The Project Gutenberg eBook, Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei, by Allen Wilson Porterfield

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Title: Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei

Author: Allen Wilson Porterfield

Release Date: February 12, 2004 [eBook #11066]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRAF VON LOEBEN AND THE LEGEND OF LORELEI***

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Modern Philology

VOLUME XIII October 1915 NUMBER 6 (pp. 65-92)

ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD

GRAF VON LOEBEN AND THE LEGEND OF LORELEI

I

The devotees of Apollo have to give a good account of themselves in Olympia before, they can become persona grata on Olympus. They spend their lives, more or less, at the various games of poetry. Some, like Goethe, win in the majority of trials, and then we study all of their records regardless of their individual excellence. Some like Immermann in Oberhof, win only once, but this is sufficient to insure immortality. Some play and joust, run and wrestle with constancy and grace; their records, just after starting and just before finishing, are interesting, but in the end they are always defeated. And when this is the case, posterity, lay and initiated, forgets their names and concerns itself in no wise with their records, unless it be for statistical purposes. It is to the latter class that Graf von Loeben[1] belongs. For twenty-five years he was a perpetual, loyal, chivalric contestant in the Olympic vale of poetry. His running was interesting, but he never won; he never wrote a single thing that everybody still reads for its own sake.

Aside from his connection with the Lorelei-matter, Graf von Loeben is, therefore, at present, a wholly obscure, indeed unknown, Poet. The large Konversations-Lexikons[2] of Meyer and Brockhaus say nothing about him, unless it be in the discussion of some other poet with whom he associated. Of the twenty best-known histories of German literature, some of which treat nothing but the nineteenth century, only six contain his name, and these simply mention him either as a member of the Dresden group of pseudo-romanticists, or as one of those Afterromantiker who did yeoman service by way of bringing real romanticism into disrepute through their unsubstantial, imitative, and formless works. And this is true despite the fact that Loeben was an exceedingly prolific writer and a very popular and influential man in. his day. Concerning his personality, Muncker says: "Die Tiefe und Wärme seines leicht erregbaren Gemüthes, seine Herzensreinheit, seine schwärmerische Hingabe an alles Schöne und Edle sowie sein zartes Tactgefühl erwarben ihm bei Freunden und Bekannten das Lob einer schönen Seele in des Wortes schönster Bedeutung."[3]

As to his poetic ability from the point of view of quantity, one can only marvel at the amount he produced in the time at his disposal; his creative works cover all types and sorts of literature.[4] He is best known for his numerous poems and his magnus opus, Guido, a novel of 360 pages, written under the pen-name of "Isidorus Orientalis," and intended as a continuation of Novalis' Ofterdingen; he used Tieck's notes for this purpose. He wrote also a great number of letters, between 60 and 70 elaborate reviews, and some critical essays, the best of which seems to be his commentary to Madame de Staël's De l'Allemagne, while he translated from Anacreon, Dante, Guarini, Horace, Ovid, Petrarch, Vergil, and others, and left a number of fragments including the outline of a pretentious novel of which Heinrich von Veldeke, whom he looked upon as "der Heilige des Enthusiasmus," was to be the hero. And he was, incidentally, an omnivorous reader, for, as he naïvely said:

    Viele Bücher muss ich kennen,
    Denn die Menschen kenn' ich gern.[5]

As to his originality, another confession is significant:

    Ja, es gibt nur wenig Leute,
    Deren Schüler ich nicht bin.[6]

No attempt, however, has as yet been made at even an eclectic edition of his numerous finished works, a few of which are still unpublished, many of which are now rare.[7]

As to his standing with his literary contemporaries, Eichendorff admitted[8] that Loeben influenced him as a man and as a poet; it was he who induced Eichendorff to write some of his earlier works under the pen-name of "Florens." And Eichendorff in turn credited Goethe with the remark[9] that "Loeben war der vorzüglichste Dichter jener Zeit." His influence on Platen[10] is not quite so certain; Loeben was Platen's senior by ten years, and they resembled each other in their ability to employ difficult verse and strophe forms, and Platen read Loeben in 1824. Kleist interested himself in Loeben sufficiently to publish one of his short stories in his Abendblätter, but only after he had so thoroughly revised it that Reinhold Steig says: "Ich würde als Herausgeber die Erzählung sogar unter Kleists Parerga aufnehmen."[11] His connection with, and influence upon, the Dresden group of romanticists, including Tieck, is a matter of record,[12] and Fouqué looked upon him as a poet of uncommon ability.[13]

But let no one on this account believe that Loeben was a great poet and that the silence concerning him is therefore grimly unjust. Goethe, whether he made the foregoing remark or not, at least received[14] Loeben kindly; but he received others in the same way who were not poets at all. Eichendorff said: "Loeben. Wunderbar poetische Natur in stiller Verklärung."[15] But Eichendorff was then only nineteen years old, and he later took this back. Herder was moved to tears[16] on reading Loeben's Maria, but Herder was easily moved, and he died soon after; he would in all probability have changed his mind too. Friedrich Schlegel, on the other hand, was not justified in calling[17] the pastoral poems in Arkadien "Schafpoesie." Uhland praised[18] these same poems; but he reminded Loeben in no uncertain terms, that the chief characteristic of southern poetry was "Phantasie," while that of the northern poets was "Gemüth," and that the attempt to revive the spirit of Guarini, Cervantes, and their kind was not well taken.

That Loeben has been so totally neglected by historians and encyclopedists is simply a case of that disproportion that so frequently characterizes general treatises. Loeben is entitled to some space in large works on German literature; but he was, like many another who has been given space, a weak poet. And the sort of weakness, with which he was endowed can be brought out by a discussion of two of his novelettes, Das weisse Ross,[19] and Leda, neither of which is by any means his best work, and neither of which seems to be his worst. But, to judge from what has been said of his prose works in general, both are quite typical.

The plot so far as the action[20] is concerned is as follows: Otto owes the victory he won at