The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 54

Rundschau_ 18, 1879. In Italy in the sixteenth century there was a change to this extent, that greenery was no longer clipt, but allowed to grow naturally, and the garden represented the transition from palace to landscape, from bare architectural forms to the free creations of Nature. The pa.s.sion for flowers--the art of the pleasure garden, flourished in Holland and Germany. (Falke.)]

[Footnote 13: W.H. Riehl states (_Kulturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten_) that Berlin, Augsburg, Leipzig, Darmstadt, and Mannheim were described in the seventeenth century as having 'very fine and delightful positions'; and the finest parts of the Black Forest, Harz and Thuringian mountains as 'very desolate,' deserted, and monotonous, or, at best, as not particularly pleasant scenery. If only a region were flat and treeless, a delicious landscape could be charmed out of it. Welcker, Court physician at Hesse Ca.s.sel, describing Schlangenbad in 1721, said that it lay in a desolate, unpleasing district, where nothing grew but foliage and gra.s.s, but that through ingenious planting of clipt trees in lines and cross lines, some sort of artistic effect had been produced. Clearly the principles of French garden-craft had become a widely accepted dogma of taste. Riehl contrasts the periwig period with the mediaeval, and concludes that the mediaeval backgrounds of pictures implied feeling for the wild and romantic. He says: 'In the Middle Ages the painters chose romantic jagged forms of mountains and rocks for backgrounds, hence the wild, bare, and arid counted as a prototype of beautiful scenery, while some centuries later such forms were held to be too rustic and irregular for beauty.' One cannot entirely agree with this. He weakens it himself in what follows. 'It was not a real scene which rose Alp-like before their mind's eye, but an imaginary and sacred one; their fantastic, romantic ideal called for rough and rugged environment': and adds, arguing in a circle, 'Their minds pa.s.sed then to real portraiture of Nature, and decided the landscape eye of the period.' My own opinion is that the loftiness of the 'heroic' mountain backgrounds seemed suitable for the sacred subjects which loomed so large and sublime in their own minds, and that these backgrounds did not reveal their ideal of landscape beauty, nor 'a romantic feeling for Nature,' nor 'a taste for the romantic,' nor yet a wondrous change of view in the periwig period.]

[Footnote 14: In his _Harburg Program_ of 1883 _(Beitrage zur Geschichte des Naturgefuhls_), after an incomplete survey of ancient and modern writings on the subject, Winter sketches the development of modern feeling for Nature in Germany from Opitz to 1770, as shewn in the literature of that period, basing his information chiefly upon Goedeke's _Deutsche Dichtung._]

[Footnote 15: Comp. Chovelius _Die bedeutendsten deutschen Romanz des 17 Jahrhunderts_. Leipzig, 1866.]

[Footnote 16: Chovelius.]

[Footnote 17: Daniel Lohenstein's _Blumen_. Breslau, 1689.]

CHAPTER IX

[Footnote 1: Freiherr von Ditfurth, _Deutsche Volks und Gesellschaftslieder des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts_, 1872.]

[Footnote 2: Goedeke-t.i.ttmannschen Sammlung, xiii., _Trutz-Nachtigall._]

[Footnote 3: _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_.]

[Footnote 4: t.i.ttmann's _Deutsche Dichter des 17 Jahrhunderts_, vol.

vi.]

[Footnote 5: Comp., too, iv. 5: 'Die ihr alles hort und saget, Luft and Forst und Meer durchjaget; Echo, Sonne, Mond, und Wind, Sagt mir doch, wo steckt mein Kind?'

21. 'Den sanften West bewegt mein Klagen, Es rauscht der Bach den Seufzern nach Aus Mitleid meiner Plagen; Die Vogel schweigen, Um nur zu zeigen Da.s.s diese schone Tyrannei Auch Tieren uberlegen sei.'

_Abendlied_ contains beautiful personifications: 'Der Feierabend ist gemacht, Die Arbeit schlaft, der Traum erwacht, Die Sonne fuhrt die Pferde trinken; Der Erdkreis wandert zu der Ruh, Die Nacht druckt ihm die Augen zu, Die schon dem sussen Schlafe winken.']

[Footnote 6: Hettner, _Litteraturgeschichte des 18 Jahrhunderts_.]

[Footnote 7: Lappenberg in _Zeitschrift fur Hamburgische Geschichte_, ii. Hettner, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 8: 'Ye fields and woods, my refuge from the toilsome world of business, receive me in your quiet sanctuaries and favour my Retreat and thoughtful Solitude. Ye verdant plains, how gladly I salute ye! Hail all ye blissful Mansions! Known Seats! Delightful Prospects! Majestick Beautys of this earth, and all ye rural Powers and Graces! Bless'd be ye chaste Abodes of happiest Mortals who here in peaceful Innocence enjoy a Life unenvy'd, the Divine, whilst with its bless'd Tranquility it affords a happy Leisure and Retreat for Man, who, made for contemplation and to search his own and other natures, may here best meditate the cause of Things, and, plac'd amidst the various scenes of Nature, may nearer view her Works. O glorious Nature! supremely fair and sovereignly good! All-loving and All-lovely All-Divine! Whose looks are so becoming, and of such infinite grace, whose study brings such Wisdom, and whose contemplation such Delight.... Since by thee (O Sovereign mind!) I have been form'd such as I am, intelligent and rational; since the peculiar Dignity of my Nature is to know and contemplate Thee; permit that with due freedom I exert those Facultys with which thou hast adorn'd me. Bear with my ventrous and bold approach. And since not vain Curiosity, nor fond Conceit, nor Love of aught save Thee alone, inspires me with such thoughts as these, be thou my a.s.sistant, and guide me in this Pursuit; whilst I venture thus to tread the Labyrinth of wide Nature, and endeavour to trace thee in thy Works.']

[Footnote 9: Comp. Jacob von Falke, '_Der englische Garten_' (_Nord und Sud_, Nov. 1884), and his _Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks_.]

[Footnote 10: _Dessins des edifices, meubles, habits, machines, et utensils des Chinois_, 1757.]

CHAPTER X

[Footnote 1: '_Die Alpen im Lichte verschiedener Zeitalter_,'

_Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Vortrage_, Virchow und Holtzendorff.

Berlin, 1877.]

[Footnote 2:

Geschafte Zw.a.n.g und Grillen Entweihn nicht diese Trift; Ich finde hier im Stillen Des Unmuts Gegengift.

Es webet, wallt, und spielet, Das Laub um jeden Strauch, Und jede Staude fuhlet Des lauen Zephyrs Hauch.

Was mir vor Augen schwebet Gefallt und hupft und singt, Und alles, alles lebet, Und alles scheint verjungt.

Ihr Thaler und ihr Hohen Die l.u.s.t und Sommer schmuckt!

Euch ungestort zu sehen, Ist, was mein Herz erquickt.

Die Reizung freier Felder Beschamt der Garten Pracht, Und in die offnen Walder Wird ohne Zw.a.n.g gelacht....

In jahrlich neuen Schatzen zeigt sich des Landmanns Gluck, Und Freiheit und Ergotzen Erheitern seinen Blick....

Ihm prangt die fette Weide Und die betante Flur; Ihm grunet l.u.s.t und Freude Ihm malet die Natur.']

[Footnote 3: _Litteratur geschichte_.]

[Footnote 4: _Samtliche poetische Werke_, J.P. Uz. Leipzig, 1786.]

[Footnote 5: _Samtliche Werke_. Berlin, 1803.]

[Footnote 6: _Samtliche Werke_, J.G. Jacobi, vol. viii. Zurich, 1882.]

[Footnote 7: He said of his garden at Freiburg, which was laid out in terraces on a slope, that all that Flora and Pomona could offer was gathered there. It had a special Poet's Corner on a hillock under a poplar, where a moss-covered seat was laid for him upon some limestone rock-work; white and yellow jasmine grew round, and laurels and myrtles hung down over his head. Here he would rest when he walked in the sun; on his left was a mossy Ara, a little artificial stone altar on which he laid his book, and from here he could gaze across the visible bit of the distant Rhine to the Vosges, and give himself up undisturbed to his thoughts.]

[Footnote 8: Gessners _Schriften_. Zurich, 1770.]

[Footnote 9: Spalding, _Die Bestimmung des Menschen_. Leipzig, 1768.]

[Footnote 10: Klopstock's _Briefe_. Brunswick, 1867.]

[Footnote 11: Comp. _Odes_, 'Die Kunst Tialfs' and 'Winterfreuden.']

[Footnote 12: _Briefe_.]

[Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.]

[Footnote 14: Comp. his letters from Switzerland, which contain nothing particular about the scenery, although he crossed the Lake of Zurich, and 'a wicked mountain' to the Lake of Zug and Lucerne.]

[Footnote 15: Claudius, who, at a time when the lyric both of poetry and music was lost in Germany in conventional tea and coffee songs, was the first to rediscover the direct expression of feeling--that is, Nature feeling. (Storm's _Hausbuch_.)]

CHAPTER XI

[Footnote 1: I have obtained much information and suggestion from '_Ueber die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter_,' and '_Ueber die Alpine Reiselitteratur in fruherer Zeit_,' in _Allgem.

Zeitung_. Jan. 11, 1885, and Sept. 1885, respectively.]

[Footnote 2: _Evagatorium 3, Bibliothek d. litterar. Vereins_.

Stuttgart, 1849.]

[Footnote 3: _Bibliothek des litterar. Vereins_. Stuttgart, 1886.]

[Footnote 4: _Descriptio Larii lacus_. Milan, 1558.]

[Footnote 5: _Itinerarium Basil_. 1624.]

[Footnote 6: Osenbruggen, _Wanderungen in der Schweiz_, 1867; _Entwickelungsgeschichte des Schweizreisens_; Friedlander, _Ueber die Entstehung und Entwickelung_.]