The Graeco-German Imbroglio The Tyranny of Greece over Germany, By
E, M. Butler. (Cambridge University Press. 15s.) ON the coast of Columbia stands one of the strangest and most :fascinating towns in the world. Cartagena was founded by Charles V, who left it unfinished. The Indians, instead of undoing his work and rebuilding the town on their own lines, contented themselves with finishing the Renaissance buildings in a style of their own ; so that the modern visitor is astounded by the sight of, for instance, a delicate classical pediment ' supported by vast barley-sugar pillars fat enough to support -a whole temple. The effect of an entire town built on these lines is bizarre and extravagant in the extreme, but not more so than the spectacle afforded by the efforts of the great German romantics to fit the art and thought of the ancient world in to the procrustean bed of their own strange sensibility. This attempt, which was initiated by Winekelmann in the `middle of the eighteenth century, reached its height in the poetry of Holderlin, and achieved'a lurid sunset in the pseudo- ',philosophy of Nietzsche and the esoteric theories of Stefan :George, has inspired Miss Butler with one of the most important 'works of criticism of recent years.
The whole movement, which incidentally produced all the best of German literature and some of the greatest poetry in the world, was in essence the outcome of the typically Teutonic yearning for a mythology that should be their very own—a search the deplorable results of which (only hinted at by Miss :Butler) may be observed in the " new " Germany of today. 1" He bears his own pains more easily who sees his god suffer :too," remarked Heine piercingly ; and the hypostatisation of reality, whether in the interests of art or of life, is a game at which the Germans have always shown themselves proficient. To see life steadily and whole is a programme which fails to ,commend itself to this strange people, for, as Miss Butler observes, " accurate knowledge has little inspirational value." . Now German knowledge •of Greek art was never accurate : . it had little chance to be, since it was inaugurated by a man whose neurotic, if genuine, sensibility led him to see, not what . was there, but what he wanted to see. Poor Winekelmann's 'disabilities (the epithet imposes itself) landed him in the fatal 7 error of finding all he wanted of Greece in Rome, and of refusing to look further. It was left to Lessing (a far greater man, as Miss Butler points out), and to Goethe, to discover the error; .but neither was more successful in exemplifying it. 1phigenia, :though a poetic masterpiece, was quite as unsuited, both in subject and treatment, as the Laocoon group to demonstrate : the serenity and noble grandeur which Winckelmann had posited as the essential qualities of Greek art. The tragedy of Goethe's attempt to scale this Everest lay in the „essential un-Greekness of his mind, though in this respect he was undoubtedly nearer to his ideal than the writers who :followed in his wake. Yet, like all superhuman efforts, this of Goethe's produced some magnificent things by the way, and as a psychological study it is one of the most dramatic and -.intricate that exist.. Miss Butler's essay on Goethe is the bets - I have ever read ; it is concentrated, packed with stimulating ; ideas, •and absorbingly acute. Her theory of a break in the - construction of Tasso I believe to be a misconception, though•I lack space to discuss the point here. And-surely it was a mis- take to have allowed her justifiable enthusiasm for Hiilderlin , to lead her into exalting his poetry above that of Goethe—a mistake all the more curious in that she gives us, so admirable an analysis of. the latter's poetical genius and development. Hiilderlin's diction is often slovenly to the point of meaning- - lessness, which Goethe's never is. But these points do not affect the course of her argument, and her account of Goethe's prolonged struggle with his daimon, and the importance which she claims for his inveterate avoidance of tragedy—both of them features of character which were rendered more acute by the semi-barbarous state of the Germany in which he lived- , are a real contribution, not only to Goethe criticism, but to , the wider considerations- which so portentous a development Always suggests.
Schiller, again, though ultimately of less account than Goethe, is here given his exact due, which is greater than those who have not seen his dramas acted are apt to allow. Miss Butler points to the cleavage between his early and
later plays as the result of the realisation of a transcendental fate—" that feeling of a real world out of joint," If Goethe was in some ways able to surmount the ineoir sisteneies and unrealities of his Hellenism (one thinks of Santa- yana's remark that Goethe created Helen only to hand lie over to Wagner), Hffiderlin , remained the martyr, in lgis"P Butler's phrase, of the whole, disastrous movement, for his mind was soon destroyed by the Frankenstein gods of his OWO (and Goethe's and Schiller's) creation. In describing Holder- lin, Miss Buller has described Shelley, but without naming him, That was as well, for the parallel has been overdrawri•i yet the inability to outgrow a purely adolescent view of is the distinguishing mark of both poets. That .was in • peculiar degree Hiilderlin'A tragedy ; but luckily for us the lyrical expression of its progress is so supremely beautiful that regret is impossible. As Miss Butler is careful to make clear, Bread and Wine is the point where, in Thies of miraeulow; loveliness, the two incompatible worlds of Paganism am Christianity achieve something like a blending. • This is the. 'bridge that, in their heart of hearts, both Goethe and Sehiller longed to build. There it stands ; but, as MisS Butler point's out, no orthodox Christian would dare attempt to cross 'Only a weightless spirit of the trempe of Holderlin could pOS5 safely across ; he did so, and in Der Einzige yielded to Christ 'But the gods of his imaginary Greece—the Greece of hip so often exquisite novel, Hyperion—had their revenge iv the end.
To Heine, in some ways an even more tragic figure, the problem presented itself from a rather different angle—tlir 'sceptical, iconoclastic angle of the exile and the Jew. Apart from this fact, the parallel with Baudelaire is instructive, and one is not surprised that the lover of Crescentia Mirat, 'the stupid, selfish sensualist who corresponds so strikingly to Baudelaire's Jeanne Duval, should have ended, after many gyrations, in substituting Dionysus *for the Apollo of Goethe and Winckelmann. ' Nietzsche saw the possibility of making the best of both worlds, and stated the problem with new and startling eloquence, in The Birth of Tragedy. 1314 the eventual result, in Zarathustra, was something more wildly un-Greek than anything Nietzsche's predecessors could have dreamed of, and unfortunately " ' the deepest book its the German language ' is without the power to convince.' • Thenceforward, the battle may be considered lost, in spite of ,the attempts of Carl Spitteler and-Stefan George to rejoin it. I have a few quarrels with Miss Butler. In her accounG of Winekelmann's terrible murder, she allows herself the following remark : " While holding no brief for Arcangel!' one may yet be forgiven for thinking that this sordid awl brutal assassination would never have occurred if Wineklemanit had been a different man." One may be forgiven for feeling
• that in this sentence not much has been said. Were Mussolini and Hitler different men, the present state of Europe would • not be what it is. It is the " why " of facts that is interesting not the bare facts themselves. Again, I feel that Miss Butler;s understandable impatience with the preposterous hieraticisT of George has led her into underrating his poetry, though slit is undoubtedly right in preferring that of Rilke ; ,and, note •
ignorance compels inc to offer this criticism with diffidence, I find it difficult to believe that Spitteler's Olympian Spring' Time is really. " a work of genius hitherto unequalled. in this • age." Here I seem to detect the pleading of the specialist. Last but not least, I strongly deprecate Miss 'Butler's conten- tion that the classical hexameter is alien to the genius of the German tongue. Indeed, modern examples alone, such as the superb Duineser Elegien of 'bike, are sufficient to show that German, with its complicated syntax, its use of enelyties, and its numberless variety of syllabic stress, is the only modern language competent to deal with this particular metre.
" Herbstlich leuchtet die Flamme vom landlichgeselligen Herde, 7 Knistet and •glanzet, wio rasth sausend vom Roisig empor."
That is by Goethe and in itself, I think, aImoSt suffices to establish my point.
But I have no wish to end this review on a note of denigra- tion. My admiration for Miss Butler's scholarship, her powers of analysis and appreciation, is far too great for me tro wish to prevent readers from paying close 'attention to a work of the first interest and importance.
EDWARD SACKVILLE-WEST.
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