AUSTRIAN PEASANTS.*
Jr has been noted as a deplorable fact, that Germany's literature has not kept pace with her political aggrandisement. In the department of belles lettres especially, no new men of first-class merit have arisen. Austria, however, may now boast a naïvely orginal writer, Ludwig Auzengruber, a dramatist and story- teller, who recently bore off the Schiller prize, and whose novel, Der Sehandfleck, showed that he could write a work of power. He also gained some distinction by short stories published in Nord und S&L, which attracted attention at the time, and which he has now issued in two volumes, under the attractive title, Dorfgdnge (" Village Walks "). They deal entirely with Aus- trian country life, and he himself once designated them as contributions to the psychology of the peasant.
Austria has not yet come under the all-subduing and all- suppressing yoke of Bismarck ; from her, therefore, can still issue a writer who ventures to think outside the prescribed groove, and to speak as he thinks, without first considering if his ideas are likely to fall in with those permitted by the authorities. It is more than possible that Bismarck would not object to Anzengruber; he is not a didactic writer—he defends or attacks no system of philosophy—but we doubt if the un- conscious outlook of Anzengruber could have been developed under the Prussian regime, which is nothing if not conscious, and deals chiefly in phrases that have received the official imprimatur. It is long since we read anything more refresh- ingly natural, humorous, pathetic, and true. It is a matter for regret that a satisfactory English translation of these tales is hardly feasible, owing to the impossibility of repro- ducing the effect of the warm, rich, Austrian dialect in which they are narrated.
These are no mere sketches of humble life, that describe what passes "in huts where poor men lie," neither are they stories after the fashion made so popular by Auerbach, wherein the peasant is represented through a rose - coloured medium, cleansed and furbished-up outwardly for eyes polite, and having arrived inwardly at as distinct a recognition of his own personality and its relation to the universe as if he, like their creator, had sat at the feet of Spinoza. Anzengruber's peasants are less pretty, less picturesque, but more real ; they savour of the soil, they live mentally in that dim, intellectual twilight characteristic of uneducated persons and you,* children: Anzengruber writes with no didactic purpose, he rarely inter- rupts the flow of his narrative by a reflection, his tales are naïvely told, simple and fresh as the hedges of the country dis- tricts amid which their scenes are laid. There is nothing of effort, of conscious manufacture, to be traced. And yet, though all seems thus upon the surface, though there is no conscious contrivance, they are more profound, refined, and suggestive than at first sight appears. Anzengruber relies for his effect upon the fidelity of his pictures, and in this fidelity lies his hidden power.
A distinctive feature of these stories is that they deal with
• Dorfgange. von L. Anzengruber. Rosner : Wien. London : Nutt. 1880.
Catholic peasants, and reveal to us the effect produced by the tenets of the Church of Rome when accepted literally by the nebulous mind of an uneducated country bumpkin. Anzengruber, himself a Catholic, though scarcely one to the pattern and liking of Rome, has lived much among the country folk, and understands and can depict how these people are affected by the spiritual conditions under which they are brought up. They are by no means unthinking ; on the contrary, the shepherd who sits day after day in the pasture, tending his flock and wiling away the hours by knitting, strives to penetrate many a secret of nature and life, while he mechanically forms stitch upon stitch. But he does so in a cumbersome, awkward mode ; he gets confused in the meshes of his own reflections, and is apt to grow an indifferent sceptic, or a mere worshipper of dead forms. The problem of the universe is too hard for him ; he abandons it in despair. As a rule, peasants are silent more from an inability to put their dim thoughts into words than from dis- like of speech ; they cannot give vent to their anxious specula- tions, that often land them on darkly pessimistic shores. Most common, for obvious causes, is the conflict between reason and their blind and literal belief; and this, two stories illustrate most perfectly. Before proceeding further, however, we would wish to remove the possibility of an erroneous impression to the effect that Anzengruber's stories are irreverent, that might arise from our necessarily brief survey. Anzengruber's mind is far too pure, too healthy, to be irreverent ; true religion will never be misunderstood at his hands ; his ethics and his belief are of the highest and noblest ; he assails not truth, but priestly assumptions.
" Wie der Huber ungliabig wurde " (" How Huber became an Unbeliever ") is told with noble brevity and simplicity, in- terrupted by no reflexions, and unrolls before us a curious psychological process. Old Huber, a man known in all the village for his piety and integrity, has just returned from the burial of his wife. He is asked by the sexton what inscription he desires upon her tombstone, and a verse is suggested in which occur the words, "peaceful was her death." This Huber rejects ; her death was far from peace- ful, she suffered long and painfully ; he will walk through the churchyard, and scrutinise the epitaphs, perchance he will find one more to his taste. He does so, and reads how one says he lies beneath awaiting the resurrection ; another says he is looking down upon his beloved ones from above ; a third, that he rests in eternal sleep ; a fourth—and that a notorious rogue --how he is revelling in the joys of Heaven. " What !" ex- claims Huber, "not even under the earth are people of one mind. Only one of these things can be true. After dying, one person cannot manage so, and another so." Then he sees one of the representations of purgatory so common in Catholic churchyards. "What, there is yet another alternative! Now, what is true? What comes of us ? Do we remain lying down for ever, or do we get up again and fly about free as air, or do we burn ?" A dim notion that the priest says much in the church for which he cannot vouch dawns on Huber, for after all, wearing a stole and an alb and a four-cornered cap cannot do it all. The priest probably knows as little of all these things as he himself. An inscription asserting that we have been nothing and return to nothing clenches Huber's doubts. "Yes, yes !" he sighed, wiping from his brow the perspiration induced by the unwonted effort of thought ; "yes, our minds misgive us ofttimes in life, but as a youngster we spring over it, and as a man we carefully avoid it; only when we are old we fall on it with our noses. No- thing before and nothing behind, and in the middle nothing very wise. Dying is not half so stupid as being born." Thus Huber leaves the churchyard a Materialist. He consents to hear the mass for the repose of his wife's soul, "since it has been paid for," but he vows the Church shall extract no more money from him. But—and 'here comes in the healthy substratum of peasant minds—Huber's revolt does not make him immoral ; on the contrary, he regrets more than ever any evil he may have done since, its there is no hereafter, he can no longer retrieve it. He grows, if possible, yet more worthy. "Since we have only time, let us do our best in it," he remarks. "Are you,- perhaps, cause of all?" he says, addressing the Sun ; "probably you don't know, don't inquire. To be, that is all we can and of which we know. Well, let us live. Do you do your day's work up there in the blue sky, and I down here in my furrow. It will, probably, be all right. Upright I will remain, and for that I need no commandment." Such is philosophy evolved in a narrow range of thought.
More tragical is the history of Liesel, the goose-herd. Hers is a dreamy nature, and this is her misfortune. She, too, accepts her faith literally ; but it has its poetic side, to which she attaches herself. When her childish questions are quieted. with promises that after her first communion she will compre- hend all things, she is bitterly cast down and her faith shaken when, after partaking of the consecrated wafer, she understands as little as before the speech of the birds and plants. She grows up still a dreamer, and is held by the peasants to be a daft thing, and despised and contemned. Her very love is spurned. Then it occurs to her, as she passes a wayside shrine, that she will appeal to the Virgin in her sorrow. "Our Lord is a man," she said ; "he can't understand the likes of us so well, and one can't exactly tell him every- thing ; now, if I could have a talk with you, perhaps all might still be well. If you don't mind, I will come to you in church to-night." And to the church she goes, and when she is alone, confronts the image upon the altar with, "And now for my talk with you." What passes in the building during the nights- while a heavy storm roars without, is never known. In the morning, the sacristan, to his horror, finds the Virgin's image absent from the altar and her fine clothes strewn around, while on the ground lies Liesel clasping the figure in her arms, and moaning, "She, too, is nothing but wood." From that day forward her reason left her, and this was the only phrase that issued from her lips. "That is the judgment of God upon over-inquisitiveness," was the verdict of some pious folk.
The story of Jacob, who outwitted Heaven, is inimitable, both in form and matter. The fable baldly told is robbed of half its attraction. We must read the story of this man's one cow, his ewe-lamb, coveted by a rich farmer, his David. The- cow falls ill, Jacob, in his despair, appeals to every saint in turn to save it, promising each one a stout candle for his pains. The cow recovers, and Jacob, too poor to meet the liabilities he has incurred, yields at last to the rich man's offer, selling him the cow, with all the vows upon it, vows of which, however, he does not tell the purchaser till after the conclusion of the bar- gain. The rich man, also a bit of a miser, is now bound to execute Jacob's expensive promises, lest he should draw down upon himself and the cow the wrath of the whole saintly com- munion.
"The Child of Sin" is, again, darkly tragic. It depicts the corruption of a naturally noble soul by the half-culture of priestly nurture. Its hero struggles to be true to his vows of chastity, while he inherits a passionate temperament. In the end he succumbs and dies, and the unnatural system avenges itself. "Pious Catherine" shows us the native immobility of the peasant, who desires to live and die on the spot where he was born. He knows nothing of the rest of the world, and does not wish to know. He thinks it must be strange if a pereon knocks about much in the world,—is born here, married there,. removes thither, goes thence, never knowing where death may overtake him, and where may be his last abode. He cannot conceive how such a one can stretch and extend himself in. thought, when so many bits of his life and memory lie in various spots. And how terrible it will be when he is called before the Judgment Seat, and has thus to gather up the fragments of his life piece-meal from one place and another.
Space will not permit us to dwell longer upon these refresh- ingly original tales. Beyond question, their author belongs to. the modern realistic school, but he is saved from its faults by a tender heart, a genuine sympathy for his fellow-men. Moreover, a realism such as his is useful in turning light upon social pro- blems. A terse and able writer, Anzengruber will not fail to- meet with admirers outside the limits of his native land.
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