the mood that took hold of her in the Eternal City with the words:

With elegiac whispers
Looks from the barren Palatine
A single pine tree gloomily
Towards the silent forum.

A number of poems have sprung from the impressions that Tasso's traces have left in the poetess:

At your tomb all vain imaginings die,
Here your glory sits enthroned in majestic peace,
But where man suffered, I found tears,
And I was allowed to sob and dream here like you!

Under the title "Images and Figures", delle Grazie shares her feelings at the sight of great Italian works of art, such as Guercino's Sant' Agnese, Maderna's St. Cecilia, Belvedere's Apollo, Otricoli's Zeus and Michelangelo's Moses. The poem "Two Madmen" from the cycle "Sorrento" juxtaposes Tasso and Nietzsche, who both walked on this ground:

Two great men walked these paths
And often both stand suddenly before my mind:
Tasso, the prince of poets by the grace of God,
And Friedrich Nietzsche ... equal was their gain,
And folly was his name ...

Delle Grazie has seen all the glory that is to be seen in Italy:

Like all of them, you drew me to you,
Enchanted, enraptured and beguiled,
On ruins you lied to me of a happiness,
That you destroyed hard in the sun's glare

Your worldview also speaks clearly from this book:

But I am not resentful ... I am going home again,
Even if with a crudely broken walking stick-
I bring back with him the old torments
And here as there I lay him on a grave! -

Lajos describes the feelings that seized him at the moment when his opponent's life was in his power with the words: "He turned pale to the lips, his knees trembled as if he had caught the Danube fever, and suddenly he pulled down his hat and saluted me deeply ... and smiled like a fool ... Then I felt so well, so well, I tell you, for now I knew that one could do worse to one's enemy than murder him, and that my torment was at an end, because I could no longer hate the one standing before me; it came into my throat like disgust - I spat out against him, threw the shotgun back into the reeds, took my fiddle and left ..." And then he says of the man he has humiliated: "Wherever he can, he rants at me to the people, and would love to set the pandurs and the magistrate on my neck, but he can't say anything right against me, and he won't even say that he was too bad to kill me! But he's like air to me; even if I have to breathe it in, I can always give it back - there! That's how indifferent he is to me!" The experience with the nobleman became a source of great insight for Lajos. He realized how to look at the world without hate and love. "What happened to my love, what happened to my hatred?" he says. "It's all over, and back then I thought I would die from it! Anyone who has experienced something like this in himself becomes calm and cannot do wrong even to his enemy!" "If I have bad eyesight and bump my head on a post - is it the post's fault or mine? The post is there and has its right, and I am there and would also have my right if my eyes weren't bad - I could avoid it, couldn't I? And if I could like a good-for-nothing and hate a scoundrel, wasn't I just so blind? They weren't, and that's why I had to bang my heart and skull against them like the post! But who am I to believe when I can deceive myself like that, when every man is twice: as he was born and as I think he is? And do I know what I am like? Many people avoid me - they do me no harm, but they want to do me even less good! Why is that? Have I done something wrong? Well, they're right too! I think to myself, because everyone who lives only wants himself, even if he thinks he likes someone else so much!" These are words of wisdom that only a life to which existence has revealed itself without veil can give birth to. People call Lajos a "rebel elf" because he despises them. And the nobleman says of him: "He is capable of anything." But these words mean nothing more than that the nobleman is incapable of recognizing how the poor gypsy's independent soul can express itself. To him it is an element that is moved by elemental forces, effective from depths of which the average brain has no idea. The unknown, the dark forces in the gypsy's head and heart fill the nobleman with a sense of dread. He only feels safe with people who, like himself, have inherited their character from their forefathers, or those who have been beaten into slavery by the knout.

Two other "rebels" stand opposite the gypsy, the rebel of thought and feeling, in delle Grazie's story: Istvän, the former political rebel and hero of freedom, who, at the side of his "practical" Susi, has risen to the much-admired heights of the "real politician", and Bändi, whose rebel soul unleashes itself in the wildest curses, but without the revolutionary fire in his chest preventing him for the time being from serving as a coachman for the nobleman, whom he would like to sic all the devils on. The last two "rebels" are put up with by the society of comfort-seekers, for the Istväns are harmless if their Susis have the opportunity to put on fat comfortably, and the Bändis may grumble, but they make useful beasts of burden. These rebels are not feared, as they integrate themselves into society, albeit reluctantly; but the rebels of the Lajos type are regarded like a mountain that has once acted as a volcano and then closed up again. A new eruption is feared at any moment. The average people have no idea that the fire materials pushing outwards have turned into noble substances on the inside.

The second story, "Bozi", is satirical. The subject matter is taken from that part of Hungary where people, buffaloes, pigs and chair judges live so close to each other, are eternally in each other's way and yet cannot leave each other behind; this milieu, which unites the fatalism of half-Asia with Christian beliefs and Turkish legal practice with the theories of the corpus juris and the tripartium so peacefully and unchallenged! "Bozi" is a buffalo. But a very special kind of buffalo. Not a herd buffalo, but a master buffalo. He does not conform to the rules that God and the people in his habitat have given the buffalo; he leaves his home when he pleases in order to spread fear and terror among the people. He particularly likes it when he can appear among a large crowd of people on festive occasions and wreak havoc. However, he had to pay for such an undertaking with his freedom. He was kept behind strictly locked doors and was only allowed outside at night when people were asleep. But this made things even worse. For if he had previously filled people with horror as a buffalo, now he was a ... Devil. Because anyone who encountered the animal at night thought it was the prince of hell incarnate. The "enlightened" village doctor, who owns Meyer's Dictionary of Conversations and can look everything up in it, was no more protected from this by his scientific education than Mr. du Prel was protected from spiritualism by his philosophical education. The good doctor believes that it was a "supernatural" being that attacked him at night until he is brought his coat, which he lost while fleeing from the ghost, and is told that the buffalo has brought home the protective covering wrapped around his horns. Another time, part of the village community, led by the mayor and with the sacristan and holy water at their side, go out because the "devil" has appeared again and has even taken one of the village residents. The devil is to be fought. The whole village community can't do anything because they tremble with terror when they arrive at the place where the "evil one" is raging. Only one foolish man, who is also there and believes in neither God nor the devil, sees what is really there - the buffalo, strikes at it and wounds it. The others go away with long noses.

The story is written with the kind of humor that testifies not only to a complete mastery of the art medium, but also to a firm world view. Hypocritical religiosity, undigested enlightenment, the modern superstition of the "clever people" is hit and exposed in this short story.

The epic "Robespierre" was published in 1894. More than in any other work of poetry of our time, one should have seen in this epic a profound expression of contemporary feeling. But the harsh critics of "modernism" passed it by rather carelessly. They do not do much better than the much-maligned professors of aesthetics and literary history, who rarely have a feeling for the truly great of their own time. One of the most lauded literary judges of the present day, Hermann Bahr, found it not beneath his dignity to begin a short review of "Robespierre" with the words: "Otherwise blameless and nice people, who have nothing at all of the artist, are suddenly compelled to ape the gestures of the poets." Anyone who speaks like this knows the airs and graces of "modernism", but not its deeper forces. M. E. delle Grazie's poetry is the reflection of the modern world view from a deep, strongly feeling, clear-sighted soul endowed with great artistic creative power. Just as the image of the French Revolution presents itself to a deep and proud nature, so has delle Grazie portrayed it. Just as Agamemnon, Achilles, Ulysses and the other heroes of the Trojan War appear before our imagination in vivid figures when we let Homer's "Iliad" work its magic on us, so do Danton, Marat, Robespierre when we read delle Grazie's epic. Only those who are blind to the spirit of our time or only understand its pose can fail to recognize the significance of this poetry. There is nothing petty in the painful tones struck here. When delle Grazie describes suffering and pain, she does not do so because she wants to point out the misery of everyday life, but because she sees disharmony in the great development of humanity. Robespierre is the hero in whose soul lives everything that humanity has always called idealism. He ends tragically because the great dream of the ideals of humanity that he dreams must necessarily ally itself with the mean aspirations of lower natures. Rarely has a poet looked so deeply into a human soul as delle Grazie did into Robespierre's.

A personality who climbs to the heights of humanity in order to come to the terrible realization that life's ideals are illusions, deluded by nature, drunk on existence, to the poor victim man - Robespierre stands before us as such a personality. In the place of the genius of death, he, who wants to lead humanity to the light, hears the words:

"How deceptive is your blind zeal! ... Do you not realize that all around us
The poisonous seed of life grows thick and disgusting?
It is a graveyard on which we stand - yet ourselves,
How pure and happy, because unconsciously and without torment
Germs the young green here from the rot! How unearthly cheerfulness it weaves around
The rotten little crosses all around and almost ashamed
They crumble - what should be the sign
Of the misery of existence in this blessed place?
No, know: here I wander to be happy
And quietly dream of my paradise:
The paradise of unmoved peace.
But a few steps further I dwell,
And, as you see, not lonely: hut after hut
Surrounds the cemetery, and in each one throbs-
What did you call it? -, the warm pulse
Of being: sickness and vice,
Poverty and suffering, the hollow-cheeked skeleton of misery,
And everything, everything that damns, consciously
And feeling to decay! Itself, there is
The cross's own place, there rises
The brazen colossus of pain, there groans
Despair, on the blood-washed torture
Of being strained in vain and unheard
Her gruesome: "My God, why have you left me
Forsaken me?! There I look when the deception
Of being to beguile my mind anew
And want to blind - and that huge cross,
That grows out of the earth, longing for heaven
Ascends and yet finally fearful and shrill
With this call turns from hope:
It then says to me anew, full of majesty:
"Be desireless, and you have redeemed yourself"

If one is to go to the poet's country in the sense of the well-known saying, in order to understand the poet, one must decide, in order to recognize Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, to wander over realms that lie in the regions of the highest spiritual interests of mankind. There one is led over rich worlds of life, full of life and vitality, filled with ardent desire; but in this life pulsate poisonous substances, flowers sprout that bear decay as their innermost destiny - beauty is resplendent, but it is resplendent like mockery and impotent splendor - sublimity glistens, but it is irony in itself. To the veil-covered eye, the greatest appears; remove the veil, and the "greatest" dissolves into haze and mist, into empty, stale nothingness.

The poet devoted ten years, the best of her life, to her work. During this time, her immersion in the history of the great French liberation movement went hand in hand with the study of modern science. She rose to the heights of human existence, where one sees through the deep irony that lies in every human life, where one can smile even at the nothingness of existence because one has ceased to desire it.

In the book of poems that delle Grazie followed "Robespierre", we read the confession of painful renunciation that the poet brought to the contemplation of the world and life. Of "Nature" she says:

.... Pulling her triumphal chariot
We all: panting, sweaty and yet
Blissful too: for as a mirage swings
Hope before us and happiness and every illusion,
That they have created for our scorn,
And we, the addiction-poisoned army of slaves,
Call ideals. - And so we rush in a lustful hurry
And madly we chase along, until treacherously
The strength leaves us, the breath fades and farther
For ever our goal floats on golden clouds,
Until helpless and panting we
Collapse - then she cheers demonically,
Then she shouts her cruel "Evo&!" and directs
Crushing over a thousand victims
The chern spokes of her biga!

In her "Robespierre", Marie Eugenie delle Grazie has admirably mastered the immense material that was available to her in the French liberation movement, with its wealth of ideas, characters, destinies and actions. She is as much a master in the characterization of people as she is a brilliant portrayer of events. The whole gamut of the human heart and mind, from the devoted instincts of goodness to the most hideous instincts of the animal in man, from the impulses of the demon-driven fanatic that rise deep from the undercurrents of the soul to the abstract theorist living in sophisticated conceptual worlds: the poet exposes everything, in the same way the deep motifs, the hidden sources of human characters and temperaments as the small traits in which nature so often hints at the great. Conditions in which the guilt and aberrations of long ages and generations are symbolically expressed, dramatic situations in which tremendous doom is preparing or dramatically rushing towards catastrophe, are depicted in vivid vividness, in deeply penetrating painting. The court of Louis XVI, with its rotten splendor, with its loudly speaking dialectic of guilt and doom, is presented to us in succinct outlines, as is the dull air of the dive in which the hunted human creature, the starved poverty, the thirst for freedom that turns into hatred are discharged. The poet's ability to cope with the diversity of human nature becomes clear when one compares her characterization of Louis XVIL, Marie Antoinette, Necker and the courtiers at Versailles with that of Marat, Danton, Mirabeau, Saint-Just and Robespierre. A dying court milieu, the convulsive convulsions of the popular soul: everything comes into its own artistically. Wherever the storm of feelings of freedom expresses itself in bloody deeds, wherever the spirit announces itself in words, which either age the traditions of the centuries or allow the mysterious fermentations of the human soul to burst forth as if from a dark night: delle Grazie's art of depiction is at home everywhere. The dull dwellings of the cultural slaves, where the enslaved humanity expresses itself in the darkest images, is just as perfectly depicted as the surging turmoil of world-shaking logic and rhetoric in the National Assembly, as is the terrible storm that erupts in the Bastille Storm, as is the hollow splendor, the glistening prejudice, the blind weakness and vain grandeur of the Versailles court. The "mysteries of humanity", which reflect the eternal pondering of world logic, appear no less clearly before our eyes than the arguments of the day and the motives born in haste of man, who in other times lived an animalistic, dull life, but within this movement becomes the driving motor of far-reaching, luminous developments.

See how Danton enters the turmoil in "Saint-Antoine" in the "desolate neighborhood of hunger", where "the bitter misery looks out of half-loose eyes", all-round clear, with all the peculiarities of his personality.

... massive, deeply bowed head,
As if he fears to carry away deck and walls here,
A new spirit enters the smoky room.
Towards him, grinning and devoted
The dirty innkeeper of the tavern; and through
The surprised guests long rows
It travels like a flash of lightning and sweeps them upwards.
"Danton!" "He himself!" "Welcome!" Not a greeting,
It is a single sigh of fainting,
As if he brought air and manhood to their hatred.
A broad laugh around the fleshy lips,
The pining open ones, Danton stands
Motionless there first. The small eye
Only flashes from its deep-set sockets,
Puffing up, breathing in an instant, wide
And greedily the leaf-scarred nostrils open.
'Tis like a smell of sweat of brutal power
Around him, like an alien atmosphere,
Which is pregnant with energy, like lightning
A summer sky. What the crowd loves
And respects - to this it was! Trains, loud
And open like the road, a roadway
Of life and stained by it like them;
Their cynical laughter, their bitter rumbling
And undignified forgiveness, from the crown to
To the sole of the rabble's rough lines,
And no law but that of their own strength!

In this way, the poet knows how to place the personality in the situation in an atmospheric and deeply true way. In this way, she is able to let the unspoken characters that live in the shapeless spirit of the people grow together with the spirit of the individual, the generality with the individuality.

In this way, delle Grazie is also able to find the transition, the harmony between the silent, lifeless nature and the wanderings of the human heart. The poet's depictions of nature carry a rare artistic life, a peculiar grandeur and truth.

If you want to recognize delle Grazie's personality in its full depth, you have to read the volume "Gedichte", which was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig in 1897. The passion and depth of the most direct personal feeling is revealed here in the highest, most general thoughts of humanity, a world view that wrestles with cosmic riddles speaks to us as the pulse of daily life. A hymn may reflect the tone and view of this poetry:

In the circle of the living walks
And walks from mouth to mouth
A terrible whispered word
Its brazen sound, it makes
The rosy cheeks blanch,
The most jubilant dithyrambos
of madness, and the most dazzling fairy tales
Of existence are torn apart by it, and
Fade away with him for eternity.

The crown of thorns of sorrow,
The rosaries of happiness
And diadems of glory
They all, all entwine,
Entangled and overgrown
The pale asphodel of death! Whose wings rustle,
He trembles, and to whom his hollow voice resounds,
He has lied for the last time ...

Decay and rot are fermenting
In our veins, decay guides us
According to its law, and what lives and breathes,
decay has created it,
Decay destroys it too! A filthy vortex
Full of mystery and madness circles
Life, and our pygmy race, it circles
With it: in blind weakness, droll dignity and powerlessness ...

All victorious and free only reigns
The giant Death: with flashing sword he mows
The glistening lie of existence away
And speaks, for eternity
Pointing to dust and decay,
The one, eternal truth: "It is nothing!"

Rarely will one be able to admire the creations of delle Grazies even where one does not share the feelings and views of a poet. Because even where you have to say "no", you are aware that you are saying "no" to greatness.

• 1. "The Rebel", "Bozi". Two stories by M. E. delle Grazie. Leipzig. Breitkopf & Härtel.

Died on December 2, 1900

I

We have seen him grow in recent years, grow in creative joy and the boldness of new plans, grow in artistic ability, spiritual strength and inner clarity. We had to experience the pain of seeing this growth abruptly, cruelly - cut off. On December 2, we had to sink into the empty, barren void all the joyful, proud hopes we had pinned on the personality of Ludwig Jacobowski. Anyone who was able to talk to him recently about his plans and his expectations will have an idea of what German intellectual life has lost in this man. He was one of those people of whom it can be said that the scope of their intellectual interests is as broad as intellectual life itself. And there was an energy in his soul, an indefatigable desire to create, which gave his friends the firm belief that he could do whatever he wanted. - He had to wrestle hard with fate. Apart from "death, there is probably not much that this fate bestowed upon him without a difficult struggle. And one can say of his entire art what he prefaced his last creation "Glück", an "act in verse":

It was like dying when I lived it!
It was a comfort to me when I wrote it!
Who ever trembled in the same affliction,
Accept it and love it!

When talking about two events in his youth that had a profound influence on his life, Ludwig Jacobowski mentioned the death of a school friend and his first reading of Schiller's works. It was not yet five weeks ago that he spoke to me of both events as memories that had a very special place in his soul. "I am once again creating a poetic monument to my school friend," he said. In the short notes on his life, which he wrote in October [1887] for external reasons, we find the sentence: "When I was twelve years old, my mother died. I owe it to this hard blow, as well as to a friend who had already died, but especially to the influence of reading our literature, that I became a different person." Anyone with a psychological eye can see from this sentence that it comes from a soul whose feelings are as deep as its aims are broad. Jacobowski wrote these lines at the age of nineteen. Even then, he had gone through times when the seriousness of life had confronted him in its darkest colors. But he also had hours behind him in which his strong energy and the will to rely solely on his own strength gave him comfort and hope. Early on, he sought "consolation" in what he wrote. He was twenty years old when his first collection of poems "Aus bewegten Stunden" was published. In one of the first poems in the booklet, we read the words that are deeply characteristic of his nature:

Man strives to grasp the insubstantial,
To solve the riddles of the universe with the power of thought,
To reach boldly up to the light out of dull nights,
To dive down to the source of all beings,
And over labyrinths of deep-secret questions
Rolls majestically his spirit's chariot of victory.

What Goethe once said to Eckermann, Jacobowski felt early on: "In poetry, only the truly great and pure is beneficial, which in turn stands there like a second nature and either lifts us to itself, or spurns us." In his "eventful hours", moods took place that lifted him up to the great arena on which the highest affairs of man come to fruition, and moods that made him appear like a scorned person who does not have enough strength to participate in these affairs. - He later faithfully described these two moods to us in his novel "Werther, the Jew" (1892) and in the drama "Diyab, the Fool" (1895). In the novel, one side of Jacobowski's character is portrayed, the sensitive soul that is tormented by the adversities of existence, that has to endure harsh pain because it is tender and irritable. The drama portrays the poet's willful nature, which feels superior to those who cause it pain, which draws from itself what the outside world denies it. And how much this nature had to draw from itself was presented to the world in significant art in the book "Loki. Novel of a God" (1898). With this creation, Jacobowski achieved something that can only be achieved through the interaction of three spiritual forces in the personality: childishness, artistry and philosophy. Simplicity in the perception of world phenomena, harmony in artistic creation and depth in the thoughtful contemplation of nature and man: Jacobowski's essence lay in the interpenetration of this trinity. I used this trinity to characterize his nature after he had presented us with his last collection of poems in his "Shining Days". It is one of the most beautiful memories of my life: how I saw his eyes light up when I was able to hand him my review of his "Shining Days" and he read the above words in it. He thought he recognized himself. As an artist, he sought the simplest forms. And he probably saw the goal of art in achieving the most popular simplicity through the highest means. But he never wanted this simplicity without depth. - He disdained all artistic refinement. He did not need to seek out oddities if he wanted to portray life in its true meaning. Poetry came to him from the smallest phenomena of everyday life. He knew how to see in broad strokes.

Jacobowski was a man who pursued all the mysteries of existence in his solitary sensations. In his "Loki", he sketched the labyrinths and lighthouses of existence. Out of gloomy experiences, he came to the harmonious view of life of his "Shining Days". The light from which the verses originate finally fell on his bitter experiences:

Ah, our shining days
Shine like eternal stars.
As consolation for future lamentation
They glow from a golden distance.

Don't weep because they have passed!
Smile, because they have been!
And even if the days become gloomier.
Redeem our stars!

And the man who wrestled with himself was at the same time inspired by the desire to work ceaselessly on the elevation of intellectual culture. His ten-penny booklets "Lieder fürs Volk" and the collection "Deutsche Dichter in Auswahl fürs Volk" (published by G. E. Kitzler, Berlin, at a price of 10 pfennigs) arose from a deeply social trait in his personality. He experienced great joy through this undertaking. He liked to speak of this joy. He wanted to serve the spirit of the people; and he had been able to see clearly how deep the need and receptivity for spiritual creations is among the people. He received reports from all sides about the success of his endeavors in this field. He wanted to describe the experiences he had made in this direction in the very near future. Like so many of his plans, this one was also destroyed by a cruel fate.

The preparatory work that Jacobowski left behind for a major work on the development of the popular imagination cannot be overlooked. He once wanted to present the development of the human spirit in thought and artistic creation on a comprehensive basis. His love of folk poetry resulted in the beautiful work "Aus deutscher Seele", a "book of folk songs" (Minden in Westf. 1899). And while he immersed himself in the folk soul on the one hand, he ascended to the lonely heights of romantic poetry on the other. Together with Oppeln-Bronikowski, he recently published "Die blaue Blume", an "anthology of romantic poetry". (Published by Eugen Diederichs in Leipzig.)

Jacobowski's friends were still aware of a plan that was to result in a life's work. He was striving for an artistic interpretation of the cosmic secrets in a poem entitled "Earth". He set himself the highest standards for this creation. He thought of the greatest efforts to become mature for this work.

This all needs to be said in order to appreciate how deeply those who were close to Ludwig Jacobowski feel his loss. It is depressing for them to have to speak of such dashed hopes. They cannot overcome the pain with the awareness that Jacobowski's achievements will leave his name deeply engraved in the annals of German intellectual history. Because for them, this awareness is linked to the bitter thought of what this name would mean if an intellectual power that would have been sufficient for a long, long life had not been destroyed in its first bloom.

II

Death tore Ludwig Jacobowski away from beautiful and far-reaching plans in the thirty-third year of his life. A life that was in constant upward development, filled with restless creative joy, has thus come to an abrupt end. Not so long ago, separated by a relatively short period of time, I was able to present the readers of this magazine with two pictures of this poet's creations, his "Loki. Roman eines Gottes" and of his last collection of poems "Leuchtende Tage". In his "Loki", Jacobowski had reached a temporary high point in his work. This work points both forwards and backwards in the poet's development. Backwards to a life full of external and internal struggles, to a life for which the struggle for existence had not been easy, but which had created a rich content in the struggle with the highest riddles of humanity; forwards to a future that seemed to bring fulfillment to great hopes. It was not a novel in the usual sense of the word, but a symbolic representation of the eternal struggles of the human soul. Jacobowski depicted what constantly weighs on the human heart in the form of a battle between enemy gods. The human mind clings with love to everything that has been created; it wants to cherish and nurture what has been created with devotion. But this created thing must, for its own salvation, give birth to its worst enemy from within itself; the created must be continually transformed so that it does not - in Goethe's beautiful words - arm itself to stare. As true as it is that good human qualities flourish within peace and order, it is also true that the old good must be destroyed from time to time. Jacobowski contrasts this destructive force of existence with the sustaining gods, the Aesir, in the form of Loki.

Only a poet who combines the gift of deep contemplation with the ability to create in the simplest artistic forms is able to conquer the characteristically meaningful world problem through poetry. And Ludwig Jacobowski was gifted with the qualities that made him capable of such a task. After his "Shining Days" appeared, I thought I could not better characterize the essence of his personality than by depicting him as a harmony of the three forms of soul life: the childlike, the artistic and the philosophical. I can still see him before me as he read this characterization of his way of thinking in my review of his "Bright Days" with eyes filled with joy. He believed he had recognized himself. He was always devoted to the study of folk poetry. He believed he recognized the ideal of poetic creation in its simplicity. He competed with this simplicity in his own creations. He did not think much of artistic refinement. That one must return to the childishness of the simple life of the soul at the height of the spirit was a kind of unconscious conviction in him. He really saw the highest things in the simplest lines. And this simplicity was accompanied by the depth of a world observer. Those who were close to him know how he was in his element when he could talk about the great problems of knowledge, when he could ponder the eternal questions of humanity. Everywhere in his poetry we also encounter this process. Broad perspectives leapt out at him from the most mundane experiences.

Ludwig Jacobowski had finally come to a free, harmonious view of the world. It was this that gave rise to verses such as these:

Ah, our shining
Days shine like eternal stars
As consolation for future lamentation
They glow from a golden distance.

Don't weep because they have passed!
Smile, because they have been!
And even if the days become gloomier,
Redeem our stars!

But the light he has worked his way up to is dearly bought. And he could have given many of his poems the same motto as the one before his last creation, the one-act play in verse "Glück":

It was like dying when I lived it!
It was a comfort to me when I wrote it!
Whoever trembled at the same time,
Take it and love it!

Jacobowski entered the public eye at an early age. He was twenty-two years old when his first collection of poems "Aus bewegten Stunden" was published. He captured the moods of his secondary and primary school years in these poems. They stem from a youthful life that made it as difficult as possible for him to believe in himself. A highly aspiring idealism lived in this youth, who only believed he was worthy of existence if he set himself the highest tasks. But at the same time, this young man's soul was riddled with the harshest doubts. It had depressing, difficult hours in which all confidence in itself seemed lost. An irritable, brooding mind was combined here with an unshakeable energy, a fine sensitivity to all the impressions of the world with an invincible pride that he owed nothing to anyone but himself. Moods of powerlessness and moods of defiance alternated constantly in the young Jacobowski. We encounter these moods in two of his poems. One is depicted in his novel "Werther, the Jew" (1892) and the other in the drama "Diyab, the Fool" (1895). There, the young man who is cruelly tormented by the adversities of life with a soft, irritable, hypersensitive disposition; here, the defiant one who bravely resists everything hostile and draws all the energy he can from himself to take up the struggle for life.

We could still expect much from the spirit that had grown so visibly with each of his creations. Especially his friends, who were familiar with his rich plans, who had seen how deeply he knew how to take every experience, and who knew his strength, which seemed to increase with ever higher tasks. From a devastating experience he had drawn the material for his poem "Glück" (Happiness), an "act in verse" (Bruns Verlag, Minden 1900), written that fall. Here, too, he had found a beautiful way to transform the harsh bitterness of existence into a poem of great perfection that comforted him.

And just how high the demands he placed on himself were could be fully appreciated when one heard him speak of a poem that was germinating in his mind. In a cosmic work of art, "Earth", he wanted to depict his way of looking at the mysteries of the world. He spoke of this plan as something that was mysterious to him, something that would be difficult to detach from his soul. First of all, he wanted to spend his days "maturing" for this task.

Hand in hand with his artistic interests, Jacobowski had a great thirst for knowledge. He spent a great deal of time thinking about and researching the origins of poetic creation. A small book and numerous essays bear witness to this aspect of his work. He worked towards a major work that would depict the development of the poetic imagination. He collected incessantly for it. He researched the poetry of lower cultures in order to get to know the beginnings of poetic creation. His preliminary work and collections in this field are immense.

And while he was trying so hard to work energetically on the development of the spirit himself and to penetrate this process in a recognizing way, he was restlessly striving for ways to make the treasures of the spirit accessible to the broadest strata of the people. He wrote in quick succession in his books "Aus deutscher Seele. Ein Buch Volkslieder" and (together with Oppeln-Bronikowski) in the "Blaue Blume", a compilation of the most valuable creations of German Romanticism. His venture with cheap popular editions of valuable poetry was particularly fruitful. His "Lieder fürs Volk" and his "Deutsche Dichter in Auswahl fürs Volk" are masterpieces of their kind. He has published a booklet of the best contemporary Iyrian works, which costs only ten pfennigs. At the same price, he has also published a selection of Goethe's and Heine's works. This undertaking promised great results. It was one of his most beautiful experiences in the last months of his life to feel these effects from everywhere. He wanted to bring the best spiritual treasures to the people; and every day brought him new written and oral evidence of the receptiveness of the broadest strata of the people to this enterprise. He often said to me: "That was an attempt. I would readily admit that the attempt was a failure, if that were the case. But the attempt succeeded in the most surprising way. He wanted to describe the experiences he had made in this field in the collection "Freie Warte", also a work from his last years.¹ Fate also destroyed this plan for him.

The seeds of a rich, long human life lay in this personality. Only a small number were allowed to mature.

• 1. Three issues of this collection were published by Bruns in Minden.

Died on March 18, 1876

In the Württemberg town of Weinsberg, the jovial poet and rapturous spirit seer Justinus Kerner became chief medical officer in 1818. Since that time, the picturesque home of this strange man has been visited by countless artists, poets, scholars and spiritualists on their travels through southern Germany. On August 7, 1840, a man of simple appearance and unpretentious demeanor appeared in the hospitable house and introduced himself as the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath. Doubts arose in Kerner as to whether he could believe the visitor that he was the bearer of the name, which was already being pronounced with recognition in the widest circles at the time. Kerner knew from the first words that he was dealing with a dear, wonderful person; what the man held within himself only gradually became apparent. In this encounter with the Swabian poet, the essence of the great freedom singer Freiligrath is symbolically expressed. He himself slowly penetrated to his deeper nature, to that nature which was called to find the most captivating tones for man's sense of freedom. What happened in Freiligrath's heart when his true calling dawned on him can be seen in the words he prefaced his collection of poems "Ein Glaubensbekenntnis" (A Confession of Faith), published in 1844. "The most recent turn of events in my immediate fatherland of Prussia has painfully disappointed me, who was one of those who hoped and trusted, in many ways, and it is primarily to this that the majority of the poems in the second section of this book owe their origin. None of them, I can calmly affirm, was made; each has come about through events, as necessary and inevitable a result of their clash with my sense of justice and my convictions as the decision, taken and carried out at the same time, to return my much-discussed small pension into the hands of the King. Around New Year 1842, I was surprised by its award: since New Year 1844, I have stopped collecting it." - In January 1844, the man who, as late as 1841, expressed his confession in the words: "The poet stands on a higher vantage point than on the battlements of the party", concluded his freedom poem "Guten Morgen" with the words:

Good morning then! - Free I will stand
For the people and with them in time! With the people the poet shall go - ...

The Freiligrath who, with his fiery imagination, revelled in the glowing colors of distant lands in the thirties, who knew how to conjure up the life of the lush tropical world with such vividness before the souls, who sang of the desert king (in "Löwenrit") and of the sad fate of emigrants, could be considered worthy of a royal pension; Freiligrath, who in the forties felt the stormy urge for freedom of the time as the basic trait of his own heart, had to say of himself: "Firmly and unshakably I take the side of those who oppose reaction with forehead and breast! No more life for me without freedom!"

Lonely, eerie and dark
Is the distant, high sea! I love to see heather and broom
Growing around the dunes.

Freiligrath sees the ships coming and going. They tell him of distant lands and their wonders. And what he has never seen rises up in his imagination in glorious splendor. The poet transports himself to Africa, America and Asia, and vividly describes what his dreams tell him about these parts of the world.

In 1835, the world first became acquainted with what Freiligrath saw in his dreams, what he experienced in his innermost being during a strenuous, busy youth. Freiligrath's poems first appeared in the literary journals of the time, such as the "Deutscher Musenalmanach", published by Chamisso and Schwab, and the "Stuttgarter Morgenblatt". The poet's name was soon praised wherever there was an appreciation of genuine poetry. Freiligrath, who had meanwhile returned to Germany and found commercial employment in Barmen, was able to publish a collection of poems as early as 1838. Indeed, he could now even think of retiring from his grueling profession and living as a freelance writer. He settled as such in the small town of Unkel on the Rhine in 1839. It was here that he met the woman who would henceforth share the burdens of life with him. She was the daughter of a Weimar seminary teacher Melos. She had been friends with Goethe's grandchildren since childhood and could look back to a time when the old Goethe himself had enjoyed her games and joked with her. She had then worked as an educator in Russia and, through experience and energetic striving, had come to a high view of life. Freiligrath's meeting with Kerner took place on a journey he undertook in 1840, the main purpose of which was to make the acquaintance of his bride's father in Weimar and to talk to him. It was an eventful journey that the poet made to Weimar via southern Germany. He met Ludwig Uhland as well as many other important personalities. This poet with a soulful mind became a dear friend to him.

Ferdinand Freiligrath was not granted the leisure to devote himself to poetry, through which he won more and more hearts, and to enjoy the beautiful marriage he had made in 1841. Difficult life worries kept coming back to him. How could it be otherwise, since at a time when the creations of his youth were bringing him steadily growing recognition, he was moving away from the ideas that had established his young poetic fame? Time showed him new paths. What meant the air of life to him, freedom, which he had always sought to conquer in fierce battles, he saw as oppressed and ostracized in public life.

Germany is Hamlet!
Serious and silent
Within its gates every night
Goes the buried freedom around,
And beckons the men on the watch.

So he laments in April 1844, when he compiles the poems that are united in his "Creed" and gives them as a preface on the way:

To Aßmannshausen in the Kron'
Where many a thirsty man has already drunk,
There I make for a crown'
This booklet for the print!

Freiligrath loved the Rhine region. That is probably why he was drawn to St. Goar in the difficult days of his inner struggles, when he sought and found union with the struggling soul of time, where he spent a short time in quiet seclusion and contemplation. There is no question that it became easier for others to hear the call of time. Freiligrath's feelings appear like a brittle element that does not want to come out into the light of day, but which then shines all the brighter when it has found its way there. Herwegh, who was one of the first to strike a revolutionary note, initially had a repellent effect on Freiligrath. Indeed, he had even spoken harsh words of censure against Herwegh when the latter had spoken derisively about E.M. Arndt, who had once been dismissed as a demagogue and then recalled by Friedrich Wilhelm IV. And what we read about Freiligrath in the "Einundzwanzig Bogen" published by Herwegh in Zurich shows us that at the beginning of the 1940s the freedom singers thought little of the "pensioner" of the King of Prussia. Since the publication of "Glaubensbekenntnis", no one could be in any doubt as to the state of affairs in the poet's innermost being, who until then had been seen from a "higher vantage point" than the battlements of the party. Herwegh, who had recently been derisively counted with Geibel in the "duet of the retired", now had to consider leaving Germany in order to escape the persecutors of the friends of freedom. Freiligrath sought asylum in Brussels. It has rightly been said that Freiligrath's desire for freedom grew to the point of religious fervor. How he understood the mood of the oppressed in the face of the powerful, how he was able to give it flaming words! With unparalleled boldness, he addressed his voice to the hearts of those whose freedom can only be taken away from them as long as they are not aware that the edifice of power that is crushing them is constantly being built up by themselves, stone by stone. This mood finds words in his "Phantasie an den Rheindampfer" that are not often found in world literature. The collection of poems from 1846, to which the aforementioned poem also belongs, is one great hymn to freedom. And the "New Political and Social Poems" published in 1849 can be read with the feeling that the shrill cry of pain of the entire national soul for freedom and an existence worth living can be heard from a poet's heart on which all the suffering of the time has been heaped.

In Germany, Freiligrath had not been able to find a home since the mid-1940s. The revolutionary poet could lose his freedom any day, the man struggling with life could not find the means for his material existence. In 1846, he moved to London, where he had once again found a commercial position. He was constantly drawn back to Germany. In May 1848, he moved into the headquarters of German democracy in Düsseldorf. Here he worked with Marx and Engels on the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" in the service of freedom. An accusation that he had incurred because of the poem "Die Toten an die Lebendigen" (The Dead to the Living) showed how deeply his tones had penetrated the people's hearts. The ruling powers would probably have liked to have been able to strike a major blow against the bold poet. After all, in the aforementioned poem he had let the dead who had fallen for freedom speak, calling on the living to prove themselves worthy of their dead champions. Freiligrath's wife was prepared for the worst. She herself feared being sentenced to death. The jury returned an acquittal. The acquitted man was met with unparalleled jubilation as he stepped out of the courthouse into the crowd, which numbered in the thousands. It was unthinkable for Freiligrath to remain in Germany permanently. He had to decide to seek his fortune in exile for the time being. So he returned to London in 1851. He had to work hard as a merchant from early morning until late evening. His house became a place of refuge for political refugees from all countries. Freiligrath had advice and help for anyone who turned to him. He left no stone unturned to ease the lot of those who had to seek refuge in the cosmopolitan city for the sake of their convictions, where life was certainly not easy for such personalities at the time. However, Freiligrath's poetic energy was now flagging. The difficulties he encountered in life and the great tasks he was set had probably caused the spring from which such powerful things had flowed to gradually dry up in later life. Freiligrath was also a personality who only spoke when he had something important to say. But when such a significant occasion presented itself, he also found words that could be rivaled by little in terms of depth of feeling and beauty of expression. How heartfelt are the words in which he expressed the pain felt by the "scattered men" at the death of Gottfried Kinkel's wife when they "silently buried the German woman in the foreign sand".

In 1867, Freiligrath was able to return to Germany. The Geneva bank he represented in London had fallen into ruin. The old man once again faced the possibility of having to fight the bitterest battle for his life once more. His friends and admirers in Germany rallied to spare him that. A collection for an honorary gift, which could relieve the poet of all worries for the rest of his life, had the most favorable success. Freiligrath spent the rest of his life in Cannstatt near Stuttgart. From then on, wherever he went in Germany, he saw the echoes of his fame. He now devoted himself to translating American and English poets, Longfellows, Burns and others. In addition to his own creative activities, he always endeavored to convey foreign poetry, to which his heart was devoted, to his people.

The fact that Freiligrath made valuable contributions to the war poetry of 1870 has led some circles to believe that the great freedom singer had more or less turned his back on the ideals of his youth in old age and reconciled himself to the new political circumstances. Treitschke even found the words: "When, years later, all his republican ideals lay shattered on the ground and the dream of his youth was fulfilled by monarchical powers, he cheered gratefully, without small-mindedness, at the new greatness of Germany, and his bright poet's greeting answered the trumpet of Gravelotte." Whoever says this should also not forget to mention that Freiligrath returned a Mecklenburg medal sent to him by return of post and that he refused to accept the Order of Maximilian, which had been terminated by Fritz Reuter's death. He was only able to follow the development of the "New Political Conditions" until 1876. He died on March 18 of that year. It can hardly be assumed that Treitschke's followers would also have rejoiced if Freiligrath had witnessed the further development and passed judgment on it. Whatever the case may be, however, if the freedom singer once said of his poems in later life: "These things have become historical and are no longer intended to agitate", he was probably doing himself an injustice. His songs of freedom have an inherent power that is far from being doomed to be merely "historical".

Fercher von Steinwand and Marie Eugenie delle Grazie

Silence is one of the most effective means used by our journalism to give prominence only to those literary phenomena that are convenient to it. Our newspaper people no longer recognize the critic's duty to pave the way for important talents to reach the public. One need only possess the nobility peculiar to the true German, who disdains to make an impact through anything other than his work, to hope in vain for the influence he deserves in literature. We remember that an influential Viennese critic, at a time when Hamerling was at the height of his creative powers, spoke of a "certain Mr. Hamerling in Graz", that journalistic impudence even dared, when the "Homunculus" appeared, to write down the words about one of our greatest German spirits: "A poet not unknown in the provinces." This is how one treats the greats who, after decades of struggle, have finally forced recognition upon themselves. These are the fruits of the newspaper system, which has been brought up by liberalism. One of these fruits is that the German people in Austria are virtually unaware that on March 22 a poet celebrated his sixty-second birthday in Vienna who is one of the most national in the noblest sense of the word. Anyone familiar with Hamerling's "Blätter im Winde" will find in it a short poem addressed to Fercher von Steinwand, whose magnificent creation "Gräfin Seelenbrand" pays the tribute of recognition it deserves.

Who is Fercher von Steinwand? We say it freely and openly: one of the most talented and peculiar German poets, who remained unnoticed all his life because he did not know how to win the friendship of the writers. Johann Kleinfercher - his real name - was born on March 22, 1828 in Steinwand in Carinthia. He devoted himself to scientific and philosophical studies in Vienna under the greatest privations. His great talent was recognized by insightful people at the very moment when Fercher was on the verge of perishing in the material hardships of life. The insight of a Viennese scholar, which cannot be valued highly enough, provided Fercher with a carefree life. From this time on, the poet lived entirely according to his literary inclinations. Due to the unfavorable circumstances, he published little. "Dankmar", a tragedy (1867), "Gräfin Seelenbrand", a poem (1874), and "Deutsche Klänge aus Österreich" (1881) are all that we have of him in book form. Individual poems that have appeared in magazines, such as "Chor der Urtriebe", published in the "Deutsche Wochenschrift", are worthy additions to the larger works. Fercher is a German individuality. In him, the folklore appears transfigured into a truly artistic spirituality. His "German Sounds" contain poems that are definitely among the most beautiful in German literature. Depth of feeling and spiritual height of vision are united here with an admirable handling of form. In particular, the high Germanic seriousness of these creations appeals to us. Fercher often rises to a height that we only find in Schiller's "Spaziergang" or Goethe's "Weltseele", for example in the aforementioned "Chor der Urtriebe". Of course, we cannot think of giving an exhaustive characterization of our native poet here; we only wanted to point out the literary recklessness that dominates our time. Fercher certainly still has treasures in his writing desk; but he can hope for no understanding in the neglect of our literary conditions; and therefore he would probably prefer not to publish.

A second talent we would like to mention here is Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. Although the German national provincial press has done its duty here, the Viennese press does not seem to want to behave any differently towards delle Grazie than it did with Fercher. We are dealing here with a personality from whom we can hope the greatest. His works to date, "Poems", "The Gypsy", "Hermann", an epic poem, and "Saul", a drama, are truly more than can be expected from a talent up to the age of 21. "Hermann" is a German epic that is completely imbued with the noble idealism of our people. We attach particular importance to the fact that the world-historical mission of the Germans is presented to our souls with such clarity. "Saul" and "Hermann" complement each other in this respect. In "Saul" we meet a personality in the midst of the Jewish people who wants to preach the God of love to this people. But the people of Jehovah have no understanding for this. Therein lies the tragedy of Saul. Full understanding for the religion of love could only be had by a people who live completely egoistically according to the ideal. This is the case with the Germans. But this is to be shown in delle Grazie's "Hermann". Here, too, we encounter German high-mindedness in masterly form. If we already find much that is admirable in the four works of delle Grazie mentioned above, we find from the poems recently published in various magazines that this talent has only now found its true direction, that in future creations of his we can expect what we must regard as the artistic consequence of the present world view. Of course, it is not at all important how one relates to this world view itself. One can, as for example the writer of these lines, be a decided opponent of it; but one has the duty to describe as such the talent in which this view finds its artistic transfiguration. And it seems to us necessary to emphasize that this transfiguration necessarily had to emerge from the German spirit. The mechanical-naturalistic view of existence requires a state of mind that could only produce the deep pain that delle Grazie's most recent poems present to us in a quintessentially German mind. One must possess the depth of German feeling in order to portray that pain with full dignity. And there is something terribly shattering when we are confronted with the following sentiment: "You play of soulless atoms that conjures up ideals for us that are grand, beautiful and sublime out of purely mechanical causality. You can only make existence seem worthless to me. I float there without support, in the midst of your antics. I recognize it as buffoonery, but I can't get out of your circle. You present your worthless haze to me as the content of my life. You create images of beauty, but in bodies in which decay eats away." Anyone who does not understand this pain has no heart for the bleakness of our current views. Delle Grazie's latest poems are the reflection of the modern spirit from the German heart. What position we take on them is a completely different question; the fact that we must not pass them by as a significant phenomenon seems to me to be an imperative of aesthetic conscience. There are things that every educated person has to deal with. What delle Grazie has in common with all true "natures" is to pose questions to fate, to present us with a "human destiny". Admittedly, there is little understanding for this today, when all we get to hear in the theaters is dramatized nonsense penned by the shallowest journalistic narrow-mindedness.

It is a real consolation to anyone who has a heart and a sense for his people that there are still phenomena like Fercher and delle Grazie in a time when people who lack everything for such a reign dominate our literature. "Saul" by delle Grazie was found by Laube to be perfectly suitable for dramatic performance; in German Vienna, however, they prefer to stage another play by the author of "Wilddiebe", as was recently announced to us. If we wanted to describe the disgrace done to the German people and their art, we would have to use too harsh a tone. So better not ...

Faust by Goethe, with introduction and continuous explanation. Edited by Karl Julius Schröer. Second, thoroughly revised edition. Heilbronn 1888

With the large volume of Goethe literature today, one runs the risk of misjudging or even overlooking what is truly significant within it. We would like to hope that this is not the case with Schröer's works on Goethe, which are a quite unique phenomenon within this literature. We would like to point out this peculiarity in connection with the recently published second edition of Schröer's Faust commentary. The way in which Schröer approaches Goethe is, to put it briefly, that which is most fertilized by the education Goethe himself has attained. For Schröer, the poet's writings are not simply the object that he approaches with the usual interest of the philologist or literary historian in order to dissect them according to the usual method of research. Above all, Schröer sought to apply his own method to Goethe himself in order to find the key to understanding the poet in the poet himself, according to the principle that if Goethe really represents the pinnacle of German education, then he can only be measured by his own measure. The great spirit becomes most fruitful for us when we first learn from him before approaching him critically.

What makes Goethe seem so great to us is the great style that permeates all his work; this is his world view and the original power that lay within him and which is even greater than all his works. He could never exhaust himself because his being, capable of almost infinite forms, rejuvenated itself after each creation. That is why his works always point us back to his life, to his personality. That is why it is so important for us to know how his creations came about. Schröer's research is based on this. Although he never forgets the philological aspect, he never makes it an end in itself, but always treats it as a means of penetrating deeper into the workings of Goethe's mind. Schröer always uses the factual, the details, to which other Goethe scholars attach such great importance, in the service of the idea. Goethe himself said of his work: "I do not rest until I find a concise point in the phenomena from which much can be derived, or rather, which voluntarily produces much from itself and carries it towards me."

We have to find this concise point again if we want to understand the poet. And Schröer's intention is to lead us to this point. With regard to the first part, the explainer now shows how Goethe is seized by the Faust idea and how it is then transformed in his mind. The Faust saga in its original sixteenth-century form is Protestant-orthodox. Faust is conceived in contrast to Luther. Both men broke with the existing church, stepped out of the historically traditional forms of religion. But in completely opposite ways. Luther did so with the Bible in his hand, pointing to the written word of God. He throws the inkwell at the head of the devil, which in the view of the time was secular scholarship. Faust is different. He not only renounces the church, but also theology itself, "no longer wanted to be called a theologian, became a man of the world, called himself a D. Medicinae, who put the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench". This means nothing other than: Faust has left the paths of thought marked out by higher powers and, as a truly free man, wants to determine his own goal and direction. Therefore, according to the view of the sixteenth century, he falls prey to the infernal powers. Goethe turned him into the Faust of his time, who must not perish because he has become a "man of the world" who is warmly welcomed by the heavenly host, because he "always strives", even if, according to the true Protestant principle, he always relies on his own labor. Goethe turned the Faust idea from a Protestant-orthodox one into a Protestant-free one. This Protestant character of the Faust saga was first pointed out by Schröer, and he has thus brought a great feature into the explanation of Goethe's Faust, he has set himself a significant goal by utilizing all the details to put this basic character of the poem, which has thus been clarified, in the right light. Schröer's second task is to show how the individual images that make up the poem arose in Goethe's mind and how they gradually came together to form a whole in accordance with this guiding basic idea. For although Goethe was always guided by high idealistic motives, one must not imagine that he strove for the embodiment of abstract ideas. Ideas fill him, his nature, his work; but what he offers us in his works are concrete images. He always had to be powerfully seized by some kind of vision, then he sought to give it a poetic form. That is why Faust, for all its depth, is so full of life, so fresh. Everything bears the character of the individual, there is no dry, abstract generality to be found anywhere. In many cases, Schröer has succeeded in proving the origin of such images, indeed often the origin of the moods expressed in Faust. In doing so, he has probably done more for our understanding of Faust than can ever be done by proving when this or that scene was first written down. We will only emphasize a few things. When Goethe has Söller say the words in the sixth act of the third act of "The Accused": "Oh, how I shudder, poor man, I am boiling hot. Doctor Faust was not half too brave. Richard the Third was not half so!" We can conclude from this that he already had the figure of Faust in full tragic seriousness in mind when he wrote these lines, in 1769. Schröer adds the other fact that Goethe, after returning ill from Leipzig to Frankfurt in 1768, studied the views of Theophrastus Paracelsus and was pleased that nature was presented to him here, even if perhaps in a fantastic way in the "Golden Chain of Homer" (the aurea catena Homeri of the alchemists), in a beautiful combination that points us quite clearly to verses 447 ff. of Faust:

How everything weaves itself into the whole,
One works and lives in the other!
How heavenly forces rise up and down
And pass the golden buckets to each other!

In connection with this, we read in a letter to Friederike Oeser dated February 13, 1769: "I have seen you so rarely - as an inquiring magus hears a mandrake whistle." This is the origin of the first Faust monologue. Thus Schröer leads us to a full understanding of Faust by means of the psychological genesis of the individual parts of Faust. In the above we can clearly see how the figure of Faust appears in Goethe's mind as early as 1769 and what significance it has. Another example is the following. In the first act of the second part, where the goings-on at the imperial court are depicted with such superior humor, we are referred to Goethe's reading of Hans Sachs. Sachs' two poems "geschicht kaiser Maximiliani löblicher gedechtnus mit dem alchemisten" and "wunderlich geschicht kaiser Maximiliani löblicher gedechtnus von einem nigromanten", which Goethe read in 1775, made a vivid impression on the poet; here he found a concise point from which much can be derived. We recognize this vivid impression in the description of the goings-on at the imperial court and in the conjuring scene of Helena. The magnificent image at the end of the second part, where the good and evil spirits fight for Faust's soul, was created in a similar way. In a letter from Goethe to the painter Fr. Müller dated June 21, 1781, we see the idea come to life in the poet's imagination as he talks about a picture depicting the battle between the archangel Michael and the devil "over the corpse of Moses". He says: "If one [...] wanted to treat this subject, it could not, it seems to me, be otherwise than that the saint, still full of the graceful vision of the promised land, departs in rapture and angels are busy lifting him away in a blaze of glory. For the words: "The Lord buried him" leave us room for the most beautiful prospects, and here Satan could at most only contrast in a corner of the foreground with his black shoulders and, without laying hands on the Lord's anointed, at most only look around to see whether there might not be something for him to acquire here." Schröer comments: "Moses departs at the sight of the promised land, like Faust in view of the completion of his work. In a blaze of glory from above on the right, the heavenly host comes to carry Faust away, and as the angels lift him up, we see Mephistopheles looking around, literally like Satan in the letter to Müller." It is precisely here that one would most likely believe that Goethe started from an abstract idea, and it is interesting to see how a concrete image underlies this as well.

Goethe's Faust requires commentary. The natural freshness of the first part and the high culture of the second, which make the poetry so appealing to us, also present difficulties of a very special kind for understanding. Only when we recognize the connection between the individual and the whole of Goethe's spirit do we fully penetrate. Schröer seeks to convey this insight. It is particularly necessary for the second part, which has been so often misunderstood and misjudged. We hope that this commentary in particular will do much to ensure that the view that Schröer expresses with the words: "It is by no means a work of diminishing poetic power; it is full of life, admirable in detail and as a whole."

Modern epic in 10 cantos by Robert Hamerling ¹

A. Richter, Hamburg and Leipzig 1888

Hamerling's peculiarity lies in the happy combination of a rich imagination with a profound understanding of things. As a result, he seems to be the most competent poetic portrayer of those historical epochs in which the turning points of human development occurred. His profundity allows him to find the driving forces, the jumping-off points in history everywhere, and his magnificent imagination embodies them in a wealth of figures in which the entire content of their time is reflected and which are nevertheless full of individual life. Hamerling mostly depicts times in which a high level of culture is passed on to a declining generation that is no longer able to cope with the tasks set for it at the educational level reached by its ancestors. In such times, man is unable to grasp the fullness of the spirit he is confronted with, and it therefore becomes a distortion within him: the culture that has reached its zenith turns into its opposite and consumes itself. The poet shows this in "Ahasuerus" for Roman culture, in "Aspasia" for Greek culture; in "King of Sion" and in "Danton and Robespierre" his basic idea is quite the same. His latest epic "Homunculus" is also based on the same idea. It depicts the caricature that our modern culture becomes when we imagine it following the path it has taken to its ultimate consequences. Homunculus is the representative of modern man. Nothing else is so characteristic of him as the complete lack of what is called individuality. That source of ever-fresh life that allows us to constantly draw something new from within ourselves, so that our mind and spirit appear to be endowed with a certain self-grounded depth that never completely gives itself away, is completely lost to modern man. A distinct individuality is not something manageable, for no matter how many expressions of life we have become acquainted with, it is not possible for us to piece together such a picture of it that we could predict the sum of its further activity. Every subsequent action always receives a new impulse from the depths of the being, which shows us new sides of it. This distinguishes individuality from mechanism, which is only the result of the interaction of its constituent parts. If we know these, we also know the limits within which its work is enclosed. The life of modern man is now becoming more and more machine-like. Education, social forms, professional life, everything works to drive out of man what we would like to call individual life, the soul. He becomes more and more a product of the circumstances that affect him. This soulless, unindividual human being, heightened to the point of caricature, is Hamerling's homunculus. Created chemically in a retort, he lacks any possibility of further development beyond the limits that the master of science has determined for him through the substances added to the mixture. This human mechanism runs through all stages of modern life. In it all the perversities of it appear carried to extremes and thus in their inner hollowness. He undertakes everything possible. However, he never strives to create anything truly positive, but only to use the products of nature and the human spirit for his own entirely futile undertakings in order to gain honor, prestige and power. He first tried to do so by founding a large, modern-style newspaper. By taking all the excesses of modern journalism to the extreme, he seems to achieve his purpose best. But his profession was no longer enough for him when he saw a new era of "economic boom" approaching. He becomes a founder and thus a trillionaire. With superior humor, the poet illustrates how the whole world lies in the dust in front of the lowly money and pays homage to it. A great crash throws Munkel down from the heights he has climbed and he is forced to seek a new and adventurous path in life. He succeeds in raising the treasure of the Nibelungs, which is only possible for a fatherless man, and in forming a union with Lurley, the mermaid, who joins the soulless man as a soulless woman, a type of genuine, modern female unnature. They establish a realm of unnature in Eldorado. All concepts of the natural are turned upside down. Everyone will enjoy reading the magnificent description of the life of the party in this state abortion. After this "foundation" also fails, Munkel throws himself into educating those apes, who have remained at the ape stage in the humanization of this race and who, in his opinion, must be much more uncorrupted than their degenerate offspring, to become human beings and to create a new state with them. This empire also suffers from the same flaw as all other undertakings of the homunculus. The ape has become outwardly human, it even lives in the forms of the state, but again the soul is missing. The apes are mechanisms, as is their state. Everything must therefore finally reveal itself in its impossibility. Munkel soon longs for a new satisfaction of his thirst for action. He seeks it by preaching to the Jews about emigrating to Palestine and founding a new Jewish kingdom. He leads the procession and becomes King of the Jews in Jerusalem. But the Jews need Europe, and Europe needs the Jews. And so, after proving themselves completely incapable of leading their own empire, they return to Europe. Homunculus, their king, is crucified first. In this song, Hamerling confronts both the Jews and the anti-Semites with the superior objectivity of a wise man. Of course, it is here that one is most likely to misjudge this objectivity. The greatest short-sightedness, however, is when, as has happened so often, over-sensitive Jews regard an unbiased assessment of the circumstances as a mistake. But one has no right to immediately accuse those who do not expressly emphasize their partisanship for the Jews of taking a stand against them. Homunculus, the shamefully abandoned man, is rescued with the help of Ahazver and reappears in Europe to put the theoretical views of pessimism into practice. A congress is convened with the aim of persuading all beings to put an end to existence in one day by a unanimous decision. Agreement is reached, and the pessimists' highest ideal seems close to realization thanks to Munkel's genius. April 1st is to be the day of the end, everything goes well. Then, at the decisive moment, the kiss of a pair of lovers is heard, and everything is thwarted again. Homunculus finally realizes that there is nothing more to be done with this depraved race, so he builds an airship and sets off into the infinite universe. A bolt of lightning strikes the craft, and so Homunculus, clinging to the remains of it, floats in infinite space with Lurley, whom he has always found again after she has repeatedly passed through him, a play of cosmic forces, sometimes attracted by this world body, sometimes repelled by that. He cannot die, he becomes a play of the elements of which he is composed like a machine. The soulless human being cannot become happy. Our happiness only comes from our own self. Only a deep, substantial inner being can give satisfaction. Anyone who does not have one has not truly come into being in the higher human sense. Where this primal source is missing, life appears to be an odyssey without goal or purpose. What has taken a beginning in that characterized higher sense can calmly depart again when its task has been fulfilled. Homunculus, however, cannot die, for it is never truly born. A mere mechanism knows neither birth nor death. That is why it will float in space forever.

As you can see, Hamerling's profundity has succeeded in a marvelous way in reproaching time for its aberrations. Just as the basic idea is great and significant, so too is the individual part full of life. Here, too, Hamerling has remained the idealistic poet. His task is to draw the consequences of reality, to look beyond the accidental to the profound. Just as the truly great and dignified in the ideal only appears even more heightened, more dignified, so the bad and perverse in the idealistic poet becomes a caricature. Many will take offense at these distorted images; but they should not blame the poet, but the world from which he has drawn. Admittedly, our criticism is the furthest removed from this objective assessment of the work; it has dragged it down into the dispute between the parties and sought to distort the public's image of it in the most unbelievable way. We will talk about this critical attitude towards "Homunculus" in another article.

The behavior of our critics towards the "Homunculus" has once again shown that they are devoid of any desire for objectivity. Whether it finds the core point of a work, whether it puts the matter in the right light, is all the same to it; it is only interested in twisting a series of "witty" phrases to "amuse" its audience. For the most part, the latter does not ask whether the critic has made an accurate judgment or not, whether he is capable of selflessly immersing himself in a work; it only asks about the witty ingenuity that is the enemy of all positive criticism. This criticism never considers that it is completely unfruitful if it does not set itself the serious task of advancing the public's understanding of the times and their phenomena. The critic only wants to use the productive intellectual work of the true writer or artist as a footstool to make his own unfruitful personality widely known. Everywhere it is the lack of seriousness in the conception of their profession that must be held against contemporary criticism. The two Schlegels, for example, who always had great artistic principles and an important world view in the background when they made their judgments, were exemplary critics. Now, however, one leaves oneself entirely to subjective arbitrariness. It is only due to this circumstance that a critic today makes statements that are in blatant contradiction to those he made a few months ago. Where a serious view of art and the world supports individual judgments, such vacillation is inconceivable. For the most part, contemporary critics have not the slightest awareness of their responsibility before the forum of world history. In his song "Literarische Walpurgisnacht" (Literary Walpurgis Night), Hamerling has aptly depicted the unpleasant state of our contemporary literature, always remaining true to the poet's task, of course, whose depiction must remain uninfluenced by the tendencies and slogans of the parties. But what has criticism made of this "homunculus"? It has dragged him down into the dispute between the parties, and indeed into the most repugnant form of it, the racial struggle. It certainly cannot be denied that today Judaism still appears as a cohesive whole and as such has often intervened in the development of our present conditions, and in a way that was nothing less than favorable to Western cultural ideas. Judaism as such, however, has long since died out, has no justification within the modern life of nations, and the fact that it has nevertheless survived is a mistake of world history, the consequences of which could not fail to be felt. We do not mean here the forms of the Jewish religion alone, we mean above all the spirit of Judaism, the Jewish way of thinking. The unprejudiced would have thought that the best judges of the poetic form that Hamerling gave to the fact just mentioned were Jews. Jews, who have settled into the Western cultural process, should be the best to recognize the faults of a moral ideal that has been transplanted from ancient times into modern times and is completely useless here. The Jews themselves must first of all realize that all their special aspirations must be absorbed by the spirit of modern times. Instead, Hamerling's work has simply been presented as if it were the confession of faith of a partisan of anti-Semitism.

The poet has been accused of a point of view that he is unable to adopt due to the intellectual height on which he stands. We now understand quite well that someone whose name appears in the "Homunculus" in an unflattering context cannot come to an objective appreciation of the book. But when a major newspaper like the "Neue Freie Presse" has nothing more to say about the "Homunculus" than the tantrums of a necessarily biased person dressed up in bland jokes, then you really don't know whether to be annoyed by such frivolity or laugh at the impudence. Must there not simply be an intention to smell anti-Semitism in the objective presentation of the spirit of Judaism? There is a very specific formula for the form of anti-Semitism that, if one wants to use the dispensable word, is appropriate to Hamerling: He takes - like any unbiased person free of party fanaticism - the point of view towards Judaism that any Jew independent of the prejudices of his tribe and denomination can share. But no more is required of a mind that is as completely wedded to Western ideals as Hamerling. If the attitude of the "Neue Freie Presse" and similar papers towards the "homunculus" is reprehensible in the highest degree, it is no less unforgivable when anti-Semitic newspapers portray Hamerling as a comrade-in-arms of that party which, apart from its aptitude for rioting and making noise, has nothing characteristic but the complete lack of any thought. The supporters of this party have simply torn passages out of context in their newspapers in order to reinterpret them in their own way, which, as we know, is the main art of journalism. Hamerling has resolutely defended himself against such distortions of his latest work, first in a letter printed in the "Grazer Tagespost" and in the "Deutsche Zeitung", then in a poem in the "Schönen blauen Donau". We have endeavored here to contrast his point of view with the deliberately false interpretations of his contemporaries.

We cannot help but remember the opinion of some other critics, which is based on a complete misunderstanding of the relationship between poet and poetry. One asks: How must a person be at odds with himself and the world who allows himself to be carried away by the creation of such ugly images; how morbid must the mind of someone be who holds up such a mirror image to his time? In contrast, we would like to raise another question: How must a criticism have fallen out with the principles of all aesthetics if it diverts the judgment of a work as such to the poet's subjective feelings? It was a great word that Schiller once uttered to Goethe when the latter complained that he was accused of the immorality of some of his characters: If it can be shown that the immoral actions flow from your way of thinking and not from your characters, then this could be held against you, but not because you have failed before the Christian, but because you have failed before the aesthetic forum. One would think that such principles, which are irrefutable, would have long since become second nature to our critics. But if that were the case, they would have found that the figures of time that Hamerling created could not look any different than they do, because they have nothing to do with his way of thinking about time. But this is one of the main faults of our criticism, that it does not, following the example of science, want to incorporate the principles that once existed as permanent axioms. It is quite in the case of the scholars, who do not know the already existing principles of their science. We do not have a criticism that is completely at the height of its time, because what is currently called that is mostly nothing but critical dilettantism.

• 1. See special notes, $. 593 ff.

A lecture by Prof. Dr. W. Heinzelmann Erfurt 1891, Hugo Neumann

The attempt to measure Goethe according to an underlying standard must always lead to erroneous results. Just as little positive contribution to Goethe's scientific knowledge will be made by those who simply ask themselves: to what extent do Goethe's scientific views agree with those of Darwinism or those of our time in general, just as little can a person come to a correct judgment about the ethical and religious content of Goethe's poems who examines them for their agreement or disagreement with the teachings of Christianity, as the author of this lecture does. Goethe can only be explained from within himself, from the innermost nature of his very being. Every lens through which his achievements are seen changes [their] original form. That is why Heinzelmann's conclusions are one-sided and skewed. And if he recommends the interpretation of "Iphigenia" for school use in his sense, we would like to say, on the other hand, that for this purpose the pure, unbiased consideration of the work of art seems more useful to us, because it alone brings the student to understand Goethe purely from within, without any preconceived opinion.

Mr. Edler Herr zu Putlitz has been appointed director of the Stuttgart Court Theater. When the news of this appointment was published in the newspapers, many a friend of the arts was no doubt surprised, for no one is aware of any qualifications that this gentleman brings to such a position. Indeed, the newly appointed official himself admitted with touching naivety when he took office that he was well aware that he did not have such prerequisites and that he owed his high position solely to the merits of his father. These lines do not in the least intend to belittle the undeniable merits of this father. They cannot and must not be forgotten. But in the face of such facts, the question is forced upon us: have we really come so far down the evil path of reaction that a son is given a high, responsible position simply because his father held a similar position? Where will we end up if we no longer fill important positions with people who are personally suited to them, but instead make the qualifications dependent on birth and descent! It must be particularly painful that this case could occur in the field of art. It shows a lack of understanding of the inner essence and dignity of art. In times when art was a pastime to fill idle hours, when people had no idea of its high value, the opinion that any gentleman could take the helm of an art institution could have been justified. But since the nation has come to realize that art is one of the most powerful levers of all culture, since that time, the influential circles should finally have come to the realization that only those who are deeply involved with the aspirations and activities of art are called to take a leading position in an art institute. How degrading it is for the performing artist to see the dilettante placed above him as judge and director! And truly lamentable is the objection that is often made against considerations of this kind: there are no right men in Germany for such a position. If only the Germans would once get rid of the unfortunate misjudgment of the merits of their contemporaries! As if every person really had to rest in the grave for fifty years before they could be recognized for their achievements. We have no doubt that future literary historians will celebrate Bulthaupt as a great dramatist who was wronged by his contemporaries. But why do people who claim to understand such things not step forward when a position needs to be filled and say with energy: this is the most worthy man for this place? In the long run, even those in positions of authority could not resist the unanimous and powerful declaration of discerning circles, which should become public opinion. But there is never any talk of our knights of the mind energetically standing up for their convictions. They consider “moderate restraint” to be the true characteristic of a true intellectual aristocracy. The fact that we are experiencing an ever more incredible decline in our cultural life, that we lack a true public opinion in matters of art, and that we are being led back into the dark conditions of dead cultural periods: no one is concerned about this. If things continue to develop in the same way, we will eventually end up with a situation where a man is appointed as a professor of political science or philosophy at a university because his father has rendered services to the corresponding disciplines or because he belongs to a socially privileged family, and without any further proof of his personal abilities being required. We will see optimistic people coming and saying: the man will settle into his office, he will learn. We have heard such judgments - from otherwise quite capable men - when Burckhard was appointed to the top position at the Burgtheater in Vienna from a purely bureaucratic position. Such people must allow us to find it natural when someone hires a layman as a doctor. For he will learn the duties of his profession and will settle in. A layman as theater director can certainly not cure a sick person to death. But he can kill good taste. But that is less noticeable. He will still be able to “amuse” people.

The author of the essay “Serious Signs of the Times”
(see “Litterar. Merkur” No. 4) has the following
to say in response:

The comparison with an unread book seems to me to be quite inadmissible: Mr. zu Putlitz is not a closed book, but an unwritten one. What our article was directed against was the fact of the appointment. There was not the slightest reason for it. Why appoint a man to the post of theater director who has not done anything to prove his ability to the public, when there are enough men in Germany who can be relied upon to fill this position? Even if we admit that Mr. zu Putlitz will settle in. The position of theater director is not one that should be filled by a man who has not in some way settled into the arts. In such serious matters, one does not count on possibilities. It may be that he will settle in; but it may also be that he will not. Mr. zu Putlitz is not even mentioned. Once he has been appointed, he must fulfill his task as well as he can. Our article was not directed against him, but against the views of those who appointed him.

The objection that, according to the demands of our article, the director must be a universal genius, equally experienced in drama, music, song, ballet, is not correct. We do not demand that the director be a master of every single art form, but only that he have a lively relationship with art. He does not need to have a relationship with all areas of art, but he must have become familiar with art from some side. Whether musician, dramatist, critic, etc.: that is less important. But something of all of them.

What the author of the reply says about the principle of familiarization could at best still apply to a member of the stage. The individual singer or actor will be able to be used with the right talent, even before he is finished. But the theater should not be a place of education for directors. The top manager must have certain goals and a clear, coherent artistic vision. It is quite possible that Mr. zu Putlitz is very capable and knows a lot. But that can mean nothing compared to the fact that there are men in Germany who have proven through their journalistic achievements that every theater can expect an artistic upswing under their direction. Where that is the case, there is no need to let someone settle in first. It is painful to see so much intellectual power that is not used in public life, while important things are accomplished by people who appear to have little vocation.

Appearances of the modern mind and the nature of man. By Robert Schellwien

Leipzig 1892, C. E. M. Pfeffer

Few publications in contemporary philosophical literature can compare with this book in terms of profundity, sharp conceptualization and scientific thoroughness. We are dealing with a very important publication. The author has what so many lack today: the courage of thought that dares to tackle the central problems of the world, and also the necessary confidence in our human power of thought that is needed to solve the highest tasks. Schellwien is an idealist. He considers the phenomena given by experience to be a content lifted out of the dark sea of the unconscious into the sphere of the conscious by the human "I". The "I" is only a post-creator, but insofar as the force living and working in it is identical with the primordial force of the universe, it is at the same time the creator of the world content given to us. For Schellwien, the real task of philosophy is to understand the latter as a birth from the unconscious, which comes about through the "I". For Schellwien, the laws that constitute the world are only the laws of our own "I", which confront us as an object. The author aptly explains how the mechanical explanation of nature arises from the fact that man perceives the laws of the object, but is not aware that these laws are ultimately those of his own spiritual organism. In this way he arrives at the view that in every appearance of the world he recognizes a twofold aspect: the given, objective side, and the subjective, the concept or idea of the thing. Both together are equally important to him for grasping the full reality. This brings him closer to the view that the writer of these lines himself holds and has repeatedly expressed. Most recently in his writing: "Wahrheit und Wissenschaft" (Weimar, Herm. Weißbach, 1892) p. 34 with the words: "Cognition is thus based on the fact that the content of the world is originally given to us in a form that does not completely reveal it, but which has a second essential side in addition to what it directly presents. This second, originally not given side of the content of the world is revealed through cognition. What appears separate to us in thinking is therefore not empty forms, but a sum of determinations (categories), which, however, are form for the world content. Only the form of the world content gained through cognition, in which both sides of the world content are united, can be called reality." Schellwien also does not believe in the dull Philistine view that the law of the world exists only in space and time, and that the human spirit is thrown into a corner as an empty vessel to stand there until some drop of experiential knowledge happens to fall into it. He does not think of the mind as being so oblivious to the world, but full of content, so that something comes out when it brings the treasures lying in its depths to the surface. The author does not want to deny the importance of experience: but he knows that we can only enlighten ourselves about the actual nature of the world by seeking the solution to the actual riddle in the courageous unrolling of our own "I". Schellwien attributes this development of our spiritual content to this will. We cannot agree with him on this. This will is superfluous. The spiritual content is the power in itself that unfolds from itself. On this point the author has not yet sufficiently freed himself from the Schopenhauerianism from which he evidently started. Only when he completely discards this crutch can he clearly recognize the original light of the absolute spirit based on its own content. He will then realize that the idea does not need the aid of the will in order to be, but that the phenomena of the will themselves lead back to the idea in their depths. On the whole, Schellwien shows himself to be a philosopher who wants to draw the content of his science from the essence of human individuality. However, it is not the ego as an individual, arbitrary entity that is his foundation, but the concrete-personal, which has the advantage over all other world entities that it contains the general, the abstract as something concrete and full of content. In this, he rises above Stirner and Nietzsche, of whom he gives an excellent characterization in the first two chapters of his book.