On the whole, it is evident the difficulties to a History of Friedrich are great and many: and the sad certainty is at last forced upon me that no good Book can, at this time, especially in this country, be written on the subject. Wherefore let the reader put up with an indifferent or bad one; he little knows how much worse it could easily have been!--Alas, the Ideal of history, as my friend Sauerteig knows, is very high; and it is not one serious man, but many successions of such, and whole serious generations of such, that can ever again build up History towards its old dignity. We must renounce ideals. We must sadly take up with the mournfulest barren realities;--dismal continents of Brandenburg sand, as in this instance; mere tumbled mountains of marine-stores, without so much as an Index to them!
Has the reader heard of Sauerteig's last batch of
Springwurzeln, a rather curious valedictory Piece?
"All History is an imprisoned Epic, nay an imprisoned Psalm and Prophecy," says Sauerteig there. I wish, from my soul, he had DISimprisoned it in this instance! But he only says, in magniloquent language, how grand it would be if disimprisoned;--and hurls out, accidentally striking on this subject, the following rough sentences, suggestive though unpractical, with which I shall conclude:--"Schiller, it appears, at one time thought of writing an
Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it.
By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of a man and his life that I want from my Schiller, but the actual natural Likeness, true as the face itself, nay TRUER, in a sense. Which the Artist, if there is one, might help to give, and the Botcher (Pfuscher) never can! Alas, and the Artist does not even try it;leaves it altogether to the Botcher, being busy otherwise!--"Men surely will at length discover again, emerging from these dismal bewilderments in which the modern Ages reel and stagger this long while, that to them also, as to the most ancient men, all Pictures that cannot be credited are--Pictures of an idle nature; to be mostly swept out of doors. Such veritably, were it never so forgotten, is the law! Mistakes enough, lies enough will insinuate themselves into our most earnest portrayings of the True: but that we should, deliberately and of forethought, rake together what we know to be not true, and introduce that in the hope of doing good with it? I tell you, such practice was unknown in the ancient earnest times; and ought again to become unknown except to the more foolish classes!" That is Sauerteig's strange notion, not now of yesterday, as readers know:--and he goes then into "Homer's Iliad," the "Hebrew Bible," "(terrible Hebrew VERACITY of every line of it;" discovers an alarming "kinship of Fiction to lying;" and asks, If anybody can compute "the damage we poor moderns have got from our practices of fiction in Literature itself, not to speak of awfully higher provinces?
Men will either see into all this by and by," continues he;"or plunge head foremost, in neglect of all this, whither they little dream as yet!--"But I think all real Poets, to this hour, are Psalmists and Iliadists after their sort; and have in them a divine impatience of lies, a divine incapacity of living among lies. Likewise, which is a corollary, that the highest Shakspeare producible is properly the fittest Historian producible;-- and that it is frightful to see the Gelehrte Dummkopf [what we here may translate, DRYASDUST] doing the function of History, and the Shakspeare and the Goethe neglecting it. 'Interpreting events;'
interpreting the universally visible, entirely INdubitable Revelation of the Author of this Universe: how can Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or noble, nor ever will know?
Poor wretch, one sees what kind of meaning HE educes from Man's History, this long while past, and has got all the world to believe of it along with him. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice-unhappy world that takes Dryasdust's reading of the ways of God!
But what else was possible? They that could have taught better were engaged in fiddling; for which there are good wages going.
And our damage therefrom, our DAMAGE,--yes, if thou be still human and not cormorant,--perhaps it will transcend all Californias, English National Debts, and show itself incomputable in continents of Bullion!--"Believing that mankind are not doomed wholly to dog-like annihilation, I believe that much of this will mend. I believe that the world will not always waste its inspired men in mere fiddling to it. That the man of rhythmic nature will feel more and more his vocation towards the Interpretation of Fact; since only in the vital centre of that, could we once get thither, lies all real melody; and that he will become, he, once again the Historian of Events,--bewildered Dryasdust having at last the happiness to be his servant, and to have some guidance from him. Which will be blessed indeed. For the present, Dryasdust strikes me like a hapless Nigger gone masterless: Nigger totally unfit for self-guidance; yet without master good or bad; and whose feats in that capacity no god or man can rejoice in.