The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 7

_The Conflict between Spring and Winter_, with its cla.s.sic suggestions, is penetrated by a truly German love of spring.[38] It described the time when the cuckoo sings high in the branches, gra.s.s clothes earth with many tints, and the nightingale sings untiringly in the red-gold butcher's broom, captivating us with her changing melodies.

Among the savants whom Charlemagne gathered round him was Angilbert.

Virgil was his model, but the influence of the lighter fluency of Fortunatus was visible, as in so many of his contemporaries. With a vivid and artistic pen he described the wood and park of Aachen and the Kaiser's brilliant hunt[39]; the great forest grove, the gra.s.sy meadows with brooks and all sorts of birds flitting about, the thicket stocked with many kinds of game.

At the same time, his writing betrayed the conventional tone of courts in its praise of his great secular lord, and a 'thoughtful romantic inclination' for the eternal feminine, for the beautiful women with splendid ornaments, and necks s.h.i.+ning like milk or snow or glowing like a rose, who, as Ebert puts it, 'lay far from the asceticism of the poetry of the saints.'

Naso Muadorinus in his pastorals took Calpurnius and Nemesia.n.u.s for his models, just as they had taken Virgil, and Virgil Theocritus.

Muadorinus imitated the latter in his pastorals.

In an alternate song of his between an old man and a boy, the old man draws an artistic contrast between the shady coolness of the wood and the mid-day glow of the sun, while the boy praises Him whose songs the creatures follow as once they followed Orpheus with his lute; and at the end, Charlemagne, who was extolled at the beginning as a second Caesar, is exalted to heaven as the founder of a new Golden Age.

In the Carolingian Renaissance of the Augustine epoch of literature, Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, takes first place. At any rate, he described in a very superior way, and, like Fortunatus, with some humour, the draining of the Larte at Le Mans, Feb. 820; also, in a light and lively strain, the Battle of the Birds, and, with the same strong colouring, Paradise.

The idyll of the cloister garden, so often treated, became famous in the much-read _Hortulus_ of Wahlafried.[40]

Despite cla.s.sical flourishes from Virgil and Columella, and pharmaceutical handling of plants, there is a good deal of thoughtful observation of Nature in these 444 hexameters.

They contain descriptions of seasons, of recipes, flowers and vegetables, of the gardener's pleasure in digging his fields in spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up by the moles, in protecting his seedlings from rain and sun, and, later on, in his gay beds of deciduous plants.

There is a touch here and there which is not unpoetic--for instance:

A bright green patch of dark blue rue paints this shady grove; it has short leaves and throws out short umbels, and pa.s.ses the breath of the wind and the rays of the sun right down to the end of the stalk, and at a gentle touch gives forth a heavy scent.

and:

With what verse, with what song, can the dry thinness of my meagre muse rightly extol the s.h.i.+ning lily, whose whiteness is as the whiteness of gleaming snow, whose sweet scent is as the scent of Sabian woods?

He closes pleasantly too, adjuring Grimald to read the book under the shade of the peach tree, while his school-fellows play round and pick the great delicate fruit which they can barely grasp with one hand.

In the poem to the layman Ruodbern (100 hexameters) he described the dangers of Alpine travelling, both from weather and other foes. In those days the difficulties of the road excluded all interest in mountain beauty. There is a tender and expressive poem in Sapphic metre, in which, homesick and cold in winter, he sang his longing for beautiful Reichenau. But even he, like most of his predecessors and all his followers, wielded his pen with labour, expression often failing to keep pace with thought.

It only remains to mention Wandalbert, a monk of the monastery at Prun, who, in a postscript to the _Conclusio des Martyrologium_, gives a charming account of a landowner's life in field, garden, and hunt.

In the cloister, then, idyllic comfort, delighting in Nature and a quiet country life, was quite as much at home as scholars.h.i.+p and cla.s.sical study. But we shall look there in vain for any trace of the sentimental, the profoundly melancholy att.i.tude of the Fathers of the Church, Basil and Gregory, or for Augustine's deep faith and devout admiration of the works of creation: even the tone of Ausonius and Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a thing of the past. Feeling for Nature--sentimental, sympathetic, cosmic, and dogmatic--had dwindled down to mere pleasure in cultivating flowers in the garden, to the level Aachen landscape and such like; and the power to describe the impression made by scenery was, like the impression itself, lame and weary.

It was the night of the decline breaking over Latin literature.

And how did it stand with German literature up to the eleventh century? A German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and Mersen (842), but during this period traces of German poetry are few, outweighed by Latin.

The two great Messianic poems, _Heliand_ and _Krist_, stand out alone. In the _Heliand_ the storm on the lake of Gennesaret is vividly painted:

Then began the power of the storm; in the whirlwind the waves rose, night descended, the sea broke with uproar, wind and water battled together; yet, obedient to the command and to the controlling word, the water stilled itself and flowed serenely.

In _Krist_ there is a certain distinction in the description of the Ascension, as the rising figures soar past the constellations of stars, which disappear beneath their feet; for the rest, the symbolic so supplants the direct meaning, that in place of an epic we have a moralizing sermon. But there are traces of delight in the beauty of the outer world, in the suns.h.i.+ne, and sympathy is attributed to Nature:

She grew very angry at such deeds.

The poem _Muspilli_ (the world fire) shews the old northern feeling for Nature; still more the few existing words of the _Wessobrunner Prayer_:

This I heard as the greatest marvel among men, That once there was no earth nor heaven above, The bright stars gave no light, the sun shone not, Nor the moon, nor the glorious sea.

How plainly 'the bright stars' and the 'glorious sea' shew joy in the beauty of the world!

In the oldest Scandinavian poems the inflexible character of the Northerner and the northern landscape is reflected; the descriptions are short and scanty; it is not mountain, rock, and sea which count as beautiful, but pleasant, and, above all, fruitful scenery. The imagery is bold: (Kenninger) the wind is the wolf of wood or sail, the sea the pathway of the whale, the bath of the diving bird, etc.

The Anglo-Saxon was especially distinguished by his forcible images and epithets. In Rynerwulf we have 'night falls like a helmet, dark brown covers the mountains.' 'The sky is the fortress of the storm, the sun the torch of the world, the jewel of splendour.' 'Fire is eager, wild, blind, and raging; the sea is the gray sea, and the sparkling splendid sea; waves are graves of the dead,' etc.

Vivid feeling for Nature is not among the characteristic features of either Scandinavian or old German poetry.

It is naive and objective throughout, and seldom weighty or forcible.

The Waltharius shews the influence of Virgil's language, in highly-coloured and sympathetic descriptions like those of the Latin poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance.

Animal saga probably first arose just before the twelfth century, and their home was probably Franconia.

Like the genial notices of plant life in the Latin poems of the Carlovingian period, the animal poems shewed interest in the animal world--the interest of a child who ponders individual differences and peculiarities, the virtues and failings so closely allied to its own.

It was a naive 'hand-and-glove' footing between man and the creatures, which attributed all his wishes and weaknesses to them, wiped out all differences between them with perfect impartiality, and gave the characteristics of each animal with exactness and poetry.

The soil for the cultivation of poetry about animals was prepared by the symbolic and allegorical way of looking at Nature which held sway all through the Middle Ages.

The material was used as a symbolic language for the immaterial, the world of sense conceived of as a great picture-book of the truths of salvation, in whose pages G.o.d, the devil, and, between them man, figured: thus plant life suggested the flower of the root of Jesse, foretold by Isaiah, red flowers the Saviour's wounds, and so forth.

In the earliest Christian times, a remarkable letter existed in Alexandria, the so-called 'Physiologus,' which has affected the proverbial turns of speech in the world's literature up to the present day to an almost unequalled degree.

It gave the symbolic meanings of the different animals. The lamb and unicorn were symbols of Christ; sheep, fish, and deer, of his followers; dragons, serpents, and bears, of the devil; swine, hares, hyenas, of gluttony; the disorderly luxuriance of snow meant death, the phoenix the resurrection, and so forth, indeed, whole categories of animals were turned into allegories of the truths of salvation.[41] The cleverest fables of animals were in _Isengrimen_, published in Ghent about 1140 in Latin verse--the story of the sick lion and his cure by the fox, and the outwitting of the wolf. Such fables did not remain special to German national literature, but became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of landscape, animal, and genre painting.

CHAPTER III

THE NAIVE FEELING AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES

In the development and maturing of the race, as of the individual, nothing is more helpful than contact with foreign elements, people of other manners, thoughts, and feelings. Intimate intercourse between different nationalities rouses what is best in the soul of a nation, inviting, as it does, to discussion and opposition, as well as to the acquisition of new ideas. The conquests of Alexander the Great opened up a new world to the Greek, and a new culture arose--h.e.l.lenism. It was a new world that rose before the astonished eyes of the Crusader--in his case too, the East; but the resulting culture did not last. The most diverse motives fused to bring about this great migration to a land at once unknown and yet, through religion, familiar; and a great variety of characters and nations met under the banner of the Cross.

Naturally this shaking up together, not only of Europeans among themselves, but of the eastern with the western world, brought about a complete revolution in manners, speech, art, science, trade, manufacture, thought, and feeling, and so became an important factor in general progress.

The narrow boundaries of nationality, race, and education were broken through; all felt equal before the leading idea; men, places, plants, and animals were alike new and wonderful. Little wonder if German knights returning home from the East wove fiction with their fact, and produced the most fantastic and adventurous heroic songs.

Many of the n.o.blest of the nations joined the Crusades in pious ardour for the cause, and it is easy to imagine the effect of the complete novelty of scene upon them. With such tremendous new impressions to cope with, it is not surprising that even the best minds, untrained as they were, were unequal to the task, and that the descriptions of real experiences or events in poetic form failed to express what they meant. Besides this, there is no doubt that in many ways the facts fell below their ideals; also that the Crusader's mantle covered at the same time a rabble, which joined from the lowest motives, the sc.u.m of Europe. It must also be remembered that it is far easier to experience or feel than to pa.s.s on that experience and feeling to others; that those who wrote did not always belong to the most educated; and that they wrote, for the most part, with difficulty in Greek or Latin. When all this has been weighed and admitted, the fact remains that in existing accounts of the Crusades there is great poverty of description of scenery, and lack of much feeling for Nature. The historian, as such, was bound to give first place to matters of fact and practical importance, and so to judge a place by its value to an army pa.s.sing through or occupying it; by its fertility, water-supply, its swamps or stony ground, and so forth; but still the modern reader is astonished to see how little impression the scenery of the Holy Land made, judged by the accounts we possess, upon the Crusaders. Even when it is conceded that other important concerns came first, and that danger, want, and hunger must often have made everything disagreeable, still, references to Nature are very scanty, and one may look in vain for any interest in beautiful scenery for its own sake.

There is only matter-of-fact geographical and mythological information in William of Tours' _History of the Crusades_; for instance, in his description of the Bosphorus he does not waste a word over its beauty. But, as 'fruitful' and 'pleasant' are ever-recurring adjectives with him, one cannot say that he absolutely ignored it.

He said of Durazzo: 'They weather the bad seasons of the year in fruitful districts rich in woods and fields, and all acceptable conditions'; of Tyre, 'The town has a most excellent position on a plain, almost entirely surrounded by mountains. The soil is productive, the wood of value in many ways.' Of Antioch, 'Its position is very convenient and pleasant, it lies in valleys which have excellent and fertile soil, and are most pleasantly watered by springs and streams. The mountains which enclose the town on both sides are really very high; but send down very clear water, and their sides and slopes are covered by buildings up to the very summits.'

There is nothing about beautiful views, unless one takes this, which really only records a meteorological curiosity: 'From the top of one mountain one can see the ball of the sun at the fourth watch of the night, and if one turns round at the time when the first rays light up the darkness, one has night on one side and day on the other.'

Tyre is described again as 'conspicuous for the fertility of its soil and the charm of its position.' Its great waterworks are especially admired, since by their means 'not only the gardens and most fruitful orchards flourish, but the cane from which sugar is made, which is so useful to man for health and other purposes, and is sent by merchants to the most distant parts of the world.' Other reporters were charmed by the fertility and wealth of the East. 'On those who came from the poorer and colder western countries, the rich resources of the sunny land in comparison with the poverty of home made an impression of overflowing plenty, and at times almost of inexhaustibleness. The descriptions of certain districts, extolled for their special richness, sound almost enthusiastic.[1]

Burkhard von Monte Sion was enthusiastic about Lebanon's wealth of meadows and gardens, and the plain round Tripolis, and considered the Plain of Esdraelon the most desirable place in the world; but, on exact and unprejudiced examination, there is nothing in his words beyond homely admiration and matter-of-fact discussion of its great practical utility.