Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature – 3. The Reaction in France

These obscure, yet in a manner unambiguous expressions of Novalis's opinions on the subject of the true nature of poetry and romance, make it easy for us to understand his judgment of Wilhelm Meister, a book he had greatly admired in early youth. For in Wilhelm Meister, as in Torquato Tasso, poetry has to give way to reality, the poetic conception of life to the practical. Novalis could imagine nothing more shameful than this; it was sin against the holy spirit of poetry. In the novel, in fiction, poetry is not to be done away with, not even to be restricted, but to be exalted and glorified.

So he determines to write a novel which shall be the direct antithesis of Wilhelm Meister. He even takes thought of such small matters as type and size, and determines that in them Heinrich von Ofterdingen shall be the exact counterpart of the book, the worldly philosophy of which it is to refute by its magic mysticism. He writes to Tieck: "My novel is in full swing; it is to be a deification of poetry. In the first part Heinrich von Ofterdingen ripens into a poet; in the second he is the glorified poet. The story will have many points of resemblance with your Sternbald but will lack its lightness. This want, however, may not be a disadvantage, considering the subject."

Goethe and Wilhelm Meister Novalis criticises thus: "Goethe is an altogether practical poet. His works are what English wares are – simple, neat, suitable to their purpose, and durable… He has, like the Englishman, a natural sense of order and economy, and an acquired sense of what is fine and noble… Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre is, in a way, altogether modern and prosaic. Romance perishes in it, and so does the poetry, the magic quality, of nature. The book only deals with everyday human affairs; nature, and the belief in her mysterious powers, are quite forgotten. It is a poetically written story of bourgeois domestic life, in which the marvellous is expressly treated as poetry and fancy. Artistic atheism is the spirit of the book. Wilhelm Meister is a Candide directed against poetry."

Novalis's aim, then, is to produce a work exactly the opposite of this, one in which everything is finally resolved into poetry, in which "the world becomes soul." For everything is soul. "Nature is to the soul what a solid body is to light. The solid substance stops light, breaks it up into wonderful colours, &c., &c. Human beings are soul prisms."

His novel is, then, an allegory, the key to which is contained in the fairy-tale introduced into the story. This fairy-tale is supposed to show how the true eternal world comes into existence; it is a description of the restoration of that kingdom of love and poetry in which the great "world-soul expands and blooms everlastingly." Novalis believes that, since the existing heaven and the existing earth are of a prosaic nature, and since our age is an age of utilitarianism, a poetical day of judgment must come, a spell must be broken, before the new life can blossom forth. – Arcturus and his daughter slumber, frozen in their palace of ice. They are released by Fable (i.e. Poetry) and her brother, Eros. Eros is the child of the restless father, Reason, and the faithful mother, the Heart. Fable owes her being to unfaithfulness on the part of Reason; she is born of Fancy, daughter of the Moon; her godmother is the guardian of the domestic altar, Sophia, Heavenly Wisdom.

Against the good powers in this allegory a conspiracy is formed by the Writer. The Writer is the spirit of prose, of narrow enlightenment; he is depicted as constantly writing. When Sophia dips what he has written into a bowl which stands upon the altar, a little of it sometimes remains legible, but often it is all washed out. If drops from the bowl happen to fall upon him, they fall from him again in the shape of numbers and geometric figures, which he eagerly collects, strings upon a thread, and wears round his neck as an ornament. The Writer is Novalis's Nureddin. The result of his plot is the imprisonment of the Father and Mother and the destruction of the altar.

But Fable has escaped. She descends into the realm of Evil, and exterminates Evil by delivering up the Passions to the power of the death-bringing Fates. Time and Mortality are now no more. "The last thread of the flax is spun; the lifeless is reanimated; life reigns." In a universal conflagration, the mother, the Heart, is burned to death, the sun disappears, and the ice is melted round the palace of Arcturus. Through a new, happy earth, stretching far and wide under a new heaven, Eros and Fable pass into the palace. Fable has fulfilled her mission; she has brought Eros to his beloved, the daughter of the king. The kingdom of poetry and love is established.

 
"Gegründet ist das Reich der Ewigkeit;
In Lieb und Frieden endigt sich der Streit;
Vorüber ging der lange Traum der Schmerzen;
Sophie ist ewig Priesterin der Herzen."⁵⁷
 

Sophia occupies the same place in this allegory that Beatrice does in Dante's great poem.

The glorification of the old Meistersinger is, of course, intended as a glorification of poetry in general, but his story, as told in the novel, is really the story of Hardenberg's own life and endeavour. Heinrich von Ofterdingen's home and quiet childhood remind us of Hardenberg's. A dream, which seems doubly rich in omen because his father as a youth had dreamed one like it, gives him a fore-feeling of the mysterious happiness of the poet's life, and shows him, in the form of a wonderful blue flower, the object of the poet's longing and endeavour.

In order that he may acquire some knowledge of the world, it is decided that Heinrich and his mother shall travel, in company with a number of merchants, to Augsburg. The incidents of the journey and the tales of his travelling companions enrich him with impressions, and fertilise the germs of poetical productivity that lie latent in his soul. For all their talk is of poetry and poets; they tell him the story of Arion, and popular legends in which poets are the equals of kings, and they philosophise on the subject of poetry and art, not like merchants of the most barbarous period of the Middle Ages, but like Romanticists of the year 1801. One of them, for example, gives the following pantheistic explanation of the instinctive impulse of mankind towards plastic art: "Nature, desiring to have some enjoyment of all the art that there is in her, has metamorphosed herself into human beings. In their minds, through them, she rejoices in her own glory, selects what is most pleasant and lovely, and reproduces it in such a manner that she may possess and enjoy it in manifold ways."

In a castle to which they come, Heinrich meets a captive Eastern girl, whose touching plaint it is interesting to compare with the song of the Oriental beauty (La Captive) in Victor Hugo's Les Orientales. In a book belonging to a mysterious hermit (the original of the charcoal-burner's book in Ingemann's Valdemar Sejer) he finds the history of his own life.

The travellers arrive at Augsburg, and here Heinrich makes the acquaintance of a poet and a fascinating young girl. In Klingsohr he has a noble example of the fully developed poet, a poet whose utterances in many ways remind us of Goethe's. Almost everything that Klingsohr says is surprisingly rational and wise; we can scarcely understand how Novalis himself failed to take any of it to heart. The following are some of his remarks: "I cannot too strongly recommend you to follow your natural inclination to penetrate into the reason of things, to study the laws of causation. Nothing is more indispensable to the poet than insight into the nature of every event, and knowledge of the means whereby to attain every aim… Enthusiasm without understanding is useless and dangerous, and the poet will be able to effect few miracles if he is himself astonished by miracles… The young poet cannot be too calm, too thoughtful. True, melodious eloquence demands a wide, calm, observing mind." Upon one point, however, Klingsohr and Novalis are entirely agreed, namely, that everything is, and must be, poetry. "It is a great misfortune that poetry should have a special name, and that poets should form a separate guild. There is nothing separate or special about poetry. It is the mode of action characteristic of the human mind. Do not all men aspire poetically every moment of their lives?"

All Heinrich's love longings are satisfied when he sees Klingsohr's daughter, Mathilde. He feels once more as he felt when he saw the vision of the "blue flower." But Mathilde is drowned. Heinrich loses her as Novalis had lost Sophie von Kühn. Utterly broken down, he leaves Augsburg. He is comforted in his sorrow by a vision (like the visions Novalis had at Sophie's grave) in which he sees the departed and hears her voice. In a distant monastery, the mission of whose monks it is to keep alive the sacred fire in young souls, and which seems to be a species of "spirit-colony," he lives "with the departed." He experiences all the sensations to which Novalis has given expression in the Hymns to Night. Then he returns from the spirit-world to life, and falls in love with a being no less wonderful than the object of his first passion. Mathilde's place is filled by Cyane.

The second part of the novel is only sketched. Heinrich wanders the whole world round. After going through every earthly experience, "he retires again into his soul, as to his old home." Things material now become transformed into things spiritual. "The world becomes a dream, the dream becomes the world." Heinrich finds Mathilde again, but she is no longer distinguishable from Cyane – just as, in Novalis's own life, Julie was not Julie, but Sophie come to life again. And now "the festival of soul," of love and eternal fidelity, is celebrated. On this occasion allegory reigns supreme. The principle of good and the principle of evil appear in open competition, singing antiphonies; the sciences do the same, even mathematics. We hear much about Indian plants – probably the lotus-flower was made to play a part as partaking of the nature of the "blue flower."

The end of the story is merely indicated. Heinrich finds the "blue flower" – it is Mathilde. "Heinrich plucks the blue flower, and releases Mathilde from the spell which has bound her, but loses her again. Stunned by grief, he turns into a stone. Edda, who, besides being herself, is also the 'blue flower,' the Oriental captive, and Mathilde (fourfold 'Doppelgängerei'), sacrifices herself to the stone. It turns into a singing tree. Cyane hews down the tree, and burns herself along with it, upon which it turns into a golden ram. Edda-Mathilde is compelled to sacrifice the ram, and Heinrich becomes a man once more. During these transformations he has all manner of wonderful conversations." This we can readily believe.

In Danish literature the work most allied to Heinrich von Ofterdingen is Ingemann's De Sorte Riddere ("The Black Knights"). We learn from Ingemann's autobiography how exactly his frame of mind at the time he was writing this book corresponded to that of the German Romanticist. "I paid but little attention to all the great events that were happening in the outer world. Even the conflagration of Moscow, the destruction of the Great Army, and the fall of Napoleon were to me ephemeral phenomena … even in the German War of Liberation I only saw a divided nation in conflict with itself, noble powers without any principle of unity and concord. Between the ideal life and human life there lay a yawning abyss, which only the heavenly rainbow of love and poetry could bridge over… I wrote myself into a fairy labyrinth, in which love was my Ariadne-thread, and in which I hoped, with the great harp of the poetry of life, the strings of which are strung by genius from rock to rock over black abysses, to lull the monsters of existence to sleep, resolve the dissonances in the great world-harmony, and solve the world-mystery." The result of this attempt was woeful.

It is certain that in Heinrich von Ofterdingen Novalis succeeded in producing something as unlike Wilhelm Meister as possible. The "blue flower" was the emblem of the ideal. Here we have the real forgotten in the ideal, and the ideal in its emblem. Poetry is entirely separated from life. Novalis thinks that this is as it should be. In Ofterdingen he says of poets: "Many and important events would only disturb them. A simple life is their lot, and they must make acquaintance with the varied and numberless phenomena of the outer world only by means of tales and books. Only seldom during the course of their lives is it permissible for them to be drawn into the wild eddy of some great event, in order that they may acquire a more accurate knowledge of the position and character of men of action. Their receptive minds are quite sufficiently occupied with near and simple phenomena… Here upon earth already in possession of the peace of heaven, untormented by vain desires, only inhaling the fragrance of earthly fruits, not devouring them, they are free guests, whose golden feet tread lightly, and whose presence causes all involuntarily to spread their wings… If we compare the poet with the hero, we shall find that the poet's song has many a time awakened heroic courage in youthful hearts, but never that heroic deeds have called the spirit of poetry to life in any soul."

The fundamental error could not have been defined more clearly. According to this theory, poetry is not the expression of life and its deeds; no, life and its deeds have poetry as their origin. Poetry creates life. Undoubtedly there is poetry of which this may be true; but if there be any one kind of poetry of which it could never be true, it is the kind under consideration. To what possible deed could it incite? To the changing of one's self into a singing tree or a golden ram? There is no question of action in it at all, only of longing.

All the best of Novalis's work is simply an expression of this longing, which includes every desire, from the purely natural ones to the most transcendental aspiration. Perhaps the most beautiful things he has written are two songs – the one giving expression to the sensuous longings of the young girl, the other to the longing which is part and parcel of the enthusiastic friendship of young men.

The song in which the young girls complain of the hardships of their lot is charming. Here the "blue flower" is simply the forbidden fruit. But the longing is expressed with bewitching roguishness. In the poem "To a Friend," again, we have it expressed with fervency and solemnity: —

 
"Was passt, das muss sich ründen,
Was sich versteht, sich finden,
Was gut ist, sich verbinden,
Was liebt, zusammen sein,
Was hindert, muss entweichen,
Was krumm ist, muss sich gleichen,
Was fern ist, sich erreichen,
Was keimt, das muss gedeihn.
 
 
"Gieb treulich mir die Hände,
Sei Bruder mir und wende
Den Blick vor Deinem Ende
Nicht wieder weg von mir.
Ein Tempel, wo wir knieen,
Ein Ort, wohin wir ziehen,
Ein Glück, für das wir glühen,
Ein Himmel mir und Dir!"
 

The longing here is almost that of the Crusader – a seeking in the far distance for something great and glorious. The "blue flower" melts into the blue of the horizon. Its very colour betokens distance.

Let us dwell for a moment longer on this flower. In Spielhagen's Problematische Naturen, one of the characters says: "You remember the blue flower in Novalis's tale? Do you know what it is? It is the flower which no mortal eye has seen, yet the fragrance of which fills the world. Not every creature is delicately enough organised to perceive its perfume; but the nightingale is intoxicated with it when she sings and wails and sobs in the moonlight and the grey dawn; and so were, and so are, all the foolish human beings who, in prose and verse, have poured, and are pouring, forth their woes to Heaven; and so, too, are millions more, to whom no God has granted the power to say what they suffer, and who look up in dumb anguish to the Heaven which has no mercy upon them. And alas! for this suffering there is no cure – none except death. For him who has once inhaled the fragrance of the blue flower there is not a peaceful hour left in life. Like a murderer, or like one who has turned away the Lord from his door, he is driven onward, ever onward, however much his tired limbs ache, and however fervently he longs to lay down his weary head. When he is tormented by thirst, he begs at some hut for a drink; but he hands back the empty vessel without a word of thanks, for it was dirty, or there was an ugly insect in the water – in any case, he had found no refreshment in it. Refreshment! Where are the eyes which have taken from us the desire ever to look into other, brighter, more ardent eyes? Where the breast upon which we have rested with the certain knowledge that we should never long to listen to the beating of a warmer, more loving heart? Where? Can you tell me where?"

"Love," so runs the reply, "is the fragrance of the blue flower, which, as you have said, fills the world; and in every being whom you love with your whole heart you have found the blue flower."

"I fear that is not a solution of the riddle," says the hero sorrowfully, "for this very condition, that we should love with our whole hearts … we can never fulfil. Which of us can love with his whole heart? We are all so weary, so worn out, that we have neither the strength nor the courage essential to true, serious love – that love which does not rest until it has taken possession of every thought of a man's mind, every feeling of his heart, every drop of blood in his veins."

This interpretation is a beautiful one, and it is not incorrect, but it is not exhaustive. It is not only in love, but in every domain of life that the "blue flower" represents perfect, and hence to that extent ideal, but still purely personal happiness. The longing for this, from its nature unattainable, happiness is the constant, restless desire depicted by all the Romanticists.

Perhaps not one of the regular German Romanticists is so completely the poet of Romantic longing as Shack Staffeldt, who, though a German born, wrote in Danish. But he does not depict the longing which produced outward restlessness. His longing is far too deep to be satisfied by wandering about the world. It is in the writings of certain of the later Romanticists that longing appears as the restless desire which drives man from place to place.

Of this it seems to me that we have the most typical description in Eichendorff's novel, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts ("The Life of a Ne'er-Do-Well"). Published in 1824, this book was written twenty years after Heinrich von Ofterdingen, though by a man only ten years Novalis's junior, a disciple of Tieck, an ultra-Romanticist of a pious, amiable disposition.

Joseph, Baron von Eichendorff, the son of a nobleman of high position, was born in Upper Silesia in 1788. His family being Catholic, his early education was superintended by a Catholic ecclesiastic. In 1805 he went to the University of Halle to study law, and, amongst other lectures, attended those of Professors Schleiermacher and Steffens, the latter of whom had a special attraction for him. It was here that he made his first acquaintance with Romantic literature; Novalis opened to him a new dream-world, rich in promise. In his very first holidays he went to Wandsbeck to visit old Claudius, whom he had loved from his early boyhood. Claudius's paper, the Wandsbecker Bote, had been his greatest comfort in the days when his tutor plagued him with instructive children's books. There is something of Claudius's mild humour in Eichendorffs own poetry.

The year 1807 found him at Heidelberg, where he made the acquaintance of the Romanticists living there, Arnim, Brentano, and Görres being the most notable. He assisted in editing Des Knaben Wunderhorn (a famous collection of popular songs and poetry), and collaborated with Görres in his work on the old popular literature. In 1809 he met Arnim and Brentano again in Berlin; here he also made the acquaintance of Adam Müller, who exercised a considerable influence upon him. He was strongly influenced, too, by Fichte's lectures.

As there seemed no prospect of a career for him in Prussia, he went in 1810 to Vienna, intending to enter the service of the Austrian Government. In Vienna he spent much of his time in the company of Friedrich Schlegel, formed a close friendship with Schlegel's stepson, Philipp Veit, the painter, and wrote his first, exaggeratedly Romantic story, Ahnung und Gegenwart, which is nothing but a collection of lyric dreams and fancies. Nevertheless, in this work, as well as in his later productions, it was his desire to contrast the "fervent harmony existing between healthy, fresh humanity and nature, in forest, stream, and mountain, shining mornings and dreamy starlit nights, with the empty pleasures of the great world, and the affected prudery or real depravity of the period." As in all his works, adventure predominates. As soon as he quits the domain of merry vagabond life and romantic adventure, he is in danger of relapsing into the supernatural and horrible.

Instead of entering the Austrian Government service as he had intended, he determined to take part in the war against Napoleon. He joined Lützow's famous Free Corps, and was attached to a militia battalion. He had just been discharged when the news came of Napoleon's return from Elba. He immediately enlisted again, and entered Paris with the German troops.

In course of time he received an appointment in the Prussian Kultusministerium (department of religion and education), and developed into a conscientious and capable official. In 1840, a dispute between the Government and the Roman Catholic bishops produced strained relations between him (the good Catholic) and the head of his department. He sent in his resignation, but it was not immediately accepted; he was commissioned to prepare a report on the restoration of the castle of Marienburg.

Having made himself master of the Spanish language, he translated some of Calderon's Autos Sacramentales. This pursuit led to a still closer connection between him and the leaders of the Ultramontane party. In his later years he criticised modern German literature in the spirit of orthodox Catholicism, writing of the Catholic tendency of the Romanticists as if it were the most important and best feature of the school, and treating the change of opinion of some of the leaders in regard to this matter as a falling away from the truth and a sign of literary decadence. He looked with contempt upon Schiller's heroes, with their "rhetorical ideality," and upon the symbolic "Naturpoesie" of Goethe's shorter poems. "How different," he says, "is the great idea of Romanticism, homesickness, longing for the lost home – that is to say, for the universal, the Catholic Church." With these unsound theories Eichendorff combined real and considerable lyrical talent. No one has given, in a condensed form, better representations of the longings and the ideals of Romanticism. In the little story, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, we seem to hear young Romanticism twittering and singing as if he had caught it bodily and shut it up in a cage. It is all there – the fragrance of the woods and the song of the birds; longing for travel and delight in it, especially when Italy is the goal; Sunday emotions and moonlight; genuine Romantic vagrancy and idleness – such idleness that from want of use the limbs actually begin to fall out of joint, and the hero begins to feel as though he "were tumbling to pieces."

The Ne'er-Do-Well is a miller's son, young and poor, whose only pleasure in life is to lie under the trees and look up into the sky, or to roam aimlessly about the country with his zither, singing such sad and beautiful songs that the hearts of all who hear him "long." "Every one," he says, "has his allotted place upon this earth, his warm hearth, his cup of coffee, his wife, his glass of wine of an evening, and is content. But I am content nowhere." He, the humble gardener (for such, when he does work, is his occupation), adores a high-born, lovely lady whom he has only seen once or twice; he addresses her in a beautiful and touching song: —

 
"Wohin ich geh' und schaue
In Feld und Wald und Thal,
Vom Berg hinab in die Aue,
Vielschöne, hohe Fraue,
Grüss ich dich tausendmal.
 
 
In meinem Garten find' ich
Viel Blumen, schön und fein,
Viel Kränze wohl draus wind' ich,
Und tausend Gedanken bind' ich
Und Grüsse mit darein.
 
 
"Ihr darf ich keinen reichen,
Sie ist zu hoch und schön;
Sie müssen alle verbleichen,
Die Liebe nur ohne Gleichen
Bleibt ewig im Herzen stehn.
 
 
"Ich schein' wohl froher Dinge
Und schaffe auf und ab,
Und ob das Herz zerspringe,
Ich grabe fort und singe
Und grab' mir bald mein Grab."⁵⁸
 

Through his lady's influence he is promoted to the post of rent-collector for the castle. He inherits from his predecessor a magnificent dressing-gown, red with yellow spots, a pair of green slippers, a nightcap, and some long-stemmed pipes.

Arrayed in his new splendour, and smoking the longest pipe he can find, he lives a quiet, easy life for some time, digging up all the potatoes and vegetables in his garden and planting flowers in their stead, listening with rapture to a distant hunting or post horn, and placing a bouquet every morning upon a stone table where his lady is certain to find it. This goes on until she vanishes from his horizon. As he is sitting alone one day over his account-book, his zither lying beside him, a sunbeam falls through the window upon its dusty strings. "It touched a string in my heart. 'Yes,' said I; 'come away, my faithful zither! Our kingdom is not of this world!'" So he leaves behind his account-book, dressing-gown, slippers, and pipe, and wanders out into the wide world; to Italy first.

This Ne'er-Do-Well is the most comical, awkward, childlike creature one can imagine; in mind he is about ten years old, and he never grows any older. Like Andersen's heroes, the Improvisatore and O.T., he is repeatedly saved from temptation simply by his ignorance and inexperience. He never realises what is going on around him. Things happen to him without his doing anything to bring them about. He is the central figure of a group of characters who all pursue callings which leave them as free as he is himself – painters travelling to Italy, an artist who runs away with his lady-love, musicians wandering from town to town, and roaming students, who trudge along, singing student songs. Compared with this life of wandering and seeking and expectation, ordinary, every-day life naturally appears excessively monotonous. When the hero returns to his native town, he finds the new rent-collector sitting at his door, wearing the same spotted dressing-gown, the same slippers, &c. After having spent his life seeking for his "blue flower," he finds it at last at home. His first rapture is described playfully, almost in Hans Andersen's manner, as follows: "It was such a pleasure to hear her talk so brightly and trustfully to me, that I could have listened to her till morning. I was as happy as I could be. I took a handful of almonds, which I had brought all the way from Italy, out of my pocket. She took some, and we sat and cracked them, and looked contentedly out over the peaceful scene."

The Ne'er-Do-Well may be regarded as the representative, the spokesman, of the ornamental, profitless arts, and of infinite longing. Infinite longing! Let us imprint these words in our memory, for they are the foundation-stone of Romantic poetry.

The longing took curiously morbid forms in the less healthy Romantic souls. The well-known German author, Franz Horn, informs us in his autobiography that at the age of three or four he was already capable of poetic longing and suffering, and of divining life in apparently dead things. He goes on to say that the child-like mysticism of a certain popular refrain had a perfectly magic attraction for him. He quotes the verse in question, and it proves to be none other than the good old rhyme: "Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home!"

 
"Maikäfer flieg!
Dein Vater ist im Krieg,
Deine Mutter ist im Pommerland,
Und Pommerland ist abgebrannt,
Maikäfer flieg!"⁵⁹
 

The other children were hard-hearted enough to laugh at this poem, but to him it seemed most touching. The unhappy cockchafer was fatherless and motherless. His father was in the wars, and "what might not come of that?" And his mother? Of her "the news was still more uncertain." She was in far-off Pomerania, and Pomerania was on fire! What scope for fancy! And there was the poor cockchafer, too, borne on the wings of his longing out into the wide, wide world, seeking, ever seeking. – We positively feel as if we were turning into children again.

But let us return to the idea that underlies all this. The longing of the individual for infinite happiness rests, as has already been said, upon the belief that this infinite happiness is attainable by man. But this belief, in its turn, rests upon the individual's Romantic conviction of his own infinite importance. The doctrine of immortality itself is only a result of belief in the cosmic importance of the individual. And this belief in the infinite importance of each separate individual is genuinely medieval. Whole sciences, such as astrology, were founded upon it. The very stars of heaven were supposed to have a close connection with the destinies of individual men, and actually to occupy themselves with them. Heaven and earth and all that in them is, revolved round man. The Romanticists naturally feel the want of astrology, and would fain have the science restored. What they call the "blue flower" is what in astrology was called a man's planet, and in alchemy, the philosopher's stone.

In his lectures Upon the Literature, Art, and Spirit of the Age (1802), A. W. Schlegel writes: "In the same sense in which we may call Kepler the last astrologist, we may demand that astronomy should become astrology again. Astrology fell into disrepute because it made pretensions to science which it could not sustain; but the fact of its having made such pretensions does not take away the idea, the imperishable truths, which lie at its foundation. There is unquestionably something more sublime in the idea of the dynamic influence of the stars, in the supposition that they are animated by reason, and, like subordinate deities, exercise creative power in their appointed spheres, than in the theory that they are dead, mechanically governed masses." And in a letter to Buntzen, Heiberg writes: "It must be allowed that the Middle Ages, with their alchemistic and astrological superstitions, which, albeit superstitions, were based upon a belief in the unity of nature and mind … possessed more of the true scientific spirit than the present day, with its deliberate renunciation of the one thing which in the long run is of any account." In the same strain (in his essay on Hveen) he praises astrology, as "based upon the profound mysticism of the Middle Ages." When even Heiberg could praise Tycho Brahe for his astrological bias, can we wonder that Grundtvig defended his hypothesis of the earth being the centre of the universe? O Romanticism! Romanticism!