I (1817)

A wealth of terms for unfavorable criticism:—

A scanty store for praise:—

“Words are the image of the soul; yet not an image, but rather a shadow! Expressing roughly, and signifying gently, all that we have, all that we have had in our experience! What was,—where has it gone? and what is that which is with us now? Ah! we speak! Swiftly we catch and seize the gifts of life as they fleet by us.”

The insight and character of a man express themselves most clearly in his judgments. In what he rejects, and what he accepts, he confesses to what is alien to him and what he has need of; and so each year designates unconsciously its present spiritual state, the compass of its past life.

Thus is it also with nations; their praise and censure must always be strictly consonant to their situation. We possessed Greek and Roman terminology of this sort; the foregoing would give an occasion for examining recent criticism. Like the individual man, the nation rests on traditional ideas, foreign more often than native, both inherited and original. But only in so far as a people has a native literature can it judge and understand the past as it does the present. The Englishman clings earnestly and stubbornly to classic antiquity, and will not be convinced that the Orient has produced poets, unless he can be shown parallel passages from Horace. What advantages, on the other hand, Shakespeare’s independent genius has brought to the nation can hardly be expressed.

The French by the introduction of badly understood classical principles and an over-nice sense of form so constrained their poetry that it must finally quite disappear, since it could not become more similar to prose. The German was on the right road and will find it again, as soon as he gives up the unhappy attempt to rank the Nibelungen with the Iliad.

The favorable opinion which an excellent foreign writer has concerning us Germans may be appropriately related here. The Privy Councilor of the Russian Empire, Count Uvaroff, speaks thus in our honor, in a preface addressed to an old friend and partner, and contained in his valuable work on Nonnus of Panopolis, the Poet (St. Petersburg, 1817): “The renaissance of archæology belongs to the Germans. Other peoples may have contributed preparatory work, but if the more advanced philological studies are ever developed to a complete whole, such a palingenesis or regeneration could only take place in Germany. For this reason, certain new views can hardly be expressed in any other language, and on that account I have written in German. I hope we have now given up the perverse notion of the political preëminence of this or that language. It is time that every one, unconcerned about the instrument itself, should select the language which fits most closely the circle of ideas in which his thought is moving.”

Here speaks an able, talented, intellectual man, whose mind is above the petty limitations of a cold literary patriotism, and who, like a master of musical art, draws the stops of his well-equipped organ which express the thought and feeling of each moment. Would that all cultivated Germans would take thankfully to heart these excellent and instructive words of his, and that intellectual youths would be inspired to make themselves proficient in several languages, as optional instruments of life!

II (1820)

In my article on “Urteilsworte französischer Kritiker,” a large number of unfavorable epithets used by French critics were set off against a scanty number of favorable words. In connection with this, the Vrai Liberal of February 4, 1819, lodges a complaint against me and accuses me of an injustice towards the French nation. It does this with so much civility and charm as to make me ashamed of myself, were it not for the fact that behind my presentation of those words there lay a secret, which I hasten to reveal to it and to my readers at this time.

I admit without hesitation that the Brussels correspondent of the Vrai Liberal is quite right when he points out how among the words of censure which I gave there appear many peculiar ones which one would not exactly expect; and in addition, that in the list of favorable words, several are lacking which ought to occur to every one. In order to explain this, and make the story clearer, I shall relate how I was induced to make this particular list.

When Herr von Grimm forty years ago achieved an honorable entrance into Parisian society, at that time extraordinarily talented and intellectual, and was recognized practically as a member of this distinguished company, he decided to send a written bulletin of literary and other interesting matters to princely personages and wealthy people in Germany, in order to entertain them, for a considerable remuneration, with the characteristic life of Paris circles, in regard to which they were curious in the outside world, because they could well consider Paris as the centre of the cultured world. These letters were to contain not merely news; but the best works of Diderot, The Nun, Jacques the Fatalist, etc., were by degrees inserted in such small portions that curiosity, attention, and eagerness were kept alive from number to number.

Through the favor of distinguished patrons I was permitted to peruse these bulletins regularly, and I did not neglect to study them with great deliberation and ardor. Now, if I may be permitted to say it to my credit, I always cheerfully recognized the superiority of the writers and their works, treasured and admired them, and also thankfully profited by them. For this reason I was soon struck in this correspondence of Grimm’s with the fact that in the stories, anecdotes, delineation of character, description, criticism, one noticed more of censure than of praise, more derogatory than laudatory terminology. One day in good humor, for my own consideration and edification, I began to take down the complete expressions, and later, half in jest and half in earnest, to split them up and arrange them alphabetically; and thus they remained on my desk for many years.

When finally the correspondence of Grimm was published, I read it as the document of a past age, but with care, and soon came upon many an expression which I had noticed before; and I was convinced anew that the censure by far exceeded the praise. Then I hunted up the earlier work of mine and had it printed, for the sake of intellectual edification, which did not fail me. At the moment I was not able to give further attention to the matter; and it is therefore not unlikely that in so voluminous a work many a word of praise and blame that has escaped me may be found.

But in order that this reproach, which appeared to concern a whole nation, may not be left clinging to a single author, I shall reserve the privilege of discussing this important literary topic on more general lines in the near future.