LECTURE SEVEN
ROBERT HAMERLING: POET AND THINKER Berlin, April 26, 1914
On July
15, 1889, I was standing in the St. Leonhard cemetery near Graz with
the writer Rosegger and the sculptor Hans Brandstetter as the body of
the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling was lowered into the grave.
[ Note 1 ]
Robert Hamerling had been called from the physical plane a few
days earlier. He died after decades of unutterable suffering that
grew to an unbearable level at the end of his life. Prior to the
burial, the body had been laid out in the beautiful Stifting House on
the outskirts of the Austro-Styrian town of Graz. The physical form
left behind by his great soul lay there, a wonderful reflection of a
life of striving to reach the highest levels of the spirit: so
expressive, so eloquent was this physical form. It also bore the
imprint of the unspeakable suffering this poet had had to endure in
his life!
On that occasion a little
girl of ten could be seen among the closest mourners. She was Robert
Hamerling's ward and had brightened and cheered the poet's last years
with the promise of her character. She was the girl to whom Robert
Hamerling had dedicated the lines that fundamentally reveal his mood
in the last years of his life.
[ Note 2 ]
And because they let us see
so deeply into Hamerling's soul, please permit me to read you these
lines:
To B.(ertha)
Child, like a butterfly harmlessly
Fluttering past the pain-racked invalid,
When having seen me begin the homeward journey,
In the wake of suffering
Do not think of me in your flush of youth:
A fleeting thought is all that you would give;
Nor when happily in love, in marriage or in motherhood:
Your memory would be only a pale reflection in the bustle of your life.
Only at sixty years of age, please think of me:
The poor sick man you saw
Year after year stretched on a bed of suffering,
Who, tortured by unceasing pain,
Spoke little, save laborious groans;
Nothing was he to you and nothing could he be.
At sixty years of age, child, think of him:
Then you will muse on him, muse long,
And late, deep compassion will rise in you
For him then long at rest from suffering.
A teardrop fills your eye as offering
For him long paled in death,
Who nothing was to you, and nothing could be.
It is not
necessary to describe the situation of a poet who could write lines
that speak so powerfully of his suffering in virtually the entire
second half of his life. There was much gossip, even after Hamerling
had already been confined to his bed for a large part of his life,
and allegations about the sybaritic life the author of “Ahasver”
supposedly led. It was even rumored that he lived in a sumptuous
house in Graz, and that he had a large number of girls for his
pleasure, who had to perform Greek dances day after day and other
such things. All these stories were told at a time when illness kept
him laid up while the sun was shining outside. He was forced to stay
in bed in his small room, knowing that outside the sun was shining on
the meadows, on the glorious nature he had enjoyed so much in the
brief periods he was able to leave his sickbed.
And this same bright sun
was shining gloriously when we accompanied the deceased to his last
resting place on July 15, 1889. There are few indeed who lived under
such outward constraints and yet were devoted with every fiber of
their soul to what is great, beautiful, monumental, magnificent, and
joyous in the world.
I remember one time sitting
with a young musician in Vienna who was a great friend of
Hamerling's. This young man was essentially a poor fellow who soon
succumbed to a mental illness. He was deeply pessimistic and never
tired of complaining about life. And since he loved Hamerling a great
deal, he loved to cite the poet in his complaints about life. On this
occasion, the young musician once again wanted to quote Hamerling as
a pessimist. As we were sitting together in a cafe, I was able to
call for a newspaper that contained a small occasional poem by
Hamerling entitled “Personal Request.” I showed it to the
young musician.
Personal Request
Say that I write bad verses,
Say that I steal the silverware,
Say I'm a rotten German
Because my diet says I can't eat Jews
And Slavs for breakfast;
Or that I betray our Austria
Because I sing the praise of Bismarck.
Say that I'm stricken with grief because
Praise for me is sadly lacking,
Slandered I am basely on occasion —
But I ask one thing only:
Do not say that I'm a pessimist,
That the last word in my singing
Belongs to blasé-modern
Stupid, dull unhappiness with living!
What? The poet is a pessimist
Because he makes complaining noises?
Just because the world is lovely
And life seems so charming to him
He would painfully regret it
If his part he were to forfeit.
If you call pessimists all persons
Who complain, then pessimistic
Is the man from whom a cry
Escapes while he is at the dentist!
Everything the critics say, believe them,
Except that I'm a pessimist!
I hate this word. To me it smells
Rather like its final syllable.
[ Note 3 ]
These
words characterize Hamerling's attitude and show that he lived in
greatest pain (he wrote as much to Rosegger) at the time of writing
this poem “Personal Request.” He wrote to Rosegger: “I
am not worried about becoming a pessimist, but I do fear going mad or
becoming an imbecile, as sometimes I can manage only a few minutes
respite from the never-ending pain!”
[ Note 4 ]
The man who began
his poetic career with words truly sounding like a lifetime's program
was worried about going mad or becoming an imbecile, but not about
becoming a pessimist. For when Robert Hamerling sent his first major
poem, “Venus in Exile,” out into the world, he gave it
the motto:
Go on your way, a holy messenger,
And sing in joyful tones
Of the dawning day,
Of the realm of beauty to come.
That was
his attitude throughout his life. We must recall one very memorable
scene if we want to fully understand Hamerling's unique nature. A few
months or weeks before his death, he moved from his flat in Graz —
where he lived on the street then called Realschulstrasse; now it is
Hamerlingstrasse — to a small summer house, called Stifting
House, situated in a secluded area on the outskirts of the town. Two
servants had to carry the invalid down; his flat was three floors up.
Several times he almost fainted. But on either side of him he had a
parcel tied up with a broad ribbon, which went round his neck like a
stole; they contained the wrapped manuscript of his last work,
The Atomistic Will.
[ Note 5 ]
This was characteristic of the way this
poet lived and of what he loved. He did not want the manuscript of
this philosophical work to leave his hands for even a minute! He was
so ill that two servants had to carry him down; yet he had to hold on
to the thing that filled his life. So he was carried down and taken
out to Stifting House in the most beautiful sunshine, sighing, “Oh,
what pleasure to ride like this; if only I were less ill, less ill!”
The soul and spirit at work
under these physical conditions remained open to all that is great
and beautiful, all that is filled with spirit in the world. It worked
out of the wellsprings of greatness, beauty, and spirituality in such
a way that we cannot really be surprised by his attitude to
pessimism. We cannot be surprised to see in Hamerling's spirit living
cosmic evidence that the spiritual forces in us can triumph over
material and natural forces, however obstructive they may be, in
every situation.
Fifty-nine years earlier,
that is in 1830, Robert Hamerling was born in Austria in an area
called Waldviertel.
[ Note 6 ]
Because of its special natural
configuration that region is eminently suited — and was
probably more so then than now when it is crisscrossed by railroad
lines — to concentrate the soul inwardly if it is awake and to
deepen the soul. The Waldviertel region is basically a backwater of
civilization, although someone was born and lived there in the first
half of the nineteenth century who was also widely known in Austria
this side of the river Leitha. He has probably been forgotten by now,
and at most continues to live in the memory of the people in the
Waldviertel, in numerous folk legends. I have to add that I often
heard tell of this person's fame because my parents came from the
Waldviertel area. Thus, I could at least hear about the remnants of
his peculiar fame, which is characteristic of the atmosphere of
cultural isolation in that region. This famous person was none other
than one of the “most famous” robbers and murderers of
the time, namely, Grasel. This Grasel was certainly more famous than
anyone else who came from the Waldviertel region.
In his later years,
Hamerling wrote about the Waldviertel area, and I want to read you
just a few lines from what he said about his native region where he
lived for the first ten or fifteen years of his life, because I
believe these words can throw much greater light on Hamerling's
nature than any academic characterization. He writes:
I do
not know how much the construction of a railroad skirting the
Waldviertel area has affected the latter's isolation from the world.
In 1867, the appearance of a stranger still created quite a stir
there. If such a person came along on foot or by coach, the oxen
plowing the fields came to a halt and turned their heads to gawk at
the new apparition. The farmer made one or two feeble attempts to
drive them on with his whip — but in vain, and finally, he did
likewise, and the plow rested until the stranger had disappeared
behind the next hill or forest. That, too, is the image of an
idyllic atmosphere!
[ Note 7 ]
Hamerling's
life and personality are an example of a soul growing out of and
beyond its environment, and of an individuality's development. He was
the son of a poor weaver. Since they were completely impoverished,
his parents were evicted from their home at a time when Hamerling was
not yet capable of even saying “I.” His father was forced
to go abroad while his mother remained in the Waldviertel area, in
Schonau, with the young boy. There the child experienced the beauties
of the Waldviertel region. A scene from that time remained always in
his memory of an experience he believed actually gave him his own
being. The seven-year-old boy was going down a hill. It was evening,
and the sun was setting in the west. Something came toward him,
golden, out of the golden sunshine, and Hamerling describes what was
shining forth in the golden light as follows:
Among
the most significant memories of my boyhood, but also most difficult
to convey, are the often strange moods that passed through my soul
when I was a roaming boy. In part they came from the moment's lively
impressions and stimulation, usually from nature around me, in part
they were waking dreams and premonitions. Speaking about himself,
the mystic Jakob Böhme used to say that the higher meaning, the
mystical life of the spirit was awakened in him miraculously at the
moment when he was dreamily absorbed in gazing at a pewter bowl
sparkling in the sunlight.
[ Note 8 ]
Perhaps every spiritual person
has a pewter bowl like Böhme's as the origin of his real inner
awakening. I vividly recall a certain evening when I was about seven
years old. I was going down a hill, and the sunset shone toward me
like a miracle, a spiritual vision. It filled my heart with an
unforgettably strange mood, with a presentiment that today seems to
me like a calling, reflecting my future destiny. In high spirits, I
hurried toward an unknown destination; yet, at the same time my soul
was filled with a melancholy that made me want to cry. If that
moment could have been explained out of the surrounding
circumstances, if it had not been so completely unique, it would
surely not have remained so indelibly in my memory.
[ Note 9 ]
Thus, in
the poet's seventh year the poetic and spiritual muse drew near. At
that time, the seed for everything that was later to become of this
soul was laid into it from out of the cosmos, so to speak. The nice
thing is that Hamerling ascribes his poetic calling to such an event,
as if it were a miracle the cosmos itself performed on him.
Because of his parents'
poverty, the boy had to be educated at the Cistercian monastery of
Zwettl.
[ Note 10 ]
In return for his school lessons, he had to sing in
the monastery choir. At that time, Hamerling was between ten and
fourteen years old. He formed a close relationship to a strange
personality at the monastery, namely, Father Hugo Traumihler, a
person completely given over to mystical contemplation and a strict
ascetic life. At that time the boy already possessed a thirst for the
beauty of the cosmos and an urge to deepen his soul. You can imagine
that he was inspired by the inner experiences Father Traumihler
described from his inner contemplation of the secrets of the heart
and soul. He was a mystic of a very elementary, primitive kind who
nevertheless made a deep impression on Hamerling's soul.
But it is impossible to
talk about the poet Hamerling without mentioning what was such a
great part of his longing: the longing to be a great human being.
When he returned on a trip to the Waldviertel long after he had left
the area, people who knew that he came from there asked him what he
wanted to be.
[ Note 11 ]
But although he was already well past twenty,
Hamerling had not thought about what he wanted to be. This
realization brought it home to him that at that age you cannot avoid
the question “What do you want to do?” The only thing he
could tell himself was: “Well, I cannot really tell them what I
want to be, because they would not understand. For when I am asked
what I want to be, I want to answer: I want to become a human being!”
So sometimes he said he wanted to be a philologist or an astronomer
or something like that. People could understand that. But they would
not have understood that someone who had finished his studies might
intend to become a human being.
Well, much could be said
about the development of Hamerling as a poet and, above all, about the
unfolding of three things in his soul. The first he later described in
The Atomistic Will
by saying that the Greeks called the universe “cosmos,” a
word connected with beauty.
[ Note 12 ]
That, to him, was characteristic
of the Greek spirit, for his soul was filled with the beauty that resonates
throughout the universe. And his heart's desire was to see humankind
in turn permeated by that beauty; that was what he wanted to express
in poetic form. So everything in him strove toward beauty, toward the
beauty-filled world of the Greeks. Yet he saw so many aspects of life
that cast a pall over the beauty intended by nature. For him beauty
was identical with spirituality. He would often survey everything he
knew about Hellenism and then look with sadness at modern culture,
the readers of his poetry. He wanted to write poetry for this modern
culture in order to fill it with sounds that would encourage people
to bring beauty and spirituality back into life, and thus return
happiness to life on earth. Hamerling found it impossible to speak of
a discrepancy between the world and beauty in human life. He was
inspired by the belief that life should be infused with beauty, that
beauty should be alive in the world, and from his youth on he would
have preferred to live for that alone. It was like an instinct in his
soul. But he had met with much that showed him the modern age must
struggle through many things that frustrate our ideals in life.
Hamerling was a student in
1848. He was a member of the liberation movement and was arrested by
the police for this “great crime” and given a special
punishment, as happened to many who had been part of the liberation
movement in Vienna at that time. If they went beyond what the police
thought permissible, they were taken to the barber where their hair
was cut as a sign that they were “democrats.” These days
you no longer risk having your hair cut just because you hold liberal
views — progress indeed! The other thing not allowed at that
time was the wearing of a broad-brimmed hat. This again was taken as
a sign of liberal views. One had to wear a so-called “topper,”
a top hat, which had full police approval.
Hamerling had to put up
with this and much else. Let me just mention one more event as a
small indication of how the world treated the great poet; I believe
it leads to a much better characterization than an abstract
description. The event I am referring to happened when Hamerling had
concluded his years at university and was about to take his teaching
examination. He had good grades in Greek, Latin, and mathematics.
Indeed, he received excellent grades on his Greek and Latin. But if
we read further in his report card, we find that although Hamerling
claimed to have read some grammar books, his performance in the
examination did not indicate a thorough study of the German language.
This was said of the man who has enriched the German language so
immeasurably through his unique style!
I would like to draw your
attention to another experience Hamerling had. In 1851, he became
acquainted with a family and one evening was invited to stay for a
party. He would have gladly joined them, but he could not stay. Then
the daughter of the family had a glass of punch sent over to his
student quarters. What were his feelings then? He suddenly had the
urge to take pencil and paper, and he felt himself transported into
another world. At first he saw images of world history, presented as
if in a large tableau. Then these images were transformed into a
chaos of blossoms, rot, blood, newts, golden fruits, blue eyes, harp
music, destruction of life, the thunder of cannons, and quarreling
people. Historical scenes alternated with blossoms and salamanders.
Then, as if crystallizing from out of the whole, a pale, serious
figure with penetrating eyes appeared. At the sight of this figure,
Hamerling came to. He looked at the piece of paper. The paper, blank
before the vision, had written on it the name Ahasver and below, the
outline for the poem “Ahasver.”
Hamerling's interest in
everything that moves the human soul to its heights and depths was of
rare profundity, and combined with a drunkenness with beauty, so to
speak. That is why the ten years he spent teaching high school in
Trieste on the glorious Adriatic and taking his vacations in
neighboring Venice may be described as a happy time for him. He got
to know Venice so well that years later he still knew all the nooks
and crannies and little alleys where he had walked many times on
beautiful evenings. There he saw radiant nature and southern beauty,
for which his soul had such a yearning. This southern beauty
blossomed in “Greeting in Song from the Adriatic.” Like
his early works, this poem shows Hamerling's extraordinary talent. It
was followed by “Venus in Exile.” Hamerling conceived of
Venus not only as the embodiment of earthly love, but as the bearer
of the beauty that rules and holds sway in the cosmos, a beauty that
is in exile as far as modern humanity is concerned. Robert
Hamerling's longing as a poet was to liberate beauty and love from
their exile. Hence the motto I read to you:
Go on your way, a holy messenger,
And sing in joyful tones
Of the dawning day,
Of the realm of beauty to come.
But
Hamerling's soul could not sing of the “dawning day, / Of the
realm of beauty to come” without looking into all the dark
recesses of the human soul. The vision of Ahasver shows what Robert
Hamerling saw in those recesses. It continued to stand before his
soul until he found the poetic form for the personality of Ahasver.
Ahasver became the thread running through human life as the
personification of an individuality who wants to escape life but
cannot. This individuality is then contrasted with that of Nero in
Rome, a man always seeking life but unable to find it in sensual
saturation and therefore eternally searching.
We can see how life's
contradictions confronted Hamerling. This becomes even clearer in his
poem “The King of Sion” where he describes a person who
wants to bring spiritual salvation from lofty heights to his fellow
human beings but falls prey to human weaknesses in the process, to
sensuality and so on. Hamerling was always reflecting on the
proximity of opposites in life, and he wanted to give this poetic
form. Greece arose before his soul in the form to which he wanted to
restore it. In Aspasia, he described the Greece of his
imagination, the country of his yearning, the world of beauty,
including the negative aspects such a world of beauty may also bear.
In the form of a three-part novel, Aspasia became a wonderful
poem about cultural history.
Robert Hamerling was not
understood, as I learned when I met a man in a godforsaken place
whose eyes burned with resentment and whose mouth had an ugly
expression. I do not mean physical ugliness, of course; physical
ugliness can actually radiate beauty of the highest degree. This man
was one of the most vicious critics of Aspasia. In comparison
with the beauty-filled poet, that man appeared to be one of the
ugliest men, and it was clear why his bitter soul could not
understand Hamerling.
All of Robert Hamerling's
endeavors were of this order. There would be much to tell if I were
to recount the whole of his progress through history. He sought to
deal with Dante and Robespierre, ending with Homunculus, in whom he
wished to embody all of the grotesqueness of modern culture. There
would also be much to tell if I were to describe how Hamerling's
lyrical muse sought to find the reflective sounds permeating his
works in the beauty and colors of nature and in the spirit of nature.
Again, there would be much to say if I wanted to give you even just
an idea of how Hamerling's lyrical poetry is alive with everything
that can comfort our souls regarding the small things in the great
ones, or how his poems can give us the invincible faith that the
kingdom of beauty will triumph in the human soul however much the
demons of discord and ugliness might try to establish their rule.
Hamerling's soul suffered in life; yet in the midst of the deepest,
most painful suffering, his soul could find joy in the beauty of
spiritual activity. His soul could see the discords of the day all
around, and yet could immerse itself deeply in the beauty of the
night when the starry heavens rose above the waters. Hamerling was
able to give meaningful expression to this mood.
I wanted to describe
briefly, by means of a few episodes out of Hamerling's life, an image
of Robert Hamerling as a poet of the late nineteenth century who was
filled with an invincible awareness of the better future of humanity
because he was steeped completely in the truth of the beauty of the
universe. At the same time, he was a poet who could describe how the
spirit can be victorious in us over all the material obstacles and
hindrances to our spiritual nature.
It is impossible to
understand the poet Hamerling without reference to his lifelong
effort to answer the question: How do I become a human being?
Everything he created has human greatness, though not always poetic
excellence, for Hamerling's stature as a poet is a consequence of his
human greatness. When he saw disharmony in life, Hamerling always
felt an invincible urge in his soul to find the corresponding
harmony, to find the way in which all things ugly must dissolve into
beauty when we look at them rightly.
In conclusion, I want to
read you a small, insignificant poem typical of Hamerling. In
conception and thought it belongs to his early years, but it does
characterize the mood, albeit in primitive poetic simplicity, that
accompanied him throughout his life:
The Lion and the Rose
On a deep red rose
The angry lion trod
His paw caught fast the thorn
Of this delicate bud.
His paw swelled large;
In angry pain he died.
Refreshed, the red rose drank
The early morning dew.
Be the delicate ever so delicate,
The rough ever so rough,
That which is fragile, gentle, pure —
Beauty, triumphs over all.
[ Note 13 ]
This mood
— we can see it in everything he wrote — accompanied
Hamerling through his life:
Be the delicate ever so delicate,
The rough ever so rough,
That which is fragile, gentle, pure —
Beauty, triumphs over all.
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