How the History of Poetry Lost its Mind

Around the mid-nineteenth century, the literary historian and historian Gervians published a history of German poetry. It offered something surprising. The development of German poetry is described with a haunting mastery of the mind. The abundance of material is lucidly organized; the individual poetic phenomena are individualized with a certain understanding.

But it is all presented as if the forces that worked in this poetry had died with Goethe's death. As if with Goethe everything had been exhausted that was contained in the source from which German poetry had its origin.

Gervinus made no secret of his conviction that poets who came after Goethe no longer had the full right that their predecessors had had to turn their minds away from practical reality to the regions from which poetic inspiration comes. The period that followed was to belong not to the creations of the imagination but to practical life. As if by a law of nature, poetry must pass over into mere epigonism.

What Gervinus had said had a strong effect. My dear teacher and friend Karl Julius Schröer, who was an enthusiastic supporter of Gervinus, published a history of “German Literature in the 19th Century” in 1875. He felt compelled to begin the book with an apology to Gervinus. As if it had been a sin to write about the poets who followed Goethe, he introduces his considerations in the following way:

"Gervinus significantly concluded his history of German literature with Goethe.

What may have been surprising at the time, even met with opposition, no one today would want to dispute. With Goethe, a period of literary blossoming came to an end for a long time.

If I now wish to give an overview of the development of German poetry from the beginning of our century to 1870, well beyond that conclusion, I do not want to part with those views or even go against them.

What led Gervinus to believe that poetic forces would wither away?

To answer this question, we must not lose sight of the tremendous upheaval in intellectual life around the mid-nineteenth century. It was the time when natural science declared itself the only authority on what should be considered the “true” world view. The independent striving of the human soul, which in its inner strength wanted to ascend to the experience of a spiritual world, was regarded with mistrust. On the basis of this independent striving, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had created the great idealistic world views. Such creativity was now perceived as delirium.

But this idealism was only the philosophical shadow of that light, from which Goethe, with art, did not want to achieve an arbitrary creation of the human soul, but another revelation of that which the knowledge of ideas also offers. - From this light, he had spoken thoughts like this: art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never be revealed without it.

It was in this light that Goethe felt about Greek art when he said of it: there is necessity, there is God. He had first, together with Herder, sought this “necessity” in Spinoza in the development of ideas; he found it, which he sought as truth, in art. This light had been extinguished for those who felt certain that they were only on true ground when they followed the path laid down by natural science in the second half of the nineteenth century. — An opinion of truth was developed, which poetry could not aspire to. There is certainly no need to have a lower opinion of the outwardly real significance of natural science than those who make an overall world view out of it, if one admits the characterized.

Personalities such as Gervinus were pushed towards their views by the manifold impulses that entered the subconscious of people when the natural sciences were declared sovereign. Gervinus saw the streams of enthusiasm dry up, from which a poet like Goethe drew, who allowed his natural science to flow from the same spiritual sources from which his poetry came.

The powerful impact of the newly independent natural sciences can be seen in such phenomena. Idealism, which did not venture forth to the real spirit but only to its shadowy images, the “ideas”, was no match for these impulses. It sought to fight its way through in Wilhelm Jordan, Herman Grimm, Moriz Carriere and others. He did not succeed. (The previous essays show this in detail.)

Gervinus saw a spiritual current coming, which pushed poetry aside from the desired truth. He aligned himself with this current with his opinions. Some said: it is a flight of fantastic fancy if one wants to attain the truth from the soul. Idealism chases unreal shadows. These also lost the right impression of the light because of the misjudgment of the shadow images. And yet it was the same spiritual light that had cast the shadows of ideas, in which poetry also grew, and which stood at its height with Goethe. The

worshipers of “independent” knowledge of nature said: this light is nothing. And Gervinus said: the right to be enlightened by this light has ceased. Goethe was the last to be allowed to write poetry in his style; the epigones should turn to a different light; poetry, which had its source in gray prehistoric times and which became a broad stream in Goethe, must play a modest role in the face of other tasks.

For those people who are able to recognize that the soul must find the spirit again, all the facts that are connected with turning away from spiritual reality are significant. The way in which Gervinus presented his literary history is one such fact. And no less so is the reception that this appearance faced. The witty author of the history of intellectual life in modern times, Julian Schmidt, wrote about Gervinus' achievement: 'If a large-scale undertaking is to be effective, time must bring receptivity and a certain maturity to it. That was the case in the years 1838 to 1840. It was a turning point in German literature. There was a growing feeling that one had been moving in the ether for too long and too eagerly, that it was time to look around on earth... There was a sense that there was something wrong with poetry as it had been written before, the nation's greatest pride, - - —».

All those who spoke in this way had a sense of urgency that accompanied the opinion that one had to move from a fantastic view into “spiritual distances” to a secure step in the “scientific view of the world”. But today is the time to remember that the legs of secure vision need to find the direction in which they should turn in reality.