No More Learning

Scarcely had
he obtained his dismissal after the first peace of Paris, when the
news of Napoleon's return from Elba summoned him to arms again.
In 1816, however, he began his career, after a brilliant showing
before the examiners, as an officer in the civil service of Prussia.
con-
IX-335


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JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
men
Henceforth his life was outwardly uneventful. He married soon after
his appointment. Intellectually he maintained relations with the
finest spirits of his land and time. Having served the State in
various capacities for more than a quarter of a century, he was dis-
missed at his own request in 1844, and retired to private life. He
died at Neisse on November 26th, 1857. Heine had died early in the
preceding year. With Eichendorff the last great poet of the Roman-
tic School passed away.
It would be fruitless to catalogue the works of Eichendorff that are
no longer read. His first independent effort was published at the end
of the Napoleonic campaign, under the title of Ahnung und Gegen-
wart' (Presage and Presence). Stories, comedies, tragedies, and excel-
lent translations from the Spanish followed, until now his works fill
ten volumes; but of these, only his poems and his tale (Out of the
Life of a Good-for-Nothing' retain their full vitality to-day.
His poems possess enduring beauty. They are full of that pro-
found longing for purer days and fairer realms, and of that dreamy
lyric charm, that makes men young again. There is a breath in
them of a vanished time; they sing of a golden age in which all
were idle and all women pure. The music of his verse has
attracted many composers, from Mendelssohn, his friend, to Robert
Franz in our own day. Eichendorff looked down upon the rhetori-
cal ideality of Schiller and the symbolic naturalism of Goethe. He
sang of the soul and its homesickness; of its longing for a lost inher-
itance.
The delightful Life of a Good-for-Nothing' appeared in 1824, and
it remains to-day one of the most popular tales in German litera-
ture. It is the apotheosis of idleness and vagabondism. In this
little book,” says Brandes, «all the old charms of romance are shut
up, as in a cage, to make music for us. There is the odor of the
woods and the song of birds, the longing for travel and the joys of
wandering. ” The book describes the vagabond life of a child of
genius, idle with a hundred aptitudes, pure with a hundred tempta-
tions, and amid a hundred dangers careless and irresponsible. This
Good-for-Nothing illustrates in his roving life the romantic quest of
the blue Aower. ” He lives for pure pleasures and the joys of un-
remunerative art; his is the infinite longing which never can be
stilled, but only rendered endurable by poetry, by music, and by
moonlight on forest, field, and stream. The book is an exquisite
idyl; it is full of strange adventures and all the romantic machinery
of singular disguises, lofty and secluded castles, and mysterious beau-
ties who throw flowers from shaded balconies; and yet it is essentially
idyllic, and the beautiful lyrics which are scattered through its pages
create an atmosphere of eternal summer in which we are made to


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JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
5347
forget the work-a-day world where men earn their daily bread and
feel the salutary pressure of duty.
Eichendorff himself was a faithful public servant, and in the
Life of a Good-for-Nothing' we have the confession only of what
the author perhaps thought he would have liked to be, rather than
of what he was. He was reverent and pious, and one of the most
evenly balanced minds in all that circle of madcap poets. He has
told us of those early days of the Romantic School and of the deep
thrills which agitated the entire German people when Schelling,
Novalis, the Schlegels, and Tieck began their life work in literature.
And this work was done in the days when the sword of Napoleon
hung suspended over Germany; in days when even the poet who
was to sing the praises of the dolce far niente of Good-for-Nothingness
was ready to give three years of his life for the defense of his native
land. So far had literature and life lost sight of each other, and the
men of vigorous action and solid achievement still sang sweetly of
the blue flower and of the pleasures of idleness, leaving behind them
a body of literature which, however unreal, will not lose its power to
soothe and charm.
FROM OUT OF THE LIFE OF A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING)
VE wheel of my father's mill rushed and roared again right
Tinerily
, the melting snow trickled steadily down from the
roof, the sparrows twittered and bustled about.
I sat on
the door-sill and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes; I felt so
comfortable in the warm sunshine. Just then my father came out
of the house. He had worked since daybreak in the mill, and
had his tasseled cap awry upon his head. To me he said:—“You
Good-for-Nothing! There you are sunning yourself again and
stretching and straining your bones tired, and leave me to do all
the work alone. I cannot feed you here any longer. Spring is
at the door; go out into the world and earn your own bread. ”
«Now,” said I, “if I am a Good-for-Nothing, well and good; I
will go out into the world and seek my fortune. ” And really
I was very well pleased, for it had shortly before occurred to
me too to travel, when I heard the yellow-hammer, who always
sung his note in autumn and winter so plaintively at our window,
now calling again in the beautiful spring so proudly and merrily
from the trees. I went accordingly into the house and got my
violin, which I played quite cleverly, down from the wall; my
father gave me besides a few groschens to take along, and so I


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5348
JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
sauntered out through the long village. It gave me in truth a
secret pleasure when I saw all my old acquaintances and com-
rades, right and left, just as yesterday, and day before yesterday,
and always, going out to work, to dig and to plow; while I thus
wandered out into the free world. I called out to the poor peo-
ple on all sides proudly and contentedly, Adieu! but nobody paid
very much attention to it. In my soul it seemed to me like an
eternal Sunday. And when I at last came out into the open
fields, I took up my dear violin and played and sang as I walked
along the highway.
When I presently looked about, a fine traveling carriage came
up quite near to me, that may have been for some time driving
along behind me without my having noticed it, since my heart
was so full of music; for it went along quite slowly, and two
ladies put their heads out of the carriage and listened to me.
The one was particularly beautiful and younger than the other,
but really both of them pleased me. When I now ceased sing-
ing, the elder one had the driver stop and spoke to me kindly:
“Ah, you happy fellow, you know how to sing very pretty songs.
To which I, not at all backward, answered, “If it please your
Excellency, I may have some that are prettier still. ” Thereupon
she asked me again, "Where then are you wandering so early
in the morning ? ” Then I was ashamed that I did not know,
myself, and said boldly, “To Vienna. ” Thereupon both spoke
together in a foreign language that I did not understand. The
younger one shook her head several times, but the other laughed
continuously and finally called out to me, "Spring up behind us:
we are also going to Vienna. ” Who was happier than I! I made
a bow, and at a jump was on behind the carriage, the coachman
cracked his whip, and we flew along over the glistening road, so
that the wind whistled about my hat.
Behind me disappeared village, gardens, and church towers;
before appeared new villages, castles, and mountains.
Below me
grain fields, copse, and meadows flew in many colors past; above
were countless larks in the blue air. I was ashamed to
cry aloud, but inwardly I exulted, and stamped and danced
about on the footboard of the carriage, so that I had nearly
lost my violin which I held under my arm. As the sun, how-
ever, rose continually higher, and heavy white noonday clouds
came up round about the horizon, and everything in the air and
on the broad plains became so empty and close and still over
me


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JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
5349
the gently waving grain fields, then for the first time came into
my mind my village, and my father, and our mill, and how it
was so comfortable and cool there by the shady pond, and that
now everything lay so far, far behind me. I felt so strangely,
and as if I must turn back again. I put my violin in between
my coat and waistcoat, sat down full of thought upon the foot-
board, and fell asleep.
When I opened my eyes the carriage stood still under tall
linden-trees, behind which a broad stairway led up between col-
umns into a splendid castle. On one side, through the trees, I
saw the towers of Vienna. The ladies, it appeared, had long
since got out, and the horses were unharnessed. I was much
frightened when I found myself all at once alone. As I sprang
quickly up into the castle, I heard somebody above laughing out
of the window.
In this castle it fared strangely with me. In the first place,
as I was looking about in the wide cool hall, some one tapped
me with a stick upon the shoulder. I turned quickly, and there
stood a great gentleman in court dress, a broad scarf of gold
and silk hanging down to his hips, with a silver-topped staff in
his hand, and an extraordinarily long, hooked, princely nose, big
and splendid as a puffed-up turkey, who asked me what I wanted
there. I was quite taken aback, and for fear and astonishment
could not bring forth a sound. Thereupon more servants came
running up and down the stairs, who said nothing at all, but
looked at me from head to foot. Straightway came a lady's-
maid (as I afterward learned she was) right up to me and said
that I was a charming fellow, and her ladyship desired to ask
me whether I would take service here as a gardener. I put my
hand to my waistcoat. My couple of groschens, God knows,
must have sprung out of my pocket in my dancing about in the
carriage, and were gone. I had nothing but my violin-playing,
for which, moreover, the gentleman with the staff, as he said to
me curtly, would not give a farthing. In my anguish of heart
I accordingly said yes to the lady's-maid, my eyes still directed
from one side to the uncomfortable figure which continually, like
the pendulum of a steeple clock, moved up and down the hall,
and just then again came majestically and awfully up out of
the background. Last of all the head gardener finally came,
growled something to himself about rabble and country bumpkins,
and led me to the garden, preaching to me on the way a long


## p. 5350 (#522) ###########################################

5350
JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
sermon — how I should be sober and industrious, should not rove
about in the world, should not devote myself to unprofitable arts
and useless stuff: in that case I might in time be of some
account. There were still
more very pretty, well-put, useful
maxims, only since then I have forgotten almost all of them
again. On the whole, I did not really at all rightly know how
everything had come about. I only said yes continually to every-
thing, for I was like a bird whose wings had been wet. Thus i
was, God be praised, in possession of my daily bread.
In the garden, life went on finely. I had every day my warm
food in plenty, and more money than I needed for wine,- only,
alas! I had quite a good deal to do. The temples, too, the
arbors, and the beautiful green walks,- all that would have
pleased me very well, if I had only been able to walk placidly
about and converse rationally, like the ladies and gentlemen who
came there every day. As often as the head gardener was away
and I was alone, I immediately pulled out my short tobacco
pipe, sat down and thought out pretty polite speeches, such as I
would use to entertain the young and beautiful lady who brought
me along with her into the castle, if I were a cavalier and
walked about with her. Or I lay down on my back on sultry
afternoons, when everything was so still that one could hear the
bees buzzing, and watched the clouds as they floated along to
my own village, and the grasses and flowers as they moved
hither and thither, and thought of the lady; and then it often
happened too that the beautiful lady, with her guitar or a book,
really went through the garden at a distance, as gently, as lofty
and gracious, as an angel, so that I did not rightly know whether
I dreamed or was awake.
Close by the castle garden ran the highway, only separated
from it by a high wall. A very neat little toll-keeper's house
with a red tile roof was built there, and behind it was a little
flower garden, inclosed with a gay-colored picket fence, which,
through a break in the wall of the castle garden, bordered on its
shadiest and most concealed part. The toll-keeper had just died,
who had occupied it all. Early one morning while I still lay in
the soundest sleep, the secretary from the castle came to me and
called me in all haste to the head steward. I dressed myself
quickly and sauntered along behind the airy secretary, who on
the way, now here, now there, broke off a flower and stuck it
on the lapel of his coat, now brandished his cane skillfully in the
C


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JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
5351
air, and talked to the wind all sorts of matters of which I under-
stood nothing, since my eyes and ears were still full of sleep.
When I entered the office, where it was not yet wholly light, the
steward looked at me from behind a tremendous inkstand and
piles of paper and books and a portly wig, like an owl from her
nest, and began, “What's your name? Where do you come
from? Can you write, read, and cipher ? ” When I had answered
this affirmatively, he added, “Well, her ladyship designs to offer
you, in consideration of your good behavior and your particular
merits, the vacant toll-keeper's position. ” I went over quickly
in my mind my previous behavior and manners, and I was
obliged to confess that I found at the end, myself, that the
steward was right. And so I was, then, really toll-keeper, before
I was aware of it.
I moved now immediately into my new dwelling, and in a
short time was settled. I found a number of things that the
late toll-keeper had left behind, among others a splendid red
dressing-gown with yellow dots, green slippers, a tasseled cap,
and some pipes with long stems. All these things I had wished
for when I was still at home, when I always saw our pastor going
about so comfortably. The whole day (I had nothing further to
do) I sat there on the bench before my house in dressing-gown
and cap, Smoking tobacco out of the longest pipe that I had
found among those left by the late toll-keeper, and looked at
the people on the highway as they went to and fro, and drove
and rode about. I only wished all the time that people too
out of my own village, who always said that nothing would come
of me all the days of my life, might come by and see me. The
dressing-gown was very becoming to me, and in point of fact all
of it pleased me very well. So I sat there and thought of all
sorts of things: how the beginning is always hard, how a higher
mode of life is nevertheless very comfortable; and secretly came
to the decision henceforth to give up all traveling about, to save
money, too, like others, and in good time surely to amount to
something in the world. In the mean time, however, with all my
decisions, cares, and business, I by no manner of means forgot
the beautiful lady.
The potatoes and other vegetables that I found in my little
garden I threw away, and planted it entirely with the choicest
flowers; at which the janitor from the castle, with the big
princely nose, who since I lived here often came to me and had


## p. 5352 (#524) ###########################################

5352
JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
as
become my intimate friend, looked askance and apprehensively at
me, and regarded me one whom sudden fortune had made
mad. But I did not allow this to disturb me, for not far from
me in the manor garden I heard low voices, among which I
thought to recognize that of my beautiful lady, although on
account of the thick shrubbery I could see nobody. Then I
bound every day a nosegay of the most beautiful flowers that
I had, climbed every evening when it was dark over the wall,
and placed it on a stone table which stood in the middle of an
arbor, and every evening when I brought the new bouquet the
old one was gone from the table.
I continually felt as I always feel when spring is at hand, -
so restless and glad without knowing why, as if a piece of great
good fortune or something else extraordinary awaited me. The
hateful accounts, in particular, would no longer get on at all;
and when the sunshine through the chestnut-tree before the
window fell green-golden upon the figures, and added them up
so nimbly from "amount brought forward to balance, and
then up and down again, very strange thoughts came to me, so
that I often became quite confused and actually could not count
up to three. For the eight appeared always to me like the stout,
tightly laced lady with the broad hat that I knew, and the
unlucky seven was wholly like a guide-post always pointing back-
ward, or a gallows. The nine however played the greatest
pranks, in that often, before I was aware of it, it stood itself as
a six merrily on its head; while the two looked on so cunningly,
like an interrogation point; as if it would ask:-“What shall be
the outcome of all this in the end, you poor naught?
Without
her, this slender one-and-all, you will always be nothing! ”
Sitting outside before the door, too, no longer pleased me.
I took a footstool out with me, in order to make myself more
comfortable, and stretched out my feet upon it, and I mended
an old parasol of the toll-keeper's and held it against the sun
above me, like a Chinese summer-house. But it did not at all
avail. It seemed to me as I sat thus, and smoked and specu-
lated, that my legs gradually became longer from very weariness,
and
my nose grew from idleness, as I looked down on it for
hours at a time. And when many a time before daybreak an
extra post came by, and I stepped half asleep out into the cool
air, and a pretty little face, of which in the dim light only the
sparkling eyes were to be seen, bent with curiosity out of the


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JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
5353
carriage and gave me pleasantly a good-morning, and in the vil-
lage round about the cocks crew so freshly out over the gently
waving grain fields, and between the morning clouds high in the
heavens already soared a few too early awakened larks, and the
postilion took his post-horn and drove on, and blew and blew -
then I stood for a long time still and looked after the coach, and
it seemed to me as if nothing else would do, except to go along
with them, far, far out into the world.
The nosegays I always placed, in the mean time, as soon as
the sun went down, on the stone table in the dim arbor. But
that was just it. That was all over now, since that evening; no
one troubled himself about them. As often as I, early in the
morning, looked after them, the flowers still lay there just as
they did the day before, and looked at me in real sorrow with
their wilted hanging heads, and the dew-drops standing on them
as if they wept. That grieved me very much.
That grieved me very much. I bound no more
nosegays. In my garden the weeds might now flourish as they
would, and the flowers I let stand and grow until the wind blew
away the leaves.
My heart was just as waste and wild and dis-
ordered.
In these critical times it came to pass that once when I was
lying in the window at home and looking gloomily out into the
empty air, the lady's-maid from the castle came tripping along
the road. When she saw me, she turned quickly toward me and
stood still at the window. "His Lordship returned yesterday
from his journey,” said she briskly. "Is it so? ” I replied in
astonishment, for for several weeks past I had not concerned
myself about anything, and did not even know that his Lordship
was away.
« Then his daughter, the gracious young lady, has
also had, I am sure, a very pleasant time. ” The lady's-maid
looked at me oddly from top to toe, so that I really was forced
to consider whether I had not said something stupid.
« You
don't know anything at all,” she finally said, and turned up her
little nose.
"Now," she continued, there is going to be a dance
and masquerade this evening at the castle in his Lordship's
honor. My mistress is also to go in mask, as a flower-girl — do
you quite understand ? --- as a flower-girl. Now my mistress has
noticed that you have particularly beautiful flowers in your gar-
den. ” " That is strange,” thought I to myself, "since there are
now scarcely any more flowers to be seen on account of the
weeds. " But she continued: “As my mistress needs beautiful


## p. 5354 (#526) ###########################################

5354
JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
flowers for her costume, but quite fresh ones that have just come
out of the flower-bed, you are to bring her some, and wait with
them this evening, when it has grown dark, under the great
pear-tree in the castle garden. She will come and get the
flowers. ”
I was quite dumbfounded by this news, and in my rapture
ran from the window out to the lady's-maid.
"Pah! the nasty dressing-gown! ” she cried out when she saw
me all at once out-of-doors in my costume. That vexed me. I
did not wish to be behind her in gallantry, and made a few
pretty motions to catch her and kiss her. But unfortunately the
dressing-gown, which was much too long for me, got tangled up
at the same time under my feet and I fell my whole length on
the ground. When I pulled myself together again the lady's-
maid was far away, and I heard her still laughing in the distance;
so that she had to hold her sides.
Now, however, I had something to think about and to make
me happy. She still thought of me and of my flowers! I went
into my garden and quickly pulled all the weeds out of the
flower-beds, and threw them high up over my head away into
the glistening air, as if I drew out with the roots every bit of
evil and melancholy. The roses were again like her mouth; the
sky-blue morning-glories like her eyes; the snow-white lily with
its sorrowfully drooping head looked quite like her. I laid them
all carefully in a little basket together.
It was a still, beautiful evening, with not a cloud in the
heavens. A few stars were already out in the sky; from afar
came the sound of the Danube over the fields; in the tall trees
in the castle garden near me joyfully sang innumerable birds.
Ah, I was so happy!
When night finally came on, I took my little basket over my
arm and set out on my way to the great garden. In my basket
all lay so bright and pretty together — white, red, blue, and so
fragrant that my heart fairly laughed when I looked in.
Full of happy thoughts, I went along in the beautiful moon-
light through the quiet paths tidily strewed with sand, over the
little white bridges, under which the swans sat sleeping upon
the water, and past the pretty arbors and summer-houses. I had
soon found the great pear-tree, for it was the same one under
which I had lain on sultry afternoons when I was still a gar-
dener.


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JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
5355
over
Here it was so lonely and dark. Only a tall aspen continu-
ally whispered with its silver leaves. From the castle sounded
now and then the dance music. At times I heard, too, in the
garden human voices, which often came quite near to me, and
then all at once it was again perfectly still.
My heart beat fast. A strange feeling of dread came
me, as if I intended to steal from somebody. I stood for a long
time stock still, leaning against the tree and listened on all sides;
but as nobody came, I could no longer endure it.
I hung my
basket on my arm and climbed quickly up into the pear-tree, in
order to breathe again in the open air.
I now directed my eyes immovably toward the castle, for a
circle of torches below on the steps of the entrance threw a
strange light there, over the sparkling windows and far out into
the garden. It was the servants, who were just then serenading
their young master and mistress. In the midst of them, splen-
didly dressed like a minister of state, stood the porter before a
music stand, working hard on his bassoon.
Just as I had seated myself aright in order to listen to the
beautiful serenade, all at once the doors opened, up on the bal-
cony of the castle. A tall gentleman, handsome and stately in
his uniform and with many glittering stars on his breast, stepped
out upon the balcony, leading by the hand - the beautiful young
lady in a dress all of white, like a lily in the night or as if the
moon passed across the clear firmament.
I could not turn my glance from the place, and garden, trees,
and fields vanished from my senses; as she, so wondrously illumi-
nated by the torches, stood there tall and slender, and now
talked pleasantly with the handsome officer and then nodded
kindly down to the musicians. The people below were beside
themselves with joy, and I too could not restrain myself at last,
and joined in the cheers with all my might.
As she however soon afterward again disappeared from the
balcony, and below one torch after the other went out and
the music stands were taken away, and the garden now round
about also became dark again and rustled as before, - for the
first time I noticed all this, – then it fell all at once upon my
heart that it was really only the aunt who had sent for me
with the flowers, and that the beautiful lady did not think of
me at all and was long since married, and that I myself was a
great fool.


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JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
All of this plunged me truly into an abyss of reflection. I
wrapped myself up like a hedgehog in the stings of my own
thoughts; from the castle the dance music came more rarely
across, the clouds wandered lonely along over the dark garden.
And so I sat up in the tree, like a night owl, all night long in
the ruins of my happiness.
The cool morning air waked me finally from my dreamings.
I was fairly astonished when I looked all at once about me.
Music and dance was long over, and in the castle and round
about the castle, on the lawn, and the stone steps, and the col-
umns, everything looked so still and cool and solemn; only the
fountain before the entrance plashed solitarily along. Here and
there in the twigs near me the birds were already awakening
and shaking their bright feathers; and while they stretched their
little wings they looked with curiosity and astonishment at their
strange bedfellow. The joyous beaming rays of morning sparkled
along over the garden upon my breast.
Then I straightened myself out up in my tree, and for the
first time for a long while, once more looked fairly out into the
land, and saw how a few ships were already sailing down the
Danube between the vineyards, and how the still empty high-
ways swung themselves like bridges across the glistening coun-
try, far out over the mountains and valleys.
I do not know how it came about, but all at once my old
desire to travel seized hold of me again: all the old sadness and
joy and great anticipation. It came into my mind, at the same
time, how the beautiful lady up in the castle was sleeping among
the flowers and under silken coverlets, and an angel was sitting
beside her on the bed in the stillness of the morning.
—No,"
I cried out, “I must go away from here, and on and on, as far
as the sky is blue! ”
And at this I took my basket and threw it high into the air,
so that it was very pretty to see how the flowers lay gayly round
about in the twigs and on the greensward below. Then I
climbed down quickly and went through the quiet garden to my
dwelling. Often indeed I stopped still at many a place where I
had once seen her, or where lying in the shade I had thought of
her.
In and about my house everything still looked just as I had
left it yesterday. The garden was plundered and bare; in my
room inside, the great account-book still lay open; my violin,


## p. 5357 (#529) ###########################################

JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
5357
which I had almost wholly forgotten, hung covered with dust on
the wall. A morning beam, however, from the window opposite
fell gleaining across the strings. That struck a true accord
within my heart. “Yes,” I said, “do thou come here, thou faith-
ful instrument! Our kingdom is not of this world!
And so I took the violin from the wall, left the account-book,
dressing-gown, slippers, pipes, and parasol lying, and wandered,
as poor as I had come, out of my little house away on the glis-
tening high way.
I still often looked back. A strange feeling had taken pos-
session of me. I was so sad and yet again so thoroughly joyous,
like a bird escaping from its cage. And when I had gone a long
way I took up my violin, out there in the free air, and sang.
The castle, the garden, and the towers of Vienna had already
disappeared behind me in the fragrance of morning; above me
exulted innumerable larks high in the air. Thus I went between
the green mountains and past cheerful cities and villages down
toward Italy.
Translation of William H. Carpenter.
SEPARATION
B
ROWN was the heather,
The sky was blue;
We sat together
Where flowers grew.
Is this the thrilling
Nightingale's beat?
Are larks still trilling
Their numbers sweet ?
I spend the hours
Exiled from thee;
Spring has brought flowers,
But none for me.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Charles Harvey
Genung.


## p. 5358 (#530) ###########################################

5358
JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF
LORELEI
'T'
vis very late, 'tis growing cold;
Alone thou ridest through the wold ?
The way is long, there's none to see,
Ah, lovely maid, come follow me.
“I know men's false and guileful art,
And grief long since has rent my heart.
I hear the huntsman's bugle there:
Oh fly, - thou know'st me not, — beware! )
So richly is the steed arrayed,
So wondrous fair the youthful maid,
I know thee now — – too late to fly!
Thou art the witch, the Lorelei.
Thou know'st me well, -- my lonely shrine
Still frowns in silence on the Rhine;
'Tis very late, 'tis growing cold, –
Thou com’st no more from out the wold!
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Charles Harvey
Genung


## p. 5358 (#531) ###########################################



## p. 5358 (#532) ###########################################


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GEORGE ELIOT.


## p. 5358 (#533) ###########################################

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## p. 5358 (#534) ###########################################

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## p. 5359 (#535) ###########################################

5359
GEORGE ELIOT
(1819-1880)
BY CHARLES WALDSTEIN
0 GEORGE Eliot will always have to be assigned a prominent
place in the history of the literature of the nineteenth cen-
tury as a foremost novelist, poet, and social philosopher.
Mary Ann, or, as she subsequently spelt her Christian name, Mar-
ian, Evans was born at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish
of Calton in Warwickshire, on November 22d, 1819. Her father, the
prototype of Adam Bede, was Robert Evans, of Welsh origin; who
started life as a carpenter, but soon became a land agent in War-
wickshire. This position implies great responsibilities, and demands
thorough business capacities as well as firmness and trustworthiness
of character, in his relations to his employers as well as his subor-
dinates. He was intrusted with the management of the extensive
estates of five great noblemen and land-owners in the county of
Warwickshire. He was thus a man of considerable importance and
power in the country, and would hold a social position ranking with
the highest professional classes of the neighborhood.
This position of her father gave her the opportunity of gaining
considerable insight into the lives and characters of English people
of every class, in the country, and from its neutral height between
1
the great landlord and the farmer, down to the farm laborer, she
could command the horizon line of all these lives, realize their
habits, their aspirations and sufferings, and command its extent as
well as its limitations. The country, the fields, the garden about
Griff House, where her childhood was spent, as well as the village
with its inhabitants, — with whom, through her mother as well as her
father, she came in contact, - all stimulated her loving and sympa-
thetic observation and formed that background of experience in the
youthful mind, out of which subsequently rose, with strong spontane-
ity and truthful precision of design, the characters and scenes of her
novels. They will ever remain the classical expositions of English |
provincial life in literature. The upright strength and pertinacity of
her characters, as well as the insight into practical life and the life
of men, were no doubt derived from her father, and from the inti-.
mate intercourse with him for so many years of the most important
formative period of her life.


## p. 5360 (#536) ###########################################

5360
GEORGE ELIOT
Her mother was a housewife of the old-fashioned type, whose
health was always poor, and who died when Marian was about fifteen
years of age. She is supposed to be portrayed in Mrs. Hackit in
Amos Barton. She seems to have been a woman with ready wit,
a somewhat sharp tongue, an undemonstrative but tender-hearted
nature. In many respects she seems also to have been the model for
that masterpiece of character-drawing, Mrs. Poyser. Though Marian
had two sisters, her brother Isaac Evans was her playmate. The
youthful relation between brother and sister was very much like that
of Tom Tulliver and Maggie in (The Mill on the Floss,' no doubt
the most autobiographical of her novels, as regards at least the draw-
ing of Maggie's character.
Marian was at first sent to a school at the neighboring Nuneaton;
and at a very early age she taught at Sunday school, which may
have instilled a magisterial bias into her mind from the very outset.
At the age of twelve she proceeded to a school at Coventry, kept by
the Misses Franklin, which enjoyed considerable reputation in the
neighborhood. She remained in this school for three years; beyond
elementary school duties she devoted much time to English compo-
sition, French and German. Her life was then rather solitary, moved
by strong inner religious convictions, upon which she dwelt with
passionate fervor. Her religious views were at first simply those of
the Church of England, then those of the Low Church, and then be-
came “anti-supernatural. ” The second phase was no doubt strongly
influenced by her aunt. Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, the Derbyshire Meth-
odist,” the prototype of Dinah Morris in 'Adam Bede. ' The earnest,
almost lugubrious conception of life which she formed in these times,
and which subsequent years and experiences only intensified, no
doubt gave the keynote to her whole temperament and genius. It
produced in her that supreme development of the idea of duty and
compassion for human suffering which elevates the tone of her writ-
ing with a lofty conception of life, enables her to penetrate into the
feelings and aspirations of all classes, and while it widened the
range of her sympathy, never did so at the cost of genuineness or
intensity of feeling. At the same time this serious keynote, though
it was not opposed to humor,– the growth of which it even favored, -
led to some limitations in the harmonious development of her artis-
tic nature; notably in that it counteracted the sense for the playful
and joyous side of life. The eternal conflict between Hellenism and
Hebraism, between the vine-wreath and the crown of thorns, was not
reconciled by her, but led to the suppression or defeat of Hellenism.
The true, the joyous spirit of Hellenism, with its ideals of beauty
and happiness in life, never really possessed her soul. In her own
words she has put this eternal dualism :
I


## p. 5361 (#537) ###########################################

GEORGE ELIOT
5361
(For evermore
With grander resurrection than was feigned
Of Attila's fierce Huns, the soul of Greece
Conquers the bulk of Persia. The maimed form
Of calmly joyous beauty, marble-limbed,
Yet breathing with the thought that shaped its limbs,
Looks mild reproach from out its opened grave
At creeds of terror; and the vine-wreathed god
Fronts the pierced Image with the crown of thorns. ”
Only in the tragic manifestation of the Greek mind, above all in
an Æschylus, did she find true resonance to the passionate beats of
her God-loving and world-renouncing heart. Yet more and more, as
her mind grew and severed itself from the traditional beliefs of her
childhood, with which however she ever remained in deepest sym-
pathy,— did this love of God and renunciation of the world mean the
love of man and the tolerance of weakness, the pity with suffering
and the active effort to help to rectify and to improve. The one
element in Hellenism which she adopted and clung to, and which as
a supporting wall she added to the whole structure of her more
Hebraistic beliefs and ideals, was the worship of Sanity. This wor-
ship only intensified the tolerance of the unsound, the pity for the
diseased and distorted and miserable. And though she never became
a professed Positivist, it was no doubt the response which Comte's
philosophy gave to these cravings that made his views ultimately
most congenial to her.
The true and independent development of her mind began when
after the death of her mother she took charge of Griff House for her
father; but especially when in 1841 her father retired from his active
duties, and settled at Foleshill near Coventry. It was here, while
taking lessons in Latin and Greek from Mr. Sheepshanks, and also
devoting herself to music, that she formed the friendship with Mr.
and Mrs. Charles Bray of Coventry and their kinsman Mr. Charles
C. Hennell, the Unitarian philosopher and writer. These people,
deeply interested in philosophy and literature, and important con-
tributors to the philosophico-religious literature of the day, responded
fully to the mental needs of George Eliot. Out of this intellectual
affinity grew a friendship which lasted through life. They also intro-
duced her to the philosophical and critical literature of Germany,
and it was through them that she began in 1843 her first literary
task, the translation of David Strauss's Life of Jesus, which had
been begun by Miss Brabant, who became Mrs. Charles Hennell.
The task of translating Strauss's great work, which occupied three
years of her life, was followed by work of the same nature, which,
though not as taxing as the life of Christ, must still have called upon
IX-336


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5362
GEORGE ELIOT
(
thought and perseverance to a high degree: it was “The Essence of
Christianity,' by the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. These
works, which stand on the border line between philosophy and reli-
gion, led her by a natural development into the domain of pure phi-
losophy; so that the next more extensive task which she undertook,
but to our knowledge never completed, was a translation of Spinoza's
Ethics.
She was now fairly, at the age of twenty-seven, launched in her
literary career; though as yet it was on the side of science and
religion and not of art. The essays which belong to the following
period, together with her editorial occupation, again formed a transi-
tion from the more scientific character of her writing to the domain
of pure literature. And though these works belong to the field of
criticism, it was criticism as applied to pure literature, fiction, and
biography, and thus brought her inherently ponderous and theoretical
mind, by natural stages, from analysis and speculation to the more
imaginative sphere of synthesis and creation. This early theoretical
and scientific direction of her occupation and thought may have pro-
duced that fault in her later writing with which she has often been
reproached, - it may have made her style and diction clumsy and
pedantic. On the other hand, it was a most excellent training for
the future writer of even fiction. For it exercised the mind in gain-
ing full mastery over thought; in recognizing and defining the nicest
and most delicate shadings of meaning and of expression; in insisting
upon their logical sequence, and thus impressing upon the author the
rudiments of exposition and composition; in extending and enriching
the domain of knowledge and fact; and finally, in producing and
training the force of intellectual sympathy, which sharpens as well as
intensifies insight into life and character, and gives to the mind that
pliancy which directs the feeling heart to beat in sympathy with all
forms of experiences, desires, and passions, - however far the lives
and personalities may be removed from the author who constructs or
describes them.
In 1849 the death of her father threw her into a state of deepest
depression. It was then that her kind friends the Brays took her for
a tour on the Continent, to Italy and Switzerland. She remained at
Geneva in the family of the artist D’Albert for eight months, where
she no doubt found congenial local associations; for the shores of the
Lake of Geneva, haunted by the spirits of Calvin, Rousseau, Voltaire,
Madame de Staël, Gibbon, Byron, and Shelley, seem bound up with
world-stirring thought as no other place in Europe. Upon her return
to England she made her home with the Brays at Rosehill for about
a year, and then accepted the offer of Dr. John Chapman to become
sub-editor of the Westminster Review and to make her home in his


## p. 5363 (#539) ###########################################

GEORGE ELIOT
5363
family. She here entered a circle of the most prominent literary
men and women of the day, and among these she became an inti-
mate friend of Herbert Spencer, John Oxenford, James and Harriet
Martineau, George Henry Lewes, and others. Emerson she had met
before at Rosehill. Besides her arduous sub-editorial work, she con-
tributed several remarkable papers to the Review. Among these are:
(Carlyle's Life of Sterling' and Margaret Fuller' in 1852; Women
in France: Madame de Tablé, 1854; Evangelical Teaching: Dr.
Cumming,' 1855; (German Wit: Heinrich Heine, (Silly Novels by
Lady Novelists,' (The Natural History of German Life,' 1856; (World-
liness and Otherworldliness: the Poetry of Young' in 1857.
It was in 1854 that occurred the great event in her life; she joined
George Henry Lewes as his wife, though the latter's wife was still alive.
Lewes was separated from his first wife, though circumstances inade
it impossible for him to get a divorce. From that moment George
Eliot remained the most faithful and devoted wife to Lewes and
mother to his children, until his death in 1878. She united her life
with that of Lewes after due and full deliberation, and with a thor-
ough weighing of consequences and duties. But that she felt the
deepest regret in that her complete union was not in accordance with
the established laws of the society in which she lived, is evident
from all her letters and writings; and though it need not have led
to her marriage with her late husband Mr. Cross, the opportunity
afforded of showing her respect to the established rules of matri-
monial life must certainly have made it easier for her to form a new
alliance, after the death of her first husband.
With Lewes she went to Germany, living for some time at Berlin
and Weimar, while he was writing his Life of Goethe) and she was
working at her translation of Spinoza's Ethics and was contributing
some articles on German literature. Upon their return they settled
in London, finally in the Priory, North Bank, in the northwest of the
metropolis, which was for many years a salon of the London literary
world. The Sunday afternoons of this remarkable couple united all
the talent and genius, residents or foreign visitors. One might meet
in one and the same afternoon Charles Darwin, Robert Browning,
Tennyson, Richard Wagner, Joachim the violinist, Huxley, Clifford,
Du Maurier, and Turgénieff. Lewes, the most brilliant and versatile
conversationalist of his day, gave life and freedom to these meetings;
but the intellectual and moral centre always remained George Eliot,
with her soft, sweet voice, her clear intonation, her friendly and
encouraging smile, lighting up as by a contrast the earnestness of
her serious and large features, which resembled those of Savona-
rola, whose character she has drawn in such strong lines in Romola. '
But the quality of searching sympathy and benignant humor, so


## p. 5364 (#540) ###########################################

5364
GEORGE ELIOT
1
remarkable in her writings, gave the warmth of kindness and cordial.
ity to these formidably intellectual meetings. The present writer re-
members with grateful piety how, when he was a very young man
struggling to put a crude thought into presentable form before these
giants of thought and letters, she would divine his meaning even in
its embryonic uncouthness of expression, and would give it back to
him and to them in a perfect and faultless garb; so that in admiring
and worshiping the woman, he would be pleased with his own
thoughts and would think well of himself. It is this sympathetic and
unselfish helpfulness of great and noble minds, which gives confidence
and increases the self-esteem of all who come in contact with them.
No wonder that one often saw and heard of a great number of peo-
ple, young girls or young men, who by letter or in person sought
help and spiritual guidance from her, and went away strengthened by
her sympathy and advice.
Her first attempt at fiction was made when in her thirty-seventh
year, in September 1856. The account of this is best shown in her
own words here given among the extracts from her writings. Her
first story was a short one, called “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev.
Amos Barton. ' This was followed by Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' and
Janet's Repentance, and soon there was that remarkable volume
called (Scenes of Clerical Life. ) Lewes and she and the world all
realized that she was a true novelist, and from that moment she
directed all her energies to the production of those works which will
ever live, in spite of all changes of fashions and modes of story-
telling, classical specimens of English fiction. In rapid succession
now followed Adam Bede' in 1858; (The Mill on the Floss) in 1860;
(Silas Marner) in 1861; Romola' in 1863; Felix Holt, the Radical,
in 1866; the poem “The Spanish Gypsy) in 1868; Jubal and Other
Poems) in 1870; Middlemarch' in 1872; Daniel Deronda' in 1876;
and her last work, “The Impressions of Theophrastus Such,' which
was not published till after the death of Lewes, which occurred in
1878. She married Mr. Cross in May, 1880. She died on December
22d, 1880.
To lead to the fuller understanding of George Eliot's works, it was
necessary to sketch in broad outlines the growth of her life and per-
sonality. As a writer she was not only a novelist but also a poet,
and above all a social philosopher. Her ethical bias is so strong,,
moreover, that one cannot understand her as a novelist or a poet
unless one has grasped her social philosophy and the all-pervading
and ever-present influence it has upon her mind and writing.
In her delineation of character and depiction of scenes, especially
those of rural and domestic life, truthful rendering is to her the
supreme duty; and one need but open the Scenes of Clerical Lire,
i
1
-
2


## p. 5365 (#541) ###########################################

GEORGE ELIOT
5365
Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss,' (Silas Marner,' and Middle-
march,' on any page, to realize the fullness of truth with which she
has painted. At the time of their appearance, not only were the per-
sons and the environment identified with the originals she had in her
mind, but as lasting types they tallied exactly with people and local
life known to each English reader. This truthful rendering was also
conceived by her as a primary duty of the novelist. We would refer
the reader to what, in an essay, she says of the English peasant in
fiction, and would recall her own words in the same essay:
«A picture of human life, such as a great artist can give, surprises even
the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from them-
selves, which may be called the raw material of sentiment. . . Art is
the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending
our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All
the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life
of the people. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more
artificial aspects of life. ”
Another interesting passage is one containing an estimate of Dick-
ens, in which she considers the Oliver Twists, Joes, and Nancys
terrible and pathetic pictures of London life:
«And if Dickens had been able to give us their psychological character,
their conception of life, and their emotions, with the same truth as their
idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution to art
ever made to the awakening of social sympathies. ”
George Eliot might thus be classified as one of the greatest if not
the greatest realist of the analytical or psychological order. But this
would, to our mind, be a one-sided and incomplete estimate of the
chief character in her writing and genius. Truthful rendering of life
and character may have been one of the chief motives to composi-
tion, and a fundamental requisite to the art of her fiction; but it
remained a means to a further end - the ultimate end-of her writ-
ing, as it no doubt was the fundamental stimulus to her imagination
and design. And this end and motive make her an idealist and not
a realist in fiction. The direction in which this idealism goes we
have indicated in the lines we have italicized in the passages we
quote from her, and is to be found in the ethical motive below and'
beyond all her thought and composition, the predominance of the
social philosophy in her fiction and poetry, to which we have already
referred.
We will dismiss the coarse and caricatured distinction between
realism and idealism, in which the one is supposed to render truth-
fully whatever is, without any principle of selection or composition;


## p. 5366 (#542) ###########################################

5366
GEORGE ELIOT
while the other starts with preconceived notions of the ought to be,
be it from the point of view of formal beauty or spiritual harmony,
and proves the facts that are. Art, and the novel above all, — which
deals with life at once so clear and familiar to us, and so perplex-
ingly manifold and varied as constantly to elude choice and design,
can neither forego truth nor unity of design.
But in the novelist's attitude towards human life there are two
distinct points of view from which a new classification of novelists
might be inade: the position given to ethics, the moral laws in the
presentation of life. The laws of human conduct are so essential to
the relation of man to man, that the fundamental question as to
what position ethics holds in our narrative cannot be ignored. The
novelist must have decided whether he is going to consider its
claims in the primary structure of his novel, and in the creation and
development of characters, or not. Is he going to prepare the
groundwork of artistic labor with a view to ethical design, or pure
artistic design? It may be said that the best work requires both.
But still, in so far as the one is heeded more than the other, will
the writer be an idealist or a realist in this sense.
The idealist will focus his_view of the characters, their experi-
ences and sufferings and surroundings, from a view of moral fitness
and design; the realist will find the design and composition, the har
mony which all art needs, in the characters, in the scenes, in the
life itself, and the inner organic relation of the parts to the whole.
The one leads to the best idealism, the other to the best realism.
The one produces a George Eliot, the other a Guy de Maupassant.
This realist ignores the general fitness of things, the moral law, and
says:–« This character is interesting in itself, this situation is amus-
ing, curious, striking, or terrible, — they are worth depicting, without
any question as to their relation to social or moral ideals. ) Guy de
Maupassant takes characters and situations and depicts them with
consummate art; he never troubles himself about general moral fit-
ness, never know what his moral and social ideals are,
whether he has any at all. Jane Austen is interested in her charac-
ters, in the tone and range of ideas of the period and the society in
which she lives, the types of life, and she draws them with consum-
i
mate art; but though we are left in no doubt in her case as to the
good and the bad, and though the good generally prevails and the bad
is defeated, these are not subordinated to a clear conception of an
ideal social order, without which the characters and the story could
not have been conceived and developed - as is always the case with
George Eliot. Gwendolen Harleth, Felix Holt, Maggie, Dorothea,
Lydgate, the life and surroundings of these figures, all bear a fixed
relation to the social ideals of the author; and it is in this relation
we
nor


## p. 5367 (#543) ###########################################

GEORGE ELIOT
5367
that she conceives and develops them. Nay, it is for the purpose
of illustrating and fixing this that she creates them at all. Strange
as it may sound, in so far Jane Austen might be called a realist and
be classed with Guy de Maupassant; while George Sand, with whom
she has so much similarity of spirit, is by contrast an idealist. It is
a difference in the initial methods of dealing with life in fiction.
It is not enough for George Eliot to present an interesting char-
acter, to follow up its fate and growth, to force the reader into sym-
pathy, to make him hope for success or fear failure; nor even to
show the struggle with the surroundings, to depict interesting and
complex situations and centres. Her writings always depend upon a
primary postulate, and to this postulate all characters, scenes, and
situations are ultimately subordinated. This postulate is: The ideal
social order as a whole, the establishment of sane and sound social
relations in humanity, the development and progress of human society
towards such an ideal of general human life. All characters and sit-
uations, all scenes of life, whether clerical or provincial, whether of
the present or of the past (and this may here be a grave fault), are
developed and viewed by her in their relation to this general stand-
ard of ideal society; how far they fit into this general harmony, and
failing this, how far they can in her stories be made to fit more fully;
or they are left to a more tragic end which emphasizes the facts
of their unfitness. Herein lies her distinctive character as a novelist,
a point in which her delineation differs from most of the other great
novelists — from a Balzac and a Flaubert, a George Sand, a Thackeray,
and a Dickens, a Turgénieff and an early Tolstoy. I do not mean to
say that these novelists had not a social ideal at the foundation of
their constructive imagination; but it did not play that essential part
in their conception and working out of characters and plots, it was
not ever present in their minds while they were describing charac-
ters, feelings, incidents, and situations, as it appears to have been
with George Eliot. Her philosophical and ethical bias thus manifests
itself, in that there was an idea of general social fitness and happi-
ness modifying and directing her representation of individual life and
character.
To understand this social ideal of a rational and essentially sane
world, we must conceive her as an expression of the spirit of the age
out of which she grew. And she will thus hold a place not only as
a novelist, but as a pregnant and significant exponent of the thought
of the third quarter of the nineteenth century.
The time in which her mind was formed is marked on the side of
social ethics, in that a broad and powerful humanitarian wave spread
over English life and thought. Negatively it manifested itself in that
it was a period of storm and stress toward the birth of tolerance -
r


## p. 5368 (#544) ###########################################

5368
GEORGE ELIOT
tolerance with all forms of belief and even unbelief. In the English
Church itself, it was the period of clear accentuations of shades of be-
lief that differed to a very marked degree from one another. The
Church of Rome was brought nearer to the Anglican believer, and was
robbed of its Apocalyptic horrors by a Newman and a Manning: a
definite political act was the Irish Church Act. But an especial feature
of this tolerance was the social recognition of agnosticism, in its scien- '
tific aspect through a Darwin, and in its more ethical aspect through
a Mill, a Herbert Spencer, and a Matthew Arnold; while divines of
the English Church itself, like Stanley, Maurice, Kingsley, and Jowett,
bridged over the gaps between dogmatism and agnosticism. The
repeal of the Test Act (according to which the signing of the Thirty-
nine Articles was a condition for obtaining a scholarship or fellow-
ship) abolished all disqualifications from freethinkers at the great
universities. Quakers and Jews had before been admitted to Parlia-
ment, and now took prominent and leading places.
But more positively, the philosophy of Auguste Comte with its
English exponents, especially Mill, impressed the religious feeling of
humanitarianism.