| | | Herr Schmidt, in producing a supplemental volume to his | Feschichte der deutchen National Literatur im 19ten | Jahrhundert, was well-inspired when he thought of | calling it by the attractive name of Weimar and Jena. | Although he does not say so, the curious fact is | indisputable, that German literature, unlike that of every | other nation, has never found its proper nidus in | a metropolis, but rather in these two little cites of | Saxe-Weimar, which bear the same sort of relation to Berlin, | Vienna, or Munich as Bath and Cheltenham bear to | London. Berlin, boasting of its intellectual culture, with a | magnificent university, a fine museum, a vast library, and | an energetic population, is not, nor has it ever been, a | great literary centre. All that can be said for its intellectual | pretensions is, that much bad paper is dirtied there by | muddy printer’s ink, and that much dreary discussion goes | on in academies, and select tea-parties, where sausage | and grated ham are handed round on circles of bread and | butter to shrivelled Hegelians and toothless poets. In | Vienna, the people never pretended to cultivate literature. | French novels and French morals occupy the leisure of the | idle but agreeable race, in which the thick German blood is | mingled with the more vivacious Hungarian and Italian. In | Munich, indeed, struggles have been made to foster | philosophy, poetry, and painting ~~ the last with success. | The present king is the Mecaenas of Germany. But all | efforts to stimulate literary production have been fruitless. | Nothing has ever come from these capitals, whereas the | picturesque little cities lying so snugly in the charming | Ilm-valley boast of having given to all Germany the literature | which Europe accepts as classical; and the period of | 1794-1806, which was that of the friendship between Goethe | and Schiller, forms the eleven years of

“the classical | age.”

Of course there are writers belonging to other | periods and other cities ~~ Lessing, Winckelmann, | Klopstock ~~ to whom a grateful nation also awards the | epithet of classical; but we are inclined to agree with Herr | Schmidt in eliminating the two last from the list, though we | are not inclined to do the same with the mighty Lessing, in | spite of the fragmentary and polemical nature of the | greater part of his works. Nathan der Weise and | Minna von Barnhelm appear to us quite as worthy of | the classical rank as the majority of Schiller’s works. | The

“classical period”

Herr Schmidt styles | It may also be named classical in another sense, | being exclusively based on the study of the ancient | classics. It was never meant for the people, who had their | own unclassical writers ~~ it was addressed only to the | highly cultivated, and thus grew as an exotic, dying when | the great gardeners died. | There is no-one now who | disputes the genius of Goethe and Schiller ~~ | no-one insensible to the divine | beauty of their works; but an unbiassed critic may perceive, | in the two points we have here briefly indicated, something | of the deficiency which lessens their influence, apart from | all the short-comings attendant even upon genius. The | points alluded to are, strictly speaking, one ~~ namely, the | want of Nationality. Poets living in insignificant cities, they | had not the inspiration of a great audience in default of a | great nation. Germany was not a nation, and is not yet, or it | would never grow hoarse with shouting the naive question |

Where is the German’s Fatherland?”

| Poetry, therefore, necessarily became the voice of an | individual, or of a coterie. In those terrible days when the | German soil was trembling beneath the march of | conquerors, the great poets tried to create a poetry which | should have no object but itself ~~ l’art pour l’art. | And as the noblest specimens of art known to | them ~~ at least of such art as seemed to have no other | object but itself ~~ were the remains of Greece, and as the | basis of all fine culture was Greek, so, by the inevitable | logic of things, Goethe and Schiller aimed at restoring a | Greek period. Greek art in the hands of Lessing was used | as a revolutionary weapon; but, in emancipating Germany | from the yoke of France, he only left it the alternative of | chaotic nonsense, irradiated by a gleam here and there, | calling itself Sturm und Drang, and classical | reaction. | We have only to look into Goethe’s and Schiller’s works to | perceive that, in proportion as this classical element | predominated, they were unsuccessful. Compare Goethe’s | exquisite Hermann und Dorothea with the | tedious fragment, the Achilleis. Both were | obviously inspired by Homer; but the former is one which | we may imagine Homer himself to have written, under the | same conditions ~~ it is Homeric in spirit. The | other is a lifeless reproduction of the Homeric form, | at which the blind old bard would have yawned | considerably. Hermann und Dorothea is | essentially popular ~~ high and low, young and | old delight in it. Achilleis may delight a few | scholars, but seduces no poetical mind to read it with | patience. Iphigenia, again, is an almost faultless | work, but its beauty does not lie in the Greek portions, | which are mistakes; and Faust, which is | intensely German, is the most popular of modern poems. | So likewise with Schiller, and his unhappy attempts at | classicality. Compare his Bride of Messina with | Wallenstein, or his poem Die Ideale | with his Song of the Bell. | We cannot pursue this vein, for it would lead us too far; but | we have thought it worth indicating. The problem was ~~ | How to create a German literature? That problem still | remains; for although the grand efforts of the classical | period resulted in some works which will live for ever in | German memories, the utterly factitious nature of the

| “Weimar School”

was shown in the immediate | collapse which ensued when Schiller died. Herr Schmidt, in | the volume before us, seems perfectly sensible of the fact, | although he enters into no explanations. Indeed, the defect | of his book, as of almost all books of German literature, is | the absence of solid information. The German critics | delight in philosophizing about and about a subject, seldom | condescending to plain practical details. They give you | pages about the Idee of a work, and never think | of the possibility of your not having read the work, or | having forgotten it. Dates, facts, analyses, citations are | disregarded ~~ philosophy and clouds of tobacco-smoke | take their place. Herr Schmidt calls this a History of | German Literature, and like his predecessor, Gervinus, he | is a very notable companion when you happen to be | familiar with the topic of which he treats; but if you know | nothing on opening his book, you know not much more on | closing it ~~ which is scarcely a recommendation for a | history. | We have thought it right to intimate thus much to prevent | disappointment. Our readers will find the book very | instructive if they bring with them some preliminary | instruction, but not if they open it to learn definitely what | was the course of historical development ~~ what was the | relation of one writer to another ~~ and what, specifically, | were each writer’s works. Herr Schmidt is an independent, | and sometimes a very clear-sighted critic. His style, for a | German, is agreeable and lucid. Of course he gives neither | index nor table of contents; and you have to grope your | way through the whole volume in search of any particular | writer or work ~~ a process which is rendered all the more | helpless, because the arrangement is not even | chronological, but is thrown into three groups: ~~ | “Reawakening of Greek style;” “The German Theatre to the | death of Schiller;” and “Novels and the Bourgeoisie.” | Picture to yourself an unhappy mortal anxious to recover a | passage, or to learn something about some one of the | many names which, from Lessing to Kotzebue, swell out | the catalogue of German authors, and having no other clue | than is to be gathered by three such headings as these! | The defect to which we allude is by no means peculiar to | Herr Schmidt ~~ it is an almost universal defect in German | literature. A long and sad experience tells us that the | Germans are the very worst, as they are the most prolific, | of book-makers. In parting from Weimar und Jena, | however, we wish the reader to understand that, if he | desires a work of the Gervinus class, he will find this an | excellent one. |