Produced by David Starner, Ralph Janke and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net TYPES OF WELTSCHMERZ IN GERMAN POETRY BY WILHELM ALFRED BRAUN, Ph.D. SOMETIME FELLOW IN GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AMS PRESS, INC. NEW YORK 1966 Copyright 1905, Columbia University Press, New York Reprinted with the permission of the Original Publisher, 1966 AMS PRESS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003 1966 Manufactured in the United States of America NOTE The author of this essay has attempted to make, as he himself phrases it, "a modest contribution to the natural history of Weltschmerz." What goes by that name is no doubt somewhat elusive; one can not easily delimit and characterize it with scientific accuracy. Nevertheless the word corresponds to a fairly definite range of psychical reactions which are of great interest in modern poetry, especially German poetry. The phenomenon is worth studying in detail. In undertaking a study of it Mr. Braun thought, and I readily concurred in the opinion, that he would do best not to essay an exhaustive history, but to select certain conspicuously interesting types and proceed by the method of close analysis, characterization and comparison. I consider his work a valuable contribution to literary scholarship. CALVIN THOMAS. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, June, 1905 PREFACE The work which is presented in the following pages is intended to be a modest contribution to the natural history of Weltschmerz. The writer has endeavored first of all to define carefully the distinction between pessimism and Weltschmerz; then to classify the latter, both as to its origin and its forms of expression, and to indicate briefly its relation to mental pathology and to contemporary social and political conditions. The three poets selected for discussion, were chosen because they represent distinct types, under which probably all other poets of Weltschmerz may be classified, or to which they will at least be found analogous; and to the extent to which such is the case, the treatise may be regarded as exhaustive. In the case of each author treated, the development of the peculiar phase of Weltschmerz characteristic of him has been traced, and analyzed with reference to its various modes of expression. Hoelderlin is the idealist, Lenau exhibits the profoundly pathetic side of Weltschmerz, while Heine is its satirist. They have been considered in this order, because they represent three progressive stages of Weltschmerz viewed as a psychological process: Hoelderlin naive, Lenau self-conscious, Heine endeavoring to conceal his melancholy beneath the disguise of self-irony.