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Eichendorff's Symbolic Landscape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Oskar Seidlin
Oskar Seidlin*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University, Columbus 10, Ohio
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Extract

It seems to me one of the most exciting and baffling characteristics of Eichendorff's art that, if I may use this paradox, his most profound insights are hidden on the surface. They travel, a strangely elusive contraband, in the full light of day, so that the last truths of his poetic vision, the whole web of his religious beliefs, his intellectual conceptions, his socio-ethical postulates transform themselves into the most deceptively simple folktunes, sung by his people with an ease and unconcern usually assigned in the secular psalter of a nation to that section which is headed “folk song, author unknown.” Goethe's solemn warning with regard to the ultimate secret and mystery of life, his injunction “Tell it no one but the sages,” was utterly lost on Eichendorff. He told it to every listening ear; and so it could happen that what in reality was an exploration and manifestation of truth, the poetic transmission of knowledge, was taken—or mistaken—as a bewitching play of lyrical mood and atmosphere. A comprehensive and integrated view of life thus turned in the public's hand into a picture book, lovely and self-contained, easy to peruse; and for the reader it was easy to absorb its sensuous refulgence without comprehending the meaning of design, color, and composition.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1957 , pp. 645 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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Footnotes

*

Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the poet's death (26 Nov. 1957).

References

1 Even so discerning and recent a critic as Otto F. Bollnow, Unruhe und Geborgenheit (Stuttgart, 1953), p. 146, labels Eichendorff's poetry as “im ausgepragtesten Sinne Stimmungsdichtung.” In his chapter on Eichendorfl in Geist der Goethez eit, IV (Leipzig, 1953), 232–246, Hermann A. Korff shows a curious indecision whether to see in Eichendorff a creator of symbols or a weaver of bewitching moods. After some interesting initial attempts at interpretation, Korff loses himself in the shopworn generalities about music, spell, mood pictures.

2 Eichendorffs Werke, (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1953), I, 36. Throughout this article I refer to this edition.

3 See Liselotte Dieckmann's penetrating article “The Metaphor of Hieroglyphics in German Romanticism,” CL, VII (Fall 1955), 306–312. Alice Hirschfeld's dissertation, Die Natur als Uieroglyphe (Breslau, 1936), deals only, and quite unimaginatively at that, with Hamann, Herder, Lenz, and Novalis.

4 I have given a close reading of this passage in my article “Der Taugenichts ante portas,” JEGP, lii (Oct. 1953), 509–524; now also reprinted in Aurora, 1956 [Eichendorff Almanach] (Kultunverk Schlesien, Neumarkt), pp. 70–81.

5 A short allusion to the “meaning” of this garden is found in Josef Kunz, Eichendorff: Hohepunkl und Krise der Spdtromantik (Oberursel, 1951), pp. 171 f.

6 Rudolf Ibel, Weltschau deutscher Dichter (Hamburg, 1948), p. 106, states somewhat too sharply; “Die Elemente seiner Dichtung, der Spielraum der Bilder und Situationen sind sehr begrenzt. Wer eine Erzahlung kennt, kennt sie fast alle.”

7 Rend Wehrli offers a very thorough investigation into the materials of Eichendorff's scenic views in EicliendorJjs Erlebnis und Gestaltung der Sinnenwell, Wege zur Dichtung, xxxii (Frauenfeld/Leipzig, 1938). See also Bollnow, pp. 228–231. In his essay, “Die symbolische Formelhaftigkeit von Eichendorffs Prosastil” (in Form und Jnnerlichkeit, Bern, 1955, pp. 177–209) Werner Kohlschmidt discusses these stereotypic views as genuine poetic topoi, and not just picturesque props.

8 Also noted by Ibel, p. 106.

9 A passage in Aknung und Gegenwart seems almost a direct refutation of Werther's self-abandonment in nature, his loving embrace of “blades of grass and tiny worms”: “He [Leontin] tried to fall asleep. But when the blades of grass, amidst the Incessant and monotonous humming of the bees, moved to and fro over his head… his heart was oppressed by such an anxiety that he jumped up quickly. He climbed a high tree which stood upon the ridge and rocked himself in its wavering crown over the sultry valley just to rid himself of the terrible stillness in and around him” (II, 102).

10 In his authoritative book Die Philosophic der unendlichen Landschaft (Halle, 1932), Helmut Rehder has dealt fully with the gradual rise and ultimate triumph of this fusion in romantic thinking and poetry. He does not overlook the fact that Eichendorff stands outside of this general tendency. Whether he is right in claiming that this “unromantic” attitude toward nature marks Eichendorff as a child of the Biedermeier (p. 194 f.), I am not prepared to argue. The fact as such is undeniable in spite of Bollnow's assertion of Eichendorff's “pantheism” (p. 223), a statement somewhat qualified later (p. 244), and Ibel's remark that Eichendorff “Gott immer wieder als das allumfassende und alldurchdringende Weltwesen, als die Weltseele, erlebt und erfafit” (p. 133). This “divinization” of the landscape, as revealed in romantic landscape painting, especially in the work of Philipp Otto Runge, is lucidly demonstrated—and rejected from a Catholic point of view—by Otto Georg von Simson in his article, “Philipp Otto Runge and the Mythology of Landscape,” Art Bull., xxiv (Dec. 1942), 335–350. I am greatly indebted to Professor Simson's exposition. Runge's picture “Ruhe auf der Flucht,” to which I referred, is reproduced in this article, both the first sketch and the final version.

11 definitely contradict Ibel's contention that Eichendorff's landscape “meist in eine unermefiliche Feme miindet” (p. 107).

12 A first but most rewarding investigation into the problem of time in Eichendorff's work is to be found in Wilhelm Emrich's “Eichendorff: Skizze einer Asthetik der Geschichte,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, xxvii (July 1939), pp. 192–207.

13 For the importance of “origin” in Eichendorff, see especially the chapter called “Ewige Heimat” in Ibel, pp. 99–125.

14 Strangely enough and against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bollnow states: “Eichendorffs Welthild kennt den Tag nicht, oder gar in einem betonten Sinne den Mittag” (p. 146).

15 What morning means to Eichendorff (especially in the Taugenichts) is clearly brought out by Kunz, pp. 75–77; also Ibel, p. 138. When my article was in proof I came across Richard Alewyn's superb interpretation of “Eine Landschaft Eichendorffs” (Euphorion, Li, Jan. 1957, 42–60), which, starting from a typical morning scene, develops the very essence of Eichendorff's “Raumgefuhl.”

16 It is now exactly 20 years since this succession was irrefutably and impressively proven by Albert Béguin, L'âme romanlique et la rève: Essai sur le romantisme allemand et la polsie franqaise (Paris, 1939), the first edition of which was published in 1937 (2 vols.). Yet this remarkable book does not seem to have had the impact which it deserves. Only occasionally one finds Beguin's insights and proofs accepted, as e.g. in Liselotte Dieckmann, p. 312.