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

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_Titan_, which Jean Paul regarded as his "principal work and most
complete creation," had been in his mind since 1792. It was begun in
1797 and finished, soon after his betrothal, in 1800. In this novel the
thought of God and immortality is offered as a solution of all problems
of nature and society. _Titan_ is human will in contest with the
divine harmony. The maturing Richter has come to see that idealism in
thought and feeling must be balanced by realism in action if the thinker
is to bear his part in the work of the world. The novel naturally falls
far short of realizing its vast design. Once more the parts are more
than the whole. Some descriptive passages are very remarkable and the
minor characters, notably Roquairol, the Mephistophelean Lovelace, are
more interesting than the hero or the heroine. The unfinished _Wild
Oats_ of 1804, follows a somewhat similar design. The story of Walt
and Vult, twin brothers, Love and Knowledge, offers a study in contrasts
between the dreamy and the practical, with much self-revelation of the
antinomy in the author's own nature. There is something here to recall
his early satires, much more to suggest Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_.

While _Wild Oats_ was in the making, Richter with his young wife and
presently their first daughter, Emma, was making a sort of triumphal
progress among the court towns of Germany. He received about this time
from Prince Dalberg a pension, afterward continued by the King of
Bavaria. In 1804 the family settled in Bayreuth, which was to remain
Richter's not always happy home till his death in 1825.

The move to Bayreuth was marked by the appearance of _Introduction to
Esthetics_, a book that, even in remaining a fragment, shows the
parting of the ways. Under its frolicsome exuberance there is keen
analysis, a fine nobility of temper, and abundant subtle observation.
The philosophy was Herder's, and a glowing eulogy of him closes the
study. Its most original and perhaps most valuable section contains a
shrewd discrimination of the varieties of humor, and ends with a
brilliant praise of wit, as though in a recapitulating review of
Richter's own most distinctive contribution to German literature.

The first fruit to ripen at the Bayreuth home was _Levana_, finished
in October, 1806, just as Napoleon was crushing the power of Prussia
at Jena. Though disconnected and unsystematic _Levana_ has been for
three generations a true yeast of pedagogical ideas, especially in
regard to the education of women and their social position in Germany.
Against the ignorance of the then existing conditions Jean Paul raised
eloquent and indignant protest. "Your teachers, your companions, even
your parents," he exclaims, "trample and crush the little flowers you
shelter and cherish. * * * Your hands are used more than your heads.
They let you play, but only with your fans. Nothing is pardoned you,
least of all a heart." What _Levana_ says of the use and abuse of
philology and about the study of history as a preparation for
political action is no less significant. Goethe, who had been reticent
of praise in regard to the novels, found in _Levana_ "the boldest
virtues without the least excess."

From the education of children for life Richter turned naturally to
the education of his fellow Germans for citizenship. It was a time of
national crisis. Already in 1805 he had published a _Little Book of
Freedom_, in protest against the censorship of books. Now to his
countrymen, oppressed by Napoleon, he addressed at intervals from 1808
to 1810, a _Peace Sermon, Twilight Thoughts for Germany_ and _After
Twilight_. Then, as the fires of Moscow heralded a new day, came
_Butterflies of the Dawn_; and when the War of Liberation was over and
the German rulers had proved false to their promises, these
"Butterflies" were expanded and transformed, in 1817, into _Political
Fast-Sermons for Germany's Martyr-Week_, in which Richter denounced
the princes for their faithlessness as boldly as he had done the
sycophants of Bonaparte.

Most noteworthy of the minor writings of this period is _Dr.
Katzenberger's Journey to the Baths_, published in 1809. The effect of
this rollicking satire on affectation and estheticism was to arouse a
more manly spirit in the nation and so it helped to prepare for the
way of liberation. The patriotic youth of Germany now began to speak
and think of Richter as Jean Paul the Unique. In the years that follow
Waterloo every little journey that Richter took was made the occasion
of public receptions and festivities. Meanwhile life in the Bayreuth
home grew somewhat strained. Both partners might well have heeded
_Levana's_ counsel that "Men should show more love, women more common
sense."

Of Richter's last decade two books only call for notice here, _Truth
about Jean Paul's Life_, a fragment of autobiography written in 1819,
and _The Comet_, a novel, also unfinished, published at intervals from
1820 to 1822. Hitherto, said Richter of _The Comet_, he had paid too
great deference to rule, "like a child born curled and forthwith
stretched on a swathing cushion." Now, in his maturity, he will, he
says, let himself go; and a wild tale he makes of it, exuberant in
fancy, rich in comedy, unbridled in humor. The Autobiography extends
only to Schwarzenbach and his confirmation, but of all his writings it
has perhaps the greatest charm.

Richter's last years were clouded by disease, mental and physical, and
by the death of his son Max. A few weeks before his own death he
arranged for an edition of his complete works, for which he was to
receive 35,000 thaler ($26,000). For this he sought a special
privilege, copyright being then very imperfect in Germany, on the
ground that in all his works not one line could be found to offend
religion or virtue.

He died on November 14, 1825. On the evening of November 17 was the
funeral. Civil and military, state and city officials took part in it.
On the bier was borne the unfinished manuscript of _Selina_, an essay
on immortality. Sixty students with lighted torches escorted the
procession. Other students bore, displayed, _Levana_ and the
_Introduction to Esthetics_.

Sixteen years after Richter's death the King of Bavaria erected a
statue to him in Bayreuth. But his most enduring monument had already
long been raised in the funeral oration by Ludwig Boerne at Frankfurt.
"A Star has set," said the orator, "and the eye of this century will
close before it rises again, for bright genius moves in wide orbits
and our distant descendants will be first again to bid glad welcome
to that from which their fathers have taken sad leave. * * * We shall
mourn for him whom we have lost and for those others who have not lost
him, for he has not lived for all. Yet a time will come when he shall
be born for all and all will lament him. But he will stand patient on
the threshold of the twentieth century and wait smiling till his
creeping people shall come to join him."

QUINTUS FIXLEIN'S WEDDING[1]

From _The Life of Quintus Fixlein_ (1796)

By JEAN PAUL

TRANSLATED BY T. CARLYLE

At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the bridegroom--for the din
of preparation was disturbing his quiet orison--went out into the
churchyard, which (as in many other places) together with the church,
lay round his mansion like a court. Here, on the moist green, over
whose closed flowers the churchyard wall was still spreading broad
shadows, did his spirit cool itself from the warm dreams of Earth:
here, where the white flat grave-stone of his Teacher lay before him
like the fallen-in door of the Janus-temple of life, or like the
windward side of the narrow house, turned toward the tempests of the
world: here, where the little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross
of his father uttered to him the inscriptions of death, and the year
when his parent departed, and all the admonitions and mementos, graven
on the lead--there, I say, his mood grew softer and more solemn; and
he now lifted up by heart his morning prayer, which usually he read,
and entreated God to bless him in his office, and to spare his
mother's life, and to look with favor and acceptance on the purpose of
today. Then, over the graves, he walked into his fenceless little
angular flower-garden; and here, composed and confident in the divine
keeping, he pressed the stalks of his tulips deeper into the mellow
earth.

But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands by the
bell-ringing and the Janizary-music of wedding-gladness; the
marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were drinking
diligently; there was a clattering, a cooking, a frizzling;
tea-services, coffee-services, and warm beer-services, were advancing
in succession; and plates full of bride-cakes were going round like
potter's frames or cistern-wheels. The Schoolmaster, with three young
lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house an _Arioso_, with which,
so soon as they were perfect, he purposed to surprise his clerical
superior. But now rushed all the arms of the foaming joy-streams into
one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms the bride, descended
upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quivering, humble love; when the
bells began; when the procession-column set forth with the whole village
round and before it; when the organ, the congregation, the officiating
priest, and the sparrows on the trees of the church-window, struck louder
and louder their rolling peals on the drum of the jubilee-festival.

* * * The heart of the singing bridegroom was like to leap from its
place for joy "that on his bridal-day it was all so respectable and
grand." Not till the marriage benediction could he pray a little.

Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when
pastry-work and march-pane-devices were brought forward, when glasses,
and slain fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went
round, and when the guests rose and themselves went round, and, at
length, danced round: for they had instrumental music from the city
there.

One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of
joy: the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began
to see and hear more and more, and toward night they penetrated like a
wedge into the open door--nay, two youths ventured even in the middle
of the parsonage-court to mount a plank over a beam and commence
seesawing. Out of doors, the gleaming vapor of the departed sun was
encircling the earth, the evening-star was glittering over parsonage
and churchyard; no one heeded it.

However, about nine o'clock, when the marriage-guests had well nigh
forgotten the marriage-pair, and were drinking or dancing along for
their own behoof; when poor mortals, in this sunshine of Fate, like
fishes in the sunshine of the sky, were leaping up from their wet
cold element; and when the bridegroom under the star of happiness and
love, casting like a comet its long train of radiance over all his
heaven, had in secret pressed to his joy-filled breast his bride and
his mother--then did he lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a
press, in the old superstitious belief that this residue secured
continuance of bread for the whole marriage. As he returned, with
greater love for the sole partner of his life, she herself met him
with his mother, to deliver him in private the bridal-nightgown and
bridal-shirt, as is the ancient usage. Many a countenance grows pale
in violent emotions, even of joy. Thiennette's wax-face was bleaching
still whiter under the sunbeams of Happiness. O, never fall, thou lily
of Heaven, and may four springs instead of four seasons open and shut
thy flower-bells to the sun! All the arms of his soul, as he floated
on the sea of joy, were quivering to clasp the soft warm heart of his
beloved, to encircle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own.

He led her from the crowded dancing-room into the cool evening. Why
does the evening, does the night, put warmer love in our hearts? Is it
the nightly pressure of helplessness or is it the exalting separation
from the turmoil of life--that veiling of the world, in which for the
soul nothing more remains but souls;--is it therefore that the letters
in which the loved name stands written on our spirit appear, like
phosphorus-writing, by night, _in fire_, while by day in their
_cloudy_ traces they but smoke?

He walked with his bride into the Castle garden: she hastened quickly
through the Castle, and past its servants' hall, where the fair flowers
of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, under a long dreary
pressure; and her soul expanded and breathed in the free open garden,
on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds of the
blossoms which today were gladdening her existence. Still Eden! Green
flower-chequered _chiaroscuro_! The moon is sleeping under ground
like a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds
have fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman
of the sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red,
and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.

[Illustration: BRIDAL PROCESSION _From the Painting by Ludwig Richter_]

The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut, now standing
locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a
fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees
were folding, with clammy half-formed leaves, over the thick
intertwisted tangles of the bushes. The Spring was standing, like a
conqueror, with Winter at his feet. In the blue pond, now bloodless, a
dusky evening sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters were
moistening the flower-beds. The silver sparks of stars were rising on
the altar of the East, and, falling down, were extinguished in the red
sea of the West.

The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees, and
gave tones to the acacia-grove; and the tones called to the pair who
had first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think
of what is past, and of my withering and your own; be holy as Eternity,
and weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also!" And the wet-eyed
bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and laid his
soul, like a flower, on her heart, and said: "Best Thiennette, I am
unspeakably happy, and would say much, but cannot! Ah, thou Dearest,
we will live like angels, like children together! Surely I will do
all that is good to thee; two years ago I had nothing, no, nothing;
ah, it is through thee, best love, that I am happy. I call thee Thou,
now, thou dear good soul!" She drew him closer to her, and said, though
without kissing him: "Call me Thou always, Dearest!"

And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into the
magic-dusky garden, he took off his hat; first, that he might
internally thank God, and, secondly, because he wished to look into
this fairest evening sky.

They reached the blazing, rustling, marriage-house, but their
softened hearts sought stillness; and a foreign touch, as in the
blossoming vine, would have disturbed the flower-nuptials of their
souls. They turned rather, and winded up into the churchyard to
preserve their mood. Majestic on the groves and mountains stood the
Night before man's heart, and made that also great. Over the _white_
steeple-obelisk the sky rested _bluer_, and _darker_; and, behind it,
wavered the withered summit of the May-pole with faded flag. The son
noticed his father's grave, on which the wind was opening and
shutting, with harsh noise, the little door of the metal cross, to let
the year of his death be read on the brass plate within. As an
overpowering sadness seized his heart with violent streams of tears,
and drove him to the sunk hillock, he led his bride to the grave, and
said: "Here sleeps he, my good father; in his thirty-second year he
was carried hither to his long rest. O thou good, dear father, couldst
thou today but see the happiness of thy son, like my mother! But thy
eyes are empty, and thy breast is full of ashes, and thou seest us
not." He was silent. The bride wept aloud; she saw the moldering
coffins of her parents open, and the two dead arise and look round for
their daughter, who had stayed so long behind them, forsaken on the
earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered: "O beloved, I have
neither father nor mother. Do not forsake me!"

O thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for it, on the
day when thy soul is full of joyful tears and needs a bosom whereon to
shed them.

And with this embracing at a father's grave, let this day of joy be
holily concluded.

ROME[2]

From _Titan_ (1800)

By JEAN PAUL

TRANSLATED BY C. T. BROOKS

Half an hour after the earthquake the heavens swathed themselves in
seas, and dashed them down in masses and in torrents. The naked
_Campagna_ and heath were covered with the mantle of rain. Gaspard was
silent, the heavens black; the great thought stood alone in Albano
that he was hastening on toward the bloody scaffold and the
throne-scaffolding of humanity, the heart of a cold, dead
heathen-world, the eternal Rome; and when he heard, on the _Ponte
Molle_, that he was now going across the Tiber, then was it to him as
if the past had risen from the dead, as if the stream of time ran
backward and bore him with it; under the streams of heaven he heard
the seven old mountain-streams, rushing and roaring, which once came
down from Rome's hills, and, with seven arms, uphove the world from
its foundations. At length the constellation of the mountain city of
God, that stood so broad before him, opened out into distant nights;
cities, with scattered lights, lay up and down, and the bells (which
to his ear were alarm-bells) sounded out the fourth hour; [3] when the
carriage rolled through the triumphal gate of the city, the _Porta del
Popolo_, then the moon rent her black heavens, and poured down out of
the cleft clouds the splendor of a whole sky. There stood the Egyptian
Obelisk of the gateway, high as the clouds, in the night, and three
streets ran gleaming apart. "So," (said Albano to himself, as they
passed through the long _Corso_ to the tenth ward) "thou art veritably
in the camp of the God of war--here is where he grasped the hilt of
the monstrous war-sword, and with the point made the three wounds in
three quarters of the world!" Rain and splendor gushed through the
vast, broad streets; occasionally he passed suddenly along by gardens,
and into broad city-deserts and market-places of the past. The rolling
of the carriages amidst the rush and roar of the rain resembled the
thunder whose days were once holy to this heroic city, like the
thundering heaven to the thundering earth; muffled-up forms, with
little lights, stole through the dark streets; often there stood a
long palace with colonnades in the light of the moon, often a solitary
gray column, often a single high fir tree, or a statue behind
cypresses. Once, when there was neither rain nor moonshine, the
carriage went round the corner of a large house, on whose roof a tall,
blooming virgin, with an uplooking child on her arm, herself directed
a little hand-light, now toward a white statue, now toward the child,
and so, alternately, illuminated each. This friendly group made its
way to the very centre of his soul, now so highly exalted, and brought
with it, to him, many a recollection; particularly was a Roman child
to him a wholly new and mighty idea.

They alighted at last at the Prince _di Lauria's_--Gaspard's
father-in-law and old friend. * * * Albano, dissatisfied with all, kept
his inspiration sacrificing to the unearthly gods of the past round
about him, after the old fashion, namely, with silence. Well might he
and could he have discussed, but otherwise, namely in odes, with the
whole man, with streams which mount and grow upward. He looked even more
and more longingly out of the window at the moon in the pure rain-blue,
and at single columns of the Forum; out of doors there gleamed for him
the greatest world. At last he rose up, indignant and impatient, and
stole down into the glimmering glory, and stepped before the Forum; but
the moonlit night, that decoration-painter, which works with irregular
strokes, made almost the very stage of the scene irrecognizable to him.

What a dreary, broad plain, loftily encompassed with ruins, gardens
and temples, covered with prostrate capitals of columns, and with
single, upright pillars, and with trees and a dumb wilderness! The
heaped-up ashes out of the emptied urn of Time! And the potsherds of a
great world flung around! He passed by three temple columns,[4] which
the earth had drawn down into itself even to the breast, and along
through the broad triumphal arch of Septimius Severus; on the right,
stood a chain of columns without their temple; on the left, attached
to a Christian church, the colonnade of an ancient heathen temple,
deep sunken into the sediment of time; at last the triumphal arch of
Titus, and before it, in the middle of the woody wilderness, a
fountain gushing into a granite basin.

He went up to this fountain, in order to survey the plain out of which
the thunder months of the earth once arose; but he went along as over
a burnt-out sun, hung round with dark, dead earths. "O Man, O the
dreams of Man!" something within him unceasingly cried. He stood on
the granite margin, turning toward the Coliseum, whose mountain ridges
of wall stood high in the moonlight, with the deep gaps which had been
hewn in them by the scythe of Time. Sharply stood the rent and ragged
arches of Nero's golden house close by, like murderous cutlasses. The
Palatine Hill lay full of green gardens, and, in crumbling
temple-roofs, the blooming death-garland of ivy was gnawing, and
living ranunculi still glowed around sunken capitals. The fountain
murmured babblingly and forever, and the stars gazed steadfastly down,
with transitory rays, upon the still battlefield over which the winter
of time had passed without bringing after it a spring; the fiery soul
of the world had flown up, and the cold, crumbling giant lay around;
torn asunder were the gigantic spokes of the main-wheel, which once
the very stream of ages drove. And in addition to all this, the moon
shed down her light like eating silver-water upon the naked columns,
and would fain have dissolved the Coliseum and the temples and all
into their own shadows!

Then Albano stretched out his arm into the air, as if he were giving
an embrace and flowing away as in the arms of a stream, and exclaimed,
"O ye mighty shades, ye, who once strove and lived here, ye are
looking down from Heaven, but scornfully, not sadly, for your great
fatherland has died and gone after you! Ah, had I, on the
insignificant earth, full of old eternity which you have made great,
only done one action worthy of you! Then were it sweet to me and
legitimate to open my heart by a wound, and to mix earthly blood with
the hallowed soil, and, out of the world of graves, to hasten away to
you, eternal and immortal ones! But I am not worthy of it!"

At this moment there came suddenly along up the _Via Sacra_ a tall
man, deeply enveloped in a mantle, who drew near the fountain without
looking round, threw down his hat, and held a coal-black, curly,
almost perpendicular, hindhead under the stream of water. But hardly
had he, turning upward, caught a glimpse of the profile of Albano,
absorbed in his fancies, when he started up, all dripping, stared at
the count, fell into an amazement, threw his arms high into the air,
and said, "_Amico_!" Albano looked at him. The stranger said,
"Albano!" "My Dian!" cried Albano; they clasped each other
passionately and wept for love.

Dian could not comprehend it at all; he said in Italian: "But it
surely cannot be you; you look old." He thought he was speaking German
all the time, till he heard Albano answer in Italian. Both gave and
received only questions. Albano found the architect merely browner,
but there was the lightning of the eyes and every faculty in its old
glory. With three words he related to him the journey, and who the
company were. "How does Rome strike you?" asked Dian, pleasantly. "As
life does," replied Albano, very seriously, "it makes me too soft and
too hard." "I recognize here absolutely nothing at all," he continued;
"do those columns belong to the magnificent temple of Peace?" "No,"
said Dian, "to the temple of Concord; of the other there stands yonder
nothing but the vault." "Where is Saturn's temple?" asked Albano.
"Buried in St. Adrian's church," said Dian, and added hastily: "Close
by stand the ten columns of Antonine's temple; over beyond there the
baths of Titus; behind us the Palatine hill; and so on. Now tell
me--!"

They walked up and down the Forum, between the arches of Titus and
Severus. Albano (being near the teacher who, in the days of childhood,
had so often conducted him hitherward) was yet full of the stream
which had swept over the world, and the all-covering water sunk but
slowly. He went on and said: "Today, when he beheld the Obelisk, the
soft, tender brightness of the moon had seemed to him eminently
unbecoming for the giant city; he would rather have seen a sun blazing
on its broad banner; but now the moon was the proper funeral-torch
beside the dead Alexander, who, at a touch, collapses into a handful
of dust." "The artist does not get far with feelings of this kind,"
said Dian, "he must look upon everlasting beauties on the right hand
and on the left." "Where," Albano went on asking, "is the old lake of
Curtius--the Rostrum--the pila Horatia--the temple of Vesta--of Venus,
and of all those solitary columns?" "And where is the marble Forum
itself?" said Dian; "it lies thirty span deep below our feet." "Where
is the great, free people, the senate of kings, the voice of the
orators, the procession to the Capitol? Buried under the mountain of
potsherds! O Dian, how can a man who loses a father, a beloved, in
Rome shed a single tear or look round him with consternation, when he
comes out here before this battle-field of time and looks into the
charnel-house of the nations? Dian, one would wish here an iron heart,
for fate has an iron hand!"

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