German poetry

“ To assign to poetry, among human endeavors, the lofty and serious place of which I have spoken above, to defend it from the petty point of view of those who, mistaking its dignity, and the pedantic attitude of those who, mistaking its peculiar character, regard it only as a trifling adornment and embellishment of life or else ask an immediate moral effect and teaching from it—this, as one cannot repeat too often, is deeply rooted in the German habit of thought and feeling. ”

“ The older Romanticists begin, without exception, as the apostles of "enlightenment." They introduce a new tone into German poetry, give their works a new colour, and, in addition to this, revive both the spirit and the substance of the old fairy-tale, Volkslied, and legend. They exercise at first a fertilising influence upon German science; research in the domains of history, ethnography, and jurisprudence, the study of German antiquity, Indian and Greek-Latin philology, and the systems and dreams of the Naturphilosophie all receive their first impulse from Romanticism. ”

“ Ay, even in our own time, what has been the form, what the temper, of all poetry, from Körner and Heine, which has made the German heart leap up, but simplicity, manhood, clearness, finished melody, the very opposite, in a word, of our new school? And to look at home, what is the modern poetry which lives on the lips and in the hearts of Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen? It is not only simple in form and language, but much of it fitted, by a severe exercise of artistic patience, to tunes already existing. ”

“ Here, if ever, there was created in the German language and spirit, and in brief compass, a work of art of German prose. If ever the gods blessed a man to create, consciously or unconsciously, on the soil of the people and their needs, a perfect work of popular art in the spirit of the people and in the terms of their speech, to the weal of the people and their youth throughout the centuries, it was here. The explanation of the Second Article is one of the chief creations of the home art of German poetry. ”

“ German poetry abounds in specimens of the faithful way of handling nature; an excellent example is to be found in the stanzas called Zueignung, prefixed to Goethe’s poems; the morning walk, the mist, the dew, the sun, are as faithful as they can be, they are given with the eye on the object, but there the merit of the work, as a handling of nature, stops; neither Greek radiance nor Celtic magic is added; the power of these is not what gives the poem in question its merit, but a power of quite another kind, a power of moral and spiritual emotion. ”

“ It was necessary, too, that he should be stimulated by the ardour of a kindred talent and assisted by the keen criticism of a woman. Hundreds of sources had to flow into each other, hundreds of circumstances to coincide, of people to make each other's acquaintance, of minds to meet and fertilise each other, before this work, in its modest perfection, could be given to the world; a small thing, the translation of a poet who had been dead for two hundred years, it yet provided the most precious spiritual nourishment for millions, and exercised a deep and lasting influence on German poetry. ”

“ As the height of the Alps is measured by Mont Blanc, let the greatness of England be measured by the greatness of Shakespeare. Great nations make great poets, great poets make great nations. Happy the nation that possesses a poet like Shakespeare. Happy the youth of England whose first ideas of this world in which they are to live are taken from his pages. The silent influence of Shakespeare's poetry on millions of young hearts in England, in Germany, in all the world, shows the almost superhuman power of human genius. ”

“ He wrote in German words in a German atmosphere, but hardly from a Teutonic mind.
Truth and earnestness are essentials of German writing. And therefore it is difficult to find in German literature mere writing for writing’s sake. Its prose is the prose of discussion, argument, reflection, criticism, philosophy, analysis: its poetry is poetry of earnest meditation, real pathos, and real sentiment. Above all things German poetry is lyrical, and its lyric note rings true.
For German “literary” influence on ourselves we cannot point to much that is very definite. ”

“ Any German with penetration and tact in matters of literary criticism will own that the principal deficiency of German poetry is in style; that for style, in the highest sense, it shows but little feeling. Take the eminent masters of style, the poets who best give the idea of what the peculiar power which lies in style is, Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton. ”

“ Throughout we find singers who in verse or prose chant the national glory, and no episode of importance is without its poetic chronicle or interpretation; the national enthusiasm vents itself in war-song, in satire, in mock-heroics, or in rhyming chronicle. Wandering poets living on the scanty proceeds of their lieder; craftsmen who have taken up the sword; soldiers by profession—these are the bards of the time. Rugged and unpolished sometimes are their verses, for the Middle German is in a transition state, and poetry has long since left courts and descended among the people. ”

“ Through me the German poets have become aware that, as man must live from within outwards, so the artist must work from within outwards, seeing that, make what contortions he will, he can only bring to light his own individuality. I can clearly mark where this influence of mine has made itself felt; there arises out of it a kind of poetry of nature, and only in this way is it possible to be original. ”

“ He liked no poetry but German poetry. Physical energy was the thing he was full to the brim of, and music was one of its natural forms of expression. He had a healthy love of sport and art, of eating and drinking. ”

“ Zachariä cultivated this branch of poetry on German soil, and it pleased every one, because the ordinary subject of it was some awkward fellow, of whom the genii made game, while they favoured the better one.
It is not wonderful, but yet it excites wonder, when, in contemplating a literature, especially the German, one observes how a whole nation cannot get free from a subject which has been once given, and happily treated in a certain form, but will have it repeated in every manner, until, at last, the original itself is covered up, and stifled by the heaps of imitations. ”

“ The first true and really vital material of the higher order came into German poetry through Frederick the Great and the deeds of the Seven Years' War. All national poetry must be shallow or become shallow which does not rest on that which is most universally human,—upon the events of nations and their shepherds, when both stand for one man. ”

“ The effect of German philosophy has been to develop intense intellectual activity. The habit of searching into the hidden mysteries of being has inclined the German mind to what is deepest, and sometimes to what is most obscure in thought; and the tendency to rise to the absolute, which is characteristic of this philosophy, manifests its influence not only in the blending of poetry and metaphysics, but in every department of science, literature, and art. ”

“ Our great, our only first-rate body of contemporary poetry is the German; the grand business of modern poetry,—a moral interpretation, from an independent point of view, of man and the world,—it is only German poetry, Goethe’s poetry, that has, since the Greeks, made much way with. Campbell’s power of style, and the natural magic of Keats and Wordsworth, and Byron’s Titanic personality, may be wanting to this poetry ”

“ It is this special instinct for the ideal and mystical in German nature that has enabled spirits born of negation and revolution, like Schiller, to unite with those elements the most genial and creative inspirations of poetry. ”

“ This alliterative epic—for epic it may be called—is the one poem of this age in which the Christian tradition has been adapted to German poetic needs. Of the existence of a lyric poetry we only know by hearsay; and the drama had nowhere in Europe yet emerged from its earliest purely liturgic condition. Such as it was, the vernacular literature of the Old High German period enjoyed but a brief existence, and in the 10th and 11th centuries darkness again closed over it. The dominant “German” literature in these centuries is in Latin ”

“ The important fact is that the translation appeared in America and helped to make known to American readers certain specimens of German literature.
In the selection of material certain limitations were necessary. In the list of prose translations and articles dealing with the German countries, everything has been mentioned which refers directly or indirectly to Germany. This is important in giving a complete estimate of the interest shown, for there was a desire to know something about German prose works, German biography and history as well as German poetry. ”

“ You see I am a German at heart, and must have my world of thought and imagination, as well as the world in which men look at me with cold, hard, and even hostile eyes. Thus far this ideal world has been peopled chiefly by the shadows of those who have lived in the past or by the characters of the great creators in poetry. ”

“ The first translations of German poetry printed in America are to be sought, therefore, in the magazines and it was here also that the public received its first information about the lives of the German literati. It is the object of the present study to consider the German influence in the early American periodicals, treating especially the translations of German poetry published in them. ”

“ Other obvious fruits of the movement were the revival of the poetry and dignity of the Middle Ages, both in art and life—that colorful, form-loving musical era which the Age of Enlightenment had so crassly despised. That this yearning for the beautiful background led to reaction in politics and religion is natural enough; more edifying are the rich fruits which scholarship recovered when Romanticism had directed it into the domains of German antiquity and philology, and the wealth of popular song. ”

“ And as enjoyment of nature finds so clear an echo [pg 104] in the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, so also does the delight which man should have in man. Drinking songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? ”

“ Such are the decadent aspects of the once rich literature of the Middle High German period in the 14th and 15th centuries. Turning now to the more positive side of the literary movement, we have to note a revival of a popular lyric poetry—the Volkslied—which made the futility and artificiality of the Meistergesang more apparent. Never before or since has Germany been able to point to such a rich harvest of popular poetry as is to be seen in the Volkslieder of these two centuries. ”

“ The many inaccuracies and awkwardnesses of rhyme and diction, to which he alludes in republishing them towards the close of his life, did not prevent real lovers of poetry from seeing that no one but a poet could have transfused the daring imagery of the German in a style so free, bold, masculine, and full of life ”

“ In Germany this movement came just at the time when the idea of a universal literature had taken hold of the minds of the leading literary men, and so it was very natural that the pioneer and prophet of this great idea should also be the first to introduce into German poetry the new west-östliche Richtung. ”

“ There is nothing sacred, he claims, that has not been desecrated by this nation. But it is chiefly his own experience which he recites, when, in speaking of the sad plight of German poets, of those who still love the beautiful, he says: "Es ist auch herzzerreissend, wenn man eure Dichter, eure Künstler sieht—die Guten, sie leben in der Welt, wie Fremdlinge im eigenen Hause." ”

“ The German, like the English language, is so rich in synonimes, as to afford every facility for the intonations of the musician, and variety of expression of the poet. The poverty of the French language in this respect, presents a remarkable contrast to the German and English. French poetry must have the jingle of rhyme to make it bearable by the ear. ”

“ It rises to real passion only where the poet's invisible companion, the lictor with the terrible axe, breaks up the skeletons of the Three Kings in the Cathedral of Cologne, "the miserable skeletons of superstition." But it is in this great poem, Heine's most important work, that we have the clearest expression of the political feelings and principles which animated him, the element, new to German poetry, of warlike challenge and hand-to-hand struggle. Nothing of the kind is to be found in Goethe. ”

“ What in our country is only done for worship is done also in Germany for poetry and music. Voices blend together; art shares the privilege of religion. It is a trait which is neither French nor English, nor, I think, Italian. The spirit of artistic devotion, of impersonal combination, of common, harmonious, disinterested action, is specially German; it makes a welcome balance to certain clumsy and prosaic elements in the race.
Later.—Perhaps the craving for independence of thought—the tendency to go back to first principles—is really proper to the Germanic mind only. ”