Part 2 (1/2)

Schubart was one of Holderlin's earliest favorites, so that the latter was doubtless in this way imbued with sentiments which could only grow stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem ”An die Demut,”[41]

he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance of ”Furstenlaune” and ”Despotenblut” are plainly evident. So too in ”Mannerjubel,” 1788:

Es glimmt in uns ein Funke der Gottlichen!

Und diesen Funken soll aus der Mannerbrust Der Holle Macht uns nicht entreissen!

Hort es, Despotengerichte, hort es![42]

Perhaps nowhere outside of his own Wurttemberg could he have been more unfavorably situated in this respect. Under Karl Eugen (1744-1793) the country sank into a deplorable condition. Regardless of the rights of individuals and communities alike, he sought in the early part of his reign to replenish his depleted purse by the most shameless measures, in order that he might surround himself with luxury and indulge his autocratic proclivities. Among his most reprehensible violations of const.i.tutional rights, were his bartering of privileges and offices and the selling of troops. These things Holderlin attacks in one of his youthful poems ”Die Ehrsucht” (1788):

Um wie Konige zu prahlen, schanden Kleine Wutriche ihr armes Land; Und um feile Ordensbander wenden Rate sich das Ruder aus der Hand.[43]

Another act of gross injustice which this petty tyrant perpetrated, and which Holderlin must have felt very painfully, was the incarceration of the poet's countryman Schubart from 1777 to 1787 in the Hohenasperg. But not only from within came tyrannous oppression. Following upon the coalition against France after the Revolution, Wurttemberg became the scene of b.l.o.o.d.y conflicts and the ravages of war. Under the regime of Friedrich Eugen (1795-97) the French gained such a foothold in Wurttemberg that the country had to pay a contribution of four million gulden to get rid of them. These were the conditions under which Holderlin grew up into young manhood. But deeper than in the mere existence of these conditions themselves lay the cause of the poet's most abject humiliation and grief. It was the stoic indifference, the servile submission with which he charged his compatriots, that called forth his bitterest invectives upon their insensible heads. His own words will serve best to show the intensity of his feelings. In 1788 he writes, in the poem ”Am Tage der Freundschaftsfeier:”

Da sah er (der Schwarmer) all die Schande Der weichlichen Teutonssohne, Und fluchte dem verderblichen Ausland Und fluchte den verdorbenen Affen des Auslands, Und weinte blutige Thranen, Da.s.s er vielleicht noch lange Verweilen musse unter diesem Geschlecht.[44]

Ten years later he treats the Germans to the following ignominious comparison:

Spottet ja nicht des Kinds, wenn es mit Peitsch' und Sp.o.r.n Auf dem Rosse von Holz, mutig und gross sich dunkt.

Denn, ihr Deutschen, auch ihr seid Thatenarm und gedankenvoll.[45]

With his friend Sinclair, who was sent as a delegate, he attended the congress at Rastatt in November, 1798, and here he made observations which no doubt resulted in the bitter characterization of his nation in the closing letters of Hyperion. This convention, whose chief object was the compensation of those German princes who had been dispossessed by the cessions to France on the left bank of the Rhine, afforded a spectacle so humiliating that it would have bowed down in shame a spirit even less proud and sensitive than Holderlin's. The French emissaries conducted themselves like lords of Germany, while the German princes vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant Frenchmen. And it was the apathy of the average German, as Holderlin conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused him to put such bitter words of contumely into the mouth of Hyperion: ”Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiss und Wissenschaft und selbst durch Religion barbarischer geworden, tief unfahig jedes gottlichen Gefuhls--beleidigend fur jede gut geartete Seele, dumpf und harmonielos, wie die Scherben eines weggeworfenen Gefa.s.ses--das, mein Bellarmin!

waren meine Troster.”[46] In another letter Hyperion explains their incapacity for finer feeling and appreciation when he writes: ”Neide die Leidensfreien nicht, die Gotzen von Holz, denen nichts mangelt, weil ihre Seele so arm ist, die nichts fragen nach Regen und Sonnenschein, weil sie nichts haben, was der Pflege bedurfte. Ja, ja, es ist recht sehr leicht, glucklich, ruhig zu sein mit seichtem Herzen und eingeschranktem Geiste.”[47] Their work he characterizes as ”Stumperarbeit,” and their virtues as brilliant evils and nothing more.

There is nothing sacred, he claims, that has not been desecrated by this nation. But it is chiefly his own experience which he recites, when, in speaking of the sad plight of German poets, of those who still love the beautiful, he says: ”Es ist auch herzzerreissend, wenn man eure Dichter, eure Kunstler sieht--die Guten, sie leben in der Welt, wie Fremdlinge im eigenen Hause.”[48] Still more extravagantly does the poet caricature his own people when he writes: ”Wenn doch einmal diesen Gottverla.s.snen einer sagte, da.s.s bei ihnen nur so unvollkommen alles ist, weil sie nichts Reines unverdorben, nichts Heiliges unbetastet la.s.sen mit den plumpen Handen--da.s.s bei ihnen eigentlich das Leben schaal und sorgenschwer ist, weil sie den Genius verschmahen--und darum furchten sie auch den Tod so sehr, und leiden um des Austernlebens willen alle Schmach, weil Hohres sie nicht kennen, als ihr Machwerk, das sie sich gestoppelt.”[49]

But we should get an extremely unjust and one-sided idea of Holderlin's att.i.tude toward his country from these quotations alone. The point which they ill.u.s.trate is his growing estrangement from his own people, which in the very nature of the case must have had an important bearing upon his Weltschmerz. But his feelings in regard to Germany and the Germans were not all contempt. In many of his poems there is the true patriotic ring. It is true, we can nowhere find any clear political program, neither could we expect one from a poet who was so absorbed in his own feelings, and whose ideals soared so high above the sphere of practical politics. In this too Holderlin was the product of previous influences.

With all their clamor for political upheavals, the ”Sturmer und Dranger”

never arrived at any serious or practical plan of action.

Notwithstanding all this, the word Vaterland was always an inspiration to Holderlin, and it is especially gratifying to note that the calumny which he heaps upon the devoted heads of the Germans is not his last word on the subject. Nor did he ever lose sight of his lofty ideal of liberty for his degraded fatherland or cease to hope for its realization. In this strain he concludes the ”Hymne an die Freiheit”

(1790) with a splendid outburst of patriotic enthusiasm:

Dann am sussen, heisserrung'nen Ziele, Wenn der Ernte grosser Tag beginnt, Wenn verodet die Tyrannenstuhle, Die Tyrannenknechte Moder sind, Wenn im Heldenbunde meiner Bruder Deutsches Blut und deutsche Liebe gluht, Dann, O Himmelstochter! sing ich wieder, Singe sterbend dir das letzte Lied.[50]

What a remarkable change is noticeable in the tone which the poet a.s.sumes toward his country in the lines ”Gesang des Deutschen,” written in 1799, probably after the completion of his ”Hyperion”:

O heilig Herz der Volker, O Vaterland!

Allduldend gleich der schweigenden Muttererd'

Und allverkannt, wenn schon aus deiner Tiefe die Fremden ihr Bestes haben.

Du Land des hohen, ernsteren Genius!

Du Land der Liebe! bin ich der Deine schon, Oft zurnt' ich weinend, da.s.s du immer Blode die eigene Seele leugnest.[51]

How much the reproach has been softened, and with what tender regard he strives to mollify his former bitterness! To this change in his feelings, his sojourn in strange places and the attendant discouragements and disappointments seem to have contributed not a little, for in the poem ”Ruckkehr in die Heimat,” written in 1800, the contempt of ”Hyperion” has been replaced by compa.s.sion. He sees himself and his country linked together in the sacred companions.h.i.+p of suffering, consequently it can no longer be the object of his scorn.

Wie lange ist's, O wie lange! des Kindes Ruh'

Ist hin, und hin ist Jugend, und Lieb' und Gluck, Doch du, mein Vaterland! du heilig Duldendes! siehe, du bist geblieben.[52]

But the fact remains, nevertheless, that Holderlin from his early youth felt himself a stranger in his own land and among his own people. Some of the causes of this circ.u.mstance have already been discussed. The fact itself is important because it establishes the connection between his Weltschmerz and his most noteworthy characteristic as a poet, namely, his h.e.l.lenism. No other German poet has allowed himself to be so completely dominated by the Greek idea as did Holderlin. And in his case it may properly be called a symptom of his Weltschmerz, for it marks his flight from the world of stern reality into an imaginary world of Greek ideals. An imaginary Greek world, because in spite of his h.e.l.lenic enthusiasm he entertained some of the most un-h.e.l.lenic ideas and feelings.