The Press. — London, England, 1858-06-05 00:00:00

yittrature. Poe* and Poetry of Germany. Biographical and Critical Notices. By Madame L. DaysiCs de Pontes. In Two Vols. London : Chapman and llall. To write a continuous and copious history of the poetical literature of Germany was certainly worth undertaking. That literature is not only rich but remarkably various. It consists of parts so unlike each other that those who are conver sant with any one of them are not likely to be conversant with the others. On this account we might wait long for an historian capable of com prehending the whole sub,'.3et, and therefore a writer who has taken the pains to do sd deserves the more gratitude. Mme. de Pontes has taken this trouble. Her work, without beinkr, either profound or elaborate, exhibits extensive and familiar knowledge of the subject. It is in some parts meagre, and scarcely anywhere complete ; it is not accurate in details ; nevertheless it is 'evidently the fruit of long, if not very patient, research. It is the work of a lady who finds a pleasure in studying the German character and genius, and who has enjoyed the opportunity of collecting a large fund of information respecting them. It is in short a very entertaining book, and if the wonderful inaccuracies it contains were corrected, would be a very valuable one. German poetry is interesting to the historical student rather on account of its defects than of its excellence. It throws light upon the national weakness by partaking of it. The weakness of the German nation has always been this, that it does not exist. The chaos of a great nation is there; the elements are prepared—every strong limb and muscle of the social system; a local habitation is ready, and even a name : only the thing itself is wanting. The elements lie side by side, and will not mix. The bond of sympathy, the indispensable and indefinable thing which is called national life, the only source of true go vernment and true obedience, is wanting there ; the peasant has nothing in common with the prince, the philosopher nothing in common with the man of business. This disunion is strikingl y indicated in the poetry of Germany. It is an d always has been the poetry of a class. The nation has never found a voice, but the disjointed fragments of the nation have each at different times expressed themselves by the mouths of poets. There have been three great poetical periods in Germany. The modern school may be considered to commence with Klopstock, in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Meistersangers flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Minnesingers in the twelfth and thirteenth. Now, these three schools have each represented a single class of German society. The modern school represents the Uni versities. Its poetry is the poetry of books and of the closet. The biography of almost all the poets of the last hundred years in Germany has been the same in outline. At five years old he knew Greek ; at ten he was detected weeping with delight over the Antigone at three o'clock in the morning; at sixteen he went to the Uni versity, where, besides reading himself blind, he joined some " Hainbund," at the meetings of which, by moonlight under the shade of trees, he toasted Virtue, and Fatherland, and the Memory of the Heroes of Marathon. Two years later, he made himself illustrious by sonic pathetic verses, in which he regretted that the age of Pericles was past for ever. Commencing author on the plan of making new books out of old ones, ena moured of names, and a prophet at sec9pd hand, he passes into an exclusively literary circle, and converses only with men who compliment each other with the names of " poet " and of " genius," and believe that the world is being graduallv regenerated by their labours. lie lives in his own condonable and accommodating world, de scribes what he has never seen, and feigns what he has never felt ; happy in this, that the facts which would dissipate his chimeras never intrude themselves into his study. It is the division which exists in Germany between the learned and unlearned class which gives to the modern German poetry that fantastic, visionary, and eccentric character which to the shrewd I rench man and the practical Englishman appears so childish. THE PRESS, JUNE 5, 1858. Mme. de Pontes has shrunk from giving in these volumes any new biography of Goethe or Schiller. She finds that Mr. Lewes has almost exhausted the one subject, and the reputation of Carlyle and Bulwer has deterred her from at tempting the other. She still hopes, however, to light on a few new details by gleanin e ,, ,, after Mr. Lewes, and she assures us that much new light has been thrown upon Schiller's character since it was delineated by such distinguished pens. Accordingly, she announces " that, if these vo " lumes meet with any degree of favour, they " will be followed by another, which, together with " sketches from the lives of Germany's greatest " poets, will comprehend those of the modern " school, Uhland, Ruckert, Freiligrath, Lenau, " &c." If this design should ever be put into execution, Mme. de l'onti!s will have to show, not only how literature is spoiled by literary cliques, but also how men of strong and large hearts can resist injurious influences, and, burst ing through unnatural restraints, bring them selves into contact with the common life of corn-' mon men. Poetry, like religion, does not well consist with sectarianism ; as a general rule, poetical sects or schools do not spring up until the flame of in spiration begins to burn low. And the poetical church, like the religious one, is divided by two contrary heresies, infallible authority marshalling its slaves on the one side and antinomian licence attracting its enthusiasts on the other. Where cliques are heresies will generally be : the cliques of Paris took the side of superstition ; those of Germany, under the influence of Leming, have more generally taken the side of progress. But it mattered nothing whether poets stood still or advanced, so long as nature was hidden from them ; while those who in all simplicity held the mirror up to nature were generally found to re semble the ancients, though they had no design of imitating them. The simplicity of the classicist was inanity, and his calmness coldness, because neither was true; the originality of the romantic poet was madness, his passion idle fury, his elo quence a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, because all alike were unnatural. Into this Scylla or this Charybdis the German poetry of the last hundred years, with several illustrious exceptions, appears to have fallen, because it has been too much the poetry of a class. If after a thousand years the German nation is still without unity, we must expect to find its literature during the Middle Ages, the age of the formation of nations, bearing still more dis tinctly the stamp of a class. The fact is most strikingly so. The poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is the poetry of trades men ; that of the twelfth and thirteenth is the poetry of knights. Neither kind, certainly, could give much pleasure to any class except that which produced it ; knights would not care to listen to prudential maxims, the saws of the shop and the farm. Tradesmen could hardly take a vivid interest in legends of Palestine, in conflicts between errant knights and all mon strous things of the forest and the moor, in the beauty of princesses, for which the poet, though he had a wife of his own and the lady a husband, was willing to fight all the peers of Charlemagne at once. Yet for two centuries the knights monopolised poetry, and then became mute, while for two centuries more the shopkeepers supported a thin and monotonous performance. Nothing, surely, can show more clearly the dis united condition of society, nor anything more conclusively demonstrate the decisiveness of that revolution which after the final failure of the Crusades began to abase the arts of war and exalt those of peace. Mme. de Pontes is much more successful in her first volume than in her second. Her bio graphies of the poets of the last hundred years are not very satisfactory. The biography of a poet, when, as most of those commemorated here did, he passes his life in the study, should be the history of the formation of his mind. Perhaps a lady was not equal to such a task. Instead of this, we have generally a very minute account of the poet's courtship and marriage, and, as one love-story is generally very like another—and this second volume contains about thirty biogra phies—the topic is really quite exhausted. Moreover, in the second volume dates occur more frequently, and dates are decidedly Mme. de Ponte's weak point. We are unwilling to attribute all the chronological mistakes we have met with in this book to its authoress. When we read in one place that the French Revolution broke out in 1779, in another that it broke out in 1796, that the Peace of Westphalia was con cluded in 1748, that Klopstock was made a French citizen by the National Assembly in 1772, that in 1802 he was sixty-seven years of age, that Lessing left school in 1796, that Stol berg went to the University of Gottingen in the same year, that Hoelty was born in 1785 and died in 1775, that Biirger was born in 1748 and was entered at the University of Halle in 1754, and a multitude of similar assertions, we may be disposed to conclude that Mnie. de Pontes writes figures indistinctly, and—what on other grounds we can easily believe—that the proofs have not undergone a very careful revision. But we have observed some blunders of at least equal magnitude which cannot be thus accounted for. For example—we are informed that Paul Fleming, a pupil of Opitz, went in 1634 to Russia. " A journey to Moscow," it is added, "in those days was attended with great excite ment and sonic little peril, and Russia, just "emerging from barbarism under the tutelary "genius of its extraordinary sovereign Peter the " Great, was an object of mingled curiosity and "amazement to all the civilized nations of " Europe." The same surprising ignorance of com mon things appears in the following sentence:— "We render the passage in blank verse ; for, " despite the merits of Cowper's translation:of " Homer, and of Longfellow s ' Evangeline, we " cannot but regard the introduction of the " hexameter into English poetry as a bold and " not very successful experiment.' In the follow ing sentence the word "fraternal" is droll:—" She " knew, if Biirger did not, how intense was that " sister's suffering, and she sinned alike against " maiden-virtue and fraternal affection, against " the laws of God and man." Errors like these, however, surprising as they are in a writer of wide information in some departments at least, and of no contemptible skill in composition, as some of the translations contained in these volumes prove, do not prevent the account of the mediaeval literature of Germany here given from being the most complete and interesting which has vet been given, so far as we know, in English. We extract the following as a speci men at once of Ulrick Von Lichtenstein's skill in lyric poetry, and of Mine. de Pontes skill in translat ion : Know ye the lady whom I seek— Have you seen her in dell or bower? She is dainty, soft, and meek; Blue her pen and red her cheek, And in her hand she holds a flower. That flower is the lily white, The emblem of her soul so pure; Her hair is not with gems beilight, Her giolle is not drawn t 0 tight; wit She newer seeketh to allure. I know her well; As bees draw forth all hid len sweets, E'er so she draws with marvellous spell The closest secrets that do dwell Within the hearts of those she meets. She is sole mistress of my hesrt; She rules it, as the in"on the tide, She can bid all my griefs depart, She can soothe my bosom's smart, And much more beside. This "much more beside," with which the en thusiastic minstrel confesses that the subject transcends his best power, is very pretty and ingenuous. Our friend Ulrich was the very model of a minnesinger. He was page to a Princess who afterwards married Frederick the Warlike, Duke of Austria. lie sang for her, tilted for her ; that she might have something of his ever before her, he chopped off one of his fingers, had it placed in a splendid casket with a golden key, and presented it to her. lie wan dered over the country in female attire singing her praises. After the marriage of the lady of his love she admitted him to an interview, which she intended to be a final one. On this occasion he misbehaved himself so flagrantly that the Duchess had hint pushed out of the window, and he made a terrible noise in rolling down the castle wall. This rough treatment not succeed ing, the lady proceeded to yet more violent measures. t'lrich was cured at last, and took to pouring out invectives upon his former mistress. Meanwhile, it must be understood that he was a married man with two or three children.