Part 15 (2/2)

Henry's mother is Fancy, his father, Sense. Swaning is the Moon; the miner is the antiquary and at the same time Iron. The emperor Frederick is Arcturus. The Count of Hohenzollern and the merchants also return.”

Everything flows into an allegory. Cyane brings the stone to the emperor; but Henry is now himself the poet of the fabulous tale which the merchants had formerly related to him.

The blissful land suffers yet again by enchantment, while subjected to the changes of the Seasons. Henry destroys the realm of the Sun. The whole work was to close with a long poem, only the beginning of which was composed.

THE NUPTIALS OF THE SEASONS.

Deep buried in thought stood the new monarch. He was recalling Dreams of the midnight, and every wonderful tale, Which gathered he first from the heavenly flower, when stricken Gently by prophecy, love all-subduing he felt.

He thought still he heard the accents deeply impressive, Just as the guest was deserting the circle of joy; Fleeting gleams of the moon illumined the clattering window, And in the breast of the youth there raged a pa.s.sionate glow.

Edda, whispered the monarch, what is the innermost longing In the bosom that loves? What his ineffable grief?

Say it, for him would we comfort, the power is ours, and n.o.ble Be the time when thou art the joy of heaven again.-- ”Were the times not so cold and morose, if were united Future with Present, and both with the holy Past time; Were the Spring linked to Autumn, and the Summer to Winter, Were into serious grace childhood with silver age fused; Then, O spouse of my heart, would dry up the fountain of sorrow, Every deep cherished wish would be secured to the soul.”

Thus spake the queen, and gladsomely clasped her the radiant beloved: Thou hast uttered in sooth to me a heavenly word, Which long ago over the lips of the deep-feeling hovered, But on thine alone first pure and in season did light.

Quickly drive here the chariot, ourselves we will summon First the times of the year, then all the seasons of man.--

They ride to the sun, and first bring the Day, then the Night; then to the North, for Winter, then to the South, to find Summer; from the East they bring the Spring, from the West the Autumn. Then they hasten after Youth, next to Age, to the Past and to the Future.

This is all I have been able to give the reader from my own recollection, and from scattered words and hints in the papers of my friend. The accomplishment of this great task would have been a lasting memorial of a new poesy. In this notice I have preferred to be short and dry, rather than expose myself to the danger of adding anything from my own fancy. Perhaps many a reader will be grieved at the fragmentary character of these verses and words, as well as myself, who would not regard with any more devout sadness a piece of some ruined picture of Raphael or Corregio.

L. TIECK.

NOTES.

I.

This _rifacimento_ of Arion's story is not mere mythological twaddle.

As allegories abound, and as in fact there is a suspicion that the whole Romance may be only an allegory, an ”Apotheosis of Poetry,”--the reader must keep open his internal eye.

Arion is the Spirit of Poetry as embodied in any age, whether in a single voice, or many. This the age always attempts to drown,--seldom with applause. The sailors are the exponents of an age, or its critics. In the case of Arion, they belonged to a certain tribe of Philistines,--not yet extinct.[5] There is a deep significance in the fact, that they resolutely stopped their ears against the Poet's song. The treasures of the Poet are his ideas of the good and the beautiful, which he fetches from his far home; for he comes, ”not in entire forgetfulness.” The fact, that Arion preferred jumping overboard to being converted into a heave-offering, is typical of the self-extinguishment and natural dissolution of the true soul, born into a humanity which is not its counterpart, which cannot answer to it.

Those providential dolphins are a grateful posterity, which preserve not only the Poet's treasures, but his memory. The conflict among the sailors, too, has a deep meaning, hidden also in that old, wonderful myth of the Kilkenny cats.

But an allegory has many sides, like a genuine symphony. Each reader will interpret all of them best from his own point of view. Should Henry himself turn out to be Arion, the feat would only be one of inverted transmigration, and not more extraordinary than the regular method.

II.

An opportunity is taken to introduce some further remarks of the author concerning History. They are found among a mult.i.tude of fragments, arranged under the three heads of Philosophical, Critical, and Moral; an amorphous heap of sayings, generally of great beauty and power. The present have little connexion with the text, but will be their own excuse. The total of his remarks will be seen to hint at a theory of History, with which most school-histories and respectable annals are in no wise infected.

'Luck or fate is talent for history. The sense for apprehending occurrences is the prophetic, and luck the divining instinct. (Hence the ancients justly considered a man's luck one of his talents.) We take delight in divination. Romance has arisen from the want of history.

'History creates itself. It first arises through the connexion of the past with the future. Men treat their recollections much too negligently.

'The historian organizes the historical Essence. The data of history are the ma.s.s, to which the historian gives form, while giving animation. Consequently history always presupposes the principles of animation and organization; and where they are not antecedent there can be no genuine historical _chef d'[oe]uvre_, but only here and there the traces of an accidental animation, where a capricious genius has ruled.

'The demand, to consider this present world the best, is exactly a.n.a.logous to that which would consider my own wedded wife the best and only woman, and life to be entirely for her and in her. Many similar demands and pretensions are there, which he who dutifully acknowledges, who has a discriminating respect for everything that has transpired, is historically religious, the absolute Believer and Mystic of history, the genuine lover of Destiny. Fate is the mysticised history. Every voluntary love, in the common signification, is a religion, which has and can have but one apostle, one evangelist and disciple, and can be, though not necessarily, an extra-religion (Wechsel-religion.)

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