Debit and Credit. Gustav Freytag. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Gustav Freytag
Издательство: Bookwire
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Жанр произведения: Языкознание
Год издания: 0
isbn: 4057664613592
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deeply human and of living power in these elements, and this reality will one day obtain the victory over all opponents.

      By what an entirely different atmosphere do we feel ourselves to be surrounded in Gil Blas, where the highest poetry, the cunning dexterity of the modern Spanish Figaro, is manifested in the midst of a depraved nobility, and a priesthood alive only to their own material interests. It is only the most perfect art that could have retained for this novel readers in every quarter of the world. The dénouement is as perfect as with such materials it can be; and we feel that, instead of Voltaire's withering and satiric contempt of all humanity, an element of unfeigned good-humor lies in the background of the picture. How far inferior is Swift! and how utterly horrible is the abandoned humor of a despair that leaves all in flames behind it, which breathes upon us from the pages of the unhappy Rabelais!

      Fielding's novels, Tom Jones in particular, bear the same resemblance to the composition of Cervantes that the paintings of Murillo bear to those of Rembrandt. The peculiarity of Wilhelm Meister as a novel is more difficult of apprehension, if one does not seek the novel where in truth it lies—in the story of Mignon and the Harper, and only sees in the remainder the certainly somewhat diffuse but deeply-thought and classically-delineated picture of the earnest striving after culture of a German in the end of the eighteenth century. It would argue, however, as it appears to me, much prejudice, and an utterly unreasonable temper, not to recognize a perfect novel in the Wahlverwandschaften, however absolutely one may deny the propriety of thus tampering with and endangering the holiest family relationships, or thus making them the subjects of a work of fiction. Goethe, however, has here placed before us, and that with the most noble seriousness and the most artistic skill, a reality which lies deep in human nature and the period he represents. The tragical complications and consequences resulting even from errors which never took shape in evil deeds could not in the highest tragedy be represented more purely and strikingly than here. The stain of impurity rests upon the soul of him who thinks that he detects it, not in the book itself. Ottilie is as pure and immortal a creation of genius as Mignon.

      As novel-literature has developed itself in Europe, an attempt has been made to employ it as a mirror of the past, into which mankind shall love to look, and thereby ascertain whether civilization has advanced or retrograded with the lapse of time. This is a reaction against the eighteenth century, and it appears under two forms—the idealistic-sentimental and the strongly realistic-social. The earliest instance in Germany of the romantic school, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, is the apotheosis of the art and literature of the Middle Ages. The writings of Walter Scott put an end to this sentimentalism, and this is indeed their highest merit. Those of his works will continue to maintain the most prominent place, standing forth as true and living representations of character, which deal with the events of Scottish history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Still more the work of genius, however, and of deeper worth, Hope's Anastasius must be admitted to be—that marvelous picture of life in the Levant, and in the whole Turkish Empire, as far as Arabia, as it was about the end of the last and the beginning of the present century. In this work truth and fiction are most happily blended; the episodes, especially that of Euphrosyne, may be placed, without disparagement, beside the novels of Cervantes, and strike far deeper chords in the human heart than the creations of Walter Scott. Kingsley's Hypatia, alone of modern works, is worthy to be named along with it. That, indeed, is a marvelous and daring composition, with a still higher aim and still deeper soul-pictures. Both of them will live forever as examples of union of the idealistic and the realistic schools, poetic evocations of a by-gone reality, with all the truth and poetry of new creations. In reading either of them we forget that the work is as instructive as it is imaginative.

      The most vehement longing of our times, however, is manifestly after a faithful mirror of the present; that is to say, after a life-picture of the social relations and the struggles to which the evils of the present day have given rise. We feel that great events are being enacted; that greater still are in preparation; and we long for an epic, a world-moulding epic, to imbody and depict them. The undertaking is a dangerous one—many a lance is shivered in the first encounter. A mere tendency-novel is in itself a monster. A picture of the age must be, in the highest acceptation of the word, a poem. It must not represent real persons or places—it must create such. It must not ingraft itself upon the passing and the accidental, but be pervaded by a poetic intuition of the real. He that attempts it must look with a poet's eye at the real and enduring elements in the confusing contradictions of the time, and place the result before us as an actual existence. It has been the high privilege of the English realistic school, which we may call without hesitation the school of Dickens, that it has been the first to strike the key-note with a firm and skillful hand. Its excellence would stand out with undimmed lustre had it not, as its gloomy background, the French school of Victor Hugo and Balzac, that opposite of "the poetry of despair," as Goethe calls it. Here again, in this new English school, has the genius of Kingsley alighted. Most of his novels belong to it. And, besides himself and Dickens, there stand forth as its most brilliant members the distinguished authoress of Mary Barton, and the sorely-tried Charlotte Brontë, the gifted writer of Jane Eyre—too soon, alas! removed from us. This school has portrayed, in colors doubtless somewhat strong, the sufferings and the virtues, the dangers and the hopes of the working-classes, especially in towns and factories. But, instead of enjoining hatred of the higher classes, and despair of all improvement in the future for humanity, a healthy tone pervades their writings throughout, and an unwavering and cheering hope of better things to come shines through the gloomy clouds that surround the dreary present. There are throes of anguish—but they tell of coming deliverance; there are discords—but they resolve into harmony. The spirit finds, pervading the entire composition, that satisfaction of the desires of our higher nature which constitutes true artistic success.

      Dickens, too, has at length chosen the real life of the working-classes in their relations to those above them as a subject for his masterly pen. Dombey and Son will not readily be forgotten.