NATIONAL STYLE 205 



Carelessness, want of taste and tact, insensibility to form, 

 contempt for the genius and specific beauty of the native 

 idiom, seem to be ingrained vices of this literature. When we 

 reflect on what good German style might be what it has been 

 in the hands of men like Heine, Schopenhauer, Helmholz it 

 is really irritating not to be able to take up a book without at 

 once stumbling upon uglinesses like the following : 



Bei einer intelligenten, sehr suggestiblen Warterin wirkten die 

 Suggestions a ech^ance so machtig, dass sie mir erklarte, sie sei absolut 

 iiberwaltigt und ware gezwungen, sogar einen Mord zu begehen, wenn 

 ich ihr denselben suggeriren wiirde, so furchtbar sei der Trieb, auch den 

 grossten Unsinn zu begehen. 



It may be conceded that in an essay on Hypnotism, the 

 French phrase Suggestions a echeance is appropriate by 

 reason of its technical significance. Still we ask where is 

 the necessity for intelligent, suggestible, absolut, suggeriren ? 

 Why was the verb zu begehen tautologically repeated in so 

 short a sentence? Why could not a little pains have been 

 bestowed on bettering the lame amorphous clauses on which 

 it limps to a conclusion ? 



German prose, except in the case of a few rare stylists, 

 suffers from unwieldiness, cumbrous garrulity, circumlocu- 

 tion, and painfully prolonged suspension of thought through 

 labyrinths of qualifying clauses, parentheses, and otiose 



Varianten, eventuell, konstant, series, Stationen, Accord, Tapet, Billet, 

 splendid, Details, Honneurs. Some phrases were peculiarly offensive, as 

 these : Diese auffallige Coincidencz, diese theatercoup massige Insceni- 

 rung; Emission der Aktien ; hindurchpilotirtes Projekt ; Kompetentester ; 

 plausibem Kentabilitatsberechnungen. It may be urged that these 

 abominations are only discoverable in journalistic jargon. But news- 

 papers form the principal literature of the middle and lower classes. 

 Thus this commercial patois infiltrates common speech, and renders the 

 talk of all but highly polished people insufferable. If we have to seek a 

 valid excuse for the prevalent vulgarity of German prose, it should, 

 perhaps, be found in the social backwardness of the German people. They 

 need expressions which have become current through the usage of more 

 cultivated nations, especially the French, and which carry connotations 

 hitherto denied to their own Gothic vocabulary. 



