theories regarding the universalia, a revolt based on a more practical epistemology in that it opened the door to the human will in the search for saving grace.26 Similarly, the philosophy of experience from Locke to James, so distinctly an Anglo-Saxon product, leaves nowhere a certain secure anchorage in Positivist thought. Nevertheless, certain suggestions may be brought forward that will apply if literary biography is to be free of servitude to an inapplicable law of causation and which will perhaps indicate certain secure boundaries of an epistemological sort for it as one of the historical sciences. In any method it is almost trite to say that chronology must play a part, if for no other reason than because it furnishes an absolutely secure way of representing the continuity of history. Schopenhauer has pointed out that in history the most general is the most certain.27 There is no arguing about the years of the author's birth and death, and within these fall dates that measure childhood, youth, maturity and age by certain events of life. Biological factors of inheritance, family, etc., cannot interest us as causal starting points; historically they may be significant as showing patterns of life likely to be similar to those with which we have to deal in the personality of our author. Important are the unconscious expressions of childhood and early youth, early sayings and verses, as indicating the earliest fixations of ideas, as well as the earliest letters and writings touching on the unfolding of the inner life. Here the much-abused psychoanalysis may supply factors which will greatly enrich our knowledge of the subconscious processes of the poet's thought.28 Education and occupation, love and 26 Cf. Siebeck, "Occams Erkenntnislehre," Archiv f. Philosophie, X (1897), 317 ff. 27 Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, II, 3, Par. 38; Grisebach's Ausgabe, II, 517. With his rare metaphysical acuteness Schopenhauer has indicated in this passage the methodological difference between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften. The former base on individual observations and deduce abstract laws from them; while the latter base on a general frame-work; i.e., abstract ideas, within which events arrange themselves by subjective combination. 28 Here I cannot forbear referring to the conservative yet very helpful application of certain data from this method to a literary work by Ernst Feise in an article, "Werther als nervöser Charakter," in the Germanic Review, July, 1926, as an instance of what may be gained by a study of the literature of neurosis for an understanding of a work on which discussion from other aspects had become threadbare. friendship are of importance if they can give usable evidence of the inner processes of self-reproduction. Very important, of course, are the ideas which engaged the attention of early contemporaries and show the modes of thought in the poet's life, particularly in his youth; while lines drawn from other poets and thinkers help us, not as determining influences, but because their similarity or dissimilarity with the poet's own ideas may lead to a better understanding of the unfolding of his genius. Individuum est ineffabile, and it must be conceded that in the last instance the essence of the individual poet will remain a mystery for his biographer. Attempts have been made to define the personality of literary genius by various forms of intersecting loci-psychological or metaphysical, stylistic, racial and nationalistic. Particularly interesting experiments have been made in the field of the new psychology. Some of these attempts to define the poetic Gestalt by a psychological network, like that of the great questionnaire used by Paul Margis in his psychological study of E. T. A. Hoffmann,29 are still too much dependent on criteria of the natural sciences to be really adaptable as a method for understanding the poet's work. The great interest of the subject lies in its complexity and the consequent freedom left to the historian to work out his own method. As has been noted above, literary biography is an art-product and the biographer must be at once scientist and artist. His program may be likened to that which the Herr in Faust assigns to the Erzengel: "Doch ihr, die echten Göttersöhne, Erfreut euch der lebendig reichen Schöne! Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt, Umfaß' euch mit der Liebe holden Schranken, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 29 E. T. A. Hoffmann, eine psychographische Individualanalyse. Beiheft zur Zs. f. angewandte Psychologie u. psychologische Sammelforschung, 4 (Leipzig: Barth, 1911). GERMAN GENIUS IN THE NOVELLE BY LAMBERT A. SHEARS OGETHER with the lyric, the German Novelle is recognized TOGET at home and abroad as its country's greatest contribution to the international literary symphony. Spielhagen, certainly not narrowly national in his aesthetic sympathies, writes: "Und so ist es gewiß kein Zufall, daß wir neben unserer eigentlichen Roman-Literatur eine Novellen-Dichtung haben von einer Fülle und stilvollen Schönheit und Reinheit, mit der sich, was andere Nationen in diesem Genre erzeugen, auch nicht annähernd messen kann." To take the words of an eminent practitioner who has brought the Novelle to a high state of perfection: "Die Novelle, wie sie sich in neuerer Zeit, besonders in den letzten Jahrzehnten ausgebildet hat . . . eignet sich zur Aufnahme auch des bedeutendsten Inhalts, und es wird nur auf den Dichter ankommen, auch in dieser Form das Höchste der Poesie zu leisten . . . die heutige Novelle ist die Schwester des Dramas und die strengste Form der Prosadichtung.” Here we have a high testimonial both as to the content and the form of this genre. 3 Besides four Novellisten, whose title to fame is undisputed, viz., Gottfried Keller, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Storm, and Paul Heyse, the nineteenth century can point to many other authors of high rank in this field, including E. T. A. Hoffmann, Adalbert Stifter, Otto Ludwig, and Ferdinand von Saar. When we consider that the Novelle, properly socalled, was not domesticated by the Romanticists until the 1 F. Spielhagen, Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans, Leipzig, 1883, S. 263. 2A. Köster, Briefwechsel zwischen Th. Storm und G. Keller, 4. Auflage, Berlin, 1924, p. 181. 'As there is no convenient equivalent for this word in English I shall use the German form. The choice of these names may seem arbitrary, but none will deny the genius of their owners. 5 early years of the nineteenth century, its sudden and continued popularity is remarkable. As Bastier notes in his solid and brilliant study of the German Novelle, one cannot mention a single writer of prominence from Wieland down to the present day who has not produced some sort of short narrative. Even Richard Wagner, musician, and Helmuth von Moltke, strategist, have tried their hand at it. And if we require added confirmation of this vogue, we need but turn to the endless collections of stories, native and foreign, to the Novellenbücher, Novellenalmanache, Novellenschätze, etc., appearing throughout the century. In spite of its origin as the offspring of the German Romantic genius, assisted by Goethe, and the stories of Boccaccio and Cervantes, the Novelle was not long in losing the traces of its foreign extraction. The stories of Stifter or Keller, for instance, bear little resemblance to those of the Italian or Spaniard. The typical example of the nineteenth century is thoroughly German, as we shall attempt to show in the course of our study. However, it does usually have the earmarks of its German Romantic forbears." What are the leading traits of the Romantic School as they affected the Novelle? Perhaps the most striking one is the subjectivity which the authors injected into their narratives. In their hands the sharp, vivid objectivity of the foreign models was soon left by the wayside. One of the earliest theorists of the Novelle, Friedrich Schlegel, expresses it thus: "Die Novelle soll besonders geeignet sein, eine subjektive Stimmung und Ansicht, und zwar die tiefsten und eigentümlichsten derselben indirekt und gleichsam sinnbildlich darzustellen." Again, Schlegel writes that, as in the case of the Novelle, "Das Beste in den besten Romanen nichts anderes ist, als ein mehr oder minder Paul Bastier, La Nouvelle Individualiste en Allemagne de Goethe à G. Keller, Paris, 1910, p. 13. • Cf. Bastier, op. cit., P. 18. 'Heinrich von Kleist, one of the greatest German Novellisten, stands rather aloof from the main stream of literary development. Not until long after their publication in 1811 did his Novellen become widely known. Nachricht von den poetischen Werken des Johannes Boccaccio, 1801. Quoted by K. Ewald, Die deutsche Novelle im ersten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen, 1907, p. 15. Of Goethe's verhülltes Selbstbekenntnis des Verfassers." Novelle (1826) which represented years of thought and was conceived with the idea of a special genre, the author claims that it symbolized his whole philosophy of life. And others will be mentioned who expressed their hopes, feelings and aspirations in this form. At first glance the Novelle may not seem to be a suitable vehicle for confessional writing. However, it is comparatively brief, even allowing for the extravagances of certain Romantic authors; its structure is normally compact and severe. According to Bastier, precisely because of its apparent objectivity, writers have chosen this genre as a safe repository for their innermost experiences: "Si le poète choisit la Nouvelle pour y épancher son âme, c'est souvent pour que le public ne s'aperçoive pas qu'il se confesse. Nulle forme n'égare plus facilement les lecteurs." 10 In this connection, one wonders why critics have persisted in speaking of the cold objectivity of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's throbbing Novellen, in the face of his own words: "Ich bediene mich der Form der geschichtlichen Novelle rein zu dem Zwecke, meine seelischen Erfahrungen und Gefühle darin unterzubringen. Ich ziehe sie dem Zeitroman vor, da sie mich besser verhüllt und den Leser in größerer Entfernung hält. So bin ich unter einer ganz objektiven und außerordentlichen künstlerischen Form im Inneren ganz individuell und subjektiv." 11 Closely allied to the subjectivity of the German Novelle is its lyricism. This characteristic is so obvious in some of the famous Novellisten that it has often been remarked. We find it in high degree in Arnim, Brentano, Eichendorff, Mörike, Stifter, Storm, Saar, to mention but a few names. The "lyric Novelle" was naturally common among the Romanticists as they sought deliberately to make their narratives "musical," to express their emotions and feelings as directly as possible; "Brief über den Roman," in the Athenäum, III, 1800, quoted by R. McB. Mitchell, Heyse and his Predecessors in the Theory of the Novelle, Frankfurt a/M, 1915, p. 14. This is a particularly good study of the subject. 10 Op. cit., p. 290. 11 Letter to Felix Bovet, Jan. 14, 1888, quoted by L. Bianchi, Von der Droste bis Liliencron, Beiträge zur Deutschen Novelle und Ballade, S. 139. |