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

"Benefactors!" cried the other, in astonishment; "These rogues and
vagabonds?"

In her indignation, she was now at last tempted to relate to him,
under promise of the strictest secrecy, the history of her youth; and
as Andrew at every word grew more incredulous, and shook his head in
mockery, she took him by the hand, and led him to the chink; where, to
his amazement, he beheld the glittering Elf sporting with his child,
and caressing her in the arbor. He knew not what to say; an
exclamation of astonishment escaped him, and Zerina raised her eyes.
On the instant she grew pale, and trembled violently; not with
friendly, but with indignant looks, she made the sign of threatening,
and then said to Elfrida "Thou canst not help it, dearest heart; but
outsiders will never learn sense, wise as they believe themselves."
She embraced the little one with stormy haste; and then, in the shape
of a raven, flew with hoarse cries over the garden, toward the firs.

In the evening, the little one was very still, she kissed her rose
with tears; Mary felt depressed and frightened; Andrew scarcely spoke.
It grew dark. Suddenly there went a rustling through the trees; birds
flew to and fro with wild screaming, thunder was heard to roll, the
earth shook, and tones of lamentation moaned in the air. Andrew and
his wife had not courage to rise; they wrapped themselves in their bed
clothes, and with fear and trembling awaited the day. Toward morning
it grew calmer; and all was silent when the sun, with his cheerful
light, rose over the wood.

Andrew dressed himself, and Mary now observed that the stone of the
ring upon her finger had become quite pale. On opening the door, the
sun shone clear on their faces, but the scene around them they could
scarcely recognize. The freshness of the wood was gone; the hills were
shrunk, the brooks were flowing languidly with scanty streams, the sky
seemed gray; and when you turned to the Firs, they were standing there
no darker or more dreary than the other trees. The huts behind were no
longer frightful; and several inhabitants of the village came and told
about the fearful night, and how they had been across the spot where
the gipsies had lived; how these people must have left the place at
last, for their huts were standing empty, and within had quite a
common look, just like the dwellings of other poor people; some of
their household gear was left behind.

Elfrida in secret said to her mother: "I could not sleep last night;
and in my fright at the noise, I was praying from the bottom of my
heart, when the door suddenly opened, and my playmate entered to take
leave of me. She had a traveling-pouch slung round her, a hat on her
head, and a large staff in her hand. She was very angry at thee; since
on thy account she had now to suffer the severest and most painful
punishments, as she had always been so fond of thee; for all of them,
she said, were very loath to leave this quarter."

Mary forbade her to speak of this; and now the ferryman came across
the river, and told them new wonders. As it was growing dark, a
stranger of large size had come to him, and had hired his boat till
sunrise, but with this condition, that the boatman should remain quiet
in his house--at least should not cross the threshold of his door. "I
was frightened," continued the old man, "and the strange bargain would
not let me sleep. I slipped softly to the window, and looked toward
the river. Great clouds were driving restlessly through the sky, and
the distant woods were rustling fearfully; it was as if my cottage
shook, and moans and lamentations glided round it. On a sudden, I
perceived a white streaming light that grew broader and broader, like
many thousands of falling stars; sparkling and waving, it proceeded
forward from the dark Fir-ground, moved over the fields, and spread
itself along toward the river. Then I heard a trampling, a jingling, a
bustling, and rushing, nearer and nearer; it went forward to my boat,
and all stepped into it, men and women; as it seemed, and children;
and the tall stranger ferried them over. In the river, by the boat,
were swimming many thousands of glittering forms; in the air white
clouds and lights were wavering; and all lamented and bewailed that
they must travel forth so far, far away, and leave their beloved
dwelling. The noise of the rudder and the water creaked and gurgled
between whiles, and then suddenly there would be silence. Many a time
the boat landed, and went back, and was again laden; many heavy casks,
too, they took along with them, which multitudes of horrid-looking
little fellows carried and rolled; whether they were devils or
goblins, Heaven only knows. Then came, in waving brightness, a stately
train; it seemed an old man, mounted on a small white horse, and all
were crowding round him. I saw nothing of the horse but its head; for
the rest of it was covered with costly glittering cloths and
trappings; on his brow the old man had a crown, so bright that, as he
came across, I thought the sun was rising there and the redness of the
dawn glimmering in my eyes. Thus it went on all night; I at last fell
asleep in the tumult, half in joy, half in terror. In the morning all
was still; but the river is, as it were, run off, and I know not how
I am to use my boat in it now."

The same year there came a blight; the woods died away, the springs
ran dry; and the scene, which had once been the joy of every traveler,
was in autumn standing waste, naked, and bald, scarcely showing here
and there, in the sea of sand, a spot or two where grass, with a dingy
greenness, still grew up. The fruit-trees all withered, the vines
faded away, and the aspect of the place became so melancholy that the
Count, with his people, next year left the castle, which in time
decayed and fell to ruins.

Elfrida gazed on her rose day and night with deep longing, and thought
of her kind playmate; and as it drooped and withered, so did she also
hang her head; and before the spring, the little maiden had herself
faded away. Mary often stood upon the spot before the hut, and wept
for the happiness that had departed. She wasted herself away like her
child, and in a few years she too was gone. Old Martin, with his
son-in-law, returned to the quarter where he had lived before.

HEINRICH VON KLEIST

* * * * *

THE LIFE OF HEINRICH VON KLEIST

By JOHN S. NOLLEN, PH.D.

President of Lake Forest College

Brandenburg has, from olden times, been the stern mother of soldiers,
rearing her sons in a discipline that has seemed harsh to the gentler
children of sunnier lands. The rigid and formal pines that grow in
sombre military files from the sandy ground make a fit landscape for
this race of fighting and ruling men. In the wider extent of Prussia
as well, the greatest names have been those of generals and statesmen,
such as the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and Bismarck, rather
than poets and artists. Even among the notable writers of this region,
intellectual power has usually predominated over gifts of feeling or
of imagination; the arid, formal talent of Gottsched is an exemplary
instance, and the singularly cold and colorless mind of the greatest
thinker of modern times, Immanuel Kant, seems eminently Prussian in
quality. Growing out of such traditions and antecedents as these, the
genius of Heinrich von Kleist appears as a striking anomaly.

This first great literary artist of Prussia was descended from a
representative Prussian family of soldiers, which had numbered
eighteen generals among its members. Heinrich von Kleist was born
October 18, 1777, at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in the heart of
Brandenburg, where his father was stationed as a captain in the
service of Frederick the Great. The parents, both of gentle birth,
died before their children had grown to maturity. Heinrich was
predestined by all the traditions of the family to a military career;
after a private education he became, at the age of fourteen, a
corporal in the regiment of guards at Potsdam.

[Illustration: #HEINRICH VON KLEIST IN HIS TWENTY-FOURTH YEAR# Made
after a miniature presented by the poet to his bride]

The regiment was ordered south for the Rhine campaign against the
French revolutionists, but the young soldier saw little actual
fighting, and in June, 1795, his battalion had returned to Potsdam; he
was then an ensign, and in his twentieth year was promoted to the rank
of second lieutenant.

The humdrum duties and the easy pleasures of garrison life had no
lasting charms for the future poet, who was as yet unconscious of his
latent power, but was restlessly reaching out for a wider and deeper
experience. We soon find him preparing himself, by energetic private
study, for the University; in April, 1799, against the wishes of his
family and his superior officers, he obtained a discharge from the
army and entered upon his brief course as a student in his native
city. He applied himself with laborious zeal to the mastery of a wide
range of subjects, and hastened, with pedantic gravity, to retail his
newly won learning to his sisters and a group of their friends. For
the time being, the impulse of self-expression took this didactic
turn, which is very prominent also in his correspondence. Within the
year he was betrothed to a member of this informal class, Wilhelmina
von Zenge, the daughter of an officer. The question of a career now
crowded out his interest in study; in August, 1800, as a step toward
the solution of this problem, Kleist returned to Berlin and secured a
modest appointment in the customs department. He found no more
satisfaction in the civil than in his former military service, and all
manner of vague plans, artistic, literary and academic, occupied his
mind. Intensive study of Kant's philosophy brought on an intellectual
crisis, in which the ardent student found himself bereft of his fond
hope of attaining to absolute truth. Meanwhile the romantic appeal of
Nature, first heeded on a trip to Wuerzburg, and the romantic lure of
travel, drew the dreamer irresistibly away from his desk. His sister
Ulrica accompanied him on a journey that began in April, 1801, and
brought them, by a devious route, to Paris in July. By this time
Kleist had become clearly conscious of his vocation; the strong
creative impulse that had hitherto bewildered him now found its proper
vent in poetic expression, and he felt himself dedicated to a literary
career. With characteristic secretiveness he kept hidden, even from
his sister, the drama at which he was quietly working.

Absorbed in his new ambition, Kleist found little in Paris to interest
him. He felt the need of solitude for the maturing of his plans, and
with the double object of seeking in idyllic pursuits the inspiration
of Nature and of earning leisure for writing, he proposed to his
betrothed that she join him secretly in establishing a home upon a
small farm in Switzerland. When Wilhelmina found it impossible to
accept this plan, Kleist coldly severed all relations with her. He
journeyed to Switzerland in December, 1801, and in Bern became
acquainted with a group of young authors, the novelist Heinrich
Zschokke, the publisher Heinrich Gessner, and Ludwig Wieland, son of
the famous author of _Oberon_. To these sympathetic friends he read
his first tragedy, which, in its earlier draft, had a Spanish setting,
as _The Thierrez Family_ or _The Ghonorez Family_, but which, on their
advice, was given a German background. This drama Gessner published
for Kleist, under the title _The Schroffenstein Family_, in the winter
of 1802-03. It had no sooner appeared than the author felt himself to
have outgrown its youthful weaknesses of imitation and exaggeration.
Another dramatic production grew directly out of the discussions of
this little circle. The friends agreed, on a wager, to put into
literary form the story suggested by an engraving that hung in
Zschokke's room. By common consent the prize was awarded to Kleist's
production, his one comedy, _The Broken Jug_.

In April, 1802, Kleist realized his romantic dream by taking up his
abode, in rural seclusion, on a little island at the outlet of the
Lake of Thun, amid the majestic scenery of the Bernese Oberland. In
this retreat, encouraged by the applause of his first confidants, he
labored with joyous energy, recasting his _Schroffenstein Family_,
working out the _Broken Jug_, meditating historical dramas on Leopold
of Austria and Peter the Hermit, and expending the best of his
untrained genius on the plan of a tragedy, _Robert Guiscard_, in which
he strove to create a drama of a new type, combining the beauties of
Greek classical art and of Shakespeare; with his _Guiscard_ the young
poet even dared hope to "snatch the laurel wreath from Goethe's brow."

Two months of intense mental exertion in the seclusion of his island
left Kleist exhausted, and he fell seriously ill; whereupon Ulrica, on
receiving belated news of his plight, hastened to Bern to care for
him. When a political revolution drove Ludwig Wieland from Bern, they
followed the latter to Weimar, where the poet Wieland, the dean of the
remarkable group of great authors gathered at Weimar, received Kleist
kindly, and made him his guest at his country estate. With great
difficulty Wieland succeeded in persuading his secretive visitor to
reveal his literary plans; and when Kleist recited from memory some of
the scenes of his unfinished _Guiscard_, the old poet was transported
with enthusiasm; these fragments seemed to him worthy of the united
genius of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, and he was convinced
that Kleist had the power to "fill the void in the history of the
German drama that even Goethe and Schiller had not filled." But in
spite of Wieland's generous encouragement, Kleist found it impossible
to complete this masterpiece, and his hopeless pursuit of the perfect
ideal became an intolerable obsession to his ambitious and sensitive
soul. He could not remain in Weimar. In Dresden old friends sought to
cheer him in his desperate attempts to seize the elusive ideal; to
more than one of them, in his despair, he proposed a joint suicide.
Again he was driven to seek solace and inspiration in travel, a friend
accompanying him to Switzerland. Arrived at Geneva in October, 1803,
Kleist fell into the deepest despondency, and wrote Ulrica a letter
full of hopeless renunciation. Half crazed by disappointment and
wounded pride, he rushed madly through France to Paris, broke with his
friend, who had again repelled a joint suicide, burned his manuscript
of _Guiscard_, and made secretly for Boulogne, hoping to find an
honorable death in Napoleon's projected invasion of England.
Fortunately he fell in with an acquaintance who saved him from the
risk of being arrested as a spy, and started him back on his homeward
way. He was detained at Mentz by serious illness, but finally, in
June, 1804, reappeared in Potsdam. The poet's spirit was broken, and
he was glad to accept a petty civil post that took him to Koenigsberg.
After a year of quiet work, he was enabled, by a small pension from
Queen Louise, to resign his office and again devote himself to
literature.

The two years spent in Koenigsberg were years of remarkable development
in Kleist's literary power. Warned by the catastrophe of the earlier
attempt to reach the heights at a single bound, he now schooled
himself with simpler tasks: adaptations, from the French, of La
Fontaine's poem, _The two Pigeons_, and of Moliere's comedy,
_Amphitryon_--both so altered in the interpretation that they seem
more like originals than translations; prose tales that are admirable
examples of this form--_The Marquise of O._, _The Earthquake in
Chili_, and the first part of the masterly short story _Michael
Kohlhaas_; and the recasting of the unique comedy _The Broken Jug_.
Finally he attempted another great drama in verse, _Penthesilea_,
embodying in the old classical story the tragedy of his own desperate
struggle for _Guiscard_, and his crushing defeat.

Meanwhile the clouds were gathering about his beloved country, and in
October, 1806, the thunderbolt fell in the rout of the Prussian army
at Jena. Napoleon's victorious troops pressed on to Berlin and the
Prussian court retreated with the tide of fugitives to Koenigsberg.
Kleist was overwhelmed by the misery of this cataclysm, which,
however, he had clearly foreseen and foretold. With a group of
friends he started on foot for Dresden, but was arrested as a spy at
the gates of Berlin and held for months as a prisoner in French
fortresses, before the energetic efforts of Ulrica and others procured
his release.

Late in July, 1807, he finally arrived in Dresden, where he remained
until April, 1809. These were the happiest and the most prolific
months of his fragmentary life. The best literary and social circles
of the Saxon capital were open to him, his talent was recognized by
the leading men of the city, a laurel wreath was placed upon his brow
by "the prettiest hands in Dresden;" at last he found all his hopes
being realized. With three friends he embarked on an ambitious
publishing enterprise, which included the issuing of a sumptuous
literary and artistic monthly, the _Phoebus_. This venture was
foredoomed to failure by the inexperience of its projectors and by the
unsettled condition of a time full of political upheaval and most
unfavorable to any literary enterprise. Kleist's own contributions to
this periodical were of the highest value; here appeared first in
print generous portions of _Penthesilea, The Broken Jug_, and the new
drama _Kitty of Heilbronn_, the first act of the ill-fated _Robert
Guiscard_, evidently reproduced from memory, _The Marquise of O._, and
part of _Michael Kohlhaas_. If we add to these works the great
patriotic drama, _Arminius_ (_Die Hermannsschlacht_), two tales, _The
Betrothal in San Domingo_ and _The Foundling_, and lyric and narrative
poems, the production of the brief period in Dresden is seen to bulk
very large.

In the stress of the times and in spite of the most strenuous efforts,
the _Phoebus_ went under with the first volume, and the publishing
business was a total wreck. Kleist's joy at the acceptance of _The
Broken Jug_ by Goethe for the Weimar theatre was turned to bitterness
when, because of unintelligent acting and stage management, this
brilliant comedy failed wretchedly; the disappointed author held
Goethe responsible for this fiasco and foolishly attacked him in a
series of spiteful epigrams. He longed to have his _Arminius_
performed at Vienna, but the Austrian authorities were too timid to
risk the production of a play that openly preached German unity and a
war of revenge against the "Roman tyranny" of Napoleon. Kleist then
turned to lyric poetry and polemic tirades for the expression of his
patriotic ardor. When Austria rose against Napoleon, he started for
the seat of war and was soon the happy eye-witness of the Austrian
victory at Aspern, in May, 1809. In Prague, with the support of the
commandant, he planned a patriotic journal, for which he immediately
wrote a series of glowing articles, mostly in the form of political
satires. This plan was wrecked by the decisive defeat of the Austrians
at Wagram in July.

Broken by these successive disasters, Kleist again fell seriously ill; for
four months his friends had no word from him, and reports of his death
were current. In November, 1809, he came to Frankfort-on-the-Oder to
dispose of his share in the family home as a last means of raising funds,
and again disappeared. In January, 1810, he passed through Frankfort
on the way to Berlin, to which the Prussian court, now subservient to
Napoleon, had returned. He found many old friends in Berlin, and even
had prospects of recognition from the court, as the brave and beautiful
Queen Louise was very kindly disposed toward him. Again he turned to
dramatic production, and in the patriotic Prussian play, _Prince
Frederick of Homburg_, created his masterpiece. Fortune seemed once
more to be smiling upon the dramatist; the _Prince of Homburg_ was to
be dedicated to Queen Louise, and performed privately at the palace of
Prince Radziwill, before being given at the National Theatre. But
again the cup of success was dashed from the poet's lips. With the
death of Queen Louise, in July, 1810, he lost his only powerful friend
at court, and now found it impossible to get a hearing for his drama.

[Illustration: SARCOPHAGUS OF QUEEN LOUISE IN THE MAUSOLEUM AT
CHARLOTTENBURG _Sculptor, Christian Rauch_]

Other disappointments came in rapid succession. _Kitty of Heilbronn_,
performed after many delays at Vienna, was not a success, and Iffland,
the popular dramatist and director of the Berlin Theatre, rejected
this play, while accepting all manner of commonplace works by inferior
authors. The famous publisher Cotta did print _Penthesilea_, but was
so displeased with it that he made no effort to sell the edition, and
_Kitty of Heilbronn_, declined by Cotta, fell flat when it was printed
in Berlin. Two volumes of tales, including some masterpieces in this
form, hardly fared better; the new numbers in this collection were
_The Duel, The Beggar Woman of Locarno_, and _Saint Cecilia_. Again
the much-tried poet turned to journalism. From October, 1810, until
March, 1811, with the assistance of the popular philosopher Adam
Mueller and the well-known romantic authors Arnim, Brentano, and
Fouque, he published a politico-literary journal appearing five times
a week. The enterprise began well, and aroused a great deal of
interest. Gradually, however, the censorship of a government that was
at once timid and tyrannical limited the scope and destroyed the
effectiveness of the paper, and Kleist spent himself in vain efforts
to keep it alive. The poet now found himself in a desperate
predicament, financially ruined by the failure of all his enterprises,
and discredited with the government, from which he vainly sought some
reparation for the violence done to his journal; worst of all, he
found himself without honor at home, where he was looked upon as a
ne'er-do-well and a disgrace to the reputation of a fine old military
family. As a last resort he applied for reinstatement in the army, it
being a time when Prussia seemed to be girding herself for another
struggle with Napoleon. But the attempt to borrow enough money for his
military equipment failed, and he found no sympathy or support on a
final visit to his family in Frankfort. In October, 1811, the
patriotic men who had been quietly preparing for the inevitable war of
liberation were horrified by the movement of the Prussian government
toward another alliance with Napoleon; and Kleist felt it impossible
to enter an army that might at any moment be ordered to support the
arch-enemy of his country. His case had become utterly hopeless.

At this juncture the unfortunate poet found what he had so often
sought in his crises of despair--a companion in suicide. Through Adam
Mueller he had become acquainted with Henrietta Vogel, an intelligent
woman of romantic temperament, who was doomed by an incurable disease
to a life of suffering. She listened eagerly to Kleist's suggestions
of an escape together from the intolerable ills of life. The two drove
from Berlin to a solitary inn on the shore of the Wannsee, near
Potsdam; here Kleist wrote a touching farewell letter to his sister,
and, on the afternoon of November 21, 1811, after the most deliberate
preparations, the companions strolled into the silent pine woods,
where Kleist took Henrietta's life and then his own. In the same
lonely place his grave was dug, and here the greatest Prussian poet
lay forgotten, after the brief, though violent, sensation of his
tragic end; half a century elapsed before a Prussian prince set up a
simple granite monument to mark the grave. Ten years passed after
Kleist's death before his last great dramas, _Arminius_ and the
_Prince of Homburg_, were published, edited by the eminent poet and
critic Ludwig Tieck, who also brought out, in 1826, the first
collection of Kleist's works. Long before this time, the patriotic
uprising for which he had labored with desperate zeal in his later
works, had brought liberation to Germany; it was on the thirty-sixth
anniversary of Kleist's birth that Napoleon's power was shaken by the
decisive Battle of Leipzig.

Heinrich von Kleist was born into a generation that was dominated by
the spirit of Romanticism. Tieck and the Schlegels were a few years
older, Fouque was of the same age as he, and Arnim and Brentano
somewhat younger. His acquaintance was largely with the authors who
represented this tendency. In his own works, however, Kleist was
singularly independent of the romantic influence. This is the more
remarkable inasmuch as his character had many traits in common with
the ardent spirits of the Romantic group. His uncompromising
individualism and overweening ambition, his love of travel, his
enthusiastic acceptance of Rousseau's gospel of Nature, are
characteristically Romantic, and so, we may say, is his passionate
patriotism. Eccentricities he had in plenty; there was something
morbid in his excessive reserve, his exaggerated secretiveness about
the most important interests of his life, as there surely was in his
moroseness, which deepened at times into black despair. Goethe was
most unpleasantly impressed by this abnormal quality of Kleist's
personality, and said of the younger poet: "In spite of my honest
desire to sympathize with him, I could not avoid a feeling of horror
and loathing, as of a body beautifully endowed by nature, but infected
with an incurable disease." That this judgment was unduly harsh is
evident enough from the confidence and affection that Kleist inspired
in many of the best men of his time.

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