University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
JEAN PAUL, THE ONLY-ONE.

The man in the play, who wished for `some
forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean
sea of brewis,' might have seen his ample
desires almost realized at the table d'hôte of the
Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming
dined that day. At the head of the table sat a
gentleman, with a smooth, broad forehead, and
large, intelligent eyes. He was from Baireuth in
Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean
Paul, to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his
right. There was music all dinner-time, at the
other end of the hall; a harp and a horn and a
voice; so that a great part of the fat gentleman's
conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming,
who sat opposite to her, and could look right
into her large, melancholy eyes. But what he

heard, so much interested him,—indeed, the very
name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been
enough for this,—that he ventured to join in the
conversation, and asked the German if he had
known the poet personally.

“Yes; I knew him well,” replied the stranger.
“I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the
best years of his life. In my mind the man and
the author are closely united. I never read a page
of his writings without hearing his voice, and seeing
his form before me. There he sits, with his
majestic, mountainous forehead, his mild blue eyes,
and finely cut nose and mouth; his massive frame
clad loosely and carelessly in an old green frock,
from the pockets of which the corners of books
project, and perhaps the end of a loaf of bread,
and the nose of a bottle;—a straw hat, lined with
green, lying near him; a huge walking-stick in his
hand, and at his feet a white poodle, with pink
eyes and a string round his neck. You would
sooner have taken him for a master-carpenter than
for a poet. Is he a favorite author of yours?”

Flemming answered in the affirmative.

“But a foreigner must find it exceedingly difficult
to understand him,” said the gentleman. “It
is by no means an easy task for us Germans.”

“I have always observed,” replied Flemming,
“that the true understanding and appreciation of
a poet depend more upon individual, than upon
national character. If there be a sympathy between
the minds of writer and reader, the bounds
and barriers of a foreign tongue are soon overleaped.
If you once understand an author's character,
the comprehension of his writings becomes
easy.”

“Very true,” replied the German, “and the
character of Richter is too marked to be easily
misunderstood. Its prominent traits are tenderness
and manliness,—qualities, which are seldom found
united in so high a degree as in him. Over all
he sees, over all he writes, are spread the sunbeams
of a cheerful spirit,—the light of inexhaustible
human love. Every sound of human
joy and of human sorrow finds a deep-resounding

echo in his bosom. In every man, he loves his
humanity only, not his superiority. The avowed
object of all his literary labors was to raise up
again the down-sunken faith in God, virtue, and
immortality; and, in an egotistical, revolutionary
age, to warm again our human sympathies, which
have now grown cold. And not less boundless is
his love for nature,—for this outward, beautiful
world. He embraces it all in his arms.”

“Yes,” answered Flemming, almost taking the
words out of the stranger's mouth, “for in his mind
all things become idealized. He seems to describe
himself when he describes the hero of his Titan,
as a child, rocking in a high wind upon the branches
of a full-blossomed apple-tree, and, as its summit,
blown abroad by the wind, now sunk him in
deep green, and now tossed him aloft in deep blue
and glancing sunshine,—in his imagination stood
that tree gigantic;—it grew alone in the universe,
as if it were the tree of eternal life; its roots
struck down into the abyss; the white and red
clouds hung as blossoms upon it; the moon as

fruit; the little stars sparkled like dew, and Albano
reposed in its measureless summit; and a storm
swayed the summit out of Day into Night, and out
of Night into Day.”

“Yet the spirit of love,” interrupted the Franconian,
“was not weakness, but strength. It was
united in him with great manliness. The sword
of his spirit had been forged and beaten by poverty.
Its temper had been tried by a thirty years'
war. It was not broken, not even blunted; but
rather strengthened and sharpened by the blows it
gave and received. And, possessing this noble spirit
of humanity, endurance, and self-denial, he made
literature his profession; as if he had been divinely
commissioned to write. He seems to have cared
for nothing else, to have thought of nothing else,
than living quietly and making books. He says,
that he felt it his duty, not to enjoy, nor to acquire,
but to write; and boasted, that he had made
as many books as he had lived years.”

“And what do you Germans consider the prominent
characteristics of his genius?”

“Most undoubtedly his wild imagination and
his playfulness. He throws over all things a
strange and magic coloring. You are startled at
the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations,
which are scattered everywhere with a reckless
prodigality;—multitudinous, like the blossoms
of early summer,—and as fragrant and beautiful.
With a thousand extravagances are mingled ten
thousand beauties of thought and expression, which
kindle the reader's imagination, and lead it onward
in a bold flight, through the glow of sunrise and
sunset, and the dewy coldness and starlight of summer
nights. He is difficult to understand,—intricate,—strange,—drawing
his illustrations from every
by-corner of science, art, and nature,—a comet,
among the bright stars of German literature.
When you read his works, it is as if you were
climbing a high mountain, in merry company, to
see the sun rise. At times you are enveloped in
mist,—the morning wind sweeps by you with a
shout,—you hear the far-off muttering thunders.
Wide beneath you spreads the landscape,—field,

meadow, town, and winding river. The ringing of
distant church-bells, or the sound of solemn village
clock, reaches you;—then arises the sweet and
manifold fragrance of flowers,—the birds begin to
sing,—the vapors roll away,—up comes the glorious
sun,—you revel like the lark in the sunshine
and bright blue heaven, and all is a delirious
dream of soul and sense,—when suddenly a friend
at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece
of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his
writings,—the serious and the comic, the sublime
and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous
are mingled together. At times he is sententious,
energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse.
His thoughts are like mummies embalmed
in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopements;
but within these the thoughts themselves
are kings. At times glad, beautiful images,
airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious;—
at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, chained
together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave
and base, high and low, all in their motley dresses,
go sweeping down the dusty page, like the galley-slaves,
that sweep the streets of Rome, where
you may chance to see the nobleman and the
peasant manacled together.”

Flemming smiled at the German's warmth, to
which the presence of the lady, and the Laubenheimer
wine, seemed each to have contributed
something, and then said;

“Better an outlaw, than not free!—These are
his own words. And thus he changes at his will.
Like the God Thor, of the old Northern mythology,
he now holds forth the seven bright stars in
the bright heaven above us, and now hides himself
in clouds, and pounds away with his great
hammer.”

“And yet this is not affectation in him,” rejoined
the German. “It is his nature, it is Jean
Paul. And the figures and ornaments of his style,
wild, fantastic, and oft-times startling, like those
in Gothic cathedrals, are not merely what they
seem, but massive coignes and buttresses, which
support the fabric. Remove them, and the roof

and walls fall in. And through these gurgoyles,
these wild faces, carved upon spouts and gutters,
flow out, like gathered rain, the bright, abundant
thoughts, that have fallen from heaven.

“And all he does, is done with a kind of serious
playfulness. He is a sea-monster, disporting
himself on the broad ocean; his very sport is earnest;
there is something majestic and serious about
it. In every thing there is strength, a rough good-nature,
all sunshine overhead, and underneath the
heavy moaning of the sea. Well may he be
called `Jean Paul, the Only-One.' ”

With such discourse the hour of dinner passed;
and after dinner Flemming went to the Cathedral.
They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in
blue, with a cocked hat, and a crimson sash and
collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles.
This important gentleman conducted Flemming
through the church, and showed him the choir,
with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the
beautiful figures in brown stone, over the bishops'
tombs. He then led him, by a side-door, into the

old and ruined cloisters of St. Willigis. Through
the low gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon
the pavement of tombstones, whose images and
inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps
of many generations. There stands the tomb of
Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured
on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly-marked,
and serious countenance. Below it is
a bas-relief, representing the poet's funeral. He
is carried to his grave by ladies, whose praise he
sang, and thereby won the name of Frauenlob.

“This then,” said Flemming, “is the grave,
not of Praise-God Bare-bones, but of Praise-the-Ladies
Meissen, who wrote songs `somewhat of
lust, and somewhat of love.' But where sleeps
the dust of his rival and foe, sweet Master Bartholomew
Rainbow?”

He meant this for an aside; but the turkey-cock
picked it up and answered;

“I do not know. He did not belong to this
parish.”

It was already night, when Flemming crossed

the Roman bridge over the Nahe, and entered
the town of Bingen. He stopped at the White
Horse; and, before going to bed, looked out into
the dim starlight from his window towards the
Rhine, and his heart leaped up to behold the bold
outline of the neighbouring hills crested with Gothic
ruins;—which in the morning proved to be
only a high, slated roof with fantastic chimneys.

The morning was bright and frosty; and the
river tinged with gay colors from the rising sun.
A soft, thin vapor floated in the air. In the sunbeams
flashed the hoar-frost, like silver stars; and
through a long avenue of trees, whose dripping
branches bent and scattered pearls before him,
Paul Flemming journeyed on in triumph.

I will not prolong this journey, for I am
weary and way-worn, and would fain be at Heidelberg
with my readers, and my hero. It was
already night when he reached the Manheim gate,
and drove down the long Hauptstrasse so slowly,
that it seemed to him endless. The shops were

lighted on each side of the street, and he saw
faces at the windows here and there, and figures
passing in the lamp-light, visible for a moment
and then swallowed up in the darkness. The
thoughts that filled his mind were strange; as are
always the thoughts of a traveller, who enters for
the first time a strange city. This little world had
been going on for centuries before he came; and
would go on for centuries after he was gone. Of
all the thousands who inhabited it he knew nothing;
and what knew they, or thought, of the
stranger, who, in that close post-chaise, weary with
travel, and chilled by the evening wind, was slowly
rumbling over the paved street! Truly, this
world can go on without us, if we would but think
so. If it had been a hearse instead of a post-chaise,
it would have been all the same to the people of
Heidelberg,—though by no means the same to
Paul Flemming.

But at the farther end of the city, near the
Castle and the Carls-Thor, one warm heart was

waiting to receive him; and this was the German
heart of his friend, the Baron of Hohenfels, with
whom he was to pass the winter in Heidelberg.
No sooner had the carriage stopped at the irongrated
gate, and the postilion blown his horn, to
announce the arrival of a traveller, than the Baron
was seen among the servants at the door; and, a
few moments afterwards, the two long-absent
friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming
received a kiss upon each cheek, and another on
the mouth, as the pledge and seal of the German's
friendship. They held each other long by the
hand, and looked into each other's faces, and saw
themselves in each other's eyes, both literally and
figuratively; literally, inasmuch as the images
were there; and figuratively, inasmuch as each was
imagining what the other thought of him, after the
lapse of some years. In friendly hopes and questionings
and answers, the evening glided away at
the supper-table, where many more things were
discussed than the roasted hare, and the Johannisberger;
and they sat late into the night, conversing
of the thoughts and feelings and delights, which
fill the hearts of young men, who have already
enjoyed and suffered, and hoped and been disappointed.