Слике страница
PDF
ePub

is necessary, and presents itself naturally enough to those whom Heaven has endowed with such a gift. The movement which does not come from without then stirs within us. The repose is less complete, it is true; but it is also more agreeable when light and gentle ideas, without agitating the depths of the soul, only softly skim the surface. This sort of musing we may taste whenever there is tranquillity about us; and I have thought that in the Bastile, and even in a dungeon where no object struck my sight, I could have dreamed away many a thrice pleasurable day.

[ocr errors]

But it must be said that all this came better and more happily in a fruitful and lonely island, where nothing presented itself to me save smiling pictures, where nothing recalled saddening memories, where the fellowship of the few dwellers there was gentle and obliging, without being exciting enough to busy me incessantly; where, in short, I was free to surrender myself all day long to the promptings of my taste or to the most luxurious indolence. As I came out from a long and most sweet musing fit, seeing myself surrounded by verdure and flowers and birds, and letting my eyes wander far over romantic shores that fringed a wide expanse of water bright as crystal, I fitted all these attractive objects into my dreams; and when at last I slowly recovered myself, and recognized what was about me, I could not mark the point that cut off dream from reality, so equally did all things unite to endear to me the lonely retired life I led in this happy spot! Why can that life not come back to me again? Why can I not go finish my days in the beloved island, never to quit it, never again to see in it one dweller from the mainland, to bring back to me the memory of all the woes of every sort that they have delighted in heaping on my head for all these long years? Freed from the earthly passions engendered by the tumult of social life, my soul would many a time lift itself above this atmosphere, and commune beforehand with the heavenly intelligences, into whose number it trusts to be ere long taken.

FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT

(1788-1866)

ÜCKERT was not only a great poet and fervid patriot, but a man of wide learning and solid scholarly attainments. His knowledge of languages was phenomenal, and his boast that for him "every language written by men possessed life" was not a gross exaggeration. His contributions to Oriental studies were voluminous and valuable, but they have inevitably been rendered obsolete or obsolescent by the restless advance of German scholarship; it is only in the inspired translations from Oriental literatures that we have results of permanent value. The ultimate analysis of Rückert's manifold life labors reveals as the essential and indestructible part, his poetry. The parallel with Uhland is obvious. Both were scholars and pioneers in their chosen fields; both were active in the liberal movement in Germany; both were poets of the first rank, and have erected poetic monuments of enduring worth. Uhland was more racy of the German soil, and his ballads and lyrics have the touch of the autochthonous folk-song; his scholarship was Germanistic. Rückert's studies were in Oriental fields, and in the Orient he found much of his poetic material; he was more exotic than Uhland, and yet he has left behind a mass of true German poetry which has endeared him to the hearts of German children. The still retiracy of wood and garden, nursery and home, he has sung most movingly. The larger ambitions for a united fatherland he has expressed most powerfully. That this poetic productivity, which continued unimpaired to the end of his long life, should have been but the lounging garment of the German professor when his talar was laid aside, is a remarkable evidence of the depth and strength and versatile beauty of Rückert's mind.

[graphic]

FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT

Friedrich Rückert was born at Schweinfurt on May 16th, 1788. It was obvious at an early age that the study of philology and æsthetics was his vocation, and to these he devoted himself at the University of Würzburg. He became a private teacher, an official tutor, and

[ocr errors]

eventually a university professor. His life was that of the typical German scholar; but he retained the freshness of the poet's heart, and the expression quoted above—“Every language possesses life for me" is characteristic: he infused vitality into all he taught.

(

All poets were patriots in the stirring first years of the nineteenth century. Rückert's part in the national uprising is represented by his vigorous 'Geharnischte Sonette' (Sonnets in Armor), and the martial songs entitled Spott- und Ehrenlieder' (Songs of Praise and Derision). These were published in 'Deutsche Gedichte' (German Poems) in 1814, under the pseudonym of Freimund Reimar. After the declaration of peace, Rückert assumed the editorship of Cotta's Morgenblatt in Stuttgart, and there formed the friendship of Uhland. In the autumn of 1817 he went to Italy; but Rome did not throw its powerful enchantment about him as it had around Goethe and Platen. Rückert stayed but one year. On his return he stopped in Vienna, where he received invaluable instruction in Persian from the celebrated Orientalist, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Thenceforth the study of the Oriental languages and literatures became his chief occupation and life task. In 1826 he accepted the Oriental chair at Erlangen; and in 1841, shortly after the accession of Frederick William IV., he was called to the University of Berlin. The Frankish poet was never quite at home in the Prussian capital; but he held his position till 1848, when he retired definitely to the happy life of a gardener and scholar at Neuses, near Coburg. In this charming retreat he had established his poet's-home shortly after his marriage with Luise Fischer in 1821; there he spent almost without interruption the last eighteen years of his life, and there he died on January 31st, 1866.

The most important poetic yield of Rückert's Oriental studies was the book of Oriental lyrics called 'Oestliche Rosen' (Roses of the East), much admired by Goethe. His translations from the Indian, Hebrew, Persian, Arabian, and Chinese are permanent enrichments of the literature of Germany; the writings of Sa'di, Firdausī, and Kālidāsa he has transformed into German classics: and in this sense he is the greatest and worthiest successor of Herder and Goethe in their strivings toward the ideal of a universal literature.

Rückert's resources seemed inexhaustible. Ripe wisdom, broad knowledge, deep sympathy, strong imagination, and absolute mastery of language and form, were all his. It was not unnatural that his virtuosity should mislead his Muse into mediocrity at times, but he says of himself:

"Had I not written the verse you care nothing about,

The verses that really delight you had ne'er been thought out.”

Several historical plays remain to show that the drama was not his field. The lyric, the gnomic, the didactic, were his proper element. The glowing, joyous love-songs to his fiancée, which he published in the year of his marriage under the title of Liebesfrühling' (Springtime of Love), display his lyric quality in its highest degree. His pure and strong fancy enabled him to give poetic value to the commonplace and unimportant. The popular 'Haus und Jahreslieder' (Songs of the House and Year) show how Rückert was able to bring the most insignificant and unpromising subjects into poetic relations with fair and lofty thoughts. The singable quality of his verse was publicly praised by Goethe, and composers have borne frequent witness to their appreciation of it by setting the songs to music. Most famous perhaps is the simple, compact, tender, and untranslatable 'Du bist die Ruh' of Schubert (Thou art Rest). Goethe on his death-bed repeated Rückert's solemn lines, 'At Midnight.'

But the stores of wisdom and learning which filled the poet's mind received artistic expression in the finest didactic poem of German literature, 'Die Weisheit des Brahmanen' (The Brahman's Wisdom). It contains a wealth of wisdom, wrought into finely fashioned forms. With an artist's eye he could fathom the profound and gaze at the sublime, and he was able to proclaim his vision with the awing solemnity of an ancient prophet. With this poem Rückert established himself permanently in the German heart, into which he had first entered singing his lays of love and of war. He died before his lifelong dream of a united Germany had been realized. He had symbolized this dream in 'Barbarossa,' but had lost hope, for the ravens of discord and distrust continued still to circle round the mountain. It was only five years after Rückert's death that a German emperor was crowned at Versailles.

THE HOUR-GLASS OF ASHES

HEN Torismund, for love of Rosalind,

WH

Consumed to ashes in the flames he fanned,
She did not strew his ashes on the wind,
But gathered it all up with faithful hand;

And now he serves the child's inventive mind,
Within her hour-glass placed instead of sand:
Glad that through her, he still no peace doth find
In death, who found none in the living's land.

Translation of C. T. Brooks.

DR

AMARYLLIS

O NOT bid me welcome, dearest;
Do not say to me, «< Good-by!"
When I come, thy kisses, dearest;
When I go, then breathe a sigh.

Not when coming thou dost see me,
Do I come to thee, my dear:
Ever when I'm parted from thee
Stays my heart behind me here.

Nor when going thou dost see me,
Do I leave the sacred spot:

Dearest, I remain there in the

Chamber, though thou know'st it not.

Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.

SAD SPRING

From the series of sonnets entitled In Memory of Agnes'

"S

WEET Spring is here," I heard men say and sing;
Then went I forth to seek where he might be:

I found the buds on every bush and tree,
But nowhere could I find my darling, Spring.
Birds sang, the bees they hummed, but everything
They sang or hummed was sad as sad could be;
Rills gushed, but all their waves were tears to me;
Suns laughed,- no joy to me their looks could bring.
Nor of my darling could I find a trace,

Till with my pilgrim staff I took my way

To a well-known but long-neglected place,

And there I found him, Spring: near where she lay,
He sate, a beauteous boy, with tearful face,

Like one who weeps above a mother's clay.

Translation of C. T. Brooks.

« ПретходнаНастави »