Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 43

98.

SOMETHING LIKE BREAD.-Bread neutralises and takes out the taste of other food, and is therefore necessary to every long meal. In all works of art there must be something like bread, in order that they may produce divers effects. If these effects followed one another without occasional pauses and intervals, they would soon make us weary and provoke disgust-in fact, a long meal of art would then be impossible.

99.

JEAN PAUL.-Jean Paul knew a great deal, but had no science; understood all manner of tricks of art, but had no art; found almost everything enjoyable, but had no taste; possessed feeling and seriousness, but in dispensing them poured over them a nauseous sauce of tears; had even wit, but, unfortunately for his ardent desire for it, far too little-whence he drives the reader to despair by his very lack of wit. In short, he was the bright, rank-smelling weed that shot up overnight in the fair pleasaunces of Schiller and Goethe. He was a good, comfortable man, and yet a destiny, a destiny in a dressing-gown.(20)

100.

PALATE FOR OPPOSITES.-In order to enjoy a work of the past as its contemporaries enjoyed it, one must have a palate for the prevailing taste of the age which it attacked.

101.

SPIRITS-OF-WINE AUTHORS.-Many writers are neither spirit nor wine, but spirits of wine. They can flare up, and then they give warmth.

102.

THE INTERPRETATIVE SENSE.-The sense of taste, as the true interpretative sense, often talks the other senses over to its point of view and imposes upon them its laws and customs. At table one can receive disclosures about the most subtle secrets of the arts; it suffices to observe what tastes good and when and after what and how long it tastes good.

103.

LESSING.-Lessing had a genuine French talent, and, as writer, went most a.s.siduously to the French school. He knows well how to arrange and display his wares in his shop-window. Without this true art his thoughts, like the objects of them, would have remained rather in the dark, nor would the general loss be great. His art, however, has taught many (especially the last generation of German scholars) and has given enjoyment to a countless number. It is true his disciples had no need to learn from him, as they often did, his unpleasant tone with its mingling of petulance and candour.-Opinion is now unanimous on Lessing as "lyric poet," and will some day be unanimous on Lessing as "dramatic poet."

104.

UNDESIRABLE READERS.-How an author is vexed by those stolid, awkward readers who always fall at every place where they stumble, and always hurt themselves when they fall!

105.

POETS' THOUGHTS.-Real thoughts of real poets always go about with a veil on, like Egyptian women; only the deep _eye_ of thought looks out freely through the veil.-Poets' thoughts are as a rule not of such value as is supposed. We have to pay for the veil and for our own curiosity into the bargain.

106.

WRITE SIMPLY AND USEFULLY.-Transitions, details, colour in depicting the pa.s.sions-we make a present of all these to the author because we bring them with us and set them down to the credit of his book, provided he makes us some compensation.

107.

WIELAND.-Wieland wrote German better than any one else, and had the genuine adequacies and inadequacies of the master. His translations of the letters of Cicero and Lucian are the best in the language. His ideas, however, add nothing to our store of thought. We can endure his cheerful moralities as little as his cheerful immoralities, for both are very closely connected. The men who enjoyed them were at bottom better men than we are, but also a good deal heavier. They _needed_ an author of this sort. The Germans did not need Goethe, and therefore cannot make proper use of him. We have only to consider the best of our statesmen and artists in this light. None of them had or _could_ have had Goethe as their teacher.

108.

RARE FESTIVALS.-Pithy conciseness, repose, and maturity-where you find these qualities in an author, cry halt and celebrate a great festival in the desert. It will be long before you have such a treat again.

109.

THE TREASURE OF GERMAN PROSE.-Apart from Goethe's writings and especially Goethe's conversations with Eckermann (the best German book in existence), what German prose literature remains that is worth reading over and over again? Lichtenberg's _Aphorisms_, the first book of Jung-Stilling's _Story of My Life_, Adalbert Stifter's _St. Martin's Summer_ and Gottfried Keller's _People of Seldwyla_-and there, for the time being, it comes to an end.

110.

LITERARY AND COLLOQUIAL STYLE.-The art of writing demands, first and foremost, subst.i.tutions for the means of expression which speech alone possesses-in other words, for gestures, accent, intonation, and look.