Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/555

Rh Sturm und Drang move- mcnt. Herder. Goethe. GOETII 3.] Drang” (“Storm and Pressure"). It lasted, from about 1770, for ten or twelve years, and included nearly all the writers wl1o still had fame to win. Their most prominent quality was discontent with the existing world. They dctested not only tyranny and superstition but everything which prevented, or seemed to prevent, the free exercise of any powerful impulse. To break down conventionalities appeared to the “ Sturm und Drang” poets their true function ; but even this did not satisfy them. They longed for some knowledge deeper and more intimate tl1an that attained by science, philosophy, or history, for some emotion intenser than can arise from any known human relation. All these conflicting feelings they expressed in their writings. l"rom slavish submission to French critical laws they were of course completely emancipated. Most of them despised laws of every kind in literature as well as in life, and con- tinually proclaimed that the duty of a man of genius was to write precisely as nature dictated. By “genius” they meant vehement sensations, by “nature” a free use of vigorous epithets. The writer who formed the connecting link between Lessiug on the one hand and Goethe and Schiller on the other, and whom the best writers of the “ Sturm und Drang” movement regarded as their critical guide, was Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). Herder is sometimes com- pared with Lessing, but while Lessing has a cosmopolitan touch which makes him intelligible and attractive to all the world, Herder is in the strictest sense a German, and is only slightly studied beyond his own nation. He was less boldly original than his older co11te111p0rary, and never attained the clearness, force, and classic beauty of Lessing’s style. Nevertheless he is justly ranked among the most distinguished spirits Ger111a11y has produced. His mind was receptive in 111any different directions, and what he absorbed he made his own by independent thought, giving it out in new and suggestive forms. As an original poet, Herder does not rank high; yet genuine poetic impulses are visible in the poem in which he gave shape to the Spanish legends of the Cid. The literature in which he looked for the highest manifestation of thought and feeling was that which appeals to popular sentiment and has its root in popular life. Lessing had already called attention to the songs and ballads of the people ; but Herder was the first German who decisively followed the impulse which led in England to the publication of I’ercy’s Ileliques. In his Stinunen. cler l'o‘M'er (“ Voices of the Peoples”) he brought together an admirable collection of the lyrical utterances of many races; and it would be ditlicult to overrate the ser- vice he thus rendered, for he conducted his countrymen to a source of imaginative pleasure and revival in which their literature is exceptionally rich. By far his most important prose work was his Idem zur I ’/zilosop/tie der Geschichte dcr .l[e'I1s¢'7¢/zeit (“Ideas towards the Philosophy of the History of Ilumanity"), in which, working to some extent on the lines laid down in the brief paragraphs of Lessing’s Educa- iion of the Ilzumm Ifuce, he develops the conception of pro- gress, aud indicates that we can fully understand any single element of history only by seeing it in the light of human evolution as a whole. This excellent book elevated the aims and enlarged the scope of historic inquiry in Germany; and it still produces a powerful moral effect by its noble spirit of humanity. To the end of his (lays Hcrder was animated by a ﬁne enthusiasm for human happiness, and it lights up his pages even when his subject does not lead to its direct expression. To Herder belonged the high honour of stimulating and directing, at a critical stage, the young genius of Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832). In naming Goethe we mention the writer who holds in German literature the place held by Shakespeare in the literature of England, GERMAN Y 537 and by Dante in that of Italy. He towers high above even the greatest of his contemporaries, predecessors, and successors,—Schiller himself, who is most worthily asso- ciated with him, being far interior in breadth of sympathy and splendour of creative impulse. Goethe, indeed, is one of the few writers who, while marked by strongly national characteristics, belong to the world rather than to a particu- lll‘ country. The special phases of his age have begun to pass away, but his best work has lost none of its freshness ; it cannot become old, since it is rooted in elements of human life that eternally endure. All things co-operated to render worthy of his destiny this favoured child of fortune. During his long life he enjoyed almost uninterrupted physical vigour ; he was born into a family of prosperous circumstances, although not so highly placed as to satisfy his ambition; he received the best intellectual training his epoch could afford ; in Weimar he was free to adapt the plan of his life to his inclinations ; and he appeared at the very time when, by an era of sincere poetic endeavour and unparalleled critical labour, the mind of the nation had been prepared for the boldest efforts of genius. Nature has seldom lavished so many advantages on the greatest of her great men. The quality in Goethe which immediately arrests atten- tion is the extraordinary range of his activity. Hardly any aspect of human existence was strange to him. He possessed in an unsurpassed degree the faculty of dmmati- cally thinking himself into phases of life to which his per- sonal impulses would not have led him; and he deliberately enlarged his experience by exercising this power at every stage of his career. It was his prevailing conviction that all ideals which fascinate or l1ave fascinated humanity must have a touch of vitality; and none was so remote from him but he sought to penetrate to its meaning. He could be just to Hellenic culture without doing wrong to mediaevalism ; he appreciated the spirit of Christianity without being indifferent to the faith of the Parsees or the Buddhists; he presented the ascetic aspirations of a “beautiful soul,” while setting forth the gaiety of the brightest and most careless tempers ; he felt the cl1arn1 of art at the same time that he carried on profound researches in science ; he loved his country, and yet, even when it was overrun by Napoleon’s troops, he would not join the patriots in saying a harsh word of France. This absolute univer- sality destroyed enthusiasm for special practical move- ments ; but it gave astonishing variety to his literary achievements. Goethe’s was in every respect a thoroughly poetic nature. He could not pass through a profound experience, an image of beauty could not cross his vision, without an accompanying impulse to ﬁnd for his emotion an adequate sensuous representation. So vast a body of writings as his inevitably includes much that is tedious, but in his happiest moments his genius moved with the ease, the certainty, the calmness of the great forces of nature; he could be as perfect in the lightest stroke of delicate feeling as in the grandest flight of soaring imagina- tion. The world he rcﬂects is the world v.'e actually know ; but he is not, therefore, in any narrow sense, a realist. The facts he images are shaped and coloured by his thought and feeling; he breathes into them a life by which they are made of universal signiﬁcance. This combination of realism and idealism is one of the chief secrets of his power. His art aims at producing the most general effects, yet it is kept fresh, vivid, and true by incessant contact with the concrete life of men. Heine relates that he felt inclined to address Goethe in Greek, so like was the calm digniﬁed old man to an earthly Zeus ; and this is probably the image suggested to most minds by his name. But in youth he was full of eager life, restless, and passionate, and his early works-6lS3ear the X. --