John
Fitzell. The Hermit in German
Literature (from Lessing to Eichendorff).
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1961; later
reprints.
John Fitzell was a career professor of German literature; this book was based on his dissertation, retaining the characteristic exhaustive review of the literature and source quotations in the original German. The author acknowledges Charles P. Weaver's 1924 book The Hermit in English Literature from the Beginnings to 1600 as his working model. Fitzell's treatment of a more contemporary period within a rich continental tradition makes The Hermit in German Literature a key contribution to the history of the cultural image of the hermit.
The author organizes his subject into three thematic groups: 1) the
hermit and society, 2) what he calls the "inner conflict" of the hermit
and the world, and 3) the hermit and nature. The coverage is roughly
the 18th- to early 19th-centuries, with an introductory view of the
preceding literary German archetypes. Within each chapter, Fitzell
treats authors
chronologically, and adds a helpful chronological index of authors. As
a side note, Fitzell uses the term "hermithood" and not eremitism.
This review will briefly summarize each writer Fitzell covers. The 130+ pages of the original edition offer an excellent summary of a rich trove of literature that begs for a return to the originals for enjoyable exploration.
Chapter 1. The Hermit of Literary Tradition.
In this introductory chapter, Fitzell establishes two German
literary perspectives of the hermit prior to the 18th century. Positive
motivation is maintained by Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival,
wherein the hermit
Trevrizent stands as a bridge between the values of fallen humanity and
religious aspiration. Once a chivalrous knight, Trevrizent renounces
knighthood and becomes a hermit to atone for the crimes of his brother,
the king Anfortas.
This function of hermithood as a vicarious atonement for other men's sins is, of course, akin to the conceptions of Christ and of sainthood. ... The synthesis of the worldly and the religious elements in Trevrizent render him qualified to act as Parzival's spiritual tutor and to lift from him frustration and guilt of the past. [Thus the hermit] stands in the center of Wolfram's poem.
A contrasting negative setting for the hermit figure is offered by
the
era of
the Thirty Years War in the novel Simplicissimus
by Johann Grimmelshausen.
Fitzell summarizes:
The hermit, Simplicius's father, once a ranking officer, renounces the world completely because of disgust and horror for it built up through the sad experiences of his past. To save his soul, he dedicates his remaining years to preparing for the life to come.
But the son cannot accept the advice of his father and prefers to experience the world himself, becoming a marauding mercenary. The novel is considered an example of the picaresque genre, but only as a narrative of adventures. Not unlike the father, however, the son is heart-sickened by the world: by his rapacious commander, by the depravities of war, by society, and by the evils of those he encounters. Simplicius then undertakes a pilgrimage to seek out virtue, concluding, as Fitzell puts it, "that the evils of society constitute a crime against nature and the divine order." Thus the son ends his days becoming a hermit like his father, "to save his soul from otherwise certain damnation."
Chapter 2. The Hermit and Society.
This section considers eight authors who present hermit motives for separation from society.
- Lessing's 1749 poem "Der Eremit" depicts a charlatan who imitates
eremitic practices in the forest in order to attract fame, money, and
especially women, thus humiliating the entire village. When accused and
brought before a judge who insists on names of the seduced (in order to
savor embarrassing the families), the hermit names the judge's wife.
The poem attacks sham piety.
- Goethe's drama Satyros
(1773) contrasts two views of nature. "The hermit
revels in ... deep insight into divine order which is the fruit of
inward experience; Satyros [the protagonist] represents the violently
exaggerated emotionalism of more conventional Storm and Stress, in this
case, a view of nature as wild, primitive lust."
- Jakob Lenz's drama Die Kleinen
(1775) remained unfinished but sufficiently reveals
the author's intent. The central character Engelbrecht discovers a
hermit who withdrew from the world to let his worldly-minded brother
reach courtly office unrivaled. Engelbrecht alludes to the political
struggles of the hermit's brother. The hermit despairs at the news,
doubting his motive and wondering if he should have assumed worldly
responsibility after all. The work is a clear critique of reclusion.
- Friedrich Klinger's 1776 drama Sturm
und
Drang features a protagonist
Blasius, disillusioned by the world, witnessing the conflicts
of his friends and their failed relations with women. Blasius pursues
"the deeper eternal
world of nature" and "turns from the oppressive superficiality of
society to the living spirit of nature."
- Gottfried Burger's 1778 poem "Der wilde Jager" (translated by Sir
Walter Scott as "The Wild Huntsman") presents the fate of a haughty
aristocrat's
flagrant destruction of nature. The destruction of land and animals
impoverishes the peasants, but further represents a blasphemous
violation of the divine ordering of nature, as a hermit tells the evil
count to his face. The arrogant count dismisses him. In the ballad, the count goes
hunting one Sunday morning, the wild horns mocking the church bells.
In the
rapacious count's relentless pursuit of a stag, horses and dogs tears up a hapless
peasants' grain fields, then maul a shepherd's flock. The
stag escapes to the safe haven of the hermit's "Gottes hutte," and the
hermit emerges to confront the count.
The poem, notes Fitzell, unites
two of the principal themes of Sturm und Drang literature -- the inviolate quality of nature and the tyranny of the aristocracy." [Here,] nature is interpreted ... as a living organic cosmos, the pattern of divine order. ... The figure of the hermit is made typical rather than individual; he has a symbolic voice. His seclusion in the heart of the forest makes him the interpreter of God's purpose and the defender of His creatures.
- Lessing's protagonist Nathan the Jew in Nathan der Weise (1779) hopes to
demonstrate that a
humane and social life without compromise or artificialities is a
natural way of life versus eremitism. His Muslim friend Al-Hafi,
Saladin's treasurer, who has witnessed worldly compromises of money and
power, rejects society, and decides to flee to solitude in India. A
third character, a Christian lay brother, serves a patriarch conspiring
with the Templars to assassinate Saladin. The lay brother, like
Al-Hafi,
wishes to flee the world, a motive which Lessing respects as an ideal
but criticizes as renouncing moral responsibility within the life
sphere of the two
latter characters.
- Adelbert Chamisso presents a romantic hero Peter Schlemihl --
also the title of the 1813 tale -- whose
motive for eremitism is the loss of his shadow, an intriguing
projection of the individual in society. Despite his wealth, Schlemihl
cannot break into society or develop relationships. On a trip to Egypt,
he suddenly decides to imitate the early Christian desert hermits and
renounces his former life to disappear.
Chapter 3. The Inner Conflict.
- Goethe composed two versions of Erwin
und Elmire. The 1775 version is a light opera emphasizing the
emotional turn of the characters: "Erwin retires to mountain peace
because his sincere and open expressions of love have not been returned
but even scorned by the coquettish Elmire," Fitzell summarizes. Erwin's
solitude is anything but peaceful, however, in his "state of mental
torture" haunted by Elmire. Bernardo visits Erwin, persuading him at
last to return and reveal his feelings to Elmire, and he does, with
joyful reconciliation ensuing. In the operetta, Bernardo sings "against
hermithood as being a solution for the weak" ... and praises the life
of
the citizen who earns his living and creates a household. As Fitzell
points out, the operetta is "full of rococo flavor."
However, the 1787 prose version has new influences reflecting an evolved Goethe. A more reflective, mature Erwin is inspired in his reclusion by the spirit of a wise old hermit he did not come to know, now deceased. Erwin's life is a "tranquil melancholy," and he draws "spiritual strength from nature." Though occasionally pained by Elmire's memory, he recalls the old hermit's tranquil mien and is at peace. In this version, another couple, Valerio and Rosa, are introduced. Valerio has "lost patience with Rosa because of her petty jealousies." A welcomed Valerio visits Erwin but then the two young women, Rosa and Elmire, appear, contrite. Reconciliation ensures, and a grateful departure from the hermitage, which has imbued all with its peace and reconciled the lovers. The hero of this version of the tale is the invisible character of the old hermit, whose values embrace all to appreciate nature, tranquility, and the spiritual.
- Lenz's unfinished novel Die
Walderbruder (1776) features a protagonist Herz who became a
hermit to preserve his idealistic image of a woman known only through
correspondence. The story unfolds through letters of the various
characters. Herz's case is "pathological," Fitzell says. Herz is a wild
idealist who "fell violently in love with the sublime revelation of
feminine character and intellect." Herz's forest hermitage is
Rousseauean purity reflecting his idealism. He sees his eremitic life
objectively, accommodating himself to area peasants and ignoring friend
Roth's pleas to return to society, unaware of the gossip and intrigue
around him. One freezing night, Lenz must abandon his hut, and in town
crosses paths with his ideal woman Stella, unaware of what is planned
for her -- and him. Fitzell concludes: "Herz embodies as a hermit a
strange blending of fanatical idealism and individualism." Eremitism is
to him simply a preservation of his delusions.
- In Klinger's tragic 1776 drama Die
Zwillinge, protagonist Grimaldi suffers
from the death of his beloved Juliette and longs to become a hermit,
but he feels useless and melancholic. He is constantly belittled by his
friend Fernando and only understood by Juliette's brother Guelfo.
Grimaldi evolves a theory for his inner hermithood, "based on dreams,
sentiment, and revulsion toward society." But his "idealistic
dream-reality" is a "living death," a pathological melancholy," and a
"macabre devotion to the dead love of his gloomy past."
- While Brentano's hermit Werdo Senne in the 1800 novel Godwi suffers the past fate of
Klinger's Grimaldi, he nevertheless "finds consolation and inspiration
in nature." The novel narrates the circumstances of the past: courtship
and engagement, the protagonist's business voyage, the unscrupulous
Godwi's falsification of the protagonist's death in order to marry the
young woman Marie and bear a child from him. But the protagonist
returns, and he reacts to circumstances by becoming a hermit. With news
of the
protagonist's return comes Marie's suicide with her child. The hermit
Werdo Senne's consolation is a harp and melancholy songs, the "joy and
peace of eternal unity in nature and God which is the fruit of his
tragic experience. Fitzell notes here "the theme of relationship
between art and madness" characterizing many hermits in literature.
- Opposite to Brentano's reconciled Werdo is Annette von
Droste-Hulshuff's Epos in her 1818 Walter,
a story of one "doomed to guilt and suffering," of the triumph of evil,
and of a tortuous hermithood. Walter is born of the frail angelic
Theatilde and the "robber-knight" Alhard; he is born to solitude,
restlessness, and melancholy. As a knight, he befriends the
hermit Balduin -- a man once wealthy but who has now discarded his
possessions -- and his beautiful daughter Alba, with whom he falls in
love. But Walter is obliged to go on crusade, with marriage to a
society
maiden Caceilia promised as reward on his return, and so his heart is
divided. Upon Walter's return, many have died: Balduin, Alba, and
Alhard. In sorrow, Walter seeks out the hermit Verenus, who warns
him against hermithood given Walter's disposition. Walter insists.
Where
Balduin's eremitism was moral consciousness, and Verenus's is wise
experience, Walter's motive is regret and flight.
- Lenau's 1832 horror story Die
Marionetten presents another hermit made
of tragic love, this time Count Robert sorrowing for his only daughter
Maria. The dark hermitage and death symbols lend a pall to a
retrospectively-told tale related by Robert: while he is away on
crusade,
young Maria is seduced by a wanderer Lorenzo, and she commits suicide.
As
with Brentano among others, eremitism and madness are linked.
Fitzell digresses to present other mad hermits in German literature of this era: Klinger's Grimaldi in Der Zwillinge has already been described. Three additional titles are numbered as part B. (versus implied A. above.).
- Klingor's 1791 novel Fausts
Leben, Thaten und Hollenfahrt
revives the theme of the devil's challenge (to Faust) to expose the
hypocrisy of a supposedly-virtuous man, in this case a hermit. The
novel parallels the temptations of St. Antony. Faust is impressed by
the hermit's lack of moral pride and presumption. He is humble in
admitting his weaknesses and inadequacies. But ultimately the hermit is
made to fall and plunges into madness; death consumes all of the
story's characters. Klingor's intent (like the devil's) to besmirch
the hermit ironically fails in portraying the intensity of worldly
corruption.
- In Wackenroder's 1799 Ein
wunderbares Marchen von einem nackten Heiligen
is a tale of "sacred madness" set in Oriental exoticism, wherein a
cave-dwelling hermit is the only person who audibly perceives the rush
of time in great "furious rhythms" that drive him mad. But on moonlit
night overseeing a river bank, the hermit hears the music of lovers
floating downstream on a boat. Their beautiful music displaces the
whirling wheel of time in the hermit's ear -- and heart.
- E. T. A. Hoffman's 1817 Serapion
features a mad hermit who thinks he is the original St. Serapion, the
Egyptian Christian desert father. Ironically, the hermit's intent and
social relations are impeccable, the first-person narrative relates,
and he refutes every objection to eremitism proposed by the narrator.
Chapter 4. The Hermit and Nature.
Of this chapter, Fitzell remarks:
In nature, the hermit hopes to find the ultimate, universal values in life, for which he has rejected those of society (chapter 2) and in this realm he seeks to attain spiritual calm and healing for a soul wounded by unhappy developments in the past -- nature is a refuge from hostile forces in the world, and transforms tragic experiences into a new reality (chapter 3).
In this final chapter, therefore, Fitzell examines the Romantic theme of nature as identification with the eternal.
- Christoph Martin Weiland's 1780 epic poem Oberon evolves
the plot and setting of the Robinsonade. The Spanish knight
Alonso is shipwrecked on a deserted island. His wife, children, and
friends have perished. The vanities of society are revealed. A vision
of a "partition between this life and the next" falls. Alonso gains a
"supra-rational recognition." Supernatural elements pervade the tale:
angelic voices, a magic portal, elf rulers, a sacred grotto. A
mysterious couple, Huon and Amanda, seek out his advice to be
reconciled
with king Oberon. Hermithood is a last stage to wisdom, a
reconciliation with nature.
- Holderlin's 1799 poem "Hyperion" describes the title character
Hyperion's search for wisdom in nature after suffering life
disappointments. The hermit's letters present his retrospective
experiences: a disillusionment with others, an observation of
degeneration. The solitary seeks to devote himself to nature as with
the
innocence of children. The historical context is the Greek war for
independence from the Ottoman Turks. Hyperion persuades himself to
lead a troop of fighters, but their bestial behavior upon victory only
further disillusions him. Hyperion's beloved Diotima urges him to
solitude, here a pessimism toward society but a prophetic vision of
nature.
- In the 1801 novel Heinrich von
Ofterdingen
by Novalis, the hermit Friedrich von Hohenzollern is an old hermit of
many experiences, now at peace with himself. He reflects to visitors on
the necessary individualism of youth and the appropriateness of
solitude in old age. Once a knight whose family died, Heinrich dwells
in a cave, reading and contemplating, bridging life and nature.
- Schiller's 1803 poem Die Braut
con Messina
presents a hermit dwelling on Mt. Etna in literal and symbolic
isolation. He possesses future vision and foresees the kidnapping and
death of a saintly young woman.
- Ludwig Uhland's 1809 Konig
Eginhard
is a dramatic fragment about a forest hermit, a old legend found in
Grimm. The hermit senses timelessness in events around him. When King
Eginhard and his abducted bride Adelheit escape to a forest castle,
they encounter the hermit Paul, who discourses to them about the forest
and nature's reflection of the divine and the timeless. For the hermit
(as for Romanticism in general) the forest represents nature as a whole.
- The hermit in Justinus Kerner's 1811 tale Die Heimatlosen
is called a Waldvater or nature spirit, the fatherly spirit presiding
over
nature, while the tale's theme is Todessehnsucht or longing for reunion
(with the spirit of nature). In the tale, the protagonist is a sailor
who, after a
long voyage, returns to discover that his wife has remarried, convinced
of his death at sea after so long an absence. He retreats alone to a
mountain forest to live out his long years. At death, the mountain folk
bury him in a stalactite cavern, where his body is preserved. Thus the
hermit is a symbol and a literal personification of nature.
- Goethe inserts four anchorites in Faust
(1832), in part of the last scene. "The anchorites represent stages of
spiritualization in nature (Naturvergesitigling)," notes Fitzell, which
free the soul of its transitory physical properties that it may enter
into the pure sphere of love emanating from the presence of the "Mater
gloriosa, das Ewig-Weibliche." The anchorite called Pater ecstaticus,
never stationary, moves among cells; Pater profundus represents "the
substantial elements of nature" and its motivating
force, love; Pater seraphicus is nearly spiritual and
is conscious of the transition from the physical; and Doctor Marianus
is in
the loftiest cell and highest state of spiritualization. For Goethe,
the
hermit stands between earthly and spiritual worlds.
- The hermit of Eichendorff's 1835 Eine Meerfahrt
is Don Diego, once a knightly adventurer who sought El Dorado,
overcame shipwreck and resisted the plaudits of the queen of the
deserted island of his rescue. Diego establishes a safe haven on
the island for the ship's remnant, himself returning to Spain to
embrace hermithood. The story represents the shattered storms of life
revealing the "rock of spiritual tranquility" to the conscious soul.
Conclusion.
Fitzell's study remains an essential source on hermits in German
literature, exploring and cataloging the literary genres, the hermit
prototypes, plots, and characters of imagination and culture. This work
brings important information to the study of eremitism in its many
manifestations.
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