458 



LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1872. 



and of her husband, Count Albert Wicken- 

 burg, is a delightful imitation, in easy verse, 

 of Michael Drayton's graceful fairy - tale, 

 " Nymphidia." Hermann Lingg, too, has 

 chosen as a subject that composer of the 

 "Stabat Mater," whose princely father was 

 beheaded as a Sicilian rebel in the presence 

 of his son and his wife, the latter of whom 

 died from the shock. The work appears in his 

 new collection "Dunkle Gewalten." Lingg 

 merely indicates Astorga's tragical fate in a 

 vision at the close of his poem ; while the 

 countess has described both the execution 

 and the artist's musical growth in the Spanish 

 cloister whence he derived his name. Another 

 poetess (Betty Paoli) long ago made Astorga's 

 fate the subject of a tale in verse in her "Ro- 

 mancero ; " yet, whether from ignorance or 

 intention, she made Peroglese, the composer of 

 what was long regarded as the finest " Stabat 

 Mater," the hero of the tragedy. Lingg's 

 latest productions are rightly named ; they are 

 "dark," obscure, and confused: the plasticity 

 which formerly distinguished his conception 

 has disappeared. "Lothar," by Adolf von 

 Schack, the translator of "Firdusi," is a sort 

 of versified book of travels, after the manner 

 of " Childe Harold." The verse is sonorous, 

 and the pictures of the East and of Spain are 

 as clear as crystal. No narrative poem, how- 

 ever, has appeared this year that can compare 

 with Hamerling's "Ahasuerus," or "King of 

 Sion " (now in a fifth edition), or W. Hertz's 

 " Hugdietrich's Bridal Journey," of which an 

 illustrated edition has just come out. 



Of the older song- writers, T. G. Fischer, lit- 

 tle known except to readers of the Augsburg 

 Allgemeine Zeitung, and Emile Ritterhaus, 

 have published new volumes of poems. 



The commission which bestows the "Em- 

 peror's prize," founded on the centenary of 

 Schiller's birth, 1859, has this year made no 

 award. That founded on Grillparzer's eigh- 

 tieth birthday (1871), to be given by the Vienna 

 Academy, of Science for the most successful 

 play of the last three years, will not be be- 

 stowed till 1875. That this is not owing to 

 any lack of dramas is clear from the fact that 

 T. L. Klein, who is known by his learned but 

 one-sided and ill-arranged history of the 

 dramas, has alone published six volumes of 

 plays. 



At the head of the novelists of this year 

 stands an Austrian lately deceased, one whom 

 we were accustomed in his lifetime to meet in 

 quite another sphere. Frederick Halm, the 

 author of "Griseldis," has left behind him 

 novels which appear in the two volumes con- 

 taining his remains. " The Marchpane-Lissie " 

 will insure its author a permanent place beside 

 H. von Kleist among the few good story-tellers 

 of his nation. Like Kleist, Grillparzer, and 

 Hebbel, he, though a born dramatist, is also 

 an emiaent writer of tales. Grillparzer's 

 " Poor Player " has already found a place in 

 Paul Heyso's "Deutscher Novellenschatz," an 



excellent collection of the best novelettes, of 

 which four volumes have appeared. There 

 are to be found in it little gems of art like 

 Eichendorif's "Passages from the Life of a 

 Good-for-nothing," Storm's "Immense," Saar's 

 "Innocens," and Heyse's "La Rabbiata," 

 which the flood of ephemeral novels threatened 

 to drive out of sight. 



Our principal romance- writers amuse them- 

 selves with publishing new editions of their 

 works. If number of editions be a test of 

 merit, about the first place is due to Gustav 

 Freitag, whose apotheosis of the bourgeoisie, 

 "Debit and Credit," has gone through seven- 

 teen editions after all, not so many as 

 Kampe's " Robinson Crusoe," of which, not 

 counting piratical reprints, eighty-one editions 

 have appeared. Next comes Auerbach, whose 

 " On the Heights " (his best work) has reached 

 a tenth edition, while Gutzkow's " Roman En- 

 chanter" is in a fourth. But, if we allow for 

 the short space of time since Frederick Spiel- 

 hagen made his debut with " Problematical 

 Natures," and consider the numerous reprints 

 and popular editions of his subsequent works, 

 he stands at the head. He may be regarded 

 as the spokesman of the fourth estate, as 

 Freitag is of the third; but he surpasses 

 Freitag _in impartiality and in objectivity of 

 delineation. His characters are natural, and 

 made lifelike by a few strokes. Besides, he 

 possesses a descriptive power which raises 

 some portions of his novels beyond reach of 

 rivalry. 



The supremacy of the physicists, hitherto 

 uncontested, has been attacked in a very pi- 

 quant and, in spite of its objectionable form, 

 very biting book, by the astronomer, Prof. 

 Zollner, of Leipsic. The work is more espe- 

 cially devoted to the " Nature of Comets," but 

 also treats of the history of the theory of cog- 

 nition and of a variety of other things, such 

 the banquet given to Dr. Hoffman, the chenm 

 on his return to Berlin from England, in a 

 which will not please everybody. From a 

 philosophical point of view, the book is impor- 

 tant only in so far as it is a demand, proceed- 

 ing from a follower of the natural sciences, for 

 a proper handling of the entire body of the 

 natural sciences, and a protest against the nar- 

 row devotion to a small specialty. Darwin- 

 ism has brought once more into repute the 

 zoological philosophy of Lamarck, and La- 

 marck, in his turn, the scientific ideas of Goethe, 

 Schelling, and Oken, to which Hackel recurs 

 in his "Naturlichen Schopfungsgeschichte." 

 The great success of Hartmann's "Philosophy 

 of the Unknown " is due to its relationship to 

 Schelling's "Spirit in Nature,"and the growth 

 of a need for philosophy among the representa- 

 tives of the natural sciences. It forms an ap- 

 ple of discord between the Materialists on the 

 one hand, who acknowledge no spirit, and 

 therefore no unknown in Nature, and, on the 

 other, the followers of Schopenhauer, who ac- 

 knowledge a will, but not a " rational " will 



