Romanticism and the romantic school in Germany

Front matter

r I

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

A PAET of the subject-matter here presented was delivered in the form of lectures at Harvard University, before a general academic audience, during the spring of 1908. The chapters which connect themselves in particular with these lectures are the following, — "The Romantic Mission," "Romanticism and Symbolism," "Romanticism and Nature," "Romanticism and the Fairy Tale," "Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the Golden Age and the Blue Flower," and "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism."

In the preface an opportunity is offered to the author to express his gratitude to those friendly agents who assisted him in the making of his book.

Were it possible for me to weigh rightly my indebtedness to all those critics and writers who preceded me along the path that I have traveled, many would come in to claim their share. To these I can tender only a general acknowledgment. I am, however, under special obligation to individuals. I am indebted to Professor Charles H. Grandgent of Harvard University for reading the entire book in manuscript and for friendly criticism. I am indebted to Professor Bugen Kuhnemann, Visiting Professor from Germany at Harvard University during the academic year, 1908-9, for reading, in manuscript, those portions of the book which have to do more in particular with Philosophy, and for suggestions made to me. And I am especially iadebted to my friend. Doctor Harold deW. Fuller of Harvard University, for faithful assistance rendered me in the final revision of the language of the book.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,

November, 1909,

vii

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION xi

I. Romanticism, Classicism and Humanism . 1

Chapter I

I HOPE my readers will pardon another attempt to settle the weighty and venerable case of "Eomanticism" versus "Classicism," these two grim ghosts of the past that have stalked with might through the nineteenth century, and have puzzled many a clear head. And I hope I may be pardoned for the word "Humanism," which, in most recent days, has been on the lips of many. Methioks it is a good omen that this word is now being repolished with new meaning. It shows that there is a new awakening, a stir of new thought. Present-day philosophers have had a good deal to say on this subject, but the word does not entirely belong to philosophy: the literary critic may also have his little say; for literature deals with life, and this life is the life of humanity, and only through humanity can we come to humanism.

I

The more one studies romanticism the stronger grows the conviction that it is not merely a passing phase of this or that literature, but arises out of a lasting, fundamental trait in human nature. This fundamental trait was not merely in the great romantic movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but was always, wiU always be, and unhappy is the period when it is not. This needs some explanation, and in order to enter at once into the heart of the matter, I venture to add the seemingly paradoxical statement that likewise classicism is founded on a fundamental human trait, and that this trait was not merely during the flourishing eras of the Greeks and Romans, but was always, will always be, and unhappy is the time when it is not.

When we come to fundamental traits, we must be very wary, for almost anything is easier of comprehension than the fundamentals of things. "We have a great love for fundamentals, and like to air our knowledge of them whenever we can; and, surely, I shall not be the first champion in this matter, for throughout the nineteenth century we have been invited to feast on the fundamentals of romanticism and classicism. Nevertheless, much as has been said on the subject, we know that we are far from being agreed on the true meaning and carrying power of either of these two terms. The names of so totally different writers as Byron and Tieck, Scott, Wordsworth and Novalis, Shelley and August Wilhebn Schlegel, Victor Hugo, Tennyson and Rossetti, Maeterlinck and Gerhard Hauptmann could be cited as witnesses. They are all romanticists, yet we cannot state just why. But the strongest proof to me of how little we actually know about Romanticism and Classicism considered as lasting human traits is the actual existence to-day of a powerful antagonism between the advocates of the one form and those of the other. So great is at times this antagonism as to threaten the overthrow of the opponent's claims altogether, and, with them, the fundamental human traits on which these claims rest. Were we absolutely agreed on the fundamentals of romanticism and -classicism, I question whether we should then be quite so bitter in our opposition. We are, at the present moment, again seriously concerned in the time-honored question: "What is romanticism?"

Not so much because of the new romantic flutter which has agitated us during the last decade, nor because we secretly expect a still greater romantic wave immediately to follow ; but because to-day, more than for many a year, there is among us a fierce struggle between the two fundamental human traits on which romanticism and classicism rest. Ther e is a struggle between Heart and Head. It is in every domain: whether we^turn to science or literature or art or history or religion or education or philosophy or society, — everywhere we find two parties warring against each other, one representing the intellect, the other the heartr Each one has staked out his territory, and protects rtr^th might and main against the approaches of his adversary. In the domain of literature, with which we are now concerned, we find the following general conditions. Throughout the nineteenth century, by gradual, steady increase, the world of reality has opened its fascinating realm to us, has taught us its truths, and has led us to — respect the value and sternness of "facts." Yet these facts are forcing themselves upon us in ever increasing legions, with such persistency, and such downright crudity that many thoughtful minds have become weary of them. Along with this stream of facts, there have been, throughout the nineteenth century, waves of an emotional life, thrown up by the large romantic movement which "Hourished at the beginning of the century. From time to time these waves have risen to impressive proportions, and, ia our most recent days, have given us even what might be called a romantic renaissance in Maeterlinck, Hauptmann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and a host of smaller writers. Some of the products of the best of these writers are notable literary products ; others, however, are so f an-

S tastic, so extravagantly impressionistic, and so outspoken in their assertions of the poet's instinctive rights to literary freedom, that many of our saner minds have turned also against this romanticism. Voices are being heard from time to time which are demanding a higher art than a blind adherence to mere facts or a capricious freedom in matters of emotion can give us. It is said that romanticism has gone to seed, that the nineteenth century has sucked its vitality, and that we are now in need of an art with classic standards, criteria, ideals. Here is the new parting of the way. Whither shall we go? Is it true that the nineteenth century has sucked the vitality out of romanticism ? Is it true that our age is ripe for an art with definite classic standards? We must make a fresh attempt to understand romanticism; and this we can do only by returning to the fundamental human traits on which it rests.

There ^T^~two-strangely organized tempers in man, in the 'physieal-and-psyehie^man", which have exerted, and will ever exert, a most powerful influence on his whole history. What these tempers truly are, I confess, I do not know: nor do I think that any psychologist or psychophysicist could fully tell. All we know is that they exist ; and I am perfectly willing to declare myself in this matter a pragmatist, by taking these things at their "cash value." However, I can somewhat describe them, and, since they are perfectly familiar to all of us, I expect no difficulty.

They are not faculties but tempers, and, as such, closely knit together with the texture of our constitution, varying with each individual, even with each age. They are temperamental attitudes of the mind regarding the world of matter and that of the spirit. They have, therefore, both an outer and an inner side, so to speak, — an jmpirical and anjd ealistic sid e. One of these tempers shows itself in an interest on the part of manjsjaind in the tangible and visible; in what can be clearly understood and reasoned

■4 out ; in what lies in broad daylight ; in accuracy and logical demonstration 5 in common-sense Tightness; in the useful, practical, expedient, scientific; in the real, every-day world; and, on its more idealistic side, ia order, symmetry, proportion, restraint, sobriety, in obedience to an ideal standard, m—dutjf. We may call this the legal ^;emper. The other temper shows itself ia an interest, iooFso much ia the tangible as such, as in the immediate effect the tangible has on the mind, — in sensations and feelings, in emotional impressions, in the~'mdividual, 'personaf, and instinctive; and, on its more idealistic side, ia freedom, in the imagiaative, unreal, ia aspirations, hopes, beliefs, ia profound emotional values, in sympathy, in aU true soul experiences, ia the sense of the infinite, in — love. This may be called the sympathetic temper. /

We all kaow tKeseliwo temperamental forces well. They are as old as man, and we find them mentioned together in the oldest human manuscript. When the writer of the Biblical Proverbs said: "Let not kiadness aad truth forsake thee, ' ' he meant these two. They are the transforming agents of all our faculties, giving them tone and color, iavestiag our imagination and our will, even our fleetiag moods, with their essence. Yet they rarely ever harmoniously blend, but war agaiast each other. We wonder sometimes how they can peacefully exist together in one body. Like two iadependent, individual egos, apart yet inseparably linked together, they live within us, reacting upon the outer world, anu forming with it relations of sympathy or antinathy . At one time, they cause us to stretch out our arms in love and sympathy for the whole world, happy in the joy of personal liberty and the oneness of all things, and, at another time, to draw tight the cruel reins of self-restraint for obedience' sake, for the sake of order, society, law, or for the very outer world, which is so, and no whit different.

Sometimes they rule alternately and with sternness for long periods until one overcomes the other. We make laws and write them down carefully in our statute books, with due regard to logical clearness and precision of language, priding ourselves in having found the absolute truth. Yet there lives in man's mind an undefinable, purely ideal priuciple which we call justice. Hidden beneath the surface of consciousness, it wells up occasionally, clashes against the written law, and will, if resisted, overturn entirely, as during the French Revolution, the existing order of society. "We make creeds in which we embody, in fixed, intellectual terms, our religious beliefs, teach them to our children, and build churches on their strength ; and yet there lives in man an unwritten religious instinct, which he quietly harbors in the bosom of his heart until the time comes when, as during the Reformation, a new form of religion, founded on a new creed, is established. We make works of art, and write poetry on established models, according to well-defined, generally accepted priuciples ; yet there comes a time when the iustinct for new expressions and new forms of beauty, ever sleeping in man's mind, arises into consciousness, and, as in the case of the German Storm and Stress, a revolt against established rules breaks out.

These two temperamental forces are the parents of classicism and romanticism. And since they are fundamentally bound up with man's whole nature, it follows that classicism and romanticism are also fundamental, accompanying man throughout his life's history. There are a variety of terms which can be appropriately used to set off the one from the other. They are not interchangeable, and one set of terms cannot be substituted indiscriminately in place of the other; yet a common bond unites them all: Head and Heart; Intellect and Feeling; Reserve and Passion; Selection and Sympathy; Restraint and Enthusiasm; Obedience and Freedom. But for the purpose of literature on its highest levels, no two words appear to me so significant and full of meaning as these two : Duty and Love. Classicism_is-iQunded-oa-duty;_ romanticism on love. The fiiirnieaning of these words will become clearer to us in later pages.

II

It is the province of literature to represent life. That is, its province is the revelation, in beauty of form,' of the life, being, essence, soul, meaning, entity of the world or any independent part of it. It is the life of the world, not its structure, that literature deals with. How a thing is made and what it consists of, or what function it serves, does not primarily belong to literature, but to science. Science deals with the world of facts, literature with its life. To be sure, the poet needs also facts (and to these facts the modern man will tenaciously cling) ; but it is not for them but for the life imbedded in them that literature lives — a truth to which we must return anew again and again. The scientist takes man and dissects him iato minutest parts, inside and outside, bones, cells, nerves, muscles, gray matter and blood, even his acts and thinking processes, his moral, intellectual, and ssthetie reactions upon the outer world; but the poet takes man and depicts him in his verse as a separate entity, as a distinct being, for his very existence' sake, for the life that is in him and the relation of this life to other lives.

No two poets will, however, look upon the world, will

'On the relation between the beauty of form and the beauty of spirit I have expressed myself in The New Constructive Criticism, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. XXn, pp. 421fE. and in Das Aestetische Symbol, ZeitscKrift fiir PHlosophie und philosophische Kritii, Vol. CXXX, pp. 49fE.

HOMANTICISM, CLASSICISM AND HUMANISM

see its life, in exactly the same way. They will view life either from a more "legal" or a more "sympathetic" standpoint. In so much as the poet leans toward legality, he will be a keen observer of the external world, and, in this respect, come closer to the scientist : his studies of life will be in intimate accord with underlying laws or with distinct characteristics as they are deducible from the observations of many like objects. If it be man that he seeks to put on his canvas, he will give us one that the common sense of the intelligent community will at once recognize as a man they know and are accustomed to deal with. His art may be close to life's reality and give us in detail the actual man as we meet him on the street; or his art may be idealistic and give us the higher man as he should be or might be, the typical man as the Greeks have so well depicted in their great art ; or a representative man of his own social class in whom the characteristics of many have found most perfect expression; or a man shapen in obedience to some other definite laws, which the poet has derived from the empirical world.

On the other hand, in so much as the poet leans toward the sympathetic side of life, he will feel himself bound by no limitations of the empirical order of things, except only in so far as it serves his own inner life. He will be influenced only by his own individual experiences, independent of any accepted external order, or accepted abstract law. Life, entity, being, soul, spirit will appear to him free and borderless ; he will see a wide, unexplored, infinite world behind the visible things, with infinite power and possibilities. And he, the artist, will believe himself vested with uncommon powers to perceive these infinite possibilities. Intellect suffices him no more, feeling steps in its place, and takes leading command. "The heart," says Novalis, "is the key to the world." The outer world, as such, loses its significance, and becomes a world of spiritual things seen by instincts and intuitions; it loses its fixity and enters into a state of flux, in which new things arise ab initio; it is a seething, creative world, in which our desires, hopes, aspirations, longings take bodily shape, transforming under their sway the world we are accustomed to see into a world of imaginative beings.

We may consider these two mental attitudes from yet another point of view: on the one side is the world "I think;" on the other, the world "I feel;" and in the middle the world "I will." "When I think, I must have something to think about: things of the outer world, or conditions, or ideas founded on these things make up the material. But when I feel, I do not feel about things, but things about make me feel. I deal not with things but with states of the mind, with a subject world of emotional experiences. Since, in this latter case, I am dealing with states of mind, I am, as it were, one step further removed from the external world than when I deal with ideas of things, and, being further removed, more within the border lines of my inner life, I am nearer that other world of infinite freedom which stretches out beyond, — I feel myself free. My mental states are, as it were, waves of the ocean of infinite soul-life. On the other hand, when I deal with ideas of things, I am closer to the external world, and, if I make an attempt to reach out for an ideal beyond, I cannot do so on the waves of feeling, but only through a slow process of reasoning in obedience to definite

"We may also observe stages of development in these two temperamental attitudes. I may "think" or "feel" only superficially: that is, I may be satisfied with the first sensations of the outer world (intellectual impressionism), or with the first ripples of emotions in the inner world (emotional impressionism) . Or I may insist on penetrating deeper into life on the external as well as on the internal side. With my intellect I may analyze carefully the outer world (naturalism), or through logic obtain the type which underlies the individual object (typical art), or the universal laws applicable to each form (the forms of classic, idealistic art) . And with my feeling I may allow the ripples to swell until they touch more and more the ocean of infinite life (various forms of romantic art) . We are concerned here more in particular with these deeper processes of thought and feeling.

This "legal" and this "sympathetic" temper in man are, then, we are now agreed, the two chief forces that shape his art. If we wish, therefore, to define romanticism, or obtain a knowledge of the meaning of romanticism as a movement in literary history, we must return to these forces and seek it in them.

Ill

It is, therefore, unsatisfactory, if not misleading, to say as some critics have been fond of saying ever since Heine's The Romantic School, that romanticism is a return to the Middle Ages. Even the further additional information that it is a return to the spirit of the Middle Ages fails to bring us nearer to the truth. It is indeed true that many of the romanticists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were fond of medieeval life with its chivalry, adventures, mysticism, and religion ; yet there are qualities in mediaeval life, salient and decisive qualities (asceticism, for instance), which are foreign to these romanticists. Besides, there were romanticists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who did not return to the Middle Ages (not even to its chivalry) ; and there were romanticists preceding the Middle Ages; and there were romanticists immediately following the Middle Ages (in the period of the Renaissance) who were disdainful of mediaevalism ;

and there are romanticists to-day whose writings bear no distinctive mediaeval markings; and there may be romanticists some time in the unknown, remote future, so far in advance of the spirit of the Middle Ages as to make a general definition of romanticism, based on medisevalism, seem a laughable, romantic extravagance.

We might,. with almost equal propriety, say that romanticism is the return to the spirit of the Greeks. For, though we have accustomed ourselves to think of the Greeks as the bearers of Hellenic culture, of that type of mind which has expressed itself in restraint, reason, measure, symmetry, soberness, in the noble form of human perfection reached in obedience to a type, in the form-beauty of their plastic art, in the Parthenon-crowned Acropolis, in the measured dialogue of Sophocles' dramatic art, in the logical precision of Aristotelian philosophy, — ^there was a long period preceding this culture, in which not classicism, but romanticism was the controlling cultural element. There was a period of emotional enthusiasm, of lyricism, of music, of mysticism, of orientalism, of dreams, of symbolism, — the time when giants and centaurs and satyrs and fauns and gorgons and erinyes had their sway, when the Hellenes had a sense of the infinite which no chisel could shape into form, when their dramas were music-dramas which arose out of the dance and music in honor of Dionysus. Dionysus! That is the word which expresses Greek romanticism in its fundamentally primitive form. Hymnal bacchanalia, dance orgies, drunken revelry's noisy songs, dithyrambic lyric shouts accompanying the ceremonies in honor of a god were the first romantic outbursts. Dionysus stood for much in the mind of the ancients. He was the god of the free spirit, a very old god, who had come from far away. He was the god of Wanderlust, who had come from the Orient, the land of tales and wonders. He was the wine god, the first cultivator of the grape, whose juice

13 , , dispelled men's sorrows, making them forget that they were only children of this earth. He was, with Apollo, the god of prophecy. He was the god of nature, who called man to the mountains and woods, who opened his heart with longiugs for more life, for the infinite, for the borderless beyond, there, in the mysterious night time, on Mount Cithteron and on Mount Parnassus, around the fire of sacrifice, with songs and music and plays, with weeping and laughter, with rage and dreamy forgetfubaess. Is this not all romantic ? And the same romanticism continued as the Greeks in the glorious fifth and fourth centuries of their history reached the height of Hellenic culture, only in altered form, subdued, restrained, held in bounds in obedience to definitely formulated ideals which in time had gained supremacy.

Friedrich Schlegel, the doctrinaire of the romantic school in Germany, with a profound insight into the spirit of Greek life and art, had seen this, too. "In Sophocles' temperament," he says, "the divine intoxication of Dionysus, the masterful ingenuity of Athena, and the calm selfpossession of Apollo were blended in equal proportions. ' ' ' And this same romanticism continued after the decline of Greek culture and was handed down the ages.

But it is much better not to speak of romanticism as the return to the spirit of any particular period of history, neither that of the Greeks nor that of the Middle Ages. Eomanticism, in its true essence, is more than the return to any particular past period. It is the return to the ever living eternal spirit itself, the same that God breathed into man's heart in the garden of creation. It is man's return to himself, to one of the well-springs of his life, to the receptive, non-critical, emotional side of his nature. Romanticism is the cultivation of the free world of the

*Cf. Veber das Studmm der griecMsehen Poesie, in Jugendsohriften, edited by Minor, Vol. I, p. 140.

spirit in art and life. And tMs free world of the spirit had its well-springs in man's heart always. In the days of Oriental glory, in the days of the Greeks and Romans, in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in Shakespeare's day, in the great romantic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in our own day. Only it appeared never twice in the same form, it differed with each age and the culture of each age and the racial differences of each age. Nor was it ever the same in any individual, but differed as individual temperaments differed, and in particular it differed according to the presence or absence of the other half in human make-up, the scientific, critical, legal, intellectual half. The emotional side in human nature rarely ever appeared alone, but always in mixture with the intellectual, however diminutive this latter ingredient may, at times, appear to be. Infinite, therefore, is the variety of romantic forms, and, while we can point out the underlying general principle and define romanticism as the cultivation of the free world of the spirit, no particular romanticism is defined by it, nor the romanticism of the Romantic School in Germany, to which these pages are devoted.

IV

"What position shall we now take? Shall we abandon ourselves to a world of the spirit which knows of no limitation, cultivating those waves of feeling which ripple over the consciousness of our souls whenever we come in contact with the outer world ; or shall we, with greater faithfulness to the world of facts and logical processes of reasoning, hold fast to definite ideals of what is right, true, and beautiful? Shall the heart rule or the head, enthusiasm or restraint, the dreams of the mystic or the claims of tradition, ' ' love " or " duty ? ' ' Both certainly answer to definite human needs. There can be only one answer. It seems ahnost too elementary to ask the question. Of course we want hoth: we want to catch the waves of emotion, and yet hold them in suspension. "We want a world of freedom, yet also one of restraint, a world of restrained freedom, of organized liberty, of directed spontaneity, a world in which the untrammeled spirit is guided by laws, in which the instinctive feeling of the fleeting moment has been transformed into the life of humanity, significant and enduring. Elementary and simple as this may seem to be, for the purposes of art it is most complex. An harmonious union between these two forces has been successfully accomplished by artists only at the best periods in man's history. Following persistent temperamental differences, and often impelled by the influence of a feverish reaction against preceding art forms, writers have been led into extremes, and have cultivated forms of art in which liberty passed into license, and restraint into dogmatism. To establish a perfect harmony is indeed not easy, for it requires the molding together of the whole man in the fullness of his spiritual possessons, the marshaling of all those forces, which, existing separately in the minds of this or that individual, live united in the body of the whole of humanity. An art which has for its ideal this complete humanity, this blending of man's best fruits of rational thought with the best fruits of emotional life can have only one name. It is not Classicism, nor yet Romanticism as such, but — Humanism. In humanistic art the free world of the spirit, life's enthusiasm, the poet's love for the great world of beautiful things are held in suspension by ideals formed in obedience to laws that regulate the being of humanity at large. In the best humanistic art, individual art has become humanized, that is, the wealth of the free individuality has yielded to the commonwealth of humanity.

Yet the actual harmonious interpenetration of our two chief forces in this humanistic art is only a theory, and will ever remain a theory. "We cannot and should not reduce it to fixed laws. Ever varying will be the combinations. And among these combinations are also classicism and romanticism. "We may have a classic-humanistic or a romantic-humanistic art. When, in this humanistic art, the emotional life or the intellectual life bubbles over, in a manner sufficiently conspicuous to be easily recognized, we call the one art romantic, the other classic. Often, however, romanticism or classicism is not humanistic: forgetful of the claims of the other half of humanity, the writer cultivates his intellect or his emotions in a one-sided fashion for the law's sake or for freedom's sake. In such a case something objectionable associates itself in our mind with these two terms. "We are dealing with imperfect art forms, with pseudo-forms or forms that have lost their vitality; and then we are far away from humanism.

We must dismiss these evil associations which cluster about the words romanticism and classicism in our minds, dismiss what we like to repeat so glibly about the dead abstractness of the eighteenth century classicism and the wildness and f antasticalness of nineteenth century romanticism. There is nothing intrinsically evil in these art forms, no more than there is in the fundamental human tempers on which they rest. Neither is entitled to rank above the other. Neither is good nor bad. They are of equal value, as the hours of the light and the hours of the night are, to use this figure, to the completed day. We need the light for clear vision, for an orientation of the world in which we live, for a clear perception of our duties as members of society, for a life devoted to wholesome activity; and we need the hours of the night for the preservation of energy, for wise passiveness, for solitude, for play and recreation, for solemn communion and devout meditation. There is nothing intrinsically weak or sicMy in romanticism, nor strong, youthful, or sound in classicism (so often said), but both may become weak and sickly, if their natural limitations are disregarded, as the man who works not only during the hours of the light, but also during the night, or he who sleeps not only in the night, but also in the daytime — est modus in rebus. There is soundness and joyousness in Homer and Sophocles, and also in those portions of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Victor Hugo, Novalis, Tieck, Rossetti, Tennyson, Gerhard Hauptmann, in which man's emotional nature and his intellectual nature are blended in romantic-humanistic proportions.