LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1871. 



461 



very uncompromising, bitter and harsh, pre- 

 vailed in the Versailles ranks. Another writer, 

 Sempronius, a pseudonym of one who is prob- 

 ably a political man, if not a leader, well in- 

 formed and personally acquainted with all 

 parties and all the actors of the tragedy, lets 

 us into the coulisses, and elucidates much of 

 the secret history of the Commune. In the 

 whole, sixteen "Histoires de la Commune" 

 are now in print. 



There is pathos, pride, and much talent, 

 in the passionate pages Jules Favre has writ- 

 ten pro Domo sud. In the dithyrambic style 

 Paul de Saint-Victor's " Barbares et Bandits " 

 deserves a passing and laudatory notice. Here, 

 "communists and conquerors" are sacrificed 

 together, not without cause, to the deep 

 hatred and revenge of their victims, and de- 

 voted to the infernal gods. Sarcey's pungent 

 wit vies, in his "Siege de Paris," a clever, 

 readable book, with Paul de Saint-Victor's 

 eloquence and poetry. Kenan's work, "Re- 

 forme Intellectuelle ou Morale," more dispas- 

 sionate and philosophical, contains many excel- 

 lent hints, insinuated and rather obliquely 

 shown. 



Le"on Peer's "Etudes Bouddhiques" and 

 Desnoireterre's sprightly work, " Voltaire et 

 le Dixhuitieme Sidcle," as well as the third 

 volume of Madame Duplessis-Mornay's curious 

 "Memoires," have been drowned and obscured 

 in the hubbub and darkness of the late politi- 

 cal events. Some pretty elegiac pieces of poe- 

 try, in the "Wordsworth-Bloomfield style, by 

 CoppSe and Manuel, and two or three dramas, 

 by Alexandre Damasjffc and Belot, at once wit- 

 ty, metaphysical, physiological, and unblush- 

 ing] y cynical, some of them elegantly " porno- 

 graphic," the works of biases, completely hostile 

 to the old society, its manners and ways not 

 daring to attack them in front, and content to 

 analyze leisurely the poisonous stuff they ad- 

 mire have broken a little the insipid monot- 

 ony of political squabblings and journalistic 

 frays. Novelists and romance-mongers have 

 kept almost quiet, and remained silent. Only 

 some ladies, who had entrepris la fourniture 

 of the Parisian feuilletons, continue plying 

 their old trade, A cinq centimes la ligne ; no- 

 body cares, and nobody reads. A " pearl," of 

 the finest, purest water, has been thrown in 

 that deep intellectual morass, "La Roche-aux- 

 Mouettes," by Jules Sandeau. It is a book for 

 children, but quite on a par with your best 

 children's books, naive, fresh, sometimes 

 quaint, even funny, most amusing, and full of 

 honest feelings, interspersed with good pic- 

 tures of Breton scenery. 



GERMANY. All branches of the German 

 nation, even the Austrians, who took no part 

 in the actual struggle, are represented in the 

 Kriegs- und Siegsliteratur, which represents 

 the effects of the past year on the book-mar- 

 ket. On the whole, one must allow that this 

 literature is more remarkable for quantity than 

 for quality; that the soldiers of the nation 



have been more successful than its poets: and 

 it would seem, in spite of Goethe's celebrated 

 saying, that even in Prussia poetry does not 

 so readily respond to the word of command as 

 the Guard and the Landwehr. The lyrics of 

 1813, the poems of Arndt, Korner and Schen- 

 kendorf, were the expression of a patriotic in- 

 dignation, that had been growing up during 

 long and bitter years of distress and trial; 

 but the war of 1871 suddenly broke out in the 

 midst of what was apparently the profoundest 

 peace, and found the poets less prepared and 

 less enthusiastic than the Prussian recruits. 

 This serves to explain the fact that an indiffer- 

 ent song like the "Wacht am Rhein" could 

 become the Sturmlied of the army, although, 

 of course, its popularity was in a great meas- 

 ure due to the music to which the words were 

 set. But it is disgraceful that a political street- 

 song, in the style of the Berlin comic journal 

 Kladderadatsch, the so-called " Kutschkelied," 

 should attain popularity, and should be trans- 

 lated, if only in ridicule, into every European 

 tongue, and even into ancient Greek and San- 

 scrit, and that elaborate discussions should 

 take place as to its history and author. To 

 the two great collections of the political poetry 

 of the year, the "Liedern zu Schutz und 

 Trutz," and the "Fur Strassburg's Kinder," 

 nearly all the distinguished German poets, and 

 several undistinguished ones, have contributed. 

 Many of the former have also published sepa- 

 rate manifestations of their patriotic enthu- 

 siasm effusions generally more remarkable 

 for the good intentions that prompted them 

 than for intrinsic merit. If we put aside the 

 stories which appeared in the feuilletons of 

 the papers, we find that little of importance 

 has appeared beyond "The Last Bombardier" 

 ("Der Letzte Bombardier ") of the indefatiga- 

 ble Hacklander, some middling novels by Gus- 

 tav vom See, a few pious tales by the Countess 

 Franzisca von Schwerin, and the highly-col- 

 ored fictions of Adolph Wilbrandt. If we 

 pass from imaginative literature to philosophy, 

 we must allow that the remarkable paucity of 

 philosophical works is not due to the war 

 alone. No philosopher has advocated the 

 present war as Fichte did the War of Indepen- 

 dence, and, in an eloquent address "to the 

 German nation," extolled it as a "crusade of 

 reason;" probably because at present there 

 are few Fichtes. The Centenary of Hegel, tho 

 observance of which was postponed on account 

 of the war, has been celebrated by the unveil- 

 ing of his bust ; but outside the Berlin Hegel 

 Society, of which Prof. Michelet is the ortho- 

 dox president, the jubilee has awakened no 

 echo in Germany. On the other hand, Fichte's 

 son, an aged, gray-haired man, yet still an in- 

 defatigable worker, has seized the occasion of 

 the restoration of the empire to edit his father's 

 speeches, which advocated the movement on 

 the highest moral grounds, and has prefixed 

 to them a preface that is well worth reading. 

 The biography of Schelling has been com- 



