Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in GermanyBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
The result, as I have elsewhere shown, is that Romanticism acquired
more lucidity and clearer contours on Danish soil. It became less a
thing of the night; it ventured, veiled, into the light of the sun.
It felt that it had come to a sedate, sober-minded people, a people
who were not yet quite sure that moonlight was not unnatural and
sentimental. It came up from the deep mine shafts from which Novalis
had been the first to conjure it, and, with Oehlenschläger's Vaulundur,
hammered on the mountain-side till the mountain burst open and laid
all its treasures bare to the light of day. It felt that it had come
to another, a more serene and idyllic clime; it shook off all its
weirdness; its thick, shapeless mists condensed into slender river
nymphs; it forgot the Harz and the Blocksberg, and took up its abode
one beautiful Midsummer Eve in the Deer Park near Copenhagen.[2]
_Aladdin_ is a finer and more intelligible literary work than Tieck's
_Kaiser Oktavianus_, but Oehlenschläger could not deny that _Aladdin_
would never have been written if _Oktavianus_ had not been in
existence. Heiberg's _Julespög og Nytaarslöjer_ is to the full as witty
as Tieck's Aristophanic satires, but the whole idea--the play within
the play, the literary satire, and the blending of the sentimental
with the ironical--is borrowed from Tieck, and, what is worse, is
only comprehensible from Tieck's standpoint. In short, there is in
Oehlenschläger, Hauch, and Heiberg more form than in Novalis, Tieck,
and Fr. Schlegel, but less substance--that is to say, less direct
connection with real life. German literature has too often formed the
connecting link. We Danes have too often refused to occupy ourselves,
in literature, with the great problems of life, have simply dismissed
them when we could not succeed in giving them correct literary form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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