Each one represents an
attitude
to life, of which the
?
?
Stefan George - Studies
He had his own mode
of reading, which was a slow solemn declamation based upon
the intoning of the office in the Catholic church.
To these surface difficulties to the understanding of George's
poetry--the deeper ones are no more than those to which every
serious poet may legitimately lay claim as his right--may be
added (at any rate for readers outside Germany) the concen-
trated and compact use of language, whereby he avoids, as far
as possible, the little connecting colourless words--prepositions,
articles and conjunctions. This forces him often to the genitive
construction; 'ich forschte bleichen eifers nach dem horte'; or
he avoids the preposition by means of present and perfect parti-
ciples; or prefers such turns of phrase as: 'ich ihrer und sie
meiner gotter lachten' instead of 'ich lachte u? ber ihre gotter
und sie lachten u? ber meine'. The elimination of so many of
these little connecting words, whilst it produces an effect of
compactness, has also the effect of slowing down the movement
of the line by the greater tightness of verbal texture.
No doubt the symbolical type of poem presents difficulties
which are absent in a poem which is the immediate expression
of feeling. The Symbolist poet gives expression to his poetical
idea not in the language of direct emotion, but in the presenta-
tion of some image of a thing, a person, a situation, which is the
symbol of the idea; unless therefore he uses generally accepted
symbols, or such as are easily decipherable, he runs the risk of
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? being difficult of comprehension. George writes almost ex-
clusively symbolical poems, and in the earlier volume where
the presentation of a 'Stimmung' (un etat d'dme) is primarily
his aim, the basic significance of the poem is easily revealed
by the appositeness of the symbol chosen. Thus Die Spange
at the end of Pilgerfahrten and Vogelschau at the end of
Algabal, by their place in the order of poems, hint at once at
some significance with regard to the poet's situation. In Das
Jahr der Seele the poem which begins 'Die blume, die ich mir
am fenster hege' sheds its material significance and reveals its
emotional message on a first reading; even in the last volume,
Das Neue Reich, the poem Das Lied is manifestly beneath its
legendary narrative a statement of the poet's lot on earth. Butnot
all of George's poems yield up their symbolical meaning so reacP
2y. It may perhaps be legitimately assumed that such poems
have in their composition a more conscious effort of the will, a
greater attention to the elements of form and the deliberate
choice of words than the poems which are the direct expression
of feeling, and such poems as come, so to speak, surging up
unhampered from the subconscious--as Goethe's poem Uber
alien Gipfeln ist Ruh would appear to have done if the tradi-
tional account of its composition be the true one. But the over-
insistence on the song-like element in lyrical poetry is as re-
strictive as the undue emphasis upon the element of form. The
unpremeditatedness of song of the German poets who were
unduly influenced by the Volkslied at the beginning of the
nineteenth century led them to write countless poems which
were trite and trivial in content, and had little but their facile
tunefulness to recommend them. These were the poems which
had determined the conventional standard of German lyrical
poetry throughout the century, and they were the touchstone
by which George's formed and fashioned art was tested and
usually rejected.
From all that has been said it will be apparent that George
was a very self-conscious and deliberate poet, in whom the ele-
ments of will and intention were manifestly at work in the
process of composition. He took upon himself the role of poet
and in the light of his conception and conviction of what it
should be, he played his rdle with conscientiousness and un-
remitting attention. But it was his very awareness of himself as
il fabbro which aroused a feeling of hostility to his poetry--
strengthened by the recognition of a similar principle in the
conduct of his life--a feeling which expressed itself in such dis-
approving terms as 'mannered', 'artificial' and 'unnatural' by
the general public.
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? Qoethe insisted that it was the characteristic of jail art that
it was not nature;. and the demand that art should be ^natural'
is made only by those who have failed to recognize that essential
distinction. As long as the divergencies of art from nature do
not obtrude themselves--for they are present in all art--they
are tacitly accepted and overlooked. But the artist who, like
George, makes it clear that he is fully aware of the distinction
and is working in accordance with this awareness, creates a
stumbling block which makes his acceptance by the general
public difficult and exposes him to resentment and often ridicule.
This was the situation in which George found himself during
the greater part of his creative life as a poet in regard to all but
a small and discriminating body of readers.
V
In the growing uncertainty and questioning of values in the
second half of the nineteenth century art became a moral
problem which found expression in the writings of various
investigators into the nature of society, notably in the works of
Tolstoi. In Germany the dramatist and critic JPaul Ernst found
it necessary to assign to art an ethical function as a means of
educating 'das Volk. ' before he could with a quietened conscience
devote himself to literature as a profession. Ten years later
y , in the early writings of Thomas Mann the dubiety of art be-
\ came one of the main themes. For Stefan George however no
such problem arose. But the unquestioned acceptance of
aestheticism with him is made possible by the assimilation to
> it of two essentially ethical ideas, the ideas of dedication ( Weihe)
,". ^-and discipline (Zucht). These are the controlling forces to which
^ all the poetry of George is subject; and they manifestly imply
. a sense of responsibility in the practice of his art, which may be
implicit in many poets but is rarely so explicitly revealed as in
George. The first poem in the early Hymnen is entitled Weihe.
Thus the theme is announced from the beginning, and in some
of the other early poems its importance is illustrated by refer-
ences to another element, Leidenschaft (passion), which, since
it is inimical to the poet's absolute dedication to his art is re-
presented as an invasion of the sanctuary of poetry by the emo-
tions of ordinary life. The expression of Zucht in the world
of art is crystallized in the idea of form, that is to say in the
unremitting effort of the poet to achieve perfection of form.
With Paul Ernst the idea of form is screwed up into a sort of
moral compulsion and converted into an operative element in
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? the disciplining of man's ethical being. Thomas Mann, however,
in the following decade perceives its twofold possibilities, and
speaks in Der Tod in Venedig not only of its ethical quality--
'als Ergebnis und Ausdruck der Zucht' (the outcome and ex-
pression of discipline)--but also of its amoral and even immoral
potentialities, since it can be applied to subject matter of all
kinds and thus legitimatize the poet's occupation with all that
falls under the heading of what Mann stigmatizes as 'das Lieder-
liche' (the disreputable). But with George no such doubt and
misgivings were associated with the idea of form, nor indeed
with poetry as such at all. It was only in the abuse of poetry,
whether in a mistaken choice of subject matter or in an inade-
quate attention to its formal perfection, that he was concerned
to effect a reform. It was the idea of a mission which from the
beginning coloured his attitude to the practice of poetry, and
this mission was to be carried out not merely by the laying down
of certain principles with regard to it in the introductory pages
of Die Blatter fur die Kunst, but also in the actual poems which
he himself and those who shared his ideals wrote as examples of
the new ideal.
No man, however great a genius, is entirely outside the pre-
vailing taste of the period in which he lives, and George reveals
the fact that he belongs to the nineties of the last century both
in his acceptance of the idea of the autonomy of art and in his
particular conception of beauty itself. The reader of today will
often, especially when reading the earlier volumes, find himself
uneasily reminded of what was considered artistic or beautiful
in the nineties, and no longer is so: thus the artistic adornment
of the volumes itself, the description of the appearance of In-
spiration in the poem Weihe, of the Angel in Der Teppich des
Lebens and much of the attitudinizing and overcolourfulness of
Algabal.
George's collected works, including five volumes of trans-
lations and one of prose sketches, occupy eighteen volumes in
the collected edition; but the volumes contain as a rule not
more than 150 pages and the manner of printing is generous of
space. His earliest poems are dated 1886. He was then a youth
of eighteen. His last poems appeared in collected form in the
volume entitled Das Neue Reich issued in 1928. Extending
therefore over a period of forty years the poems offer the
opportunity to survey a poetical and indeed spiritual develop-
ment, and it seems most suitable to treat them chronologically.
If the idea of development be accepted it must be with the reser-
vation that no development in the quality of the poems is
implied, on the contrary it may be maintained with some justi-
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? fication that the poems of the middle period (Das Jahr der Seele,
Der Teppich des Lebens, and Der Siebente Ring) are the height
of George's poetic achievement. The poems in the later volumes,
notably in Der Stern des Bundes and to a considerable extent in
Das Neue Reich, are markedly different in form and subject
matter from the earlier ones; and the change which has taken
place in the poetry reflects the change in the spiritual life of the
poet himself, so that here in lhe more conventional sense the
word" development is apposite. That development reveals
George in the earlier stages as a seeker for illumination, for a
significance to life; finding it in his middle period, or rather
having it revealed to him; and then using that illumination to
survey the world of European civilization at the beginning of
the century and pass judgment upon it. Given the nature of the
subject matter in Der Stern des Bundes it is only to be expected
that poetry will set aside her more traditional charms and adopt
a severer and harsher mode of expression. One does not expect
from the prophet Jeremiah the sweetness of voice of the Song
of Solomon.
Die Fibel with its immature beginnings being left aside, the
first volume in which the determining and permanent literary
influences upon George are operative is the one which includes
Hymnen; Pilgerfahrten; Algabal (1892), the three parts of
which had been published separately before. It may be noted
that the tripartite arrangement within the volumes is common
to several of the later collections.
The first group, Hymnen, are in the manner of the French
Symbolists, more markedly so indeed than the poems in any
succeeding volume. The poet seeks to give in each of the poems
a presentation (Darstellung) of a transitory aspect of his inner
Jife (itat d'dme) by means of symbols which take the form
in many of the poems of aspects of landscape--narrowly circum-
scribed aspects such as of a terrace with vases; a corner of a
park with a fountain; a stretch of sea shore. All are evoked and
. suggested, not carried out in detail; but with a very noticeable
and already masterly employment of colour, which continues
indeed throughout the early volumes, as does the ability to make
skilful use of vowel sounds to produce a musical effect; for
instance, the whistling sound of the reeds in 'die hohen rohre
im linden winde ihre fahnen schwingen'. The first poem, Weihe,
represents the inner preparation of the poet for the coming
of Inspiration (die herrin) which consecrates him to bis function
as a poet. Inspiration descends; there is in the description
perhaps a recollection of Diana descending to kiss the sleeping
Endymion on Mount Latinos. The ideas of blessing bestowed
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? upon the poet, of purification and sacred acceptance, heighten
the religious sense of the poet's vocation. But together with the
idea of the dedication of the poet there is also the suggestion of
- the disturbing influences from the outside world, which seek to
turn him aside from his ideal task. These disturbing elements
are envisaged as. human love, and throughout this and the
following group of poems we have hints of a conflict between
these two elements in the being of the poet. But the love of
women plays no important role in the poetry of George, and
where it appears--mainly in the early volumes--it is never pre-
sented with enough intensity to make it convincing: the poet
turns too easily from feminine allurements to the claims of his
pen for the reader to fear that the temptation was very compel-
ling. In Das Jahr der Seele a shadowy 'Freundin' accompanies
the poet through the park of his soul and imparts some conso-
lation to his bereaved spirit. With her, woman disappears almost
entirely from George's poetry except in verses addressed to
\ friends. '
The group ends with a poem called Die Garten schliessen;
and the next group, Pilgerfahrten, is prepared for by the last
line: 'Pilger mit der hand am stabe'. The situation is given in
the Aufschrift to the next group I George as a pilgrim setting
forth in his search for illumination. Endowed with his gift of
poetry, feeling himself a dedicated being, but disturbed by
the allurements of life to which from time to time he yields, he
proceeds upon his solitary way; and the remainder of this volume
and the two succeeding ones show him seeking and proving,
yielding at times to passion, to melancholy and despair, and
communicating in symbolical form his inner experiences. )
Pilgerfahrten shows us more of the conflict between the dedi-
cated poet and those emotional disturbances which militate
against the carrying out of his sacred function: his fallings away
from his high calling through misgiving, world-wearinesSj
through ignoble contact with the life of the crowd. "There are
poems of admonition to himself; poems in which he conjures up
the journeys of his childhood; one in which the meaninglessness
of all growth is symbolized in the attitude of a woman as she
looks down upon the flowers in her garden:
Verdrossen wittert sie den stolz der dinge
Die nur zum blu? hen aufgesprossen sind.
1 The poem Die Fremde in Der Teppich des Lebens might indeed be
regarded as symbolizing woman as the intrusive element in the ordered
life.
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? This group contains two well-known poems: Miihle, lass die
arme still, and the already mentioned Die Spange. Both are
symbolical, the former more obscurely so than the latter; but
in the narrative subject matter--a number of white-robed girls
returning from their first communion and drowned by the break-
ing of the ice on the lake which they are crossing--there seems
to be a possibility of two interpretations. It may be said that the
surface meaning of the poem--the facts allusively narrated--
is not immediately easy to grasp.
One interpretation brings it into connection with the under-
lying conflict of these early volumes: the conflict between the
element of dedication in the poet's life and the hos^c forces. of
the world without. In this respect the white-robed communicants
represent clearly the element of dedication; the 'schwarze
Knaben', which draw them down into the dark waters of de-
struction, the forces which are at war with it. Hence it is a mood
of misgiving, even despair, which is symbolized. A second
interpretation makes the Stimmung which is symbolized the
poet's sense of insecurity in a universe where the life of man, con-
sciously controlled, is at the mercy of the darker, profounder,
irrational and incomprehensible forces. It is perhaps worth
noting with what verbal skill the metallic quality of the frozen
landscape is suggested.
The second poem, Die Spange {The Clasp), appears at the end
of the collection and its symbolical meaning is clear. 'The
Clasp' is George's art. Under the form of this image he is
saying that he wished to write cool, simple poetry, but that he
. has not yet acquired the maturity to do it. He will therefore
attempt another kind: the richly ornate, highly coloured,
"exotic type; and these indeed are the characteristics of the
poems in the succeeding group, Algabal. The change from the
one type of poetry to the other is signalized in the poem not
only in the verbal statement but in the difference in the use
of vowel sounds in the two stanzas; and the frequency and
stressing of the full 'o' sounds in the second stanza--there are
seven in three lines--makes the effect of a fanfare heralding the
appearance of splendour:
Ich wollte sie aus kiihlem eisen
Und wie ein glatter fester streif /
Doch war im schacht auf alien gleisen
So kein metall zum gusse reif.
Nun aber soli sie also sein:
Wie eine grosse fremde dolde
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? Geformt aus feuerrotem golde
Und reichem blitzendem gestein.
Algabal reveals an aspect of George's poetry which is con-
fined to this particular volume and owes much to certain tenden-
cies and movements in French poetry in the second half of the
century, namely to that which is usually stigmatized as Deca-
dentisme and attributed to Baudelaire, Rimbaud and above all
to Huysmans: an attitude of mind which has its essential source
in the dissatisfaction of the poets of the time with the material-
istic, scientific civilization which the nineteenth century brought
with it. The particular reaction to the civilization of the age
which finds expression in Decadentisme is only one of many
others; all of which, however, are basically a rejection of it.
The Decadents go further than the Parnassians and Symbolists,
for they reject the life of nature altogether and seek to set up
in its place an artificial life in which they cultivate a mode of
existence which draws its values from artificiality. The extreme
statement of this attitude of mind is to be found in Huysmans,
and receives explicit expression in the following passages from
A Rebours. In a preface written twenty years later the author
describes how the work came into existence. It was to have
been a brief fantasy:
Je me figurais un monsieur Folantin. . . qui a ddcouvert
dans l'artifice un derivatif au degout qui lui inspirent les
tracas de la vie et les moeurs americains de son temps.
In the novel itself the hero Des Esseintes describes nature thus:
Cette sempiternelle radoteuse a maintenant use la debon-
naire admiration des vrais artistes, et le moment est venu oil
il s'agit de la remplacer, autant que faire se pourra par
l'artifice.
These are the ideas which are put into practice by the hero of the
Algabal poems, the Late Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, and
they represent in extreme form the ideas of George--exaggerated,
over-coloured, the idea of artificiality forced almost into a cari-
cature of itself.
In the spiritual pilgrimage of George to which each volume
of poems bears witness, Algabal represents the stage in which
artificiality is glorified and a complete abandonment to it is
essayed and tested as a possible solution in the search for a
satisfying mode of life. George, like Huysmans, rejected it,
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? but in the working out of the problems of his own being in
terms of the emperor-priest he created a work of richness of
colouring, rhetorical splendour and a certain outmoded beauty.
The identification of George with Algabal is of course not com-
plete. It is not so much with the perverse and cruel tyrant, which
according to history he was, but with one who was both priest
and emperor and thus set aside by his position from the ordinary
life oFlnan^in that sense 'dedicated' as George felt himself to
_ be as a poet.
The work is dedicated to the memory of King Ludwig II of
Bavaria, the patron of Wagner, the lover of the arts, who sought
to realize in concrete form the dreams of his romantic soul,
who rejected life as he experienced it in the civilization around
him, attempted to create an artificial mode of life of his own and
ultimately died by drowning. In the Aufschrift George addresses
the king as 'a derided martyr king' and speaks of himself as
'his younger brother'.
Algabal is divided into three parts: Im Untergrund; Tage;
Andenken. The first describes the emperor's subterranean
palace and gardens, and it is in this part that the rejection of
nature and the glorification of artificiality appear most clearly.
The second part, Tage, records Incidents and situations in the
life of Algabal during the years of his rule. The third, Andenken,
gives, as its title suggests, his memories and musings upon that
period of rule after it is over. Part I has four poems: the first
describes in a general way the realm he has created.
Wo ausser dem seinen kein wille schaltet
Und wo er dem licht und dem wetter gebeut.
The second describes the golden room, the third the silver
room of his underground palace; the fourth his subterranean
garden. Thus he speaks of it:
Mein garten bedarf nicht luft und nicht warme/
Der garten den ich mir selber erbaut
Und seiner vogel leblose schwarme
Haben noch nie einen friihling geschaut.
Tage gives impressions of the life and of the character of
Algabal. In him there is also that duality which appears in
different forms in these early poems of George: tender and cruel,'
-, beauty-loving and vindictive, a thinker and a voluptuary, asking
himself after he has put his subjects to death whether he has
V- really hated them; satisfied with himself that he has killed a
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? 'pair of lovers sleeping beneath a tree and thus prevented them
from waking to a life which would have interrupted the enjoy-
^> ment of their love; putting a slave to death who had disturbed
his doves while he was feeding them, and then causing the slave's
name to be inscribed in the golden goblet from which he drank
vtiie following evening.
This collection of poems is unlike much of the early works of
George in so far as the poet has made a coherent symbol for
himself in the person of Algabal and lived through a certain
phase of experience in his imagined hero. The same pattern
recurs, though less definitely, and with an unnamed hero in
Die Hangenden Garten. But this phase of experience is now
over--a solution has been tried but has proved inadequate;
new experiences must be sought and put to the test. At the end
of Algabal stands the poem Vogelschau--'Weisse schwalben
sah ich fliegen' (white swallows I saw flying); it represents a
turning away from the exotic, from the world of 'Unnatur',
symbolized in underground palaces and gardens, from the
artificiality of a realm constructed entirely by the hand of man
in defiance of nature. The 'bunte Haher' (gaily coloured jays)
of the 'Wald der Tusferi' (wood of Tusferi) of the second stanza;
the 'Raben' (ravens) and 'schwarze Dohlen' (black daws) of the
third stanza are representative of all that, and we come in the
final stanza to the 'weisse Schwalben' again but now no longer
'in dem Winde hell und heiss' (in the bright and burning wind)
but 'in dem Winde kalt und klar' (in the cold and clear wind).
This poem forms the transition from the atmosphere of the
world of Algabal to one in which there prevails a more tonic
and astringent air, which gives the atmosphere for the next
collection: Das Buch der Hirten.
The poems of this collection have as their setting the Greece
of the idylls, not the heroic Greece but the every-day pastoral,
bucolic life. The second collection, Das Buch der Sagen und
Sange, has the Middle Ages for its setting; the third, Das Buch
der Hangenden Garten, the Orient. In none of the collections
is there any attempt at an archaeological, reconstruction of a
past age. The civilizations chosen are symbols of states of mind
of the poet--stages in his search for illumination of the signifi-
cance of life.
Each one represents an attitude to life, of which the
? figures which appear in the poems are representatives; and the
poems in all these books are concerned with imaginary figures.
v These may well be projections of the poet's inner life, but each
poem considered individually and apart from its setting still
remains a self-contained evocation of a person, a mood, a situa-
tion, thus carrying out the principle announced in Die Blatter
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? filr die Kunst that the aim of jjoetry was presentation, not re-
flection, the transformation of the poetical idea into & concrete
^ form. In no one of the poems appears a character vouched for
^. by history; but the figures, though imaginary, are nevertheless,
typical of a situation or of the period of which they are repre-
_ sentative. In this collection appears clearly for the first time the
very marked habit of the later George to present characters,
which interest not so much by their individual qualities as by
their existence as types, so that a certain statue-like quality is
common to most of them.
The contrast between Algabal--George's most colourful and
brilliant achievement so far--and Das Buch der Hirten could
not be greater. From the violent exoticism of the earlier work
he passes to an atmosphere of cool serenity, and the colours
are correspondingly subdued to pastel shades; from the rejection
of nature and the febrile determination^to create an artificial
,world, to the acceptance of the ordinary life of nature, and to
the picture of a life lived in accordance with it--in accordance
with nature, that is, as it is moulded by immemorial custom and
manifests itself in the communal life of man, unchallenged by
the arbitrariness of the will of the individual. Here are no
passions at work, but a calm following of that which seems to
be the natural order of man's life, though the presentation is
tinged by a certain melancholy, which is indeed apparent in all
the early volumes: the sisters who on the anniversary of the
death of their bridegrooms recall their loss; the shepherd
who set forth for the day in charge of his sheep; the wrestler
who is unaware of the fame which his skill has brought him; the
youths who have been brought up to be servants in the temple
but are not chosen for that office; the first born who must wander
forth from their homes to seek a living elsewhere. All these
figures accept their fate unquestioningly, and of their accept-
ance a feeling of serenity is begotten, which is deepened by the
poetic treatment itself: the measured, moderate statement, the
coolness of presentation. Nothing here excites or distresses
intensely--everything has the calm and simplicity of figures on
a frieze: the music of the verse is very subdued and solemnly
moving; its metrical form the long unrhymed line.
The periods chosen in these collections are, as has been said,
symbols of states of mind of the poet. Thus though they are
successively investigated and presented, they exist also con-
temporaneously. In turning away from bucolic Greece, George
is not rejecting it as he had rejected the world of Algabal.
No single period symbolizes his whole ideal of life; it is in the
combination of the three that this consisfsT"~ ~~
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? It has been said that George's ideal of life lies in the synthesis
of the three elements of which man is compounded: 'Geist,
Seele und Leib' (spirit, soul and body); though in his later
works more importance is assigned to 'Leib'. The terms as used
by George defy an exact definition but it may roughly be said
that 'Geist' represents the living in accordance with ones destiny;
'Seele' the elements of enthusiasm, devotion and loyalty ^'Lfiib'-
^tne recognition of the body^and_the sensuous. Ufe. In passing
""from Das Buck der Mr ten to Das Buch der Sagen und Sange
we find ourselves again in a world--the world of the Middle.
-Ages--which seemed to George at this time to have produced
. ^harmonized and unified life, just as the Greece of the earlier
collection had done,T)ut of a different kind. Again we have poems
presenting characteristic figures of a period--for George it is
largely the period of chivalry and song, with religious devotion
as an integraTeTement of it. Thus: the youth keeping watch
before the altar on the eve of his being dubbed a knight (Sporen-
wache); the companions in arms; the hermit; the knight and
his lady parting at dawn; the group of knights-errant in search
of the grail; the knight who sleeps when he should be watching;
poems suggested by the 'Minnedienst' of the twelfth century;
a hymn in praise of the Virgin--all motifs taken from the civiliza-
tion of the Middle Ages. Again there is no attempt at antiquarian
resuscitation of a past age. George lets his imagination wander
through mediaeval times and identifies aspects of his own inner
life with certain figures, certain characteristic situations. The
theme of dedication and passion in conflict recurs once or
. twice: in Der Ritter der sich verschlief, and more markedly in
Sporenwache, in which for a moment the youth forgets his
religious dedication during the vigil and the picture,of a maiden
he had once seen passes before his thoughts,
The beautiful youth in heroic pose or hVneroic function is
one of the characteristic figures which appears in all these early
collections. It is central with George, for it is the symbol at this
stage of 'das schone Leben'; it occurs again in Der Teppich des
Lebens and ultimately transcends even the symbolical and be-
comes the realization of 'das schone Leben' in the ideal figure
of Maximin in Der Siebente Ring and Der Stern des Bundes.
The poems of the next collection: Die Hangenden Garten1
are more akin to the poems of Algabal, though without their
violence and cult of artificiality. After the bucolic world of the
shepherds and the heroic world of the Middle Ages, the world
of this oriental ruler is assayed as a symbol of the sensuous life.
1 Schoenberg set fifteen of these poems to music in 1906.
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? Thus after the life of the spirit and the life of soul, the life of the
hody is examined as a possible mode from which satisfaction
may be obtained. As in Algabal a certain vague succession of
events, hinted at rather than stated, forms the string upon which
the poems are threaded, so in this collection there is a central
figure, though he is not named. Ruler and priest, he neglects
his functions as such for love; half of his country is overrun by
the enemy; he goes as a minstrel slave to the court of another
ruler; gives this up, too, from an inner dissatisfaction and a
sense of the valuelessness of all activity. In the last poem but one,
he is seen looking back upon all he has lost. He hears voices
from the stream--the last poem, Stimmen im Strome,--which
call to him and promise him recovery, refuge and peace. But
even this may not bring satisfaction. Beyond it is annihilation,
dissolution, absorption into the elements. This poem with its
floating, swaying music (largely due to the frequent use of pres-
ent participles) represents this in symbolical form in the voices
of the water nymphs who draw him down to the pleasures of
their life beneath the waves, promising him ultimate bliss in his
dissolution and transformation into the waves themselves.
In so far as the three worlds represented in the three books
are spirit, soul and body, at the end of the third book the syn-
thesis of the three has not been achieved, though no one of
the three has been rejected. It is no doubt logical that the end
of the book which is symbolical of 'Leib' should be dissolution,
since that is the end of the body and all that pertains thereto.
A comparison between the last poems in each of the three collec-
tions reveals a positive note only in the second one, which re-
presents 'Seele' in the hymn to the Virgin Lilie der Aue. The
last poem in Das Buch der Hirten is called Das Ende des
Siegers and suggests that the hero in the last resort will be over-
come. Wounded by the monster which escapes him, with a
wound that will not heal, he ends in pitiable decay. It would
seem therefore that in so far as no synthesis has yet been
brought about between the claims of spirit, soul and body, the
most positive and enduring value is that offered by 'Seele'. The
conflict 'Weihe-Leidenschaft' which appears in the earlier
collections fades out with Das Buch der Hangenden Garten.
The next volume establishes a connection with the earlier
ones by its very title. The poet still upon his 'Pilgerfahrten',
after essaying all these modes of experience, having rejected
some and turned aside from the exclusive acceptance of any,
turns back to his own soul and holds communion with himself
in. the park-like landscape of Das Jahr der Seele. The settings of
the earlier collection had been drawn from the historical past
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? or the exotic or the artificially imaginative. Here the back-
ground is nature, but nature moulded and controlled by the
hand of man and almost in its particular form created by it.
The background is to a great extent revealed by suggestion
rather than by direct description; but with the colours, the
atmosphere, the feel of Autumn, Winter and Summer as much
conditioning the 'Stimmungen' of the 'ich' and 'du' of the poems
as conditioned by them. What belongs to nature exclusively and
is not the effect of the hand of man is primarily the ordered pro-
cession of the seasons, and even from this Spring has been omitted.
The volume entitled Das Jahr der Seele1 falls again into three
parts, of which the first is the one covered by the title; the second
part is devoted to poems concerned with personal friends; the
third is called Traurige Tdnze. The first part has a further tri-
partite division: Nach der Lese (Autumn), Waller im Schnee
(Winter) and Sieg des Sommers. In all of them the atmosphere
of the particular season is sensitively caught and expressed.
In a preface warning the readers not to try and identify places
I or characters George wrote: 'Seldom are 'ich' and 'du' so much
the same soul as in this book'. With this indication from George
it seems justifiable to assume that^hey represent the soul of the
poet communing with itself. The first part of the book suggests
a point of repose, of self-collection after the experiences recorded
in the works already passed under review ^s it perhaps in nature
after all that the illumination will be found? But there seems a
weariness, a sense of the fruitlessness of his quest, there is no
Spring in the year of his soul, and a certain melancholy hangs
over the whole giving it a music of its own. There is almost a
renunciation of hope and the acceptance of a second-best until
the real illumination, now almost despaired of, makes its appear-
ance. Throughout the work the fiction of a 'du', of the presence
of a second person, is maintained; and this 'du' is a gracious
visitor, Vfho understands and soothes the distress of one who is
seeking direction in life and awaiting illumination. The sugges-
tion, at least, that the companion (a woman) is not the Beloved
herself but one who must be accepted in her place, is given in
poems two and three. But the atmosphere of the whole work is
tentative, vaguely expectant, and indeed the Angel, who is to
bring the illumination in Der Teppich des Lebens, is prefigured in
the lines:
Driiben an dem strand ein bruder
Winkt das frohe banner schwenkend.
1 Schoenberg set one poem from this volume to music; Webern also
one for mixed chorus a capella. ".
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? But all is symbolical--the 'ich' and the 'du', the seasons of the
year; and the park in which the lovers walk is the soul of the
poet. '~
. The poems are all written in four-lined stanzas and with few
^exceptions in eleven syllabled lines,- so that throughout the
i>worlcTeminine rhymes predominate. It is no doubt partly this
which gives to this collection a musical quality which has made
it the most popular and the most quoted form of George's
works. It is not even necessary to perceive the symbolic mean-
. ing in order to realize that here are poems which will bear com-
^ parison in purely jDoetic quality, even in the most conventional
acceptance of the term, with favourite anthology pieces in
German literature.
Umkreisen wir den stillen teich
In den die Wasserwege miinden!
Du suchst mich heiter zu ergriinden
Ein wind umweht uns friihlings-weich.
Die bla? tter die den boden gilben
Verbreiten neuen wolgeruch /
Du sprichst mir nach in klugen silben
Was mich erfreut im bunten buch.
Doch weisst du auch vom tiefen gliicke
Und scha? tzest du die stumme tra? ne?
Das auge schattend auf der briicke
Verfolgest du den zug der schwa? ne.
Doubtless this poem is symbolical, though its symbolical sig-
nificance is notapparent on the surface, deeper than which the
,ingenuous reader need not penetrate in order to perceive its
poetical beauty, and this fact makes its acceptance more easy.
The same may be said also of the poem in Waller im Schnee:
Die blume die ich mir am fenster hege
Verwahrt vorm froste in der grauen scherbe
Betriibt mich nur trotz meiner guten pflege
Und ha? ngt das haupt als ob sie langsam sterbe
Um ihrer friihem bliihenden geschicke
Erinnerung aus meinem sinn zu merzen
Erwa? hl ich scharfe waffen und ich knicke
Die blasse blume mit dem kranken herzen.
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? Was soil sie nur zur bitternis mir taugen?
Ich wu? nschte dass vom fenster sie verschwande . . .
Nun heb ich wieder meine leeren augen
Und in die leere nacht die leeren hande.
Like the former poem it can be appreciated without its symbolic
reference which, however, is here more easily recognized: the
sickly flower, the poet's decision to cut it, the sense of emptiness
which is the result of his action--all this refers to some inward
circumstances, such as the deliberate crushing of a hope, an
ambition, a love.
The second part of the volume consists of poems addressed to
George's personal friends, and circumstances connected with
their reunions. Part of their significance is inevitably lost to
those readers who are unacquainted either with the friends or
with the circumstances, but there are some poems among them
concerned with George's own inner life and situation at this
time which are illuminating in that respect. The third part of the
collection, Traurige Tdnze, moves back again into an atmosphere
tinged with the melancholy of the poems of Das Jahr der Seele.
Like these they are all in four-lined stanzas, but here each poem
consists of three stanzas. The length of line has a greater variety
than in those of the earlier groups. Some--Dies leid und diese
last for instance--are lyrics of weariness and despair. This
weariness is lightened in some of the poems by the determination
to make the best of what is available, to be thankful for what is,
since the great illumination has not come; to welcome autumn
because there has been no spring. The mood sways up and
down, from poem to poem. 'lf they are dances they are sad
dances. As in Das Jahr der Seele there is the assumption of a
companionship of 'ich' and 'du' and many of the poems are
addressed to the 'du'. The following poem gives the prevailing
mood of the whole group: acceptance of and gratitude for what is,
with a sense that it is a second best, that something has been missed
which would have solved all problems and realized all aspirations:
Es lacht in dem steigenden jahr dir
Der duft aus dem garten noch leis.
Flicht in dem flatternden haar dir
Eppich und ehrenpreis.
Die wehende saat ist wie gold noch/
Vielleicht nicht so hoch mehr und reich /
Rosen begru? ssen dich hold noch/
Ward auch ihr glanz etwas bleich.
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? Verschweigen wir was uns verwehrt ist /
Geloben wir glu? cklich zu sein
Wenn auch nicht mehr uns beschert ist
Als noch ein rundgang zu zwein.
But throughout the prevailing melancholy of these poems there
is* a sense of expectancy; and the coming of illumination which
is heralded in the last poem of Waller im Schnee by the appear-
ance of the brother on the shore who 'beckons, waving his
joyous banner' is repeated in the lines:
Mein feuchtes auge spa? ht nur fern
Nach diesem Einen aus der gern
Die harfe reich und wohlgestimmt
Der unsre goldne harfe nimmt i
Nor is there absent an element which varies the dominating
tone of melancholy: the note of admonition or self-encourage-
ment--for as in Das Jahr der Seele, the 'ich' and 'du' must
ultimately be considered parts of the poet's own soul. Thus one
poem concludes with the lines:
Nicht vor der eisigen firnen
Drohendem ra? tsei erschrick
Und zu den ernsten gestirnen
Hebe den suchenden blick!
\
And there are other poems in which the same note is struck, v
\
VI
The tendency to see George as a figure of masterfulness, of
complete self-possession, to which the later volumes lend some
evidence has been extended to cover the whole of his life. This
is a simplification of his personality which is not justified. Up
to and including Das Jahr der Seele there is a continuous refer-
ence in the poems to states of mind which are far from indicating
such a convinced attitude of self-possession. As has been sug-
gested, all these earlier collections express a seeking and proving
of possible modes of life, and in all of them there are poems
which are the expressions of uncertainty, misgiving, doubt and
even of world-weariness and despair, so that on the whole it
may be said that a sense of melancholy prevails, not least in
Das Jahr der Seele and in Traurige Ta? nze. It is only from Der
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? Teppich des Lebens onwards that the personality of George, as
v revealed in his poetry, presents the appearance under which
he is generally envisaged, and emerges as that of one whose attitude
to life is a positive one: masterful, autocratic, even dictatorial.
For the poems included in Der Teppich des Lebens (1899),
above all in the poems of the Vorspiel, announce the illumina-
tion, the promise of fulfilment, the attainment of which had been
the aspiration recorded in all the earlier poems. The Vorspiel
is also in a more inward sense a prelude--a prelude to the revela-
tion of Maximin, which forms the core of the following volume:
Der Siebente Ring. Der Teppich des Lebens has again a tripartite
division; Vorspiel; Teppich des Lebens; Lieder von Traum
und Tod. With this volume a new idea enters George's poetry
--the idea of a message. The idea of a mission had been implicit
in his poetry from the beginning; now it becomes more explicit,
\ fortified by the message. In the Vorspiel, it is as yet a message
delivered to him by the Angel; but in the later volumes it will
become a message which he himself is called to deliver to his
country and his generation. In the twenty-four poems which
make up the Vorspiel the ideal of life which is to be his is
announced by the Angel to him, and the various tentative modes
represented in the earlier volumes coalesce and are crystallized
inj:he ideal of 'das schone leben', which is henceforth to
determine his thinking.
The first poem describes the appearance of the Angel to the
almost despairing poet: he comes as the messenger of 'das
. /schone leben', and it is noteworthy that his voice is almost
identical with that of the poet-- 'und seine stimme fast der
meinen glich' from which it is to be assumed that here again--
as in Das Jahr der Seele--there is an externalization of a part of
George's own inner life, the part that has now found an adjust-
ment to the claims of spirit, soul and body. , in which adjust-
ment 'das schone leben' is realized, and the manifestation, of
Jdas schone leben' is the body. In the successive poems--all
poems of equal length (four quatrains of solemn and sustained
movement) the Angel announces and the poet accepts a certain
mode of life. He will live in solitude, at the most only among a
few chosen companions all of whom share his ideals with him.
The course of his life will now be altered: no longer will he jour-
ney to foreign lands; the landscape of his native land, the land-
scape of the Rhine will be his chosen province, from which he
will speak to his own people.
It is at this point that George takes up the rfile of the German
poet; and though this is often held against him, the charge
seems hardly a legitimate one. His assumption of this rdle
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of reading, which was a slow solemn declamation based upon
the intoning of the office in the Catholic church.
To these surface difficulties to the understanding of George's
poetry--the deeper ones are no more than those to which every
serious poet may legitimately lay claim as his right--may be
added (at any rate for readers outside Germany) the concen-
trated and compact use of language, whereby he avoids, as far
as possible, the little connecting colourless words--prepositions,
articles and conjunctions. This forces him often to the genitive
construction; 'ich forschte bleichen eifers nach dem horte'; or
he avoids the preposition by means of present and perfect parti-
ciples; or prefers such turns of phrase as: 'ich ihrer und sie
meiner gotter lachten' instead of 'ich lachte u? ber ihre gotter
und sie lachten u? ber meine'. The elimination of so many of
these little connecting words, whilst it produces an effect of
compactness, has also the effect of slowing down the movement
of the line by the greater tightness of verbal texture.
No doubt the symbolical type of poem presents difficulties
which are absent in a poem which is the immediate expression
of feeling. The Symbolist poet gives expression to his poetical
idea not in the language of direct emotion, but in the presenta-
tion of some image of a thing, a person, a situation, which is the
symbol of the idea; unless therefore he uses generally accepted
symbols, or such as are easily decipherable, he runs the risk of
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? being difficult of comprehension. George writes almost ex-
clusively symbolical poems, and in the earlier volume where
the presentation of a 'Stimmung' (un etat d'dme) is primarily
his aim, the basic significance of the poem is easily revealed
by the appositeness of the symbol chosen. Thus Die Spange
at the end of Pilgerfahrten and Vogelschau at the end of
Algabal, by their place in the order of poems, hint at once at
some significance with regard to the poet's situation. In Das
Jahr der Seele the poem which begins 'Die blume, die ich mir
am fenster hege' sheds its material significance and reveals its
emotional message on a first reading; even in the last volume,
Das Neue Reich, the poem Das Lied is manifestly beneath its
legendary narrative a statement of the poet's lot on earth. Butnot
all of George's poems yield up their symbolical meaning so reacP
2y. It may perhaps be legitimately assumed that such poems
have in their composition a more conscious effort of the will, a
greater attention to the elements of form and the deliberate
choice of words than the poems which are the direct expression
of feeling, and such poems as come, so to speak, surging up
unhampered from the subconscious--as Goethe's poem Uber
alien Gipfeln ist Ruh would appear to have done if the tradi-
tional account of its composition be the true one. But the over-
insistence on the song-like element in lyrical poetry is as re-
strictive as the undue emphasis upon the element of form. The
unpremeditatedness of song of the German poets who were
unduly influenced by the Volkslied at the beginning of the
nineteenth century led them to write countless poems which
were trite and trivial in content, and had little but their facile
tunefulness to recommend them. These were the poems which
had determined the conventional standard of German lyrical
poetry throughout the century, and they were the touchstone
by which George's formed and fashioned art was tested and
usually rejected.
From all that has been said it will be apparent that George
was a very self-conscious and deliberate poet, in whom the ele-
ments of will and intention were manifestly at work in the
process of composition. He took upon himself the role of poet
and in the light of his conception and conviction of what it
should be, he played his rdle with conscientiousness and un-
remitting attention. But it was his very awareness of himself as
il fabbro which aroused a feeling of hostility to his poetry--
strengthened by the recognition of a similar principle in the
conduct of his life--a feeling which expressed itself in such dis-
approving terms as 'mannered', 'artificial' and 'unnatural' by
the general public.
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? Qoethe insisted that it was the characteristic of jail art that
it was not nature;. and the demand that art should be ^natural'
is made only by those who have failed to recognize that essential
distinction. As long as the divergencies of art from nature do
not obtrude themselves--for they are present in all art--they
are tacitly accepted and overlooked. But the artist who, like
George, makes it clear that he is fully aware of the distinction
and is working in accordance with this awareness, creates a
stumbling block which makes his acceptance by the general
public difficult and exposes him to resentment and often ridicule.
This was the situation in which George found himself during
the greater part of his creative life as a poet in regard to all but
a small and discriminating body of readers.
V
In the growing uncertainty and questioning of values in the
second half of the nineteenth century art became a moral
problem which found expression in the writings of various
investigators into the nature of society, notably in the works of
Tolstoi. In Germany the dramatist and critic JPaul Ernst found
it necessary to assign to art an ethical function as a means of
educating 'das Volk. ' before he could with a quietened conscience
devote himself to literature as a profession. Ten years later
y , in the early writings of Thomas Mann the dubiety of art be-
\ came one of the main themes. For Stefan George however no
such problem arose. But the unquestioned acceptance of
aestheticism with him is made possible by the assimilation to
> it of two essentially ethical ideas, the ideas of dedication ( Weihe)
,". ^-and discipline (Zucht). These are the controlling forces to which
^ all the poetry of George is subject; and they manifestly imply
. a sense of responsibility in the practice of his art, which may be
implicit in many poets but is rarely so explicitly revealed as in
George. The first poem in the early Hymnen is entitled Weihe.
Thus the theme is announced from the beginning, and in some
of the other early poems its importance is illustrated by refer-
ences to another element, Leidenschaft (passion), which, since
it is inimical to the poet's absolute dedication to his art is re-
presented as an invasion of the sanctuary of poetry by the emo-
tions of ordinary life. The expression of Zucht in the world
of art is crystallized in the idea of form, that is to say in the
unremitting effort of the poet to achieve perfection of form.
With Paul Ernst the idea of form is screwed up into a sort of
moral compulsion and converted into an operative element in
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? the disciplining of man's ethical being. Thomas Mann, however,
in the following decade perceives its twofold possibilities, and
speaks in Der Tod in Venedig not only of its ethical quality--
'als Ergebnis und Ausdruck der Zucht' (the outcome and ex-
pression of discipline)--but also of its amoral and even immoral
potentialities, since it can be applied to subject matter of all
kinds and thus legitimatize the poet's occupation with all that
falls under the heading of what Mann stigmatizes as 'das Lieder-
liche' (the disreputable). But with George no such doubt and
misgivings were associated with the idea of form, nor indeed
with poetry as such at all. It was only in the abuse of poetry,
whether in a mistaken choice of subject matter or in an inade-
quate attention to its formal perfection, that he was concerned
to effect a reform. It was the idea of a mission which from the
beginning coloured his attitude to the practice of poetry, and
this mission was to be carried out not merely by the laying down
of certain principles with regard to it in the introductory pages
of Die Blatter fur die Kunst, but also in the actual poems which
he himself and those who shared his ideals wrote as examples of
the new ideal.
No man, however great a genius, is entirely outside the pre-
vailing taste of the period in which he lives, and George reveals
the fact that he belongs to the nineties of the last century both
in his acceptance of the idea of the autonomy of art and in his
particular conception of beauty itself. The reader of today will
often, especially when reading the earlier volumes, find himself
uneasily reminded of what was considered artistic or beautiful
in the nineties, and no longer is so: thus the artistic adornment
of the volumes itself, the description of the appearance of In-
spiration in the poem Weihe, of the Angel in Der Teppich des
Lebens and much of the attitudinizing and overcolourfulness of
Algabal.
George's collected works, including five volumes of trans-
lations and one of prose sketches, occupy eighteen volumes in
the collected edition; but the volumes contain as a rule not
more than 150 pages and the manner of printing is generous of
space. His earliest poems are dated 1886. He was then a youth
of eighteen. His last poems appeared in collected form in the
volume entitled Das Neue Reich issued in 1928. Extending
therefore over a period of forty years the poems offer the
opportunity to survey a poetical and indeed spiritual develop-
ment, and it seems most suitable to treat them chronologically.
If the idea of development be accepted it must be with the reser-
vation that no development in the quality of the poems is
implied, on the contrary it may be maintained with some justi-
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? fication that the poems of the middle period (Das Jahr der Seele,
Der Teppich des Lebens, and Der Siebente Ring) are the height
of George's poetic achievement. The poems in the later volumes,
notably in Der Stern des Bundes and to a considerable extent in
Das Neue Reich, are markedly different in form and subject
matter from the earlier ones; and the change which has taken
place in the poetry reflects the change in the spiritual life of the
poet himself, so that here in lhe more conventional sense the
word" development is apposite. That development reveals
George in the earlier stages as a seeker for illumination, for a
significance to life; finding it in his middle period, or rather
having it revealed to him; and then using that illumination to
survey the world of European civilization at the beginning of
the century and pass judgment upon it. Given the nature of the
subject matter in Der Stern des Bundes it is only to be expected
that poetry will set aside her more traditional charms and adopt
a severer and harsher mode of expression. One does not expect
from the prophet Jeremiah the sweetness of voice of the Song
of Solomon.
Die Fibel with its immature beginnings being left aside, the
first volume in which the determining and permanent literary
influences upon George are operative is the one which includes
Hymnen; Pilgerfahrten; Algabal (1892), the three parts of
which had been published separately before. It may be noted
that the tripartite arrangement within the volumes is common
to several of the later collections.
The first group, Hymnen, are in the manner of the French
Symbolists, more markedly so indeed than the poems in any
succeeding volume. The poet seeks to give in each of the poems
a presentation (Darstellung) of a transitory aspect of his inner
Jife (itat d'dme) by means of symbols which take the form
in many of the poems of aspects of landscape--narrowly circum-
scribed aspects such as of a terrace with vases; a corner of a
park with a fountain; a stretch of sea shore. All are evoked and
. suggested, not carried out in detail; but with a very noticeable
and already masterly employment of colour, which continues
indeed throughout the early volumes, as does the ability to make
skilful use of vowel sounds to produce a musical effect; for
instance, the whistling sound of the reeds in 'die hohen rohre
im linden winde ihre fahnen schwingen'. The first poem, Weihe,
represents the inner preparation of the poet for the coming
of Inspiration (die herrin) which consecrates him to bis function
as a poet. Inspiration descends; there is in the description
perhaps a recollection of Diana descending to kiss the sleeping
Endymion on Mount Latinos. The ideas of blessing bestowed
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? upon the poet, of purification and sacred acceptance, heighten
the religious sense of the poet's vocation. But together with the
idea of the dedication of the poet there is also the suggestion of
- the disturbing influences from the outside world, which seek to
turn him aside from his ideal task. These disturbing elements
are envisaged as. human love, and throughout this and the
following group of poems we have hints of a conflict between
these two elements in the being of the poet. But the love of
women plays no important role in the poetry of George, and
where it appears--mainly in the early volumes--it is never pre-
sented with enough intensity to make it convincing: the poet
turns too easily from feminine allurements to the claims of his
pen for the reader to fear that the temptation was very compel-
ling. In Das Jahr der Seele a shadowy 'Freundin' accompanies
the poet through the park of his soul and imparts some conso-
lation to his bereaved spirit. With her, woman disappears almost
entirely from George's poetry except in verses addressed to
\ friends. '
The group ends with a poem called Die Garten schliessen;
and the next group, Pilgerfahrten, is prepared for by the last
line: 'Pilger mit der hand am stabe'. The situation is given in
the Aufschrift to the next group I George as a pilgrim setting
forth in his search for illumination. Endowed with his gift of
poetry, feeling himself a dedicated being, but disturbed by
the allurements of life to which from time to time he yields, he
proceeds upon his solitary way; and the remainder of this volume
and the two succeeding ones show him seeking and proving,
yielding at times to passion, to melancholy and despair, and
communicating in symbolical form his inner experiences. )
Pilgerfahrten shows us more of the conflict between the dedi-
cated poet and those emotional disturbances which militate
against the carrying out of his sacred function: his fallings away
from his high calling through misgiving, world-wearinesSj
through ignoble contact with the life of the crowd. "There are
poems of admonition to himself; poems in which he conjures up
the journeys of his childhood; one in which the meaninglessness
of all growth is symbolized in the attitude of a woman as she
looks down upon the flowers in her garden:
Verdrossen wittert sie den stolz der dinge
Die nur zum blu? hen aufgesprossen sind.
1 The poem Die Fremde in Der Teppich des Lebens might indeed be
regarded as symbolizing woman as the intrusive element in the ordered
life.
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? This group contains two well-known poems: Miihle, lass die
arme still, and the already mentioned Die Spange. Both are
symbolical, the former more obscurely so than the latter; but
in the narrative subject matter--a number of white-robed girls
returning from their first communion and drowned by the break-
ing of the ice on the lake which they are crossing--there seems
to be a possibility of two interpretations. It may be said that the
surface meaning of the poem--the facts allusively narrated--
is not immediately easy to grasp.
One interpretation brings it into connection with the under-
lying conflict of these early volumes: the conflict between the
element of dedication in the poet's life and the hos^c forces. of
the world without. In this respect the white-robed communicants
represent clearly the element of dedication; the 'schwarze
Knaben', which draw them down into the dark waters of de-
struction, the forces which are at war with it. Hence it is a mood
of misgiving, even despair, which is symbolized. A second
interpretation makes the Stimmung which is symbolized the
poet's sense of insecurity in a universe where the life of man, con-
sciously controlled, is at the mercy of the darker, profounder,
irrational and incomprehensible forces. It is perhaps worth
noting with what verbal skill the metallic quality of the frozen
landscape is suggested.
The second poem, Die Spange {The Clasp), appears at the end
of the collection and its symbolical meaning is clear. 'The
Clasp' is George's art. Under the form of this image he is
saying that he wished to write cool, simple poetry, but that he
. has not yet acquired the maturity to do it. He will therefore
attempt another kind: the richly ornate, highly coloured,
"exotic type; and these indeed are the characteristics of the
poems in the succeeding group, Algabal. The change from the
one type of poetry to the other is signalized in the poem not
only in the verbal statement but in the difference in the use
of vowel sounds in the two stanzas; and the frequency and
stressing of the full 'o' sounds in the second stanza--there are
seven in three lines--makes the effect of a fanfare heralding the
appearance of splendour:
Ich wollte sie aus kiihlem eisen
Und wie ein glatter fester streif /
Doch war im schacht auf alien gleisen
So kein metall zum gusse reif.
Nun aber soli sie also sein:
Wie eine grosse fremde dolde
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? Geformt aus feuerrotem golde
Und reichem blitzendem gestein.
Algabal reveals an aspect of George's poetry which is con-
fined to this particular volume and owes much to certain tenden-
cies and movements in French poetry in the second half of the
century, namely to that which is usually stigmatized as Deca-
dentisme and attributed to Baudelaire, Rimbaud and above all
to Huysmans: an attitude of mind which has its essential source
in the dissatisfaction of the poets of the time with the material-
istic, scientific civilization which the nineteenth century brought
with it. The particular reaction to the civilization of the age
which finds expression in Decadentisme is only one of many
others; all of which, however, are basically a rejection of it.
The Decadents go further than the Parnassians and Symbolists,
for they reject the life of nature altogether and seek to set up
in its place an artificial life in which they cultivate a mode of
existence which draws its values from artificiality. The extreme
statement of this attitude of mind is to be found in Huysmans,
and receives explicit expression in the following passages from
A Rebours. In a preface written twenty years later the author
describes how the work came into existence. It was to have
been a brief fantasy:
Je me figurais un monsieur Folantin. . . qui a ddcouvert
dans l'artifice un derivatif au degout qui lui inspirent les
tracas de la vie et les moeurs americains de son temps.
In the novel itself the hero Des Esseintes describes nature thus:
Cette sempiternelle radoteuse a maintenant use la debon-
naire admiration des vrais artistes, et le moment est venu oil
il s'agit de la remplacer, autant que faire se pourra par
l'artifice.
These are the ideas which are put into practice by the hero of the
Algabal poems, the Late Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, and
they represent in extreme form the ideas of George--exaggerated,
over-coloured, the idea of artificiality forced almost into a cari-
cature of itself.
In the spiritual pilgrimage of George to which each volume
of poems bears witness, Algabal represents the stage in which
artificiality is glorified and a complete abandonment to it is
essayed and tested as a possible solution in the search for a
satisfying mode of life. George, like Huysmans, rejected it,
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? but in the working out of the problems of his own being in
terms of the emperor-priest he created a work of richness of
colouring, rhetorical splendour and a certain outmoded beauty.
The identification of George with Algabal is of course not com-
plete. It is not so much with the perverse and cruel tyrant, which
according to history he was, but with one who was both priest
and emperor and thus set aside by his position from the ordinary
life oFlnan^in that sense 'dedicated' as George felt himself to
_ be as a poet.
The work is dedicated to the memory of King Ludwig II of
Bavaria, the patron of Wagner, the lover of the arts, who sought
to realize in concrete form the dreams of his romantic soul,
who rejected life as he experienced it in the civilization around
him, attempted to create an artificial mode of life of his own and
ultimately died by drowning. In the Aufschrift George addresses
the king as 'a derided martyr king' and speaks of himself as
'his younger brother'.
Algabal is divided into three parts: Im Untergrund; Tage;
Andenken. The first describes the emperor's subterranean
palace and gardens, and it is in this part that the rejection of
nature and the glorification of artificiality appear most clearly.
The second part, Tage, records Incidents and situations in the
life of Algabal during the years of his rule. The third, Andenken,
gives, as its title suggests, his memories and musings upon that
period of rule after it is over. Part I has four poems: the first
describes in a general way the realm he has created.
Wo ausser dem seinen kein wille schaltet
Und wo er dem licht und dem wetter gebeut.
The second describes the golden room, the third the silver
room of his underground palace; the fourth his subterranean
garden. Thus he speaks of it:
Mein garten bedarf nicht luft und nicht warme/
Der garten den ich mir selber erbaut
Und seiner vogel leblose schwarme
Haben noch nie einen friihling geschaut.
Tage gives impressions of the life and of the character of
Algabal. In him there is also that duality which appears in
different forms in these early poems of George: tender and cruel,'
-, beauty-loving and vindictive, a thinker and a voluptuary, asking
himself after he has put his subjects to death whether he has
V- really hated them; satisfied with himself that he has killed a
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? 'pair of lovers sleeping beneath a tree and thus prevented them
from waking to a life which would have interrupted the enjoy-
^> ment of their love; putting a slave to death who had disturbed
his doves while he was feeding them, and then causing the slave's
name to be inscribed in the golden goblet from which he drank
vtiie following evening.
This collection of poems is unlike much of the early works of
George in so far as the poet has made a coherent symbol for
himself in the person of Algabal and lived through a certain
phase of experience in his imagined hero. The same pattern
recurs, though less definitely, and with an unnamed hero in
Die Hangenden Garten. But this phase of experience is now
over--a solution has been tried but has proved inadequate;
new experiences must be sought and put to the test. At the end
of Algabal stands the poem Vogelschau--'Weisse schwalben
sah ich fliegen' (white swallows I saw flying); it represents a
turning away from the exotic, from the world of 'Unnatur',
symbolized in underground palaces and gardens, from the
artificiality of a realm constructed entirely by the hand of man
in defiance of nature. The 'bunte Haher' (gaily coloured jays)
of the 'Wald der Tusferi' (wood of Tusferi) of the second stanza;
the 'Raben' (ravens) and 'schwarze Dohlen' (black daws) of the
third stanza are representative of all that, and we come in the
final stanza to the 'weisse Schwalben' again but now no longer
'in dem Winde hell und heiss' (in the bright and burning wind)
but 'in dem Winde kalt und klar' (in the cold and clear wind).
This poem forms the transition from the atmosphere of the
world of Algabal to one in which there prevails a more tonic
and astringent air, which gives the atmosphere for the next
collection: Das Buch der Hirten.
The poems of this collection have as their setting the Greece
of the idylls, not the heroic Greece but the every-day pastoral,
bucolic life. The second collection, Das Buch der Sagen und
Sange, has the Middle Ages for its setting; the third, Das Buch
der Hangenden Garten, the Orient. In none of the collections
is there any attempt at an archaeological, reconstruction of a
past age. The civilizations chosen are symbols of states of mind
of the poet--stages in his search for illumination of the signifi-
cance of life.
Each one represents an attitude to life, of which the
? figures which appear in the poems are representatives; and the
poems in all these books are concerned with imaginary figures.
v These may well be projections of the poet's inner life, but each
poem considered individually and apart from its setting still
remains a self-contained evocation of a person, a mood, a situa-
tion, thus carrying out the principle announced in Die Blatter
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? filr die Kunst that the aim of jjoetry was presentation, not re-
flection, the transformation of the poetical idea into & concrete
^ form. In no one of the poems appears a character vouched for
^. by history; but the figures, though imaginary, are nevertheless,
typical of a situation or of the period of which they are repre-
_ sentative. In this collection appears clearly for the first time the
very marked habit of the later George to present characters,
which interest not so much by their individual qualities as by
their existence as types, so that a certain statue-like quality is
common to most of them.
The contrast between Algabal--George's most colourful and
brilliant achievement so far--and Das Buch der Hirten could
not be greater. From the violent exoticism of the earlier work
he passes to an atmosphere of cool serenity, and the colours
are correspondingly subdued to pastel shades; from the rejection
of nature and the febrile determination^to create an artificial
,world, to the acceptance of the ordinary life of nature, and to
the picture of a life lived in accordance with it--in accordance
with nature, that is, as it is moulded by immemorial custom and
manifests itself in the communal life of man, unchallenged by
the arbitrariness of the will of the individual. Here are no
passions at work, but a calm following of that which seems to
be the natural order of man's life, though the presentation is
tinged by a certain melancholy, which is indeed apparent in all
the early volumes: the sisters who on the anniversary of the
death of their bridegrooms recall their loss; the shepherd
who set forth for the day in charge of his sheep; the wrestler
who is unaware of the fame which his skill has brought him; the
youths who have been brought up to be servants in the temple
but are not chosen for that office; the first born who must wander
forth from their homes to seek a living elsewhere. All these
figures accept their fate unquestioningly, and of their accept-
ance a feeling of serenity is begotten, which is deepened by the
poetic treatment itself: the measured, moderate statement, the
coolness of presentation. Nothing here excites or distresses
intensely--everything has the calm and simplicity of figures on
a frieze: the music of the verse is very subdued and solemnly
moving; its metrical form the long unrhymed line.
The periods chosen in these collections are, as has been said,
symbols of states of mind of the poet. Thus though they are
successively investigated and presented, they exist also con-
temporaneously. In turning away from bucolic Greece, George
is not rejecting it as he had rejected the world of Algabal.
No single period symbolizes his whole ideal of life; it is in the
combination of the three that this consisfsT"~ ~~
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? It has been said that George's ideal of life lies in the synthesis
of the three elements of which man is compounded: 'Geist,
Seele und Leib' (spirit, soul and body); though in his later
works more importance is assigned to 'Leib'. The terms as used
by George defy an exact definition but it may roughly be said
that 'Geist' represents the living in accordance with ones destiny;
'Seele' the elements of enthusiasm, devotion and loyalty ^'Lfiib'-
^tne recognition of the body^and_the sensuous. Ufe. In passing
""from Das Buck der Mr ten to Das Buch der Sagen und Sange
we find ourselves again in a world--the world of the Middle.
-Ages--which seemed to George at this time to have produced
. ^harmonized and unified life, just as the Greece of the earlier
collection had done,T)ut of a different kind. Again we have poems
presenting characteristic figures of a period--for George it is
largely the period of chivalry and song, with religious devotion
as an integraTeTement of it. Thus: the youth keeping watch
before the altar on the eve of his being dubbed a knight (Sporen-
wache); the companions in arms; the hermit; the knight and
his lady parting at dawn; the group of knights-errant in search
of the grail; the knight who sleeps when he should be watching;
poems suggested by the 'Minnedienst' of the twelfth century;
a hymn in praise of the Virgin--all motifs taken from the civiliza-
tion of the Middle Ages. Again there is no attempt at antiquarian
resuscitation of a past age. George lets his imagination wander
through mediaeval times and identifies aspects of his own inner
life with certain figures, certain characteristic situations. The
theme of dedication and passion in conflict recurs once or
. twice: in Der Ritter der sich verschlief, and more markedly in
Sporenwache, in which for a moment the youth forgets his
religious dedication during the vigil and the picture,of a maiden
he had once seen passes before his thoughts,
The beautiful youth in heroic pose or hVneroic function is
one of the characteristic figures which appears in all these early
collections. It is central with George, for it is the symbol at this
stage of 'das schone Leben'; it occurs again in Der Teppich des
Lebens and ultimately transcends even the symbolical and be-
comes the realization of 'das schone Leben' in the ideal figure
of Maximin in Der Siebente Ring and Der Stern des Bundes.
The poems of the next collection: Die Hangenden Garten1
are more akin to the poems of Algabal, though without their
violence and cult of artificiality. After the bucolic world of the
shepherds and the heroic world of the Middle Ages, the world
of this oriental ruler is assayed as a symbol of the sensuous life.
1 Schoenberg set fifteen of these poems to music in 1906.
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? Thus after the life of the spirit and the life of soul, the life of the
hody is examined as a possible mode from which satisfaction
may be obtained. As in Algabal a certain vague succession of
events, hinted at rather than stated, forms the string upon which
the poems are threaded, so in this collection there is a central
figure, though he is not named. Ruler and priest, he neglects
his functions as such for love; half of his country is overrun by
the enemy; he goes as a minstrel slave to the court of another
ruler; gives this up, too, from an inner dissatisfaction and a
sense of the valuelessness of all activity. In the last poem but one,
he is seen looking back upon all he has lost. He hears voices
from the stream--the last poem, Stimmen im Strome,--which
call to him and promise him recovery, refuge and peace. But
even this may not bring satisfaction. Beyond it is annihilation,
dissolution, absorption into the elements. This poem with its
floating, swaying music (largely due to the frequent use of pres-
ent participles) represents this in symbolical form in the voices
of the water nymphs who draw him down to the pleasures of
their life beneath the waves, promising him ultimate bliss in his
dissolution and transformation into the waves themselves.
In so far as the three worlds represented in the three books
are spirit, soul and body, at the end of the third book the syn-
thesis of the three has not been achieved, though no one of
the three has been rejected. It is no doubt logical that the end
of the book which is symbolical of 'Leib' should be dissolution,
since that is the end of the body and all that pertains thereto.
A comparison between the last poems in each of the three collec-
tions reveals a positive note only in the second one, which re-
presents 'Seele' in the hymn to the Virgin Lilie der Aue. The
last poem in Das Buch der Hirten is called Das Ende des
Siegers and suggests that the hero in the last resort will be over-
come. Wounded by the monster which escapes him, with a
wound that will not heal, he ends in pitiable decay. It would
seem therefore that in so far as no synthesis has yet been
brought about between the claims of spirit, soul and body, the
most positive and enduring value is that offered by 'Seele'. The
conflict 'Weihe-Leidenschaft' which appears in the earlier
collections fades out with Das Buch der Hangenden Garten.
The next volume establishes a connection with the earlier
ones by its very title. The poet still upon his 'Pilgerfahrten',
after essaying all these modes of experience, having rejected
some and turned aside from the exclusive acceptance of any,
turns back to his own soul and holds communion with himself
in. the park-like landscape of Das Jahr der Seele. The settings of
the earlier collection had been drawn from the historical past
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? or the exotic or the artificially imaginative. Here the back-
ground is nature, but nature moulded and controlled by the
hand of man and almost in its particular form created by it.
The background is to a great extent revealed by suggestion
rather than by direct description; but with the colours, the
atmosphere, the feel of Autumn, Winter and Summer as much
conditioning the 'Stimmungen' of the 'ich' and 'du' of the poems
as conditioned by them. What belongs to nature exclusively and
is not the effect of the hand of man is primarily the ordered pro-
cession of the seasons, and even from this Spring has been omitted.
The volume entitled Das Jahr der Seele1 falls again into three
parts, of which the first is the one covered by the title; the second
part is devoted to poems concerned with personal friends; the
third is called Traurige Tdnze. The first part has a further tri-
partite division: Nach der Lese (Autumn), Waller im Schnee
(Winter) and Sieg des Sommers. In all of them the atmosphere
of the particular season is sensitively caught and expressed.
In a preface warning the readers not to try and identify places
I or characters George wrote: 'Seldom are 'ich' and 'du' so much
the same soul as in this book'. With this indication from George
it seems justifiable to assume that^hey represent the soul of the
poet communing with itself. The first part of the book suggests
a point of repose, of self-collection after the experiences recorded
in the works already passed under review ^s it perhaps in nature
after all that the illumination will be found? But there seems a
weariness, a sense of the fruitlessness of his quest, there is no
Spring in the year of his soul, and a certain melancholy hangs
over the whole giving it a music of its own. There is almost a
renunciation of hope and the acceptance of a second-best until
the real illumination, now almost despaired of, makes its appear-
ance. Throughout the work the fiction of a 'du', of the presence
of a second person, is maintained; and this 'du' is a gracious
visitor, Vfho understands and soothes the distress of one who is
seeking direction in life and awaiting illumination. The sugges-
tion, at least, that the companion (a woman) is not the Beloved
herself but one who must be accepted in her place, is given in
poems two and three. But the atmosphere of the whole work is
tentative, vaguely expectant, and indeed the Angel, who is to
bring the illumination in Der Teppich des Lebens, is prefigured in
the lines:
Driiben an dem strand ein bruder
Winkt das frohe banner schwenkend.
1 Schoenberg set one poem from this volume to music; Webern also
one for mixed chorus a capella. ".
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? But all is symbolical--the 'ich' and the 'du', the seasons of the
year; and the park in which the lovers walk is the soul of the
poet. '~
. The poems are all written in four-lined stanzas and with few
^exceptions in eleven syllabled lines,- so that throughout the
i>worlcTeminine rhymes predominate. It is no doubt partly this
which gives to this collection a musical quality which has made
it the most popular and the most quoted form of George's
works. It is not even necessary to perceive the symbolic mean-
. ing in order to realize that here are poems which will bear com-
^ parison in purely jDoetic quality, even in the most conventional
acceptance of the term, with favourite anthology pieces in
German literature.
Umkreisen wir den stillen teich
In den die Wasserwege miinden!
Du suchst mich heiter zu ergriinden
Ein wind umweht uns friihlings-weich.
Die bla? tter die den boden gilben
Verbreiten neuen wolgeruch /
Du sprichst mir nach in klugen silben
Was mich erfreut im bunten buch.
Doch weisst du auch vom tiefen gliicke
Und scha? tzest du die stumme tra? ne?
Das auge schattend auf der briicke
Verfolgest du den zug der schwa? ne.
Doubtless this poem is symbolical, though its symbolical sig-
nificance is notapparent on the surface, deeper than which the
,ingenuous reader need not penetrate in order to perceive its
poetical beauty, and this fact makes its acceptance more easy.
The same may be said also of the poem in Waller im Schnee:
Die blume die ich mir am fenster hege
Verwahrt vorm froste in der grauen scherbe
Betriibt mich nur trotz meiner guten pflege
Und ha? ngt das haupt als ob sie langsam sterbe
Um ihrer friihem bliihenden geschicke
Erinnerung aus meinem sinn zu merzen
Erwa? hl ich scharfe waffen und ich knicke
Die blasse blume mit dem kranken herzen.
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? Was soil sie nur zur bitternis mir taugen?
Ich wu? nschte dass vom fenster sie verschwande . . .
Nun heb ich wieder meine leeren augen
Und in die leere nacht die leeren hande.
Like the former poem it can be appreciated without its symbolic
reference which, however, is here more easily recognized: the
sickly flower, the poet's decision to cut it, the sense of emptiness
which is the result of his action--all this refers to some inward
circumstances, such as the deliberate crushing of a hope, an
ambition, a love.
The second part of the volume consists of poems addressed to
George's personal friends, and circumstances connected with
their reunions. Part of their significance is inevitably lost to
those readers who are unacquainted either with the friends or
with the circumstances, but there are some poems among them
concerned with George's own inner life and situation at this
time which are illuminating in that respect. The third part of the
collection, Traurige Tdnze, moves back again into an atmosphere
tinged with the melancholy of the poems of Das Jahr der Seele.
Like these they are all in four-lined stanzas, but here each poem
consists of three stanzas. The length of line has a greater variety
than in those of the earlier groups. Some--Dies leid und diese
last for instance--are lyrics of weariness and despair. This
weariness is lightened in some of the poems by the determination
to make the best of what is available, to be thankful for what is,
since the great illumination has not come; to welcome autumn
because there has been no spring. The mood sways up and
down, from poem to poem. 'lf they are dances they are sad
dances. As in Das Jahr der Seele there is the assumption of a
companionship of 'ich' and 'du' and many of the poems are
addressed to the 'du'. The following poem gives the prevailing
mood of the whole group: acceptance of and gratitude for what is,
with a sense that it is a second best, that something has been missed
which would have solved all problems and realized all aspirations:
Es lacht in dem steigenden jahr dir
Der duft aus dem garten noch leis.
Flicht in dem flatternden haar dir
Eppich und ehrenpreis.
Die wehende saat ist wie gold noch/
Vielleicht nicht so hoch mehr und reich /
Rosen begru? ssen dich hold noch/
Ward auch ihr glanz etwas bleich.
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? Verschweigen wir was uns verwehrt ist /
Geloben wir glu? cklich zu sein
Wenn auch nicht mehr uns beschert ist
Als noch ein rundgang zu zwein.
But throughout the prevailing melancholy of these poems there
is* a sense of expectancy; and the coming of illumination which
is heralded in the last poem of Waller im Schnee by the appear-
ance of the brother on the shore who 'beckons, waving his
joyous banner' is repeated in the lines:
Mein feuchtes auge spa? ht nur fern
Nach diesem Einen aus der gern
Die harfe reich und wohlgestimmt
Der unsre goldne harfe nimmt i
Nor is there absent an element which varies the dominating
tone of melancholy: the note of admonition or self-encourage-
ment--for as in Das Jahr der Seele, the 'ich' and 'du' must
ultimately be considered parts of the poet's own soul. Thus one
poem concludes with the lines:
Nicht vor der eisigen firnen
Drohendem ra? tsei erschrick
Und zu den ernsten gestirnen
Hebe den suchenden blick!
\
And there are other poems in which the same note is struck, v
\
VI
The tendency to see George as a figure of masterfulness, of
complete self-possession, to which the later volumes lend some
evidence has been extended to cover the whole of his life. This
is a simplification of his personality which is not justified. Up
to and including Das Jahr der Seele there is a continuous refer-
ence in the poems to states of mind which are far from indicating
such a convinced attitude of self-possession. As has been sug-
gested, all these earlier collections express a seeking and proving
of possible modes of life, and in all of them there are poems
which are the expressions of uncertainty, misgiving, doubt and
even of world-weariness and despair, so that on the whole it
may be said that a sense of melancholy prevails, not least in
Das Jahr der Seele and in Traurige Ta? nze. It is only from Der
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? Teppich des Lebens onwards that the personality of George, as
v revealed in his poetry, presents the appearance under which
he is generally envisaged, and emerges as that of one whose attitude
to life is a positive one: masterful, autocratic, even dictatorial.
For the poems included in Der Teppich des Lebens (1899),
above all in the poems of the Vorspiel, announce the illumina-
tion, the promise of fulfilment, the attainment of which had been
the aspiration recorded in all the earlier poems. The Vorspiel
is also in a more inward sense a prelude--a prelude to the revela-
tion of Maximin, which forms the core of the following volume:
Der Siebente Ring. Der Teppich des Lebens has again a tripartite
division; Vorspiel; Teppich des Lebens; Lieder von Traum
und Tod. With this volume a new idea enters George's poetry
--the idea of a message. The idea of a mission had been implicit
in his poetry from the beginning; now it becomes more explicit,
\ fortified by the message. In the Vorspiel, it is as yet a message
delivered to him by the Angel; but in the later volumes it will
become a message which he himself is called to deliver to his
country and his generation. In the twenty-four poems which
make up the Vorspiel the ideal of life which is to be his is
announced by the Angel to him, and the various tentative modes
represented in the earlier volumes coalesce and are crystallized
inj:he ideal of 'das schone leben', which is henceforth to
determine his thinking.
The first poem describes the appearance of the Angel to the
almost despairing poet: he comes as the messenger of 'das
. /schone leben', and it is noteworthy that his voice is almost
identical with that of the poet-- 'und seine stimme fast der
meinen glich' from which it is to be assumed that here again--
as in Das Jahr der Seele--there is an externalization of a part of
George's own inner life, the part that has now found an adjust-
ment to the claims of spirit, soul and body. , in which adjust-
ment 'das schone leben' is realized, and the manifestation, of
Jdas schone leben' is the body. In the successive poems--all
poems of equal length (four quatrains of solemn and sustained
movement) the Angel announces and the poet accepts a certain
mode of life. He will live in solitude, at the most only among a
few chosen companions all of whom share his ideals with him.
The course of his life will now be altered: no longer will he jour-
ney to foreign lands; the landscape of his native land, the land-
scape of the Rhine will be his chosen province, from which he
will speak to his own people.
It is at this point that George takes up the rfile of the German
poet; and though this is often held against him, the charge
seems hardly a legitimate one. His assumption of this rdle
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