A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Hyperion

H >> Henry Wadsworth Longfellow >> Hyperion




The truth is, that in all things he acted more from impulse than
from fixed principle; as is the case with most young men. Indeed,
his principles hardly had time to take root; for he pulled them all
up, every now and then, as children do the flowers they have
planted,--to see if they are growing. Yet there was much in him
which was good; for underneath the flowers and green-sward of
poetry, and the good principles which would have taken root, had he
given them time, therelay a strong and healthy soil of common
sense,--freshened by living springs of feeling, and enriched by many
faded hopes, that had fallen upon it like dead leaves.




CHAPTER IV. THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER.



"Allez Fuchs! allez lustig!" cried the impatient postilion to his
horses, in accents, which, like the wild echo of the Lurley Felsen,
came first from one side of the river, and then from the
other,--that is to say, in words alternately French and German. The
truth is, he was tired of waiting; and when Flemming had at length
resumed his seat in the post-chaise, the poor horses had to make up
the time lost in dreams on the mountain. This is far oftener the
case, than most people imagine. One half of the world has to sweat
and groan, that the other half may dream. It would have been a
difficult task for the traveller or his postilion to persuade the
horses, that these dreams were all for their good.

The next stopping-place was the little tavern of the Star, an
out-of-the-way corner in the town of Salzig. It stands on the banks
of the Rhine; and, directly in front of it, sheer from the water's
edge, rise the mountains of Liebenstein and Sternenfels, each with
its ruined castle. These are the Brothers of the old tradition,
still gazing at each other face to face; and beneath them in the
valley stands a cloister,--meek emblem of that orphan child, they
both so passionately loved.

In a small, flat-bottomed boat did the landlady's daughter row
Flemming "over the Rhine-stream, rapid and roaring wide." She was a
beautiful girl of sixteen; with black hair, and dark, lovely eyes,
and a face that had a story to tell. How different faces are in this
particular! Some of them speak not. They are books in which not a
line is written, save perhaps a date. Others are great family
bibles, with all the Old and New Testament written in them. Others
are Mother Goose and nursery tales;--others bad tragedies or
pickle-herring farces; and others, like that of the landlady's
daughter at the Star, sweet love-anthologies, and songs of the
affections. It was on that account, that Flemming said to her, as
they glided out into the swift stream;

"My dear child! do you know the story of the Liebenstein?"

"The story of the Liebenstein," she answered, "I got by heart,
when I was a little child."

And here her large, dark, passionate eyes looked into Flemming's,
and he doubted not, that she had learned the story far too soon, and
far too well. That story he longed to hear, as if it were unknown to
him; for he knew that the girl, who had got it by heart when a
child, would tell it as it should be told. So he begged her to
repeat the story, which she was but too glad to do; for she loved
and believed it, as if it had all been written in the Bible. But
before she began, she rested a moment on her oars, and taking the
crucifix, which hung suspended from her neck, kissed it, and then
let it sink down into her bosom, as if it were an anchor she was
letting down into her heart. Meanwhile her moist, dark eyes were
turned to heaven. Perhaps her soul was walking with the souls of
Cunizza, and Rahab, and Mary Magdalen. Or perhaps she was thinking
of that Nun, of whom St. Gregory says, in his Dialogues, that,
having greedily eaten a lettuce in a garden, without making the sign
of the cross, she found herself soon after possessed with a
devil.

The probability, however, is, that she was looking up to the
ruined castles only, and not to heaven, for she soon began her
story, and told Flemming how, a great, great many years ago, an old
man lived in the Liebenstein with his two sons; and how both the
young men loved the Lady Geraldine, an orphan, under their father's
care; and how the elder brother went away in despair, and the
younger was betrothed to the Lady Geraldine; and how they were as
happy as Aschenputtel and the Prince. And then the holy Saint
Bernard came and carried away all the young men to the war, just as
Napoleon did afterwards; and the young lord went to the Holy Land,
and the Lady Geraldine sat in her tower and wept, and waited for her
lover's return, while the old father built the Sternenfels for them
to live in when they were married. And when it was finished, the old
man died; and the elder brother came back and lived in the
Liebenstein, and took care of the gentle Lady. Ere long there came
news from the Holy Land, that the war was over; and the heart of the
gentle Lady beat with joy, till she heard that her faithless lover
was coming back with a Greek wife,--the wicked man! and then she
went into a convent and became a holy nun. So the young lord of
Sternenfels came home, and lived in his castle in great splendor
with the Greek woman, who was a wicked woman, and did what she ought
not to do. But the elder brother was angry for the wrong done the
gentle Lady, and challenged the lord of Sternenfels to single
combat. And, while they were fighting with their great swords in the
valley of Bornhofen behind the castle, the convent bells began to
ring, and the Lady Geraldine came forth with a train of nuns
alldressed in white, and made the brothers friends again, and told
them she was the bride of Heaven, and happier in her convent than
she could have been in the Liebenstein or the Sternenfels. And when
the brothers returned, they found that the false Greek wife had gone
away with another knight. So they lived together in peace, and were
never married. And when they died--"

"Lisbeth! Lisbeth!" cried a sharp voice from the shore, "Lisbeth!
Where are you taking the gentleman?"

This recalled the poor girl to her senses; and she saw how fast
they were floating down stream. For in telling the story she had
forgotten every thing else, and the swift current had swept them
down to the tall walnut trees of Kamp. They landed in front of the
Capucin Monastery. Lisbeth led the way through the little village,
and turning to the right pointed up the romantic, lonely valley
which leads to the Liebenstein, and even offered to go up. But
Flemming patted her cheek and shook his head. He went up the valley
alone.




CHAPTER V. JEAN PAUL, THE ONLY-ONE.



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 end of the
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 heheard, 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-resoundingecho 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 asfruit; 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 the 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 envelopements; 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 bright 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 oft-times 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 roofand walls fall in. And through these gurgoyles, these wild
faces, 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 every thing 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 theold 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."

It was already night, when Flemming crossedthe 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 up to behold
the bold outline of the neighbouring 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 from 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.

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 werelighted on each side of the street, and he saw faces at
the windows here and there, and figures passing in the lamp-light,
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 irongrated 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 the pledge and
seal of the German's friendship. They held each other long by the
hand, and looked into each other's faces, 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.




CHAPTER VI. HEIDELBERG AND THE BARON.



High and hoar on the forehead of the Jettenbühl stands the Castle
of Heidelberg. Behind it rise the oak-crested hills of the Geissberg
and the Kaiserstuhl; and in front, from the broad terrace of
masonry, you can almost throw a stone upon the roofs of the city, so
close do they lie beneath. Above this terrace rises the broad front
of the chapel of Saint Udalrich. On the left, stands the slender
octagon tower of the horologe, and, on the right, a huge round
tower, battered and shattered by the mace of war, shores up with its
broad shoulders the beautiful palace and garden-terrace of
Elisabeth, wife of the Pfalzgraf Frederick. In the rear are older
palaces and towers, forming a vast, irregular quadrangle;--Rodolph's
ancientcastle, with its Gothic gloriette and fantastic gables; the
Giant's Tower, guarding the drawbridge over the moat; the Rent
Tower, with the linden-trees growing on its summit, and the
magnificent Rittersaal of Otho-Henry, Count Palatine of the Rhine
and grand seneschal of the Holy Roman Empire. From the gardens
behind the castle, you pass under the archway of the Giant's Tower
into the great court-yard. The diverse architecture of different
ages strikes the eye; and curious sculptures. In niches on the wall
of Saint Udalrich's chapel stand rows of knights in armour, all
broken and dismembered; and on the front of Otho's Rittersaal, the
heroes of Jewish history and classic fable. You enter the open and
desolate chambers of the ruin; and on every side are medallions and
family arms; the Globe of the Empire and the Golden Fleece, or the
Eagle of the Cæsars, resting on the escutcheons of Bavaria and the
Palatinate. Over the windows and door-ways and chimney-pieces, are
sculptures and mouldings of exquisite workmanship; and the eyeis
bewildered by the profusion of caryatides, and arabesques, and
rosettes, and fan-like flutings, and garlands of fruits and flowers
and acorns, and bullocks'-heads with draperies of foliage, and
muzzles of lions, holding rings in their teeth. The cunning hand of
Art was busy for six centuries, in raising and adorning these walls;
the mailed hands of Time and War have defaced and overthrown them in
less than two. Next to the Alhambra of Granada, the Castle of
Heidelberg is the most magnificent ruin of the Middle Ages.

In the valley below flows the rushing stream of the Neckar. Close
from its margin, on the opposite side, rises the Mountain of All
Saints, crowned with the ruins of a convent; and up the valley
stretches the mountain-curtain of the Odenwald. So close and many
are the hills, which eastward shut the valley in, that the river
seems a lake. But westward it opens, upon the broad plain of the
Rhine, like the mouth of a trumpet; and like the blast of a trumpet
is at times the wintry wind through this narrow mountain pass. The
blue Alsatian hills rise beyond; and, on a platform or strip of level
land, between the Neckar and the mountains, right under the castle,
stands the city of Heidelberg; as the old song says, "a pleasant
city, when it has done raining."

Something of this did Paul Flemming behold, when he rose the next
morning and looked from his window. It was a warm, vapory morning,
and a struggle was going on between the mist and the rising sun. The
sun had taken the hill-tops, but the mist still kept possession of
the valley and the town. The steeple of the great church rose
through a dense mass of snow-white clouds; and eastward, on the
hills, the dim vapors were rolling across the windows of the ruined
castle, like the fiery smoke of a great conflagration. It seemed to
him an image of the rising of the sun of Truth on a benighted world;
its light streamed through the ruins of centuries; and, down in the
valley of Time, the cross on the Christian church caught its rays,
though the priests were singing in mist and darkness below.

In the warm breakfast-parlour he found the Baron, waiting for
him. He was lying upon a sofa, in morning gown and purple-velvet
slippers, both with flowers upon them. He had a guitar in his hand,
and a pipe in his mouth, at the same time smoking, playing, and
humming his favorite song from Goethe;

"The water rushed, the water swelled,

A fisher sat thereby."

Flemming could hardly refrain from laughing at the sight of his
friend; and told him it reminded him of a street-musician he once
saw in Aix-la-Chapelle, who was playing upon six instruments at
once; having a helmet with bells on his head, a Pan's-reed in his
cravat, a fiddle in his hand, a triangle on his knee, cymbals on his
heels, and on his back a bass-drum, which he played with his elbows.
To tell the truth, the Baron of Hohenfels was rather a miscellaneous
youth, rather a universal genius. He pursued all things with
eagerness, but for a short time only; music, poetry, painting,
pleasure, even the study of the Pandects. Hisfeelings were keenly
alive to the enjoyment of life. His great defect was, that he was
too much in love with human nature. But by the power of imagination,
in him, the bearded goat was changed to a bright Capricornus:--no
longer an animal on earth, but a constellation in heaven. An easy
and indolent disposition made him gentle and childlike in his
manners; and, in short, the beauty of his character, like that of
the precious opal, was owing to a defect in its organization. His
person was tall and slightly built; his hair light; and his eyes
blue, and as beautiful as those of a girl. In the tones of his
voice, there was something indescribably gentle and winning; and he
spoke the German language, with the soft, musical accent of his
native province of Curland. In his manners, if he had not `Antinous'
easy sway,' he had at least an easy sway of his own. Such, in few
words, was the bosom friend of Flemming.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.