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

Henceforward Gentz's letters are full of complaints of "such mental lassitude, despondency, emptiness, and indifference" as he had hitherto neither known nor imagined, and which he aptly describes as a "sort of intellectual consumption." He calls himself "damnably blasé." "Believe me," he writes to Rahel, "I am damnably blasé. I have seen and enjoyed so much of the world that I am no longer influenced by its illusive grandeur and rewards." "Nothing delights me; I am cold, blasé, contemptuous, thoroughly persuaded of the folly of almost every one else, unduly certain of my own – not wisdom – but clear-sightedness, and inwardly devilish glad that the so-called great doings are coming to such a laughable end." So indifferent has he become, that Napoleon's downfall, which he had formerly so ardently desired, arouses no deeper feeling in him than this. "I have become terribly old and bad," he himself confesses with an amiable effrontery which reminds us of Friedrich Schlegel, and which never deserted him.

It is about this time that he begins to be persistently haunted by the fear of death; he now regularly notes in his diary the exact degree to which the feeling is weighing upon him. His letters betray all the weaknesses of a nervous woman. The correspondence between him and Adam Müller is particularly ludicrous. We are never allowed to forget that they are both afraid of thunder. But even a letter is sometimes more than Gentz can bear. He writes to Müller: "Your letters shatter my tender nerves." His fear of death most frequently took the form of fear of being murdered. After the assassination of Kotzebue by Sand, his terror lest he also might fall a victim to the hatred of the Liberal youth of Germany reached such a climax that the sight of a sharp knife was sometimes enough, as he himself confesses, to bring on a fainting-fit. In 1814 he writes to Rahel: "Now, God be praised, all is at an end in Paris. I am, thank God, very well. I live sometimes at Baden, sometimes in Vienna, have sometimes brioches with exquisite butter for breakfast, sometimes other heavenly cakes. I have come into possession of furniture that makes my heart leap for joy, and I am far less afraid of death."

He now looks to Görres as the only person who can write, he himself being incapable of any kind of production. Yet at this very time he occupies such an exalted position in society that he can deny himself to crowned heads. On the 31st of October, 1814, he writes in his diary: "Refusé le prince royal de Bavière, le roi de Danemark," &c. He meets Talleyrand, and admires him excessively. To give this admiration a practical direction, the astute French diplomatist presents him with 24,000 florins in the name of the King of France. At the close of 1814 Gentz writes in his diary: "The aspect of public affairs is melancholy… But, since I have nothing to reproach myself with, my accurate knowledge of the pitiful doings of all these petty beings who rule the world, so far from distressing, only serves to amuse me; I enjoy it all like a play given for my private delectation." Is not this like a speech of Jean Paul's Roquairol? Tired of life, whatever disturbs his peace is objectionable to him. It is now his object to maintain the existing condition of things at any price. In 1815, in argument with Görres, he actually defends the Peace of Paris. He was too sagacious and cold, too great a hater of phrases, not to sneer at the "Burschenschaften" (students' leagues), the agitation for a national German dress, the Teutoburgerwald enthusiasm, and others of the same description; nevertheless, the assassination of Kotzebue was made a pretext for forbidding the formation of patriotic societies, as further assassinations and crimes were feared. It was owing to Gentz's exertions that the universities were placed under control and that the press was gagged. Of the liberty of the press he now writes: "I hold to my opinion, that, to prevent abuse of the press, nothing should be printed for a certain number of years. This as the rule, with a very few exceptions permitted by a thoroughly competent court, would in a short time lead us back to God and the truth."

His utterances on the occasion of the Greek war of liberation prove that, in spite of his reactionary ardour, he had too much sense to believe, like Adam Müller and the rest, in the principle of legitimacy and the divine right of kings as revealed truths. He had written to Müller in 1818: "You are the only man in Germany of whom I say: He writes divinely when he chooses; and nothing in our audacious days astonishes and exasperates me more than the audacity of those who dare to measure themselves with you… Your system is a completed, rounded whole. It would be vain to attack it from any side. One can only be entirely in it or entirely outside of it. If you can prove to us, make comprehensible to us, that all real knowledge, all true understanding of nature, all good laws and social regulations, nay, even history itself (as you somewhere assert), are, and can only be, communicated to us by divine revelation, then (as far as I am concerned at least) you have gained the day. As long as you do not succeed in doing this, we stand afar off, admire you, love you, but are separated from you by an impassable gulf." It must be remembered that Adam Müller had gone the length of asserting that the existence of the Holy Trinity sufficiently proves that any national economical system based upon one single principle must be a wrong system. It even proves to him the necessity of the "Dreifelderwirthschaft" (triennal rotation of crops). Now, when Greece revolts, Gentz writes that the principle of legitimacy, being the production of time, must be modified by time, and makes the following noteworthy assertion: "I have always been aware that, in spite of the majesty and power of my employers, and in spite of all the single victories gained by us, the spirit of the times would in the long-run prove stronger than we are; that the press, contemptible as it is in its excesses, would prove its superiority to all our wisdom; and that neither diplomatic art nor violence would be able to hold back the wheel of the world."

In his sixty-fifth year, the worn-out, gouty, suffering old man was taken possession of by two passions strangely out of keeping with his age and the bent of his mind. It was a momentary return of youth. The one was for the famous ballet-dancer, Fanny Elsler, at that time a girl of nineteen. His infatuation for her knew no bounds. He writes: "I have won her simply and solely by the magic power of my love. Until she knew me she did not know that such love existed… Think of the bliss of daily undisturbed intercourse with a being whose every attribute enraptures me … in whose eyes, and hands, and every separate charm I can absorb myself for hours, whose voice bewitches me, and with whom I can carry on endless conversations; for I am educating her with fatherly solicitude, and she is the aptest of pupils, a pupil who is at once my beloved and my child."

The other surprising passion was for Heine's Buch der Lieder, then just published. It was all very well for the old reactionary to call the audacious poet a "crazy adventurer;" he could not resist his sorcery. "I am still," he writes, "refreshing myself with the Buch der Lieder. Like Prokesch, I bathe for hours in these melancholy waters. Even the poems which verge upon actual blasphemy I cannot read without the most profound emotion; I sometimes blame myself that I so often and gladly return to them." His receptive nature could not withstand them. He has rightly described himself as a woman. In a strain which reminds us of the hermaphroditic traits in Lucinde, he writes to Rahel: "Do you know the reason why the relation between us is such a perfect one? I will tell you. It is because you are an infinitely productive and I am an infinitely receptive being: you are a great man; I am the first of all the women who have ever lived."

He was now so nervous that a vigorous handclasp would alarm him; even the sight of a martial moustache was enough to disquiet him. In well-intentioned travellers who came to make his acquaintance he saw assassins in disguise. In the last year of his life his back was bent, his gait timorous and unsteady. The clear, sagacious eyes, for which he had been remarkable as a youth, were now, as it were, veiled by their furtive expression. In company he fortified himself by wearing large black spectacles.

One day at a fête, Fanny Elsler, presenting him with a foaming glass of champagne which she had tasted, said teasingly: "Der Krug geht so lange zu Wasser, his er bricht" (German proverb – The pitcher goes often to the well, but comes home broken at last). Gentz replied: "It will anyhow last out my time and Metternich's." His standpoint is indicated and judged in these words.

In religious matters Gentz was extraordinarily vacillating. At one time he would declare that religion was to him simply a matter of politics; at another, though he never actually went over to Catholicism, he would, in Romantic fashion, make great concessions to it. He prostrated himself at the feet of the Catholic mystic, Adam Müller, who literally took Napoleon to be the devil incarnate (writing, for instance, to Gentz in July 1806, that "as Christians we must subdue the Bonaparte within us"); and, when petitioning the Emperor for an appointment in Austria, he gave as one of his reasons for leaving Prussia, "my long-felt enmity to Protestantism, in the original character and increasingly evil tendencies of which I believe I have discovered, after much and careful proving of the matter, the root of all the corruption of our times, and one of the main causes of the decay of Europe."

In politics he is the representative of unequivocal, conscious reaction, and he does not, like some other hypocritical reactionaries, fight shy of the word. In a letter written at Verona in 1822, he relates that at a dinner-party at Metternich's he has just met Chateaubriand, who has been extremely amiable and complimentary to him. "In the course of conversation he mentioned it as a remarkable phenomenon, one which could not possibly escape the notice of the historian, that four or five years ago, when the condition of Europe seemed quite hopeless, a mere handful of men – not more than could be counted on one's fingers – had determined to combat the Revolution, and that these men had been so successful that to-day they were taking the field, with Governments and armies supporting them, against the common enemy. As marking the most important moments in this bold reaction, he mentioned the founding of Le Conservateur, and the Congress of Karlsbad. He looks forward to the future with sanguine courage, regarding the victory of the good cause as certain. All true power and real talent are upon our side, contained in some ten or twelve heads. Nothing could be more dangerous for us than to attach too much importance to the attacks of the Revolutionaries, or to be in any way afraid of these said Revolutionaries, who, for all their uproar, are mere babblers. I could scarcely conceive, he added, how such men as Benjamin Constant, Guizot, and Royer-Collard had sunk in the public estimation. This and more he said, not with any fire and eagerness, but calmly and coldly."

Gentz was far from guessing, when he penned these words, how great a surprise this same man held in store for him. Two years later the event occurred which forms the turning-point, the watershed, as it were, in the spiritual history of the first half of the century, namely, Chateaubriand's dismissal from the Ministry and entrance into the ranks of the Liberal opposition, whose leader he became. It was this event in combination with Byron's death, which happened about the same time, that called Liberalism throughout the whole world to arms.

Gentz could not control his wrath. After the appearance of Chateaubriand's article in the Journal des Débats on the abolition of the censorship, he wrote to a friend: "I subscribe to every word you say about Chateaubriand. It is long since anything has agitated and incensed me in the manner this really villainous article has done. It is the work of a man who, because he has not succeeded in disturbing the peace of his enemies with drums and pipes, grasps a torch and sets fire to the roof over their heads. Not that there is anything incomprehensible in such a performance, for Frenchmen are now at liberty to do whatever they please; and the man who, in his vindictive antagonism, could immediately violate every sense of duty, honour, and decorum, as this monster did on the third day after his dismissal, was bound in the end, irritated by the feeling of his own impotence, to go as far as he could without running the risk of imprisonment – a risk practically non-existent in his country." But all Gentz's wrath could not check the current of events, and before long the reaction which he represents was struggling in its death throes.

In a letter to Pilat, written in 1820, he writes: "What is Duller, what is La Mennais, what (with the exception of Bonald) are all the writers of our day in comparison with Maistre? His book On the Pope is, to my mind, the greatest and most important of the last half century. You have not read it, or you could not have failed to mention it. Take my advice – do not read it à batons rompus, amidst the noise and distractions with which you are constantly surrounded, but keep it for a time when you have unbroken quiet and can concentrate your thoughts. Your so-called friends must know the book, but not a word do they say of it. Such meat is too strong for these lukewarm, critical souls. It has cost me some sleepless nights, but what enjoyment have they not purchased me! Profundity of thought in combination with astonishing erudition and with political insight superior to Montesquieu's, the eloquence of a Burke, and an enthusiasm which at times rises to the height of genuine poetry – to this add the characteristics of the man of the world, adroitness, refinement, the knack of sparing the feelings of the individual whilst treading his doctrines and opinions under foot, a prodigious knowledge of men and things – and think of it all employed in such a cause, to produce such results! Yes; now I fully and firmly believe that the Church will never fall. If such a star made its appearance in her sky but once in a century, she would not only stand, but prevail. The book has some weak points! I say this in order that my admiration may not seem blind – but they are lost like spots in the sun. Others before Maistre may have felt what the Pope is, but no other writer has expressed it as he has done. This extraordinary book, which the contemptible generation of to-day barely condescends to notice, represents the labour of half a lifetime. The author, now a man of more than seventy, has evidently been engaged upon it for twenty years. A monument should be erected to him in one of the great churches of Rome. Kings should take counsel with him. As a matter of fact, after he has exhausted his private means, all that he has obtained from his Government, and that not without difficulty, is the title of Minister, and an income sufficient to live upon in Turin with the greatest economy. Never has a human being had a better right to say to his children: —

 
'Disce puer virtutem ex me, verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis!'
 

What a man! and how few of our contemporaries even know that he exists!"

Here, again, we are at a point where the German reaction passes, as it were, into the French.⁹¹

The German reaction is in its essence literary, the French political and religious. The former gradually glides into Catholicism, the latter is openly and consistently Catholic. In every domain, indeed, the French reaction upholds the principle of traditional authority, and De Maistre is its most earnest and most high-minded, as well as one of its most gifted representatives. The witty and vigorous panegyrist of the headsman and champion of the auto da fé is the conscientious, ardent antagonist of enlightenment and humanitarian ideals.

The German Romanticists loved twilight and moonshine. The blazing daylight of rationalism and the lightning flashes of the French Revolution had driven them to seek comfort in the dusk. But what is even Novalis's love of night in comparison with Joseph de Maistre's glorification of darkness!

Ancient legend tells that Phaëton, the son of Apollo, being allowed one day to drive his father's chariot, guided it so carelessly that the sun scorched the whole earth and set many of its cities on fire. The fable adds, that a whole race of men were so terrified that they with one accord cried to the gods to grant them eternal darkness. De Maistre is a descendant of that race, and a man who has some claim to greatness because of his gifts, his faith in Providence, and his contempt for his fellow-men. And to this day there exist descendants of the race; but these have degenerated into dwarfish figures, who assert themselves the more the more insignificant and timid they are. Their cry, too, is "Darkness! more darkness!" The more devoid they are of ideas and aims, the louder they cry, and their only faith is faith in the power of darkness.

Those who, in studying the history of German Romanticism, pay special attention to the growth of the reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century, are struck by the inferiority of the German Romanticists in single-minded strength of character to such a reactionary as De Maistre. It is to be remembered, however, that they were not statesmen and politicians, but authors; even those among them who, like Gentz, represent the transition from literature to politics, have no real significance except as writers.

From the purely literary point of view the Romantic School in Germany possesses permanent interest. One has but to compare it with the equivalent groups in other lands to be fully impressed by the originality and intellectual importance of its members.

A Romantic current is perceptible in the first decades of this century in almost every country in Europe; but only in Germany, England, and France is the movement a distinctly original and important one; only in those countries is it a European "main current." What we observe in the Slavonic countries is more or less an echo of English Romanticism.

The Romantic literature of Scandinavia is strongly influenced by that of Germany.

In Sweden, where Romanticism was known by the name of "Phosphorism," or "new school," it attacked (as was its wont) French taste in literature, in this instance represented by the Swedish Academy. In 1807 the "Aurora Society" was founded by Atterbom, Hammarsköld, and Palmblad. The principles it proclaimed were in all essentials those of the German Romantic School. Atterbom's symbolism reminds us of Tieck's; Stagnelius has a certain resemblance to Novalis. The movement has, nevertheless, distinctly national characteristics.

In Norway the lonely Wergeland, in spite of his highly susceptible, enthusiastic temperament, is a living protest against the German Romantic spirit; but Andreas Munch is a pronounced Romanticist of the German type. And such undertakings as the re-writing and publication of the Norwegian fairy tales (Asbjörnson and Moe) and the collecting of the Norwegian national songs (Landstad) are due to the impulse which the Romanticists' predilection for everything national communicated to the minds of the men of the North.

In Denmark the connection between German and native Romanticism is of a very complex nature. As a rule, the Danish poets receive their first impulse from Germany, but afterwards strike out paths for themselves. Oehlenschläger was awakened by Steffens and strongly influenced in the early years of the century by Tieck. It was under the influence of German Romanticism that Grundtvig renounced his youthful rationalism; and his patriotism and nationalism have strong points of correspondence with Arndt's and Jahn's. The influence of Fouqué and Hoffmann is apparent in Ingemann; Hauch is an enthusiastic admirer of Novalis; J. L. Heiberg, as the dramatiser of fairy tales, is a pupil of Tieck; Hans Christian Andersen, as the fantastic story-teller, the pupil of Hoffmann. Shack Staffeldt, German born, is a full-blown Romanticist, a devout worshipper of "the blue flower."

But though foreign influence, as this work sufficiently shows, is everywhere traceable, the independent, national and Scandinavian characteristics of Danish Romanticism are, nevertheless, unmistakable and strong.