Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 18.djvu/406

 In 1890 she published her first volume of Poems, which was overlooked until she attained fame as a novelist. In 1907 appeared New Poems. In these two volumes of verse her poetic genius showed pronounced individuality. She is not, indeed, essentially a lyric poet, she is too problematic for that; besides, she does not like to open her heart, but rather comments on life. Only some smaller love songs and poems of nature are "pure feeling breathed in pure music." Yet even when she pours out her love, her hopes, and her sorrows, and charms us by the simple pathos of genuine lyric poetry, there still remains a certain sad touch of restraint and shyness, a marked feature which she shares with many a North German poet and, strangely enough, also with the Swiss Gottfried Keller, whom she congenially understands, and on whom she wrote an appreciative essay. But in addition to these short lyrics of rhythmic grace—and more important than they—there are dreamy fancies, sombre legends, and, above all, plastic renderings of historic episodes in her poems. These poems are like finely-cut cameos, all of a perfect art which reminds us of Konrad Ferdinand Meyer's masterpieces. Ricarda Huch surely was influenced by this master, and has quite remarkably assimilated his art.

Her inspiration, however, was purely personal. Some strong expressions of her poetic nature are to be seen in her tempestuous love of beauty and freedom, her mystic glorification of death, and her pronounced interest in history, all of which find their expression also in sundry prose works.

Her intense love of beauty, united with her acquaintance of Italy and thirst for historic knowledge, inspired her to write excellent essays on the heroes of Italy's political renaissance (The Risorgimento, 1908). And on those psycho-biographical sketches, poetical studies based on historical sources, so to speak, is based The Life of Count Federigo Confalonieri (1910), another prose work, half history, half fiction. It is the time of the Austrian sway