Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany. Georg Brandes

The task of giving a connected account of the German Romantic School is, for a Dane, an arduous and disheartening one. In the first place, the subject is overwhelmingly vast; in the second, it has been treated again and again by German writers; and, lastly, these writers, in their division of labour, have entered so learnedly into every detail, that it is impossible for a foreigner, one, moreover, to whom the sources are not always accessible, to compete with them in exhaustive knowledge. From their childhood they have been familiar with a literature with which he first makes acquaintance at an age when assimilation, in any quantity, has become a much more difficult process. What the foreigner must rely on is, partly the decision with which he takes up and maintains his personal standpoint, partly the possibility that he may display qualities which are not characteristic of the native author. Such a quality in the case in point is the artistic faculty, the faculty, I mean, of representation, of externalisation. The German nature is so intense and profound that this faculty is comparatively rare. The foreigner has, moreover, this advantage over the native, that it is easier for him to detect the mark of race—that in the German author which stamps him as a German. The German critic is too apt to consider "German" synonymous with "human being," for the reason that the human beings he deals with are almost always Germans. The foreigner is struck by characteristics which are overlooked by the native, sometimes because he is so accustomed to them, more frequently because he himself possesses them.

There are many works to be criticised and classified, many personalities to describe. My aim will be to present these personalities and works in as firm and sharp outline as possible, and, without giving undue attention to detail, to throw light upon the whole in such a manner that its principal features will stand out and arrest the eye. I shall endeavour, on the one hand, to treat the history of literature as humanly as possible, to go as deep down as I can, to seize upon the remotest, innermost psychological movements which prepared for and produced the various literary phenomena; and on the other hand, I shall try to present the result in as plastic and tangible a form as possible. If I can succeed in giving shape, clear and accurate, to the hidden feeling, the idea, which everywhere underlies the literary phenomenon, my task will be accomplished. By preference, I shall always, when possible, embody the abstract in the personal.

First and foremost, therefore, I everywhere trace the connection between literature and life. This is at once proved by the fact that, whereas earlier Danish literary controversies (that between Heiberg and Hauch, for example, or even the famous one between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger) were kept entirely within the domain of literature and dealt exclusively with literary principles, the controversy aroused by the first volume of this work has entailed, quite as much from the nature of the work as from the irrationality of its opponents, the discussion of a multitude of moral, social, and religious questions. The Danish reaction, feeling itself to be akin to the one I am about to depict and unmask, has attempted to suppress the movement which it recognised to be antagonistic to itself—but so far with little prospect of success. A French proverb says: Nul prince n'a tué son successeur.

When, however, the connection between literature and life is thus emphasised, the delineations and interpretations of men and their books by no means produce what we may call drawing-room history of literature. I go down to the foundations of real life, and show how the emotions which find their expression in literature arise in the human heart. And this same human heart is no still pool, no idyllic mountain lake. It is an ocean, with submarine vegetation and terrible inhabitants. Drawing-room history of literature, like drawing-room poetry, sees in human life a drawing-room, a decorated ball-room—the furniture and the people alike polished, the brilliant illumination excluding all possibility of dark corners. Let those who choose to do so look at things thus; it is not my point of view. Just as the botanist must handle nettles as well as roses, so the student of literature must accustom himself to look, with the unflinching gaze of the naturalist or the physician, upon all the forms taken by human nature, in their diversity and their inward affinity. It makes the plant neither more nor less interesting that it smells sweet or stings; but the dispassionate interest of the botanist is often accompanied by the purely human pleasure in the beauty of the flower.

As I follow the more important literary movements from country to country, studying their psychology, I attempt to condense the fluid material by showing how, from time to time, it crystallises into one or other definite and intelligible type. The attempt is attended with extraordinary difficulty in this particular period of German literature, from the fact that the chief characteristic of the period is an absence of distinctly typical forms. This literature is not plastic; it is musical. French Romanticism produces clearly defined figures; the ideal of German Romanticism is not a figure, but a melody, not definite form, but infinite aspiration. Is it obliged to name the object of its longing? It designates it by such terms as "ein geheimes Wort," "eine blaue Blume," "der Zauber der Waldeinsamkeit" (a mystic word—a blue flower—the magic of the lonely woods). These expressions are, however, definitions of moods, and each mood has a corresponding psychological condition, my task is to trace back each mood, emotion, or longing to the group of psychological conditions to which it belongs. This group in combination constitutes a soul; and such a soul, with strongly marked individuality, represents in literature the many who were unable to depict their own character, but who recognised it when thus placed before them. I may possibly succeed in proving that the type does not escape us because the author may have chosen to paint landscape after landscape in place of delineating characteristic personalities, or because he confounds literature with music to the extent of at last entitling his poems simply Allegro or Rondo; but that, on the contrary, the distinctly peculiar qualities of these landscapes and the character of this word-music are symptomatic of a psychological condition which may be determined with considerable accuracy.

In the general introduction to this work I have sketched the plan which I have proposed to myself. It is my intention to describe the first great literary movement of the century, the germinating and growing reaction, first elucidating its nature, then following it to its climax.

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