Part 15 (1/2)
Whispered talk of gentle wishes Hear we only, we are gazing Ever into eyes transfigured, Tasting nought but mouth and kiss; All that we are only touching, Change to balmy fruits and glowing, Change to bosoms soft and tender, Offerings to daring bliss.
The desire is ever springing, On the loved one to be clinging, Round him all our spirit flinging, One with him to be,-- Ardent impulse ever heeding To consume in turn each other, Only nourished, only feeding On each other's ecstasy.
So in love and lofty rapture Are we evermore abiding, Since that lurid life subsiding, In the day grew pale; Since the pyre its sparkles scattered, And the sod above us sinking, From around the spirit shrinking Melted then the earthly veil.
Spells around remembrance woven, Holy sorrow's trembling gladness, Tone-like have our spirits cloven, Cooled their glowing blood.
Wounds there are, forever paining; A profound, celestial sadness, Within all our hearts remaining, Us dissolveth in one flood.
And in flood we forth are gus.h.i.+ng, In a secret manner flowing To the ocean of all living, In the One profound; And from out His heart while rus.h.i.+ng, To our circle backward going, Spirit of the loftiest striving Dips within our eddying round.
All your golden chains be shaking Bright with emeralds and rubies, Flash and clang together making, Shake with joyous note.
From the damp recesses waking, From the sepulchres and ruins, On your cheeks the flush of heaven, To the realm of Fable float.
O could men, who soon will follow To the spirit-land, be dreaming That we dwell in all their joyance, All the bliss they taste, They would burn with glad upbuoyance To desert the life so hollow,-- O, the hours away are streaming, Come, beloved, hither haste.
Aid to fetter the Earth-spirit, Learn to know the sense of dying, And the word of life discover; Hither turn at last.
Soon will all thy power be over, Borrowed light away be flying, Soon art fettered, O Earth-spirit, And thy time of empire past.
This poem was perhaps a prologue to a second chapter. Now an entirely new period of the work would have opened; the highest life proceeding from the stillest death; he has lived among the dead and conversed with them. Now the book would have become nearly dramatic, the epic tone, as it were, uniting together and simply explaining the single scenes.
Henry suddenly finds himself in Italy, distracted, rent with wars; he sees himself the leader of an army. All the elements of war play in poetic colors. With an irregular band, he attacks a hostile city; here appears in episode the love of a n.o.ble of Pisa for a Florentine maiden.
War-songs--”a great war, like a duel, n.o.ble, philosophical, human throughout. Spirit of the old chivalry; the tournament. Spirit of baccha.n.a.lian sadness.[4] Men must fall by each other,--n.o.bler than to fall by fate. They seek death.--Honor, fame, is the warrior's joy and life. The warrior lives in death and like a shade. Desire for death is the warrior-spirit. Upon the earth is war at home; it must be upon earth.”--In Pisa Henry finds the Son of Frederick the Second, who becomes his confidential friend. He also travels to Loretto. Several songs were to follow here.
The poet is cast away on the sh.o.r.es of Greece by a tempest. The old world with its heroes and treasures of art fills his mind. He converses with a Grecian about morality. Everything from ancient times is present to him; he learns to understand the old pictures and histories.
Conversation upon Grecian polity and mythology.
After becoming acquainted with the heroic age and with antiquity, he visits the Holy Land, for which he had felt so great a longing from his youth. He seeks Jerusalem, and acquaints himself with Oriental poetry.
Strange events among the infidels detain him in desert regions; he discovers the family of the eastern girl (see Part I.): the manners and life of nomadic tribes.--Persian tales, recollections of the remotest antiquity. The book during all these various events was to retain its characteristic hue, and recall to mind the blue flower: throughout, the most distant and distinct traditions were to be knit together, Grecian, Oriental, Biblical, Christian, with reminiscences of and references to both the Indian and Northern mythology.--The Crusades.--Life at sea.-- Henry visits Rome. Roman history.
Sated with his experiences, Henry at length returns to Germany. He finds his grandfather, a profound character; Klingsohr is in his society. An evening's conversation with them.
Henry joins the court of Frederick, and becomes personally acquainted with the emperor. The court would have made a worthy appearance, portraying the best, greatest, and most remarkable men, collected from the whole world, whose centre is the emperor himself. Here appears the greatest splendor, and the truly great world. German character and German history are explained. Henry converses with the emperor concerning government and the empire; obscure hints of America and the Indies. The sentiments of a prince,--the mystic emperor,--the book, ”De tribus impostoribus.”
Henry having now, in a new and higher method than in the Expectation, lived through and observed nature, life, and death, war, the East, history, and poetry, turns back into his mind as to an old home. Front his knowledge of the world and of himself arises the impulse for expression; the wondrous world of fable now draws the nearest, because the heart is fully open to its comprehension.
In the Manesian collection of Minnesingers, we find a rather obscure rival song of Henry of Ofterdingen and Klingsohr with other poets; instead of this, jousting, the author would have represented another peculiar poetic contest, the war of the good and evil principles in songs of religion and irreligion, the invisible world contrasted with the visible. ”Out of Enthusiasm the poets in baccha.n.a.lian intoxication contend for death.” The sciences are poetized; mathematics also enters the lists. The plants of India are commemorated in song; new glorification of Indian mythology.
This is Henry's last act upon the earth; the transition to his own glorification. This is the solution of the whole work, the _Fulfilment_ of the allegory which concludes the First Part. Everything is explained and completed, supernaturally and yet most naturally. The part.i.tion between Fiction and Truth, between the Past and the Present has fallen down. Faith, Fancy, and Poetry lay open the internal world.
Henry reaches Sophia's land, in Nature, such as might be allegorically painted; after having conversed with Klingsohr concerning certain singular signs and omens. These are mostly awakened by an old song which he hears by chance, and in which is described a deep water in a secluded spot. The song excites within him long forgotten recollections; he visits the water, and finds a small golden key, which a raven had stolen from him some time before, and which he had never, expected to find. An old man had given it to him soon after Matilda's death, with the injunction that he should carry it to the emperor, who would tell him what to do with it. Henry seeks the emperor, who is highly rejoiced and gives him an ancient ma.n.u.script, in which it is written that the emperor should give it to that man who ever brought him a golden key; that this man would discover in a secret place an old talisman, a carbuncle for his crown, in which a s.p.a.ce was yet left for it. The place itself is also described in the parchment. After reading the description, Henry takes the road to a mountain, and meets on the way the stranger who first told him and his parents concerning the blue flower; he converses with him about Revelation. He enters the mountain and Cyane trustingly follows him.
He soon reaches that wonderful land in which air and water, flowers and animals, differ entirely from those of earthly nature. The poem at the same time changes in many places to a play. ”Men, beasts, plants, stones and stars, the elements, sounds, colors, meet like one family, act and converse like one race. Flowers and brutes converge concerning men. The world of fable is again visible; the real world is itself regarded as a fable.” He finds the blue flower; it is Matilda, who sleeps and has the carbuncle. A little girl, their child, sits by a coffin, and renews his youth. ”This child is the primeval world, the close of the golden time.” ”Here the Christian religion is reconciled with the Heathen. The history of Orpheus, of Psyche, and others are sung.”
Henry plucks the blue flower, and delivers Matilda from her enchantment, but she is lost to him again; he becomes senseless through pain, and changes to a stone. ”Edda (the blue flower, the Eastern Maiden, Matilda) sacrifices herself upon the stone; he is transformed to a melodious tree. Cyane hews down the tree and burns herself with him. He becomes a golden ram. Edda, Matilda, is obliged to sacrifice it. He becomes a man again. During these metamorphoses he has the very strangest conversations.”
He is happy with Matilda, who is both the Eastern Maiden and Cyane. A joyous spirit-festival is celebrated. All that has past was Death, the last dream and awakening. ”Klingsohr comes again as king of Atlantis.