46. Loki

I

There are poetic tasks¹ that any naturalism must fail to fulfill. These are the ones that relate to the struggle of eternal powers in the human soul. This struggle represents the entire development of the human inner life, from birth to death. This struggle is not exhausted in individual actions, moods or events. May the individual events that life brings to man find this or that, tragic or joyful outcome: the fundamental struggle that the eternal fights in the human breast always arises anew. Naturalistic art can only depict the individual, self-contained circles of struggle. For only these belong to the world of reality. In order to depict the primal struggles, the imagination must go beyond this reality. It must depict in a higher, ideal sphere as complete what reality never brings to a conclusion. The philosopher can do this in ideas, the artist in pictures. At a certain level of civilization, poetic imagination depicts these eternal struggles in the soul in the form of mythological and legendary figures. This divine or legendary world is nothing other than an image of what goes on at the bottom of the human mind. If the poet wants to depict the reign of the eternal, he must detach it from the contingencies of human life, from the joys and sorrows of everyday life. His figures will still be human, but human beings stripped of the contingent.

Ludwig Jacobowski has set himself such a supreme artistic task in his latest work: “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (Bruns Verlag, Minden i. W. 1899). Two powers are constantly fighting in every human breast, a hot, heavy, life-and-death struggle. The one contains: kindness, love, patience, friendliness, beauty; the other: hatred, enmity, anger, hostility and the element that, in its strength, always forgets the soft forms of beauty. The poetic spirit of an earlier cultural stage contrasted the two powers in the Nordic deities Balder and Loki. Ludwig Jacobowski has depicted them again in his novel. The ancient Nordic deities served him as models for his characters. But the characters that the Nordic saga placed in these deities are no more than a starting point for Jacobowski. For the powers fight differently in the modern soul than in that of prehistoric man. Modern man leads a more profound life than that of prehistoric man. The man of an earlier age imagined the forces that ruled within him to be similar to the forces of nature that he perceived with his senses in the outside world. For the modern man, these forces take on a more spiritual content. This change in man's consciousness of himself corresponds to the transformation that Jacobowski's imagination has carried out with the figures of the saga. Loki's battle against the gods in the Norse saga appears like a natural process, invented by the imagination that feeds on sensual reality. Jacobowski portrays him as a personification of what moves the modern human soul. The poet has thus deepened the saga. He has described a battle that arises from love. Balder and Loki love Nanna. But Balder loves as love itself loves; he loves with a passion that is free of selfishness. With the love that Goethe has in mind when he says: “No self-love, no self-interest lasts, before their coming they have shrunk away. We call it: being pious!” Loki loves like selfishness loves, which celebrates the festival of the highest self-indulgence in love. The modern poet depicts the eternal struggle between egoism and selflessness. It is the struggle that the modern soul fights out in all its depth; the struggle that forms the content of the conflicting world views of the present. Jacobowski views this struggle with the calm that comes from the objective imagination of the true poet. And from this objectivity, he has created a philosophical work of the first order. He has thus found a higher expression for the modern soul than his contemporaries, who are forever groping and experimenting, can find.**

As I read his novel over and over again, I could not shake off the feeling that he had achieved what a mind like Maeterlinck always strives for. Maeterlinck has spoken a beautiful 'word'. The Belgian poet-philosopher believes that man is a mystical accomplice of higher divine beings in all his parts. And when Maeterlinck, as a poet, wants to portray the divine, of which man is an accomplice, his powers fail him. He merely gives us a hint. Jacobowski describes this divine with vivid imagination. If we follow Maeterlinck's poetry, we must have something of the philosopher in us. A great idea hovers behind his poetry. We sense it. And if we have enough philosophical sense, we will complete this idea. But it remains philosophical. It does not become a picture in the poet himself. This is the case with Jacobowski. He presents the divine, of which man is the mystical accomplice, in individual forms. And from this imagination, which is connected with the eternal, flows a lyrical power that gives the symbolic, which he presents, an individual blood. This lyrical element is like an atmosphere in which these eternal figures must breathe and live. It stands above the social atmosphere of reality, just as the poet's figures stand above reality. Hamerling says of his “Ahasver”: “Overarching, towering, mysteriously spurring and driving, accelerating crises, standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life - that is how I imagined the figure of Ahasver.” And that is how Jacobowski imagined the figure of his Loki.

Human nature is a whole. It contains within itself both the element of selfless devotion and unreserved selfishness. Good and evil are both present. The one finds its natural balance in the other. When good appears, evil immediately enters the scene as a complement. Only seemingly can one dominate the other. Becoming itself calls forth destruction. Balder, the all-embracing love, the sun of existence, cannot come into being without Loki, the selfishness, the darkness, awakening against it. Life spins itself out in eternal contradictions.

Loki, the novel of a god, is a work of poetry based on a philosophical view of life. And just as philosophical contemplation does not harm life, so the philosophical basis of Jacobowski's poetry does not harm it either. For he is a true poet. And the fact that he is capable of philosophical contemplation increases the value of his poetry. The fact that his imagination always has a plastic, creative, individual effect is what gives his work its artistic character.

This poet has found a form for modern consciousness in which he can express himself without sacrificing anything of the highest idealistic artistic demands and world ideas. He rules over the saga in a free manner, for it has become an artistic means for him.

II

One night, the gods are terrorized by a terrible dream. Unseen things are happening in the sky. Each god is awakened from his sleep. And each one sees the bed next to him empty. But black mist rises from the bed. And when the Ase rises to look for his wife, she lies there with sweat on her brow and heavy breathing, as if she had just returned from a long journey. The Ase share the strange news with each other in the morning. Only Urd, the goddess of fate, can know what the mysterious meaning is. But they cannot ask her, for her mouth speaks only when spoken to. Urd's messenger, the black mountain falcon, announces that an Aesir child has been born this night. Its mother is an Aesir. Which one, even Urd does not know. She also does not know who the father is. The Asin should feed the child in turn. It should be called “Loki”. Thus a being is placed in the world of the gods, sprung from it itself, but as a child of sin, the sin of the gods.

High up in the north, far from Valhalla, the child of sin grows up. Frigg, Odin's wife, has prepared a bed for him in a hut. And every day, one of the Ases has to go to the distant hut to care for the little god. When Odin's wife was with him for the first time, the child smiled sweetly. But the goddess beat the boy, and he forgot how to laugh. And all the Asinnen mistreat the child. They nourish it with glacier milk, wolf's foam and eagle meat. It should atone for its sinful origin. This origin has made it the enemy of the whole world of gods; the Asinnen also raise it to be the enemy of the world of gods.

Soon they no longer cared for the boy. An elven old woman, Sigyn, continues to care for him like a mother. He grows up under her protection. He becomes a strong, serious being. The Asinnen have driven the cheerfulness out of him. He has to work hard to gain food from the earth. This is a mystery to him, and he asks Sigyn whether all beings have to create the bread of life in the sweat of their brow. The old woman's answer encompasses the feelings of all those who are burdened and weighed down, that anxious question that the disinherited ask themselves all the time: “O wise world of the Ases! Some walk above the air and the sun, reaching into the lovely air to the right and to the left and grasping firm fruits and blessed stalks. And the others crawl laboriously over chasms and cliffs; and their hands tear at the rough earth, empty and only moist from their own sweat.” The god of the disinherited is Loki, and his feelings towards the other Ases are those of the joyless life burdened with toil towards the effortless, joy-producing [happiness].

Loki sets out to meet those of his own kind who live in the sun of happiness. And when he enters their circle, it becomes clear that he possesses something that they all have to do without, something that the one burdened with pain has over the one who enjoys undeserved happiness: wisdom. Loki knows the future of the other gods. The happy one lives in eternal present. He enjoys the moment and does not care about the driving wheels that move the world. Only those who are hurt by the wheels as they turn ask about their course; and from this question comes the knowledge of the course of the world. Thus wisdom is born from pain. And wisdom makes one strong in the face of carefree dullness. But because the path to wisdom leads through pain, it robs the traveler of selfless love. It is generated from painlessness. Those who have not earned their fate can also give themselves selflessly. But he who has earned his being through pain demands his due and will not give up what he has earned with difficulty out of selflessness. Selfless love dwells only in the world of happiness. Balder represents this love within the realm of the gods' joy. And this love is the only thing that arouses uncanny feelings in the pain-expert from the realm of happiness. He must recognize the value of pure, noble love. He trembles before this love. Loki must confront Balder in an antagonistic manner; but he must do so with the bitter feeling that he hates a high being because he must do without his highness. The wisdom that comes from pain must give birth to new pain.

Why must the knowing Loki hate the ignorant but love-filled Balder? This question is the end of Loki's wisdom, for it comes from his own fate. And that is unknown to him. What will become of all the other gods is open to his seer's eye. What the dark powers have in store for him, he knows nothing of.

That is the fate of knowledge: that it comes from suffering and can never bring joy. And that is why the happy believe that knowledge comes from sin.

Pleasure and deprivation are the forces that eternally battle within our souls. Pleasure leads us to love, kindness and beauty; deprivation leads us to selfishness, harshness and power. The life of each of us is filled with the antagonism of these two forces. Balder and Loki are constantly fighting within our souls. We could be completely happy if we were merely pleasure-seekers. But we would know nothing of this happiness. We would have a joyful life; but a life that would be like a dream. Only deprivation would enlighten us about our happiness; but at the same time it would destroy this happiness forever.

It is a profound feature of Jacobowski's poetry that only two beings love Loki: Balder, the source of all love, and Sigyn, the elven old woman. Balder because he does not know hatred, Sigyn because she does not demand love in return. In the saga of the gods, Sigyn is the loving wife who, of course, must be loved in return. In Jacobowski's poetry, she is a being who looks at the world and its happiness with irony. Hate and love are far from Sigyn. But she is concerned that undeserved happiness does not become overpowering. That is why she cherishes and nurtures the advocate of the disinherited.

The fight for a mere principle would not carry us away. It would be somewhat frosty if Loki were the opponent of the gods, just because the negative powers have to be represented within the world plan. Loki's fight against the Ases is not one for a cause in general; Loki fights for his own cause. Balder snatches Loki's dearest possession, his adored wife. And it is precisely from Loki's personal misfortune that the gods' happiness arises. The fact that Nanna becomes Balders wife, not Lokis, is the basis of this happiness. “Nanna and Balder... These two names made the gods of Valhalla tremble with deep delight. Light came to light, sun to sun, and the love of the two shielded the glorious world of the gods against the fiends of darkness and the giants in icy Jötumheim better than enormous walls of rock and iron. Her name was like a shimmering coat of mail and a deep-sounding shield. Misfortune struck against it, but the coat of mail continued to shimmer and the shield sounded deep, as if the blow had been struck with a light willow rod.»

The gods do not enjoy their undeserved luck alone; they have also robbed Loki of his luck. This gives his enmity a personal color and a personal right. The weaknesses in the lives and characters of the gods, the imperfections in the world that is guided by them: Loki uses all of this to make the lives of the Aesir difficult and to bring about their end. “Loki's Pranks” describes the destructive war waged by the enemy of the gods. Odin and Thor's way of life is thwarted by these pranks, so that divine omnipotence and strength must retreat before the scorn that cunning pours over them. The institutions in the human realm, which the gods look upon with favor, indeed from which they live: Loki destroys them. He makes the downtrodden his protégés; he shakes the slaves out of their torpor so that the “holy”, the divine orders, are destroyed. The power of the gods over the children of the earth is scattered before the cleverness of Loki. The realm of the gods itself is exposed to Loki's shame and disgrace. Freya, the most beautiful of the Ases, loves the enemy of the Ases. It is precisely this love that Loki uses to bring the bitterest mockery upon Valhalla. He becomes the devil; he uses Freya's love to have her dishonored by the ugly dwarves.

The wildest of Loki's works is the destruction of Baldur and the realm in which only people live who are after Baldur's heart. After Balders's downfall, this people, his people, still lived “under which no fist was ever raised against a foreign head, no obscene word was ever attached to a girl's footsteps, like dirty sand to wet heels, no red gold ring or brownish amber necklace awakened impure desires. There the stalks shot freely into the air, and clouds and winds, rain and sun, pressed forward to bestow their blessings on Balders land. In the illuminated air, the noblemen strode along, their stately heads proudly raised, their golden locks cascading over their broad shoulders; and their wives walked beside them, their foreheads clear and calm, their gentle eyes glowing with love.” Loki brings ruin to this country. For everything that reminds people of Balder and his nature is to be destroyed. Loki leads the people from the land of famine against the noblemen. The sons of Balder fall under the mighty blows of the hungry; and a dog is placed on Balder's throne. “The noblemen bow their heads low before the snarling animal, one after the other, their faces white as linen in the field when the early sun licks over it. Then the women approach. The bright golden hair falls from their round heads and piles up next to the throne, then children again, wailing and weeping over the shame, and they rub their foreheads on the ground until they are bloody with shame."

With that, Loki has fulfilled his task. Balder and his kin are overcome. The other Aesir have also followed Balder into the realm of the dead. But Loki does not remain the victor. From the midst of the Balder sons, who are paying homage to the animal, a youth appears. And the animal pushes itself down from the throne, glides to the earth and licks the youth's foot. Loki has to admit: “Woe to you and me, that is Balders son. The Lord and King)... Far out in the field, he threw himself down so that his head hit the stones. But he did not pay attention to it. He cried incessantly: ”That is Balders son! Balder is not dead! Balder lives, ... eternal like me... stronger than me... Balder, the sun son! ... Woe to me! ...»

The book ends with the great secret of the world: the creative is eternal. And the creative eternally generates its counterpart: destruction. We humans are enmeshed in this course of the world. We live it. The creative is right and the destructive is right. For the creative takes its right. It is the necessary usurper. But its fate is that it must eternally generate evil with itself, out of itself. And the negative will always have an acquired right. It will destroy the usurper by virtue of this acquired right. - And then a new day of happiness and justice will dawn.

That great poetry can only arise from the great questions of world-view: that will remain an eternal truth. And Jacobowski built on this foundation.

The fact that he wanted to create a great world-view poem drove him to elevate the human and everyday to the level of the legendary and mythical. The deeper spirit will enter this sphere if it does not want to depict the periphery of insignificant details, but to shape the great flow of things. Friedrich Nietzsche also created something similar to a myth when he wanted to portray the great tasks of the world-loving man, the existentialist Zarathustra. Poetry acquires a sense of greatness when it turns the everyday into a parable and the eternal and significant into an event.