History of German Literature Georg Lukacs 1947
Again, we have rushed ahead in time to reveal trends in their full development. It was necessary because, as mentioned earlier, this inner forlornness and decomposition is overshadowed by the veil of a deceptive social security and only with the tearing of this veil in poetry can the content and style of epic and drama in the Wilhelminian era be properly explained. The tendency towards such internalization is often and sharply expressed with an anti-social accent, as the narrator Hermann Stehr says, fate “ultimately has nothing to do with external well-being, nothing to do with material fulfillment”. By twisting the relative truth contained in this statement, namely that the fate of a person can take different paths internally and externally, Stehr twists it into the absolute, by reducing all social problems to material well-being understood in a vulgar-economic sense, he brings this tendency to bear an extreme but clear theoretical statement: “Not the poet who sets himself up as the judge of his time, not the social critic, not the revolutionary rhapsodist or dramatist can, by such standards, reach that highest level of poetry which, to name but a few names, was reached by Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy or Goethe. All of these poets only wrote in order to emphasize the timeless meaning of our existence to ourselves and to mankind ... There are no contemporary problems for such a poet ... He only wants to give mankind the direction to the good, but he leaves its development to the quiet rhythm of time.”
This is the belief of many important and influential writers of this period. They express an attitude toward art and life that can be observed everywhere in the age of imperialism, but never became the dominant tendency in literature as strongly as in Germany. Needless to say, Stehr’s examples are wrong. The writers he cites as exemplary almost always shared passionately in the struggles of their day with their works. The fact that the content of these long-gone feuds can often only be made accessible to us today with the help of commentaries, that the effect of many great works of art of the past seems to have detached itself from the soil of their social and political genesis, does not change the fact that the poetry of Sophocles from the struggles for the dissolution of tribal genus rule, those of Dante and Shakespeare from those of self-destructive feudalism, those of Tolstoy from the introductory struggles of the Russian agrarian revolution from the liberation of the peasants to the revolution of 1905, those of Goethe from the disputes about the period from the prelude to the Great French Revolution up to the June Revolution. And none of these poets impartially sought only the eternal, the timeless in these disputes, but on the contrary took a concrete part in the concrete struggles of their time.
Even more important than such a correction of the historical facts is the realization that that poetic content which guarantees the ever-renewing effect of the great written works, that appeal to moments of humanity which outlast entire epochs, never comes about without the mediation of the merely temporal. The poetic concreteness and depth bears on the social problems of the time in a deceptive manner, just because Antigone, in defiance of Creon’s prohibition, regards her brother’s burial as a sacred demand of the day, just because Lear anticipates the moral disintegration of feudal society. Experiencing their own passions, their own most immediate and personal life contexts, they were able to grow into lively and at the same time symbolically significant, eternal figures for posterity, because on the one hand this timeless is only a moment, only the last, most general content of the contemporary, is therefore, artificially detached from this, a contentless generality. Poets can grasp deeper or more superficial moments in mankind’s great historical unfolding process, and their work will have a lasting or temporary effect accordingly. But even the deepest has not ceased to be historical, temporal, time-bound: it fixes an important stage in the development of mankind for the memory of mankind. Just as a great childhood experience remains active in the individual human being until his death, without ceasing to be a childhood experience, indeed with the accent of the childhood experience: so the great works of poetry live on in the human race. The eternity of their effect is inseparable from the historicity not only of their genesis, but also of their decisive content, their inner form. On the other hand, every writer, whether he likes it or not, has to draw on the problematic material of the day and always does, even if he does it like Stehr, by looking for the opposite. But this urge removes him from the concrete definitions and mediations that characterize people and situations in a striking and profound way and make them really concrete. Think of the day-to-day problems in Werther, starting with the relationship of the nobility to the bourgeoisie and from the Rousseau-like, pre-revolutionary critique of the aristocratic and petty-bourgeois society that had become alien to nature, ideologically preparing for the revolution, to the action-wise important relationships with the most incisive intellectual currents of the time, with Goldsmith and Ossian, with Klopstock and Emilia Galotti: Could the love story itself (and Werther is much more than a mere love story) then have been able to attain their spiritual, poetic-moral wealth of life?
It is precisely this abstraction, this turning away from the real riches of life, that most of the writers of the epoch of German imperialism strive for. This timelessness results in a poetic renunciation of the living, concrete historical situation of the German people. Depending on the individual worldview or artistic disposition, this either becomes a psychologism that dissolves all forms, all figures and situations, or a sometimes Romantic (Ricarda Huch), sometimes Classicistic (Paul Ernst) stylization of reality, so either the dissolution of form or, to a certain extent, a new epigonism of form.
Since the German literature of the turn of the century dispensed with social standards, the tradition in the field of forms also became problematic artistically. In countries whose art has democratic or even revolutionary traditions, the linking of epic and dramatic formal problems with the ideological and moral conflicts arising from the great social struggles has a certain spontaneously experienced implicitness. Thus the continuity of the form, which grows organically out of the subject, out of the artistic working through of such conflicts, acquires a spontaneity that is extremely favorable for art, as in the Russian novel of the nineteenth century, where the most powerful new forms emerge organically from the consciously participated overall development, grow out of society and art. In this way, going back to earlier developmental tendencies gains a social and ideological meaning that goes beyond the merely subjective artistic, beyond the mere experiment in form (Stendhal and Anatole France in their relationship to the Enlightenment). Such connections existed in Germany in the older heyday of literature, albeit much more problematically. The social conditions of modern Germany tear these connections apart. That is why a radically new art must arise with every change, from Naturalism to Expressionism and to the New Objectivity. And this general trend of development is repeated in small-scale in almost every single writer.
In terms of material ideology, Stehr’s view means a commitment to “organic development”: acceptance of the external social framework as it is, a fundamental reconciliation with it; even in the case of deep dissatisfaction, renunciation of fighting, of activity. This is how an affirmation of imperialism must come about, a reconciliation with it which, most commonly, takes the form of sentimental or cynical resignation.
All of this does not mean that there was no lack of oppositional sentiment in the German literature of the time. It is there, but takes on distorted forms. The complex against which the writer runs is detached from the life of society as a whole, gaining an apparent poetic life of its own and is thus fetishized. This can, under certain circumstances, be carried out with great literary force and produce a peculiar style. Such a tendency appears most artistically in satire and caricature. The root of its style is the grotesque discrepancy between appearance and essence. The artistic power of the caricatural design depends partly on the depth of the experience of the discrepancy, on its visionary correct capture in the appearance, but partly on how far the being itself is correctly grasped in terms of content (i.e. socially).
It is clear that sharp oppositional sentiments necessarily had to go this way. Its most outstanding representative in German literature is Frank Wedekind. He has created new means of expression for the dramatic scenery, new, deep-acting stimuli from the transformation of everyday capitalist life into the grotesque, whereby this transformation is a sharply critical, passionate revelation: the inanimate, the unnatural is shaped with tremendous sensual force.
But at the basis of Wedekind’s caricature lies a mystification of which he was unaware. Like many important modern writers, especially Strindberg, Wedekind places the contradiction between the erotic-sexual life of the individual and bourgeois society with its laws, customs and conventions at the center of his work. But while Strindberg, in his heyday, tackled the whole problem, albeit with a stubborn one-sidedness, with Wedekind the elemental, above all the sexual, but also everything else instinctive about human beings, is detached from the overall context and emerges as an independent power abstractly opposed to the world, to society, which appears as a rigid system of dead and killing conventions. Wedekind now designs out of such skewed contrasts. This urge towards the elementary makes him consciously oppose the art of his time. So he says in the prologue to the Earth Spirit:
Was seht ihr in den Lust- und Trauerspielen?! –
Haustiere, die so wohlgesittet fuehlen,
An blasser Pflanzenkost ihr Muetchen kuehlen
Und schwelgen in behaglichem Geplaerr;
Wie jene anderen – unten im Parterre;
Der eine Held kann keinen Schnaps vertragen,
Der andere zweifelt, ob er richtig liebt,
Den dritten hoert ihr an der Welt verzagen,
Fuenf Akte lang hoert ihr ihn sich beklagen,
Und niemand, der den Gnadenstoss ihm gibt. –
Das wahre Tier, das wilde, schoene Tier,
Das, meine Damen! – sehn Sie nun bei mir.
(What see you, whether in light or sombre plays?
House-animals, whose morals all must praise,
Who wreak pale spites in vegetarian ways,
And revel in an easy cry or fret,
Just like those others–down in the parquet.
This hero has a head by one dram swirled;
That is in doubt whether his love be right;
A third you hear despairing of the world,–
Full five acts long you hear him wail his plight,
And no man ends him with a merciful sleight!
But the real beast, the beautiful, wild beast,
Your eyes on that, I, ladies, only feast!)
Wedekind was persecuted as an immoral writer. Very wrong. There is a real, heartfelt rebellion is present in him against what is rigid and mendacious in modern bourgeois life, and this is presented with a subjectively genuine moral pathos, a radical rebellion, with real artistic power. But the distorted basis of the starting point distorts the artistic drawing. Wedekind rightly senses that modern German literature is much too literary. He says: “We know of no other questions and problems than those that arise among writers and scholars ... To get back on the trail of a great, mighty art. To achieve this, we must move as much as possible among people who have never read a book in their lives, who are guided by the simplest animal instincts in their actions.” Here the wrong contrast becomes clear: between the poles of the literary remoteness from life and the uninhibited dominance of the animalistic, the entire social world disappears. And the more Wedekind justifiably fights against the charge of immorality, the more his moral pathos is expressed directly (period since So ist das Leben), the deeper his art sinks the foreground and more and more overwhelms the satirical individual features that are often still relevant. A formally grotesque, content-related distorted and confused, deeply prosaic utopianism emerges.
The development of their greatest German master in this period, Heinrich Mann, shows how much the correct grasping of the essence forms the artistic basis of every really genuine and great satire and caricature. In terms of ideology, Heinrich Mann occupies an isolated, special position in Germany: he is a deeply convinced democrat, and increasingly a clear critic of democracy in the Wilhelminian period.
Even his early works, such as Im Schlaraffenland, show the power and truth of his satirical distortion in the social direction caused by the content as usually happens in ordinary life, can only activate his suppressed, crippled, slavish-slave-keeping sadistic instincts on those directly at his mercy, on his students, and then through a virtuosically treated, grotesque course of action is brought to the whole “good society” of his city to make its power tangible in a sadistic-grotesque way.
It is a horrible, but true to life picture of this time. The Romanesque-democratic traditions that are effective in Heinrich Mann’s world-view and work lead him artistically beyond the limits of German spiritual naturalism, socially and intellectually beyond the false and narrow German conception of the philistine. Of course, the old, correct democratic view still prevails with Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Keller: the philistine, both the dull and the overstretched, both the conventionally rigid and the eccentrically hopping, must be fought as an obstacle on mankind’s path to freedom and progress. It was only German Romanticism that narrowed the concept of the philistine to that of the artistically uncultivated; the social opponent was derided from the purely intellectual, from the guild literary point of view as the dull insensitive, the untalented. This view also dominates the literature of the imperialist period. But Heinrich Mann is anti-philistine in the sense of the French Revolution, which undertook to eradicate not only aristocratism but also philistinism.
This view is most clearly expressed in the masterpiece of his pre-war period, the Untertan. Here is the final portrait of the average German in pre-war imperialism, a caricatural variation on the theme of Wilhelm II’s dictum: “I lead you to glorious times!” The main character is a caricature of Wilhelm II, even in his outward features. Rightly so, for that is the basis of his popularity among the masses of German philistinism: rulers and ruled are cowardly and tyrannical, fearful and sadistic, petty, cunning and intoxicated with phrases. Here, Heinrich Mann creates those traits that are common to merchants and intellectuals alike. It is, in Marx’s words, a prophetic figure, for it can be said that most of the traits that epitomized the German of the fascist period are already being made visible here. In the case of other writers, the spiritual underworld of Wilhelminian security erupted unintentionally and unconsciously; here it is put on the pedestal with the conscious intention of deterring, with the call to repentance.
Der Untertan gives no genesis, no prehistory of the type of Wilhelminian man. Rightly so. This would disturb the clear lines of the satire. It is only discreetly indicated that the attack is not aimed at the German per se, but at the product of modernity. Heinrich Mann was able to omit the prehistory all the more easily because his brother Thomas Mann in Buddenbrooks, in the story of a merchant family, shaped the inner and outer history of the German citizen up to the eve of the radical capitalist upsurge in an incomparable way. While in The Loyal Subject remnants of the old bourgeoisie only appear on the horizon of the past, Thomas Mann’s modern types appear as a future perspective of the destruction of the old humane and cultured Germany. Thomas Mann wrote his novel in a strictly objectivist manner, but his position on this question is clearly evident: his full sympathy is on the side of the old types who have been run over and pushed aside, whom the new, ruthlessly brutal, unscrupulously fraudulent generation is destroying economically.
Reactionary criticism sees above all in Thomas Mann the poet of security. He is that, but in a completely different sense than Stefan George. Of course, for him too, with the exception of Buddenbrooks, the inner problems of the security and not the immediate social problems of the period take central stage. But firstly, he never idealizes this state of affairs, but uncovers its insoluble moral problems, and does so through a socio-moral criticism: how can one lead a human life in such a world, with such an inwardness? Thomas Mann’s answer is negative.
It would be superficial to think that he primarily or even exclusively shapes the problematic of the artist in modern bourgeois society. The novel Royal Highness clearly shows the opposite: for him, art and artistry are only the pointed form, the concentrated pure culture of a moral, a general social-human problem of the epoch. The spirit (art) has distanced itself from life, this situation cannot be changed with individual strength, and it is now a question of how one can complete this path. Anyone who does not have the necessary rigor towards oneself here falls apart, dissolves. Anyone who consistently completes the path freezes humanly in the ice region of isolation of inhumanity.
We have no space here to even hint at the rich dialectic of the various solutions to this problem. We can also only briefly point out that Thomas Mann’s artistic worldview goes beyond the limits of spiritual naturalism everywhere (although in the pre-war period and during the war he was politically and philosophically strongly influenced by specifically German-imperialist ideologies, by Nietzschean anti-democratism, etc.) that in his artistic principles he is more connected with some older German traditions and with Scandinavian and Russian realism than with the style of his German contemporaries.
Thomas Mann’s masculine spirit is unwilling to capitulate to the necessity of self-dissolution, but his vivid feeling for the fraternal equality of all human beings is just as unwilling to bow to the cold and harsh aristocratism of art for art’s sake, to the morality of the ivory tower. Thomas Mann rescued himself from this problem, which was unsolvable given his social and ideological assumptions at the time, by affirming the Prussian strictness of duty, the Prussian attitude. It is an emergency exit from a false dilemma, where the general tendencies of his epoch were not yet ideologically understood.
But the writer Thomas Mann is, unconsciously, perhaps even unintentionally, a more profound and correct social critic than the thinker. Not too long before the outbreak of war he creates a peak figure of his dreamed Prussian attitude: the hero of the novella Death in Venice. Here Thomas Mann inherits the social criticism of Theodor Fontane, but he expands it to criticize the internal Prussianization of the entire German intelligentsia. And he shows that this attitude harshly and rigidly separates people from the social environment, gives them the appearance and self-deception of their inner moral stability, but that the smallest shock is enough to make the merely pushed aside and artificially suppressed, but unrecognized and morally vanquished mental underworld to unleash the barbaric and bestial chaos: the dirty waves of this chaos crash over his head and effortlessly break the apparent barrier of the attitude.
What George and Rilke now and then, half unconsciously, break out of, what Wedekind glorifies with shuddering delight, what Heinrich Mann denounces in open polemics, triumphs here over the last attempt of the greatest writer of the period, if only with inner, spiritual, socially detached, undemocratic, only internally moral means. The security of Wilhelminism turns out to be a thin layer of earth beneath which the untamed volcano of barbarism, moral chaos, simmers, ready to erupt at any moment.