This
part of the volume, however, and the following one (Gestalten)
stand somewhat apart from the poems which form the core of
the book: the third, fourth, fifth and sixth parts-- Gezeiten
(Tides); Maximin; Traumdunkel and Lieder.
part of the volume, however, and the following one (Gestalten)
stand somewhat apart from the poems which form the core of
the book: the third, fourth, fifth and sixth parts-- Gezeiten
(Tides); Maximin; Traumdunkel and Lieder.
Stefan George - Studies
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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? contains no chauvinistic elements; and if he assumes it half
way through his career, it must be remembered that most other
German poets, Holderlin, for instance, were such from the be-
ginning, and it is odd to find fault with a poet for being primarily
the poet of his own country. Moreover his Germanism is so shot
through with Greek elements that he might have said with
Holderlin: 'The Greeks are indispensable to us'. Indispensable
because in his view (as in Holderlin's) Germans could only real-
ize themselves as Germans by assimilating the ideal life of
Greece to their lives. In the seventh poem, the Angel lays downs
for the poet the course he is to pursue: turning aside from all \
controversy even with the sages, contemplating life from a point
of vantage, assessing the value of things but taking no care to
acquire them; following not Christianity but the spirit of
Greece--''Hellas ewig unsre liebe'.
The poet has descended now from his ivory tower to the
street. 'Du stiegest ab von deinem hohen hause zum wege. '
_ There he will still remain, a stranger from a distant shore to the
multitude whom he has hitherto avoided. They cannot under-
stand him; but now and again a kindred spirit will comprehend
his ideals and a community will be established:
Nur manchmal bricht aus ihnen edles feuer
Und offenbart dir dass ihr bund nicht schande.
Dann sprich: in starker schmerzgemeinschaft euer
Erfass ich eure bru? derlichen hande.
Already in these poems of the Vorspiel appears the prophetic
idea of a new community of race and people. The poet is to take
up his place among those leaders and rulers in the world of the
spirit whose influence has spread over centuries. He feels his
mission as a leader in that world confirmed; and he conceives
of history as the sum of these great and heroic personalities--of
whom he himself is one--who are the vital factors in the develop-
ment of mankind. The Vorspiel is the central manifesto of
George's doctrine of life.
The actual Teppich des Lebens forms the second part of the
collection and is introduced by the poem Der Teppich (The
Tapestry). This explains the title of the volume. The poems are
to give pictures of characteristic figures which make up the
pattern of fife, illuminate aspects of it and declare its signifi-
cance. They are individual figures, but all presented with a
simplicity, abstractness and sometimes allusiveness which
make them rather types and symbols than differentiated indi-
viduals, and with a general tendency to see them heroically as
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? figures taken from a primitive form of life. All the poems are in
the same form as those of the Vorspiel. They include such poems
as Urlandschaft--a picture of a primaeval landscape into which
man makes his irruption; Der Freund der Fluren--the gardener
tending his plants; Der Jiinger--the disciple; DieFremde--the
strange woman who comes to the village, creates disturbance
there by her allurements, and disappears leaving behind only
the child which she has borne there. Characteristic figures
are represented already in Das Buch der Hirten and Das Buck
der Sagen und Sange with their settings of antiquity or the
Middle Ages. George's method here is not new to him, but it
has received confirmation from the message of the Angel. It
continues throughout the later volumes. Such poems may be
described, making use of George's own title for a number of
poems in this collection, as Standbilder--Standbilder der
Menschheit (Statues of the human race); heroically seen, some-
times presenting in rather abstract fashion typical aspects of life,
and calculated to stimulate a sense of human greatness and
pride, though not all represent admirable aspects of human life.
The next volume, Der Siebente Ring1, which did not appear
until eight years later, is considerably larger than any of the
others and is of primary importance, for it embodies the ideas
enunciated in the Vorspiel of Der Teppich des Lebens, embodies
in fact in the person of Maximin 'das schone leben', whose
messenger had visited George in the earlier volume. It is divided
into seven parts, and the fourth, the central one, entitled
Maximin, is the core of the work, anticipated in the first three
parts, and reflected upon those that follow it. It is in this volume
that George appears not only as the poet with a message, but
also as the seer; and thus the thought content of his poems
acquires increasing importance. George himself in the opening
poem entitled Das Zeitgedicht anticipates the surprise which
his contemporaries will feel when faced with the change in his
poetry and in the poet himself; that he whom they formerly
blamed for his aesthetic withdrawal from life (whilst they
themselves rushed into it with uproar and hideous greed); he
whose inner struggles and torments they had failed to recognize
--that he should have exchanged his pipings for the brazen
notes of the trumpet. Where they see change however there is
in reality continuation, for it may be that all beauty, strength
and greatness will arise tomorrow from the calm flutings of a
youth.
Zeitgedichte are poems which attack contemporary social and
1 Schoenberg set two poems from this volume to music, Webern five.
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? political abuses and prevailing attitudes of mind which are felt
to be evil. They are nothing new in German literature. In
Heine's second collection of poems one division bears this
title. But Heine's Zeitgedichte are more direct in their attack
and often more scurrilous; those of George are basically con-
cerned with heroic judgments passed on the actual conditions
of civilization. In a second poem bearing the same title Das
Zeitgedicht describes itself as the voice of conscience, disturbing
the complacency of the contemporary world. George, unlike
Heine, uses the symbolic method of presentation which he has
maintained throughout: . pictures of the heroic past such as the
Porta Nigra of Trier; the tombs of ancient German kings at
Speier; or heroic and distinguished personalities such as Dante;
Nietzsche; Leo XIII; Boecklin; all these serve to stress by con-
trast the degeneracy of the present age and of the masses.
This
part of the volume, however, and the following one (Gestalten)
stand somewhat apart from the poems which form the core of
the book: the third, fourth, fifth and sixth parts-- Gezeiten
(Tides); Maximin; Traumdunkel and Lieder. In these is cele-
brated the achievement, the manifestation of 'das schone Leben'
in the person of Maximin, the beautiful, gifted youth who is
deified by George.
It is this deification of Maximin that constitutes the stumbling
block for many an appreciative reader of George's poetry; and
indeed the various subtle and metaphysical interpretations of
the poet's cult of Maximin, offered by disciples, seem almost
calculated to make things worse. For Maximin emerges not
merely as a symbol of the godhead, but as the god himself:
Dem bist du kind / dem freund.
Ich seh in dir den Gott
Den schauernd ich erkannt
Dem meine andacht gilt.
The nearest approach to this relationship in literature is that
of Dante to Beatrice: but Beatrice is the symbol of Divine
Truth, not Divine Truth itself. In Maximin, in his presence as
long as he lives, in the cult of him after his death (a certain
parallel may be seen in Novalis's cult of the dead Sophie)
George finds the god incarnate, as well as the realization of 'das
schone Leben' which the Angel had announced to him. In
him the deity is embodied, and the body deified. George met
Maximin only a year or two before the boy's death, and he re-
mained ever after the centre of a quasi-religious, quasi-mystical
experience. This adoration is prefigured in earlier writings of
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? George, above all in the idea that nothing really exists except
in so far as it is 'gestaltet', receives form. From this hypostasis
of form there is perhaps only a step to the belief that the godhead
must manifest itself in the perfect body, indeed that the perfect
body is the godhead.
A statement in a later number of Die Blatter fiir die Kunst
(1910) will elucidate, even if it does not make acceptable, this
conception of the divine, attributed by the writer to the Greeks:
. . . of all the utterances of the thousands of years which are
known to us, the Greek idea that the body is god--the body
which is the symbol of transitoriness--was by far the most
creative,. . . by far the boldest and the most worthy of man-
kind, and surpasses in sublimity every other, including the
Christian one.
(The words 'der leib sei der gott'--are printed in large capitals. )
But whatever attitude may be taken to this experience of
George's, it is nevertheless clear that in this transformation of
a human being into a divinity George's seeking and striving
for significance in life found its fulfilment. Indeed it was pre-
pared by his exclusive concern with the education of male
youth and the continually recurring figure of the beautiful
young hero in the earlier poems. Thus there is a certain logic
in the Maximin climax to George's life. The figure of Maximin
dominates the whole of Der Siebente Ring, but there can be no
doubt that the poems which celebrate the more human relation-
ship of the master to the disciple, the delight in his presence,
the intensity of affection he evokes, the poignancy of grief felt
at his death are more impressive poetically, have a more spon-
taneous movement and possess a greater warmth than those
poems which are concerned with the deification of the boy. In
the poems celebrating the purely human relationship it would
seem that the spirit of love--and it was its only full flowering in
George's life--has broken down barriers and released constraints
of expression which are clearly felt in other parts of George's
oeuvre. In the division Gezeiten, in which the human inter-
course between George and Maximin finds expression, George's
poetic quality is at its finest, and some of this quality flows
over into the songs in the latter part of the volume, awakening
sympathy and tenderness for a grief which was manifestly so
deeply and poignantly felt. But this has reference primarily to
Maximin'the human being; with Maximin the god, the attempt
is made to surround him with all the attendant circumstance of
a godhead who triumphs over death and remains a living being
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? in the minds of his worshippers. And the reader remains
fundamentally unmoved. It is unlikely that many, outside of
George's own circle, will feel able to accept Maximin as a religious
revelation, even though they may accept him as a poetic inspira-
tion. They may rather regard ah the religious paraphernalia
as a sign of the urgent need of George's generation to find a
substitute for the gods who had disappeared. This, it seems, is the
only explanation for the strange fact that a youth of sixteen
years, unknown and unobserved until George observed him,
. endowed with whatever beauty and gilts of personality, should
- be found suitable to support divinity and should be divinely
proclaimed by so selective a spirit as George, and as a god im-
posed upon his followers. But the iigure of Maximin thus con-
ceived becomes for George a centre of light and a symbol of
^perfection; and by the standard of this symbol George tested
and indignantly rejected contemporary life. In the last volumes
of his poetry he judges, reproves, warns, admonishes and
foresees imminent destruction. Thus in Der Stern des Bundes
(1914) and Das Neue Reich (1928), the last two volumes, the
spirit of the Zeilgedichte and the spirit of the Maximin poems
combine to form a unity of inspiration.
In the poems of Der Stern des Bundesjil is the voice of
the poet-seer, poet-prophet which prevails. VVhere in the Zeit-
gedichte the evils of contemporary civilization are denounced
implicitly by reference to figures who stand in contrast to it,
in the later volume the attack is more direct. Raising his
voice as the seer, George warns against the degeneracy of
modern times, castigates the weaknesses and falseness of de-
mocracy, refutes the belief in a fallacious prosperity, pours
scorn upon materialism and the falsely optimistic idea of prog-
ress based upon it, deplores the absence of heroism, and fore-
sees still greater evils to come. It is the voice of one crying in
the wilderness that the day of judgment is at hand. The message
continues to be expressed in abstract, symbolic terms--no
reference is made to concrete instances, no names are mentioned
to be held up to obloquy, no place is named. Often the setting
seems to be suggested by classical themes or borrowed from the
Bible. Through this world of symbols the figure of George
passes, proclaiming the wrath to come, the destruction which is
now inevitable. In one poem he contrasts the present with
past times, scorning the belief of the present generation that
their times show greater freedom and tolerance than the Dark
Ages. These at least had a god on whose behalf cruel things
were done, but modern times have set up an idol in his place
and into its jaws they hurl their best. In another he cites, with-
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? out naming him, Nietzsche as the last warner, the last to show
the possibility of salvation. But the people paid no heed: they
continued to talk, to laugh, to mock. The warner departed--
now it is too late, no arm now will hold up the spokes of the
wheel which is rolling down into the void.
Der Stern des Bundes is a very homogeneous work, consisting
of short poems each of a dozen lines or so, mainly unrhymed.
It has a division called Eingang, followed by three books. The
spirit of which Maximin is the embodiment broods over the
whole. In the Eingang there are poems which suggest a com-
munion between the poet and the dead youth, who strengthens
and confirms him in his task. The first book contains the poems
as already described, hortatory, denunciatory, menacing. The
second book, like the Eingang, is concerned with Maximin and,
recalling the days of their earthly friendship, asserts a commu-
nion with him after his death. The third book contains poems of
admonition, which seem to be addressed not to a wider public
but rather to a chosen circle of initiates. And indeed in a pre-
fatory note attached to the public version George explains that
the book was intended originally for the friends of his inner
circle; but that appearing as it did immediately before the out-
break of war in 1914 it was interpreted as a breviary for the
men on the battlefields. This however was not his intention: 'The
events of 1914 made the minds of a wider public receptive for
a book which might have remained a secret book for years'. A
certain quasi-mystical note is present in these poems which is
new in George. For instance, the poem which begins:
Ich bin der Eine und bin Beide
Ich bin der zeuger bin der schoss
Ich bin der degen und die scheide
Ich bin das opfer bin der stoss.
It is only too easy to see how the words of the final chorus could
be interpreted as referring to the war upon which young Germans
were setting out, and how readily a nationalistic meaning could
be attached to them:
Gottes pfad ist uns geweitet
Gottes land ist uns bestimmt
Gottes krieg ist uns entzu? ndet
Gottes kranz ist uns erkannt.
But it was in intention for a smaller community and a different
campaign that the chorus was written.
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? The poems are frequently difficult and obscure. Considered
as pure poetry there is little to charm in them and though they
v. may represent the summit of George's thought, they do not
. represent the summit of his poetical achievement. One--sym^
bolicaL but easily comprehensible in its symbolism--may stand
as a representative of many.
Wer je die flamme umschritt
Bleibe der flamme trabant!
Wie er auch wandert und kreist:
Wo noch ihr schein ihn erreicht
Irrt er zu weit nicht vom ziel.
Nur wenn sein blick sie verlor
Eigener schimmer ihn tru? gt:
Fehlt ihm der mitte gesetz
Treibt er zerstiebend ins all
| The last book which George published, Das neue Reich (1928),
contains poems written during the 1914-18 war and in the
years of anarchy in Germany which followed it. Let it not be
assumed that it is a glorification of any new political realm: in-
deed, it would seem rather from the tone of the poems that the
realm is visionary. Many of the poems have reference to the war
and some appeared separately before 1918. On the whole it is
the voice of the poet-seer which speaks, especially in the first
section--the voice of one who has seen his warnings of calamity
realized in the event; who has been present at the destruction
of the civilization whose end he had foretold. If his judgement
of the state of affairs seems harsh and rigid it is because he will
not allow a sentimental optimism to blind his vision of truth,
nor comforting catch-phrases to lull his ears to the acceptance of
a false security; because he will not cry Peace, Peace, when
there is no peace. In the symbolical poem Der Brand des Tem-
pels he declares that it will be half a thousand years before the
temple can be restored. His attitude to the war in the poems
dealing with it, more especially in Der Krieg, cannot have en-
deared him to those whose patriotism was of a chauvinistic
kind. To those who come to the Seer in their distress and wonder
at his calm he replies that he has shed his tears in advance and
. now has none to shed . . . What is to him the murder of hundred
thousands, compared to the murder of life itself? He cannot
grow excited about native virtue and French treachery. . .
There is no occasion for rejoicing. There will be no triumph,
only the unworthy downfall of many . . . Sick worlds pass in
fever to their end amidst the tumult. And to those who ask
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? whether he fails to recognize the measure of sacrifice and the
strength of the communal spirit, he replies that these things are
to be found also on the side of the enemy. At the end of the poem
a more conciliatory attitude is taken up by the Seer who, basing
his faith upon the youth of his nation, refuses to believe that his
country, too beautiful to be laid waste by foreign feet, can perish.
But George speaks in these poems not exclusively as the
prophet whose warning words have been ignored and are now
fulfilled in the destruction around him. In the poem Hyperion
he sees himself also as the prophet of a newer and better civiliza-
tion which he as a dying man will not live to see:
Mein leidend leben neiet dem schlummer zu
Doch giitig lohnt der Himmlischen verheissung
Dem frommen . . . der im Reich nie wandeln darf;
Ich werde heldengrab > ich werde scholle
Der heilige sprossen zur vollendung nahn:
MlT DIESEM KOMMT DAS ZWEITE ALTER / LIEBE
GEBAR DIE WELT / LIEBE GEBIERT SIE NEU.
Ich sprach den spruch / der zirkel ist gezogen . . .
Eh mich das dunkel iiberholt entruckt
Mich hohe schau: bald geht mit leichten sohlen
Durch teure flur greifbar im glanz der Gott.
It was certainly not Hitler whom George foresaw as the god who
should make all things new.
Another poem, Der Mensch und der Drud, reveals a change,
of which there are occasional signs in the late volumes, in George's
attitude to nature. The hostile attitude to the primaeval aspect
of nature has yielded to a recognition, perhaps intellectual
rather than emotional, of nature as. the basis and indispensable
element in human life and of the necessity that humanity should
remain in immediate contact with it. In this poem he warns
against an excessive intellectualism which is losing touch with
the primitive simplicities and instincts of life, from which alone
man can draw the strength necessary to "sustain existence.
Presented in symbolical form as Der Drud, or Satyr, these
fundamentals of all existence admonish mankind:
Mit alien kiinsten lernt ihr nie was euch
Am meisten frommt. . . wir aber dienen still.
So hor nur dies: uns tilgend tilgt ihr euch.
Wo unsre zotte streift nur da kommt milch
Wo unser huf nicht hintritt wachst kein halm.
War nur dein geist am werk gewesen: langst
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? Wa? r euer schlag zersto? rt und all sein tun
War euer holz verdorrt und Saatfeld brach. .
j Nur durch den zauber bleibt das leben wach.
The last part of the volume is headed Das Lied and to it the
distich is prefixed:
Was ich noch sinne und was ich noch fu? ge
Was ich noch liebe tra? gt die gleichen zu? ge.
It is therefore to be expected that the songs which make up this
part of the volume will reveal the same qualities as those in the
earlier volumes. In point of fact there seems to be in some of
these songs of George's old age a freer movement, a greater
simplicity and an approximation to what is normally met with
in the German Lieder of the more traditional poets. Certainly
there is no diminution, but rather an increase of the lyric note
in such poems as Das Lied; Seelied; Das Licht and the last one
of all: Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme. Das Lied teils in
narrative form of the man who went out in^his youth to an
enchanted country, and found, when he returned, that years
had passed, that no one knew him any longer. All thought him
mad and set him to tend the flocks. Only the children listened
to a song. he sang, and still sang it themselves together when he
was dead. A subject matter frequent enough in folk legend, here
it is clearly a symbolical account of the fate of the poet at the
hands of the community. In Seelied the old man sitting on the
sea shore describes his waiting all day for the child with golden
hair, whose coming is the only joy left him. This poem would
seem to refer to Maximin. The last poem in the volume is mani-
festly an evocation of him, of all he had meant to George, of
inspiration, beauty, truth, fulfdment of life. It is poetically one
of the loveliest poems which George wrote and it stands at the
end of his poetical career, a tribute to that which had given
meaning and value to his life.
Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme
Du wie der morgen zart und licht
Du blu? hend reis vom edlen stamme
Du wie ein quell geheim und schlicht
Begleitest mich auf sonnigen matten
Umschauerst mich im abendrauch
Erleuchtest meinen weg im schatten
Du ku? hler wind du heisser hauch
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? Du bist mein wunsch und mein gedanke
Ich atme dich mit jeder luft
Ich schliirfe dich mit jedem tranke
Ich kusse dich mit jedem duft
Du bliihend reis vom edlen stamme
Du wie ein quell geheim und schlicht
Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme
Du wie der morgen zart und licht.
VII
George's poetry comes not from an overflowing heart and as the
result of an uncontrollable impulse. The element of will was a
part of the creative urge, and the reader is Conscious of this.
His poetic idea was not carried on the flow of words but con-
trolled it, so that the reader's attention is not carried on the
flow of words either but is aware of their manipulation, and
without careful attention to this can derive no satisfaction from
the poems. George did not himself think that there was any
break in his poetical development, nor indeed is there. JHis
mission as a poet began with the aim of rescuing poetry from
that effeteness which was prevalent in his youth, and in his
^mature years he directed that mission upon the civilization of
his time, for he saw that poetry is an index of the age in which
it is written.
like Holderlin he recognized that he was a poet in penurious
times: 'Dichter in durftiger Zeit'. But he did not ask himself,
as Holderlin did, to what purpose one should be a poet in such
times. Or if he did, his answer was ready to hand: for the very
reason that they are penurious. For he recognized the truth of
Jean Paul's saying: 'No age is in such need of poetry as that
which thinks it can do without it'. Like Holderlin too he realized
that the gods had abandoned men, and like him he sought to
replace them. But his attempt to do so was fraught with even
greater difficulties than that of his predecessor.
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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? contains no chauvinistic elements; and if he assumes it half
way through his career, it must be remembered that most other
German poets, Holderlin, for instance, were such from the be-
ginning, and it is odd to find fault with a poet for being primarily
the poet of his own country. Moreover his Germanism is so shot
through with Greek elements that he might have said with
Holderlin: 'The Greeks are indispensable to us'. Indispensable
because in his view (as in Holderlin's) Germans could only real-
ize themselves as Germans by assimilating the ideal life of
Greece to their lives. In the seventh poem, the Angel lays downs
for the poet the course he is to pursue: turning aside from all \
controversy even with the sages, contemplating life from a point
of vantage, assessing the value of things but taking no care to
acquire them; following not Christianity but the spirit of
Greece--''Hellas ewig unsre liebe'.
The poet has descended now from his ivory tower to the
street. 'Du stiegest ab von deinem hohen hause zum wege. '
_ There he will still remain, a stranger from a distant shore to the
multitude whom he has hitherto avoided. They cannot under-
stand him; but now and again a kindred spirit will comprehend
his ideals and a community will be established:
Nur manchmal bricht aus ihnen edles feuer
Und offenbart dir dass ihr bund nicht schande.
Dann sprich: in starker schmerzgemeinschaft euer
Erfass ich eure bru? derlichen hande.
Already in these poems of the Vorspiel appears the prophetic
idea of a new community of race and people. The poet is to take
up his place among those leaders and rulers in the world of the
spirit whose influence has spread over centuries. He feels his
mission as a leader in that world confirmed; and he conceives
of history as the sum of these great and heroic personalities--of
whom he himself is one--who are the vital factors in the develop-
ment of mankind. The Vorspiel is the central manifesto of
George's doctrine of life.
The actual Teppich des Lebens forms the second part of the
collection and is introduced by the poem Der Teppich (The
Tapestry). This explains the title of the volume. The poems are
to give pictures of characteristic figures which make up the
pattern of fife, illuminate aspects of it and declare its signifi-
cance. They are individual figures, but all presented with a
simplicity, abstractness and sometimes allusiveness which
make them rather types and symbols than differentiated indi-
viduals, and with a general tendency to see them heroically as
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? figures taken from a primitive form of life. All the poems are in
the same form as those of the Vorspiel. They include such poems
as Urlandschaft--a picture of a primaeval landscape into which
man makes his irruption; Der Freund der Fluren--the gardener
tending his plants; Der Jiinger--the disciple; DieFremde--the
strange woman who comes to the village, creates disturbance
there by her allurements, and disappears leaving behind only
the child which she has borne there. Characteristic figures
are represented already in Das Buch der Hirten and Das Buck
der Sagen und Sange with their settings of antiquity or the
Middle Ages. George's method here is not new to him, but it
has received confirmation from the message of the Angel. It
continues throughout the later volumes. Such poems may be
described, making use of George's own title for a number of
poems in this collection, as Standbilder--Standbilder der
Menschheit (Statues of the human race); heroically seen, some-
times presenting in rather abstract fashion typical aspects of life,
and calculated to stimulate a sense of human greatness and
pride, though not all represent admirable aspects of human life.
The next volume, Der Siebente Ring1, which did not appear
until eight years later, is considerably larger than any of the
others and is of primary importance, for it embodies the ideas
enunciated in the Vorspiel of Der Teppich des Lebens, embodies
in fact in the person of Maximin 'das schone leben', whose
messenger had visited George in the earlier volume. It is divided
into seven parts, and the fourth, the central one, entitled
Maximin, is the core of the work, anticipated in the first three
parts, and reflected upon those that follow it. It is in this volume
that George appears not only as the poet with a message, but
also as the seer; and thus the thought content of his poems
acquires increasing importance. George himself in the opening
poem entitled Das Zeitgedicht anticipates the surprise which
his contemporaries will feel when faced with the change in his
poetry and in the poet himself; that he whom they formerly
blamed for his aesthetic withdrawal from life (whilst they
themselves rushed into it with uproar and hideous greed); he
whose inner struggles and torments they had failed to recognize
--that he should have exchanged his pipings for the brazen
notes of the trumpet. Where they see change however there is
in reality continuation, for it may be that all beauty, strength
and greatness will arise tomorrow from the calm flutings of a
youth.
Zeitgedichte are poems which attack contemporary social and
1 Schoenberg set two poems from this volume to music, Webern five.
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? political abuses and prevailing attitudes of mind which are felt
to be evil. They are nothing new in German literature. In
Heine's second collection of poems one division bears this
title. But Heine's Zeitgedichte are more direct in their attack
and often more scurrilous; those of George are basically con-
cerned with heroic judgments passed on the actual conditions
of civilization. In a second poem bearing the same title Das
Zeitgedicht describes itself as the voice of conscience, disturbing
the complacency of the contemporary world. George, unlike
Heine, uses the symbolic method of presentation which he has
maintained throughout: . pictures of the heroic past such as the
Porta Nigra of Trier; the tombs of ancient German kings at
Speier; or heroic and distinguished personalities such as Dante;
Nietzsche; Leo XIII; Boecklin; all these serve to stress by con-
trast the degeneracy of the present age and of the masses.
This
part of the volume, however, and the following one (Gestalten)
stand somewhat apart from the poems which form the core of
the book: the third, fourth, fifth and sixth parts-- Gezeiten
(Tides); Maximin; Traumdunkel and Lieder. In these is cele-
brated the achievement, the manifestation of 'das schone Leben'
in the person of Maximin, the beautiful, gifted youth who is
deified by George.
It is this deification of Maximin that constitutes the stumbling
block for many an appreciative reader of George's poetry; and
indeed the various subtle and metaphysical interpretations of
the poet's cult of Maximin, offered by disciples, seem almost
calculated to make things worse. For Maximin emerges not
merely as a symbol of the godhead, but as the god himself:
Dem bist du kind / dem freund.
Ich seh in dir den Gott
Den schauernd ich erkannt
Dem meine andacht gilt.
The nearest approach to this relationship in literature is that
of Dante to Beatrice: but Beatrice is the symbol of Divine
Truth, not Divine Truth itself. In Maximin, in his presence as
long as he lives, in the cult of him after his death (a certain
parallel may be seen in Novalis's cult of the dead Sophie)
George finds the god incarnate, as well as the realization of 'das
schone Leben' which the Angel had announced to him. In
him the deity is embodied, and the body deified. George met
Maximin only a year or two before the boy's death, and he re-
mained ever after the centre of a quasi-religious, quasi-mystical
experience. This adoration is prefigured in earlier writings of
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? George, above all in the idea that nothing really exists except
in so far as it is 'gestaltet', receives form. From this hypostasis
of form there is perhaps only a step to the belief that the godhead
must manifest itself in the perfect body, indeed that the perfect
body is the godhead.
A statement in a later number of Die Blatter fiir die Kunst
(1910) will elucidate, even if it does not make acceptable, this
conception of the divine, attributed by the writer to the Greeks:
. . . of all the utterances of the thousands of years which are
known to us, the Greek idea that the body is god--the body
which is the symbol of transitoriness--was by far the most
creative,. . . by far the boldest and the most worthy of man-
kind, and surpasses in sublimity every other, including the
Christian one.
(The words 'der leib sei der gott'--are printed in large capitals. )
But whatever attitude may be taken to this experience of
George's, it is nevertheless clear that in this transformation of
a human being into a divinity George's seeking and striving
for significance in life found its fulfilment. Indeed it was pre-
pared by his exclusive concern with the education of male
youth and the continually recurring figure of the beautiful
young hero in the earlier poems. Thus there is a certain logic
in the Maximin climax to George's life. The figure of Maximin
dominates the whole of Der Siebente Ring, but there can be no
doubt that the poems which celebrate the more human relation-
ship of the master to the disciple, the delight in his presence,
the intensity of affection he evokes, the poignancy of grief felt
at his death are more impressive poetically, have a more spon-
taneous movement and possess a greater warmth than those
poems which are concerned with the deification of the boy. In
the poems celebrating the purely human relationship it would
seem that the spirit of love--and it was its only full flowering in
George's life--has broken down barriers and released constraints
of expression which are clearly felt in other parts of George's
oeuvre. In the division Gezeiten, in which the human inter-
course between George and Maximin finds expression, George's
poetic quality is at its finest, and some of this quality flows
over into the songs in the latter part of the volume, awakening
sympathy and tenderness for a grief which was manifestly so
deeply and poignantly felt. But this has reference primarily to
Maximin'the human being; with Maximin the god, the attempt
is made to surround him with all the attendant circumstance of
a godhead who triumphs over death and remains a living being
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? in the minds of his worshippers. And the reader remains
fundamentally unmoved. It is unlikely that many, outside of
George's own circle, will feel able to accept Maximin as a religious
revelation, even though they may accept him as a poetic inspira-
tion. They may rather regard ah the religious paraphernalia
as a sign of the urgent need of George's generation to find a
substitute for the gods who had disappeared. This, it seems, is the
only explanation for the strange fact that a youth of sixteen
years, unknown and unobserved until George observed him,
. endowed with whatever beauty and gilts of personality, should
- be found suitable to support divinity and should be divinely
proclaimed by so selective a spirit as George, and as a god im-
posed upon his followers. But the iigure of Maximin thus con-
ceived becomes for George a centre of light and a symbol of
^perfection; and by the standard of this symbol George tested
and indignantly rejected contemporary life. In the last volumes
of his poetry he judges, reproves, warns, admonishes and
foresees imminent destruction. Thus in Der Stern des Bundes
(1914) and Das Neue Reich (1928), the last two volumes, the
spirit of the Zeilgedichte and the spirit of the Maximin poems
combine to form a unity of inspiration.
In the poems of Der Stern des Bundesjil is the voice of
the poet-seer, poet-prophet which prevails. VVhere in the Zeit-
gedichte the evils of contemporary civilization are denounced
implicitly by reference to figures who stand in contrast to it,
in the later volume the attack is more direct. Raising his
voice as the seer, George warns against the degeneracy of
modern times, castigates the weaknesses and falseness of de-
mocracy, refutes the belief in a fallacious prosperity, pours
scorn upon materialism and the falsely optimistic idea of prog-
ress based upon it, deplores the absence of heroism, and fore-
sees still greater evils to come. It is the voice of one crying in
the wilderness that the day of judgment is at hand. The message
continues to be expressed in abstract, symbolic terms--no
reference is made to concrete instances, no names are mentioned
to be held up to obloquy, no place is named. Often the setting
seems to be suggested by classical themes or borrowed from the
Bible. Through this world of symbols the figure of George
passes, proclaiming the wrath to come, the destruction which is
now inevitable. In one poem he contrasts the present with
past times, scorning the belief of the present generation that
their times show greater freedom and tolerance than the Dark
Ages. These at least had a god on whose behalf cruel things
were done, but modern times have set up an idol in his place
and into its jaws they hurl their best. In another he cites, with-
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? out naming him, Nietzsche as the last warner, the last to show
the possibility of salvation. But the people paid no heed: they
continued to talk, to laugh, to mock. The warner departed--
now it is too late, no arm now will hold up the spokes of the
wheel which is rolling down into the void.
Der Stern des Bundes is a very homogeneous work, consisting
of short poems each of a dozen lines or so, mainly unrhymed.
It has a division called Eingang, followed by three books. The
spirit of which Maximin is the embodiment broods over the
whole. In the Eingang there are poems which suggest a com-
munion between the poet and the dead youth, who strengthens
and confirms him in his task. The first book contains the poems
as already described, hortatory, denunciatory, menacing. The
second book, like the Eingang, is concerned with Maximin and,
recalling the days of their earthly friendship, asserts a commu-
nion with him after his death. The third book contains poems of
admonition, which seem to be addressed not to a wider public
but rather to a chosen circle of initiates. And indeed in a pre-
fatory note attached to the public version George explains that
the book was intended originally for the friends of his inner
circle; but that appearing as it did immediately before the out-
break of war in 1914 it was interpreted as a breviary for the
men on the battlefields. This however was not his intention: 'The
events of 1914 made the minds of a wider public receptive for
a book which might have remained a secret book for years'. A
certain quasi-mystical note is present in these poems which is
new in George. For instance, the poem which begins:
Ich bin der Eine und bin Beide
Ich bin der zeuger bin der schoss
Ich bin der degen und die scheide
Ich bin das opfer bin der stoss.
It is only too easy to see how the words of the final chorus could
be interpreted as referring to the war upon which young Germans
were setting out, and how readily a nationalistic meaning could
be attached to them:
Gottes pfad ist uns geweitet
Gottes land ist uns bestimmt
Gottes krieg ist uns entzu? ndet
Gottes kranz ist uns erkannt.
But it was in intention for a smaller community and a different
campaign that the chorus was written.
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? The poems are frequently difficult and obscure. Considered
as pure poetry there is little to charm in them and though they
v. may represent the summit of George's thought, they do not
. represent the summit of his poetical achievement. One--sym^
bolicaL but easily comprehensible in its symbolism--may stand
as a representative of many.
Wer je die flamme umschritt
Bleibe der flamme trabant!
Wie er auch wandert und kreist:
Wo noch ihr schein ihn erreicht
Irrt er zu weit nicht vom ziel.
Nur wenn sein blick sie verlor
Eigener schimmer ihn tru? gt:
Fehlt ihm der mitte gesetz
Treibt er zerstiebend ins all
| The last book which George published, Das neue Reich (1928),
contains poems written during the 1914-18 war and in the
years of anarchy in Germany which followed it. Let it not be
assumed that it is a glorification of any new political realm: in-
deed, it would seem rather from the tone of the poems that the
realm is visionary. Many of the poems have reference to the war
and some appeared separately before 1918. On the whole it is
the voice of the poet-seer which speaks, especially in the first
section--the voice of one who has seen his warnings of calamity
realized in the event; who has been present at the destruction
of the civilization whose end he had foretold. If his judgement
of the state of affairs seems harsh and rigid it is because he will
not allow a sentimental optimism to blind his vision of truth,
nor comforting catch-phrases to lull his ears to the acceptance of
a false security; because he will not cry Peace, Peace, when
there is no peace. In the symbolical poem Der Brand des Tem-
pels he declares that it will be half a thousand years before the
temple can be restored. His attitude to the war in the poems
dealing with it, more especially in Der Krieg, cannot have en-
deared him to those whose patriotism was of a chauvinistic
kind. To those who come to the Seer in their distress and wonder
at his calm he replies that he has shed his tears in advance and
. now has none to shed . . . What is to him the murder of hundred
thousands, compared to the murder of life itself? He cannot
grow excited about native virtue and French treachery. . .
There is no occasion for rejoicing. There will be no triumph,
only the unworthy downfall of many . . . Sick worlds pass in
fever to their end amidst the tumult. And to those who ask
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? whether he fails to recognize the measure of sacrifice and the
strength of the communal spirit, he replies that these things are
to be found also on the side of the enemy. At the end of the poem
a more conciliatory attitude is taken up by the Seer who, basing
his faith upon the youth of his nation, refuses to believe that his
country, too beautiful to be laid waste by foreign feet, can perish.
But George speaks in these poems not exclusively as the
prophet whose warning words have been ignored and are now
fulfilled in the destruction around him. In the poem Hyperion
he sees himself also as the prophet of a newer and better civiliza-
tion which he as a dying man will not live to see:
Mein leidend leben neiet dem schlummer zu
Doch giitig lohnt der Himmlischen verheissung
Dem frommen . . . der im Reich nie wandeln darf;
Ich werde heldengrab > ich werde scholle
Der heilige sprossen zur vollendung nahn:
MlT DIESEM KOMMT DAS ZWEITE ALTER / LIEBE
GEBAR DIE WELT / LIEBE GEBIERT SIE NEU.
Ich sprach den spruch / der zirkel ist gezogen . . .
Eh mich das dunkel iiberholt entruckt
Mich hohe schau: bald geht mit leichten sohlen
Durch teure flur greifbar im glanz der Gott.
It was certainly not Hitler whom George foresaw as the god who
should make all things new.
Another poem, Der Mensch und der Drud, reveals a change,
of which there are occasional signs in the late volumes, in George's
attitude to nature. The hostile attitude to the primaeval aspect
of nature has yielded to a recognition, perhaps intellectual
rather than emotional, of nature as. the basis and indispensable
element in human life and of the necessity that humanity should
remain in immediate contact with it. In this poem he warns
against an excessive intellectualism which is losing touch with
the primitive simplicities and instincts of life, from which alone
man can draw the strength necessary to "sustain existence.
Presented in symbolical form as Der Drud, or Satyr, these
fundamentals of all existence admonish mankind:
Mit alien kiinsten lernt ihr nie was euch
Am meisten frommt. . . wir aber dienen still.
So hor nur dies: uns tilgend tilgt ihr euch.
Wo unsre zotte streift nur da kommt milch
Wo unser huf nicht hintritt wachst kein halm.
War nur dein geist am werk gewesen: langst
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? Wa? r euer schlag zersto? rt und all sein tun
War euer holz verdorrt und Saatfeld brach. .
j Nur durch den zauber bleibt das leben wach.
The last part of the volume is headed Das Lied and to it the
distich is prefixed:
Was ich noch sinne und was ich noch fu? ge
Was ich noch liebe tra? gt die gleichen zu? ge.
It is therefore to be expected that the songs which make up this
part of the volume will reveal the same qualities as those in the
earlier volumes. In point of fact there seems to be in some of
these songs of George's old age a freer movement, a greater
simplicity and an approximation to what is normally met with
in the German Lieder of the more traditional poets. Certainly
there is no diminution, but rather an increase of the lyric note
in such poems as Das Lied; Seelied; Das Licht and the last one
of all: Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme. Das Lied teils in
narrative form of the man who went out in^his youth to an
enchanted country, and found, when he returned, that years
had passed, that no one knew him any longer. All thought him
mad and set him to tend the flocks. Only the children listened
to a song. he sang, and still sang it themselves together when he
was dead. A subject matter frequent enough in folk legend, here
it is clearly a symbolical account of the fate of the poet at the
hands of the community. In Seelied the old man sitting on the
sea shore describes his waiting all day for the child with golden
hair, whose coming is the only joy left him. This poem would
seem to refer to Maximin. The last poem in the volume is mani-
festly an evocation of him, of all he had meant to George, of
inspiration, beauty, truth, fulfdment of life. It is poetically one
of the loveliest poems which George wrote and it stands at the
end of his poetical career, a tribute to that which had given
meaning and value to his life.
Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme
Du wie der morgen zart und licht
Du blu? hend reis vom edlen stamme
Du wie ein quell geheim und schlicht
Begleitest mich auf sonnigen matten
Umschauerst mich im abendrauch
Erleuchtest meinen weg im schatten
Du ku? hler wind du heisser hauch
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? Du bist mein wunsch und mein gedanke
Ich atme dich mit jeder luft
Ich schliirfe dich mit jedem tranke
Ich kusse dich mit jedem duft
Du bliihend reis vom edlen stamme
Du wie ein quell geheim und schlicht
Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme
Du wie der morgen zart und licht.
VII
George's poetry comes not from an overflowing heart and as the
result of an uncontrollable impulse. The element of will was a
part of the creative urge, and the reader is Conscious of this.
His poetic idea was not carried on the flow of words but con-
trolled it, so that the reader's attention is not carried on the
flow of words either but is aware of their manipulation, and
without careful attention to this can derive no satisfaction from
the poems. George did not himself think that there was any
break in his poetical development, nor indeed is there. JHis
mission as a poet began with the aim of rescuing poetry from
that effeteness which was prevalent in his youth, and in his
^mature years he directed that mission upon the civilization of
his time, for he saw that poetry is an index of the age in which
it is written.
like Holderlin he recognized that he was a poet in penurious
times: 'Dichter in durftiger Zeit'. But he did not ask himself,
as Holderlin did, to what purpose one should be a poet in such
times. Or if he did, his answer was ready to hand: for the very
reason that they are penurious. For he recognized the truth of
Jean Paul's saying: 'No age is in such need of poetry as that
which thinks it can do without it'. Like Holderlin too he realized
that the gods had abandoned men, and like him he sought to
replace them. But his attempt to do so was fraught with even
greater difficulties than that of his predecessor.
