Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/599

 the poet's death. It is a colossal drama with humanity for its hero. Weak human nature may fall, under temptation, but its innate nobility will assert itself triumphantly in the end. Faust atones for his errors by a life devoted to altruistic effort, and so his soul after all is saved. The Catholic atmosphere of the closing scene, where the penitent Gretchen intercedes with the Virgin for her lover, betrays the influence of the Romantic School.

If Goethe is the man of universal gifts, Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) is preeminently a dramatist. He too received his first impulse from the Storm and Stress movement. His first three dramas, "Die Raeuber" (1781), "Fiesco" (1783), and "Kabale und Liebe" (1784), breathe a spirit of passionate revolt. With all their youthful exaggeration, they reveal unmistakable dramatic power. In "Don Carlos" a calmer spirit reigns and a greater mastery of form is evident. Freedom of thought is the burden of its message. The composition of this work had turned Schiller's attention to history, and for a time the study of history and philosophy got the better of poetic production. The historical works that are the outcome of these studies are valuable rather for their style than as original contributions. Goethe's study of Kant's philosophy was responsible for a number of works of an aesthetic character, notably "Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung," where naive and sentimental are taken as typical of ancient and modern respectively. His friendship with Goethe (1794-1805) won Schiller back to poetry and now followed in rapid succession his dramatic masterpiece: "Wallenstein," a trilogy, the first historic German tragedy in the grand style (1796-99), "Maria Stuart" (1800), and "Die Jungfrau von Orleans "(1801), a noble defence of the Maid of Orléans against the slanders of Voltaire. "Die Braut von Messina" (1803) is a not altogether successful attempt to combine modern spirit with antique form. The poet's last great drama, "Wilhelm Tell" (1804), is, perhaps, the most popular German play. Here he reverts again to the idea of freedom which he championed so passionately in his youthful dramas, and which here found its most convincing expression. The grandly conceived tragedy "Demetrius" remained a fragment, owing to the author's untimely death (1805). As a lyric poet Schiller is far below Goethe. His lyrics lack spontaneity; they are rather the product of reflection and are mostly philosophic in character. His masterpiece in this line is "Das Lied von der Glocke" (1800). He also excels in epigram and gnomic verse, and as a writer of ballads he has few equals.

The great classic drama by no means immediately won its way. Besides the opera, the bourgeois drama ruled the stage and its most popular representatives were Iffland and Kotzebue. The plays of these writers were thoroughly conventional in tone; those of Kotzebue had a distinctly immoral tendency, but they were theatrically effective and immensely popular.

Of prose writers contemporary with Goethe we may mention the historians, Justus Möser (d. 1794) and Johannes von Müller (d. 1809). In philosophy the commanding figure is Immanuel Kant, whose work has exerted a tremendous influence on modern thought. Alexander von Humboldt's (1769-1859) "Kosmos" is a classic of natural science.

In the field of the novel, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) achieved distinction. His writings, "Quintus Fixlein," "Hesperus," "Titan," and others were enormously popular in their day, but owing to their bizarre style and absolute formlessness, joined to an unbearable discursiveness, they have lost all charm for modern readers. The unfortunate Friedrich Hoelderlin (1770-1843) combined the classic with the romantic spirit in unique fashion. His passionate longing for the lost beauty of ancient Greece was expressed in his novel "Hyperion," as well as in some noble lyrics.

'''VIII. ROMANTICISM AND THE ERA OF REVOLUTION (1805-1848)'''

With the beginning of the nineteenth century the revolt against the Aufklärung (Enlightenment), started by Herder, reasserted itself. There was also a marked revival of religious sentiment. The Romantic School rose into prominence. Art was to be rescued from the sway of rationalism; imagination and emotion were to be set free. Taking as a basis Fichte's philosophy, which proclaimed the ego as the supreme reality, the romanticists proceeded to free creative genius from the barriers of convention and tradition. But the result was often an extreme subjectivism that broke through the restraints of artistic form and lost itself in fantastic visions and vague mysticism. The leaders of the movement turned away from a sordid present to far-away Oriental regions, or to a remote past like the Middle Ages. This predilection for medievalism coming together with the religious revival gave to the romantic movement a pronounced Catholic tendency. Some of the leading romanticists, Brentano, Görres, Eichendorff, were Catholics; others, like Friedrich Schlegel, became Catholics. Sympathy for Catholicism is noticeable in the work of all the members of the school.

The Romantic movement was also a salutary reaction against the excessive classicism of Goethe and Schiller. The national element was again emphasized. The Middle Ages, depreciated and misrepresented ever since the Reformation, were now shown in a fairer light by historians like von Raumer, Wilken, Voigt, and others. The great medieval literature was rediscovered by scholars like Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm and Lachmann. In fact, the science of Germanic philology owes its origin to the Romantic School. The enthusiasm for foreign literature also bore rich fruit in masterly translations and reproductions. Here lies the main significance of much of the work of the brothers Schlegel, the critical leaders of the Older Romantic School. August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845) is famous as a translator. His translations of Shakespeare have become German classics, while his renderings from the Spanish (Calderon, Lope de Vega), Italian, and Sanskrit are hardly less meritorious. His brother, Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), who became a convert to Catholicism, enunciated the romantic doctrines in his aphorisms. Through his treatise, "Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier" (1808) he became the pioneer of Sanskrit studies in Germany. The work of the Schlegels in criticism and literary history was epoch-making; they taught critics not merely to criticize, but to understand, to interpret, to "characterize." The school found no really great poet to put its theories into practice. Still the poetry of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), better known as Novalis, is pervaded by deep feeling. His fragmentary novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" is an attempt to show the development of a true romantic poet. Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) revived the old folk-books, satirized the Enlightenment in his comedies, wrote roman-