MODERN HISTORY OF LITERATURE 501 



fundamental idea of the classical period, the union of antiquity with 

 Christian asceticism, and sees a world-wide gap between Schiller's 

 time, to which this line belongs, and the joy of living of Young Ger- 

 many, he has overlooked the fact that this same Schiller lets his 

 Mortimer say, "1st Leben doch des Lebens hochstes Gut " (Life is 

 after all the highest possession of life); and again that this same 

 Mortimer looks upon life as the only possession of the bad man. Or 

 when another refers the sentence from Schiller's Tell, " Der Starke ist 

 am machtigsten allein" (The strongman is mightiest alone), to Fried- 

 rich Schlegel's Alarkos, "So starke Seelcn sind allein am starksten" 

 (Such mighty souls are mightiest alone), and finds in Schiller's whole 

 conception of Tell a product of the romantic tendency of the times, 

 he forgets that Schiller received this isolated, non-political Tell from 

 Goethe, who had sketched his plan long before the Alarkos, and 

 that even Ibsen's Enemy of the People ends with a similar thought, 

 which he certainly borrowed neither from Schiller nor Schlegel. 

 Not blind worship, but sober critical treatment of parallel passages, 

 that are as plentiful as blackberries in modern literature, is one of 

 the most difficult problems of modern philology, and, because of the 

 more easily accessible and richer material, can be heard with profit 

 perhaps even in the Babel und Bibcl controversy, or if it deals 

 with the latest attempt to explain the Norse Edda from ancient 

 models. On the other hand, one must be just as careful in assert- 

 ing the dependence of, or the derivation from, as in asserting the 

 originality of anything. One puts a finger on a passage and cries out : 

 "Only Goethe can have said that." In a conversation, Scherer once 

 said to me that the verse "Die Windc schwingen leisc Fliigel" (The 

 winds swing gentle wings) was truly "Goethe-like'' because of the 

 powerful endowment of natural phenomena with life expressed in the 

 verb, that no poet except Goethe, or at least, no poet before Goethe, 

 could have written it. Later, however, I read even in old Lichtwehr 

 in the fable Der Wind and der Komct : "'Die Nacht schwang ihre 

 feuchten 1'liigel " (The night .swung its damp wings), and in the Lied 

 an. die Frende (The Song to Joy) by I/: "Die Frcude .schwingt uni 

 sie die giild'nen Fliigel" (Joy swings about them her golden wings), 

 and, "Die Finsternis schwingt ihre tragcn Flugel" (Darkness swings 

 its lazy wings). Even in dealing with such a strikingly original 

 genius as II. von Klei.st such mistakes are not uncommon. The 

 beautiful picture of the cherub passing through the night, whom the 

 races of men, lying upon their backs, regard with wonder, in which 

 the clever biographer thought heivcogni/ed most vividly, as a favorite 

 picture of the poet, the individualizing concreteness of Kleist, is 

 nevertheless taken from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliit. If 

 one also compares with Goethe's statement that Kleist always tried 

 to produce confusion of the feelings, the phrase, " ' Yerwinv rneiii 



