BAUMBACH'S "SUMMER LEGENDS."*
TRH Thuringian poet whose Summer Legends are here trans-
lated has a true grace, and a delicate fancy of his own ; but he is too eager to satirise the world as it is, and consequently he often spoils a beautiful story by tarnishing it with a cer- tain spirit of mockery which is not at all in keeping with the fanciful idealism that is their main beauty. Miss Dole would certainly have done better to exclude, for instance, "The Water of Forgetfulness" entirely from her volume.
The opening of it is disagreeable and not at all in the tone of the best of these tales, and though the close is conceived in a very different spirit, that does not take the bad taste out of the mouth, which the opening produces. Another of the efforts at satire which is of a less objectionable kind, but still quite out of keeping with the delicate idealism distinguishing the best of these tales, is " Theodelinda, and the Water-Sprite,' in which a sentimental young lady, a would-be poetess, so disgusts a water-sprite by her long-winded effusions as to drive him away from a fairy home where he was an unwelcome 'visitor; so that Theodelinda actually earns the gratitude of the little forest-women by her dreary sickliness, and receives in return an inexhaustible skein of blue yarn from which she knits herself blue stockings in superfluity. In the same tone is the last legend, in which is described the union of the immortal" Stupidity" with the equally immortal "Pride," and the great happiness of that union. We cannot say that we enjoy these attempts of Baumbach to engraft a cold and shallow mockery on his fair flights of fancy. There is, to our apprehension, a jar in this kind of story which is extremely disagreeable. The fanciful idealism is tainted by the mockery, and the effect of the mockery itself is blunted by the medium of fancy in which it is conveyed to us. But when Baumbach does not give way to his rather unfortunate taste for combining mockery with fancy, he can write as perfect a story as Hans Christian Andersen himself. "The Forgotten Bell," for in- stance, and "The Water of Youth," and" The Match-Makers," and "The Easter Rabbit," are all of them tales of great beauty which we should have picked out for special admira- tion even if we had found them amongst Andersen's tales ; for they have the happy ring about them, and the spiritual delicacy, and the childlike simplicity, which give to so many of Andersen's tales their liquid freshness and their playful innocence. Andersen himself could hardly have imagined a better conversation between a cat and a dog on their master's melancholy, and the best cure for it, than Baumbach has given us in "The Match-Makers." A lonely artist is sitting in his room on Christmas Eve lamenting his solitude :— .
" Then, as he sat thus brooding over the past, he suddenly heard close to him the words : Old friend, shall we chat together ? The master is asleep.'—' I am willing,' came the answer. You begin.' —r That is my poodle and my cat,' said the scan to himself, 'and I am dreaming To be sure, on Christmas eve, animals have the power of speech ; I used often to hear that when I was young. If only I do not wake up before I learn what the two have to say to one another !'—' Friend Pussy,' the poodle began, do you know that for some time the master has not quite pleased me ? He has neglected me. I will forgive him for not having me sheared in the summer, but it hurts me deeply that he almost never claims my services.'—' Yes,' replied the cat, he is no longer as he used to be. Just think, yesterday he even forgot to give me my breakfast. At last I shall have to return to my former life of catching mice. That would be hard.'—' Do you know, my dear,' said the poodle, what would be the best thing for us and for him ? If we had a woman in the house who would look after our rights and keep things in order.'—' Oh !' exclaimed the cat, that is a doubtful suggestion. The wife would probably look on the friends of her husband's youth with disapproval. We have both seen our best days. Suppose the young woman should show us the door, what then, brother?'—' But I know one who would not do that,' replied the poodle, and you know her too.'—The cat pointed with her fore-paw to a little picture on the wall. It was a woman's head with large, dark, childlike eyes:—' Do you mean that one there.'—' Yea,' said the poodle. She would be the woman for us. She is friendly toward me, that I know ; and she doesn't digiike you, for I have seen with my own eyes how lately, when you creep around her window, looking for sparrows, she sets out a cup of milk for you. And our master She likes him too,' said the cat, filling out the sentence. That I know ; for when she is sitting by the window, sewing, and the master passes along on the street, she turns her pretty white neck after him, and blushes. And when people blush— I know what that means,' interrupted the poodle. We are both agreed, and that is the main point. She must be our mistress.'—' But the master ?' asked the cat, doubtfully.—' That will be all right,' said the poodle, confidently. But hush ! He is moving ; he is waking • Sumner Legends. By Rudolph Banmbach. Translated by Helen B. Dole. London: Walter Scott.
up.' The sleeper leaped from his chair, and looked suspiciously at his companions. But they lay, to all appearance lost in sweet dreams, curled up like snail-shells on their cushions, and never stirred. And with his hands behind his back, the man strode up and down the room, like one who is striving to settle some weighty question."
We can well imagine the sequel, though we cannot imagine it half as vividly as Baumbach, in whose hands it makes an exquisite Christmas picture.
Still more beautiful is the story of "The Forgotten Bell," which is really a charming poem in a fanciful dress, as the following opening will sufficiently prove :—
"The little bell in the ruined forest chapel saw with sorrow how everything was preparing for the feast of the Resurrection. In former years, when the sound of the bells trembled through the air at the happy Easter-tide, she, too, had lifted her voice and sung in the chorus of the proud sisters in the church towers. But that time was long ago. Since the old hermit was buried, no hand had pulled the rope at Easter-tide; silent and forgotten hung the bell beneath her little roof, and for a bell nothing is harder than to be obliged to keep silent at the feast of the Resurrection. Passion week had come. On Wednesday the hare came bounding out of the forest. He stopped in front of the chapel, stood on his hind legs, and called up to the bell, If you have anything to be done in the city, tell me, for I am on my way there. I have been appointed Easter hare, and have my paws full, and so much business to attend to that I don't know which end my head is on.' The sorrowful bell kept silent, and the hare ran on. The next night there was a mighty roaring in the air. The roes crouched down in the underbrush, for they thought it was the night hunts- man passing through the forest. But it was not the forest fiend, but the bells, on their way to Rome to obtain the blessing of the Pope. The bell from the convent on the mountain came over to the forest chapel, and stopped for a moment. 'How is it, sister,' she asked the forgotten bell; 'that you are not going, too ?'—' Ah, I would gladly go,' lamented the little bell. 'But I have been idle the whole year long, therefore I dare not go with you. Still, if you will do me a favour, say a good word to the holy father in Rome for me. Perhaps he will send some one to ring me on Easter Sunday. It is so melancholy to have to be silent when all of you are singing. Will you do me the kindness ?' The convent bell mumbled something like non possumus: Then she arose, like a great, clumsy bird, from the ground, and flew after the others. And the forgotten bell remained sadly behind. Be thankful that human beings leave you in peace,' said the forest owl to the bell. 'The stupid beasts in the woods understand nothing about your ringing, and it disturbs me in my meditation. But you are not entirely forsaken, for I am going to build my nest near you. And you will gain much by it, for I am a man from whom you can learn a great deal.' Thus spoke the owl, and puffed himself up. But the bell gave him no answer."
Why a writer who can write like this should think that it adds to the beauty of his conceptions to let-in to the body of them little bits of commonplace cynicism such as the following passage interwoven even into this lovely little tale, we cannot imagine. It would seem that the unhappy realism of the day has so infected Baumbach that he can hardly give us a frag- ment of pure and lovely idealism without suggesting some disagreeable contrast to remind us that life is not like that, but is full of spots and stains. Baumbach has told us in the opening of this story, that soon after the death of the hermit who that built the hermitage and placed the bell in it which afterwards found itself so forgotten, another hermit came who excited the jealousy of the nearest villagers :—
"It happened that soon after the hermit's decease another came, who established himself in the deserted hermitage ; and he pleased the women quite well, for he was young in years and had a pair of eyes as black as coals. But the new hermit was an eye- sore to the men ; why, it was never exactly known. In short, the peasants collected together one day, seized the recluse, and con- ducted him to the highway. And the hermit turned his back to the thankless fellows, and was seen no more in that region."
Now, that passage strikes the one false note in the story. Has Wagner's notion that discords add to the beauty of the higher music, really infected German literature so deeply that even poets like Baumbach think it artistic to interleave scraps of
cynicism with the purest and happiest flights of fancy P We have a strong impression that the basis of what is called
"Realism" as it runs through the literature of the present day has quite as often proved to be a pure loss to modern Art as a real gain to it. It is a gain where it is used to show life as it is in a connection in which it is appropriate that life should be so described, and where the ideal aim of human action is all the better appreciated through our understanding how far below that ideal our actual life falls. But where it adds nothing but a mocking note to the fancy of the poet, and rather suggests that the poet is only half in earnest in his higher visions, than that he is deeply sensible of the failure of human nature to live up to his standard, this vein of Realism only lowers the
significance of the visionary world into which it is introduced', instead of making its lesson appear all the nobler for the contrast with real life.
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