Meistersinger

“ I wanted, above all, to finish the first act of the Meistersinger with all possible despatch, so as to send Schott part of the manuscript at last. I had told him that I was going to send it to him almost immediately when I attacked him about the advances which had so long been withheld from me. I then intended to collect the means wherewith to meet my obligations in Vienna, while living in complete retirement and, as I hoped, in concealment. ”

“ Sachs, at the request of the presiding officer of the guild, also offers him the medal as the insignia of membership in the guild of mastersingers. Walther's experience with the pedantry which had condemned him the day before, when he had sung as impulse, love, and youthful ardor had prompted, leads him to decline the distinction; but the old poet discourses on the respect due to the masters and their, work as the guaranty of the permanence of German art, and persuades him to enter the guild of mastersingers.
"Die Meistersinger" is photographic in many of its scenes, personages, and incidents ”

“ Meister himself, with his wavering impulses and vague strivings after an ideal existence, is revealed with absolute truth to nature, and, although he never wins (nor is intended to win) our full respect, we are compelled, almost in spite of ourselves, to follow him with interest from stage to stage of his career. The most important character, however, is not Meister, but Mignon, one of the strangest, most pathetic figures in the world’s literature. ”

“ Wilhelm thought not of the clothes or goods he might have lost: he felt deeply how inestimable to him was this pair of human beings, who had just escaped so great a danger. He pressed little Felix to his heart with a new emotion: Mignon, too, he was about to clasp with joyful tenderness; but she softly avoided this: she took him by the hand, and held it fast.
"Master," said she (till the present evening she had hardly ever named him master; at first she used to name him sir, and afterwards to call him father) ,—"Master! we have escaped an awful danger: thy Felix was on the point of death." ”

“ Wilhelm Meister is a novel in every sense, the first of its kind, called by its admirers the only delineation of modern society,- as if other novels, those of Scott for example, dealt with costume and condition, this with the spirit of life. ”

“ It was here that the “Meistersänger” lingered longest, “preserving without text and without notes the traditional love of their craft.” It is true that the Meistersänger lacked on the whole the freshness and fascination of their forerunners the “Minnesänger,” but their story forms an interesting chapter in the history of the literature of their land, though a German historian of German literature has sneered at them as “chiefly burghers of towns ... ”

“ Old Meister had a high notion of his son's faculties and capabilities: he said this in the hope that his friend would contradict him, and [45] hold up to view the admirable gifts of the youth. Here, however, he deceived himself. Old Werner, who, in practical concerns, would trust no man but such as he had proved, answered placidly, "One must try all things. We can send him on the same journey: we shall give him a paper of directions to conduct him. There are sundry debts to be gathered in, old connections are to be renewed, new ones to be made. ”

“ A hero, who was probably originally intended to demonstrate the failure of the vacillating temperament when brought face to face with the problems of art, proved ill-adapted to demonstrate those precepts for the guidance of life with which the Lehrjahre closes; unstable of purpose, Wilhelm Meister is not so much an illustration of the author’s life-philosophy as a lay-figure on which he demonstrates his views. Wilhelm Meister is a work of extraordinary variety, ranging from the commonplace realism of the troupe of strolling players to the poetic romanticism of Mignon and the harper ”

“ Schiller done, I began Wilhelm Meister, a task I liked perhaps rather better, too scanty as my knowledge of the element, and even of the language, still was. Two years before I had at length, after some repulsion, got into the heart of Wilhelm Meister, and eagerly read it through; my sally out, after finishing, along the vacant streets of Edinburgh, a windless, Scotch-misty morning, is still vivid to me. 'Grand, serenely, harmoniously built together, far-seeing, wise and true. ”

“ The peculiarity of Wilhelm Meister as a novel is more difficult of apprehension, if one does not seek the novel where in truth it lies—in the story of Mignon and the Harper, and only sees in the remainder the certainly somewhat diffuse but deeply-thought and classically-delineated picture of the earnest striving after culture of a German in the end of the eighteenth century. ”

“ Metternich indeed often pays his compliments to the ideal, as when he praises the league as resting on the same basis as the great Christian society of man, namely, the precept of the Book of Books, “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.” ”

“ A pleased smile shone upon the old woman’s face as she recognized the tap, and hastened to admit the person who had formerly embodied her dreams of a daughter-in-law, who should be the instrument of rest and ease to her old age. But the Anna Rolf who now passed through the dark shop into the glowing kitchen, had been for two years a comely young matron; Leppel Rolf, the stalwart young carpenter, having wooed and won her, while Shoemaker Metzerott sat passively under his lapstone. Rumor asserted that the fair Anna had been somewhat piqued by this same passivity ”

“ After he had labored greatly to persuade her that he could not take her with him, that he would conduct her to a place where he might often see her, she appeared as if she had not heard a word of it. "Thou wishest not to have me with thee," said she. "Perhaps it is better: send me to the old harper; the poor man is lonely where he is."
Wilhelm tried to show her that the old man was in comfortable circumstances. "Every hour I long for him," replied the child. ”

“ Karl Metzerott and Ernest Clare work and wait for the day of the Lord, hand in hand. The shoemaker has grown very gentle, and is much beloved by children, to whom he tells stories by the hour of Louis and the Christ-child, until the small minds become at times confused, as to which one it was who ’vided the tin soldiers, and invited the Prices to share his dinner of soup. But, as to the filling of the shoes at Christmas, that Karl considers a vain superstition. ”

“ Wilhelm, on foot, went on before them through the hills; making every one that met him stare with astonishment at his singular figure. He hastened with quick and contented steps across the forest; Laertes walked whistling after him; none but the women continued to be dragged along in the carriages. Mignon, too, ran forward by his side, proud of the hanger, which, when the party were all arming, she would not go without. Around her hat she had bound the pearl necklace, one of Mariana's relics, which Wilhelm still possessed. Friedrich, the fair-haired boy, carried Laertes's gun. ”

“ Strains of music had already begun to resound from the Hall, as Metzerott finished his repast.
“The girls are enjoying themselves,” he said, smiling, to his neighbor, who happened to be Leppel Rolf; but an obese little man opposite called out,—
“Enjoying? But how can they, with no partners to whirl them around? When I was your age, Karl, would I have been so lazy? No, my arm would have been round the prettiest waist in the lot long ago. Hurry, lazy fellow!”
There was a roar from the tableful at this sally, for the speaker was well known as the shyest of men where “ladies” were in question. ”

“ Of this I can assure you,—were I a man, no one should foist a child on me; but it is a happiness for women, that, in these cases, men are not so quick of sight."
These things over, Wilhelm and Barbara parted: he was to take Felix with him; she, to carry Mignon to Theresa, and afterwards to live in any place she pleased, upon a small annuity which he engaged to settle on her.
He sent for Mignon, to prepare her for the new arrangement. "Master," said she, "keep me with thee: it will do me good, and do me ill." ”

“ Now, however, Wilhelm had again approximated to his brother: he was just about to do what Werner had so earnestly desired. He could say, "I am abandoning the stage: I mean to join myself with men whose intercourse, in every sense, must lead me to a sure and suitable activity." He inquired about his property; and it now seemed strange to him, that he had never, for so long a time, disturbed himself about it. He knew not that it is the manner of all persons who attach importance to their inward cultivation altogether to neglect their outward circumstances. ”

“ So lived these two fathers, often meeting to take counsel about their common concerns. On the day we are speaking of, it had been determined to send Wilhelm out from home, for the despatch of some commercial affairs.
"Let him look about him in the world," said old Meister, "and at the same time carry on our business in distant parts. One cannot do a young man any greater kindness than initiate him early in the future business of his life. ”

“ Schiller was intensely interested in the book, and often talked about it with Goethe, who sought his advice as to the best way of rounding it off. Encouraged by his friend’s enthusiasm, Goethe carried on his labours steadily until it was finished in 1796.
In “Werther,” Goethe’s first romance, he deals only with one great crisis in the history of his hero. “Wilhelm Meister,” on the contrary, is a picture of the entire course of a young man’s life. Meister is the son of a merchant, and at the point where the tale begins he is associated with his father in business. ”

“ When the company was breaking up at a pretty late hour, Philina softly whispered Wilhelm as she passed, "I must have my slippers back: thou wilt not bolt the door?" These words excited some perplexity in Wilhelm, when he reached his chamber; they strengthened the suspicion that Philina was the secret visitant: and we ourselves are forced to coincide with this idea; particularly as the causes, which awakened in our friend another and a stranger supposition, cannot be disclosed. ”

“ To make amends, we must take a long walk, and try to avoid disputes. Two o’clock, if that suits you. I shall expect you promptly to the minute. Your idea about Wilhelm Meister is rather pretty, but, after all, it is only a sophism.
One might as well say that the memory of a pleasure is a variety of pain. This is especially true of half-pleasures, by which I mean pleasures unshared with another. You shall have those verses, if you insist upon it. You shall have, also, your portrait in Turkish dress, which I have begun. I have placed a nargile in your hand, to add to the local colour. ”

“ Only experience has taught me how worse than useless it is. No one was ever converted by argument; thousands have been hardened in error by it.”
“And who is it at ‘Prices’ you want to convert?” asked Karl Metzerott.
“I have come to ‘Prices’ to find work if I can,” replied Ernest Clare. “I was a poor boy, Mr. Metzerott, and learned the trade of a carpenter, not from choice but necessity, and supported myself by it until I went to the Theological Seminary.”
“Where ye was educated free like myself, though not in the true faith,” said Father McClosky. ”

“ It contained a eulogy on minstrelsy,—described the happiness of minstrels, and reminded men to honor them. He produced his song with so much life and truth, that it seemed as if he had composed it at the moment, for this special occasion. Wilhelm could scarcely refrain from clasping him in his arms: but the fear of awakening a peal of laughter detained him in his chair; for the rest were already in half-whispers making sundry very shallow observations, and debating if the harper was a Papist or a Jew. ”

“ On the German side of the Rhine Adolf Menzel was the great pioneer of truth. The history of German art must do him honour as one who first had the genius and courage to break away from conventional forms of phrasing, and bring the truth of nature into art: at first, as in the case of Meissonier, it was nature in masquerade; but it was nature seen and rendered with all the sincerity of a man to whom the art of pose was wanting from the very first. ”

“ Louis glanced around the plain, bare room, and thought of Alice’s dainty parlor, of the pink and white nest that sheltered his bird, of which he had once had an accidental glimpse,—and he sighed heavily.
“Why should you fancy her here?” asked Metzerott, interpreting the sigh aright. “She doesn’t suit you, and that’s all there is about it. Rise into her world indeed! I hope your father is an honest man, which is more than can be said of hers!” ”

“ This, and the knowledge that Louis, his only son, Louis, to whom he had been both father and mother, that Louis clung to his rival and condemned his father’s course, filled Karl Metzerott’s tongue with fire. His rugged features glowed, his strong frame trembled, as he pictured the rich man’s home, where the cost of one single picture would have been wealth—nay, length of days, to the bowed figure, old beyond her years, whose life slowly ebbed from her, as she toiled through the gorgeous rooms and up and down the wide, richly carpeted stairs. ”

“ In the Germany of the sixteenth century the [Pg 145] mercantile middle class came to be of social importance, and around them grew up a new art of song.
IV
The era of the middle-class or Burgher dominance in the German cities is represented, in music, by the institution of the Meistersang (master song) . The Meistersang was the middle-class replica of the Minnesang. It arose shortly after the natural death of the Minnesang, early in the fourteenth century, originating, strangely enough, at Mayence, where Heinrich Frauenlob, the last of the great Minnesingers, died. ”