The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV by Editor in Chief: Kuno Francke

E >> Editor in Chief: Kuno Francke >> The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36

* * * * *

Today in a French book about two lovers I came across the expression:
"They were the universe to each other." It struck me as at once
pathetic and comical, how that thoughtless phrase, put there merely as
a hyperbolical figure of speech, in our case was so literally true.
Still it is also literally true for a French passion of that kind.
They are the universe to each other, because they lose sense for
everything else. Not so with us. Everything we once loved we still
love all the more ardently. The world's meaning has now dawned upon
us. Through me you have learned to know the infinitude of the human
mind, and through you I have come to understand marriage and life, and
the gloriousness of all things.

Everything is animate for me, speaks to me, and everything is holy.
When people love each other as we do, human nature reverts to its
original godliness. The pleasure of the lover's embrace becomes
again--what it is in general--the holiest marvel of Nature. And that
which for others is only something to be rightly ashamed of, becomes
for us, what in and of itself it is, the pure fire of the noblest
potency of life.

* * * * *

There are three things which our child shall certainly have--a great
deal of wanton spirit, a serious face, and a certain amount of
predisposition for art. Everything else I await with quiet
resignation. Son or daughter, as for that I have no special
preference. But about the child's bringing-up I have thought a great,
great deal. We must carefully avoid, I think, what is called
"education;" try harder to avoid it than, say, three sensible fathers
try, by anxious thought, to lace up their progeny from the very cradle
in the bands of narrow morality.

I have made some plans which I think will please you. In doing so I
have carefully considered your ideas. But you must not neglect the
Art! For your daughter, if it should be a daughter, would you prefer
portrait-or landscape-painting?

* * * * *

You foolish girl, with your external things! You want to know what is
going on around me, and where and when and how I live and amuse
myself? Just look around you, on the chair beside you, in your arms,
close to your heart--that is where I am. Does not a ray of longing
strike you, creep up with sweet warmth to your heart, until it reaches
your mouth, where it would fain overflow in kisses?

And now you actually boast because you write me such warm letters,
while I only write to you often, you pedantic creature. At first I
always think of you as you describe it--that I am walking with you,
looking at you, listening to you, talking with you. Then again it is
sometimes quite different, especially when I wake up at night.

How can you have any doubt about the worthiness and divineness of
your letters? The last one sparkles and beams as if it had bright
eyes. It is not mere writing--it is music. I believe that if I were to
stay away from you a few more months, your style would become
absolutely perfect. Meanwhile I think it advisable for us to forget
about writing and style, and no longer to postpone the highest and
loveliest of studies. I have practically decided to set out in eight
days.

II

It is a remarkable thing that man does not stand in great awe of
himself. The children are justified, when they peep so curiously and
timidly at a company of unknown faces. Each individual atom of
everlasting time is capable of comprising a world of joy, and at the
same time of opening up a fathomless abyss of pain and suffering. I
understand now the old fairy-tale about the man whom the sorcerer
allowed to live a great many years in a few moments. For I know by my
own experience the terrible omnipotence of the fantasy.

Since the last letter from your sister--it is three days now--I have
undergone the sufferings of an entire life, from the bright sunlight
of glowing youth to the pale moonlight of sagacious old age. Every
little detail she wrote about your sickness, taken with what I had
already gleaned from the doctor and had observed myself, confirmed my
suspicion that it was far more dangerous than you thought; indeed no
longer dangerous, but decided, past hope. Lost in this thought and my
strength entirely exhausted on account of the impossibility of
hurrying to your side, my state of mind was really very disconsolate.
Now for the first time I understand what it really was, being new-born
by the joyful news that you are well again. For you are well again
now, as good as entirely well--that I infer from all the reports, with
the same confidence with which a few days ago I pronounced our
death-sentence.

I did not think of it as about to happen in the future, or even in
the present. Everything was already past. For a long time you had been
wrapt in the bosom of the cold earth; flowers had started to grow on
the beloved grave, and my tears had already begun to flow more gently.
Mute and alone I stood, and saw nothing but the features I had loved
and the sweet glances of the expressive eyes. The picture remained
motionless before me; now and then the pale face smiled and seemed
asleep, just as it had looked the last time I saw it. Then of a sudden
the different memories all became confused; with unbelievable rapidity
the outlines changed, reassumed their first form, and transformed
themselves again and again, until the wild vision vanished. Only your
holy eyes remained in the empty space and hung there motionless, even
as the friendly stars shine eternally over our poverty. I gazed
fixedly at the black lights, which shone with a well-known smile in
the night of my grief. Now a piercing pain from dark suns burned me
with an insupportable glare, now a beautiful radiance hovered about as
if to entice me. Then I seemed to feel a fresh breath of morning air
fan me; I held my head up and cried aloud: "Why should you torment
yourself? In a few minutes you can be with her!"

I was already hastening to you, when suddenly a new thought held me
back and I said to my spirit: "Unworthy man, you cannot even endure
the trifling dissonances of this ordinary life, and yet you regard
yourself as ready for and worthy of a higher life? Go away and do and
suffer as your calling is, and then present yourself again when your
orders have been executed."

Is it not to you also remarkable how everything on this earth moves
toward the centre, how orderly everything is, how insignificant and
trivial? So it has always seemed to me. And for that reason I
suspect--if I am not mistaken, I have already imparted my suspicion to
you--that the next life will be larger, and in the good as well as in
the bad, stronger, wilder, bolder and more tremendous.

The duty of living had conquered, and I found myself again amid the
tumult of human life, and of my and its weak efforts and faulty deeds.
A feeling of horror came over me, as when a person suddenly finds
himself alone in the midst of immeasurable mountains of ice.
Everything about me and in me was cold and strange, and even my tears
froze.

Wonderful worlds appeared and vanished before me in my uneasy dream. I
was sick and suffered great pain, but I loved my sickness and welcomed
the suffering. I hated everything earthly and was glad to see it all
punished and destroyed. I felt so alone and so strangely. And as a
delicate spirit often grows melancholy in the very lap of happiness
over its own joy, and at the very acme of its existence becomes
conscious of the futility of it all, so did I regard my suffering with
mysterious pleasure. I regarded it as the symbol of life in general; I
believed that I was seeing and feeling the everlasting discord by
means of which all things come into being and exist, and the lovely
forms of refined culture seemed dead and trivial to me in comparison
with this monstrous world of infinite strength and of unending
struggle and warfare, even into the most hidden depths of existence.

On account of this remarkable feeling sickness acquired the character
of a peculiar world complete in itself. I felt that its mysterious
life was richer and deeper than the vulgar health of the dreaming
sleep-walkers all around me. And with the sickliness, which was not at
all unpleasant, this feeling also clung to me and completely separated
me from other men, just as I was sundered from the earth by the
thought that your nature and my love had been too sacred not to take
speedy flight from earth and its coarse ties. It seemed to me that all
was right so, and that your unavoidable death was nothing more than a
gentle awakening after a light sleep.

I too thought that I was awake when I saw your picture, which evermore
transfigured itself into a cheerful diffused purity. Serious and yet
charming, quite you and yet no longer you, the divine form irradiated
by a wonderful light! Now it was like the terrible gleam of visible
omnipotence, now like a soft ray of golden childhood. With long, still
drafts my spirit drank from the cool spring of pure passion and became
secretly intoxicated with it. And in this blissful drunkenness I felt
a spiritual worthiness of a peculiar kind, because every earthly
sentiment was entirely strange to me, and the feeling never left me
that I was consecrated to death.

The years passed slowly by, and deeds and works advanced laboriously
to their goal, one after the other--a goal that seemed as little mine
as the deeds and works seemed to be what they are called. To me they
were merely holy symbols, and everything brought me back to my one
Beloved, who was the mediatrix between my dismembered ego and the one
eternal and indivisible humanity; all existence was an uninterrupted
divine service of solitary love.

Finally I became conscious that it was now nearly over. The brow was
no longer smooth and the locks were becoming gray. My career was
ended, but not completed. The best strength of life was gone, and
still Art and Virtue stood ever unattainable before me. I should have
despaired, had I not perceived and idolized both in you, gracious
Madonna, and you and your gentle godliness in myself.

Then you appeared to me, beckoning with the summons of Death. An
earnest longing for you and for freedom seized me; I yearned for my
dear old fatherland, and was about to shake off the dust of travel,
when I was suddenly called back to life by the promise and reassurance
of your recovery.

Then I became conscious that I had been dreaming; I shuddered at all
the significant suggestions and similarities, and stood anxiously by
the boundless deep of this inward truth.

Do you know what has become most obvious to me as a result of it
all? First, that I idolize you, and that it is a good thing that I do
so. We two are one, and only in that way does a human being become one
and a complete entity, that is, by regarding and poetically conceiving
himself as the centre of everything and the spirit of the world. But
why poetically conceive, since we find the germ of everything in
ourselves, and yet remain forever only a fragment of ourselves?

And then I now know that death can also be felt as beautiful and
sweet. I understand how the free creature can quietly long in the
bloom of all its strength for dissolution and freedom, and can
joyfully entertain the thought of return as a morning sun of hope.

A REFLECTION

It has often struck my mind how extraordinary it is that sensible and
dignified people can keep on, with such great seriousness and such
never-tiring industry, forever playing the little game in perpetual
rotation--a game which is of no use whatever and has no definite
object, although it is perhaps the earliest of all games. Then my
spirit inquired what Nature, who everywhere thinks so profoundly and
employs her cunning in such a large way, and who, instead of talking
wittily, behaves wittily, may think of those naive intimations which
refined speakers designate only by their namelessness.

And this namelessness itself has an equivocal significance. The more
modest and modern one is, the more fashionable does it become to put
an immodest interpretation upon it. For the old gods, on the contrary,
all life had a certain classic dignity whereby even the immodest
heroic art is rendered lifelike. The mass of such works and the great
inventive power displayed in them settles the question of rank and
nobility in the realm of mythology.

This number and this power are all right, but they are not the
highest. Where does the longed-for ideal lie concealed? Or does the
aspiring heart evermore find in the highest of all plastic arts only
new manners and never a perfected style?

Thinking has a peculiarity of its own in that, next to itself, it
loves to think about something which it can think about forever. For
that reason the life of the cultured and thinking man is a constant
study and meditation on the beautiful riddle of his destiny. He is
always defining it in a new way, for just that is his entire destiny,
to be defined and to define. Only in the search itself does the human
mind discover the secret that it seeks.

But what, then, is it that defines or is defined? Among men it is the
nameless. And what is the nameless among women?--The Indefinite.

The Indefinite is more mysterious, but the Definite has greater magic
power. The charming confusion of the Indefinite is more romantic, but
the noble refinement of the Definite has more of genius. The beauty of
the Indefinite is perishable, like the life of the flowers and the
everlasting youth of mortal feelings; the energy of the Definite is
transitory, like a genuine storm and genuine inspiration.

Who can measure and compare two things which have endless worth, when
both are held together in the real Definiteness, which is intended to
fill all gaps and to act as mediator between the male and female
individual and infinite humanity?

The Definite and the Indefinite and the entire abundance of their
definite and indefinite relations--that is the one and all, the most
wonderful and yet the simplest, the simplest and yet the highest. The
universe itself is only a toy of the Definite and the Indefinite; and
the real definition of the definable is an allegorical miniature of
the life and activity of ever-flowing creation.

With everlasting immutable symmetry both strive in different ways to
get near to the Infinite and to escape from it. With light but sure
advances the Indefinite expands its native wish from the beautiful
centre of Finiteness into the boundless. Complete Definiteness, on the
other hand, throws itself with a bold leap out of the blissful dream
of the infinite will into the limits of the finite deed, and by
self-refinement ever increases in magnanimous self-restraint and
beautiful self-sufficiency.

In this symmetry is also revealed the incredible humor with which
consistent Nature accomplishes her most universal and her most simple
antithesis. Even in the most delicate and most artistic organization
these comical points of the great All reveal themselves, like a
miniature, with roguish significance, and give to all individuality,
which exists only by them and by the seriousness of their play, its
final rounding and perfection.

Through this individuality and that allegory the bright ideal of witty
sensuality blooms forth from the striving after the Unconditioned.

Now everything is clear! Hence the omnipresence of the nameless,
unknown divinity. Nature herself wills the everlasting succession of
constantly repeated efforts; and she wills, too, that every individual
shall be complete, unique and new in himself--a true image of the
supreme, indivisible Individuality. Sinking deeper into this
Individuality, my Reflection took such an individual turn that it
presently began to cease and to forget itself.

"What point have all these allusions, which with senseless sense on
the outward boundaries of sensuality, or rather in the middle of it, I
will not say play, but contend with, each other?"

So you will surely ask, and so the good Juliana would ask, though no
doubt in different language.

Dear Beloved! Shall the nosegay contain only demure roses, quiet
forget-me-nots, modest violets and other maidenlike and childlike
flowers? May it not contain anything and everything that shines
strangely in wonderful glory?

Masculine awkwardness is a manifold thing, and rich in blossoms and
fruits of all kinds. Let the wonderful plant, which I will not name,
have its place. It will serve at least as a foil to the
bright-gleaming pomegranate and the yellow oranges. Or should there
be, perhaps, instead of this motley abundance, only one perfect
flower, which combines all the beauties of the rest and renders their
existence superfluous?

I do not apologize for doing what I should rather like to do again,
with full confidence in your objective sense for the artistic
productions of the awkwardness which, often and not unwillingly,
borrows the material for its creations from masculine inspiration.

It is a soft Furioso and a clever Adagio of friendship. You will be
able to learn various things from it; that men can hate with as
uncommon delicacy as you can love; that they then remold a wrangle,
after it is over, into a distinction; and that you may make as many
observations about it as pleases you.

JULIUS To ANTONIO

You have changed a great deal of late. Beware, my friend, that you do
not lose your sense for the great before you realize it. What will
that mean? You will finally acquire so much modesty and delicacy that
heart and feeling will be lost. Where then will be your manhood and
your power of action? I shall yet come to the point of treating you as
you treat me, since we have not been living with each other, but near
each other. I shall have to set limits for you and say: Even if he has
a sense for everything else that is beautiful, still he lacks all
sense for friendship. Still I shall never set myself up as a moral
critic of my friend and his conduct; he who can do that does not
deserve the rare good fortune to have a friend.

That you wrong yourself first of all only makes the matter worse. Tell
me seriously, do you think there is virtue in these cool subtleties of
feeling, in these cunning mental gymnastics, which consume the marrow
of a man's life and leave him hollow inside?

For a long time I was resigned and said nothing. I did not doubt at
all that you, who know so much, would also probably know the causes
that have destroyed our friendship. It almost seems as if I was
mistaken, since you were so astonished at my attaching myself to
Edward and asked how you had offended me, as if you did not understand
it. If it were only that, only some one thing like that, then it would
not be worth while to ask such a painful question; the question would
answer and settle itself. But is it not more than that, when on every
occasion I must feel it a fresh desecration to tell you everything
about Edward, just as it happened? To be sure you have done nothing,
have not even said anything aloud; but I know and see very well how
you think about it. And if I did not know it and see it, where would
be the invisible communion of our spirits and the beautiful magic of
this communion? It certainly cannot occur to you to want to hold back
still longer, and by sheer finesse to try to end the misunderstanding;
for otherwise I should myself really have nothing more to say.

You two are unquestionably separated by an everlasting chasm. The
quiet, clear depth of your being and the hot struggle of his restless
life lie at the opposite ends of human existence. He is all action,
you are a sensitive, contemplative nature. For that reason you should
have sense for everything, and you really do have it, save when you
cultivate an intentional reserve. And that really vexes me. Better
that you should hate the noble fellow than misjudge him. But where
will it lead, if you unnaturally accustom yourself to use your utmost
wit in finding nothing but the commonplace in what little of greatness
and beauty there is in him, and that without renouncing your claim to
a liberal mind?

Is that your boasted many-sidedness? To be sure you observe the
principle of equality, and one man does not fare much better than
another, except that each one is misunderstood in a peculiar way. Have
you not also forced me to say nothing to you, or to anyone else, about
that which I feel to be the highest? And that merely because you
could not hold back your opinion until it was the proper time, and
because your mind is always imagining limitations in others before it
can find its own. You have almost obliged me to explain to you how
great my own worth really is; how much more just and safe it would
have been, if now and then you had not passed judgment but had
believed; if you had presupposed in me an unknown infinite.

To be sure my own negligence is to blame for it all. Perhaps too it
was idiosyncrasy--that I wanted to share with you the entire present,
without letting you know anything about the past and the future.
Somehow it went against my feelings, and I regarded it too as
superfluous; for, as a matter of fact, I gave you credit for a great
deal of intelligence.

O Antonio, if I could be doubtful about the eternal truths, you might
have brought me to the point of regarding that quiet, beautiful
friendship, which is based merely upon the harmony of being and living
together, as something false and perverse.

Is it now still incomprehensible if I quite go over to the other side?
I renounce refined enjoyment and plunge into the wild battle of life.
I hasten to Edward. Everything is agreed upon. We will not only live
together, but we will work and act in fraternal unison. He is rough
and uncouth, his virtue is strong rather than sensitive. But he has a
great manly heart, and in better times than ours he would have been, I
say it boldly, a hero.

II

It is no doubt well that we have at last talked with each other again.
I am quite content, too, that you did not wish to write, and that you
spoke slightingly of poor innocent letters because you really have
more genius for talking. But I have in my heart one or two things more
that I could not say to you, and will now endeavor to intimate with
the pen.

But why in this way? Oh, my friend, if I only knew of a more refined
and subtle mode of communicating my thoughts from afar in some
exquisite form! To me conversation is too loud, too near, and also too
disconnected. These separate words always present one side only, a
part of the connected, coherent whole, which I should like to intimate
in its complete harmony.

And can men who are going to live together be too tender toward each
other in their intercourse? It is not as if I were afraid of saying
something too strong, and for that reason avoided speaking of certain
persons and certain affairs. So far as that is concerned, I think that
the boundary line between us is forever destroyed.

What I still had to say to you is something very general, and yet I
prefer to choose this roundabout way. I do not know whether it is
false or true delicacy, but I should find it very hard to talk with
you, face to face, about friendship. And yet it is thoughts on that
subject that I wish to convey to you. The application--and it is about
that I am most concerned--you will yourself easily be able to make.

To my mind there are two kinds of friendship. The first is entirely
external. Insatiably it rushes from deed to deed, receives every
worthy man into the great alliance of united heroes, ties the old knot
tighter by means of every virtue, and ever aspires to win new
brothers; the more it has, the more it wants. Call to mind the antique
world and you will find this friendship, which wages honest war
against all that is bad, even were it in ourselves or in the beloved
friend--you will find this friendship everywhere, where noble strength
exerts influence on great masses, and creates or governs worlds. Now
times are different; but the ideal of this friendship will stay with
me as long as I live.

The other friendship is entirely internal. A wonderful symmetry of the
most intimately personal, as if it had been previously ordained that
one should always be perfecting himself. All thoughts and feelings
become social through the mutual excitation and development of the
holiest. And this purely spiritual love, this beautiful mysticism of
intercourse, does not merely hover as the distant goal of a perhaps
futile effort. No, it is only to be found complete. There no deception
occurs, as in that other heroic form. Whether a man's virtue will
stand the test, his actions must show. But he who inwardly sees and
feels humanity and the world will not be apt to look for public
disinterestedness where it is not to be found.

He only is capable of this friendship who is quite composed within
himself, and who knows how to honor with humility the divinity of the
other.

When the gods have bestowed such friendship upon a man, he can do
nothing more than protect it carefully against everything external,
and guard its holy being. For the delicate flower is perishable.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36