German Literature Archives - Page 12 of 14

Thomas Mann’s Gladius Dei and the Challenge of Modern Art

I confess I’ve never really gotten the hype with Thomas Mann. Or rather, the moment I start reading him I’m usually left either disappointed or confused. I blame his reputation. German students like me flock to read him but soon find they spend more time in the dictionary than the stories themselves. Death in Venice is a particular pain to understand the language of, and that’s not even half the battle of making sense of that tale. Nonetheless, once I read it in English (the poor Cambridge academics who supervise me are doubtless shaking their heads in disappointment) I found it rather enjoyable, and intellectually challenging too. Nevertheless, due to the arcane rules of Cambridge examinations I can’t talk about Death in Venice next year, though Mann himself remains on the syllabus. Looking for alternatives, I turned to “Gladius Dei”, hoping it would have something interesting to say.

“Gladius Dei” – I was attracted by the title, meaning “the sword of God” – is not nearly as action-packed as its title suggests. And nor is it as focused on the past as the Latin hints at either. Instead, it shows the clash between modern art and the sensibility that drove it with the older ideas that once justified artistic creation but which, in 1902 (the time of the novella’s composition), had very much fallen out of fashion. It is the tale of one man, Hieronymus, and his struggle against modernism as a whole.

Translations are from David Luke’s Death in Venice and Other Stories.

Introduction: Munich, the Fallen City

“Munich was resplendent.” “Gladius Dei” begins with a description of Munich, and Munich in some way is the main character of the novella. The German Jugendstil, their Art Nouveau, was at the height of its popularity in the city at the time the novella was written. From the very first paragraph, listing “festive squares” and “colonnades” and “fountains” we are immersed into this world of art. We meet the people, particularly women, who live in the city – as types, rather than as people. They are all relaxed and indolent. There is no rush about them.

Then we are taken into “the elaborate beauty-emporium of Herr M. Blüthenzweig”, where artistic reproductions and books are all on display, ranging in topic from the very modern to the classical. And here there is the first sense that art and its creation are not done in isolation, but influenced by consumers and their tastes – “among all this the portraits of artists, musicians, philosophers, actors and writers are displayed to gratify the inquisitive public’s taste for personal details.”

Next, we meet the key reproduction, which forms the focal point of the novella – but we don’t learn what it is in the novella’s first part. Instead, we are introduced to it through (literal) framing – “there is a large picture which particularly attracts the crowd: an excellent sepia photograph in a massive old-gold frame”. The frame is significant – its age contrasts with the contents, which are “sensational” and highly modern, promoted by “quaintly printed placards” and “this year’s great international exhibition”. Ironically, like the citizens of the novella, we are shown modern art by means of its popular reputation rather than its particular contents.

The narrative then moves back onto the street from its focus, completing the framing of the central picture. The final paragraph discusses the popularity of the art while returning to the novella’s opening words. “That it should continue so to thrive is a matter of general and reverent concern; on all sides diligent work and propaganda are devoted to its service; everywhere there is a pious cult of line, of ornament, of form, of the sense, of beauty… Munich is resplendent.” Though “Gladius Dei” ends its first part with the same words that begun it, here the tone is changed. From the purely celebratory beginning, now there is something seedy about the art – hinted at by words like “propaganda” and “cult”. It is this tension and seediness that the centre of Mann’s tale hinges upon.

Hieronymus and the Madonna

With the second section of “Gladius Dei” we are introduced to Hieronymus, whose name, reminding me of the artist Bosch, immediately conjures up images of the past. Against the brightness of resplendent Munich we are told that “when one looked at him, a shadow seemed to pass across the sun or a memory of dark hours across the soul”. He is inscrutable, but we are told he resembles a portrait in Florence of a monk who also raged against the world. In this way, Mann connects the present anger of Hieronymus with a historical precedent, that of the priest, Girolamo Savonarola. The two of them also share the same name.

A painting of Girolamo Savonarola, a priest who shares many characteristics with Hieronymus in Gladius Dei — Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican priest who shares a passionate hatred of modernity with Hieronymus, alongside some physical features too.

Hieronymus first goes to a church on the Ludwigstrasse to pray, and then he comes across the art house of Blüthenzweig. Going inside, he sees the reproduction first mentioned in part 1 of “Gladius Dei”:

“It was a Madonna, painted in a wholly modern and entirely unconventional manner. The sacred figure was ravishingly feminine, naked and beautiful. Her great sultry eyes were rimmed with shadow, and her lips were half parted in a strange and delicate smile. Her slender figures were grouped rather nervously and convulsively round the waist of the Child, a nude boy of aristocratic, almost archaic slimness, who was playing with her breast and simultaneously casting a knowing sidelong glance at the spectator.”

This is sacrilege. A holy image turned lustful – “ravishing”, “sultry”, and the “knowing sidelong glance” all suggest that the glorification inherent in such a choice of subject has taken a back seat. Hieronymus overhears two young men discussing the painting, neither of whom respects its religious subject matter. “She does make one a bit doubtful about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception” one says. But they inform the reader that the painting has been bought by the Pinakothek Gallery and that its artist is being feted around the city. Their language is almost comically cultural, as if – to use the modern phrase – they are a bunch of posers. I would be surprised if this was not exactly what Mann has in mind. Hieronymus, meanwhile, finishes looking at the painting, and leaves, ending part 2.

Part 3 is only a page long, but it describes Hieronymus’ struggles to rid himself of the image of the sexualised Madonna. At last, however, “on the third night” he receives what he perceives to be a command from God, and decides that he must go and protest the display of such a work of art. And now the story approaches its climax.

Action and Inaction – the Bloodless Climax of Gladius Dei

Part 4 begins as Hieronymus heads onto the street, filled with righteous rage. “It is God’s will”, he thinks to himself, echoing the cries of “Deus Vult” that launched the first crusades. Outside the weather has begun to worsen, and a storm appears to be approaching. He reaches Blüthenzweig’s shop and goes inside, seeing evidence all around him for the spiritual decay of humankind. For example, there is a “gentleman in a yellow suit with a black goatee” who has a “bleating laugh” – both the laugh and the goatee suggest something animalistic about him. Coming across Blüthenzweig as he’s finalizing a transaction Hieronymus hears him call it “most attractive and seductive”.

Blüthenzweig is a capitalist, an art dealer with little appreciation for art itself. That is Hieronymus’ interpretation anyway, as he claims the dealer despises him “because I am not able to buy anything from you.” Meanwhile, Hieronymus is entirely concerned with the non-monetary value that art has. Is it good for the spirit, or not? In the case of the Madonna, he sees it as actively pernicious – “vice itself.” Blüthenzweig rejects this immediately – “The picture is a work of art… and as such it must be judged by the appropriate standards”. The painting has been bought by the gallery and is universally acclaimed. Both Blüthenzweig and Hieronymus have their own idea of what the “appropriate standards” are, but Blüthenzweig’s idea is marked by a focus on the external – acclaim – while Hieronymus’ is internal – “the spiritual enrichment of mankind”.

Hieronymus does not let Blüthenzweig convince him. He cries of hell, of the torments of purgatory. Beauty is a lie used by the representatives of Jugendstil to avoid considering the health of the soul. Instead, art ought to be “the sacred torch that must shed its merciful light into all life’s terrible depths, into every shameful and sorrowful abyss”. It must be about compassion, not beauty. Hieronymus demands that Blüthenzweig burns the reproduction, which naturally he does not have any interest in doing. He calls in Krauthuber, one of his workers, to throw Hieronymus out of the shop. Krauthuber is “a son of the people, malt-nourished, herculean and awe-inspiring” and with “heroic arms.” He represents, it seems to me, a sidestepping of the Christian view of art that Hieronymus represents towards the Classical, where art, especially if one takes Nietzsche’s view, was all about advancing the spirit and glorifying it.

Just not in the Christian sense of the spirit or glorification. Alone on the street, Hieronymus falls into madness, surrounded by the markers of a depraved age – “carnival costumes”, “naked statues”, and “the busts of women”. He sees them all piled into a pyramid and set to flames. It is here, as the novella ends, that he quotes Savonarola, who had had a similar vision of God’s vengeance, “Gladius Dei super terram… Cito et velociter” – “behold there is the sword of God above the Earth, fast and swift”. He has achieved nothing for his madness, but perhaps Hieronymus succeeded in saving his soul. Who can say?

Theories of Art and the Modernism of “Gladius Dei”

By the time that Mann is writing “Gladius Dei” Hieronymus’ view of art was well out of date. Even in the 19^th century, art had already become popular, its form and content determined by market forces – think of Dickens in England during that time, or Dumas in France. That’s not to say that lofty goals had departed from artistic endeavours, but rather that they were often secondary to the need to feed oneself and one’s family, especially as artistic production became democratised and a new generation of writers and artists who were not aristocratic in background came to prominence.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to see where Mann sits in all this. Though in “Gladius Dei” he shows the vapid banality of Blüthenzweig and his customers, Hieronymus is a ridiculous figure too. The contrast between the violence of the novella’s title and the ultimate lack of action and change seems to mock Hieronymus’ hopes to change society’s relation to art for the better. Likely, Mann sits somewhere in the middle – he respects Hieronymus’ love for the spiritual mission for art, while acknowledging the historical forces that make this view secondary, and indeed challenging to hold. The old values, in a world where “God is dead”, simply aren’t reliable anymore.

It’s also worth considering how the form of “Gladius Dei” reflects modernism in its composition. For one, there’s Mann’s ambivalence towards all of his characters, so that it’s not clear who is worth supporting, if anybody. Then there is also the satirical use of religion (just like the Madonna itself) and its language when Hieronymus thinks God is commanding him to defeat Blüthenzweig and the reproduction. It’s clear that Mann doesn’t think Hieronymus is really hearing God or want the reader to think so either. The inconclusiveness of the novella’s conclusion is also, in its own way, modernistic. We are given no guidance – it’s not even clear if we should pity Hieronymus. All, I think, that is clear is that the Jugendstil movement and the Christian artistic sensibility of Hieronymus are both inadequate in Mann’s view. But what is good art – Mann’s ideas on that are impossible to work out.

A photo of Thomas Mann in 1905 — Thomas Mann in 1905, three years after “Gladius Dei” was completed. I’m not sure how far I approve of the coldness of his writings. Intellectualism alone is not what I’m after as a reader.

Conclusion

Personally, I’m closer to Hieronymus than Mann is. Not in the sense that I think literature and art should be about fulfilling a Christian message, but rather that I do think there should be a strong message in them about the value of humanity. A literature must be affirmative, glorifying our lives and life itself in all their complexity, whether good or bad. This is the secret to Tolstoy’s greatness. Mann doesn’t care enough about people for that. In this, he reminds me a little bit of Isaac Babel, another writer who is much more intellectual than emotional. It can make stories that are thought provoking, but terribly cold…

I thought “Gladius Dei” was ok. I mean, it’ll be easy to write about it next year once I’m back at Cambridge. But the measure of a book’s value isn’t how easily I’ll be able to ram it into an essay. I’ll keep reading Mann, but I hope one day I’ll understand where he keeps his heart locked away. Irony just doesn’t cut it for me – our own world is too ironic, too dispassionate, already. The solution to an ironic and dead world isn’t acceptance, but a conscious search for meaning and value, like Kazantzakis managed in Report to Greco. But perhaps I’m asking too much.

If you’ve read “Gladius Dei” and have an opinion on it, why not drop by the comments and let me know what you thought?

Theodor Storm’s Immensee – Summary and Analysis

Immensee is perhaps the best known of Theodor Storm’s novellas, and like many of them it is a tale of thwarted love and missed opportunities. Unlike Storm’s Aquis Submersus, which I have written about here, and which is characterised by elements of tragedy and drama, Immensee is a much more symbolic work where the main focus is on “Stimmung”, or mood. What follows is a summary of the story of Immensee, followed by some ways of looking at the meaning of the tale. Translations from the German are mine.

A picture of a book cover for Immensee, showing a white lily. — An old American cover for *Immensee*. It shows one of the novella’s key symbols – the white lily.

The Plot of Immensee

Immensee tells the brief story of two children, Reinhard and Elisabeth, who at first seem destined to marry. Through ten vignettes, each no more than a few pages, we follow the two as they grow from children into adults, and then become separated through Elisabeth’s marriage to another man, Erich. The opening and final vignettes, both titled “The Old Man” are set considerably later than the rest of scenes, and show Reinhard as an old man, lonely and unfulfilled as he reminisces upon the disappointment of the past and his own role in sealing his fate.

The first of the reminiscences is entitled “The children” and shows the two children – Reinhard aged ten, and Elisabeth only five – playing together in the height of summer. Their joy with each other is palpable – they dance and sing, and the section ends with them returning home, “springing hand in hand together”. The next section, “In the Forest” takes place seven years later, as Reinhard is preparing to leave for further study in a different town. The two children are tasked with locating strawberries and Reinhard claims he knows a place, but when they arrive, exhausted, it is dark and there are none left on the bushes. A brief division is seen between the children, as Elisabeth says the place makes her afraid, while Reinhard talks of its beauty. In either case, they leave empty handed, and Reinhard’s final day is a disappointment.

“There Stood the Child on the Road” sees Reinhard already at university on Christmas Eve. Like a good student we find him drinking in a bar, where a gypsy woman is playing music. Reinhard stands and makes a toast “to your beautiful, sinful eyes!” and tries to give her money, but she rebuffs him when he refuses to stay for her. He leaves the bar and goes outside onto the street, and then home, where he finds a gift of cookies from Elisabeth has arrived. In her letter she berates him for not having written or sent her any fairy tales as he had promised. Overcome with guilt, Reinhard goes out and buys a coral cross for her, and then begins writing letters home to her and his mother.

“At home” sees Reinhard home and with Elisabeth, but he finds her changed. There are pauses where earlier there would be conversation, and she often turns her back to him. He also discovers that in the place of the bird he had sent her another boy, Erich, has given her a luxurious cage with a canary inside it. She doesn’t seem interested in what he has written either. But before he departs, he seems to rekindle his passion for her, and reassure himself of her faithfulness. He tells her he has a secret, “and when in two years I am back here you shall learn what it is!” – undoubtedly a proposal. But in “A Letter”, the shortest of the vignettes of Immensee, we learn that Elisabeth has agreed to be married to Erich, after refusing for some time. Reinhard, perhaps to build expectation, hadn’t written to her since they parted…

“Immensee” has Reinhard come to Immensee, the estate that Erich has inherited and which has given him the means to win over both Elisabeth and (more importantly) her mother. He has come at Erich’s invitation, not his wife’s, because Erich wishes to surprise Elisabeth by showing her her old friend. And for most of the scene we don’t even see her. When Reinhard finally does, she appears unfamiliar, as “the white and girlish form of a woman”. Both of them appear changed to one another, and Reinhard ends up starting to go for walks alone in the evenings, where on one occasion the heavens break open and he is soaked.

“My Mother Wanted It” has the family – Erich, Elisabeth, and her mother – sitting around one evening with Reinhard also present. Together Elisabeth and Reinhard sing a popular Romantic ballad, and then, emboldened, Reinhard reads one of his poems – he is a writer – which is clearly about Elisabeth’s marriage to Erich and her loss of Reinhard. She grows embarrassed and leaves the room. Reinhard also goes outside, and approaches the lake that lies in the centre of the Immensee Estate. There he sees a white lily, and he tries to swim out to it. He gets very close, but is unable to make it to the lily. He leaves, sodden and disappointed.

In “Elisabeth”, the final vignette, Reinhard tries to reminisce upon the past together with Elisabeth, but she rejects him, even the idea of going looking for strawberries – “it’s not the time for strawberries now”. Having failed, Reinhard heads back to the house. On the way he meets the gypsy, now an old woman, who asks for alms. He gives her his money and then asks her what else she wants, but she says there’s nothing else. At the house Reinhard finds he cannot write anymore and decides to leave as soon as possible. The next morning he aims to leave without notice, but she finds him in time to confirm her suspicions that he will never come again. And then Reinhard is gone.

His memories exhausted, the aged Reinhard sees before him the water lily again and decides to get to work. His creativity is gone, but there remains within him a capacity for academic study. This is to be his fate.

So that’s the plot of Immensee. Now for a few bits and pieces towards thinking about it.

The Novella’s Structure: Poetry and Vignettes

I mentioned above that Immensee is divided into ten vignettes, or scenes, ranging from Elisabeth and Reinhard’s youths up to Reinhard’s old age. What is the significance of the structure? Each of the scenes is able to function as an independent unit, similar to separate poems in a cycle. Each scene brings with it a different mood, with its own symbols and ideas. They function as separate memories, while nonetheless forming part of a coherent whole – Reinhard’s understanding of his failed relationship with Elisabeth. The containment of these scenes within Reinhard’s memory serves to contain his central despair over his failure and bring order to the meaninglessness and chaos of his life. By organising his memories Reinhard can come to understand them and move on. The novella thus moves from the first scene’s initial pain at being reminded of Elisabeth, to Reinhard moving on through academic work at the end.

By using vignettes and focusing on the mood, the structure of Immensee has significance outside of Reinhard’s perspective too. Not only does the structure bring order to Reinhard’s life, it also makes it beautiful. In this way Storm takes what is ultimately a tragic story and imbues it with a redemptive quality – he makes it into art. In this way, he predicts Nietzsche’s command that our suffering must be made into art so that it can have value.

Immensee also makes use of poetry. Storm was a wonderful poet as well as a writer and a few of the poems in Immensee are also found in my collection of his poetry. The use of poetry serves to enhance the feeling that the vignettes are poetic themselves. The song of the gypsy is important because it stresses the fragility of existence, warning Reinhard of the danger of his hopes for Elisabeth and his ultimate fate.

Today and just today,
Am I so beautiful.
Tomorrow, oh tomorrow,
All this will pass away.
And only in this hour,
Can I call you my own.
For death, alas my death
Will find me all alone.

The poetry that Reinhard reads to Elisabeth is also significant. Reinhard thinks, perhaps, that the beauty of his artistic talent will be enough to win the old Elisabeth back to him. But he is sorely mistaken. In this way we see that poetry and the artistic structure of Immensee more broadly is designed to redeem the world but not grant us riches in it.

The Symbols and Details of Immensee

Immensee is full of symbols and symbolic content and here I’ll only focus on the things that strike me as particularly significant. After all, our essays are only so long.

Colours, Light and Dark. According to my notes from the first time I read Immensee the colours of the novella get progressively darker as it progresses. Reading it through this time, I don’t think it’s an exact science. Nonetheless, there is a clear movement from light to dark. When the children are first playing it is summer and bright outside. But by the time of their first problems, in the forest, it is dark. Immensee itself, for Reinhard at least, is marked by its darkness. The weather there is always bad and stormy, reflecting his own increasingly sad state of mind.

An illustration from an American edition of Immensee. It shows Reinhard giving Elizabeth a flower — From an early American edition of *Immensee*, I find the picture accurately shows the kind of (perhaps excessive) Romanticism of the story.

Names. I’m not sure what the significance of any of the characters’ names in Immensee is, but there is one point I’d like to mention. In “A Letter” we learn that Reinhard’s second name is Werner after his landlady brings in the letter from Elisabeth’s mother. It is something of a jarring moment for the reader, as up till then Reinhard has only been called Reinhard – we come to know him by that name. It is significant because it reflects the jarring nature of the news the letter contains: the person Reinhard thought he knew, Elisabeth, has changed completely from his idea. The intimacy they had shared is lost, and Reinhard thus becomes (albeit temporarily in the text) Mr Werner. But it is enough.

Immensee itself is also a significant name. “Imme” is a poetic variant of the German word for bee, so the estate’s name is something like “bee-lake”. Bees are used throughout literature for their associations with productivity and hard, collective work. This is exactly what we see on Erich’s estate: a world of practical achievements in his factory and workers that stands in complete contrast to Reinhard’s unacknowledged, intellectual world. So in its own way, even the novella’s title is there to show what Reinhard lacks.

The Bird. Reinhard sends Elisabeth a linnet, a small bird. But the bird, we learn in “There Stood the Child on the Road”, has died. And when Reinhard goes home he sees a new bird, a canary, in a new golden cage. The cage represents the riches of Erich, having inherited the estate at Immensee, and perhaps the bird in the cage may be read as Elisabeth herself, her heart now caught by another. In any case, the incident with the birds shows clearly how Reinhard’s role in her life is being usurped by another.

The Coral Cross. The significance of the coral cross seems to me rather to be its lack of significance to the plot. In a work full of echoes, symbols and connections the cross is notable in that it does not reappear, but rather is forgotten. The faith that the cross implies turns out not to be present in Elisabeth – or at least, the faith is eventually overcome. It is, in a sense, a red herring among symbols because of its lack of use. Instead, it comes to symbolise Reinhard’s failure.

The White Lily. This is the main symbol of the whole of Immensee. It appears both in “My Mother Wanted it” but also in the final vignette, as a vision before Reinhard’s eyes. Reinhard swims into the centre of the lake to try to capture the beauty of the lily, but he is defeated. And thus it comes to represent all that is unreachable, unattainable, especially in terms of beauty. But at the same time, its beauty is great, and thus when Reinhard thinks about it towards the end of the novella it comes as a sort of consolation. It cannot be reached, but it remains in his memory, just as Elisabeth herself does.

Ways of Approaching Immensee: Romanticism and Social Constraints

There are lots of different ways of approaching writing about Immensee and here are those that caught my eye while thinking about the novella.

Parent-child conflict. How very banal. Nonetheless, there is a social angle to the novella that’s well worth exploring. Elisabeth is put under a lot of pressure by her mother to be with Erich, rather than with Reinhard. The reason for this seems to be that Erich is far more monetarily successful and has a greater social status, while Reinhard is simply a writer. When Reinhard comes to visit Immensee, Erich shows him all of the industry being built on the land, including a spirits factory. Reinhard, however, ends the novella still renting rooms, rather than owning houses.

Reinhard’s failure to be with Elisabeth is the result of his reluctance to tell her his feelings outright – instead he wants to wait too years before surprising her with a proposal. But Reinhard’s failure is also the failure of the Romantic sensibility more broadly. Immensee, in the version we now read, was published in 1851, some time after the Romantics of the German lands, such as Heine, had already given up on Romanticism or died. The novella is far enough beyond Romanticism to treat its ideas with scepticism and irony.

A photo of Storm when he was younger. — A relatively young Theodor Storm. Immensee was an early-career hit, but it’s not my favourite story of his. The Rider on the White Horse (Der Schimmelreiter) takes that prize. I also love his poems.

This attitude manifests itself in the way Reinhard is treated. He makes up fairy tales for Elisabeth and writes poetry, and seems to see great power in gestures and in art. But as a result, he waits to tell Elisabeth of his feelings, including making the ridiculous decision not to send any letters for two years, all of which means that Erich is able to propose instead. When, at Immensee itself, he comes to sing with Elisabeth, he tries to talk about his passion for the music, but nobody pays any attention to his lyricism on the subject. Reinhard, the Romantic, is out of touch and unable to communicate properly with the modern people surrounding him. His passionate verses fail to seduce or please Elisabeth – instead they only upset her. Immensee thus presents the collision of the Romantic sensibility with reality and its subsequent failure to impress.

No doubt the art is beautiful, as Immensee itself is. But it is also useless for Reinhard’s pursuit of his worldly aims. He needs money and status if he’s to get anywhere when he has a rival like Erich.

Conclusion

Storm’s novella has remained popular for over one hundred and fifty years, and given what I’ve discussed above I hope it’s possible to see why that’s the case. Not only is the work short and structured in a way that makes it easy to read a few pages of at a time, it is also highly symbolic, making it richly rewarding to read it repeatedly. Its clearly symbolic quality makes it prime fodder for classroom syllabuses, because it’s hard to find something in the work that doesn’t mean something. I would know about that – I first had to read it back in school, though I’m not sure I actually did, as my copy was eerily devoid of annotations when I came to read it through last week.

The topic of the novella also helps it. Frustrated love is something that is easy to relate to, and as a result the distance between Storm’s time and our own seems far less than it actually was. For who hasn’t found, in the course of their lives, some small regret for a relationship that could have been, if only we’d just stopped and had the confidence to act in time? A gloomy memory, no doubt, but at least in Immensee old Storm turns the sentiment into art. In a way, our sufferings are thereby redeemed.

For more Theodor Storm, check out my thoughts on Aquis Submersus here. For other German novellas, check out Meyer’s Marriage of the Monk, Eichendorff’s From the Life of a Good for Nothing or Thomas Mann’s Gladius Dei.

If you’re looking for a translation of Immensee, here’s one I found. If you want to read some of Storm’s poetry, I’ve translated some poems here.

Nature and Politics in Joseph von Eichendorff’s Life of a Good-for-nothing

This is not a book for our times. Joseph von Eichendorff’s From the Life of a Good-for-nothing / Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts is a novella that is positively soaked in the Romanticism of its day. But while that might make for exciting poetry elsewhere, it doesn’t make the story nearly as interesting as one might hope. While other writers of German Romanticism, such as Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann used their Romantic milieu to create gripping and horrific tales that made use of magic and monsters, Eichendorff’s decision to – on the contrary – use Romanticism’s tropes to tell an ultimately happy and positive story means that the whole thing just becomes drearily cheery and predictable.

An etching of Eichendorff — Joseph von Eichendorff. He wrote, as did many of the German Romantics, a combination of both poetry and prose. *From the Life of a Good-for-nothing* contains a great many poems interspersed among its pages.

That’s not to say that From the Life of a Good-for-nothing isn’t without its positive aspects. But for me at least they weren’t enough to make me finish reading with a sense that I’d really enjoyed the work.

Plot

The plot of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is not complex. Our narrator, an Austrian, is kicked out of his father’s house and decides to find his own happiness in the wide world, taking with him his violin. He finds work in a castle, first as a gardener and then as a collector of customs duties, and there he falls in love with one of the women who live within its walls. Events force him out of the castle and onto the road again, and he decides to visit Italy. On the way he meets various other people, from painters to chambermaids, with whom he sings and dances. He also spends a lot of time wandering through nature, in true Romantic style, falling asleep in bushes and dreaming of being a bird. Once in Rome he meets his beloved again, and chases her back to Austria, where they marry.

Music, Nature, and Poetry in From the Life of a Good-for-nothing

I read From the Life of a Good-for-nothing in the original German. Normally, I try to avoid the originals of these novellas like the plague, but I enjoyed Eichendorff’s work more than I expected to. His writing is rather clear. More importantly, From the Life of a Good-for-nothing contains a lot of poetry, which is never fun to read in translation (including below). I’m not going to pretend that the poetry was fantastic, because unfortunately it is infected by the same sickly cheeriness as the rest of the book, but there were a lot of nice ditties, like this one, from the beginning:

If God decides on joy for man,
He sends him into the wide world
And there He shows him all His wonders,
In crag and river, wood and field.

Those lives which lie enclosed at home
Are not refreshed by morning dew;
They only know of children's cradles,
Of worries, burdens, toil and sweat.

Among the hills the river springs,
The larks are whizzing high from joy,
Why shouldn't I be singing with them,
With all my throat and all my chest?

I let the dear lord God be praised:
His rivers, larks, and woods and fields,
And earth and heaven are so great,
And He gives blessings to me too.

The poem really contains within itself the essence of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. Here nature is seen as the greatest thing that humankind possesses. And real happiness is to live within that nature. Singing and playing music always seem the happiest moments of the narrative, especially because as the novella progresses the narrator finds himself ever more often in the company of people who are willing to join in with him in the playing. Music is a universal language, in contrast to the various other languages encountered by the narrator – French, Latin, and Italian – which he doesn’t speak. He is left isolated and sad when he is unable to speak with and understand people, but using the power of music he is able to overcome language barriers. There is one moment near the end where he joins in a Latin song because the music is accessible to him.

A painting showing a castle which is falling apart and overgrown — Heidelburg Castle by Carl Blechen. Castles were beloved by the Romantics for their history and imaginative potential. The narrator of *From the Life of a Good-for-nothing* spends lots of time in castles as he travels.

Nature’s great. The narrator spends lots of time wandering around hills and forests and falling asleep in trees. He also regularly expresses a wish to be a bird. This is Romanticism, but it’s not always particularly interesting. It may be that I didn’t understand all of the fine details of the descriptions of forests, but I feel like I understood enough to follow the general idea. The problem with all of this is that the book is hopelessly cliched to modern readers, and far too happy. Don’t get me wrong, I try to be positive in my own life, but the whole worldview of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is so terribly optimistic it makes me squirm. All you need is the power of music and your own two feet and you can travel the world, make money, and marry the girl of your dreams. It sounds silly.

The Context and Politics of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing

From the Life of a Good-for-nothing was finished by Eichendorff in 1823, and any deeper look at the novella will struggle to avoid the political dimensions that lurk beneath the surface of the work. But first, the context. The German lands, Britain, Austria, and Russia in 1815 had ultimately emerged victorious in the conflict with Napoleon. However, the ideas of the French Revolution were not to be stopped as easily as its political and military leaders were. To combat these ideas, of progress and of freedom, the Austrian foreign minister and later also Chancellor, Klemens Metternich, organised a system of alliances with Russia and Prussia to isolate France and liberalism and also keep such ideas repressed within their own borders by means of increased censorship.

From the Life of a Good-for-nothing, for all its apparent innocence, is not free from the influence of its times, and is ultimately a rather conservative book – just as Romanticism more broadly in some ways was. The novella begins in a world of hard work – a world where even the snow drips “industriously” (emsig), under the shadow of the narrator’s father’s mill. Although the mill is not a modern invention, its inclusion nonetheless reflects the Romantics’ concerns about the destruction of nature for economic reasons. The narrator, instead of continuing to try to conquer nature, goes out and wanders. He finds his joy singing among the trees – a harmony, where the mill otherwise indicated disharmony. His job as a gardener is also implicitly contrasted with that of the millworker. As a gardener he is responsible for ensuring nature’s growth and development, rather than its control and destruction.

The narrator’s reward for his rejection of the stodgy, sedentary life, is the girl of his dreams and a house and wonderful wedding trip. He manages to “earn” more by not trying to “earn” anything within the growing industrial framework of value, and he does all this while being happier than the average worker. Further evidence for the rejection of modernity comes in the portrayal of Rome, where the narrator dreams of nature and doesn’t enjoy the company of the people he meets.

The ending of the novella is not only conservative for its attitude towards hard work. It’s also important to pay attention to class here. The poet’s beloved, who for the majority of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is referred to as the “Countess”, turns out not to be a noblewoman at all. At the very last moment of the story she declares herself a foundling – thus making her marriage to the narrator suitable from a social perspective. The conservatism of the novella lies, therefore, not simply in a Romantic rejection of early industrialisation and urbanisation, but also in a subtle refusal to allow anything that would go against the existing class structures and propriety. Go into nature if you so wish, but know your place. In light of Marx and the development of radical politics later on in the 19^th century this message is dangerously naïve.

Conclusion

Look, don’t get me wrong, From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is a fun and innocent book. It comes from a simpler, kinder time than our own. To come at it with a modern and critical sensibility is to destine yourself for disappointment and frustration. Its escapism is too unreal and impractical to offer any solutions for our own cynical lives, and its ultimate message of idleness being the source of wealth is not particularly inspiring either. If idleness had engendered a mental wealth, but not a physical one, then the book’s message would be both more relevant to our own days, where many are attempting to extract themselves from the rat race. To say we can make money by doing nothing, unless we’re rentiers already, is a stupid lie, and one that distracts from the value of the escapism the book otherwise proposes. At least the poetry’s good.

For more German poetry, have a look at my thoughts on a few pieces of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s work here. For more interesting examples of German novellas, see Storm’s Aquis Submersus and Meyer’s Marriage of the Monk.

Have you read From the Life of a Good-for-nothing? Am I wrong to dislike it? Have I completely misunderstood the whole thing? Why not leave a comment!