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TO A DECEASED2
But this is more than I can bear,
That still the laughing sun is bright,
As in the days when you were there,
That clocks are striking, unaware,
And mark the change of day and night —
That we, as twilight dims the air,
Assemble when the day is done,
And that the place where stood your chair
Already many others share,
And that you seem thus missed by none;
When meanwhile from the gate below
The narrow strips of moonlight spare
Into your vault down deeply go
And with a ghostly pallid glow
Are stealing o'er your coffin there.
THE CITY3
The shore is gray, the sea is gray,
And there the city stands;
The mists upon the houses weigh
And through the calm, the ocean gray
Roars dully on the strands.
There are no rustling woods, there fly
No birds at all in May,
The wild goose with its callous cry
Alone on autumn nights soars by,
The wind-blown grasses sway.
And yet my whole heart clings to thee,
Gray city by the sea;
And e'er the spell of youth for me
Doth smiling rest on thee, on thee
Gray city by the sea.
THE HEATH 4
It is so quiet here. There lies
The heath in noon's warm sunshine gold.
A gleam of light, all rosy, flies
And hovers round the mounds of old.
The herbs are blooming; fragrance fair
Now fills the bluish summer air.
The beetles rush through bush and trees,
In little golden coats of mail;
And on the heather-bells the bees
Alight on all its branches frail.
From out the grass there starts a throng
Of larks and fills the air with song.
A lonely house, half-crumbled, low:
The farmer, in the doorway bent,
Stands watching in the sunlight's glow
The busy bees in sweet content.
And on a stone near by his boy
Is carving pipes from reeds with joy.
Scarce trembling through the peace of noon
The town-clock strikes – from far, it seems.
The old man's eye-lids droop right soon,
And of his honey crops he dreams. —
The sounds that tell our time of stress
Have not yet reached this loneliness.
CONSOLATION 5
Let come to me whatever may,
While you are with me it is day.
Though in the world I wander far,
My home is ever – where you are.
Your face is all in all to me,
The future's frown I do not see.
WILHELM RAABE
By Ewald Eiserhardt, Ph.D
Assistant Professor of German, University of Rochester
Wilhelm Raabe was born on the eighth of September, 1831, in the little town of Eschershausen in the Duchy of Braunschweig. He received his schooling at the Gymnasiums in Holzminden and Wolfenbüttel; from 1849-53 he was employed in a bookstore in Magdeburg; then, while living with his mother in Wolfenbüttel, he prepared for the university, and later went to Berlin, where he studied chiefly history, philosophy, and literature. After the success of his first book, Records of Sparrow Lane (1857), he turned entirely to authorship. In 1862 he married and moved to Stuttgart, where he remained till 1870. From then on until his death in 1910 he lived in Braunschweig. Raabe was an extraordinarily productive writer, yet during the last ten years of his life he entirely gave up all literary activity, and left his last work, Old Folks in the Old Home, unfinished.
The underlying theme of Raabe's writings is the inner life of the individual man and his specifically human sphere of family, society, community, nation. With this he combines a strong preference for what is characteristically German, which he loves just as much where it is merely German, in fact, German to the point of being odd and bizarre, as where it merges into the universally human. Raabe believes, however, that both the peculiarly German and the broadly human types are found with greater richness and depth among the Germans of the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century than among those of the last third. The period before the development of modern Germany is that in which he loves best to linger. When he forsakes it, he does so to go still farther back, into the realm of history proper.
What was it that interested Raabe in history? Not so much the causal connection of events; not so much historical growth, as historical conditions. And, moreover, to him the outward circumstances are merely the necessary premises for what he really wishes to grasp, the spirit of a period, the constitution of the folk-soul. The great historical figures who led up to a period and stand out prominently in it he pushes into the background. It is the forgotten men and women that he seeks, and he pictures how circumstances or events ordered their lives, whether the individual lived apart from his age and contrasted with the mass, or whether the "milieu" wrought in him a particular condition of mind and heart, so that he was drawn into situations and events, into the "Zeitgeist," without actually exercising any decisive influence. In Else von der Tanne the German peasants, at the end of the Thirty Years' War, are sunk in "brutish stupor," inwardly and outwardly coarsened and demoralized, filled with boundless suspicion. When Else, "the purest, holiest flower in the horrible devastation of the earth," appears among them, they look upon her as something monstrous, they make a witch of her, and under their stoning the gentle miracle falls stricken at the threshold of the house of God. In Sankt Thomas the struggle between Spain and the Netherlands kindles heroism in the heart of a woman who, like a phenomenon, interposes in the fight, in which she perishes after all, without being able to give its course a favorable turn. "That was no longer that Camilla who had swung in the hammock. * * * She now appeared as the beautiful but deadly genius of this island; it was as if the destructive power of the tropical sun had become embodied in her. * * * Camilla Drago, in league with the fire from heaven, defended the castell Pavaosa." In The Crown of the Realm the heroine feels the necessity of making her lover go through the campaigns in Bohemia and Hungary from where he returns afflicted with leprosy. He gives up his happiness for lost, but the girl, from whom he has hidden, finds him, acknowledges her love for him, nurses him until his death and becomes in the end the mother-nurse of the exiled lepers.
We do not really feel this last story to be historical; for the spirit of the age, all the events and even the fate of the hero and heroine are far eclipsed by the triumphant strength of those powers that, standing above all time, are able to determine human life. The Crown of the Realm was indeed written after Raabe had tried in The People of the Forest and in his trilogy The Hunger Pastor, Abu Telfan, and The Dead-Wagon– works round which all Raabe's writings circle as round a pole – to comprehend the eternally problematical in human life and to take up some attitude toward it.
"Gib Acht auf die Gassen!" (Watch the Streets), and "Blick auf zu den Sternen!" (Look up to the Stars), are the mottos at whose point of intersection lies the life-wisdom of The People of the Forest. To wrestle with the factors of every-day life, to have a clear eye for the different values of these factors, and in general to respect the dignity of the common are indispensable to every real human life. But, if one is to attain the goals that lie in the land of promise, one's gaze must not remain fixed on the ground. For the universe and the human soul are, in themselves, dark, and receive their light only from the shining spheres that we call stars. In man's sky these are love, friendship, faith, patience, mercy, courage, humility, honor. Still more wonderful, however, than the existence of these stars is perhaps the fact that originally we did not possess them at all, but have only found them in the course of thousands of years. And how did they become ours? Through life's suffering and distress and infamy. Here, indeed, we arrive at the centre of Raabe's thought and work. All that is high in the world has developed through friction with what is low, all that is high requires the low. For just as white is seen in all its intensity only in contrast with black, so, too, depth of love, nobility of mind, strength to aspire are best manifested and unfolded in the conflict with selfishness, baseness, indifference, and every kind of distress and pain. That is why Hans Unwirrsch has Moses Freudenstein for a companion; that is why the author lays so many and such different obstacles in his way; that is why he allows him to attain only to such a modest happiness at last; for the satisfied do not hunger, and hunger for all that is noble is the meaning of our existence. That is why, too, a book like The Hunger Pastor exercises, on the whole, no liberative influence; it does, however, strengthen and edify our souls and warms our hearts with its inner glow.
But how is it? If the antagonism of those elements that increase life and those that weaken it is necessary, must they therefore exist eternally beside each other, and to which side will the final victory incline? "If ye knew what I know, ye would weep much and laugh little: " with these words of Mohammed's Abu Telfan closes. Accordingly the ideal, symbolized in The Hunger Pastor by the cobbler's luminous ball that accompanies Hans Unwirrsch everywhere, here finds only a place of refuge in the secluded "Katzenmühle" (cat's mill). Deep resignation is the predominant mood of this work. And in the The Dead-Wagon the place of the shining ball is taken even by the hearse, and the motto of this book is, "The Canaille is lord and remains lord." Antonie Häusler falls into the power of her rascally grandfather, and attempts to rescue her fail. Nevertheless chevalier von Gläubigern reports to Jane Warwolf: "I got there in time, she is happy! Believe no one who tries to tell you that she died in misery. * * * Pay no attention to Hennig and those others about us, they know nothing * * *" The chevalier is right. Antonie died, but in the triumph of martyrdom, and this triumph, still and unnoticed as it was, continues to burn in the hearts of the three old people whom we leave at the end of the novel in the home for the old and sick in Krodebeck.
The circle of our trilogy is closed. Light and darkness war against each other in all three parts. In The Hunger Pastor love and work finally win both external and internal victory; in Abu Telfan we are left full of worry that light is diminishing more and more; in the The Dead-Wagon the deepest shadows prevail, the noble and the life-affirming forces experience external defeat, but they remain unconquerable in themselves.
Further than in the The Dead-Wagon a wise author who is just to the world may not go in his pessimism, in spite of his study of Schopenhauer, if he would not appear to indulge in mannerism, to be one-sided. Raabe does not fall a victim to his deep penetration into the hardship and infamy of life; it finally becomes to him merely the means to an end. For he thus obtains from his strict conscience the right from now on to develop for its own sake a side of his talent which had already flashed through almost all his works – his humor. In whatever relation good and evil, happiness and suffering may stand to one another, man can not entirely get rid of either of these sides of life. The idealist or pessimist seeks to emphasize one of the two sides, the realist simply takes them as they are and bears them, the humorist tries to reconcile one with the other. This reconciliation must, of course, be subjective in its nature. It takes place in the mind and heart of the man. A humorist like Raabe allows the oppressive a place within him, and is untroubled because he recognizes that it is an integral part of his lot, of humanity's lot. He does not bear it with ridicule or bitterness, indifference or resignation, because he knows he must, but rather he rejoices in the strength of his soul, he rejoices that he can do it. In the consciousness of this ability he has cast away "the fear of the earthly" and looks down smiling on the mysterious play of the forces of life. He smiles at those who allow themselves to be consumed by distress, he smiles at his own distress which he has to overcome again and again, and is yet affected by grief, is full of the deepest sympathy for all creation, for he knows that he is fighting a common battle with it all. Humor is hearty, humor is brave, humor is full of sunny, smiling wisdom. We have works and characters in German literature that are more pronouncedly and purely humorous than Raabe's. But probably in no other German writer has humor become such a controlling mood of life as in him. With no one else do we feel the faithful humorous personality of the author behind and in his works as we do with Raabe. Horacker (1876), Old Familiar Corners (1879), The Hold-All (1890) may be quoted here.
By virtue of its elevation Raabe's humor has a quiet and certain glance, and is apt to spend its all-embracing sympathy on what is overlooked, what is insignificant, and in all it finds greatness and light hidden and operative. The apparently contradictory attracts him whether it appears to be contradictory in itself or contradictory to what is generally accepted and traditional. He makes friends with originals and oddities; he leads us into the isolation of small German towns, and we feel at home in their sociability and narrowness, in their affection for things and customs of olden times, in their solidity and singularity, in all their local joys and sorrows. Among his many stories we may refer in this connection to: Der Dräumling (1872), Wunnigel (1878), The Horn of Wanza (1880).
Even in Germany Raabe became known only slowly. This was due to his quiet character that disdained all striving after effect, to the intentional mixture of various elements in his art which sometimes makes it difficult to grasp the purpose of a work as a whole, to his persistent pursuit of ends that lay outside the ruling interests of his time. When once his countrymen began to come to themselves again, however, he did not lack homage. And so it will probably continue to be. An age whose interests are centered largely in the external side of life will think little of him and pass him by, while one whose gaze is directed rather within will take the pains to understand and appreciate him. May his image never be blotted out entirely! For he belongs to those who feel ever rising within them the question, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
WILHELM RAABE
THE HUNGER PASTOR
TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED BY MURIEL ALMON
Chapter I
It is of hunger that I am going to speak in this good book of mine: what it means, what it desires, what it is able to do. I cannot, to be sure, show how, for the world as a whole, hunger is both Shiva and Vishnu, destroyer and preserver in one; it is for history to show that; but I can describe how it works in the individual as destroyer and preserver, and will continue so to work till the end of the world.
To hunger, to the sacred power of genuine, true hunger, I dedicate these pages, and, indeed, they belong to it by rights, as will, I hope, be perfectly clear by the time we have reached the end. With this latter assurance I am relieved of the necessity of writing a further introduction which, after all, would contribute only in the slightest degree to the reader's comfort, emotion, and excitement; and will begin my story with unlimited good will toward my fellow men, past, present and future, as well as toward myself and all those shadow-figures that will pass before me in the course of this tale – reflexes of the great cycle of birth, being, and passing away, of the infinite growth that is called the evolution of the world – slightly more interesting and richer than this book, it is true, but, unlike this book, not obliged to come to a satisfactory conclusion in three parts.
"Here we have the boy at last! We have him at last – at last!" cried the father of my hero, and drew a long breath of relief like a man who, after long, vain yearning, hard work, many troubles and cares, had finally reached his happy goal. He looked down with wise, shining eyes at the tiny, pitiable bit of humanity that the midwife had laid in his arms just as the evening bell had sounded. A tear stole over the man's haggard cheek and the sharp, pointed, wise fatherly nose sank ever lower and lower toward the insignificant, scarcely recognizable little nose of the new-born infant, till it suddenly rose up again with a jerk and turned with anxious inquiry toward the kind, capable woman who had contributed so much to his delight.
"Oh, Mrs. Tiebus – good Mrs. Tiebus, is it really a boy? Tell me again that you aren't mistaken – that it is really, really so!"
The midwife, who till now had watched the first tender greeting between father and son with self-assured, smiling nods of the head, now jerked her nose into the air, dispelled all the spirits and sprites of good will and contentment which had fluttered about her, with an inimitable gesture of both arms, placed them akimbo, and, with scorn, contempt, and insulted self-respect, began to speak:
"Master Unwirrsch, you are a fool! Have your picture painted on the wall!.. Is it one? Did ever anybody hear the like from such a sensible old man and the head of a house?.. Is it one? Master Unwirrsch, next, I believe, you'll forget how to tell a boot from a shoe. This just shows what a cross it is when God's gift comes so late. Isn't that a boy that you've got there in your arms? Isn't that really a boy, a fine, proper boy? Lord, if the old creature didn't have the poor little thing in his arms I'd like to give him a good box on the ears for putting such a silly, meddlesome question! Not a boy? Indeed it is a boy, Father Pitch-thread – not one of the heaviest, to be sure; but still a boy, and a proper boy at that! And how shouldn't it be a boy? Isn't Bonnyparty, isn't Napoleum on his way again across the water and won't there be war and tussling between today and tomorrow, and don't we need boys, and isn't it exactly for that reason that in these strange times of ours more boys than girls come into the world, and aren't there three boys to one girl? and you come to me, to an experienced and sensible person like me, and ask such outrageous questions? Have your picture painted on the wall, Father Unwirrsch, and have written underneath it what I think of you. Here, give the boy to me, you don't deserve to have him bother with you – go along with you to your wife – perhaps you'll ask her too, if it's – a – boy!"
Ungently the infant was snatched from the arms of the despised, crushed father and, after getting his breath, Master Anton Unwirrsch hobbled into the bedroom of his wife, and the evening bells still rang. But we will not disturb either the father and mother or the bells – let them give full utterance to their feelings with no one to interfere.
Poor people and rich people have different ways of life in this world; but when the sun of happiness shines into their huts, houses, or palaces, it gilds with the very same gold the wooden bench and the velvet chair, the whitewashed wall and the gilt one, and more than one sly dog of a philosopher says he has noticed that as far as joy and sorrow are concerned the difference between rich and poor people is not nearly as great as both classes often, very often, extremely often think. Be that as it may; it is enough for us that laughter is not a monopoly nor weeping an obligation on this spherical, fire-filled ball with its flattened poles, onto which we find our way without desiring it, and from which, without desiring it, we depart, after the interval between our coming and going has been made bitter enough for us.
The sun now shone into the house of poor people. Happiness, smiling, stooped to enter the low doorway, both her open hands extended in greeting. There was great joy over the birth of the son on the part of the parents, the shoemaker Unwirrsch and his wife, who had waited for him so long that they were almost on the point of giving up hope altogether.
And now he had come after all, come an hour before work ceased for the day! All Kröppel Street already knew of the event, and the glad tidings had even reached Master Nikolaus Grünebaum, the brother of the woman who had just given birth to the child, though he lived almost at the opposite end of the town. A grinning shoemaker's apprentice, carrying his slippers under his arm so as to be able to run quicker, bore the news there and shouted it breathlessly into Master Grünebaum's less deaf ear with the result that for five minutes the good man looked much stupider than he really was. But now he was already on his way to Kröppel Street, and as he, a citizen, householder and resident master of his trade, could not take his slippers under his arm, the consequence was that one of them deserted him faithlessly at a street corner, to begin life with nothing to depend on but its own hands, or rather its own sole.
When Uncle Grünebaum arrived at his brother-in-law's house he found so many good women of the neighborhood there, giving advice and expressing their opinions, that, in his lamentable capacity of old bachelor and pronounced woman-hater, he could but appear highly superfluous to himself. And he did see himself in this light and would almost have turned back if the thought of his brother-in-law and fellow-craftsman, left miserably alone in the midst of all this "racket" had not enabled him to master his feelings after all. Growling and grunting he pushed his way through the womenfolk and at last did find his brother-in-law in a not very enviable nor brilliant position and attitude.
The poor man had been pushed completely aside. Mrs. Tiebus had taken measures to exclude him from his wife's room; in the living room among the neighbors he was also entirely superfluous; Master Grünebaum finally discovered him sitting in a miserable heap on a stool in the corner where only the cat that was rubbing against his legs showed any sympathy for him. But his eyes were still shining with that radiance that seemed to come from another world; Master Unwirrsch heard nothing of the women's whispering and chattering, saw nothing of the confusion that reigned among them, nor did he see his brother-in-law till the latter seized him by the shoulder and, not very gently, shook him back to consciousness.
"Give a sign that you're still in the land of the living, Anton!" growled Master Grünebaum. "Be a man, and drive the womenfolk out, all of them except – except Auntie Schlotterbeck there. For although the devil takes them one and all, odd and even, still she is the only one among them that lets a man get in a word at least once an hour. Won't you? Can't you? Don't you dare to? Well, then catch hold of my coat behind till I get you out of this tumult in safety; come upstairs and let things go on as they will down here. So the boy is here? Well, praise be to God, I began to think we'd waited in vain again."
The two fellow-craftsmen pushed their way sideways through the women, got out into the passage with difficulty, and mounted the narrow creaking stairs that led to the upper story of the house. There Auntie Schlotterbeck had rented a small living room, bedroom and kitchen, which left only one room at the disposal of the Unwirrsch family, and that was stuffed so full of all kinds of articles that scarcely enough space remained for the two worthy guild-brothers to squat down and exchange the innermost thoughts of their souls. Boxes and chests, bunches of herbs, ears of corn, bundles of leather, strings of onions, hams, sausages, endless odds and ends had here been hung, or flung, stuffed or stuck below, above, before, beside and among one another with a skill that approached genius, and it was no wonder that Brother-in-law Grünebaum lost his second slipper there.
But through both the low windows the last rays of the sun shone into the room; the comrades were safe from Mrs. Tiebus and the neighbors… They sat down opposite each other on two boxes and shook hands for five well-counted minutes.
"Congratulations, Anton!" said Nikolaus Grünebaum.
"I thank you, Nikolaus!" said Anton Unwirrsch.
"Hooray, he is here! Hooray, long may he live! And again, hoo – " shouted Master Grünebaum with the full power of his lungs, but broke off when his brother-in-law held his hand over his mouth.
"Not so loud, for mercy's sake, not so loud, Nik'las. The wife is right underneath us here and has trouble enough as it is with all those women."
The new-made uncle let his fist fall on his knee:
"You're right, Brother; the devil take them, one and all, odd and even. But now let her go, old man, and tell us how you feel. Not a bit the way you usually do? Oh ho! And how does the little tadpole look? Everything in the right place? Nose, mouth, arms, legs? Nothing wrong anywhere? Everything in order: straps and legs, upper, vamp, heel and sole? Well pitched, nailed, and neatly polished?"
"Everything as it should be, Brother," cried the happy father, rubbing his hands. "A prize boy! May God bless us in him! Oh, Nik'las, I wanted to say a thousand things to you, but I choke too much in my throat; everything about me goes round – "
"Let it go as it will; when the cat is thrown down from the roof she has to take time to collect herself," said Master Grünebaum. "The wife is doing well, I suppose?"
"Yes, thank God. She behaved like a heroine; an empress couldn't have done better."
"She is a Grünebaum," said Nikolaus with pride, "and in case of necessity the Grünebaums can clench their teeth. What name are you going to have the boy called by, Anton?"
The father of the new-born child passed his lean hand over his high, furrowed forehead and stared out of the window into space for a few moments. Then he said:
"He shall be christened after three fellow-craftsmen. He shall be called Johannes like the poet in Nuremberg, and Jakob like the highly honored philosopher of Goerlitz, and the two names shall be to him as two wings on which to rise from the earth to the blue sky and take his share of light. But as a third name I will give him Nikolaus so that he may always know that he has a true friend and protector on earth, one to whom he can turn when I am no longer here."
"I call that a sentence with a head full of sense and reason, and a clumsy, ridiculous tail. Give him the names and it will be an honor for all three of us, but keep away from me with those old foolish notions of death. You're not fat, to be sure, and you couldn't exactly knock an ox down with your bare fist either; but you can draw the pitch-thread through the leather for many a long year yet, you ruminating bookworm."
Master Unwirrsch shook his head and changed the subject, and the two brothers-in-law discussed this and that with each other till it had grown perfectly dark in the storeroom.
Somebody knocked at the door, and Master Grünebaum called:
"Who is there? No womenfolk will be admitted."
"It's I," called a voice outside.
"Who?"
"I!"
"It's Auntie Schlotterbeck," said Unwirrsch. "Push the bolt back; we've sat up here long enough; perhaps I may see the wife again now."
His brother-in-law obeyed, growling, and the light from Auntie Schlotterbeck's lamp shone into the room.
"Here they are, really. Well, come along, you heroes; the women have gone. Creep out. Your wife, Master Unwirrsch? Yes, she is well taken care of; she is sleeping and you mustn't disturb her; but I've a piece of news that you shall hear and thank God. At the house of the Jew, Freudenstein, across the street, the same thing happened today as in this house; but it wasn't quite the same. The child is alive – a boy, too, but Blümchen Freudenstein is dead, and there is great lamentation over there. Praise the Lord, Master Unwirrsch; and you, Master Grünebaum, go home. Come, come, Unwirrsch, don't stand there so dumbfounded; death enters, or passes by, according to God's command. I feel as if I'd been broken on the wheel, and am going to bed. Good night to you both."
Auntie Schlotterbeck disappeared behind her door, the two masters stole downstairs on tiptoe, and in the public-house which he frequented regularly, Uncle Grünebaum had far less to say that evening about politics, municipal and other affairs than usual. Master Unwirrsch lay all night without closing his eyes; the infant screamed mightily, and it was no wonder that these unaccustomed tones kept the father awake and stirred up a whirling throng of hopes and cares and drove it in a wild chase through his heart and head.
It is not easy to produce a good sermon; but neither is it easy to make a good boot. Skill, much skill is necessary to do either, and bunglers and botchers had better keep their hands off, if they have any regard for their fellow-men's welfare. I, for my part, have an uncommon partiality for shoemakers, in their totality when they march in holiday parades as well as for the individuals. As the people say, they are a "ruminating tribe," and no other trade produces such excellent and odd peculiarities in the members of its guild. The low work-table, the low stool, the glass globe filled with water which catches the light of the little oil lamp and reflects it with greater brilliance, the pungent odor of leather and of pitch must naturally exert a lasting effect on human nature, and that is just what they do, and powerfully too. What curious originals this admirable trade has produced! A whole library could be written about "remarkable shoemakers" without the materials being in the least exhausted! The light which falls through the hanging glass globe onto the work-table is the realm of fantastic spirits; during the meditative work it fills the imagination with strange figures and pictures and gives to thought a tinge that no other lamp, patented or unpatented, can lend it. It makes one think of all sorts of rhymes, queer legends, marvelous tales and merry and sad events of the world which, when they have once been put on paper by an unpractised hand, amaze the neighbors; at which the shoemaker's wife laughs or is afraid when her husband hums them in a low voice in the dusk. Or, perhaps, we begin to ponder still deeper, we feel the necessity of "unraveling life's beginning." Deeper and deeper we look into the glowing globe, and in the glass we see the universe in all its forms and natures: we pass freely through the portals of all the heavens and know them with all their stars and elements; intuitive perception opens our minds to sublime visions and we write them down while Pastor Richter, head clergyman of the parish, stirs up the mob against us from the pulpit and the constable of Goerlitz, who is to fetch us to prison, stands before the door.
