THE LYRIC OF NASCENT MODERN REALISM THE GEORG HERWEGH AND KARL BECK BY SOLOMON LIPTZIN HE preoccupation of the German lyric with the problems of every-day and especially with the problems of industry and the new society dates back to the fifth decade of the nineteenth century. This decade is known in German literature as the time of efflorescence of the political lyric, and undoubtedly the political note was most prominent in the lyric of the years preceding the March Revolution. However, this poetry can mean but little to us to-day. Its flaming appeals in behalf of an uncensored press, a people's parliament, a liberal constitution, and a united Germany are now felt to be out of date. Even its most radical demands-the abolition of the monarchy and the submersion of the individual states in a universal democracy -cannot move our generation that has lost faith in political panaceas as much as they stirred readers in the late Metternich era. The time has come for a revaluation of the political poetry of the forties. We must recognize that its message is antiquated and that its problems are no longer acute. We must salvage that small portion that is aesthetically valuable and relegate the rest to the realm of history. It is then that the industrial and social lyric or, as it may best be called, the lyric of nascent modern realism will come to the fore as the most original contribution of this decade. Its profound sympathy with the lowly and the helpless, its plea for the obliteration of class distinctions, its protest against the mechanization of life still stir the deepest chords within us. The lyrist of the forties first discovered the factory and the slums and developed the themes of industry that still fill the verses of contemporary poets. No longer did he content himself, as did Brentano and Eichendorff, with vague hints of the existence of people that were good and poor. No longer did he represent the miner as the happy lord of the world as did Novalis in one of his most famous lyrics. The spinning girl was no longer depicted at her wheel singing of lovers gone in autumn or of lovers to come with the new May. Rather was she shown feverishly at work in the late hours of a cold December night, her cheeks pale, her young body bowed, her tender limbs distorted. The beggar ceased to be a jolly figure with lyre and poodle. Poets of the forties, such as Heinrich Heine, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Georg Herwegh, Alfred Meißner, and Karl Beck, fathomed the tragic depths of a human soul that was dependent upon alms for its daily bread. In their lyrics this earliest and apparently simplest figure of the lower class underwent a complete transformation. The traditional musical instrument disappeared. A curse was more likely to escape from a beggar's starved lips than was a song. The faithful dog was rarely present or, if present, served as excellent food for a hungry stomach. The beggar was not, however, the most pathetic figure of the new social lyric. A whole array of new characters, from the unemployed weaver to the overworked seamstress, from the pious pauper to the fierce criminal, made their appearance. The German poet was face to face with those problems of industry that to-day still trouble us. What was his reaction? How did he grapple with the new landscape of factories, with the new menace of the slums, with the intenser antagonism between rich and poor? Could he sing of the changed society with all its squalor and brutality, its glorious hopes and millennial dreams as sweetly or as vigorously as he had sung of love and nature, of God and war? Could he make the grimy face of the machinist and the tear-stained cheeks of the factory-girl poetically as attractive as the majestic countenance of the prince or the alluring glance of the heroine born to be admired? Among the first German poets to espouse the cause of the inarticulate fourth estate, mention must be made of Georg Herwegh and Karl Beck. The latter, who lived from 1817 to 1879, is hardly known to-day. Yet for a time he was looked upon as a star of first magnitude. In 1839 Gutzkow placed upon his head the laurels of Byron. Arnold Ruge praised him unstintingly. Varnhagen von Ense admired him. A host of rhymesters imitated him. Alexander von Humboldt received him at Berlin. Ferdinand Freiligrath and Georg Herwegh were impressed by the power of his imagination and the vigor of his language. Friedrich Engels wrote of him as the resurrected Schiller and recommended him to his friends as the future Goethe. The literary public was intoxicated by his glowing rhetoric, his passionate imagery, his consuming love of freedom, and did not at first censure his confused thoughts and exaggerated emotions. Beck mocked at the poets that "yearned like sweet little birds to fall asleep in the safe harbor of a maiden's bosom." He wished to go out into the horrible battlefields where nations bled, tears "flared," and human hearts broke. He called for a new Samson to burst the chains of the Philistines, for a new David to fell the Goliath of prejudice, for a new Bible, and a new Bill of Rights. In his collected poems, which went through four editions from 1844 to 1846, there was, in spite of this vague rhetoric, no protest as yet against specific laws or definite social or political ills. In his poem "Auferstehung” he even pleaded with the king to solve the social question by taxing the usurers and donating adequate funds to buy black bread for all the deserving poor. His rhapsodies of freedom and equality were felt to be so little dangerous to the established order that, when the censor in 1844 confiscated the first edition, the King of Prussia immediately ordered it to be released. As long as Beck confined himself to the lamentations of Weltschmerz or to the adoration of abstract social virtues, he could not be said to belong to the front rank of social poets, in spite of the spell exercised for a time by his verses. When in 1846, however, he published his Lieder vom armen Mann, a book that quickly went through three editions, he produced a remarkable work which far surpassed its predecessors in depth of feeling and in clearness of vision. Self-pity led him to pity others. His own pain, the subject of so much exaggeration in his earlier Weltschmerz period, sank into insignificance when compared with the bitter pain of the hungry, mistreated millions. He saw human beings divided into two hostile classes, masters and slaves, oppressors and oppressed, rich and poor, and through the mouths of the parias he hurled fierce accusations against society. "Ihr Seligen könnt euch pflegen und mästen, Ihr habet Orden und Ämter und Pfründen, Wir schmeicheln euern Launen und Sünden, Though Beck was at his best when thundering against social injustice in savage tones such as here indicated, he was nevertheless also capable of touching softer chords. There was often deep tragic pathos in his descriptions of scenes in proletarian homes. In one such scene that takes place in a Silesian hut, the hungry wife of a weaver lusts for potatoes and a glass of wine, but her husband reminds her that they are not living in paradise and that the last crumbs have just disappeared from their table. However, the resourceful woman, remembering that her sister upon marrying concealed two loaves of bread as a charm that wards off hunger, rushes forth and obtains this precious stale food. Then, as the family sits about the table enjoying the frugal meal, the husband speaks of days gone by when a simple weaver of Augsburg, named Fugger, invited an emperor to dinner. In a poetic preface addressed to the house of Rothschild, the Fuggers of the nineteenth century, Beck called the banker the King of Kings whose signature determined the fate of innumerable beings. In vain did the youth of Europe cry out for justice, freedom, and light. The Lord of Gold held nations in his grip by means of his stocks and bonds. The charity of the millionaire should not deceive anyone, for he was but paying back in drops what he had taken from the workers in buckets. A day would come when his kingdom and that of his petty pupils would collapse. The glory of his economic empire was the glory of the setting sun. Beck had no remedy for existing evils, unless the plea for charity be deemed a remedy. He could only weakly implore God to remove misery from the firesides of his brothers. He held up Fugger as a model of philanthropy, as a rich craftsman who did not forget his more unfortunate countrymen. He preached no doctrine of reform or revolution. He sought but the amelioration of distress. He flashed before the consciences of readers glaring pictures of social injustice. He was a master of pathos, an orator in verse, a musician with organ-tones at his command, a painter who used gorgeous barbaric colors. He apostrophized the potato as though it were the youngest and most tender divinity born of the loins of Zeus. He wrote a dirge on the failure of the annual crop to the melody of Hauff's 'Morgenrot! Morgenrot!" He was the first German lyrist to portray the slums of our modern towns. We see wild beings in decaying huts; deserted, barefooted, uncombed children, huddled together as a protection against cold and loneliness; the organ grinder who with his monotonous song is the hero of this little world; the emaciated factory slaves who file out of the stalls of their masters like a long, long train of corpses. In workers' quarters the nights are spent in gloom and the days in restless toil. The maiden who sews until her eyes are blear and her fingers numb must wrestle with the temptation held out by those who offer gold ducats for her love. The proletarian woman must nurse the babe of the money-changer and lull it to sleep with pleasant songs, while her own child withers and dies for want of care. Fathers are teaching their offspring to beg and mothers are selling their daughters to the lustful rich. However, when drums beat and soldiers parade, all windows are thrown wide open and old and young gape in wonder. If only these brave troops that the populace admired so much would bring bread instead of powder and bullets! If only these splendid heroes thought less of protecting the silks of the rich and more of providing shirts to cover the nakedness of the poor! But a bloody day might come, even though none desired it, when the people themselves would take up arms, when the desperate mob would sally forth with glistening bayonets, and beat its own rebellious music on a deafening drum. While Beck's violent lyrics that moved his generation have rarely been reprinted, his plaintive idyl of two humble souls and their humble love has retained its popularity until our own day. The hero and the heroine are indicated by the title |