(1806)

We are decidedly of the opinion that for the present criticism should not concern itself with this collection. The editors have collected and arranged this volume with such love and diligence, such good taste and delicacy of feeling, that their countrymen should first of all show their gratitude for this loving care by their good-will, their interest, and their sympathetic appreciation. This little book ought to be found in every home in which lively and healthy people dwell,—at the window, under the mirror, or wherever else songbooks and cookbooks are usually found, so that it may be opened in any happy or unhappy mood, and one may always find something which strikes a similar or a new chord, even though one must perhaps turn over a few pages.

But the most fitting place for this volume would be upon the piano of a lover or a master of music, so that full justice might be done the songs by setting them to old familiar tunes, or suitable tunes might be adapted to them, or, God willing, new and striking melodies might be composed through their inspiration.

If these songs were then borne from ear to ear, from mouth to mouth, clothed in their own melodious harmony, if they gradually returned regenerated and enhanced in beauty to the people from whom they, so to speak, have in part sprung, then we might truly say that the little book had fulfilled its mission, and could now be lost again in its written or printed form, because it had become part and parcel of the life and culture of the nation.

But since in our modern times, especially in Germany, nothing seems to exist or to have any effect unless it is written about again and again, adjudged and made a bone of contention, a few remarks may not improperly be introduced here about this collection,—a few observations which may not enhance our enjoyment of the book, but at least will not impair or destroy it.

What may at the outset be said unreservedly in praise of the collection is that it is thoroughly varied and characteristic. It contains more than two hundred poems of the last three centuries, all of them differing so much from one another in sense, conception, sound, and manner that the same criticism cannot apply to any two of them. We shall therefore assume the agreeable task of characterizing [some of] them in order as the inspiration of the moment may prompt us:

With these impromptu characterizations—for how could they be other than impromptu?—we do not intend to anticipate the judgment of any readers of the book, and least of all those readers who by their own lyric enjoyment and the appreciation of a sympathetic heart can get more from the poems themselves than any brief characterizations like ours can ever give them. We should like, however, in conclusion to say something about the value of the collection as a whole.

We have been accustomed for years to give the name of “folksongs” to this species of poetry, not because it is really composed by the people or for the people, but because it embraces in itself something so vigorous and wholesome that the healthy stock of the nation understands it, remembers it, appropriates it, and at times propagates it. Poetry of this kind is as true poetry as can possibly exist. It has an incredible charm even for us who stand on a higher plane of culture, just as the sight of young people and the memory of one’s own youth have for old age. Art in them is in conflict with nature; and it is because of their gradual development, their mutual influence, and their striving for form that these songs seem to seek a further perfection when they have already reached their goal. True poetic genius, wherever it appears, is perfect in itself: no matter what imperfections of language, of external technique, or anything else, stand in its way, it possesses the higher inner form which ultimately has everything at its command, and often in an obscure and imperfect medium produces a more striking effect than it can later produce in a more perfect medium. The vivid poetic perception of a limited state or condition gives to what is purely individual a universal significance, finite to be sure, but after all limitless and unrestricted, so that within a small compass we fancy we see the whole world. The promptings of a profound intuition urge the poet to a significant brevity; and what would seem in prose unpardonably topsy-turvy is to the true poetic sense a necessity and a virtue; even a solecism, if it appeals seriously to our whole imagination, stimulates it to a surprisingly high degree of enjoyment.

In characterizing the individual poems we avoided the kind of formal classification which may more readily be made in the future when several authentic and typical examples of every kind have been collected. But we cannot conceal our own preference for those songs in which lyric, dramatic, and epic treatment is interwoven in such a way that a problem, at first shrouded in mystery, is finally solved skilfully, or even, if you will, epigrammatically. The well-known ballad, “Why dois your brand sae drop wi’ bluid, Edward, Edward?” is, especially in the original, the most perfect example of this species of poetry.

We hope that the editors will be encouraged to publish in the near future another volume of poems from the rich store collected by them as well as from those already printed. We trust that when they do this they will guard themselves carefully against the sing-song of the Minnesingers, the blatant coarseness and the platitudes of the Mastersingers, as well as against everything monkish and pedantic. If they should collect a second volume of these German songs, they might also be asked to select songs of the same kind from foreign nations and to give them in the original and in translations that are either already extant or may be made by them for this special purpose. The most of these, to be sure, will be from the English, fewer from the French, some of a different type from the Spanish, and almost none from the Italian.

If from the outset we have doubted the competence of criticism, even in its highest sense, to judge this work, we have all the more reason to ignore that kind of research which attempts to separate the songs that are genuine from those that have been more or less restored. The editors, so far as it is possible in these later times, have caught the spirit of their task, and we ought to be grateful to them even for those poems which have been oddly restored or made up of heterogeneous parts or are absolutely spurious. Who does not know what a song has to undergo when it has been for some time in the mouth of the people, and not merely uneducated people either? Why should he who finally writes it down and inserts it in a collection with other poems not have a certain personal right to it? We do not possess any poetic or sacred book of earlier times which has not depended for its final form on the skill or whim of him who first wrote it down or some later copyist.

If we accept the printed collection lying before us from this point of view, and with a grateful and kindly spirit, we may charge the editors all the more earnestly to keep their poetic archives pure, lofty, and in good order. It serves no purpose to print everything; but they will place the whole nation in their debt if they contribute toward that thorough, faithful, and intelligent history of our poetry and our poetic culture which from now on must be the ultimate goal of scholars.