The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 11
But in contrast to those just mentioned the greater number of his poems are of a subjective kind. Again the poet writes of his wife, from whom after all comes every joy that he experiences away from home, and he only draws her all the closer to his heart since the passing years have imprinted the first signs of age on her gentle features. His love is mixed with yearning for the time when they were both young and – for his home. The yearning for home is at one time expressed in almost classically pure words, "nach drüben ist sein Auge stets gewandt" (his eye is ever roaming toward the other land); at another it merely underlies and glimmers through the devotion with which he paints a scene from home; at still another the poet's blood surges high and "fury and longing for home wrestle for his heart." At last he can no longer stifle his indignation; he calls upon the very dead to arise and to battle again, and in ringing words shouts to the world "die deutschen Gräber sind ein Spott der Feinde" (the German graves are mocked by enemies).
Even more strongly than in his political poems the specifically manly quality in Storm's poetry appears in what we may call his confessional lyrics. There he gives us his thoughts about immortality: that, in common with all creation, man too rebels against dissolution, and that the belief in immortality is only the final, refined, and spiritualized form of this rebellion. But the true man stands above his own fate and will not sacrifice reason even to the most seductive promises. The church stands opposed to such high development of the individual; Storm thinks poorly of it, and forbids the priest to attend at his grave.
As in the realm of the mind the poet opposes the church, so in the social sphere he attacks feudalism and the bureaucracy. Those whose national feeling is not deep and comprehensive enough to allow them to feel at one with the people he stigmatizes as the drop of poison in German blood. He holds up to ridicule those who need the pretentiousness of power in order to be happy and would like to gain it at the cost of the people's liberty. But in pithy words Storm advises his sons to keep to the truth uncompromisingly, to despise outward success, but to spare no pains in striving for true worth, not to sacrifice self-respect to consideration for others but always to remember that in this life, after all, every one can stand only on his own feet.
The years in Heiligenstadt are of special importance in Storm's whole artistic activity, inasmuch as poetry is gradually pushed into the second place by his prose works. At that time Storm was known to the greater public hardly at all by his lyrics but only by Immensee (1849) and similar tales. Hence he was recognized as the author of lyric stories expressive chiefly of "transfigured resignation." This characterization, however, is only partially justified, for resignation finally disappears from Storm's stories and the share that the lyric element has in his tales changes entirely in the course of time. Of a number of his earlier narratives and sketches it can actually be said that they were written less for the sake of the tale than on account of the mood they express. And, in Heiligenstadt, Storm, who in all spheres sought untiringly for pure form, finally reached that kind of prose in which feeling and imagination have the widest scope, the "Märchen." He writes The Rain-Witch, perhaps the most perfect artistic fairy tale of German literature, in which he not only surpasses Goethe and the Romanticists but also himself. For, in Storm's own words, his Hinzelmeier is only a "fantastic-allegorical creation," Bulemann's House, written in the style of E. T. A. Hoffmann, "an odd story," while The Mirror of Cyprianus appears rather "in the elegant robe of the saga."
The last of these works was not finished in Heiligenstadt, but when Storm was back in his old home again. For in March, 1864, he had returned to Husum, where he was given the office of "Landvogt" (district magistrate), to which were attached authority in police matters and the administration of justice.
In taking this step he had followed the call of his fellow-citizens, for the death of Frederick VII. of Denmark had once more awakened in the Duchies the hope of freedom. The longed-for happiness of his return, however, was marred; for, instead of becoming independent, Schleswig-Holstein was finally made a Prussian province, and he was still more deeply stricken by a loss in his family. In May, 1865, his wife Konstanze died after the birth of her seventh child. Storm did indeed marry again – his second wife Dorothea Jensen was a friend and relative of his and Konstanze's, and this marriage too was happy – but his further poems bear witness to what he lost in Konstanze. One of his stories, also, Viola Tricolor (1873), deals with the problem how a man can cultivate the memory of his dead wife without doing injury to his love for the living one; he called it a "Selbstbefreiung" (self-justification).
The evening of Storm's life was not spent in Husum, where memories threatened to engulf him, but in the village of Hademarschen nearby, whither he moved in 1880, when he retired from office. Here he was destined still to develop abundant artistic activity as a novelist until his death on the fourth of July, 1888.
After the completion of his imaginative writings a decided change in Storm's prose style began to take place. Formerly the lyrical element lay like a haze over and about objects and persons, and even now it does not disappear. Yet it no longer blurs and obliterates the outlines and connections, but rather streams out of the objects represented, as a fragrance rises from a flower. The first beginnings of this style are already noticeable in At the Castle (1861), in which the problems of class differences and of enlightenment form to a certain extent the backbone of the narrative, and in At the University (1862), which for a story of Storm's at that period contains a great wealth of incidents. But it was in such works as In the Village on the Heath and At Cousin Christian's that the poet first attained a purely objective narrative style. That he himself realized this is clear from his correspondence. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1873, he writes to Hebbel's biographer Kuh with reference to In the Village on the Heath: "I think I have shown by this that I can also write a story without the atmosphere of a distinct mood (Dunstkreis einer bestimmten Stimmung). I do not mean a mood which is spontaneously developed during the reading from the facts given, but a mood furnished a priori by the author."
Hand in hand with the development of this "epic" style goes the transition to realism which we find also in Storm's poems. In prose it is best represented by works like Eekenhof and Der Herr Etatsrat, or Hans and Heinz Kirch and Two-Souled. Here the poet shrinks from no harshness. We find striking portraits the lines of which are drawn with a sharp, unflattering touch. Psychic conditions of the most brutal kind are portrayed and are made the more telling because it is almost only their effects that are given. In the same way the external world stands chiefly before us in its appearances while the conditions that have led to these appearances are neglected. Finally, Storm endeavors to step beyond the bounds of pure narrative. He seizes upon material of a dramatic nature and seeks to retain – nay more, to bring out – its dramatic character, even in the epic form. In one of his letters he calls the "Novelle" the epic sister of the drama, and goes on to say that it treats of the deepest problems of human life and requires for its perfection to be centred about some conflict. Such are works like The Sons of the Senator, where individual will is pitted against individual will; Renate or At the Brewer's, where individuals struggle against a multitude who are sunk in error and superstition; and, above all, The Rider of the White Horse, where the individual wrestles with the mass, the man with the most elementary forces of nature.
The Rider of the White Horse is Storm's last complete work and also, as we believe, the one that best reflects the whole man, as far as that is possible with a poet of such varied development. The scene is laid in his home, which is characterized with vividness and grandeur in its setting of marsh and sea. Like the stories of his youth it glorifies love, the love of two beings who are faithful to each other unto death, and at the same time it touches themes which deeply occupied Storm in his age, such as the problem of heredity in Karsten Kurator, or the relation between father and son in Hans and Heinz Kirch or in Basch the Cooper. The charm of youth, to which our poet was always most susceptible, invests the chief characters, and they have that chaste reserve that holds all internal life sacred. Happiness is won, but it ends in tragedy, the tragedy which has taken the place of the resignation of his youthful works and which, after all, was more deeply rooted in Storm than the joyfulness that is sounded in Psyche. It is a man of sober intellect who tells the whole story and yet, like human life itself, it stands out against a mystic background. Remembrance of long ago has clarified everything, loving comprehension fills everything with deepest sympathy. It was granted to Storm to stand on a pinnacle of art at the end of his life, a pinnacle which he had to leave, but from which he did not need to descend.
THEODOR STORM
THE RIDER OF THE WHITE HORSE (1888)
TRANSLATED BY MURIEL ALMONThe story that I have to tell came to my knowledge more than half a century ago in the house of my great-grandmother, the wife of Senator Feddersen, when, sitting close up to her armchair one day, I was busy reading a number of some magazine bound in blue cardboard, either the Leipziger or Pappes Hamburger Lesefrüchte, I have forgotten which. I still recall with a tremor how the old lady of more than eighty years would now and then pass her soft hand caressingly over her great-grandchild's hair. She herself, and that day, have long been buried and I have sought in vain for those old pages, so I can just as little vouch for the truth of the facts as defend them if anyone should question them. Only one thing I can affirm, that although no outward circumstance has since revived them in my mind they have never vanished from my memory.
On an October afternoon, in the third decade of our century – thus the narrator began his tale – I was riding in very bad weather along a dike in northern Friesland. For more than an hour I had been passing, on the left, a bleak marsh from which all the cattle had already gone, and, on the right, uncomfortably near, the marsh of the North Sea. A traveler along the dike was supposed to be able to see islets and islands; I saw nothing however but the yellow-gray waves that dashed unceasingly against the dike with what seemed like roars of fury, sometimes splashing me and the horse with dirty foam; in the background eerie twilight in which earth could not be distinguished from sky, for the moon, which had risen and was now in its second quarter, was covered most of the time by driving clouds. It was icy cold. My benumbed hands could scarcely hold the reins and I did not blame the crows and gulls that, cawing and shrieking, allowed themselves to be borne inland by the storm. Night had begun to fall and I could no longer distinguish my horse's hoofs with certainty; not a soul had met me; I heard nothing but the screaming of the birds, as their long wings almost brushed against me or my faithful mare, and the raging of wind and water. I do not deny that at times I wished myself in some secure shelter.
It was the third day of the storm and I had allowed myself to be detained longer than I should have by a particularly dear relative at his farm in one of the northern parishes. But at last I had to leave. Business was calling me in the town which probably still lay a few hours' ride ahead of me, to the south, and in the afternoon I had ridden away in spite of all my cousin and his kind wife could do to persuade me, and in spite of the splendid home-grown Perinette and Grand Richard apples which were yet to be tried. "Just wait till you get out by the sea," he had called after me from the door, "you will turn back then; we will keep your room ready for you!"
And really, for a moment, as a dark layer of clouds made it grow black as pitch around me and at the same time a roaring gust threatened to sweep both me and my horse away, the thought did flash through my head: "Don't be a fool! Turn back and sit down in comfort with your friends." But then it occurred to me that the way back was longer than the one to my journey's end, and so, drawing the collar of my cloak closer about my ears, I trotted on.
But now something was coming along the dike towards me. I heard nothing, but I thought I could distinguish more and more clearly, as a glimmer fell from the young moon, a dark figure, and soon, when it came nearer, I saw that it was riding a long-legged, lean white horse. A dark cloak fluttered about the figure's shoulders and as it flew past two burning eyes looked at me from a pale countenance.
Who was it? Why was it here? And now I remembered that I had heard no sound of hoofs nor of the animal's breathing, and yet horse and rider had passed close beside me.
Wondering about this I rode on. But I had not much time to wonder; it was already passing me again from behind. It seemed to me as if the flying cloak brushed against me and the apparition shot by as noiselessly as before. Then I saw it farther and farther ahead of me and suddenly it seemed to me as if its shadow was suddenly descending the land-side of the dike.
With some hesitation I followed. When I reached the spot where the figure had disappeared I could see close to the dike, below it and on the land-side, the glistening of water in one of those water-holes which the high tides bore in the earth during a storm and which then usually remain as small but deep-bottomed pools.
The water was remarkably still, even stiller than the protection of the dike would account for. The rider could not have disturbed it; I saw nothing more of him. But I did see something else that I greeted with joy; below me, on the reclaimed land, a number of scattered lights shone. They seemed to come from the long, narrow Friesian houses that stood singly on mounds of different heights; while close before me, halfway up the inside of the dike, stood a large house of the same sort. All its windows on the south side, to the right of the door, were illuminated; behind them I could see people and even thought I could hear them, in spite of the storm. My horse had already turned of its own accord onto the path down the side of the dike that would lead me to the house. It was evidently a public house, for in front of the windows I could see the beams, resting on two posts and provided with iron rings, to which the cattle and horses that stopped there were tied.
I fastened mine to one of the rings and then commended it to the care of the hostler who came to meet me as I stepped into the hall. "Is there a meeting here?" I asked him, hearing distinctly the sound of voices and the clatter of glasses through the open door of the room.
"Something of the kind," he replied in Low German, and I learnt later that this dialect in the place had been current, together with the Friesian, for over a hundred years. "The dikegrave and commissioners and some of the others interested! It's on account of the high water!"
Entering I saw about a dozen men sitting at a table which ran along under the windows; on it stood a bowl of punch over which a particularly stately man seemed to preside.
I bowed and asked to be allowed to sit down with them, which request was readily granted. "You are keeping watch here, I suppose," I said, turning to the stately man; "it is dirty weather outside; the dikes will have all they can do!"
"Yes, indeed," he replied; "but we here, on the east side, think we are out of danger now; it is only over on the other side that they are not safe. The dikes there are built, for the most part, after the old pattern; our main dike was moved and rebuilt as long ago as in the last century. We got chilled out there a little while ago, and you are certainly cold too," he added, "but we must stand it here for a few hours longer; we have our trustworthy men out there who come and report to us." And before I could give the publican my order a steaming glass was pushed towards me.
I soon learnt that my friendly neighbor was the dikegrave. We got into conversation and I began to tell him my singular experience on the dike. He grew attentive and I suddenly noticed that the conversation all around us had ceased. "The rider of the white horse!" exclaimed one of the company and all the rest started.
The dikegrave rose. "You need not be afraid," he said across the table; "that does not concern us alone. In the year '17 too it was meant for those on the other side; we'll hope that they are prepared for anything!"
Now the shudder ran through me that should properly have assailed me out on the dike. "Pardon me," I said, "who and what is this rider of the white horse?"
Apart from the rest, behind the stove, sat a little lean man in a scant and shabby black coat. He was somewhat bent and one of his shoulders seemed to be a little crooked. He had taken no part whatever in the conversation of the others, but his eyes, which in spite of his sparse gray hair were still shaded by dark lashes, showed clearly that he was not sitting there merely to nod off to sleep.
The dikegrave stretched out his hand towards him. "Our schoolmaster," he said, raising his voice, "will be able to tell you that better than any of the rest of us here – only in his own way, to be sure, and not as correctly as Antje Vollmers, my old housekeeper at home, would do it."
"You're joking, Dikegrave," came the somewhat thin voice of the schoolmaster from behind the stove, "to put your stupid dragon on an equality with me!"
"Yes, yes, Schoolmaster!" returned the other; "but tales of that kind you know are said to be best preserved among the dragons!"
"To be sure," said the little man. "We are not quite of the same opinion in this matter," and a smile of superiority passed over his delicately formed face.
"You see," the dikegrave whispered in my ear, "he is still a little haughty. He studied theology once, in his youth, and stuck here in his home as schoolmaster only on account of an unfortunate betrothal."
In the meantime the schoolmaster had come forward out of his corner and seated himself beside me at the long table. "Go on Schoolmaster, let us have the story," called a few of the younger ones in the party.
"To be sure," said the old man turning to me, "I am glad to oblige you; but there is much superstition interwoven with it and it requires art to tell the tale without including that."
"Please don't leave that out," I replied, "trust me to separate the chaff from the wheat myself."
The old man looked at me with a smile of understanding. "Well, then," he said, "in the middle of the last century, or rather, to be more exact, before and after the middle, there was a dikegrave here who understood more about dikes, drains and sluices than peasants and farmers usually do; yet even so it seems hardly to have been enough, for he had read but little of what learned experts have written about such things, and had only thought out his own knowledge for himself from the time he was a little child. You have probably heard, sir, that the Friesians are good at figures and undoubtedly you have heard some talk too about our Hans Mommsen of Fahretoft, who was a peasant and yet could make compasses and chronometers, telescopes and organs. Well, the father of this dikegrave was a bit like that too; only a bit, to be sure. He had a few fields in the fens where he planted rape and beans, and where a cow grazed. Sometimes in autumn and spring he went out surveying, and in winter when the northwester came and shook his shutters, he sat at home sketching and engraving. His boy generally sat there with him and looked up from his reader or his Bible at his father measuring and calculating, and buried his hand in his blond hair. And one evening he asked his father why that which he had just written had to be just like that and not otherwise, and gave his own opinion about it." But his father, who did not know what answer to give, shook his head and said: "I can't tell you why, it is enough that it is so; and you yourself are mistaken. If you want to know more go up to the attic tomorrow and hunt for a book in the box up there. The man who wrote it was called Euclid; you can find out from that book."
The next day the boy did go up to the attic and soon found the book, for there were not many in the whole house; but his father laughed when the boy laid it down before him on the table. It was a Dutch Euclid, and Dutch, although after all it is half German, was beyond them both.
"Yes, yes," he said, "the book was my father's, he understood it. Isn't there a German one there?"
The boy, who was a child of few words, looked quietly at his father and only said: "May I keep it? There is no German one there."
And when the old man nodded he showed him a second little volume, half torn. "This one too?" he asked again.
"Take them both," said Tede Haien; "they won't do you much good."
But the second book was a little Dutch grammar, and as most of the winter was still to come it did help the lad enough so that finally when the time came for the gooseberries to bloom in the garden he was able to understand nearly all of the Euclid, then very much in vogue.
"I am not unaware, Sir," the narrator interrupted himself, "that this same incident is told of Hans Mommsen; but, here with us, people used to tell it of Hauke Haien – that was the boy's name – before Mommsen was born. You know how it is, when a greater man arises, he is credited with everything that his predecessors may have done, in earnest or in fun."
When the old man saw that the lad cared nothing about cows or sheep and scarcely even noticed when the beans were in blossom – which after all is the joy of every man from the marshlands – and that his little place might indeed get on with a peasant and a boy, but not with a semi-scholar and a servant, and also because he himself had failed of prosperity, he sent his big boy to the dike, where from Easter till Martinmas he was to wheel his barrow of earth with the other laborers. "That will cure him of Euclid!" he said to himself.
And the lad pushed his wheelbarrow, but he kept the Euclid in his pocket all the time, and when the workmen ate their lunch or stopped for a bite in the late afternoon he sat on the bottom of a wheelbarrow with the book in his hand. And in autumn when the tides began to be higher, and the work had sometimes to be stopped he did not go home with the others, but stayed, and sat on the slope of the dike, his hands clasped round his knee, and watched for hours how the gray waves of the North Sea dashed up higher and higher towards the grass-line of the dike. Not until the water came in over his feet and the foam spattered in his face did he move up a few feet higher and then sit on there. He heard neither the splashing of the water nor the screaming of the gulls and shore-birds that flew above and around him, almost touching him with their wings, and flashing their black eyes into his; nor did he see how night came and enveloped the broad, wild desert of water in front of him. All that he saw was the hem of the water outlined by the surf which, when the tide was in, struck again and again with its heavy beat on the same spot in the dike and washed away the grass-line on its steep side before his very eyes.
After staring at it long he sometimes nodded his head slowly, or, without looking up, drew a soft line in the air with his hand as if he would thus give the dike a gentler slope. When it grew so dark that all earthly things vanished from his sight and only the tide continued to thunder in his ears, he got up and trotted home half wet through.
One evening when he came home in this state, his father, who was cleaning his measuring instruments, looked up and turned on him. "What have you been doing out there so long? You might have been drowned; the water is eating right into the dike today."