Part 1 (1/2)
Laurence Sterne in Germany.
by Harvey Waterman Thayer.
NOTE
Mr. Thayer has undertaken to write, in detail and from the sources, the history of Sterne's vogue in Germany. As thus broadly defined the task had not before been attempted, although phases of it had been treated, more or less thoroughly, in recent monographs. The work here submitted, the result of careful research in a number of American and European libraries, is in my judgment an interesting and valuable contribution to our knowledge of the literary relations of England and Germany at the time of the great renascence of German letters.
CALVIN THOMAS.
Columbia University, May, 1905.
PREFACE
The following study was begun in the autumn of 1901, and was practically finished now more than a year ago. Since its completion two works of interest to lovers of Sterne have been issued, Czerny's study of Sterne's influence upon Hippel and Jean Paul, a work which the present author had planned as a continuation of this book, and Prof. Cross's new definitive edition of Sterne.
I desire here to express my thanks to Prof. W. H. Carpenter, Prof.
Calvin Thomas and Prof. W. P. Trent, under whose guidance my last year of University residence was spent: their interest in my work was generous and unfailing; their admirable scholars.h.i.+p has been and will continue to be an inspiration. I am indebted to Prof. Carpenter and Prof. Thomas for many helpful suggestions regarding the present work, and the latter especially has given freely of his valuable time to a consideration of my problems. I am grateful also to several other friends for helpful and kindly service, and to many librarians in this country and in Europe for their courtesy.
NEW YORK, May 1, 1905.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The indebtedness of German culture to other peoples has been the theme of much painstaking investigation. The history of German literature is, in large measure, the story of its successive periods of connection with the literatures of other lands, and hence scholars have sought with industry and insight to bound and explain such literary inter-relations.
The latter half of the eighteenth century was a period of predominant English influence. The first half of the century had fostered this ascendency through the popularity of the moral weeklies, the religious epic, and the didactic poetry of Britain. Admiration for English ideals was used as a weapon to combat French dominion in matters of taste, till a kind of Anglomania spread, which was less absolute than the waning Gallomania had been, only in such measure as the nature of the imitated lay nearer the German spirit and hence allowed and cherished a parallel independence rather than demanded utter subjection. Indeed, the study of English masters may be said to have contributed more than any other external cause to the golden age of German letters; to have worked with untold beneficence in bringing faltering Germany to a consciousness of her own inherent possibilities. This fact of foreign awakening of national greatness through kins.h.i.+p of inborn racial characteristics removes the seeming inconsistency that British influence was paramount at the very time of Germany's most individual, most national, outburst.
The German literary world concerned itself zealously with each new development across the channel. The German literary periodicals were diligent and alert in giving their subscribers adequate intelligence concerning new books in England,[1] and various journals[2] devoted exclusively to a retailing of English thought for German readers are by their very existence eloquent testimony to the supreme interest in things British. Through the medium of these literary journals, intelligence concerning British literary interests was disseminated, and the way was thus prepared for the reception of the British authors themselves. Every English writer of eminence, every English literary movement was in some way or other echoed in the literature of the German fatherland. English authors were read in the original, and in numerous and popular translations. A German following is a well-nigh certain inference from an English success. Sometimes the growth of German appreciation and imitation was immediate and contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the English interest, as in the case of the German enthusiasm for Bishop Percy's ”Reliques.” At other times it tarried behind the period of interest in England, and was gradual in its development. The suggestion that a book, especially a novel, was translated from the English was an a.s.surance of its receiving consideration, and many original German novels were published under the guise of English translations. Hermes roguishly avoids downright falsehood, and yet avails himself of this popular trend by describing his ”Miss f.a.n.n.y Wilkes” upon the t.i.tle page as ”So gut als aus dem Englischen ubersetzt,” and printing ”so gut als” in very small type. Muller in a letter[3] to Gleim, dated at Ca.s.sel, May 27, 1781, proposes to alter names in Liscow's works and to publish his books as an English translation: ”Germany would read him with delight,” he says, and Gleim, in his reply, finds the idea ”splendid.” Out of this one reads clearly how the Germany of that time was hanging on the lips of England.
As has been suggested, conscious or unconscious imitation in the home literature is the unavoidable result of admiration for the foreign; imitation of English masters is written large on this period of German letters. Germany is especially indebted to the stirring impulse of the English novel.
The intellectual development of a people is observable in its successive periods of interest in different kinds of narration, in its att.i.tude toward the relation of fict.i.tious events. The interest in the extraordinary always precedes that in the ordinary; the unstored mind finds pleasure only in the unusual. An appreciation of the absorbing, vital interest of everyday existence is the accomplishment of reflective training, and betokens the spiritualized nature. Yet it must be observed in pa.s.sing that the crude interest of unschooled ignorance, and undeveloped taste in the grotesque, the monstrous, the unreal, is not the same as the intellectual man's appreciation of the unreal in imagination and fancy. The German novel had pa.s.sed its time of service under the wild, extraordinary and grotesque. The crudities of such tales of adventure were softened and eliminated by the culturing influence of formal cla.s.sicism and by a newly won admiration for the everyday element in life, contemporaneous with and dependent upon the gradual appreciation of middle-cla.s.s worth. At this point the English novel stepped in as a guide, and the gradual shaping of the German novel in the direction of an art-form is due primarily to the prevailing admiration of English models.
The novel has never been a characteristic method of German self-expression, while if any form of literary endeavor can be designated as characteristically English, the novel may claim this distinction; that is, more particularly the novel as distinguished from the romance. ”Robinson Crusoe” (1719) united the elements of the extraordinary and the everyday, being the practical, unromantic account of a remarkable situation; and its extensive vogue in Germany, the myriad confessed imitations, may be said to form a kind of transition of interests. In it the commonplace gains interest through the extraordinary situation. Such an awakening a.s.sures a certain measure of interest remaining over for the detailed relation of the everyday activities of life, when removed from the exceptional situation. Upon this vantage ground the novel of everyday life was built. Near the mid-century comes another mighty influence from England, Richardson, who brings into the narration of middle-cla.s.s, everyday existence, the intense a.n.a.lysis of human sensibilities. Richardson taught Germany to remodel her theories of heroism, her whole system of admirations, her conception of deserts. Rousseau's voice from France spoke out a stirring appeal for the recognition of human feelings. Fielding, though attacking Richardson's exaggeration of manner, and opposing him in his excess of emotionalism, yet added a forceful influence still in favor of the real, present and ordinary, as exemplified in the lives of vigorous human beings.
England's leaders.h.i.+p in narrative fiction, the superiority of the English novel, especially the humorous novel, which was tacitly acknowledged by these successive periods of imitation, when not actually declared by the acclaim of the critic and the preference of the reading public, has been attributed quite generally to the freedom of life in England and the comparative thraldom in Germany. Gervinus[4] enlarges upon this point, the possibility in Britain of individual development in character and in action as compared with the constraint obtaining in Germany, where originality, banished from life, was permissible only in opinion. His ideas are substantially identical with those expressed many years before in an article in the _Neue Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften_[5] ent.i.tled ”Ueber die Laune.” Lichtenberg in his brief essay, ”Ueber den deutschen Roman,”[6] is undoubtedly more than half serious in his arraignment of the German novel and his acknowledgment of the English novelist's advantage: the trend of this satirical skit coincides with the opinion above outlined, the points he makes being characteristic of his own humorous bent. That the English sleep in separate apartments, with big chimneys in their bedchambers, that they have comfortable post-chaises with seats facing one another, where all sorts of things may happen, and merry inns for the accommodation of the traveler,--these features of British life are represented as affording a grateful material to the novelist, compared with which German life offers no corresponding opportunity. Humor, as a characteristic element of the English novel, has been felt to be peculiarly dependent upon the fas.h.i.+on of life in Britain. Blankenburg, another eighteenth-century student of German literary conditions, in his treatise on the novel[7], has similar theories concerning the sterility of German life as compared with English, especially in the production of humorous characters[8]. He a.s.serts theoretically that humor (Laune) should never be employed in a novel of German life, because ”Germany's political inst.i.tutions and laws, and our nice Frenchified customs would not permit this humor.” ”On the one side,” he goes on to say, ”is Gothic formality; on the other, frivolity.” Later in the volume (p. 191) he confines the use of humorous characters to subordinate roles; otherwise, he says, the tendency to exaggeration would easily awaken displeasure and disgust. Yet in a footnote, prompted by some misgiving as to his theory, Blankenburg admits that much is possible to genius and cites English novels where a humorous character appears with success in the leading part; thus the theorist swerves about, and implies the lack of German genius in this regard. Eberhard in his ”Handbuch der Aesthetik,”[9] in a rather unsatisfactory and confused study of humor, expresses opinions agreeing with those cited above, and states that in England the feeling of independence sanctions the surrender of the individual to eccentric humor: hence England has produced more humorists than all the rest of the world combined. There is, however, at least one voice raised to explain in another way this deficiency of humor in German letters.
A critic in the _Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften_[10] attributes this lack not to want of original characters but to a lack of men like Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Butler, Addison, Fielding.
There is undoubtedly some truth in both points of view, but the defects of the eighteenth century German novel are due in larger measure to the peculiar mental organization of German authors.h.i.+p than to lack of interesting material in German life. The German novel was crushed under the weight of pedantry and pedagogy. Hillebrand strikes the root of the matter when he says,[11] ”We are all schoolmasters, even Hippel could not get away from the tutorial att.i.tude.” The inborn necessity of German culture is to impart information, to seek recruits for the maintenance of some idea, to exploit some political, educational, or moral theory.
This irresistible impulse has left its trail over German fiction.
The men who wrote novels, as soon as they began to observe, began to theorize, and the results of this speculation were inevitably embodied in their works. They were men of mind rather than men of deeds, who minimized the importance of action and exaggerated the reflective, the abstract, the theoretical, the inner life of man. Hettner,[12] with fine insight, points to the introduction to ”Sebaldus Nothanker” as exhibiting the characteristic of this epoch of fiction. Speculation was the hero's world, and in speculation lay for him the important things of life; he knew not the real world, hence speculation concerning it was his occupation. Consequential connection of events with character makes the English novel the mirror of English life. Failure to achieve such a union makes the German novel a mirror of speculative opinions concerning life.
Hence we have Germany in the mid-eighteenth century prepared to accept and adopt any literary dogma, especially when stamped with an English popularity, which shall represent an interest rather in extraordinary characters and unusual opinions than in astounding adventure; which shall display a knowledge of human feeling and foster the exuberant expression of it.
Beside the devotees of any literary fas.h.i.+on are those who a.n.a.lyze philosophically the causes, and forecast the probable results of such a following. Thinking Germany became exercised over these facts of successive intellectual and literary dependence, as indicative of national limitations or foreboding disintegration. And thought was accordingly directed to the study of the influence of imitation upon the imitator, the effects of the imitative process upon national characteristics, as well as the causes of imitation, the fundamental occasion for national bondage in matters of life and letters. The part played by Dr. Edward Young's famous epistle to Richardson, ”Conjectures on Original Composition” (London, 1759), in this struggle for originality is considerable. The essay was reprinted, translated and made the theme of numerous treatises and discussions.[13] One needs only to mention the concern of Herder, as displayed in the ”Fragmente uber die neuere deutsche Litteratur,” and his statement[14] with reference to the predicament as realized by thoughtful minds may serve as a summing up of that part of the situation. ”Seit der Zeit ist keine Klage lauter and haufiger als uber den Mangel von Originalen, von Genies, von Erfindern, Beschwerden uber die Nachahmungs- und gedankenlose Schreibsucht der Deutschen.”