The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ix Part 75

(To Siegmund Englaender.)

--You wish to believe in the poet as you believe in the Deity; why ascend so high into the region of clouds, where everything ceases to be, even a.n.a.logy? Would you not probably attain more if you descended to the beast and ascribed to the artistic faculty an intermediate stage between the instinct of the beast and the consciousness of man? There at least we are in the sphere of experience, and have the prospect of ascertaining something real by applying two known quant.i.ties to an unknown one. The beast leads a dream life which nature herself immediately regulates and strictly adapts to those purposes, by the attainment of which, on the one hand, the creature itself subsists, but, on the other, the world continues. The artist leads a similar dream life, naturally only as an artist, and probably from the same cause; for the cosmic laws hardly come any more clearly into his field of vision than the organic laws come into that of the beast, and yet he cannot round off and complete any of his images without going back to them. Why then should nature not do for him what she does for the beast? You will, however, find in general--to go still deeper--that the processes of life have nothing to do with consciousness, and artistic generation is the highest of all processes; they differ from the logical precisely in that they absolutely cannot be traced back to definite factors. Who has ever closely watched evolution in any of its phases, and what has the impregnation theory of physiology, in spite of the microscopic detailed description of the working apparatus, done for the solution of the fundamental mystery? Can it explain even a humpback? On the other hand, there can be no complex which it would not be possible to follow up in all its involutions and finally to resolve. The structure of the universe is revealed to us, we can, if we like, play the fiddle for the dance of the heavenly bodies; but the sprouting blade of gra.s.s is a riddle and will always remain one. You would therefore be perfectly right in laughing at Newton if he wanted to "play the nave child" and declare that the falling apple had inspired him with the idea of the system of gravitation, whereas it may very well have given him the impetus which started him to reflect upon the subject. On the other hand, you would wrong Dante if you should doubt that Heaven and h.e.l.l had arisen in colossal outline before his soul at the mere sight of a wood, half in light and half in shadow. For systems are not dreamed, but neither are works of art made by minute calculations, nor, what amounts to the same thing, since thinking is only a higher kind of arithmetic, thought out. The artistic imagination is the organ which drains those depths of the world which are inaccessible to the other faculties, and in accordance herewith, my mode of viewing things puts, in place of the false realism which takes the part for the whole, only the true realism, which also comprises what does not lie on the surface. For the rest, this false realism is not curtailed thereby, for even though one can no more prepare oneself for writing poetry than for dreaming, yet dreams will always reflect daily and yearly impressions, and no less do poems reflect the sympathies and antipathies of the author. I believe all these propositions are simple and comprehensible. Whoever refuses to recognize them must throw the half of literature overboard, for example _Edipus at Colonus_ (for geography knows nothing of sacred groves), Shakespeare's _Tempest_ (for there is no such thing as magic), _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ (for only a fool is afraid of ghosts, etc.); nay he must also--and this even he who might be ready to make the other sacrifices would find it hard to bring himself to do--he must also place the French at the head of what remains; for where can one find realists like Voltaire, etc.? This, to me, seems to demonstrate my proposition, at least the counter-test is made.

THE LIFE OF OTTO LUDWIG

By A.R. HOHLFELD, Ph.D.

Professor of German Literature, University of Wisconsin

The career of Otto Ludwig belongs to a sad period in nineteenth century literature in Germany. Sad not because of any lack of works of originality and power, but sad because of the wanton neglect with which the German public of those years treated its ablest and most forceful writers. The historian Treitschke, in an essay probably written not long after the death of Otto Ludwig, sarcastically says in direct reference to the latter's tragic life: "No nation reads more books than ours, none buys fewer." To be sure, Germany was then a poor country and its readers had some excuse for being economical in supplying their literary wants.

But there was no excuse for the notorious narrowness of vision and judgment shown by many of the leading critics, theatres, and literary journals of that time. Writers of mediocre talent were praised to the skies. But old Grillparzer, Hebbel and Ludwig, Keller, Raabe, Storm, and others who brought a really new and vital message were left to bear the burden of neglect, if not of animosity. No wonder that in foreign lands, after the middle of the nineteenth century, contemporary German literature fell into an almost universal disrepute from which it is only slowly recovering at present. Foreign critics were justified in judging the significance of the literary output of Germany by those writers on whom the Germans themselves were placing the seal of national approval.

Zschokke, Gerstacker, Auerbach, Spielhagen, not to mention the ubiquitous Muhlbach or Marlitt or Polko--these were the names which in America, for instance, figured most prominently in the magazines between 1850 and 1880. [Ill.u.s.tration: OTTO LUDWIG] [Blank Page] Their works were reviewed and translated. They were considered as the representatives of Germany in the literary parliament of nations, while those of her men of letters whom we have since learned to recognize as the real forces of her mid-century literature remained unknown. Of Ludwig, who clearly belongs to this more select group, the _Atlantic Monthly_ and the _North American Review_, for obvious reasons, reviewed at some length his _Studies in Shakespeare_; but, as far as the present writer's knowledge goes, not one of his works was ever translated in this country until the _Hereditary Forester_ appeared in _Poet Lore_ only a few years ago.

Otto Ludwig was born in 1813 in Eisfeld, a small town picturesquely situated in the foothills of the southern slope of the Thuringian Forest, and his entire life was spent within the limited confines of Thuringia and Saxony. Leipzig and Dresden, not much over one hundred English miles to the northeastward of Eisfeld, were the only two larger cities with which he ever became acquainted, and, even when living there, it was characteristic of him to take refuge in some rustic suburb or near-by village. Ludwig's parents belonged to the "leading families"

of their town and were in very comfortable circ.u.mstances at the time of his birth and early childhood. Sudden reverses, however, soon interfered with the boy's prospects in life. At the age of twelve, he lost his father, six years later his mother. After the father's death a well-to-do uncle took it upon himself to care for the boy, whom he intended to be his heir and his successor in business. But neither the imaginative, nervously sensitive mother, nor the well-meaning but happy-go-lucky uncle were able to furnish that guidance which the delicate and prematurely contemplative youth needed. After only a short period of irregular schooling, Ludwig, sixteen years old, had to enter his uncle's business; but a few years of apprentices.h.i.+p convinced even the uncle that the young man was hardly on his right track as a salesman of groceries. A renewed effort to take up systematic school work with the view of preparing for one of the learned professions did not prove any more successful, and, in 1833, Ludwig, who had always shown an unusual talent for music and enjoyed excellent instruction in it, decided to become a musician. Continuing his secluded life at Eisfeld he devoted himself for years to the leisurely study and composition of music, until a few successful amateur performances of some operatic compositions of his attracted attention to him in musical circles in Meiningen, the near-by ducal residence. He was granted a scholars.h.i.+p amply sufficient to permit him to perfect his musical education at Leipzig under Mendelssohn, then the renowned director of the famous _Gewandhaus_ concerts. But the large city only deterred the shy recluse, Mendelssohn showed little appreciation for Ludwig's efforts to cultivate a realistically characteristic style of musical expression, and finally a severe spell of illness came to make the Leipzig venture a complete failure.

After a year's absence we thus find Ludwig again at home. But his experiences in the great world were not to be without consequences.

While he was at Leipzig his homesickness had made him paint in rosy colors the dreamy hermit-life at Eisfeld. Now, however, after his return, he became keenly conscious of the pettiness and inadequacy of his surroundings and of the lack of well-defined purpose in his life thus far. It was during this period of introspection and doubt that he finally decided to devote himself to a literary career. He took up the study of English, plunged into Shakespeare and Goethe, and worked a.s.siduously on a number of dramatic and novelistic ventures. In 1843 he again left Eisfeld, this time for good, and first turned to Leipzig and then to Dresden. Efforts to get some of his dramas accepted by the Leipzig and Dresden theatres continued to prove fruitless. But in 1844, after his uncle's death, he had come into possession of a small fortune, and as his habits were always exceedingly frugal, he now saw before himself the a.s.surance of a few years free from all care. In characteristic fas.h.i.+on he again created for himself a quiet retreat, partly in the idyllic surroundings of Meissen, partly in Meissen itself, the charmingly picturesque town of historic fame not far from Dresden, on the Elbe. He soon became engaged to a lovable young woman, who entered heart and soul into all of his hopes and plans, and with but brief interruptions he continued to live here in rustic retirement, until the year 1850 at last was destined to bring him recognition and fame.

Thus far none of Ludwig's writings, aside from a mere trifle or two, had found their way before the public. As many as five or six regular dramas had been completed, but none had been printed, none performed. But now he finished his _Hereditary Forester_ and with it made a deep impression upon his influential friend Eduard Devrient, the famous actor of the Dresden court theatre. Through Devrient's mediation the drama was accepted at Dresden and, although its reception by the public was at first a divided one, it was at once recognized by friend and foe as a literary and theatrical event of great significance. Though late, yet all of a sudden, Ludwig, like Byron, awoke to find himself famous. When, in 1852, he at last felt able to marry the woman of his love, his life battle seemed to have been won for good. In the same year, 1852, he published his second great drama, _The Maccabeans_, which, though not attaining the popularity of the _Hereditary Forester_, did even more perhaps to enhance the poet's fame. He could now count among the steadily widening circle of his friends and admirers men like Julian Schmidt, the prominent critic and editor, Gustav Freytag, and Berthold Auerbach. At Auerbach's suggestion, Ludwig for awhile turned to narrative literature and in the years 1855 and 1856 published his two best stories, the _Heiterethei_ and _Between Heaven and Earth_--the former again the more popular, the latter of higher literary merit.

These brief years from 1850 to 1856 were the zenith of Ludwig's career, the height of his productivity as an artist and of his success and happiness as a man. But already the shadows were gathering which were to cast such a deep gloom over the last years of the poet's life.

In 1856 he was again stricken by what seemed to be the same mysterious illness, never fully explained, that had befallen him in Leipzig. He recovered, to be sure, for the time being, but his ailments returned again and again. From about 1860 Ludwig practically never was a well man. Confined to the house and soon to his bed, he slowly wasted away.

The tenderest care of his devoted wife and the affection of a few loyal friends could do but little to relieve the most excruciating pain or to keep away the actual want that began to knock at his door. Ludwig had never learned to look upon his art as a commercial a.s.set; his few published works had never brought him much return, and his own slender means had for some time been exhausted. Some gifts of honor were bestowed upon the invalid by authors' societies and princely patrons, but they came too late to prevent the inevitable. As late as 1859 Ludwig still had hope for the future. "I see before me," he wrote in his diary, "a veritable world of conceptions and forms which I might conquer if, freed from the weight that keeps me down, I could take wings again. I believe it would not be too late yet." It was not to be. Successful production of a high order would probably have been impossible under such circ.u.mstances in any case. With Ludwig it was further prevented by an obstacle of a psychological nature. As the feeling of health and strength and ease of mind departed from him, there came in its place an ever growing, almost morbid, spirit of self-questioning criticism and doubt. As the springs of creative energy ceased flowing, Ludwig thought he could replenish them by turning to theory and a.n.a.lysis. In the free intervals between the attacks of his illness, when his mind worked as vigorously as ever, the luckless poet filled volume upon volume with esthetic and ethical reflections upon poetry and literature. From Shakespeare especially he thought he might be able to wrest those last secrets of an art which tantalizingly hovered before his vision. In these studies, fragmentary, ill-organized, not prepared for publication as they are, we nevertheless possess a veritable treasure-house of soundest reflection and subtlest intuition on many of the fundamental questions of poetry, especially of the drama. They have often been compared with Lessing's _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, of which, in many respects, they are the worthiest continuation. But in this unequal struggle Ludwig became less and less able to give life and color to his own conceptions or to be satisfied with his results when he had done so.

How many could safely try to measure up to a standard taken directly from Shakespeare! Plan upon plan was started and laid aside. A field of ruins, disquieting, threatening, piled up around the lonesome fighter who slowly succ.u.mbed beneath the crus.h.i.+ng greatness of his vision.

n.o.ble, but also tragic beyond words it is when, shortly before his death, Ludwig declared to one of his friends that even in his suffering no poet had ever been to him such a source of strength as Shakespeare, to whom he owed far more than the clarification of his ideals of art.

Thus the mariner sang the praises of the ocean as it was about to engulf his s.h.i.+pwrecked craft. Ludwig died in Dresden in February, 1865, fifty-two years of age. Of his three surviving children, two sons came to this western hemisphere and attained, in successful business and professional life, to positions of honor and influence among the German element of Southern Brazil.

Aside from the posthumous _Studies_ just spoken of, Ludwig's fame as a writer rests entirely on the two dramas, the _Hereditary Forester_ and _The Maccabaeans_, and on the two long novel-like stories, the _Heiterethei_ and _Between Heaven and Earth_. They represent practically everything that he ever published during his lifetime. The few insignificant lyrics, the additional dramas and stories, partly completed and partly fragmentary, which have become known after his death, have added no new traits to the picture of Ludwig as it will remain in the history of German literature, and they can well be omitted from consideration in this brief appreciation. It must be admitted that it is a rare phenomenon to see lasting fame and influence built on such a slender amount of work and on so brief a period of productivity. But within this limited range Ludwig must be recognized as a writer of unusual powers of observation and sympathy, of imagination and embodying execution. Truthful to himself and to the ideals of his art, uninfluenced by the popular demands of the day or by any desire for gain or fame, free from everything that smacks of sham or artifice, he succeeded in creating works that speak to us with the robustness and authority of life itself and yet are enn.o.bled by the graces of a selective and restraining art.

In his _Hereditary Forester_ Ludwig produced one of the best middle-cla.s.s tragedies of modern literature, combining in it, as indeed he had set out to do, highest literary merit with impelling effectiveness upon the stage. "It is exceedingly easy," he said, "to write a poetic drama if one does not care to keep an eye upon the stage, or one that is a successful stage play, but without poetry. * * * I shall do what I can to help create that really healthy condition of the drama which consists in the intimate union of poetry and the stage."

Following in the footsteps of Schiller in his _Intrigue and Love_ and of Hebbel in his _Maria Magdalena_, he has not attained, it is true, the ma.s.sive solidity of the latter, nor has he breathed into his drama that lofty spirit of social challenge that wings the former. On close inspection, the construction of Ludwig's drama shows undeniable flaws of motivation. The playwright has allowed too free a play to chance and slender probability. The spirit of the revolutionary unrest of 1848 is in the background, especially in the tavern scene of the third act, but it does not in any way organically connect the family tragedy which we witness with the broad movements of contemporary public life. But the play is indeed, as Ludwig desired it to be, "a declaration of war against the unnaturalness and conventionalities of our latter-day stage literature." The life-like characters which it portrays, the convincing language which they speak, the carefully drawn _milieu_ in which they move, the intense struggle of pa.s.sions in which they are engaged-these are all handled with a skill as rare as it is artistically true to life.

And even though the atmosphere enveloping it all seems to combine the realism of Ludwig's maturity with the romantic pre-disposition of his earlier works, it remains in fine keeping with that shadowy forest-world which forms the setting of the play.

Ludwig's next drama, _The Maccabaeans_, was of a radically different mold. From prose we pa.s.s to verse, from humble middle-cla.s.s life to the traditional grandeur of cla.s.sical tragedy, from the narrow circle of domestic happenings to a Shakespearean canvas of broad historical a.s.sociations, from contemporary Germany to those heroic struggles in which, in the second century, B.C., the Jews under the leaders.h.i.+p of Judas Maccabaeus defended their national and religious freedom against Syrian oppression. In this drama also, certain faults of construction are evident. There is a lack of central unity of interest, in part due, no doubt, to the long processes of development which the play underwent before completion. But again, there is the same masterly technique in all matters of detail, a wonderful strength and beauty of language, subtle and convincing character-portrayal and a splendid realization of that ethnic atmosphere of Jewish life and character in which the drama moves and from which its conflicts spring.

Of the two stories of Ludwig, the _Heiterethei_ is in every way the lighter; nevertheless, it is one of the best of those famous stories from peasant life in which German literature is so rich. More artistic than Jeremias Gotthelf and in a deeper sense truer to life than Auerbach, Ludwig has here created a popular tale of great charm and power. The "poetic realism" of his manner and the subdued ethical didacticism of his purpose have been skillfully united in forming an excellent example of truly popular art. The story is that of the gradual mellowing and final happy marriage of two young people who, with the best of hearts, are veritable firebrands of self-willed defiance to everything suggesting outside interference. The nickname of the girl, "Heiterethei," given her on account of her bright and sunny disposition, explains the t.i.tle of the story. And it must not be left unsaid that, despite the underlying seriousness of the character-development portrayed, the story as a whole is characterized by a sovereign play of humor, at times a bit grotesque and boisterous, maybe, but none the less irresistible in its quaint charm and deeper meaning.

In _Between Heaven and Earth_, Ludwig finally achieved his masterpiece, creating a work in which vision and workmans.h.i.+p are both on the highest level and thoroughly worthy of each other. No "hero" in the traditional sense, no glamor of what is commonly regarded as "poetic," no broad social background, no philosophic outlook, but within a narrow, and if you will, commonplace range, the author here permits us to get same of the profoundest glimpses of human life and character. It is a story of slaters working on steep roofs and tall church spires; and as does their scaffolding, so the poet tries to move along "between heaven and earth,"

his feet and eyes firmly fastened to life's realities, his heart and soul lifted into the realm of the ideal, the eternal. Thus interpreted, the t.i.tle of the story may indeed be taken as a symbol of that principle of "poetic realism" which Ludwig strove for and of which the story is one of the best embodiments. The technique of the work, to be sure, is that of Ludwig's day, not of our own. There are long descriptions and reflections and a good deal of direct psychological a.n.a.lysis, in all of which the narrator does not hesitate to speak from his subjective point of view. Such a method modern theorists would feign stamp as a crime against the spirit of epic art, as though a novel were a drama, and genuine narration did not by nature partic.i.p.ate of both the objective and subjective manner of presentation. But even if these things were undeniable flaws of technique, which we are far from admitting, they certainly cannot mar genuine art in its essential beauty and appeal. The Thuringian landscape and the life of the small town embedded in it, the tragic happenings in the Nettenmair family, the slow processes of soul-life in the two hostile brothers and the martyred woman between them--all this is made to live before our eyes with such simple and yet absolutely adequate means that we get from it that deep and satisfying feeling of harmony of content and form that characterizes a true masterpiece of art. Character drawing and milieu painting, always Ludwig's strong points, have again been most felicitously handled. With equal success the author has developed the plot of the story which, in a few memorable scenes, attains to truly dramatic scope and power. More admirable than everything else, however, is the subtly realistic treatment of the psychological processes in Fritz Nettenmair. His gradual deterioration, step by step, from self-indulgent joviality, through envy and jealousy, to the hatred of despair that does not even shrink from fratricide, is depicted with masterly insight and consistency. This phase of Ludwig's art strikes us as fresh and modern today, and it must have appeared like a revelation to a generation that did not yet, know Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_ or George Eliot's _Adam Bede_.

Considered in his totality as man and as artist, Ludwig cannot be counted among the names of the very first rank in German nineteenth century literature. To him cannot be a.s.signed the unequivocal greatness of a Kleist, a Hebbel, a Keller. The narrowness of the circ.u.mstances of his life and the invalidism of his mature years combined with, and no doubt were aided by, an apparent lack of robustness and forcefulness of character and temperament, and thus conspired to keep him from attaining that victorious self-a.s.sertion, that sovereign balance between volition and power, without which true greatness in the full sense of the word is impossible. But among the leading names of second rank, his will always occupy a place of distinction. If his was not the work of a Messiah, it was that of a John the Baptist. Having been nurtured in the traditions of the romanticism of Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Jean Paul, he was one of the first to experience the artistic charm and possibilities of unidealized reality and to respond to its call. It was he who seems to have coined the phrase, even if he was not first to formulate the principle, of that restrained or "artistic realism" that tries to set its standards half-way between subjectively idealistic and objectively naturalistic art. Even his extravagant admiration for Shakespeare was chiefly due to the fact that he saw in his art the supreme embodiment of this principle. Ludwig did not renounce beauty of art except where it infringed upon the one thing needful--essential truthfulness to reality, especially in all that pertains to what Hebbel called "the laws of the human soul." Many of the utterances of Ludwig's _Studies_ are as startlingly modern, not to say Ibsenesque, as similar ones in Hebbel's _Diaries_, in their frank recognition of the solemn claims of reality, even ugly reality, upon the honest artist who endeavors to interpret life in its entirety. For art, too, like all other achievements of human culture, according to Ludwig, must render service unto life. It is its function to furnish insight into life, mastery over life. "Rather no poetry at all," he exclaims, "than a poetry that robs us of the joy of living, that makes us unproductive in life, that, instead of nerving us for life, unnerves us for it."

In German literature Ludwig thus occupies a not unimportant place. Far more penetrating and far more artistic than "realists" like Auerbach or Spielhagen he paved the way for the coming of Anzengruber who, in turn, antic.i.p.ated the realism of the moderns in more, ways than is generally recognized. Ludwig will always be a figure of prominence in the history of the modern middle-cla.s.s tragedy, in the development of the story dealing with village life, in the efforts to emphasize the value of a literature close to the native soil, in the attempts of German criticism to fathom the secret of Shakespearean art. More than that, however. When the final account of the gradual evolution of nineteenth century realism will some time be written from another than a one-sidedly French point of view, a place of honorable recognition will be due to the thoughtful and forceful author of the _Studies_ and _Between Heaven and Earth_.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: The extracts from _The Prince of Homburg_ are taken from Mr. Hagedorn's translation, Volume IV of THE GERMAN CLa.s.sICS.]

OTTO LUDWIG

THE HEREDITARY FORESTER

A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS

DRAMATIS PERSONae

STEIN, _a rich manufacturer and country gentleman_.

ROBERT, _his son_.

CHRISTIAN ULRICH, _forester on the estate of Dusterwalde, called "The Hereditary Forester_."

SOPHY, _his wife_.

ANDREW, _forester's a.s.sistant _} MARY } _their children_.

WILLIAM }

WILKENS, _a wealthy farmer, uncle of_ SOPHY.

_The Pastor of Waldenrode_.

MoLLER, _Stein's bookkeeper_.

G.o.dFREY, _a hunter_.

WEILER, _keeper in Ulrich's forest_.

_The proprietor of the "Boundary Inn."_