Hyperion (Longfellow)/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
Jean Paul, the Only-One
IT was already night when Flemming crossed the Roman bridge over the Nahe, and entered the town of Bingen. He stopped at the White Horse; and, before going to bed, looked out into the dim starlight from his window towards the Rhine, and his heart leaped within him to behold the bold outline of the neighboring hills crested with Gothic ruins;—which in the morning proved to be only a high slated roof, with fantastic chimneys.
The morning was bright and frosty; and the river tinged with gay colors by the rising sun. A soft, thin vapor floated in the air. In the sunbeams flashed the hoar-frost like silver stars; and through a long avenue of trees, whose dripping branches bent and scattered pearls before him Paul Flemming journeyed on in triumph.
The man in the play who wished for “some forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean Sea of brewis,” might have seen his ample desires almost realized at the table d’hôte of the Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming dined that day. At the head of the table sat a gentleman with a smooth, broad forehead, and large, intelligent eyes. He was from Baireuth in Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean Paul to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his right. There was music all dinner-time, at the other endofthe.hall,—a harp and a horn and a voice,—so that a great part of the fat gentleman’s conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming, who sat opposite to her, and could look right into her large, melancholy eyes. But what he heard so much interested him,—indeed, the very name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been enough for this,—that he ventured to join in the conversation, and asked the German if he had known the poet personally.
“Yes, I knew him well,” replied the stranger. “I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the best years of his life. In my mind, the man and the author are closely united. I never read a page of his writings without hearing his voice, and seeing his form before me. There he sits, with his majestic, mountainous forehead, his mild blue eyes, and finely cut nose and mouth; his massive frame clad loosely and carelessly in an old green frock, from the pockets of which the corners of books project, and perhaps the end of a loaf of bread and the nose of a bottle; a straw hat, lined with green, lying near him; a huge walking-stick in his hand, and at his feet a white poodle, with pink eyes, and a string round his neck. You would sooner have taken him for a master-carpenter than for a poet. Is he a favorite author of yours?” Flemming answered in the affirmative.
“But a foreigner must find it exceedingly difficult to understand him,” said the gentleman. “It is by no means an easy task for us Germans.”
I have always observed,” replied Flemming, “that the true understanding and appreciation of a poet depend more upon individual than upon national character. If there be a sympathy between the minds of writer and reader, the bounds and barriers of a foreign tongue are soon overleaped. If you once understand an author’s character, the comprehension of his writings becomes easy.”
“Very true,” replied the German; “and the character of Richter is too marked to be easily misunderstood. Its prominent traits are tenderness and manliness,—qualities which are seldom found united in so high a degree as in him. Over all he sees, over all he writes, are spread the sunbeams of a cheerful spirit,—the light of inexhaustible human love. Every sound of human joy and of human sorrow finds a deep-resounding echo in his bosom. In every man, he loves his humanity only, not his superiority. The avowed object of all his literary labors was to raise up again the down-sunken faith in God, Virtue, and Immortality; and, in an egotistical, revolutionary age, to warm again our human sympathies, which have now grown cold. And not less boundless is his love for Nature,—for this outward, beautiful world. He embraces it all in his arms.”
“Yes,” answered Flemming, almost taking the words out of the stranger’s mouth, “for in his mind all things become idealized. He seems to describe himself when he describes the hero of his Titan, as a child, rocking in a high wind upon the branches of a full-blossomed apple-tree, and as its summit, blown abroad by the wind, now sunk him in deep green, and now tossed him aloft in deep blue and glancing sunshine,—in his imagination stood that tree gigantic;—it grew alone in the universe, as if it were the tree of eternal life; its roots struck down into the abyss; the white and red clouds hung as blossoms upon it; the moon as fruit; the little stars sparkled like dew, and Albano reposed in its measureless summit; and a storm swayed the summit out of Day into Night, and out of Night into Day.”
“Yet the spirit of love,” interrupted the Franconian, “was not weakness, but strength. It was united in him with great manliness. The sword of his spirit had been forged and beaten by poverty. Its temper had been tried by a thirty years’ war. It was not broken, not even blunted, but rather strengthened and sharpened, by the blows it gave and received. And, possessing this noble spirit of humanity, endurance, and self-denial, he made literature his profession; as if he had been divinely commissioned to write. He seems to have cared for nothing else, to have thought of nothing else, than living quietly and making books. He says that he felt it his duty, not to enjoy, nor to acquire, but to write; and boasted that he had made as many books as he had lived years.”
“And what do you Germans consider the prominent characteristics of his genius?”
“Most undoubtedly, his wild imagination and his playfulness. He throws over all things a strange and magic coloring. You are startled at the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations, which are scattered everywhere with a reckless prodigality; multitudinous, like the blossoms of early summer, and as fragrant and beautiful. With a thousand extravagances are mingled ten thousand beauties of thought and expression, which kindle the reader’s imagination, and lead it onward in a bold flight, through the glow of sunrise and sunset, and the dewy coldness and starlight of summer nights. He is difficult to understand,—intricate,—strange,—drawing his illustrations from every by-corner of science, art, and nature,—a comet among the bright stars of German literature. When you read his works, it is as if you were climbing a high mountain, in merry company, to see the sun rise. At times you are enveloped in mist,—the morning wind sweeps by you with a shout,—you hear the far-off muttering thunders. Wide beneath you spreads the landscape,—field, meadow, town, and winding river. The ringing of distant church-bells, or the sound of solemn village clock, reaches you;—then arises the sweet and manifold fragrance of flowers,—the birds begin to sing,—the vapors roll away,—up comes the glorious sun,—you revel like a lark in the sunshine and bright blue heaven, and all is a delirious dream of soul and sense,—when suddenly a friend at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his writings: the serious and the comic, the sublime and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous, are mingled together. At times he is sententious, energetic, simple; then, again, obscure and diffuse. His thoughts are like mummies embalmed in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopments; but within these the thoughts themselves are kings. At times glad, beautiful images, airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious;—at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, chained together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave and base, high and low, all in their motley dresses, go sweeping down the dusty page, like the galley-slaves that sweep the streets of Rome, where you may chance to see the nobleman and the peasant manacled together.”
Flemming smiled at the German’s warmth, to which the presence of the lady and the Laubenheimer wine seemed each to have contributed something, and then said:—
“Better an outlaw than not free!—These are his own words. And thus he changes at his will. Like the God Thor, of the old Northern mythology, he now holds forth the seven stars in the bright heaven above us, and now hides himself in clouds, and pounds away with his great hammer.”
“And yet this is not affectation in him,” rejoined the German. “It is his nature,—it is Jean Paul. And the figures and ornaments of his style, wild, fantastic, and ofttimes startling, like those in Gothic cathedrals, are not merely what they seem, but massive coignes and buttresses, which support the fabric. Remove them, and the roof and walls fall in. And through these gargoyles, these wild faces, these images of beasts and men carved upon spouts and gutters, flow out, like gathered rain, the bright, abundant thoughts that have fallen from heaven. And all he does is done with a kind of serious playfulness. He is a sea-monster, disporting himself on the broad ocean; his very sport is earnest; there is something majestic and serious about it. In everything there is strength, a rough good-nature, all sunshine overhead, and underneath the heavy moaning of the sea. Well may he be called 'Jean Paul, the Only-One.'"
With such discourse the hour of dinner passed; and after dinner Flemming went to the cathedral. They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in blue, with a cocked hat, and a crimson sash and collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles. This important gentleman conducted Flemming through the church, and showed him the choir, with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the beautiful figures in brown stone over the bishops' tombs. He then led him, by a side-door, into the old and ruined cloisters of St. Willigis. Through the low Gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon the pavement of tombstones, whose images and inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps of many generations. There stands the tomb of Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly-marked, and serious countenance. Below it is a bas-relief, representing the poet's funeral. He is carried to his grave by ladies, whose praise he sang, and thereby won the name of Frauenlob.
"This, then," said Flemming, "is the grave, not of Praise-God Bare-bones, but of Praise-the-Ladies Meissen, who wrote songs 'somewhat of lust, and somewhat of love.' But where sleeps the dust of his rival and foe, sweet Master Bartholomew Rainbow?"
He meant this for an aside; but the turkey-cock picked it up, and answered:—
"I do not know. He did not belong to this parish."
I will not prolong this journey, for I am weary and way-worn, and would fain be at Heidelberg with my readers and my hero. It was already night when he reached the Manheim gate, and drove down the long Hauptstrasse so slowly, that it seemed to him endless. The shops were lighted on each side of the street, and he saw faces at the windows here and there, and figures passing in the lamplight, visible for a moment, and then swallowed up in the darkness. The thoughts that filled his mind were strange; as are always the thoughts of a traveller who enters for the first time a strange city. This little world had been going on for centuries before he came; and would go on for centuries after he was gone. Of all the thousands who inhabited it, he knew nothing; and what knew they, or thought, of the stranger, who, in that close post-chaise, weary with travel, and chilled by the evening wind, was slowly rumbling over the paved street? Truly, this world can go on without us, if we would but think so. If it had been a hearse instead of a post-chaise, it would have been all the same to the people of Heidelberg,—though by no means the same to Paul Flemming.
But at the farther end of the city, near the Castle and the Carls-Thor, one warm heart was waiting to receive him; and this was the German heart of his friend, the Baron of Hohenfels, with whom he was to pass the winter in Heidelberg. No sooner had the carriage stopped at the iron-grated gate, and the postilion blown his horn, to announce the arrival of a traveller, than the Baron was seen among the servants at the door; and, a few moments afterwards, the two long-absent friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming received a kiss upon each cheek, and another on the mouth, as a pledge and seal of the German's friendship. They held each other long by the hand, and looked into each other's face, and saw themselves in each other's eyes, both literally and figuratively; literally, inasmuch as the images were there; and figuratively, inasmuch as each was imagining what the other thought of him, after the lapse of some years. In friendly hopes and questionings and answers, the evening glided away at the supper-table, where many more things were discussed than the roasted hare and the Johannisberger; and they sat late into the night, conversing of the thoughts and feelings and delights which fill the hearts of young men who have already enjoyed and suffered, and hoped and been disappointed.