Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century. Georg Brandes
broke the peace; but what else does Love? He outwitted her; but is not Love crafty? He mocked; but does not Love scoff even at the most powerful and most free? In other words: is not Eros himself a worker of violence, without shyness or shame, a criminal who overleaps all customary bounds.
All? That is saying too much. Heyse has indeed sometimes, as in the instances cited, shown a tendency, reminding one of Kleist, for all purely pathological erotic problems; but his nature is entirely too harmonious, too mature, and by far too typically German, to admit of his describing passion as bursting all the law and order of society. He is developed enough to see clearly that the laws of passion and the laws of society are two wholly dissimilar things, which have very little in common; yet he pays the latter the respect it deserves, that is, a conditional one. From his earliest youth it has interested and pleased him to show how relative is the truth, and how limited the worth of these laws; to bring forward in his poetic creations instances where their boundaries are overstepped in such a way that the exceptions to the rule seem right, and even the most hardened and narrow-minded person would hesitate to condemn them. In his anxiety to do full, incontestible justice to the exceptional cases, Heyse has sometimes – as in his first drama, "Francesca von Rimini," which is not included in his "Gesammelte Werke" – sought out extremely quaint exceptions; but it is his universal endeavor so to enclose the case with palisades, that no assault of usual morality can cause the downfall of the barricade. When Goethe brings together Egmont and Clärchen, he does not present the case as though it required an apology; the beauty of the relationship is its defence. Heyse, the less grand poet, whose caution is quite equal to his daring, has always fixed an eye on conventional morality, and has continually endeavored to conciliate it, either by ceding the point to it, so to say, in all other cases but just this one where its infringement was unavoidable, or by so atoning for the offence that the individual who is guilty of it is allowed to purchase the forbidden happiness, with his eyes fully open, and of his own free will, at so high a price that it appears too costly to be alluring to any Philistine.
In "Francesca von Rimini" the circumstances are as follows: Lanciotto is ugly, coarse, and corrupt; his brother, Paolo, noble and handsome. Lanciotto is inflamed with passion for Francesca. Misguided by brotherly love for the thoroughly unworthy Lanciotto, Paolo has allowed himself to be deluded not only into playing the part of suitor, but even disguised as bridegroom on the wedding day, to take the place of his brother, who feared that with his hideous person he could never obtain the maiden's consent. Not until shrouded by the darkness of the bridal chamber, does Lanciotto dare approach his bride. Now Paolo also loves Francesca, as she loves him in return. Therefore, it is no wonder that the young wife, upon discovering this gross deception, the victim of which she has become, feels dishonored by the caresses of her husband, and far from viewing her love for Paolo as a sin, she regards it as justified and sacred.
"The kiss thou gavest me the holy wafer was
Which my dishonored lips did purify from taint."
In order to make his intrenchment as solid as possible, it will thus be seen that the poet, in this naïve work of his youth, has constructed the most improbable, most far-fetched, case in the world; for what can be more preposterous than for Paolo out of pure, simple-hearted kindliness to a despicable brother, to expose the woman he loves to the basest deception, which, moreover, annihilates his own life-happiness. But in this exaggerated example will, nevertheless, be found the type according to which, in Heyse's numerous later "novellen," with their plentiful tact and exquisite delicacy, the moral collision is constructed. Let me single out at random several examples. In "Beatrice" it is legal marriage which breaks up the love romance, a forced marriage, as unholy as the marriage of Francesca, although stronger reasons are given for it. In "Cleopatra" the young German resists the love of the fair Egyptian, as stubbornly as Kleist's Count Wetter von Strahl resists the passion of Kätchen von Heilbronn. Not until her yearning for him brings Cleopatra to the brink of the grave, is the liaison between them formed. The proud Gabrielle in the work "Im Grafenschlosse" does not allow herself to be persuaded into the "conscience marriage" with the Count, until he has jeopardized his life for her sake. The young wife in "Rafael" purchases a few hours of companionship with her lover through a lifelong incarceration in the cloister; the self-surrender of Garcinde and Lottka is ennobled by the fact that the outwardly fettered but inwardly free ego was unable to conceive of a self-surrender, forbidden by circumstances, under any other conditions than those whose consequences are death. The right to the happiness of a fleeting moment is purchased by suicide.
The goblet of bliss, drained by these personages, has seasoned their destiny with poison. Heyse, therefore, affirms for these heroic souls the right to solve the problem of a conflict of duties in a different way than is customary for "the timid Philistine whose half-way measures are circumscribed by petty customs and considerations," and in the introduction to his "Beatrice"16 he himself formulates his ethic heresy in the following words: "Genial, self-dependent natures can do much toward extending the boundary lines of the moral sphere, by permitting the measure of their inner power and magnitude to shine forth as an example, through their actions, just as genial artists can burst through those barriers of their art that have been handed down to them by tradition."
No less than through this intimately allied association with ruin and death does Heyse ennoble love, legitimate or illegitimate, as indicated above, through the nature of the self-surrender. It is always conscious. These women whom he characterizes never allow themselves to be carried away by their emotions; they give themselves up as a free gift – when they yield at all. Thus it is in works dating from Heyse's earliest youth, as "Der Kreisrichter"17 (The Circuit Judge), thus in "Rafael," in "Lottka," and in so many of the "novellen" in prose and in verse. Everywhere the self-sufficiency and the right of spontaneity of the individual is preserved. The woman gives herself as a free gift to her lover, she goes freely forth to meet her own destruction, or with her own hand inflicts death upon herself; and where the bliss of love is not ennobled by the price it costs, it is at least exalted by the pride with which it is bestowed and received. By virtue of this pride the personality, itself governed by the strongest power of nature, feels independent and regal in the assertion of its sovereign dignity. In the romance "Im Paradiese" Heyse has for the first time treated as a main problem the freedom of love in antithesis to the laws of society, and maintained its justice. The fundamental idea of this romance is none other than that the morality and dignity, of love between man and woman is independent of the outward ratification of the marriage tie. According to his wont, Heyse has provided the case here given with the most forcible motives. Jansen cannot, without putting his friend to shame, become free from his despicable wife, and without Julie all his hopes as an artist and a man would perish. Yet when Julie in the presence of the assembled friends, adorned with the myrtle-wreath, freely weds Jansen, a decided attack is aimed at the purely exterior morality of society, although the incident is not brought forward as an example for imitation. The poet who in the "Kinder der Welt" urgently impresses it upon the consciences of his contemporaries, that the morality of the individual is not dependent on his metaphysical convictions, in his "Im Paradiese," strives to teach that the purity and dignity of a union of love must not be judged by the laws of outward morality, but that love both without and within the marriage relation may be true and false, moral and immoral. Everything depends, according to Heyse's views, upon the true nobility of the heart.
V
I have already said that Heyse as a poet is originally a pupil of Eichendorf. Like the hero in his "Ein Abenteuer" (An Adventure), he appears to have chosen for the companion of his first journeyman-years the romantic "Taugenichts" (Good-for-nothing). Where, in one of his "novellen" (Lottka), he introduces himself as a youth, he sings in Eichendorf's own key, and we recognize that very early in life he has been in the habit of whistling, with rare skill, the melodies of romance. Musje Morgenroth, in the collection of romantic folk-lore tales for children, which as a student he published under the title "Der Jungbrunnen" (The Fountain of Youth), is a genuine brother of the celebrated Eichendorf hero. The book is the work of a boy, and yet it is not without a certain interest, as it marks the first standpoint of our poet. It shows also with what talents he was equipped from the outset: the boyish, yet never inelegant prose flows smoothly, and the verse, which is of a vastly higher character, with all its echoes,
Gesammelte Werke, viii. 168.
Gesammelte Werke, vi. 71: "I have been sold once in my life. How mankind will now blame me if I give myself as a free-will offering in order to suppress the anguish of that disgrace!"