Books: The Interdependence of Literature
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Georgina Pell Curtis >> The Interdependence of Literature
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The nineteenth century in France has been rich in dramatists,
novelists, historians and poets, as well as in science and
learning of all kinds; but it has had no especial power, or aim,
and its opinions are constantly changing. The early novelists
were strongly directed by the writings of Sir Walter Scott, while
later ones have sought to imitate Victor Hugo and George Sand.
The literature of this period has had no effect outside of
France. Poetry has not risen any higher than Alfred de Musset;
and any further greatness in French poetry must come from a
revival of their own ancient poems and legends.
Poetry that deals only with the present becomes local, and in the
end is influenced by the constant caprice and change of fashion
instead of by the deep, heart-stirring beliefs of a strong and
united people.
ITALIAN.
The first general language of Italy was the Latin, and so
strongly was the Italian mind dominated by the influence of
ancient Rome that her earliest writers sought to keep alive the
Roman tradition. This spirit of freedom led to the establishment
of the Italian Republics, and after the Lombard cities threw off
the yoke of Frederick Barbarossa they turned their chief
attention to education and literature. The spirit of chivalry and
chivalric poetry never took such root in Italy as it did in other
European countries. Nevertheless, Italy was not uninfluenced by
the Crusades, and the Arabs, establishing a celebrated school of
medicine at Salerno, gave a new impetus to the study of the
classics. In Bologna was opened a school of jurisprudence, where
Roman law was studied, and these schools, or universities soon
appeared in other parts of Italy.
The Italians devoted more time to the study of law and history,
and to making translations from the Greek philosophers, than to
the cultivation of chivalric poetry, although many of the Italian
poets wrote in Provencal and French; and Italian Troubadours made
journeys to the European Courts.
It has been said that the only poetry that has any real power
over a people is that which is written or composed in their own
language. This is especially true of Italy. Following this early
Latin period came Dante, the most glorious, and inventive of the
Italian poets, and indeed one of the greatest masters of verse in
the world. He perfected the Tuscan, or Florentine dialect, which
was gradually becoming the literary language of Italy. Petrarch,
who succeeded Dante, is greatest in his Italian poems, and it is
by these that he is best known, while his Latin works, which he
hoped would bring him fame, have been almost forgotten.
In the fifteenth century the use of the national language in
literature entirely died out, through the rise of the Humanists,
and the craze for Greek and Latin classics; but toward the end of
the fifteenth century, under Lorenzo de'Medici and Leo X,
interest in their own literature among the Italians began to
revive again. Ariosto and Tasso wrote their magnificent epics;
and once more Italian poetry was read and appreciated, and
reached the height of its renown. Again in the seventeenth
century it declined under the influence of the Marini school;
whose bad taste and labored and bombastic style, was
unfortunately imitated in both France and Spain. In the
eighteenth century, under the patronage of Benedict XIV, the
Arcadian poets of the Marini school were banished from
literature, and other and more brilliant writers arose, possessed
of the true national feeling. Under Pope Pius VI, by whom he was
liberally patronized, Quirico Visconti undertook his "Pio
Clementine Museum," and his "Greek and Roman Iconography," said
to be the two greatest archaeological works of all ages.
With the rise of Napoleon, Italy was flooded with French
writings, and French translations, not always of the best, and
even the French language was used instead of the Italian. The
Italian literature again suffered a decline, and it was not until
after the treaty of Vienna in 1815 that the foreign influence was
again shaken off. It will thus be seen that it was when Italian
poets wrote in their own language that their greatest and most
lasting success was attained. During the periods when a craze for
imitating foreign works existed, the national languages
deteriorated. In Germany, under the Emperor Maximilian, a crown
was publicly bestowed on any poet who achieved success in Latin
verse, while no reward or emolument was given to those who wrote
in German. The religion of Humanism in Italy went to such lengths
that many seemed to lose not only their belief but also their
good sense, as they considered it vulgar to talk of the Deity in
the language of the Bible. God was spoken of in the plural--gods.
The Father was Jupiter, the Son, Apollo; and the Devil, Pluto;
but these various errors had no lasting or far-reaching
influence. The Divine Comedy, the most powerful and lifelike
exponent of the thoughts and feelings of the age in which Dante
lived--an allegory, written in the form of a vision, at a time
when men believed that the things that are unseen are eternal--is
the most perfect and magnificent monument of earthly love,
refined and spiritualized, that has ever been written. It stands
alone; for no man of any country, coming after Dante, has been
able to write from the same motive, and in the same spirit, that
he did. Petrarch, the next greatest after Dante, is chiefly
celebrated for his lyrical poems, which were used as models by
all the most celebrated poets of the South of Europe. They are
written in two forms, the canzone taken from the Provencals, and
the sonnet, taken from the Sicilians. Petrarch kept up a wide
correspondence with the literary men of Europe; and through his
influence a sort of literary republic arose which joined together
the literati of many different countries. Boccaccio, next in rank
to Petrarch, evolved a poetry consisting of Norman wit and
Provencal love, joined to an elaborate setting of his own. He
took Livy and Cicero for his models, and tried to combine ancient
mythology with Christian history, the result being that his
writings were not so fine as they would have been had they
displayed a greater freedom a of style. His most celebrated work
is the Decameron, the idea of which is taken from an old Hindu
romance which was translated into Latin in the twelfth century.
Most of these tales have also been found in the ancient French
fabliaux, and while Boccaccio cannot be said to have really
invented them, he did clothe them anew, and his tales in their
turn have been translated into all the European languages.
It is due to Cosmo and Lorenzo de' Medici, and to Pope Leo X,
that there was such a glorious development of the fine arts in
the fifteenth century, an era whose benefits have been felt among
the cultivated nations for over three hundred years.
At the same time Poliziano created the pastoral tragedy, which
served to revive the study of Virgil. Other poets seizing on the
old romance of the Trouveres, added to them an element of
mockery, in place of the old religious belief. This new spirit
was adopted by Ariosto. From the East he borrowed the magic and
sorcery interwoven in the adventures of his knights and ladies,
giants and magicians. It remained for Torquato Tasso to revive
the heroic epic in his Jerusalem Delivered, in which he depicts
the struggle between the Christians and Saracens. Neither the
Siege of Trod, nor the Adventures of Aeneas could compare with
the splendid dramatic element in Tasso's immortal poem, which has
been said to combine the classic and the romantic style in a new
and unusual degree.
In the sixteenth century Strapparola, an Italian novelist, wrote
a number of fairy tales, which have been a treasure house for
later writers, and to which we are indebted for Puss in Boots,
Fortunio, and other stories which have now become familiar in the
nursery lore of most modern nations. Bandello, in the same
century, was a novelist from whom Shakespeare and other English
dramatists have borrowed much material.
One thing which is peculiar to Italy, and which has found its way
into nearly the whole civilized world, is Italian Opera or
melodrama. It was an outcome of the Pastoral drama, and first
took shape in 1594 under Rinuccini, a Florentine. But the true
father of Italian opera is Metastasio, who flourished in the
eighteenth century. He regarded opera as the national drama of
Italy, and raised it to a plane that it has ever since retained;
though of late years it has become more the fashion to cultivate
German opera.
DUTCH.
Erasmus said of Ghent at the end of the fifteenth century that
there was no city in Europe that could compare with it in
greatness, power, and the cultivation of its people. The lays of
the minstrels and the chivalric romances of other nations were
translated into Dutch. In the middle of the thirteenth century
Reynard the Fox was rendered into the same language, while this
era also saw a translation of the Bible made into Flemish rhyme.
The close of the fourteenth century saw the rise of some
wandering poets called Sprekers, who visited the courts of Kings
and Princes and became so popular that in the fifteenth century
they were federated into different societies that became known as
"Chambers of Rhetoric," somewhat similar to the German Guilds of
the Meistersingers. These societies spread rapidly through the
country, and from rhyme the members passed to the mystery plays,
and to the beginnings of the drama.
The Court of Burgundy in the fifteenth century brought a strong
French element into the literature of the Dutch nation, and the
poets and chroniclers of that age are chiefly Flemish.
The taste for Greek and Latin was introduced into Holland in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Erasmus and Grotius, the two
most learned men among the Dutch literati of their age.
Hooft in the seventeenth century made an extensive study of
Italian poetry, and succeeded in imparting to his tragic and
lyric verse a certain quality of sweetness and volume which it
has since retained. His style, which also embraces tragedy, has
been extensively imitated by his own countrymen.
Nearly the whole of the eighteenth century passed without any
advancement in Dutch literature. The country experienced the
French influence, in common with the rest of Europe; and French
works and translations abounded. Toward the close of this century
German taste began to predominate, and a young Dutchman, Van
Effen, founded a magazine in French, called the "Spectator,"
which was in imitation of, and on the same lines as the English
magazine of the same name. Many native writers arose at this time
and gained distinction in poetry, prose and the drama; but the
overthrow of the Dutch Republic, and the confusion attending it,
for a time extinguished the national literature, and the
beginning of the nineteenth century saw the country flooded with
poor translations of foreign books, and all the noble national
literature was forgotten. This evil was partly remedied in the
latter part of the nineteenth century; but as a whole, the Dutch
literature, while it has been influenced by foreign taste, has
had little or no weight outside of its own nation, and has not in
any way shaped the literature of other peoples.
GERMAN.
Germany, like the other Northern nations, had primitive war songs
sung by the bards. Her mythology is akin to the Scandinavian, and
like the latter she assigns a high place to women. Tacitus says:
"It is believed that there is something holy and prophetic about
them, and therefore the warriors neither despise their counsels
nor disregard their responses."
This German paganism was eminently fanciful--it peopled the
earth, air and sea with supernatural beings--the rivers had their
Undines, the caverns their Gnomes, the woods their Sprites, and
the ocean its Nixes. Besides these, there were a host of
mythological figures--the Walkyres or bridal maidens, the river
maids; and the white women, Hertha and Frigga. These legends have
formed a rich treasure house from which later German authors have
freely drawn for song or story. Before the Christian age Germany
had no literature and the first national work that can be
dignified by the name is a translation of the Bible into
Moeso-Gothic by Ulphilas, a bishop of the Goths, in the fourth
century A.D. This is a Catholic work that antedated Luther by a
thousand years.
Bishop Ulphilas invented an alphabet of Runic, Greek and Roman
letters, and this translation of the Bible remained the only
literary monument of the Germans for four hundred years. The
minstrel lays of this period were later collected by Charlemagne,
of which two specimens have come down to us. Like the Icelandic,
Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, old English, and old Saxon, they are
in a measure called alliteration, that is, a repetition of the
sound without the regular rhyme at the end of lines, or such as
we call rhyme. This circumstance made Klopstock, at a later
period, try to banish rhyme as not being correct according to
ancient usage. One of these poems, the Hildebrand-lied, belongs
to the time of Theodoric the Great. The songs collected by
Charlemagne, were later remodelled and have come down to us as
the Heldenbuch and the Nibelungen-lied. The intellectual light in
Germany went out with the death of Charlemagne, except in the
cloisters.
The Normans on the West and the Hungarians in the East menaced
the country, and the only important literary work of the time is
a poem written by a monk at the close of the ninth century. It is
called "Ludwig's Lied;" and celebrates the triumph of Louis over
the Normans. Roswitha, a nun in the tenth century, wrote some
Christian dramas in Latin that are remarkable as coming from the
pen of a woman in the Middle Ages.
The invasions of the Hungarians and Slavs in the eleventh century
effectually prevented the blossoming of any literary effort,
except for some poems known as the Lombard Cycle, in which the
rude pagan legends of antiquity were blended with the dawnings of
Christianity. But in 1138, when Conrad III became Emperor of
Germany, his accession was followed by the Crusades, which spread
a flame of enthusiasm and chivalry among the Germans.
In 1149 Conrad and Louis VII of France joined forces to lead a
Crusade to the Holy Land, and thus the German and French nobility
became intimately acquainted, and Provencal poetry soon began to
have an effect on German literature.
Emperors and nobles held court and received their foreign guests
with splendid display and hospitality. Poets and singers were
welcomed, and the chivalric literature was soon taken up by the
Suabian minstrels who became known as the Minnesingers.
From 1150 to 1300 was the golden age of Suabian literature and
German chivalry. During this period numerous romances of chivalry
were translated into German.
They have been divided into different classes, or cycles.
The first, and most ancient, have to do with Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table. Their origin is Anglo-Norman, and
they were probably taken from old Welsh chronicles in an early
age, and were known in Britain and Brittany before the poets
began to put them in rhyme.
The most popular of these romances was the San Graal, or Holy
Grail, a subject that has engaged some of the best poets of all
countries. In this legend the Cup, which was supposed to have
been used at the Last Supper, in some way is brought to Golgotha
during the Crucifixion, and is used to preserve some of the blood
that flows from Christ's side, when it is opened by the soldier's
spear. Joseph of Arimathea is thought to have brought this
precious Cup to Europe, and to have given it into the keeping of
Sir Parsifal. Knowledge of its whereabouts was then lost, so that
knights and heroes make it the object of long and fruitless
quests.
The second cycle of romance has to do with Charlemagne, and is
mostly in the form of translations from French literature.
The third, or classic cycle, relates to the great ones of ancient
times, presented in the role of chivalry. These embrace stories
of Alexander the Great, the Aeneid, and the Trojan war. During
this period there were two classes of songs in Germany; the
minstrelsy, most in favor with the nobility; and the old ballads,
which were most popular with the people. The latter were
gradually collected by different poets of the time, especially by
Wolfram of Eschenbach and put into epic verse, in which form they
have come down to us as the Heldenbuch (or book of heroes), and
the Nibelungen-lied.
The Heldenbuch relates the deeds of Theodoric and Attila and the
outpouring of the Goths into the Roman Empire. In the
Nibelungen-lied the hero is Siegfried, the Achilles of the North,
the embodiment of beauty, courage and virtue. The same personages
are met with in these German legends, as in the Scandinavian
mythology, only in the latter they take on a more godlike form.
The German Brunhild, in the Scandinavian story becomes a
Valkyriur.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the decline of
the romanticists, the loss of most of the Southern culture, and
all the literature of this time is at a low ebb, partly owing to
the wars of the Germans against the Huns.
The fourteenth century was productive of one class of literature
that was common to all Europe; namely, simple and humorous fables
and satires. "Reynard the Fox" was one of the earliest of these
fables, and remained a great favorite with the Germans, being
finally immortalized by Goethe. The same author has made us
familiar with a personage who figures in an interesting legend of
the fifteenth century. Doctor Faust, or Faustus, is a magician
who by unlawful arts gains a mastery over nature. This legend
became the foundation of a number of stories and dramas, and was
put into verse by Christopher Marlowe, the English dramatist.
The end of the sixteenth century saw a craze for Latin in
Germany. The national tongue was neglected and national poetry
was translated into Latin verse. German poets wrote in the same
classic language, and the university lectures were all delivered
in the same tongue. The seventeenth century saw the Thirty Years'
War, during which all literary activity was completely paralyzed,
and in the course of these thirty years a whole generation,
especially among the lower classes, had grown up unable either to
read or write. But after the Treaty of Westphalia matters began
to improve, and a desire to cultivate the native language awoke.
In 1688 German superseded Latin in the universities. Novels were
published; and about this time appeared a German translation of
Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" that became very popular. Poets wrote
plays in the style of Terence, or copied English models; and even
in the present day the Germans recall with pride the fact that
the Shakespearean plays were appreciated by them during and after
the Elizabethan age much more than they were by the English
Nation.
Science under Leibnitz also began to take shape in this century,
while Opitz wrote operas in imitation of the Italian style; and
translations from the Italian Marini came into vogue. In the
eighteenth century arose the Saxonic and Swiss schools of
literature, neither of which was devoted to national works.
Gottsched, the founder and imitator of French standards in art
and poetry, is known as the leader in the Saxonic school at
Leipsic, and an advocate of classical poetry.
Bodmer cultivated the English style, and retired to Switzerland
with his friends, where they founded the Swiss school. The
English lyric and elegiac poets had a wonderful influence in
Germany. The followers of this school who were, or pretended to
be, poets, began to write "Seasons" in imitation of Thomson; and
the novels of the time were full of shepherds and shepherdesses.
The craze spread to France, where the French Court took up the
fad of living in rustic lodges, and Marie Antoinette posed as a
shepherdess tending sheep. Each of these poets had numerous
followers, of whom Rambler is known as the German Horace.
Frederick the Great preferred French works, and no one seems to
have thought of starting a German school except Klopstock, who
stands almost alone in the literature of his time and country. A
man of lofty ideals, he believed that Christianity on the one
hand and Gothic mythology on the other, should be the chief
elements in all new European poetry and inspiration. Had he been
encouraged by the German Court he would have been as powerful for
good in German literature during the eighteenth century, as
Voltaire was powerful for evil in France. Wielland, a friend of
Klopstock, and a romantic poet, might have been the German
Ariosto had he not abandoned poetry for prose. He tried to copy
the Greek, in which he failed to excel. During this conflict in
Germany between the French and English school, German literature
was much influenced by Macpherson's Ossian, and Scotch names are
found in a great many German works of this period. The literature
of Germany attained its highest beauty and finish in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and its people may well be
proud of the splendid names that adorn that period. The Gottingen
School, which embraced Goethe and Schiller, includes love,
philosophy and the classics for its theme, with a touch of the
bucolic, modelled after Virgil, as in the "Louise" of Voss. But
it remained for the Romantic School, founded by Novalis, the two
Schlegels and Tieck, to oppose the study of the classic antique
on the ground that it killed all native originality and power.
They turned to the Middle Ages, and drew from its rich stores all
that was noblest and best. The lays of the Minnesingers were
revived--the true German spirit was cultivated, and the romantic
German imagination responded readily, so that during the dark
period of the French invasion, the national feeling was preserved
pure and untouched by means of these stirring and patriotic songs
of the past.
About the same time as the advent of the Romanticists in Germany
appeared Walpole's "Castle of Otranto" in England, which is
supposed to belong to the same school of literature and to have
been influenced by the German. Scott was also numbered in this
class; and it is from these old German legends of the
Minnesingers that Richard Wagner has drawn the material for
Lohengrin, Parsifal, and others of his magnificent operas. In one
department German scholars have attained a high standard, and
that is as historians of ancient classical literature.
Their researches into the language, religion, philosophy, social
economy, arts and sciences of ancient nations, has brought to
light much for which the student of literature will always be
their debtor.
LATIN LITERATURE AND THE REFORMATION.
It has been said that the literati of the Middle Ages--the monks
and schoolmen--sought to keep the people in ignorance by writing
in Latin. Those who so think can ill have studied the trend of
events in Europe for several hundred years before the
Reformation, or its bearing on literature.
After the fall of the Roman Empire vast hordes of barbarians
invaded Europe. In every country the language was in a state of
transition. One nation often spoke two or three different
dialects according to locality. In England the Gaelic,
Anglo-Saxon, the Cymric (or Welsh) and the Norman-French all had
their day. Under these circumstances it was impossible to have a
literature in the language of the people until, in the course of
time, the national languages were formed, and during this period
of transition the Latin was the language of literature, the one
medium of communication between the literati of different
countries; and had it not been for the preservation of learning
in the cloisters during these ages, all knowledge, and
literature, and even Christianity itself, would have been lost.
The monks, therefore, deserve more credit than is usually meted
out to them by hasty or superficial critics.
In the earliest ages Ireland was the seat of the greatest
learning in Europe. While England was still plunged in barbarism,
and France and Germany could boast of no cultivation, Ireland was
full of monasteries where learned men disseminated knowledge. The
Latin language thus became a means for preserving the records of
history, and it has also been a treasure house of stories,
furnishing material for much of the poetry of Europe. One of
these legends gave Scott the story of the combat between Marmion
and the Spectre Knight.
It has been said that the Ancients did not know how to hold
converse with nature, and that little or no sign of it can be
found in their writings. Matthew Arnold has traced to a Celtic
source the sympathy with, and deep communing with nature that
first appeared among European poets. Under the patronage of
Charlemagne the cloisters and brotherhoods became even more
learned and cultivated than they had been before. Whatever the
people knew of tilling the soil, of the arts of civilization, and
of the truths of religion, they learned from the monks. By their
influence States were rendered more secure, and it is to the
monks alone that Western Europe is indebted for the superiority
she attained over the Byzantines on the one hand (who were
possessed of far more hereditary knowledge than she), and over
the Arabs on the other, who had the advantage of eternal power.
The cloisters were either the abode, or the educators, of such
men as the Venerable Bede, Lanfranc and Anselm, Duns Scotius,
William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth (who preserved the
legends of Arthur, of King Lear, and Cymbeline), of Geraldus
Cambrensis, of St. Thomas a Kempis, of Matthew Paris, a
Benedictine monk, and of Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, who
came very near guessing several important truths which have since
been made known to the world by later scholars.
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