^{Note 1 in page 342} All references to and quotations from Biichner's works are based on Georg Büchner: Werke und Briefe, ed. Fritz Bergemann (Wiesbaden, 19S8).

^{Note 2 in page 342} The text of Grabbe's works is Christian Dietrich Grabbe: Werke und Briefe, ed. Alfred Bergmann (Emsdetten, 1960 ff.).

^{Note 3 in page 343} While eavesdropping on Donna Anna and Octavio, Don Juan says of the latter:

In his pursuit of amorous pleasures, Don Juan is striving for the conscious artistry that is only possible through an esthetic alienation of his feelings.

^{Note 4 in page 345} Because “boredom” plays such an important role in the literature of almost all European countries in the 19th century, this concept has led to many studies of varying merit. For the purpose of this investigation one of the most important works is Gustav Beckers' Georg Büchners “Léonce und Lena”: Ein Lustspiel der Langeweile, Probleme der Dichtung, No. 5 (Heidelberg, 1961).

^{Note 5 in page 345} For example, Wolfgang Martens in Bild und Motiv im Weltschmerz, Literatur und Leben, N. F., No. 4 (Köln, Graz, 1957), p. 140, states: “Ja, Don Juan ist geradezu ein Ahasver der Liebe.” Danton is compared to the Wandering Jew, among others, by Walter Weiss in Enttäuschter Pantheismus, Gesetz und Wandel: Innsbrucker Literarhistorische Arbeiten, m (Dornbirn, 1962), 263.

^{Note 6 in page 345} Because it is one of Faust's reasons for evoking the Devil, his attempt to correlate individual incidents with an eternal order establishes the concepts of Wellbegebenheiten and Weltgeschichte as important dialectical poles in the play (i, 434).

^{Note 7 in page 346} An interesting contrast can be made with Danton's famous question, “Was ist das, was in uns lügt, hurt, stiehlt und mordet?” (p. 45), a question which Büchner himself asks in a letter (p. 374). Somewhat speculative but not untenable is an interpretation that suggests that not only is man deprived of something but he has also been given, in its place, his human frailty. Man appears to Danton as a puppet “von unbekannten Gewalten am Draht gezogen” (p. 45); perhaps that which was given man by the “unknown forces,” by “Geister,” keeps him their slave, while that which was withheld would have made him their equal.

^{Note 8 in page 346} Most interpretations eschew any direct designation for this quality. An exception is Gustav Beckers, who writes: “Für einen der Fehler, die gemacht wurden, als die Menschen entstanden, für einen Teil des Etwas, was fehlt, wofür Danton ‘keinen Namen’ weiß, hat jetzt der Dichter für sein Lustspiel den Namen der Langeweile gefunden” (p. 50). Beckers makes the mistake of taking Danton's following lines too literally: he views “Langeweile” as that which Danton seems to describe as irremovable, but the meaning of Danton's question can best be expressed as: “but since we have never had it, we are certainly never going to be able to pull it out of each other's intestines—so why should we break open each other's bodies for its sake?”

^{Note 9 in page 347} Georg Büchner (Carbondale, III., 1964), p. 23.

^{Note 10 in page 347} “Ideologie und Verzweiflung: Religiöse Motive in Büchners Revolutionsdrama,” Euphorion, liv (1960), 83–108. All quotations from Martens that appear in the text are from this essay.

^{Note 11 in page 348} Robespierre's exclamation, “Also auch du, Camille?” (p. 33), is obviously an echo of Caesar's famous words, but while Caesar gave up further resistance, Robespierre does not refrain from killing his friend.

^{Note 12 in page 348} For example, one of the few shortcomings in Martens' otherwise excellent study of Danlons Tod is his refusal to attribute any more than theoretical, purely philosophical significance to Danton's Epicureanism (pp. 87 f.).

^{Note 13 in page 349} For example, Wilhelm Braun in Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry (New York, 1905), examining the poetry of Hölderlin, Lenau, and Heine, applies the following definition: “Weltschmerz may be defined as the poetic expression of an abnormal sensitiveness of the feelings to the moral and physical evils and misery of existenœ—a condition which may or may not be based upon a reasoned conviction that the sum of human misery is greater than the sum of human happiness” (p. 1). By and large, Braun's definition, which has been used by several of his successors in this area, seems completely applicable only to Lenau.

^{Note 14 in page 349} In the following discussion the fashionable designation “nihilism” is avoided. Weltschmerz is, to be sure, often the result of a nihilistic view of existence, yet while there is a frequent overlapping of the two phenomena, not all Well-schmerzler are necessarily radical nihilists. Indeed, in Grabbe's works ideal values are not denied categorically (except in Gothland, his first drama); they only seem to exist beyond the sphere of human knowledge and conduct. The sense of physical pain is far more significant in the works of the commonly recognized Weltschmerzler than in those of many poets with a generally nihihstic approach to existence; and because this sense of the physical has a direct influence on imagery and other strictly literary aspects of their works, one could, like Walter Höllerer in Zwischen Klassik und Moderne (Stuttgart, 1958), pp. 396 f., even question the application of the basically philosophical term “nihilism” to poets such as Grabbe and Büchner, who never indulge in speculative philosophy.

^{Note 15 in page 349} Manchester, 1954, pp. 118 f.

^{Note 16 in page 349} See Wolfgang Martens, “Zum Menschenbild Georg Büchners: Woyzeck und die Marionszene in Dantons Tod,” Wirkendes Wort, viii (1957), 13–20.

^{Note 17 in page 351} One reflection of a general feeling of imprisonment within the senses is the motif of “Lebendig-Begraben,” a motif still popular long after the period of radical Weltschmerz. See, for example, my article on “The Significance of Gottfried Keller's Poem ‘An Lenau’,” Symposium, xix (1965), 352–358.