No More Learning

It is the poetry--to name a few of the accredited
English poets who were contemporary--of Ernest Dowson
(some of whose poems George translated), Lionel Johnson,
William Watson, Laurence Binyon and perhaps even Stephen
Phillips. Of course the contributions of George himself and
those of Hofmannsthal (many of the most exquisite of his
early poems) are of a higher standard than those of some of
their English contemporaries mentioned; but in the poems
which fill the greater number of the pages, poems by little-
known or today entirely unknown poets, there is a frequent
apostrophizing of the poet's lute or lyre, swans glide over dark
waters, the poet's fate is deplored or extolled. The titles of many
poems greet the reader's eye with a sense of familiarity:
Salambo; Herodias; Ariadne; Persephonia; Kalypso; Konig
Kofetua und die Bettlerin; whilst a whole world of troubadour
romanticism is concentrated in the title Wie ein edler Sanger
sang und wie eine schdne Dame darauf starb.
It is difficult to see how the regeneration of German poetry
was to be brought about by the example of the poems judged
worthy of publication in Die Blatter filr die Kunst, except in so
far as they were models of careful and clean workmanship and
thus were a living reproach to careless and slipshod writing;
and this was admittedly part of the reform of German poetry
which George and those who shared his convictions were
undertaking. George was intransigent in his rejection of the
poetry by his contemporaries which did not conform to his own
conception of what it should be. Thus he referred to that of
Richard Dehmel, a poet whose work was highly rated at that time
and is still accorded a respectable place in the history of German
literature, as 'Dreck'. And the friendly relations with Dehmel
on the part of one of the few women with whom George stood
in some sort of familiarity caused him to break off all acquaint-
ance with her. In his personal relations as in his attitude to
25
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? poetry George was ruthless. Even in the prose passages in the
Blatter not by George himself, there is often a sweeping con-
demnation of much that sets itself up as having cultural value
in German literature of the day; such statements, for instance,
as: 'The fact that there is no possibility in Germany of an artistic
or poetical event is a proof that we live in a cultural state of the
second rank', or that neither in Switzerland nor in the northern
countries could works be offered to the public as cultural
achievements such as are offered in Germany.
IV
In the history of German poetry the name of Platen stands for
the cultivation of formal beauty in verse. As such he is acclaimed
and revered by those later poets and schools of poets who have
stressed the importance of form; and as such he is quoted with ap-
proval and respect by George; indeed George sometimes couples
his name with that of Goethe. He was attacked by Heine in a
prose work entitled Die Bader von Lucca in the twenties of the
nineteenth century, an attack in which there is much that is
scurrilous and concerned with him as a personality. But in the
following passage an attempt is made by Heine--who is re-
presentative of an antithetical conception and practice of poetry
--to define certain characteristics of Platen as a poet, and this
has its bearing upon George as well. It should be noted that
Platen was much concerned with poetry in set forms and with
metrical complications, and that the excessive preoccupation
with these elements in the art of poetry was repugnant and, one
may feel, incomprehensible to Heine, so that where he found it
he was apt to reject the works in which he felt it to be obtrusive.
He writes:
Though the muses are not favourable to Platen, yet he has
the genius of language in his power, or rather he knows how
to do violence to it. . . The deeper notes of nature, as we
find them in folk songs, in children and in other poets have
never burst forth from the soul of Platen . . . The anxious
compulsion which he has to impose upon himself in order to
say anything, he calls 'a great deed in words'--so utterly
unknown to him is the very nature of poetry that he does not
understand that the Word is a 'deed' only with the rhetorician,
and that with the poet it is an 'event'. Language has never
become the master in him as it has in the real poet; on the
contrary it is he who has become master in language or rather
26
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? of language, like a virtuoso on his instrument. The greater
the advance he made in the direction of technical skill, the
greater was the opinion he had of his virtuosity; his skill
extended over every form, he could versify the most difficult
passages, he often, one may say, wrote poems on the G string.
The distinction between two types of poet adumbrated in the
above passage is a real one, though exaggerated here by Heine.
Nor is true poetry, as Heine suggests, the prerogative of the
type of poet to which he belongs and from which Platen is so
categorically excluded. But it is clear that George stands on the
same side as Platen, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Theophile
Gautier; whilst in the world of French contemporary poetry
many of George's friends belonged there too. Defined as Heine
defines it in respect of Platen, the function of the poet is to be
the master of the word (pronouncements of Oscar Wilde claim
the same achievement for himself in regard to words, i. e. lord
of language), not its minister. That George's attitude to language
falls into line with the whole trend of his nature becomes imme-
diately apparent. Like Platen he doubtless approved and took
to heart the Venetian Epigram which Goethe coined to stigma-
tize his countrymen: 'Eine Kunst nur treibt er und will sie
nicht lernen: die Dichtkunst'. It was precisely against the un-
premeditated outpourings of those poets who would not recog-
nize that poetry was, as Novalis said, 'eine strenge Kunst', that
Platen, and sixty years later George, undertook a campaign on
behalf of correctness of form and selectiveness of language, with
the recognition that poetry like every other art had to be learned
before it could be practised with propriety.
A natural corollary to this insistence upon the formal and
stylistic elements in poetry is the preoccupation with the choice
of words, which implies generally a rejection of the current
vocabulary and a preference for words which are not in normal
usage. 'Dormer un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu' may be
interpreted in two ways. The more correct way would seem to
be to use the words of every day speech, but in such a way that
their inherent meaning is not obscured by the careless and trite
application of them. In this sense it may be said that Heine has
claims to be considered a master if only an intermittent one, for
he is able to take even the clich6 and endow it with a significance
which it does not possess in the mouth of the general public.
Another way is that which was taken by Klopstock, Platen,
Meyer and George in German poetry, namely to substitute for
the generally used word one which for some reason or other has
a loftier, usually more recondite quality, sometimes even a
27
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? periphrastic turn of phrase, as in Klopstock's odes 'Brot' be-
comes 'des Halmes Frucht', and 'Schlittschuh' 'Wasserkothurn'.
George carries this second procedure further than any of his
predecessors, and it adds to the difficulty in the understanding
of his poems to find words which are both recondite and archaic
(though doubtless linguistically justified). Nor can it be asserted
that these esoteric words are in themselves necessarily more
beautiful than the everyday words for which they are substitutes.
(Thus it would be difficult to maintain that 'blust' is more
euphonious than 'bliite'. ) But their presence serves to produce
the air of guarded aloofness which invests his poetry: an air
which is heightened by yet other methods, calculated to keep
the domain of poetry within an enclosure which is separated
from actual life. George did not wish to make it easy of access; it
was a hortus inclusus, which was open only to those who were
prepared to make an effort to reach it.
This preservation of the realm of poetry as a world in itself
is further stressed by the upholding of the fiction that the poet
is still living in that conventionally accepted 'poetical' age of
simplicity, when the utensils of his craft were tablets and the
stylus, and his dress the singing robes of the rhapsode. Thus
George in an early poem writes of himself, as the poet: 'Er hat
den griffel der sich straubt zu fiihren' ('He has to use the stylus
which resists'), therein signalizing another aspect of the com-
position of poetry, as conceived by him and those who have
shared his views: namely the difficulty which the poet himself
experiences in composition. Even in the very late poems, in which
contemporary civilization is being criticized and condemned,
the poet has about him the atmosphere of the vates, and it is
more natural to think of him in a flowing robe than wearing a
frock coat and a knotted tie. The same fiction of the poet
living in the primitive days of poetry is to be found in the works
of George's French contemporaries, for instance in those of
Henri de R6gnier, some of which George translated. Thus in
L'Accueil the poet makes use of a 'calame de roseau, Dont la
pointe subtile aide k fixer le mot, Sur la tablette lisse et couverte
de cire'. And though his clothes are ragged, when his visitors
expect him to be 'drap6 de pourpre hautaine', it is in 'une robe
de laine, Qui se troue a F6paule et se dechire au bras' that he is
dressed, and by no means in knickerbockers and Norfolk
jacket.
In spite of George's insistence upon comprehensibility
together with precision of line as an essential element in a poem,
he did not meet his readers more than halfway. Apart from the
use of recondite words, he added to the difficulty of an immediate
28
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? apprehension of his meaning by devices of printing, such as
the absence of capital letters where the German usage expects
them, and the reduction of the signs of punctuation (in that
over-punctuated language) to a minimum. It would of course
be absurd to suggest that these devices were intended to make
his poems more difficult to understand. The aim was primarily
an aesthetic one, connected with the appearance of the printed
page. To all questions of typography, the fount used, the dispo-
sition of the print upon the page, the decoration of the binding
and pages, he gave detailed personal attention. Gothic type
as well as gothic script he abhorred, and Die Blatter fiir die
Kunst contains the statement that Germany cannot expect
to become a civilized country whilst it retains a barbarous type
of print. As far as the reduction of the marks of punctuation is
concerned, the disappearance in particular of commas from the
pages of his works was not merely in the interest of the appear-
ance of the page, but was also due to his opinion that the gram-
matical division of sentences which the comma marks conflicted
with the poetical rhythm, which calls for other pauses. Under-
lying this last consideration is George's idea that poetry should
be spoken rather than read from the page. 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
29
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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.
30
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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
31
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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-
32
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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
33
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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.
34
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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
35
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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,
36
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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
37
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? '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
38
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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"~ ~~
39
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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.
40
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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
41
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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. ".
42
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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.