Thursday, February 22, 2007

DEBIT AND CREDIT.

DEBIT AND CREDIT.


Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag.

Since our German literature attained maturity, no novel has achieved a
reputation so immediate, or one so likely to increase and to endure, as
_Soll und Haben_, by Gustav Freytag. In the present, apparently
apathetic tone and temper of our nation, a book must be of rare
excellence which, in spite of its relatively high price (15s.), has
passed through six editions within two years; and which, notwithstanding
the carping criticism of a certain party in Church and State, has won
most honorable recognition on every hand. To form a just conception of
the hold the work has taken of the hearts of men in the educated middle
rank, it needs but to be told that hundreds of fathers belonging to the
higher industrious classes have presented this novel to their sons at
the outset of their career, not less as a work of national interest than
as a testimony to the dignity and high importance they attribute to the
social position they are called to occupy, and to their faith in the
future that awaits it.

The author, a man about fifty years of age, and by birth a Silesian, is
editor of the _Grenz-bote_ (Border Messenger), a highly-esteemed
political and literary journal, published in Leipsic. His residence
alternates between that city and a small estate near Gotha. Growing up
amid the influences of a highly cultivated family circle, and having
become an accomplished philologist under Lachmann, of Berlin, he early
acquired valuable life-experience, and formed distinguished social
connections. He also gained reputation as an author by skillfully
arranged and carefully elaborated dramatic compositions--the weak point
in the modern German school.

The enthusiastic reception of his novel can not, however, be attributed
to these earlier labors, nor to the personal influence of its author.
The favor of the public has certainly been obtained in great measure by
the rare intrinsic merit of the composition, in which we find aptly
chosen and melodious language, thoroughly artistic conception, life-like
portraiture, and highly cultivated literary taste. We see before us a
national and classic writer, not one of those mere journalists who count
nowadays in Germany for men of letters.

The story, very unpretending in its opening, soon expands and becomes
more exciting, always increasing in significance as it proceeds. The
pattern of the web is soon disclosed after the various threads have been
arranged upon the loom; and yet the reader is occasionally surprised,
now by the appearance on the stage of a clever Americanized German, now
by the unexpected introduction of threatening complications, and even of
important political events. Though confined within a seemingly narrow
circle, every incident, and especially the Polish struggle, is depicted
grandly and to the life. In all this the author proves himself to be a
perfect artist and a true poet, not only in the treatment of separate
events, but in the far more rare and higher art of leading his
conception to a satisfactory development and _dщnouement_. As this
requirement does not seem to be generally apprehended either by the
writers or the critics of our modern novels, I shall take the liberty of
somewhat more earnestly attempting its vindication.

The romance of modern times, if at all deserving of the name it inherits
from its predecessors in the _romantic_ Middle Ages, represents the
latest _stadium_ of the epic.

Every romance is intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in
other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent
with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the
general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero.
If we pass in review the romances of the last three centuries, we shall
find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two
generations which have satisfied this requirement. Every other romance,
let it moralize ever so loudly, is still immoral; let it offer ever so
much of so-called wisdom, is still irrational. The excellence of a
romance, like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and
truthful exhibition of the course of human things.

_Candide_, which may appear to be an exception, owes its prolonged
existence to the charm of style and language; and, after all, how much
less it is now read than _Robinson Crusoe_, the work of the talented De
Foe; or than the _Vicar of Wakefield_, that simple narrative by
Voltaire's English contemporary. Whether or not the cause can be clearly
defined is here of little consequence; but an unskillfully developed
romance is like a musical composition that concludes with discord
unresolved--without perhaps inquiring wherefore, it leaves an unpleasant
impression on the mind.

If we carry our investigation deeper, we shall find that any such defect
violates our sense of artistic propriety, because it offends against our
healthy human instinct of the fundamental natural laws; and the artistic
merit, as well of a romance as of an epic, rises in proportion as the
plot is naturally developed, instead of being conducted to its solution
by a series of violent leaps and make-shifts, or even by a pretentious
sham. We shall take occasion hereafter to illustrate these views by
suitable examples...

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1 Comments:

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May 28, 2007 at 8:20 PM  

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