Soul of the Age Read online

  My songs are filled with poison—

  Why shouldn’t that be true?

  Into my budding manhood

  You poured your poison through.34

  Everybody has to bury his childhood ideals someday, but I try to keep intact the things I have learned and fought for, and I often withdraw into myself, as I strive to preserve those values from the prevailing atmosphere of decay and homogenization. I want foundations on which I can build a life of my own, without fear or need for support. To transform one’s life into a work of art, one needs to have a grounding in nature and in truth; in our society that is beyond the reach of rich and workers alike. What is needed for life to become a work of art, in the larger sense of the term, is a simple and appropriate form of culture. I don’t really believe that life can be improved, that social conditions in Germany and in Europe can be transformed; I believe that the rotten leaf will have to fall of its own accord to make way for the new. There is no point in building dams to hold back this “progress,” this fever of the nerves, which will eventually outlive its appeal. I don’t believe that anybody living in Germany today will be around to witness the new epoch. I think that there will be a long interlude of desolation and barbarism between the breakdown of our way of life and the advent of the new spring. A spring that may come from the periphery, perhaps even from Brazil. A spring that will not be perturbed by social questions. I would like to preserve for that new era the Apollo of Belvedere and the image of Goethe rather than the products of our aged civilization. I’m certain that there will be no Bellamy state35 anywhere in the twenty-first-century. Won’t people in later ages regard our epoch as the mythical age of titanic machines, and then confuse it later on with the legend of the tower of Babel—won’t the historians and anthropologists of those later centuries view our era as a pathological curiosity? As you can see, I don’t have the time or energy to present my ideas logically and develop them with any consistency. But you can sense that I’m tired of living under present conditions and am trying to head with fluttering wings toward a better spot, some place with sunshine and mountain air, far away from the valleys with their club meetings, factories, agricultural crises, Zola novels, encyclopedias, rhyme dictionaries, as well as all the pettiness and nastiness. Although there is now a plethora of ambitious plans and ideas for the future, the people themselves have actually diminished in stature; they’re stuffed to the gills with emancipatory ideals, popularized philosophies, and de luxe edition or paperback literature; it’s fashionable to dabble in fortune telling and to serve up the greatest thoughts as after-dinner treats; everything is debased: art, knowledge, all human achievements, especially language, and the corruption of the latter is always a symptom of decay. Words like “beautiful,” “good,” “luminous,” “pure,” “bad,” “ugly,” etc., have virtually disappeared, and it isn’t easy for the phrasemongering feuilletons to satisfy the jaded tastes of the masses. Everything has to be “demonic,” “phenomenal,” “striking,” “exhibiting great genius,” “wildly beautiful,” “madly in love,” “magically beautiful,” “awful,” “fairylike,” “delightful,” “wildly painful,” etc. They are busy coining massive quantities of new compounds, the most amazing tragelaphs36; they torture the deflowered language from one bridal bed to the next, and even expressions that seem strikingly original in Gaudy and Heine come across as absurd and silly in Voss, Jensen, and all those other epigones. How far removed they are from the blithely straightforward and naïvely authentic inventions of Goethe, the Master—for instance, his description of the farmer plowing up the treasure:

  and finds a golden roll

  frightened, delighted in a wretched hand.37

  (As always in letters, I’m quoting from memory.)

  I’m sure you understand what I mean. I think Germanists should be engaged in something more productive than chasing around anxiously after “foreign words” with a spear and a knife; that is hardly what our modern literati really need. And besides, those older foreign words are not Greek, or Latin, or French, they are international. While I don’t use words like “Korridoren,” “Palais,” “Souterrains,” “Fauteuils,” etc., I deliberately use words like “classical,” “antique,” “Renaissance,” “Germanicism,” “epigone,” etc., etc., and it takes a person with Latin to describe certain things in such a fine, clear, and pregnant manner, with such ingenious simplicity, as, e.g., tertius gaudens,38 etc.

  Well, I have touched upon all sorts of things, but don’t have the time to develop anything properly. Please take my stammering to heart and write me another delightful letter soon! With the very best wishes!

  TO JOHANNES AND MARIE HESSE

  Tübingen, March 7, 1896

  Papa’s note about Mother’s trip came as a complete surprise to me. I’m really eager to hear how it went. But I fear it may be quite a strain on her. Don’t keep me in this uncertainty!

  Last Sunday I spent a few hours at Fräulein von Reutern’s.39 We had an interesting conversation about Russian and French literature, and the young people present seemed rather taken aback by this. Next Sunday, I want to go and see Frau Kieser40 (formerly of Göppingen). I haven’t mustered sufficient courage to call on her, but she’s now sent word that I should come by. I saw Professor Häring the day before yesterday; we’re selling his work concerning δικαιοσύνη Θεο41 on a commission basis. He says he has already sent Papa a copy. He was as friendly as the last time. I usually spend Sunday evenings at Aunt Elisabeth’s. We play music together, and also some board games; I occasionally have a game of cards with my cousin,42 but, of course, never for money or profit. Even though I loathe having to socialize, I find it difficult to spend an entire Sunday all on my own. I’m very grateful to Auntie for her hospitality, particularly now that I’m no longer so dependent on her coffee. The widow of the Deacon has started serving me coffee on Sundays. I’d be very happy to get to know the Kiesers better, and feel somewhat more at home with them. They’re nice, fine people. Frau Kieser has three theologians in the family: two sons and a nephew.

  I have finished Virgil, and feel I now have the courage to tackle Homer right away, both poems. It will take me quite a while, but what harm? I keep putting off Sophocles in a rather cowardly fashion. I’d like to ask Papa whether he knows of a really good metrical translation of Horace, and also whether he has read Virgil’s “pastoral poems” and would recommend them. In any case, I’m going ahead with Ovid. The material is piling up, but I can eliminate some things, since I’m already sufficiently well acquainted with a few Greeks (Xenophon, Isocrates, etc.). I’m not in a great rush and I’d gladly reckon on spending two, three months on Homer, for instance, if this mood holds, since I read slowly, reread some passages, and engage in reflection. I’d definitely like to develop a comprehensive plan for reading the Ancients, as soon as possible. I’d never have foreseen ever embracing the Ancients again, with such enthusiasm. I have become the very thing I used to mock, a gold digger in avid pursuit of the dazzling veins of gold to be found in the books of the ancient world. If I hadn’t set myself the task of reaching Goethe, I probably couldn’t be enticed away so soon from these Trojan plains, stony Ithaca, the Attic bustle, the microcosm of the Forum Romanum. Before starting Homer, I have to revisit the manifold labyrinths of Greek mythology, and also straighten out my ideas again about such things as the nature of the nymphs and the genealogy of the Titans, so that I can then enjoy the meaningful, captivating intrigues of Homer’s gods, which appealed to me even in Virgil’s rather discreet version. This colorful world, from Olympus all the way down, seems rather strange and confusing to me, and yet, for anybody who wants to understand the cheerful, clever Greek way, those endless gradations of fauns, nymphs, dryads, and demigods are more important than all the old books. I’m thinking of perusing some abridged guide to the gods while familiarizing myself with the Iliad. While I occasionally read some Latin, rarely any Greek, I realize I couldn’t possibly read the Ancients, particularly the Greeks, in the original. It
would take endless time and effort, and I would have to learn more Greek than I already know. Of course, I regret not being able to go to the source, but, fortunately, I do have access to some excellent translations.

  Fond kisses from your grateful

  TO ERNST KAPFF

  Tübingen, April 1896

  Many thanks for your interesting letter! I’m almost tempted to don Romantic armor so as to ward off your sharp attacks against melancholic, sentimental poetry; yet I myself have to admit that I regard most of my lyrical sighs as a sort of bridge, which should lead me toward a place up on high, near the sun, where I can finally become a poet. Yet you’re wrong if you think it’s impossible to “write away” one’s pain; a goodly amount of poison is left behind in the verses, and in any case poetry makes fluid the pain, which often oozes considerately out of the most awkward trochees. I would ask you to think of my lyrics as essays that employ images and meters. Moreover, although I want to be many things, I have no wish to become a Romantic. In my best lyrics I sing about a country, the land of my dreams, that lies beyond the point where almost all of us are stuck—digging our spurs in vain into those old nags, philosophy and poetry—and that is perhaps “beyond Good and Evil.” But I still hope that the time will come when I shan’t have to fiddle around with rhymes, either because Pegasus himself has taken a leap or because that barrier has disappeared. By then, I think I shall indeed be a poet. But I shan’t be satisfied with merely being a singer until I have reached the frontier—my growing wings should carry the songs that far—from whence they can set forth in new but natural forms and go their own way, effortlessly, displaying all of their original force. Only then will the singer have managed to become a creator.

  I feel as if the murmurs of the sea and the jungle ought to make the covering that has me enveloped in such darkness burst and thus allow me to blossom and extend myself and compose a redeeming lyric. Then I would no longer care whether Cotta or Brockhaus43 published my lyrics, since our dear old literary world today would seem like Golgotha when contrasted with my ideal of what poetry should be. One of my lyrics goes

  —You leave me alone—

  The wind is driving the roses away

  And solitude I need not shun,

  For I am ever the hot sun.

  Strange, ever since my school days I have been condemned to solitude, and have only come to terms with it recently. I cannot make friends, maybe because I’m too proud and am not interested in wooing anybody, and for the last three years I have been doing everything alone, thinking, singing; when I’m having a drink, out walking, or at home, I feel as though there were a circle drawn around me which moves as I do and cannot be crossed. I have been alone now for two, three months every single evening and all day Sunday. I’m not turning into a hypochondriac, since I work strenuously every day, but that shadow or “nightmare” which you criticize in my lyrics may stem partly from my odd life. My letters are probably sufficient evidence that I can be communicative, empathic, cheerful, even chatty, and this correspondence with you is just about my only active relationship.[ … ]

  I’m glad that you keep a place for my letters alongside those of your dear bride, and I regard this with delight as a sign that my rough edges won’t deter you from being my closest friend and counsel—thank you! As for my rough edges, think of the beautiful verse:

  The earth is round, and that is neat,

  For had it corners and peaks

  Where would we rest our feet?

  But since it’s round and we are tall,

  For fear there is no call at all;

  Were we of similar stature,

  We’d be hurtling through nature.

  God preserve us from that! Amen. Yours, from your currently rather whimsical

  TO HIS SISTER ADELE

  [May 1896]

  But sleep did not rest on the king: he rose in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill, to behold the flame of Starno’s tower. The flame was dim and distant; the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, on its wings was the spirit of Loda.44

  I’m reading some of the Ossian poems. They’re an odd mixture of robust humanity and sentimental pathos, and taste like a delicate pancake garnished with raw chives. Malwina sits on a craggy outlook perched above a brownish-black moor; the black wind ruffling her curls carries snatches of a song from a battle raging in the distance. But she lifts up her white hands; the storm entices songs from her harp, and her soul is mournful. Her hero and beloved has fallen; the shimmering moonlight lingers over his torn shield, and his last, incomplete song has been cut off and is now a mere plaything of the dark winds. Malwina surrenders her curls to the storm, and sings a lament for her nobly fallen beloved. His spirit is a whitish mist hovering above his grave.

  It goes on like this for pages, and often sounds ridiculous, but there are some felicitous, even gripping passages, as for instance when Ossian, the blind bard, sings of his blind old age: “Why does Ossian still sing? He will soon be lying in the narrow house.”

  A reading of Ossian will convert anybody who knows a little Homer and isn’t an overly sentimental oddball into a lifelong lover of antiquity. Ossian is not one for smiles or jokes, and he cannot describe any battle in which men are killed; the moist and desolate autumn mists of the gloomy north of Scotland and Ireland waft around everywhere; there is no light, warmth, color, shape, and above all, no sun. This image could be quite captivating: the ancient bard sits on a mossy hill above the foaming waters, his blind head is sunk as he contemplates past deeds, and he holds a crude, three-stringed harp. However, we have Homer too, who not only smiles and even laughs but also sings in a more serious, genuine vein about a man’s steadfast love for his wife and country, the solemn mystery of death, and the dark world of the shades. Moreover, Homer knows all about the sun, which he loves with a passion; it’s a warm, southern sun and a golden-blue sky; artfully but unobtrusively, he conjures up colorful, sunny images before our eyes: we see towering, shimmering cities and solid, well-constructed ships sailing on the gleaming sea; we also see gods doling out advice and inflamed men rushing into battle, their shields clanking. And when he describes a character, let’s say Helen, she appears before us as flesh and blood, a powerful and radiant figure, a source of joy even to the old men in the assembly. It’s impossible to imagine what Ossian’s women are like: they have white hands, are expert harpists, and have windswept curls; the only other thing we know about them is that they are delicate creatures, whose inner woes cause them to die off remarkably quickly, preferably on the graves of their fallen sweethearts. Well, that can certainly suit individual heroes very well—even Shakespeare had his Hamlet—but if entire peoples turn moist-eyed and are enveloped in mist, the overall impression will be of a giant tear-jerking enterprise, so vast that it can afford to dismiss lachrymose heroes like Werther and Siegwart45 as mere schoolboys. These Ossianic heroes weep so copiously that, if their tears didn’t flow all the way downhill into the roaring stream—and fortunately they do—they would drown in them. And their tears flow like little brooks in the meadows—that line of verse often comes to mind. Maybe the youths are always weeping “encores” to stave off that great flood.

  Enough of that! The only reason I’m writing this down is to prove that I haven’t allowed myself to get totally absorbed in Goethe. I read some Sudermann recently to keep up with the times, and found more than I had expected. Dame Care is no masterpiece, but the At Twilight novellas impressed me; they are well constructed and as elegantly linked as Persian fairy tales, virtually all of them are technically perfect. Sudermann writes very fine German when he really wants to, but often he just couldn’t be bothered.[ … ]

  TO JOHANNES AND MARIE HESSE

  [September 13–19, 1896]

  [ … ] I’m always running into the Sunday God of churchgoing Christians and cannot help noticing that he doesn’t help out much on weekdays. There are some Christians like that among our own acquaintances. I must admit that my go
ds—my ideals in life, my poetry, even my little cult of Goethe—are better and more faithful than that Sunday God. They support me fully when things seem altogether dismal and hopeless, but there’s the rub: they suffer and complain along with me, but since they are creations of mine, they don’t have the requisite strength to pull me up and rescue me. And what will happen when the evil hour arrives that I have long dreaded, when all my work and dreams are finished, when the hand with which I work, write, and play around is all cold and shriveled, and these eyes, so avid for light, cloud over and go blind. None of my gods or my lyrics will accompany me then.

  While out on a walk with the Reverend Strauss and dear Mr. Huppenbauer on my last evening in Freudenstadt, I felt as if a door were opening in front of me; I heard the person I’m looking for pass by, and I lay awake the whole night, praying that he would stay with me, take everything I had in exchange for an assurance that he would help me. And I had nights like that again and again; and now often feel as empty as a dried-up well, and poorer than heretofore.

  I’m scanning the heavens again for the stars that represent my previous ideals, and am again trying through a form of poetic pantheism to uncover the secret to peace and health. Once again I feel that I can read the revelations of the poets better than those of the Bible. But I now know, even though no revelation has been vouchsafed me, that the Christian faith is not just a form or parable, it has a palpable, living presence; there exists no other power capable of creating and preserving such a holy sense of community and love.