Shelley's German Afterlives: 1814-2000 (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)

Shelley’s German Afterlives 1814–2000 Susanne Schmid Shelley’s Ger man Afterlives Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and...

Author: Susanne Schmid

68 downloads 1237 Views 896KB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Shelley’s German Afterlives 1814–2000 Susanne Schmid

Shelley’s Ger man Afterlives

Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters Series Editor: Marilyn Gaull The nineteenth century invented major ﬁgures: gifted, productive, and inﬂuential writers and artists in English, European, and American public life who captured and expressed what Hazlitt called “The Spirit of the Age.” Their achievements summarize, reﬂect, and shape the cultural traditions they inherited and inﬂuence the quality of life that followed. Before radio, ﬁlm, and journalism deﬂected the energies of authors and audiences alike, literary forms such as popular verse, song lyrics, biographies, memoirs, letters, novels, reviews, essays, children’s books, and drama generated a golden age of letters incomparable in Western history. Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters presents a series of original biographical, critical, and scholarly studies of major ﬁgures evoking their energies, achievements, and their impact on the character of this age. Projects to be included range from works on Blake to Hardy, Erasmus Darwin to Charles Darwin, Wordsworth to Yeats, Coleridge and J. S. Mill, Joanna Baillie, Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats to Dickens, Tennyson, George Eliot, Browning, Hopkins, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and their contemporaries. The series editor is Marilyn Gaull, PhD from Indiana University. She served on the faculty at Temple University and is now in the department of English at New York University. She brings to the series decades of experience as editor of books on nineteenthcentury literature and culture. She is the founder and editor of The Wordsworth Circle, author of English Romanticism: The Human Context, publishes editions, essays, and reviews in numerous journals, and lectures internationally on British Romanticism, folklore, and narrative theory.

Shelley’s Ger man Afterlives 18 14 –2 0 0 0

Susanne Schmid

shelley’s german afterlives 1814–2000 © Susanne Schmid, 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-10: 1-4039-7750-X ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-7750-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schmid, Susanne, 1964Shelley’s German afterlives, 1814–2000/by Susanne Schmid. p.cm. The author’s Habilitationsschrift—Freie Universität Berlin. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-4039-7750-X (alk. paper) 1. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822—Appreciation—Germany. 2. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822—Inﬂuence. I. Title. PR5438.S28 2007 821’.7—dc22 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Macmillan India Ltd. First edition: March 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

2006047154

Contents

List of Tables

vii

Acknowledgments

viii

Abbreviations

x

1

1

Introduction: Immaterial Angel or Material Poet? Why Germany? – Why Shelley? – Material or Immaterial? History and Theory – Traces of Shelley’s Ups and Downs – Chronological and Systematic Stages of Exploration

2

The Textual Condition

21

English-Language Reprints: The Vicissitudes of the German Queen Mab – German Shelley Editions: Some Figures – Shelleyan Narratives I: Percy Bysshe Shelley – Shelleyan Narratives II: Mary Shelley – Four German Shelley Editions – German Poetry Anthologies – Shelley in German Anthologies 3 German Readers of Shelley

63

The Romantic Reader: Young, Male, Vulnerable, and Alone – The Poetry Market – Shelley in Circles – Radical Readers – Institutionalized Poetry: Schools and Universities – Magazines – The Uses of Reading Shelley 4 The Lives of a Failed Martyr: Shelley and Biography

83

Life-Writing – Shelley’s Poetry, Shelley’s Personae – English and German Biographies of Shelley – Young Germany and the Failed Martyr – Death, Funeral, Apotheosis – The Angel: Ariel 5 Lyrical Shelley Translations – Musical Settings – Popular Imitations: Geibel – The George Circle – Lyrical Shelley and Academia

113

vi

C o n t e n ts

6 Revolutionary Shelley

135

Public Protest: Freiligrath and Herwegh – Brecht’s Anachronistic Procession – Protesters’ Lives: Ret Marut alias B. Traven – Recollection in Tranquility: Hamm 7 Faustian, Mystical, Parricidal: Shelley’s Strong Selves

153

Prometheus Unbound, Nietzsche, and Faust – Shelley as a Mystical Poet: Yeats and Kassner – The Cenci, Parricide, and Expressionism Conclusion

173

Appendix 1: Anthologizing Shelley: A List of Anthologies by Date of Appearance

177

Appendix 2: German Shelley Editions

185

Notes

189

Index

233

List of Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3

German Shelley editions Years in which German anthologies with Shelley’s poems appeared Shelley’s most frequently printed poems in Germany

30 34 35

Ack nowledgments

Although Shelley’s own involvement with academia was not a happy one, he has become a frequently taught poet, not only in Englishspeaking countries but also in the rest of the world. Notwithstanding his deep-rooted and understandable skepticism of all things academic, this book about Shelley’s German afterlives has been shaped by the intellectual exchange offered by institutions, and, even more, by the generosity and warmth of individuals in such places, to whom I want to express my gratitude. First and foremost, my thanks go to Elinor Shaffer, who has enthusiastically supported my endeavors and whose project The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe has offered me excellent opportunities for gaining insights, exchanging views, debating methodologies, and making contacts. Claudia Brodsky, always inspiring, generously invited me to Princeton on a two-year Lynen fellowship (2002–2004) funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. While already working on another project, Literary Salons of the Romantic Period, I had the opportunity to ﬁnish most of this Shelley manuscript under the hospitable roof of Firestone Library. The Princeton Romanticism colloquium offered invaluable opportunities for discussion. The academic mentor for my Princeton stay was Uwe Böker (Dresden). My thanks also go to the Institute for Germanic Studies (London), which invited me for a short-term visiting fellowship in fall 2001 that enabled me to check material not available elsewhere. The German Science Foundation (DFG) funded several of my trips to conferences. I received emotional, intellectual, logistic, and material support from many others, among them Norbert Bachleitner, Stuart Curran, Angela Esterhammer, Ann Gardiner, Robert Gillett, Rüdiger Görner, Uli Knoepﬂmacher, Stephan Kohl, James McKusick, FranzMeier, Horst Meller, Lachlan Moyle, Sandra Pott, Anson Rabinbach, Michael Rossington, William St Clair, Pia Verheyen, and Thomas Zabka. I am extremely grateful to Marilyn Gaull, who kindly advised me on many issues and accepted my book into her series.

ix

Ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts

I want to thank the staff at Firestone Library (Princeton), the British Library (London), the Staatsbibliothek (Berlin), the Pforzheimer Collection at the New York Public Library, and the Deutsche Bibliothek (Frankfurt), who bore all my whimsical wishes with stoical patience and helped me dig up surprising books. Early versions of this project appeared as contributions in books, and I am grateful for the permission to reuse them. Parts of chapters 1, 4, 5, and 6 of my book are based on and develop ideas brought forward in “Reception as Performance: The Case of Shelley in Germany” in Romantic Poetry, ed. Angela Esterhammer (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2002), 461–472; with kind permission of John Benjamins Publishing Co., Amsterdam/Philadelphia, www.benjamins.com. Another early version is “Martyr? Gentleman? Atheist? Christian?— Nineteenth-Century German Constructions of Shelley,” in Anglistentag 1998 Erfurt. Proceedings, ed. Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann and Sabine Schülting (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1999), 339–348. My thanks go to the Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, www.wvtrier.de, for kindly permitting me to reuse the material. Some parts of chapter 3 of this book develop ideas from my article “Bewunderung, Kritik und Vielstimmigkeit. England und englische Literatur im Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes von 1832 bis 1849,” in Beiträge zur Rezeption der britischen und irischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen Raum, ed. Norbert Bachleitner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 107–117, esp. 114–117. My thanks go to Rodopi, www.rodopi. nl. Finally, some passages of chapter 2 further develop several points made in “The Act of Reading an Anthology,” Comparative Critical Studies 1 (2004): 53–69; some pages (58–59) and (65–67) have in part been reused with kind permission of Edinburgh University Press, www.eup.ed.ac.uk. I also want to thank Oxford University Press for allowing me to quote from the following: Shelley: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson [1905], corrected by G. M. Matthews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). This study was submitted and accepted as a Habilitation at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in citations throughout the text: L

The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).

SPP

Shelley’s Poetry and Prose: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2002).

SW

Shelley: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson [1905], corrected by G. M. Matthews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). By permission of Oxford University Press.

Chapter 1

I ntrodu ction: Immater ial Angel or M ater ial Poe t?

A

s Percy Bysshe Shelley received little recognition during his lifetime, he “looked to Germany and America for his appreciation after his death, and he judged rightly,” Thomas Medwin declared in his Life of Shelley (1847).1 Shelley took much interest in German literature, which, in his days, was often associated with August von Kotzebue’s plays and, even worse, with Gothic novels, and therefore reputed to be immoral. Shelley, however, fantasized about Germany as the freethinker’s safe haven, as a place of unfettered intellectual exchange for radicals. After his death in 1822, the German interest in Shelley, which followed in the wake of the Byron fever, soon manifested itself in numerous biographical sketches, translations, and imitations. Although the early reception focused on his life, death, and funeral, his poetry soon found appreciation. Shelley has been read as the innocent martyr of circumstance, the unworldly arbiter of the aesthetic, the rebellious harbinger of revolution, the Titanic champion of parricide. Well-known authors, less-famous reviewers and editors, and anonymous readers have delighted in reinventing manifold Shelleys, who left traces not only in poems, plays, and novellas but also in anthologies, travelogues, musical settings, popular magazines, and tacky biographies, and even at radical meetings. Shelley, the immaterial and eternal angel, is thus tied to printed matter and to real events, and metamorphoses into a material poet. While tracing the history of Shelley’s reception in Germany, this book will also show how reception processes work across linguistic, national, and cultural boundaries, speciﬁcally highlighting

2

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Anglo-German literary and cultural relations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If Comparative Literature has often focused on great authors, their works, and their mutual inﬂuences, my study attempts to break new ground by using material such as popular reading matter and nonliterary texts and by drawing on methods established in the ﬁelds of textual criticism and book history. From this perspective, Shelley is no ahistorical aesthetic entity hovering above our heads, but tied to time and space, to the respective publications that transport him to a variety of readers. Thus, all acts of Shelley reception are performances, whose audiences interact with the texts in many foreseeable or maybe not so foreseeable ways.

Why Germany? Anglo-German interactions have shaped the literary and cultural lives of both countries but the relationship has by no means always been unstrained. In 1829, while visiting Weimar, Henry Crabb Robinson, the English man of letters, traveler, and conversationalist, called on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe several times. Although ﬂattered by the attention he received from the old poet, by then the senior statesman of German literature and an unquestioned authority on most issues concerning German cultural life, the meetings nevertheless occasioned some disappointment for Robinson because Goethe remained unshaken in his conviction that Byron, immortalized as “Euphorion” in the second part of his Faust, was the greatest English poet: “This, and indeed every evening, I believe, Lord Byron was the subject of his praise,”2 Robinson remarked; “I had not the courage to name the poet to whom I was and am most attached—Wordsworth.”3 Moreover, Robinson had tried to interest Goethe in Samuel Taylor Coleridge by reading out “Fire, Famine, and Slaughter”—in vain: Goethe only signaled his lack of interest.4 Although Robinson was aware of Shelley’s translation of Faust,5 his entries on Weimar do not even mention this poet, whom Goethe had called “ein armseeliger Wicht,”6 (“a miserable wretch”). Reception processes do not always run smoothly but are subject to personal preference and accident. Robinson’s missionary activities in the ﬁeld of literary relationships were only partly successful, and his futile endeavor makes him yet another unheard voice in the wilderness, a typical Romantic hero, whose quest was only recognized by posterity—in this case, by Goethe’s posterity. Despite the great poet’s dictum, the Jungdeutschen, (the Young Germans), a group of writers and critics of the

Introduction

3

1830s who openly combated Goethe’s overwhelming inﬂuence, soon began to read Shelley. The German reception of Shelley and of English Romanticism occurs against the backdrop of Anglo-German literary and cultural relations, which go back to Anglo-Saxon missionaries on the continent and of which two studies by Horst Oppel and Lawrence Marsden Price offer detailed surveys and extensive bibliographies.7 For the last 1,500 years, a continuing and fertile exchange of ideas and texts has gone on between the English- and German-speaking parts of Europe. Anglo-German cultural relationships consist of a complicated network of mutual inﬂuence: genres, styles, ﬁgures, and themes have traveled between the two countries for centuries. Faust appears in both languages’ best-known canonical texts. The English rediscovery of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century was shared by contemporaries in Germany, where the debates on the form and function of the newly emerging theater went hand in hand with a strong interest in Shakespeare, among whose admirers were Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Goethe. Thomas Percy’s ballads and James MacPherson’s Ossian deeply inﬂuenced German intellectual life, and English novels were so much sought after that they were often translated into German within a few years of their publication (Pamela, Joseph Andrews, Tristram Shandy), occasionally even in the same year (A Sentimental Journey).8 The inner struggles mastered by Samuel Richardson’s sentimental heroines found their way into Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. English novels of the Romantic period, in turn, borrowed much from German models both in style and in names and settings. Shelley was by no means the only English Romantic poet to turn to German thought. Coleridge was inﬂuenced by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, and Thomas Beddoes, allured by philosophy, spent many years in Germany. William Wordsworth’s complaint in the Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) about the “sickly and stupid German Tragedies” testiﬁes to the wide dissemination of popular German literature in Britain.9 Until the late eighteenth century, contemporary British poets (Edward Young, James Thomson) were read in Germany soon after being published.10 During the lifetime of the poets who later became the great six Romantics, however, hardly any mutual recognition occurred. The ﬁrst British Romantic authors widely read in Germany were Byron and Walter Scott.11 Robert Burns and Thomas Moore, the Scots and Irish bards, also enjoyed a certain degree of popularity.12 While William Blake, John Keats, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor

4

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Coleridge found few German readers before the turn of the century, Shelley soon became fashionable because he appeared alongside Byron in the very early stages of his continental reception. Shelley not only read and quoted from German literature but adapted its styles and themes to his own writings. Zastrozzi, his Gothic novel, is partly set in the small town of Passau and bears witness to the fashion for German horrors. His translation of passages from Goethe’s Faust around 1815 proves that he was among the ﬁrst to grasp the signiﬁcance of this text, then hardly known in England.13 Shelley’s enthusiasm for German literature eventually traveled back to its origin: Prometheus Unbound, centered on a character with overtly Faustian traits, enjoyed enormous popularity in Germany around the ﬁn de siècle, when Goethe’s Faust was widely read. Moreover, Shelley’s “Menschenliebe,”14 his glowing “love for mankind,” on which the early German critic Gustav Pﬁzer remarked, had at least one root in German literature: his idealization of love, his acquaintance with Platonic ideas, stems in part from his reading of Christoph Martin Wieland’s Agathon (1766–1767). One of his favorite images, that of the suffering poet (“I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”, “I die! I faint! I fail!”),15 can be traced back to a passage in Christian Friedrich Schubart’s poem “Der ewige Jude” (“The Eternal Jew”), published in 1783 and immensely popular for decades: “Und keuch—und zuck’ und sterbe!—”16 (“And pant, and start, and die.”) Schubart’s poem, Goethe’s Werther, and Shelley’s image of the suffering, helpless self all go back to the same combination of eighteenth-century sentimentalism with the emotionalism of Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”), the German equivalent of English pre-Romanticism. Most of Shelley’s later critics, among them the exponents of Young Germany, failed to recognize the roots of this image, taking it as evidence of Shelley’s essential weakness, passivity, and self-inﬂicted martyrdom without recognizing that their fascination with Shelley’s brand of Weltschmerz was essentially a reimport of German cultural goods.

Why Shelley? Shelley is a rewarding subject for a reception study because, over a time-span of nearly 200 years, many contradictory constructions and reactions have emerged. Nearly every reader who comments on him is attracted by his biography: his outsider status, his habits (Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, remarked on Shelley’s vegetarianism), and the lack of acknowledgment during his lifetime, the contemporary neglect

Introduction

5

for which he was compensated by posterity. No other Romantic poet has been the subject of such diverse readings. Four strands of reception stand out, in Germany as in England: his tragic life, his lyrical qualities, his political rebellion, and his Faustian champions. Despite the quality of his poetry, to many nineteenth-century readers, the brand name “Shelley” denoted a life rather than a set of literary texts. If one considers the success of Goethe’s Werther, one can understand why Shelley, whose early death was sometimes read as suicide, appealed to a German readership. When Gustav Ferdinand Kühne wrote a review of Medwin’s Shelley Papers, he fantasized about the poet’s demise. Endlich war es auch Shelley’s frühzeitiger plötzlicher Tod, der ein Interesse an ihm allgemeiner erweckte. Der seltsame Mensch hatte sich im jugendlich schwermüthigen Ueberdruß am Leben, wie seine Freunde sich erinnern, mehrmals einen Tod in den Meereswellen, und einen frühzeitigen gewünscht . . . Im Meerbusen von Genua ward sein noch blühendes Leben ein Raub der stürmischen Wellen.17 [Finally, it was his sudden early death which awakened the general interest in him. In youthful moods of melancholy weariness of life, the strange man had repeatedly wished for an early death in the waves of the sea, as his friends recalled . . . In the gulf of Genoa, his young life fell prey to the stormy waves.]

By introducing the possibility of unintentional suicide, Kühne situates Shelley in the context of Werther. This parallel, which the great Goethe had failed to see, proved to be decisive for Shelley’s German fates because it was impossible for decades not to read him as a martyr. Particularly in the early phase of his reception, Shelley’s biographies attracted more readers than his poetry, a development Shelley himself would hardly have welcomed because he did not exhibit himself to the public. Poets frequently allured their audiences both at home and abroad through their lives. Shelley belongs to a group of young men, writers and literary ﬁgures, who fueled the Romantic and postRomantic imagination: alienated outsiders, protesters, sometimes brooding and inward-looking, often poètes maudits, individuals suffering from the restraints of an unjust society. The lives of poets such as Shelley, Byron, and André Chénier have had a remarkable, in some cases even Europe-wide, appeal, similar to that of The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), translated into English within ﬁve years (1779) of its publication. All these poets died young and under tragic circumstances: Shelley was drowned in a storm, Byron succumbed to

6

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

a fever while ﬁghting for the liberty of Greece, and Chénier was guillotined during the French Revolution. Soon an apotheosis occurred. As the early nineteenth century was an era of emerging celebrity cult, not only the literary text but also the ﬁgure of the author was read and was expected to offer structures for identiﬁcation. Therefore, a poet’s private life came to be regarded as a performance, judged according to its entertainment value and its deviation from traditional morality. As news about a poet’s scandalous conduct traveled fast from one country to another, often faster than his literary texts, German readers of the 1830s knew of Shelley’s tragic life before they turned to his poetry. Long before Oscar Wilde, the artist became his own most important work of art, regardless of his intention to market his persona. Both on the side of the author and of his audience, conscious and unconscious constructions set in, for which Shelley constitutes a particularly interesting case, in England as well as in Germany. Contradictory readings of Shelley were possible because his literary texts deal with a large array of issues and cover a wide range of moods. The lyrical Shelley of “To a Skylark” differs from the hotheaded agitator of The Mask of Anarchy. Contrasting value judgments mark his reception in England: angel versus monster, lyrical poet versus revolutionary. His expulsion from Oxford following the publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, his ﬁrst marriage to Harriet Westbrook (undertaken against parental wishes), the ﬂight to the continent with Mary Godwin, and Harriet’s suicide all contributed to his scandalous reputation, which led many Victorians to regard him in a negative light. Mary Shelley and his friends countered this strand of reception by turning him into a saint, too good and too pure for this world. The Chartists, in contrast, saw Shelley as a political poet and made Queen Mab their bible.18 This political reception stood alongside the worship of the lyrical and ethereal Shelley, hailed as a “beautiful and ineffectual angel” by Matthew Arnold19 and transformed into the cult object of the Shelley Society, which was founded in 1886. In a study of the political Shelley, Paul Foot describes the lyrical turn in the English reception as a symbolic “castration” of the poet: school editions were purged of his radical ideas, and young people at universities were carefully “sheltered” from them.20 Needless to say, these different Shelleys appealed to different strata of readers. Similar extremes have been and are still perpetuated in Shelley’s reception in Germany, where each adaptation of Shelley occurs within the framework of German cultural and political contexts. Moreover, when foreign-language texts become available in translations and anthologies, further adaptations occur. Some German

Introduction

7

nineteenth-century translations of Shelley’s nature poems are modeled on the Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff, whereas the overtly political texts are grouped with and translated or adapted in the diction of early socialist songs, such as Georg Herwegh’s “Bundeslied für den Allgemeinen deutschen Arbeiterverein” (“Federal Hymn for the General Association of the German Workers,” 1863), which imitates Shelley’s political rhetoric. Around the turn of the century, in the wake of the renewed interest in Faust, German Shelley readers enthused over his Titanic and parricidal characters, Count Cenci, Beatrice, and Prometheus. Elsewhere, too, different culture-speciﬁc adaptations of Shelley emerged. While Shelley inﬂuenced the poet and revolutionary Sándor Petöﬁ in Hungary,21 the so-called New Style Poetry in Japan, which emerged around the turn of the century, found an important source in Shelley’s and Keats’s lyricism. Japan, which had opened up to the West as late as 1853, imitated Western role models in all areas, and thus, Japanese poets found inspiration in the “narrative charm” and lyrical qualities of English Romantic poetry.22 Shelley’s afterlife is the topic of a number of books and articles. The most important studies on his nineteenth-century reception in England are the ﬁnal chapters of Newman Ivey White’s Shelley (1947) and Sylva Norman’s amusingly written Flight of the Skylark (1954).23 Whereas White’s comprehensive study meticulously lists early editions and early reviews, Norman skillfully disentangles the manifold nineteenth-century legends woven around Shelley’s life by tracing them back to their respective creators. Likewise, Karsten Klejs Engelberg’s The Making of the Shelley Myth (1988), an annotated bibliography with an introductory essay, maps out constructions of Shelley’s life. As the title suggests, Foot’s Red Shelley (1980) focuses on the works and the reception of the radical Shelley, who had been neglected by educational establishments. Of particular interest is his chapter on pirated editions of Queen Mab. A recent study by Kim Wheatley, Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics (1999), analyzes the rhetoric of early reviews. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran’s Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World (1996), a selection of papers from a conference marking the bicentennial of Shelley’s birth, contains a number of articles that trace Shelley’s fates in and outside England. Numerous shorter contributions round off the picture.24 It is striking that so many studies on Shelley’s reception consider either his publishing history (White, Foot, Wheatley, Taylor, Fraistat) or the myths surrounding his life and death (Norman, Engelberg, Wheatley),25 whereas his literary inﬂuence seems to be of minor importance.

8

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Only Roland A. Duerksen’s Shelleyan Ideas in Victorian Literature (1966)26 concentrates on Shelley’s productive literary reception by Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, Charles Kingsley, George Eliot, and others, which, however, has never been considered a major question for scholars. In contrast, Byronists are far more concerned with the impact of Byron’s literary heroes at home and abroad.27 If the solitary Corsair incited enthusiastic imitations throughout Europe, Shelley’s much more abstract characters and settings found less artistic resonance among writers. Research on Shelley’s German reception commences with Solomon Liptzin’s Shelley in Germany (1924), followed by Enno Ruge’s The Trumpet of a Prophecy? Studien zur Rezeption Percy Bysshe Shelleys im “Vormärz” (1996), and by a number of articles. Liptzin paints a detailed picture of Shelley’s reception in essays, translations and literary texts, and, as he embeds his ﬁndings into the respective literary contexts, he moves beyond the positivist kind of research typical of his day.28 In studies such as Liptzin’s, the literary texts, the “works,” are stable entities with ﬁxed meanings of their own. Although older studies sometimes tend to value facts over analysis, their strength lies in offering valuable documentation, which needs to be the basis of all research on reception. Newer reception studies, in contrast, take more interest in the projections imposed on an author and his texts, starting from the recipient’s perspective. While focusing on Shelley’s impact on the Vormärz movement, Ruge’s The Trumpet of a Prophecy? points out the literary and historical contexts of contradictory readings, drawing mostly on magazines (early reviews, brief biographical sketches, contemporary popular poetry). By thoroughly illuminating each contributor’s political bias, Ruge presents multifaceted readings, not a uniﬁed image of Shelley but a panorama of views, ranging from martyr of error to champion of the German national cause. Apart from these two books, several articles by Horst Meller, Stefan Mitze, and Klaus Siebenhaar treat individual aspects.29 A new and systematic departure into reception studies particularly relevant to Romanticism is provided by a large research project in London, The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe, under the direction of Elinor Shaffer, which ranges from the seventeenth to the twenty-ﬁrst century and includes important authors such as Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley.30 The genre of Rezeptionsstudien (“reception studies”) seems to have special afﬁnities with German academia, where it has been popular for over one hundred years. Around the turn of the century, a ﬂood of positivist studies of “inﬂuence” appeared, often short PhDs

Introduction

9

that set out to show the impact of one great author on other major and minor writers. Many of these studies deserve to be brought back to light because they document source material that is difﬁcult to access. German reception studies went through a second boom in the 1970s and became one of the bones of contention between East and West German scholars. The issues at stake were the relevance of the textual structures as opposed to the sociological patterns of reading. Authorial intention was contrasted with the recipients’ expectations, conditioned by individual preferences or historical circumstance. Much-traded theories and terminologies were coined in German academia: Hans Robert Jauß’s “horizon of expectation” (“Erwartungshorizont”) and Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory gained international currency.31 However, German reception studies rarely resorted to printing and publishing history, although German scholarship is also renowned for its Buchwissenschaft, literally translated as “science of the book,” which is concerned with publishing and reading yet without the theoretical framework prevalent in American “textual criticism” and “book history.” Whereas previous German reception studies rarely combine publishing histories with histories of reception, Shelley’s German fates are an excellent case for anyone who wishes to argue in favor of a methodological change of direction.32

Material or Immaterial? History and Theory This book aims to explore premises new to comparative literary reception studies by drawing on textual criticism and book history, interdisciplinary ﬁelds of study that have gained in importance only over the last few decades. Although textual criticism and book history interlock and may even be used as synonymous terms, they originate from different disciplines. Textual criticism has departed from yet complements literary criticism by taking the factors of publication and reception into account. Book history, stemming from publishing history and bibliography, concerns itself with communication through print and the social and cultural dimensions of this communication.33 In order to map out the reception of Shelley’s life and texts, which have invited so many diverse readings, a theoretical framework suited both to Shelley’s highly subjective lyrical texts and to his multilayered reception history needs to be employed. This book is based on the following four theoretical assumptions: Materiality: Shelley’s texts (like Shelley the man) appear in material shape. Therefore, their reception needs to be considered from a

10

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

historicist perspective. Shelley readers are confronted with a miscellany of artifacts, which they encounter in different surroundings. A pirated edition of Queen Mab is not aimed at the same audience as a musical setting of “An den Mond” (“To the Moon”). Absence of stability: Shelley’s texts are not stable entities and do not possess any one immovable meaning at their center, which, like a lamp, sheds its light through the darkening shades of their adaptations.34 Varying meanings are constructed by and for varying audiences. Performativity: Each act of reception is a performance that builds up new “meanings” around a text. This book does not focus on a “great” poet’s inﬂuence but on the different reactions of audiences for whom he and his texts are staged in different ways. Subjectivity: Readers are inﬂuenced but never fully determined by the factors of class, politics, and gender. All acts of reading possess their very own subjective dimension: everyone may read against the grain. Materiality Byron, der Hausherr, einen weißen, gestickten Morgenrock lose auf den Schultern, den herrlichen Kopf mit dem dunkellockigen Haar ein wenig geneigt, ging beinahe bedrückt neben der schmalen und schlanken Gestalt Shelleys einher, dessen armseliger Reiseanzug den Eindruck seines seraphischen Gesichts nicht zu beeinträchtigen vermochte. Seine Haltung war leicht nach vorne gebeugt, wie um den Körper am Entschweben zu hindern, seine schönen Züge spiegelten die immerwährende Ergriffenheit und Begeisterung seiner Seele wider, die ein Absinken in niedere Bezirke nicht zu kennen schien.35

[Byron, the host, had a white, embroidered gown loosely on his shoulders, his wonderful head with the dark curly hair was slightly tilted, and he seemed almost oppressed as he was walking next to Shelley’s slim ﬁgure, whose paltry traveler’s clothes could not diminish the effect of his seraphic face. He was slightly bent forward, as if trying to keep his body from ﬂoating away. His beautiful features mirrored the constant enthusiasm of his soul, which did not seem to be capable of sinking into lower regions.]

To many readers and writers, Shelley is an angel, a spirit of a different quality of being, whose real tragedy had been to be tied down to time and space, to the gravity of life, for nearly 30 years. Edith

Introduction

11

Mikeleitis’s novella contrasts the sensuous Byron with the ethereal Shelley, who stand for the Dionysian and Apollonian principles, respectively. In numerous biographical sketches, Shelley appears predestined for a transcendence that situates him beyond the conﬁnes of dire materiality. The poet’s immateriality ﬁnds its counterpart in a notion of the literary text as a verbal construct, a set of ideas just as immaterial as the poet himself. Formalist approaches—New Criticism and deconstruction—focus on transhistorical aspects (textual structures, indeterminacy) and ignore or even deny the material dimension of the text, thereby promoting the immaterial poet. However, all intercourse, all exchange of ideas, is “materially executed,”36 as Jerome J. McGann declares. New Critics’ and deconstructionists’ attempts and refusals to ﬁnd deﬁnite meanings remain in the ahistorical closure of timelessness, whereas textual criticism focuses on the historical contexts of production and reception, particularly of poetry. In a move to set literary criticism onto a different track, McGann criticizes “our culture’s now dominant conceptions of textuality”37 as deﬁcient. In The Beauty of Inﬂections, a collection of programmatic essays, he argues in favor of a textual criticism beyond the “dry bones”38 of editorial scholarship, proposing to combine a close reading with historical procedure so that a critical analysis of a text must be integrated with a history of its textualizations and their reception. “Meaning” is then the process by which literary works are produced and reproduced.39 McGann thereby proposes a methodological schema that takes the factors of production, the immediate and later reception, into account.40 His approach is particularly fertile for Romantic poems, often subjected to a variety of readings. Neglected by contemporaries, they frequently found recognition only after the poets’ deaths, so that the “meanings” of the texts were (re)constructed at a time and in a context remote from that of their original production. Part of McGann’s argument goes back to Foucauldian and Barthesian notions of authorship and to the interpretative practices of New Historicism. Yet his emphasis on close reading is new to this approach. McGann’s project of theorizing antitheory takes no kind stance toward any interpretative strategy that ignores the material dimension. Deconstruction in particular comes into his line of attack, and Paul de Man’s “solitary ‘reader,’”41 in pursuit of never-to-be-ﬁxed meanings, misses out on the pleasures of material communication and can therefore only be pitied. For textual criticism, the material book is central to every analysis. Most reception studies, however, have ignored the materiality of texts and contexts. James McLaverty accurately sums up the issues at stake

12

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

when he asks: “If the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, where are Hamlet and Lycidas?”42 In contrast to painting and sculpture, a literary work of art, like music, possesses an unstable material identity.43 Whereas a painting or an architectural work (the Mona Lisa, the Louvre) exists only once and in material shape, a literary text appears in a variety of shapes. Although the Mona Lisa has also been reproduced time and again, the reproductions always go back to one material original. Reprinted poems, however, are not regarded as the offspring of the original, physical Ur-poem. Should the British Museum’s manuscript of “Kubla Khan” disappear, we would still believe in the existence of Coleridge’s poem, but the destruction of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre would lead us to classify this work of art as “lost.” This methodological problem is addressed by Jan Mukarˇovský, one of the exponents of the Prague School, who distinguishes between “aesthetic objects” and “material artifacts,” which correspond to Saussure’s “signiﬁé” and “signiﬁant.”44 Mukarˇovský’s material artifact (the printed text) signiﬁes the object of art (the poem). Whereas the artistic “work” of art or aesthetic object may traditionally be assigned superior status as representing the essence of art, it is in fact the material artifact that is permanent, that may last for centuries, and the reception of the aesthetic object entirely depends on it. It is only possible to read Shelley because the poems, the aesthetic objects, have been edited and anthologized in books, which can be touched, read, and circulated and which exist as material artifacts. Poetry is a special case because of the enormous variety of artifacts transporting the aesthetic objects: editions, anthologies, musical settings, et cetera. Whereas a play or a novel may be reprinted in its entirety, the bulk of texts constituting an author’s “poetic works” undergo frequent restructuring owing to the various modes of arranging these texts. Most poetry volumes entitled “Works” will display only a choice of poems, and each of those will vary. Editions, be they complete, variorum, or selections, and anthologies, combining texts by several authors, are the artifacts that offer kaleidoscopic views of the aesthetic objects through their different modes of arranging them. Absence of Stability No body of texts is a ﬁxed and stable transhistorical entity, and a brief look at Shelley’s complicated publishing history destroys all hope for a stable text.45 If deconstructionists pin down instability on the aesthetic level, textual critics seek it on the material plane. Texts are never timeless or universal—they are ﬁxed in their respective

Introduction

13

editions, and instability concerns the text both as aesthetic object and as material artifact. Queen Mab is a good example. As many nineteenth-century readers had access only to abridged versions, they missed out on some of the most shocking passages, which had been cut in some editions, so that their reactions may at least in part be determined by whether they were exposed to Shelley’s worst blasphemies or not. Different strata of readers encountered different versions of Queen Mab. Moreover, Shelley’s body of text has been reshaped and reorganized for numerous subsequent editions and anthologies. Thus, different artifacts assign different meanings to the aesthetic objects, the poems, which, when printed, nearly always undergo the above-mentioned process of selection. All selection criteria are subjective, inﬂuenced by historical circumstance, and the ordering of poetry is the result of reshaping and reorganizing a body of texts. And thus, the instability of a text is closely linked to its materiality. To return to Queen Mab: whereas the 1904 Oxford Shelley relegated Queen Mab to the back of the volume under the heading “Juvenilia,”46 thus presenting it as a youthful aberration, other editions emphasize the radical Shelley, and sometimes position Queen Mab at the very beginning. Queen Mab’s unstable position in Shelley’s oeuvre is mirrored by its unstable position in Shelley editions. If the notion of a stable text in English turns out to be a ﬁction, stability across linguistic boundaries is even more of an impossibility. As, up to 1840, only a fraction of Shelley’s texts were available in Germany, most readers relied on literary magazines and their biographical sketches, which were sometimes interspersed with poems. Translations, even when reliable, nevertheless add new layers of “meaning.” Two translations of Prometheus Unbound, one by Alfred Graf Wickenburg (1876) and one by Helene Richter (1887), differ remarkably, as a comparison in chapter 7 will show. Whereas Wickenburg’s invincible Prometheus is modeled on Nietzsche, Richter’s stands in the tradition of Protestant bourgeois self-improvement. Such different translations prevent the existence of a body of uniﬁed texts in any foreign language. Performativity Performativity has surfaced as a new paradigm in the study of literature and culture, and one of its key terms is “interaction.” If up to the 1980s culture was seen as a text, the focus has now shifted to a consideration of the processes of production and exchange, that is, to the model of “culture as perfomance.”47 Despite tensions, these two models are not mutually exclusive. In a performative model, the

14

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

relationship between actors and audience becomes central; thus, the performances do not occur in an ahistorical realm but are situated in space and time. The actors are not only the “great” authors but also their mediators: editors, publishers, reviewers, and readers, who, in turn, assume the role of the audience and pass on their knowledge, their views, and their cultural practices. In this model, the focus is on the activities and dynamics of production and exchange. The reader becomes an agent exposed to and participating in social practices. Here, performativity is not used in the sense of Judith Butler, who questions traditional concepts of “personality” and “gender” and substitutes them by shifting identities.48 What is under attack, once more, is the notion of the literary work as a stable entity. Angela Esterhammer’s profound exploration The Romantic Performative (2000)49 establishes the relationship between speaker and hearer as central to all utterances, and thus emphasizes their interaction. One early exploration of Shelley from the point of view of textual criticism, an inﬂuential article by Neil Fraistat, “Illegitimate Shelley: Radical Piracy and the Textual Edition as Cultural Performance” (1994), situates textual editions as performances, “informing—and informed by—their cultural moment.”50 The reader’s expectations and reactions are prestructured by the text and by the bibliographical codes of a given edition, the performance, which takes place at a certain time and for a speciﬁc audience.51 No theater production is aimed at one general transhistorical audience with uniﬁed expectations. This is also valid for the staging or editing of literary texts. Subjectivity Textual criticism and book history fall short of accounting for one aspect of reading: the fascination a poem can exude. Shelley has appealed to many readers, who found his life alluring and his poetry beautiful. Why? How? When research into reading is conducted as social history, it starts from the assumption that readers of the same sex or class read in a more or less uniform way. No readerly activity, however, is entirely determined by gender and class—the act of reading is individual. No two readers ever peruse exactly the same book in the same way. The Romantic poets saw the key concepts of “imagination” and “fancy” as relevant not only to the production but also to the reception of literature. “Imagination” and “fancy” are highly individual concepts, whose innovative potential rests on their break away from eighteenthcentury classicist, that is, transindividual norms. Their very nature lies in their individual uniqueness. Both poet and reader are visionaries,

Introduction

15

whose visions can never be fully grasped. For the Romantics, both the writing and reading of poetry resemble a dream like the one that generated “Kubla Khan.” The concept of “imagination” also plays an important role in Iser’s seminal study, The Act of Reading (1978), which combines literary analysis, anthropology, and psychology, aiming to explain what happens in the actual process of reading, the encounter between the reader and the response-inviting textual structures. Reading is an individual performance, and “meaning” is made in the interaction between reader and text. Bibliographical codes, which, according to textual critics like McGann, determine the different historical layers of “meaning,” play no role in Iser’s concept. Although he claims that his reader builds consistency during the act of comprehension, he promotes no uncontrolled subjectivity, because in his model, the text offers certain structures that precondition the act of reading. Iser also allows for indeterminacy: if no two acts of reading are alike, his individual reader determines his own indeterminacies. The reader aims to create consistency by bridging gaps and producing connections between the different viewpoints on offer and, eventually, may discover in himself what previously had been unavailable to him. When Iser argues that blanks and negations control the communication between reader and text,52 he has novels, that is, linear texts, in mind. A poem like “Ode to the West Wind” allows for even more divergent readings and different kinds of fascination. At this point, Iser’s subjective reading needs to be complemented by the hard facts of book history.53 Whoever reads an anthology piece is confronted with its materiality (the layout, choice, and arrangement of the poems), and thus, the act of creating consistency while reading depends on the selection of poetry. If an anthology—the artifact—offers a kaleidoscopic view of the aesthetic objects, the poems, then each reader has his individual book, his own kaleidoscope, which he can turn at his own will. * * * In questioning Shelley’s ahistorical value, this book also debunks the myth of the Romantic poet, of “Romanticism” as described in René Wellek’s famous article “The Concept of ‘Romanticism’ in Literary History,”54 which establishes imagination, nature, and symbolism as essential categories. Even though English (unlike German) Romanticism never existed as a movement, it ﬁgures as a period in literary history, dominated by the male “big six,” whose canonization on the basis of criteria like timelessness, transcendence, and truth, is a nineteenth-century process, like the selection of the texts that came

16

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

to be regarded as “mature” “Romantic” “works.” To the Romantics, the aesthetic object itself is not merely man-made but unique and divine. Shelley’s Defence of Poetry is exemplary in describing the status of a work of art: Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and the circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought: it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all . . . What were Virtue, Love, Patriotism, Friendship &c.—what were the scenery of this beautiful Universe which we inhabit—what were our consolations on this side of the grave—and what were our aspirations beyond it—if Poetry did not ascend to bring light and ﬁre from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? (SPP 531)55

McGann’s inﬂuential and controversial study The Romantic Ideology (1983) attacks scholarly Romanticism for its “uncritical absorption in Romanticism’s own self-representations.”56 To him, transcendence, truth, and timelessness are the cogwheels of a machine that produces false consciousness among readers. Writing with Shelleyan indignation against educational establishments, McGann historicizes the Romantic text, denies its transcendental meaning, and thus questions the very nature of the “Romantic ideology.” On the other hand, however, anyone who historicizes Shelley follows a Romantic myth when collecting traces of his belated acknowledgment through posterity.57 Is a complete escape from Romanticism possible?

Traces of Shelley’s Ups and Downs Shelley, the immaterial angel, left traces and imprints that were softer and less marked yet more continuous than the meteoric impact created by multivolume heavyweights like Byron. Historicizing Shelley’s German appearances and investigating his traces entails a closer look at the ephemeral artifacts to which the poet’s ﬂight took him. The scope of such media has been analyzed in exemplary fashion by the French working group “transferts culturels” under the direction of Michel Espagne. While tracing German–French cultural transfer in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the group draws on source material disconnected from “high art,” privileging everyday contact with culture over the veneration of great authors, considering popular reading matter, popular art, mediator ﬁgures, and publishing.58 This

Introduction

17

section will brieﬂy sketch the relevance of such sources, which provide the basis of analysis in later chapters. First and foremost, reception processes rely on people: readers, writers, reviewers, editors, translators, booksellers, teachers, travelers, salonnières. More traditional reception studies focus on the literary reactions of one “great” writer to another (for example Heinrich Heine’s imitation of Byron) and thus implicitly favor men, producers of “great” literature, whom they regard as the initiators of reception processes. Indeed, one might hold Goethe responsible both for the German enthusiasm about Byron and for the slightly belated interest in Shelley, which only set in after 1830. But is the power of such great men not overrated? Byron was read elsewhere, too, where Goethe’s inﬂuence did not reach. Goethe certainly shaped the initial reception process but does not carry the main responsibility for the reception or nonreception of any of these authors. Other initiators or mediators in reception processes are literary critics, and, important but sometimes forgotten, publishers and booksellers. All these mediators have their own interest in supplying “Shelley.” Unlike the literary-minded critics, publishers and booksellers are market-oriented, hardly interested in ﬁnding “truth” in Shelley, yet intent to sell him. Above all, Shelley was popular among female readers and writers. Louise von Ploennies, a translator, anthologist, and salonnière, inﬂuenced the German Shelley reception much more than Goethe ever did. This book considers a larger variety of texts than usual in a reception study: anthologies, editions, English-language reprints, magazines, translations, biographies, and travel writing. It positions elite acts of reception alongside nonelite readings, so that a comment by Nietzsche possesses the same status as a socialist songbook. Poems imitating Shelley’s, be they acknowledged literary works written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal or ephemeral creations by Emanuel Geibel, are considered equally relevant. Not all my material focuses on Shelley alone, who often ﬁgures as Byron’s or Keats’s companion. Shelley appears in a variety of media. In Germany, his poetry was ﬁrst printed in literary magazines, sometimes as part of a biographical sketch or review article. In the early nineteenth century, some of these articles were not originally written in German but translated, often without authorization, from British magazines, such as “Percy Bysshe Shelley. Eine biographische Skizze,” printed in the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes in 1832, which cites the Edinburgh Review as its source.59 Such articles, which initiate the interest in a poet, are often followed by single-author editions in translation, with a preface or afterword, which may constitute an interesting source

18

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

of poetological thought, especially in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century before Anglistik (“English Studies”) was established as a university subject. As a result of pirate publishing of English language reprints in Paris, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Chemnitz, and elsewhere, many English Romantic texts were cheaper on the continent than in England. Among the big reprinters were Galignani of Paris, who pirated many texts, and Tauchnitz of Leipzig, who soon entered into ﬁnancial agreements with the authors. Both reprinted Shelley in English because they valued him as a marketable poet. This proves that economic inﬂuences are as relevant as aesthetic and political aspects. Copyright is another frequently overlooked yet by no means marginal factor that accounts for more obstacles than censorship. International copyright does not become relevant before the end of the nineteenth century, yet restrictions within England inﬂuenced the publication and reading history of the English Shelley and, therefore, that of the continental Shelley, too. Most poets are anthologized only after the release of several translations. As anthologies mirror popular aesthetic and political presuppositions, editors frequently select poems that conform to popular conceptions of literary value. Literary adapations and imitations are created at a later stage. When, in the late nineteenth century, Anglistik began to consolidate as a university discipline, the Romantics ﬁgured prominently in lectures, learned articles, and books. Another frequently forgotten medium is travel writing. Most travelogues contain sketches and anecdotes of another country’s cultural life, and travelers take back scandals more readily than literary texts, particularly in the early phase of a poet’s reception. Johann Valentin Adrian, for example, wrote about Shelley in Bilder aus England (Pictures from England) as early as 1827. In Briefe eines Verstorbenen (Letters by a Deceased Person), Pückler-Muskau cast Byron as the victim of an ungrateful and philistine nation.60 Theodor Fontane referred to Shelley in Aus England und Schottland (From England and Scotland) in a similar vein: “Shelley, der Beschimpfte, durch die öffentliche Meinung vom Vaterland Verbannte” (“Shelley, abused and banished from his mother country because of public opinion”).61 Such constructions have traveled back with the writer and have contributed to the emergence of stereotypes. Reception is also inﬂuenced by space and time. Often, the slow pace of a reception process is overlooked. Whereas today, foreign-language books are on sale shortly after publication, they were less easily available before the twentieth century. Oppel’s survey of Anglo-German literary relations states that in the eighteenth century, reception processes

Introduction

19

happened locally. Hamburg, with its traditionally strong ties to England was geographically close enough to mediate between the two cultures, so it is not surprising that the ﬁrst English bookshop on the continent, later visited by Coleridge as well as William and Dorothy Wordsworth, opened up in precisely this city in 1788.62 If nineteenth-century Leipzig, the center of the German book trade, was an important nexus, English literature was also popular in the emerging cultural center of Berlin, and provincial Darmstadt in Hesse was a meeting place for numerous Shelley readers.

Chronological and Systematic Stages of Exploration Reception studies can approach their subjects chronologically or systematically. Historically, the ups and downs of the German interest in Shelley occurred in several clearly marked phases. As Liptzin’s study proceeds in chronological order, my own chronological survey can be kept very short. The German interest in Shelley ﬁrst peaked in the 1830s and 1840s, when exponents of Young Germany and of the prerevolutionary Vormärz movement discovered the poet as a martyr of circumstance, albeit a failed one.63 The main sources of information on Shelley were biographical sketches, and only when translations began to appear in installments from 1840 onward could readers peruse the poetry. Although the sedate 1850s and 1860s saw the publication of several articles on Shelley, no great interest can be recorded. The German Shelley revival began in 1866 with the release of Adolf Strodtmann’s translation, which was widely circulated and still is one of the standard Shelley translations in today’s libraries. The renewed interest turned to the poet’s longer texts, The Cenci, Queen Mab, and Prometheus Unbound. Several major poets, among them Hofmannsthal and members of the George circle, took an interest in the Faustian and the lyrical Shelleys around the turn of the century. Although the 1920s and 1930s witnessed an international decline of interest in English Romanticism, German expressionists of the 1920s continued to be fascinated by Shelley. After World War II, a revival of Romantic poetry occurred. Whereas the Titanic Shelley of the ﬁn de siècle had been read together with the mystical Blake, the 1950s Shelley was printed alongside the lyrical Keats. The hithertomentioned strands of reception mainly concern Shelley’s life, the lyrical Shelley and the Faustian Shelley, but yet another Shelley has coexisted alongside the ﬁrst three: the radical poet of Friedrich Engels, Bertolt Brecht, and Alfred Wolfenstein, and of the socialist songbooks, of the magazines edited by exiled German writers of the 1930s. This fourth

20

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Shelley was to be the East German complement of the West German lyrical angel of the 1950s and 1960s. This book follows not a chronological but a systematic argument and falls into seven critical stages. Chapter 1 establishes the need to consider the immaterial angel’s materiality and situates him in the ﬁeld of Anglo-German cultural exchange. Chapter 2 addresses Shelley’s material textualizations, his publishing history in Germany and in German, English-language reprints, editions of his poetry in translation, anthologies, and the arrangement of his poetry. Chapter 3 considers Shelley’s readership, starting from his own conception of his readers, and then moves to various realizations of Shelley in poetry recitals, musical settings, radical meetings, educational institutions, and magazines. Chapter 4 analyzes poems, novellas, and other texts inspired by his life, death, and cremation. Chapters 5–7 focus on the above-mentioned strands of reception: lyrical, revolutionary, and Faustian. Whereas evidence for the lyrical Shelley’s afterlife in Germany is surprisingly thin, the revolutionary Shelley has been more noticeable. The Faustian Shelley can be counted as a major “German” author around the turn of the century, whereas English reactions to this latter strand of reception are less marked. After so much systematic argument, however, one should remember that all reception processes are subject to yet another factor: chance. Goethe, in fact, had an unwitting ally in delaying Shelley’s German reception. Johann Heinrich Künzel, a writer from Darmstadt, who stood on the periphery of Ploennies’s circle, contributed several articles on English literature to an encyclopedia, the 1838–1841 edition of Brockhaus’s Conversationslexikon der Gegenwart. His well-informed entry “Englische Literatur” (“English Literature”) mentions Byron and Shelley. Unfortunately, the cooperation between Künzel and the publisher was not a happy one, and they seem to have been involved in a heated argument by the time Künzel had reached the middle of the alphabet. After the letter “L,” Künzel’s work for Brockhaus was terminated, and, consequently, Shelley’s entry into bourgeois German living rooms was delayed.64

Chapter 2

The Tex tual Condition

S

helley’s reception history is in part a history of his textualizations. As beﬁts a true radical, his textual entry into the Hapsburg Empire soon came to the attention of Metternich’s spies, who already knew about his notorious Queen Mab, published in 1813 and pirated since 1821.1 The Austrian foreign secretary Metternich, intent to restore and protect the political order of Europe, employed a large network of censors and informers, whose ﬁles are valuable sources for the circulation of reading matter in the early nineteenth century.2 A dossier in the Vienna State Archives, compiled around 1822–1823 by the Austrian police, relates information about Charles Clairmont, brother of Claire Clairmont and stepbrother of Mary Shelley: Mr. Claremont who it is supposed will once more endeavour to come here for an outward avowed purpose namely to give lessons but for a concealed one as the writer ﬁrmly believes is the son of the authoress of the “rights of Women”—his father was prosecuted in England some years since for sedition—his sister married Shelly—the author of Queen Mab Shelly was a deist—was deprived of his rights of a father by the Lord Chancellor of England—was the intimate of the late Lord Byron—Claremont is not his real name—it would be adviseable for the police to refer to the affair [word crossed out] with him at Presburgh.3

Charles Clairmont had come to Vienna as a language instructor and probably aroused suspicion because of his sister’s affair with Byron, who had contact with the insurrectionist Carbonari. As it is well documented that Metternich’s police observed Englishmen who had been in Italy and suspected them of antigovernment activities, Clairmont’s visit to the Shelley circle in Italy may have been taken as

22

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

proof of participation in a subversive movement, especially as the reference to Queen Mab alongside A Vindication of the Rights of Woman situates Shelley in a radical context.4 Although the ﬁrst edition of Queen Mab consists of a mere 250 texts, only 70 of which Shelley distributed, the poem soon found its way into the German-speaking parts of Europe. In 1814, the dramatist Kotzebue gave a copy of Queen Mab to an English traveler, who recounted this episode in The Theological Inquirer: I take the liberty of informing you, that during an excursion on the Continent, in the last summer, the celebrated Kotzebue put into my hands an English poem, which he doubted if I had seen in my own country, as he considered it too bold a production to issue from the British press. He spoke of it in the highest terms of admiration; and though I had not time then to peruse it, I afterwards purchased six copies of it at Berlin, and have been amply repaid by the pleasure it has afforded me.5

Although Wheatley convincingly argues that the anonymous F’s story is unlikely and only serves to highlight “British repression” as opposed to “continental freedom,”6 additional evidence nevertheless suggests its probability. Several articles in German magazines of 1819, 1820, and 1824 mention Shelley’s texts, thus proving that his literary production attracted attention almost immediately.7 The material Shelley and his textual realizations in Germany and in German are the subject of this chapter, which covers the following areas: ﬁrst, it aims to establish a publishing history of Shelley’s German texts—English-language reprints, English and German Shelley editions, anthologies—which constitute the material contexts for his reception. Second, it attempts to analyze the selection and ordering of his poetry. If, as Earl Miner pointed out, editions of poetry are “plotless narratives,”8 forming and transforming portraits of the author, German Shelley readers are offered various “narratives,” ranging from angelic sufferer to hotheaded rebel, which must be read in their respective German cultural and political contexts.

English-Language Reprints: The Vicissitudes of the German Q UEEN M AB Although scholars agree that the 1829 Galignani edition of The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, on which Mary Shelley collaborated, was an important step toward all later Shelley editions, other continental reprints of English authors, which were instrumental in spreading their fame, are regrettably underresearched.9

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

23

Shelley’s Queen Mab proves the need for further investigation into this phenomenon. English-language reprints had their heyday in the early nineteenth century, after new printing presses had made fast mass production possible and before bilateral copyright agreements, which emerged around 1850, curbed such reprinting. One German publisher, Friedrich Campe of Nuremberg, issued a Queen Mab in 1832, which was widely circulated and eventually found its way into the library of the young Friedrich Engels but also—again—fell prey to Austrian censors. The scope of Campe’s endeavor and the importance of his pirated Queen Mab need to be considered in the wider context of English-language reprinters, their programs, and their markets. The best-known and biggest continental reprinters of English-language texts in the early nineteenth century were the English-born brothers Galignani in Paris, whereas smaller ﬁrms like Campe’s are virtually unknown today as publishers of English books. Galignani offered cheap reprints of popular British authors from about 1820, mainly for British travelers, and from 1831 onward seems to have cooperated with the ﬁrm Baudry in the production of the series Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors.10 The program comprised, among others, Scott, Moore, Bulwer Lytton, Cooper, and Dickens. As Galignani’s texts were mostly pirated editions, British authors and publishers did not receive any share in the proﬁts. Tauchnitz in Leipzig started to print English texts in 1841, entered into ﬁnancial agreements with his authors in 1843, and promised to distribute his texts outside England or the former colonies. An article by G. P. R. James in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London of 1843 throws light on the practices of this unobtrusive trade. James, himself a writer of novels, biographies, and historical works that had been reprinted by Baudry and Galignani, probably against his will, complained bitterly about “one of the great cankerworms which have eaten into the heart of the British book trade.”11 If taxes on paper and advertising were the reason for high book prices in England, Galignani asked for only about a sixth of English prices, and because he did not restrict himself to the continental market, he was a serious competitor. Advertisements in Galignani’s Messenger, a daily English-language newspaper that appeared in Paris, frequently advertised the ﬁrm’s own editions, as on June 18, 1831: “Splendid editions, combining cheapness and portability. 200 volumes compressed into 17 volumes octavo, and at one sixth of the London prices.” Listed were works by Byron, Moore, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, Crabbe, Rogers, Campbell, and others.12 James describes how such piracies found their way into England and the colonies: sometimes

24

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

they were smuggled, “in sheets placed in layers between sheets of French works.” Even more successful was “a most unfortunate arrangement,” whereby customs ofﬁcers were “permitted to pass a single copy of each of these pirated works” in the baggage of travelers returning from the continent.13 Poor travelers would even be paid for carrying such books. Effective checks were impossible, because whenever a pirated work was discovered in England, its owner could argue that it had been legally imported by a traveler. As James also mentions advertisements promising delivery in England, at least part of Galignani’s production must have been aimed at the English market. In particular, circulating libraries near the coast proﬁted from the inﬂux of cheap reading material. This well-organized and proﬁtable trade was possible through loopholes until, in 1852, an Anglo-French copyright convention stopped most of Galignani’s reprinting.14 English buyers of continental reprints also appreciated that Galignani and other ﬁrms made it possible for them to evade the many existing forms of censorship. Shelley is a good example. When Mary Shelley compiled a selection of her late husband’s poetry in the Posthumous Poems of 1824, his father, Sir Timothy, enraged at an undertaking that would soil the respectable name of the Shelleys, suppressed part of the edition.15 Of the 500 copies that were printed, about 300 reached the public and 200 were withdrawn from sale. Mary Shelley, who was ﬁnancially dependent on Sir Timothy, could not take the risk of editing another collection of Percy’s poetry or of writing his life. Her volume was followed by English pirate editions, which sometimes even imitated her arrangement of the texts. Only in Galignani’s Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats (1829) could she publish another brief life of Shelley, which served as an introduction to his poetry. James’s diatribe against continental pirate prints mentions three German houses, albeit without naming them. As Tauchnitz did not print English texts before 1841 and paid royalties to authors from 1843 onward, James obviously had other ﬁrms in mind. Brönner of Frankfurt, who printed and sold English texts, had an impressive distribution network with contacts in Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Leyden, Milan, Moscow, Paris, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, and Venice.16 One can safely assume that he also delivered Englishlanguage reprints within Germany and England. Another such reprinter was Friedrich Campe of Nuremberg, the elder half brother of the renowned Julius Campe of the ﬁrm Hoffmann and Campe (Hamburg), who published Heinrich Heine, Anastasius Grün, and

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

25

other writers close to the thoughts of Young Germany and the Vormärz movement. Today, Friedrich Campe’s reputation mainly rests on his prints, his illustrated broadsheets (“Bilderbögen”), maps, children’s books, and other popular reading matter. As much source material about him was lost during World War II, little can be said about his business connections. Two short studies focus on his life and output but fail to mention English-language reprints.17 It is not surprising that Campe, a businessman of international connections with a good feeling for expanding markets, should have ventured into this lucrative ﬁeld. The British Library’s copy of Friedrich Campe’s Works of Benjamin Franklin contains a list of “Campe’s pocket editions of classics” on the inside of the front and back covers.18 His program comprised a range of popular British authors (Byron, Moore, Scott, Shakespeare) and is similar to but not as extensive as Galignani’s. The market was large enough for several competitors. Campe sold two kinds of texts: contemporary bestsellers, which, if printed in England, would have been subject to copyright restrictions, and older classics like Shakespeare. One of the contemporary texts he published was Queen Mab. Like other books from his pocket collection, Campe’s Queen Mab is fairly small (12º) and resembles other English pirate editions, some of which are even tinier. No copy I have seen bears the year of the imprint, for which Kayser’s Bücherlexikon, an encyclopedia of all books printed in Germany, gives 1832.19 To a Shelley reader, Campe’s edition had a special appeal because, unlike other piracies of Queen Mab, it is unabridged. Owing to its inﬂammatory contents, prone to arouse the suspicion of church and government, Queen Mab has had a complicated publishing history and was often reprinted in abbreviated form to ensure that the publisher would steer clear of trouble. Queen Mab is one of Shelley’s earliest poems and narrates how the fairy queen Mab takes the sleeping Ianthe up to the sky to show her the misery of this world. The long poem and the notes, which are in fact short, radical essays, are directed against church, religion, monarchy, marriage, and institutionalized abuse of power. A quotation on the title page, Archimedes’s ˜ στω ˜, και` κο´σμον κινη´σω” (SPP 16) (“Give me a place on “Δο` ς που which to stand and I shall move the world”) gives vent to Shelley’s revolutionary intention. How scandalous Queen Mab was to contemporaries emerged in the 1817 Chancery case for the custody of Shelley’s two children by his ﬁrst (and by then dead) wife, Harriet. Using Queen Mab as evidence, Harriet’s family depicted him as a heretic, unﬁt to look after his own offspring. The court ruled accordingly, and

26

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Shelley lost his case. When the ﬁrst radical pirated edition appeared in 1821, Shelley had grown out of his youthful polemic and called the poem “rather rough” (L II, 350). As a court ruling had established that Queen Mab was blasphemous and seditious, it was not protected by copyright law, and no one who reprinted or sold the text could be taken to court by the author or the publisher. Censorship thus contributed to spreading radical (or pornographic) texts. Byron’s Don Juan was pirated “legally” under similar circumstances. The wide distribution of Queen Mab became possible because a strong radical interest coincided with censorship laws advantageous to the dissemination of the text, as the large number of pirated editions proves, which were sold to radical thinkers and members of the working class. Three of the piracies were by Clark (1821, 1822, 1823), who was imprisoned at the instigation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice; others were by Baldwin, Brooks, and Hunt, distinct from one another through the length of the cuts, which were mainly motivated by the publishers’ fear of being tried for blasphemy.20 Hunt’s abbreviated version bears the subtitle “Free From All the Objectionable Passages” and lacks whole sections, among them part VII, a denial of God’s existence, and Shelley’s Notes. A comparison of the various Queen Mabs shows that Campe’s text is based on Clark’s edition,21 the least abridged and thus the most radical variant on the market. It may come as a surprise that foreign reprints ensured standards of authenticity not available through English editions. Like Galignani, Campe strove to release the complete and accurate text.22 The original contains several Greek and French quotations, for which the pirated copies use different English standard translations. Whereas Clark’s text contains the longer quotations in both languages, Campe prints them only in English and uses Clark’s, not Galignani’s or Baldwin’s, translations. Besides, Campe’s text, like Clark’s, is nearly complete, free from most objectionable abridgements. Campe’s Queen Mab must have returned to England because the British Library catalog lists two more reprints as “Campe’s edition,” namely, those by Hetherington/Watson and by Watson, giving 1839 and 1840 as dates of publication.23 Although the title pages of the British Library copies do not bear the year of the imprint, one may assume that the editions by Hetherington/Watson and Watson were printed after Campe’s. A comparison of the three volumes shows that the editors did not use the same plates, a frequent practice in the nineteenth century, as publishers would occasionally sell these plates to one another. Textual variants prove that some emendations were made. The Hetherington/Watson and Watson copies were

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

27

probably entered into the library catalog as “Campe’s edition” in the nineteenth century, when such information was available either through advertising or through the booksellers who supplied the copies. Despite the loss of sources about Campe, some clues about the distribution of his texts can be obtained. The title page of Queen Mab gives the following information: “Nuremberg published by Fr. Campe and Paris by Heideloff and Campe Ruë Vivienne N°. 16.” Galignani also resided in rue Vivienne, at number 18. Campe and his Paris-based partner, Heideloff, were probably aiming at the same market as Galignani, that is, Britain, where Queen Mab sold exceedingly well. Although the piratical neighbors Campe and Galignani were competitors, they may have cooperated in some areas, possibly even joined forces to organize the transport. The Nuremberg ﬁrm seems to have aimed even further than England because some Campe editions in the British Library (e.g. Franklin’s Works) bear the imprint “Nurnberg and New York printed and published by Frederick Campe and C°.” The Pforzheimer Library possesses a Queen Mab with the “Nurnberg and New York” imprint.24 Campe, who had business contacts in America, printed at least some texts for two markets,25 Europe and the former colonies of the British Empire. Unfortunately, little else is known about the circulation of these volumes. As none of the Campe editions I have seen bears the year of the imprint, one may assume that the printing was done from durable stereotype plates, which could be kept and reused. As large editions and continuing sales were expected, the year was left out so that the volumes would not be regarded as old stock.26 That Campe’s English-language editions were read on the continent is proved once more by Austrian censorship lists. In March 1835, Queen Mab was banned throughout the Hapsburg Empire, classiﬁed as erga schedam (strictly forbidden). While omitting the publisher, the place of publication is named, “Nurnberg et New-York,”27 indicating that the forbidden Queen Mab was in fact Campe’s radically unabridged text. As Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man had been banned in June 1826,28 followed by Medwin’s Shelley Papers in 1834, Queen Mab must have fulﬁlled the Austrians’ worst fears of the Shelley circle’s budding radicalism. Campe and his Paris-based associate, Heideloff, were not driven by market forces alone. When they published Heine’s Vorrede (Preface, 1833), which could not be printed in Prussia, they used the French connection to release material censored elsewhere.29 Another dangerous title was Adam Mickiewicz’s Bücher des polnischen Volks (Books of the Polish People), strictly forbidden in Germany but released by Heideloff and Campe in Paris, both in the original Polish (1832)

28

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

and as a German translation (1833). When the Prussian government put a ban on all existing and future texts published by Heideloff and Campe in 1834,30 Shelley’s Queen Mab must have been among the items thought to be suitable to stimulate the radical imagination. The only known (and radical) reader of Campe’s Queen Mab is Friedrich Engels, who possessed an edition with the “Nurnberg and New York” imprint.31 It is not difﬁcult to imagine how Shelley’s call to revolution added to Engels’s own ideas. Engels presumably translated some poetry by Shelley in 1839 and planned an edition in 1840 but failed to ﬁnd a publisher.32 Shelley’s accusations against an unjust regime, against the authority of the church, must have been grist to his mill. Had Engels read a less radically accurate, less authentic Queen Mab, would he have arrived at similar conclusions? Other English-language reprints of Shelley’s works were less controversial and also less inﬂuential. Abraham Isaac Asher, the founder of an English bookshop in Berlin (1830) with a London branch (1831), published an English edition of Shelley (1837), which I have not found anywhere.33 Another English-language edition of Shelley was released by Tauchnitz in 1872, in the series Collection of British and American Authors, a standard selection of Shelley’s poetry, edited by Mathilde Blind. By then, Shelley was an established canonized author, so the Tauchnitz volume could not be deemed revolutionary reading matter. Tauchnitz, who contributed to turning Leipzig into an important German center for the production and trade in German books, was one of the biggest reprinters of English literature on the continent, launching 3,741 titles between 1841 and 1900, and certainly no clandestine radical. As 80 percent of his production was read by foreigners, he achieved the large-scale distribution at which Friedrich Campe had aimed.34 Tauchnitz only reprinted books that were safe in two ways: uncontroversial and marketable, like Blind’s edition, which was among the forerunners of the Shelley revival and ensured that a European trend found its way into Germany. As the interest in Shelley, the sensitive poet of love and nature, was growing, it is not surprising that the Tauchnitz edition did not contain Queen Mab or, apart from “Ode to Liberty,” too many other explicitly political poems. Blind’s enthusiastic memoir hails Shelley as “the greatest idealistic poet of England” with “faith in a happier future of Humanity”35 and constructs a soft, feminine poet. Later Englishlanguage Shelley editions, like Richard Ackermann’s Epipsychidion und Adonais (1900) and Prometheus Unbound (1908), which offered the literary text in English and the notes in German, were published

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

29

for use in educational institutions and aimed at a general readership but not at a market outside Germany.36 In contrast, pirated editions such as Campe’s Queen Mab were unique and only possible in the early nineteenth century. Without advantageous censorship laws, loopholes, and radically accurate entrepreneurs, the authentic Queen Mab, of which originally only 70 copies were distributed, might not have survived into the twenty-ﬁrst century.

German Shelley Editions: Some Figures If Campe’s Queen Mab went through stormy adventures, German translations of Shelley’s poetry took a steadier, less exciting path. While magazines had covered the ﬁrst period of his reception, editions followed after 1830.37 This section intends to shed light on the peaks of the German interest in Shelley by providing some ﬁgures for a subsequent analysis of the arrangements of his poetry. Table 2.1, a survey of 40 German Shelley editions, gives the year of publication, the translator/editor, an abridged title, and the publisher.38 Editions are mentioned twice only if reprinted by another publisher or changed substantially. “E” indicates that the text is in English, “E/G” that the edition is bilingual, and “G” that it is in German. This could not always be veriﬁed, because some editions were only listed in old catalogs but were not available to me. In order to compare the output in the German-speaking countries to that of Britain and Ireland, the column on the right lists the numbers of Shelley editions that appeared in Britain within the respective decade. My source for these ﬁgures is the British Library Catalogue.39 Only substantially changed editions have been counted. For example: Mary Shelley’s 1839 edition is counted only once, whereas the second revised edition of 1840 is not counted. American editions are not included, either. Between Shelley’s death in 1822 and the year 1980, more than 250 editions of Shelley’s poetry were published in Britain and Ireland. The ﬁrst peak of interest in Britain occurred in the 1820s and 1830s, initiated at least partly by the Chartists’ fascination with Queen Mab. Shelley’s real British peak years, however, lay between 1870 and 1930 and saw a veritable deluge of Shelley volumes, ranging from frequently reprinted selections to privately printed individual poems or letters, some of which were released in editions of less than 100 copies for private collectors. Objects such as The Shelley Birthday Book and Calendar,40 a pocket calendar with a quotation for every day, exemplify the cult surrounding him. When popular

30

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Table 2.1

German Shelley editions

Decade

Year of Publication

1822–1830 1831–1840

1841–1850

1851–1860 1861–1870

1871–1880

1881–1890

1891–1900

1901–1910

1830

Editor/translator, title (publisher) (language)

P[aul] H[augwitz], Die Wolke (private print) (G) 1832 Queen Mab (Campe) (E) 1837 Felix Adolphi, Die Cenci (Verlag der Klassiker) (G) 1837 Percy Bissche Shelly. Poetical Works (Asher) (E) 1840 Ludwig Herrig and Ferdinand Prössel, Percy Shelleys Schriften (Meyer) (?) 1844 Julius Seybt, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetische Werke in einem Bande (Engelmann) (G) 1845 Ferdinand Prössel, Einige Dichtungen Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (Meyer) (G) None 1866 Adolf Strodtmann, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ausgewählte Dichtungen (Bibliographisches Institut) (G) 1872 Mathilde Blind, A Selection of the Poems (Tauchnitz) (E) 1876 Albrecht Graf Wickenburg, Der entfesselte Prometheus (Rosner) (G) 1878 Carl Weiser, Shelleys Feenkönigin (Reclam) (G) 1881 Queen Mab (Rudolphi & Klemm) (E) 1887 Helene Richter, Der entfesselte Prometheus (Waag) (G) ca. Adolf Strodtmann, Die Cenci 1886/88 (Meyer) (G) ca. Adolf Strodtmann, Lyrische 1886/88 Gedichte. Alastor (Meyer) (G) ca. Adolf Strodtmann, Königin Mab 1886/88 (Meyer) (G) ca. 1895 Helene Richter, Der entfesselte Prometheus (Reclam) (G) 1900 Richard Ackermann, Epipsychidion und Adonais (Felber) (E) 1902 Albrecht Graf Wickenburg, Der entfesselte Prometheus (Hendel) (G) 1904 W. Oetzmann, Die Cenci (Hendel) (G)

No. of editions published in England and Ireland 13 12

4

3

4 15

30

23

50

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n Table 2.1

Continued

Decade

Year of Publication 1908 1909 1909

1911–1920 1921–1930

1916 1922 1922 1922 1924 1924 1924

1931–1940

ca. 1938

1941–1950

1946

1949 1949 1951–1960

1958

1958 1960 1961–1970 1971–1980

1979

1981–1990

1985

1985

Editor/translator, title (publisher) (language) Richard Ackermann, Prometheus Unbound (Winter) (E) Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff, Die Cenci (Reclam) (G) Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff, Sämtliche Dichtungen (Pierson) (G) The Cenci (Tauchnitz) (E) The Cenci (Freytag) (?) The Cenci (Insel) (E) Alfred Wolfenstein, Shelley. Dichtungen (Cassirer) (G) Alfred Wolfenstein, Shelley. Die Cenci (Cassirer) (G) R. R., Percy Bysshe Shelley. Kampf (Taifun) (G) Richard Ackermann, Select Poetry and Prose (Diesterweg) (?) Hans Bütow, Liebe. Ein Fragment. Lyrische Fragmente (Silomon) (G) Albert Hess, Über die Liebe, das Leben und die Kunst (Claassen) (G) Ursula Clemen, Shelley/Keats. Oden und Hymnen (Filser) (G) Wolfgang Clemen, Selected Poems (Manu) (E) Alexander von Bernus et al., Percy Bysshe Shelley. Gedichte (Lambert Schneider) (G) Wolfgang Koeppen, Das brennende Herz (Desch) (G) Kurt Rüdiger, Alastor (Der Karlsruher Bote) (?) Rainer Kirsch, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Der entfesselte Prometheus (Insel/Leipzig) (G) Reinhard Harbaum, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Die Maske der Anarchie (Altaquito) (G) Horst Höhne, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ausgewählte Werke. Dichtung und Prosa (Insel/Leipzig) (E/G)

31

No. of editions published in England and Ireland

16 26

9

13

15

17 10

32

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

interest declined, Shelley began to attract attention in academia but never again reached the heights of his former acclaim. In Germany, three marked phases stand out. In the late 1830s and 1840s, the poet aroused so much interest that several rival editions of his poems appeared. The very ﬁrst German edition was Paul Haugwitz’s private print of “Die Wolke” (“The Cloud,” 1830), a tiny booklet with wide margins,41 generously spaced letters, and an illustration on the front cover. Ten years later, Julius Seybt began to release his instalments, which, when bound together, make for a voluminous book with small letter types and narrow margins.42 This initial phase saw Shelley’s poetry frequently printed in magazines. Among the generation of post-1848 readers, Shelley seems to have elicited few responses, probably because the 1850s and 1860s were a period of political sedation, during which values relating to home and family superseded those of political emancipation. Strodtmann’s Ausgewählte Dichtungen (Select Poetry, 1866) sparked off the second wave of interest, which lasted from the 1870s to the 1920s. Between then and 1950, the interest in Romantic poetry declined worldwide, until Shelley reemerged as the great lyrical poet alongside Keats. Table 2.1 also proves that in the framework of the 1870s Europe-wide Shelley revival, new favorites emerged: Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, both of which feature strong Titanic characters, were issued several times on their own between 1876 and 1924. English Romantic poets sold well in Germany and brought ﬁnancial gain of which these authors’ ﬁrst publishers could only have dreamed. The number of cheap editions by Reclam, Winter, and Hendel is striking. Both Der entfesselte Prometheus and Die Cenci were published by Reclam (Leipzig) as part of the series UniversalBibliothek, a number of cheap, small booklets. Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff’s Die Cenci (1909) cost twenty Pfennig, and Richter’s Der entfesselte Prometheus (ca. 1895) cost 40 Pfennig. Reclam must have expected Shelley to become a steady best seller, otherwise he would not have been included in the series Universal-Bibliothek, which sold exceedingly well and comprised classics only. Between 1867 and 1917, 2,300,000 copies of Friedrich Schiller’s drama Wilhelm Tell, 4,500,000 copies of various works by Henrik Ibsen, and 790,000 texts by Kant were sold.43 The cheap booklets were not only used in schools but also bought for private use; numerous German soldiers of World War I carried a Reclam Faust in their knapsacks. That the publisher Carl Winter offered two differently priced copies of Ackermann’s Epipsychidion und Adonais (Mk 1.60 for a paperback, Mk 2.20 for a hard cover) proves his conﬁdence in this market. Other authors

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

33

in his series Englische Textbibliothek were Byron, Keats, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Fielding, Longfellow, and Burns. Like Reclam, the publisher Hendel of Halle, who included Wickenburg’s Entfesselter Prometheus in the series Bibliothek der Gesamtlitteratur des In- und Auslandes, sold classics as small, cheap paperbacks. Rival Shelley editions were sold to different strata of readers. The competing use of typefaces—the popular Fraktur (“Gothic”) or the more elitist Antiqua (“Roman type”)—in German editions around 1900 provides additional clues about the intended readership. Reclam’s and Hendel’s texts, released between 1895 and 1904, were printed in the typeface of Fraktur, then the German standard, and aimed at a wide audience. When book design changed in the early twentieth century, books and letter types acquired a new style of functionalism for which the design objects of the Bauhaus became so well known. In the course of the 1920s, Fraktur, with its implications of nationalism, gave way to Antiqua, Roman type, which addressed a growing, modern readership. The new title pages contained fewer words, while illustrations became more minimalist,44 like the title and typeface of Alfred Wolfenstein’s Shelley edition (1922). This rather expensive volume (Mk 3.50/6.-) was published by Paul Cassirer in Berlin, whose small press promoted expressionist writers in a deliberate act of refusing to adapt to mainstream literary tastes. His preference for an unusual Roman type may stem from his connections with the esoteric circles around George, whose magazine Blätter für die Kunst used the modern Roman type very early. Cassirer did not wish to attract the mass reading public for which the Reclam output was intended. Another expensive Englishlanguage edition of The Cenci appeared in the Pandora series of the publisher Insel (Mk 4.50/12.-) in 1920, also aimed at a wellto-do readership. Insel had a policy of publishing cheaper volumes for a wide readership and more expensive editions, which fulﬁlled aesthetic claims of book production, for the elite few.45 A 1910 Keats edition by Insel, printed in Roman type, was issued both as a standard edition on normal paper and as a special edition (merely 50 copies) on more expensive paper.46 Despite the availability of numerous single-author editions, most of Shelley’s poetry was disseminated through anthologies, which the next section of this chapter will treat in more detail. Table 2.2 lists the years in which such anthologies appeared. The peaks differ from those of Shelley editions. While his poetry was published in single-author volumes in the 1830s and 1840s, it found its way into anthologies in the 1850s and 1860s, presumably because anthologists often adhere

34 Table 2.2

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s Years in which German anthologies with Shelley’s poems appeared

1828 1843, 1847 1853, 1853, 1854, 1856 1862, 1862, 1863, 1869 1881, 1885, 1886 1893, ca. 1894, ca. 1894, 1894, 1896/7, 1898, 1900 1903, 1907 1911 1936, 1936, 1945, 1945, 1953, 1953, 1962, 1962, 1974, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1999, 2000

1938, 1938 1946, 1947, 1947, 1947, 1949 1956 1965, 1967 1980 1984

to conservative selection criteria and prefer well-established authors, whose popularity has already been proved.47 It is hardly surprising that favorites have changed in the course of time. Based on a compilation of data from the anthologies and singleauthor editions in appendices 1 and 2, table 2.3 lists 20 frequently printed and translated texts. The number in brackets beside each poem indicates how many times it has been published in Germany. Poems and plays are also included in the count if only sections have been reprinted. Not all Shelley poems were fashionable throughout the entire nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While “Ode to the West Wind” has been a favorite since 1830, the popularity of other poems has peaked in some periods and declined in others. “Song to the Men of England,” no comfortable ﬁt for bourgeois poetry collections, appeared mainly in socialist songbooks around the turn of the century. “The Indian Serenade,” in contrast, not offensive to middle-class tastes, quickly found its way into anthologies. “Love’s Philosophy,” a poem that appealed to nineteenth-century notions of love, was published ten times between 1836 and 1898 but only four times in the twentieth century. As anthology pieces need to be short, these two poems fared better than long texts like Hellas, which was anthologized in short extracts only. Two kinds of shorter texts appealed to editors and anthologists: poems about nature and love on the one hand and

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n Table 2.3

35

Shelley’s most frequently printed poems in Germany

“Ode to the West Wind” (30) “When the Lamp is Shattered” (26) “Stanzas, Written in Dejection, near Naples” (19) Queen Mab (19) “The Cloud” (18) “Ozymandias” (18) “To A Skylark” (18) Prometheus Unbound (18) “The Indian Serenade” (17) “To Night” (16) “The World’s Wanderers” (15) “A Lament” (“O world! O life! O time!”) (14) “Love’s Philosophy” (14) “Song to the Men of England” (14) The Cenci (14) “Liberty” (13) “Mutability” (“We are as clouds”) (13) Alastor (12) “Song” (“A Widow Bird”) (11) “An Ode Written October, 1819” (11)

radical political poems on the other. Because of their length, the dramas Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, which depict strong Faustian characters, appear less frequently in anthologies than in single-author editions. It is hardly surprising that most anthologies include poems from only one segment of Shelley’s oeuvre. While the very successful Freudvoll und Leidvoll (Joyous and Suffering, seventh edition 1894) has “Love’s Philosophy” and “Good-Night,” the socialist anthology Von unten auf. Ein neues Buch der Freiheit (From Below. A New Book of Liberty, ﬁrst edition 1911) contains passages from Prometheus Unbound and Queen Mab, “An Ode Written October, 1819,” “Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte,” “Song to the Men of England,” and “Liberty.” In order to assess the distribution of Shelley’s poetry, we must consider the different Shelleyan narratives that have been offered to readers and ask how they were constructed through the selection and ordering of individual poems.

Shelleyan Narratives I: Percy Bysshe Shelley After an exposure to the hard facts of book history, the reader of this book may be led to regard editions of Shelley’s texts as unchanging, stable entities. However, like biographies, anthologies and editions offer narratives that are constructed through the processes of selecting

36

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

and ordering poems.48 As the order of Shelley’s poetry in German followed English editions, some of the narratives found there deserve further consideration: his own arrangements and Mary Shelley’s 1824 and 1839 editions, respectively. Whereas novels are usually transmitted in their entirety, poems are selected, arranged, and even abridged or supplied with new titles. In the introduction to a study of poetic collections, Fraistat argues that the “contexture”49 offered through a poetry edition gives each poem a larger frame within which meaning may be changed, enlarged, or reduced, depending on the arrangement. Anne Ferry’s recent study of anthologies also proves the need to analyze sequences of poetry.50 Arrangements vary greatly and rely on current aesthetic and cultural norms, although the ordering principles may not be apparent. Editions of poems offer “plotless narratives,”51 form and transform portraits of the author, exhibit views of society and of human intercourse, describe utopian spaces, offer possibilities for action, and prescribe poetological concepts. However, not every arrangement is aesthetically motivated. Some early English Shelley editions imitate the order originally chosen by himself or by his widow.52 Moreoever, an editor, let alone a translator, may not have had access to all of Shelley’s poems. For example: Queen Mab, circulated in different versions, was not always available as an unabridged original. The ordering of poems may occur on different levels, which ought to be analyzed individually, although this is not always possible in practice. One may distinguish among the following stages:53 1. The order determined by the poet himself Romantic poets were increasingly “self-conscious about their contextural practices,”54 and deliberately constructed their own narratives, as Shelley did in Prometheus Unbound, a sequence of poems on liberty. However, this criterion may lead to an overrating of authorial intention. Moreover, not all of an author’s poems are published during his lifetime. 2. The order determined by the editor or publisher during the poet’s lifetime The publisher may change the arrangement, inﬂuence the selection of texts, or even refuse to publish a poem or a volume, for example, of blasphemous texts. 3. The order imposed by an editor who effectively executed the poet’s will Mary Shelley’s editorial work, “a wife’s labor of love,” both gave a voice to Percy’s poetry and removed it “from any effective connection to the public.”55 Her dependence on Sir Timothy and

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

37

her increasing desire to Victorianize her late husband made her suppress or tone down Shelley’s more outrageous ideas. The ﬁrst edition of the Poetical Works of 1839 contains Queen Mab but without all the scandalous passages, most of which were reinserted into the second edition of 1840. Her decision to sentimentalize Shelley led to the publication of pieces never intended for a wider audience. 4. The order imposed by other later editors Later editors rearrange the texts and select speciﬁc poems or make decisions between textual variants. Their selection criteria reshape the former narratives. Some Shelley editions focus on either a lyrical or a radical poet. Publishers who pirate texts are a special case because sometimes, they simply imitate an arrangement, but they may also publish poems that cannot appear in print in England, thus helping to circulate texts otherwise lost to the reading public. 5. Foreign translations Translators may have access only to a limited number of poems, and, therefore, restricted possibilities to select texts. The exact nature of such limitations cannot always be deﬁned in retrospect, but their existence must be kept in mind when analyzing an arrangement of translated poetry. 6. Academic editions These aim at completeness and explain textual variants. The literary texts are in the original language, even when the volumes are released in Germany, whereas the notes and the introduction may be in German. During his lifetime, Shelley released 14 volumes, often mere booklets, of poetry, drama, and ﬁction and several pamphlets, such as the notorious Necessity of Atheism and An Address to the Irish People, some of which he distributed privately. Several of the slim volumes contain only one poem or play apiece: The Devil’s Walk: a Ballad (1812), Queen Mab (1813), Laon and Cythna (1817), reissued as The Revolt of Islam (1818), Oedipus Tyrannus (1820), The Cenci (1820), Adonais (1821), Epipsychidion (1821), Hellas (1822). For other volumes, he chose a selection of short poems as in Original Poetry; By Victor and Cazire (1810) and Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson (1810), or one long poem or play and several shorter pieces as in Alastor (1816), Rosalind and Helen (1819), and Prometheus Unbound (1820). It was no uncommon practice to make a long poem the centerpiece of a volume and to use shorter poems

38

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

as ﬁllers.56 These three volumes are the “narratives” Shelley intended for his contemporary readers:57 Alastor: (1) Alastor; (2) “To –” (“Oh there are spirits of the air”); (3) “Stanzas, April 1814”; (4) “Mutability”; (5) “On Death”; (6) “A Summer Evening Churchyard”; (7) “To Wordsworth”; (8) “Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte”; (9) “Superstition” (an excerpt from Queen Mab); (10) “Sonnet from the Italian of Dante”; (11) “From the Greek of Moschus” (“When winds that move”); (12) The Daemon of the World [Part I]. Rosalind and Helen: (1) Rosalind and Helen; (2) “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills”; (3) “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”; (4) “Ozymandias.” Prometheus Unbound: (1) Prometheus Unbound; (2) “The Sensitive Plant”; (3) “A Vision of the Sea”; (4) “Ode to Heaven”; (5) “An Exhortation”; (6) “Ode to the West Wind”; (7) “An Ode Written October, 1819”; (8) “The Cloud”; (9) “To a Skylark”; (10) “Ode to Liberty.”58 Fraistat argues that Romantic poets used their collections for their own “self-fashioning,”59 like Byron, who deliberately constructed the poetic persona of Childe Harold to be equated with himself. Unlike Elizabethan sonnet cycles, Romantic collections offer no plot or story in the narrow sense: Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, for example, programmatically express new poetological concepts. Whereas some older collections, such as George Herbert’s meticulously wrought The Temple (1633), are admirable pieces of architecture, volumes of Romantic poetry possess a seemingly open structure but are nevertheless carefully planned, like Keats’s Lamia, a sequence of poems structured around and varying the themes of illusion and belief, love and death, art and life. Shelley’s poetic collections present his own variations upon his favorite themes: freedom, liberation, love, and mutability. The volume Prometheus Unbound shows concern with these themes, which were taken up and varied by the long title poem and by the shorter texts.60 The title poem, situated at the beginning, revolves around liberty, love, and transformation and ends on an optimistic note, followed by a change in mood introduced by the second poem, “The Sensitive Plant,” which describes a lost paradise that does not reappear in any of the other poems in this collection. “A Vision of the Sea,” the third text, deepens the gloomy atmosphere by depicting a hostile nature. Together with “Ode to Heaven,” the ﬁrst three

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

39

shorter poems map the world: earth, sea, and sky. They are followed by “An Exhortation,” a description of the poet’s chameleon-like qualities. Similar reﬂections on the poet’s role are varied in the next poem, “Ode to the West Wind,” which again spans earth, sea, and sky, and introduces a political theme, revolution, which is also central to the poem that follows, “An Ode Written October, 1819.” The next two poems, “The Cloud” and “To a Skylark,” take the reader once more into aerial regions, from where a view of the entire world and a more abstract reﬂection on the conditions of existence are possible. Moreover, “To a Skylark” again reﬂects on the poet’s role. The volume concludes with “Ode to Liberty,” which sums up previous themes to position them in historical perspective. This last poem of the Prometheus Unbound volume ends with a passage in which the poet-speaker withdraws, like an actor who leaves the stage. In spite of his reticence about personal matters, Shelley occasionally toyed with the equation between his poetic persona and himself. The earlier Alastor volume seems more personal. Alastor, the title poem, deﬁnes the role of the poet, a failed Romantic who moves outside the bounds of society through an imaginary and solitary landscape in search of an ideal, only to meet his own death. The central ﬁgure resembles Shelley. In Alastor as in the three other poems, landscapes mirror emotional states. The natural and spiritual world, and likewise death and mutability, are central themes of this volume, which ends on the lines “Above, and all around/Necessity’s unchanging harmony” (The Daemon of the World, part I, ll. 290–291, SW 7). Struggle, chaos, and a nonbenevolent nature are all channeled into a slightly strained optimistic note. The concluding lines of a poem often constitute programmatic statements or summarize the main themes of a collection.61 The ﬁnal line of the sonnet “Ozymandias,” the last poem of the volume Rosalind and Helen, expands the geographical space and, thus, the speaker’s vision: “The lone and level sands stretch far away” (SPP 110). Rosalind and Helen and “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills,” the ﬁrst and second poem, center on the uses and abuses of power and on oppression. The ethical considerations voiced in these poems climax in the third, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” Shelley’s concern for humanity appears as criticism of institutionalized power in the fourth and ﬁnal poem, “Ozymandias,” a utopian fantasy of the fall of the mighty with an open ending, which leaves the possibility of a new beginning. Shelley himself rarely thought of his readers, probably because he was a typical coterie poet.62 While his audiences were imaginary at best, he fantasized about criteria to categorize his poetry: esoteric,

40

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

exoteric, private, political. As these inﬂuenced his publishing history, they deserve a brief explanation. Leaning on Aristotle, he distinguished between his esoteric and his exoteric texts. Whereas the overtly radical Mask of Anarchy was “exoteric” (L II, 152), suitable for the general public, Shelley never expected the much more difﬁcult Prometheus Unbound to be widely read, as he informed his publisher Charles Ollier on March 6, 1820: “I think, if I may judge by its merits, the ‘Prometheus’ cannot sell beyond twenty copies” (L II, 174). In February 1822, he wrote to John Gisborne: “Prometheus was never intended for more than 5 or 6 persons” (L II, 388). And of Epipsychidion, he declared to Ollier in February 1821: “It is to be published simply for the esoteric few” (L II, 263). A number of Shelley’s poems were distributed among his friends, sometimes handed to only one person, like “The Keen Stars were Twinkling,” sent to Jane Williams with a short letter, which ended with the words: “I commit them to your secresy and your mercy, and will try to do better another time” (L II, 437). Although those were his most private poems, Mary Shelley published them posthumously in the 1824 edition. If his “esoteric” poems were aimed at a few readers only, another group of his texts centering on political issues was intended to reach the many. In 1820, Shelley wrote to Leigh Hunt: “I wish to ask you if you know of any bookseller who would like to publish a little volume of popular songs wholly political, & destined to awaken & direct the imagination of the reformers. I see you smile but answer my question” (L II, 191). The poems for this project may have included The Mask of Anarchy, “Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration,” “Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819,” “What Men Gain Fairly,” “A New National Anthem,” “England in 1819,” “Song to the Men of England,” and “Ballad of the Starving Mother.”63 These texts, some of which became immensely popular among the Chartists, were all published in 1832 or 1839, with the exception of the last. When Shelley ironically anticipated Hunt’s reaction, he knew how unrealistic his plan must have seemed to friends and publishers alike, because no one would risk imprisonment for printing and distributing the texts of a poet who did not even sell well and might attract hostile reviews. Therefore, the narrative of oppression and uprise, the “little volume of popular songs,” did not appear during Shelley’s lifetime.

Shelleyan Narratives II: Mary Shelley It was Shelley’s most private poetry, published in Mary Shelley’s 1824 edition shortly after his death, that offered a range of texts unknown

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

41

to the contemporary reader. Her editorial construct, the narrative of the angelic Shelley, had a huge impact and inﬂuenced Shelley editions for more than 100 years. Mary Shelley was far from radicalizing him and had removed all “taints of sedition.”64 Among the poems printed for the ﬁrst time were Julian and Maddalo, Letter to Maria Gisborne, The Witch of Atlas, The Triumph of Life, and shorter pieces such as “The Sunset,” “To Constantia, Singing,” “Death,” “The Past,” “To Mary—,” “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” “To William Shelley” (“My lost William”), “Remembrance,” “A Bridal Song,” and “To Jane: The Invitation.” Some poems, such as “Love’s Philosophy,” had already been published elsewhere, for example, in magazines. Through the release of this volume, mostly a collection of some of Shelley’s hitherto unpublished verse, Mary Shelley pursued several aims. First, she made her late husband’s heritage accessible to a wider readership. Besides, she was beginning to work on her own version of the Shelley myth, painting the deceased as an unworldly, ethereal being. New poems such as “To Jane: The Invitation” and “Love’s Philosophy” differed so much from the savage indignation of Queen Mab that they facilitated the construction of a gentle and misunderstood Shelley. “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples” and other poems with a note of depression turned him into a sufferer, rejected by the very human beings he had loved so fervently (“for I am one/Whom men love not,” ll. 41–42, SW 562). The fate of the volume is well known: Sir Timothy, utterly disgusted with his son’s political and highly ungentlemanly poetical confessions, suppressed a part of the edition. In its aftermath, several pirate prints of Shelley’s poetry appeared that had taken their texts from the Posthumous Poems and the earlier volumes. Although Mary Shelley herself could no longer edit any volumes of his poetry, she assisted in their preparation and wrote the preface to the 1829 Galignani edition of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. The year 1839 ﬁnally saw the publication of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, which, once again, aided her construction of the suffering angel whose love for humankind was unsurpassed. She omitted some poems but, after protests from Edward John Trelawny and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, added them in the second edition of 1840.65 Her arrangement follows the chronological principle that has become the standard ordering principle for most complete editions of Shelley’s works ever since.66 It is fairly modern and reﬂects the poet’s growth by going back to an organic and Romantic understanding of poetry. As the poems are ordered according to the years of writing, not of publication, the moments of inspiration and creation are

42

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

privileged over the relationship between poet and audience. This typically Romantic and Shelleyan concept is described in A Defence of Poetry, where poetry acquires “divine” status. Moreover, the ordering reﬂects the notion of the misunderstood and unacknowledged poet. In the 1839 Shelley, each section is followed by a short biographical note written by Mary Shelley, who turns her late husband’s radical political creed into his individual conviction: Shelley loved the people . . . He believed that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people’s side. He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs—he wrote a few, but in those days of prosecution for libel they could not be printed. They are not among the best of his productions . . . but they show his earnestness, and with what heartfelt compassion he went home to the direct point of wrong—that oppression is detestable, as being the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph.67

Mary Shelley individualizes Shelley’s politics as “heartfelt compassion,” “indignation,” and “love,” and, by this “sympathetic method,”68 draws the reader in as an ally. Through her vivid description, she brieﬂy resurrects her husband: If an argument arose, no man ever argued better—he was clear, logical, and earnest, in supporting his own views; attentive, patient, and impartial, while listening to those on the adverse side . . . For who, except those who were acquainted with him, can imagine his unwearied benevolence, his generosity, his systematic forbearance? And still less is his vast superiority in intellectual attainments sufﬁciently understood—his sagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, his prodigious memory; all these, as displayed in conversation, were known to few while he lived, and are now silent in the tomb.69

This Shelley is no longer a hotheaded rebel but rather a man who impresses through his earnestness, a virtue that serves to make him more palatable to Victorian readers. The new ordering principle tore Shelley’s selections apart. The sublime poems of the Prometheus Unbound volume were rearranged. Between “A Vision of the Sea” and “The Cloud,” were situated playful love lyrics, namely, “Love’s Philosophy” and “To—” (“I fear thy kisses”), all written in 1820. “Ode to Heaven,” “An Exhortation,”

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

43

and “Ode to the West Wind” had been moved to the 1819 section, accompanied by “Song to the Men of England,” which had its debut in print. The drama Prometheus Unbound had moved to the front of the volume together with other long poems, whereas the shorter texts of the original Prometheus Unbound volume were printed in two different sections, 1819 and 1820. Thus, the former thematic coherence was lost. Likewise, the contents of the Alastor volume were scattered over several sections: Alastor was among the long texts at the beginning, whereas the shorter pieces were in the sections “Early Poems” and “Translations.” “Superstition” (from Queen Mab) was not reprinted at all, because Queen Mab herself had ﬁnally been assigned the status of legitimate offspring and occupied the ﬁrst position in the volume. Shelley’s poetic and eclectic self-fashioning had been superseded by completeness, the fate of all posthumously “collected” poets. The new order and the biographical notes prepared Shelley for Victorian approval. Subsequent English Shelley editions adapted Mary Shelley’s order with slight changes, but the chronological principle remained. Later editors such as William Michael Rossetti (1870) were mainly concerned with textual emendations.70 Shelley’s further popularity in England is reﬂected by anthologies and musical settings. Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, a particularly popular anthology, serves as an indicator of Shelley’s status.71 Palgrave selected mainly brief, “private” poems such as “Love’s Philosophy” or “When the Lamp is Shattered.” “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills” is included but incomplete, lacking the most overtly political passages. The Victorianizing of Shelley, sparked off by Mary Shelley and promoted eagerly by the Shelley Society, was in full swing. Shelley’s English narratives are only in part determined by the order he himself chose for his poetry. While his own arrangements centered on themes such as liberty, liberation, love, and change, they were of little consequence to his editors. Mary Shelley’s 1824 edition presents a sanitized version of the poet and draws on his lyrical qualities to soften his radical image. This strategy is continued in the 1839 edition, where biographical notes serve to turn Shelley’s political concerns into deeply felt love for humanity. As Shelley’s own volumes were not available to them, German editors and translators had to follow in Mary Shelley’s rather than in Percy Shelley’s footsteps when they selected and arranged his poetry. Considering the impact of Werther, the cultural relevance of Weltschmerz, and the political inertia of the bourgeoisie, it is not surprising that Shelley’s German editors heaped additional suffering and pain on him.

44

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Four German Shelley Editions If the original order of Shelley’s poetry has been remodeled to such an extent in English editions, then adaptations and reconstructions must be even more radical when linguistic and cultural boundaries are crossed. This section will treat four German Shelley editions: Seybt (1844), Strodtmann (1866), R. R. (1924), and Höhne (1985), each of which offers a different narrative. Three present a broad range of Shelley’s oeuvre, whereas one, the anonymous R. R.’s extremely rare booklet, focuses on the radical poet. All German Shelley editions tell stories oscillating between personal and political, nature and state, tyranny and love of freedom.

Julius Seybt (1844) The ﬁrst important German Shelley edition was by Seybt (1844), about whom little is known. In Leipzig, he frequented a rather gossipy and chaotic “Literatenverein” (“club of literati”) that aimed to support writers’ interests (as opposed to publishers’ and censors’) and was monitored by Metternich’s spies, who, by then, must have been suspicious of all things Shelleyan.72 Seybt’s volume, which appeared in several instalments between 1840 and 1844, seems to have taken Mary Shelley’s Poetical Works as a model, because his arrangement of the poetry follows her edition.73 Shelley’s own arrangement of the poems, which had served as a point of reference for some early English editors, was either unknown to Seybt or seemed irrelevant to him. The layout of his volume is simple: the poems are printed in two columns, the margins are narrow. Seybt retained Mary Shelley’s chronological ordering principle but rearranged the texts and omitted some of them altogether, probably for reasons of space.74 For example, in both editions, the 1818 section contains “Invocation to Misery,” “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills,” and other poems written in a mood of serious reﬂection, of suffering. Unlike Mary Shelley, Seybt did not include “To Mary—” and “On a Faded Violet,” both poems in which sadness is relieved through the speaker’s ﬂirtatiousness. That Seybt’s Shelley is torn, full of German Weltschmerz, is also obvious from the last poems in the respective sections. Another example: whereas in Mary Shelley’s edition, the 1817 section ends with the sonnet “Ozymandias,” denoting expanding vision and openness, Seybt concludes this section with “That Time Is Dead Forever,” and thus with a note of mutability and death. His editorial decision may be inﬂuenced by Young Germany’s stylization of Shelley as one of its

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

45

favorite martyrs. In the 1821 section, Seybt also rearranged the texts but kept the last poem, “Dirge for the Year,” which resounds on a mood of mourning, in its previous position. Seybt’s arrangement, which presents a poet of suffering, mirrors numerous biographical sketches of the 1840s. His preface follows Mary Shelley’s version of the Shelley myth by referring to the poet as unworldly and idealistic.75 By making Shelley appear as a typical exponent of suffering, Seybt situates him in the German cultural tradition of Weltschmerz. The term Weltschmerz (“world-weariness”), coined by Jean Paul, denotes a feeling of sadness, of pessimism in the face of a less than perfect or unjust world, one in which “man’s ideals and his material environment” cannot be reconciled, so that idealism, unwordliness, and suffering necessarily coincide with “nostalgia for the unattainable.”76 German Romantic poets such as Nikolaus Lenau and August von Platen were the best-known exponents of such Weltschmerz. Following this cultural tradition, which gave vent to the political inertia of the German middle class, the writers Karl Gutzkow, Kühne, and Herwegh (see chapter 4), who might have been attracted by Shelley’s radicalism, all focused on his tragic life and on the suffering caused by the restraints of an unjust society.77 Seybt’s arrangement mirrors the creed of his political friends. Unlike Mary Shelley’s ethereal, upward-moving spirit, the German Shelley is a depressed, suicidal outsider. That the German 1840s read Shelley’s poetry as an expression of his life is obvious, for example, from a long review in the Hallische Jahrbücher (1840) by Robert E. Prutz, who focused on the poet’s rebellion and his criticism of religion, concluding: “Er ist kein Dichter, den man unserem deutschen Volk an’s Herz legen kann.” (“He is no poet to be recommended to our German people.”)78 A mere analysis of the poetry seems impossible in the face of Shelley’s unusual life and death, which becomes exemplary in a negative way. Adolf Strodtmann (1866) In the 1850s, the German interest in Shelley declined until its revival was sparked off by Strodtmann’s edition (1866), which has been immensely popular among anthologists ever since.79 It contains far fewer texts than Seybt’s (33 vs. 111), whose translations are partly reworked. What Strodtmann retains is Seybt’s elegiac mood, the interconnection between a radical political idealism and personal suffering. Like Seybt, Strodtmann starts with three longer texts: Queen Mab, Alastor, and The Cenci. By beginning with Queen Mab,

46

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Strodtmann follows Mary Shelley’s arrangement but also emphasizes the political nature of Shelley’s poetry. The ﬁrst part of his Shelley, which could be bought separately, may have aimed at former supporters of the 1848 March Revolution, who demanded far-reaching reforms such as free elections, freedom of the press, and a constitution. The criticism Shelley levelled against state and church for its abuse of power must have appealed to them. Strodtmann himself shared one aspect of Shelley’s biography. He had been expelled from the University of Bonn in 1849 for putting radical ideas into print. One of his volumes of poetry is entitled Lieder eines Kriegsgefangenen auf der Dronning Maria (Songs of a Prisoner of War on the Dronning Maria, 1848) and celebrates the cause of liberty.80 After his youthful and rebellious poetic phase, he channeled his literary interests into professional activities. Apart from translating Byron, Tennyson, and a number of American, French, and Scandinavian authors, Strodtmann worked on the ﬁrst critical Heine edition. The section “Lyrische Gedichte” (“Lyrical Poems”) in Strodtmann’s Shelley edition contains a number of short poems and differs from Seybt’s arrangement because Strodtmann privileges mutability over Weltschmerz. He also follows a chronological order but omits the years of writing, thus leaving the reader uninformed about his principles of selection. The framing poems, “Mutability” and “When the Lamp is Shattered,” seem designed to introduce change as the central topic. Among the ﬁrst ten poems, all variations on this theme, are “Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte” and “Ozymandias,” which situate change on a transindividual level. “Lift Not the Painted Veil” returns to an individual dimension, warning of the consequences of too much curiosity. These poems are followed by four overtly radical ones: “Song to the Men of England,” “An Ode Written October, 1819,” “England in 1819,” and “To William Shelley” focus on political injustice and ﬁghting. The last of these, “To William Shelley,” which Seybt did not include, reintroduces a personal note, as the speaker describes a somber nighttime journey with his son, after his two other children had been taken away from him by the Lord Chancellor Eldon, as a footnote explains. Here, the reader is invited to equate the poetic persona with the real poet. This is Strodtmann’s only deviation from Seybt’s selection, through which he probably aimed to provide further psychological explanation for Shelley’s radicalism: Shelley was raving against authorities because they had mistreated him. Like Mary Shelley, Strodtmann individualized Shelley’s political protest as the action of a sensitive, suffering human being.

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

47

These political poems are followed by several texts in which mutability is once more the dominant theme: “Ode to the West Wind,” “Love’s Philosophy,” “To a Skylark,” “Ye Hasten to the Grave,” and others. “Love’s Philosophy” introduces the topic of love, intensiﬁed through the long poem Epipsychidion, which is followed by six shorter poems on death, memory, desire, dreams, and mutability. Thus, the selection provides a short account of the poet’s life as determined by radicalism and change (and occasionally by love and admiration for nature) and punctuated by suffering. In Strodtmann’s biographical arrangement of Shelley’s poetry, the radical element gradually declines and metamorphoses into love and death. By concluding with “When the Lamp is Shattered,” one of Shelley’s last poems, the volume emphasizes mutability and pain, and thus a biographical dimension. The extent to which Strodtmann wrote his own cultural background into the German translations becomes obvious in the third of the poem’s four stanzas: When hearts have once mingled Love ﬁrst leaves the well-built nest; The weak one is singled To endure what it once possessed. O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? (ll. 17–24, SW 668) Liebten sich zwei Herzen: Bald ﬂieht, ach! die Lieb’ aus dem Nest; Das schwächre hält in Schmerzen An seiner Liebe noch fest. O Lieb’, die alle Wesen Der Schwäche du zeihst so arg, Was hast du dir erlesen Den Schwächsten zur Wieg’ und zum Sarg?81

Shelley’s text, not intended for publication, is imbued with a ﬂirtatious lightness that is absent in the German translation, where the easy mingling of hearts metamorphoses into the more serious verb “liebten” (“loved”). The injection “ach,” an onomatopoetic sigh, which has no equivalent at all in the English text, emphasizes the link between love and pain, intensiﬁed by the German word “Schmerzen” (“pains”), which is much stronger and connotes more

48

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

suffering than the English “endure.” Thus, the German translation magniﬁes the intensity of love and of suffering. The fourth and last stanza presents a vision of autumn, of death, and as the ﬁnal set of lines in a selection representing a Weltschmerz poet, insinuates that Shelley’s early demise was a quasi-natural event, that this cruel and unjust world could never be a suitable place for such a sensitive being. Like Werther, Strodtmann’s Shelley suffers from unrequited love, which the ﬁnal poem fuses with death. Strodtmann’s Shelley is denied the pleasures of light, ﬂirtatious love—his Shelley focuses on an asexual and unpractical yet glowing love for mankind. Owing to Strodtmann’s skillful selection and arrangement, Shelley’s poetry reﬂects a life moving from radicalism to love, never free from pain. This narrative is supported by the preface: “So möchten wir vor Allem behaupten, daß ein reinerer und edlerer Vertreter der humanistischen Weltanschauung schwerlich jemals gelebt hat” (“We claim that no purer and nobler exponent of the humanist view of life has ever lived”).82 By implying that Shelley’s political poetry is the result of his deeply felt humanism, Strodtmann contributes to the softening down of Shelley along the lines of Seybt and Mary Shelley.83 R. R. (1924) R. R.’s slim Percy Bysshe Shelley. Kampf. Gedichte (Struggle: Poems, 1924) realizes Shelley’s plan of the “little volume of popular songs” through a selection of radical texts that appear in excellent, rhythmic, and recitable translations.84 The lack of an identiﬁable editor or translator to explain the author’s signiﬁcance in a preface heightens the experience of immediacy for the reader, who is directly confronted with radical Shelleyan˛ texts but not with the martyr’s biography or ˛ ∼ futility. The motto “ειμι ϕιλα´νθρωπος δημωκρα´τικο´ ς τ' α´θεο´ς τε,” “Ein Volksfreund bin ich und ein Gottesleugner,” in Greek and German, is a phrase Shelley once scrawled in Greek into the guestbook of a Swiss hotel. Literally translated it means “democrat, philanthropist, and atheist.”85 R. R.’s own German translation, literally “I am a friend of the people and a denier of God,” is in iambic pentameter and much more rhythmic than the Greek original. Shelley’s joke is turned into a slogan. The volume contains a mere 14 poems. The ﬁrst four describe oppression in England: The Mask of Anarchy, “Song to the Men of England,” “England in 1819,” “Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration.” The title of The Mask of Anarchy is translated as Die Fratze der Tyrannei. If the English “mask”/“masque” is a

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

49

neutral word, the German “Fratze” denotes a distorted face, so that the reader of R. R.’s volume metaphorically stares into a tyrant’s cruel features. All of R. R.’s translations emphasize the struggle against brutal tyranny. After the ﬁrst four poems on England, the geographical focus widens, and the next four texts concern themselves with the struggle for liberty in Spain, North America, and Ireland. The remainder of the volume introduces a more personal Shelley but leaves out frequently printed love poems like “Love’s Philosophy.” The ﬁrst poem, which resounds on a more private note, is “To a Friend Released from Prison,” which links Shelley’s personal concerns to his ﬁght against political injustice, followed by “Sonnet to Byron.” Byron, known to be an outcast from British society, thus becomes a partner in the struggle for liberation. The next three poems are concerned with death (“To Death” (“Death! where is thy victory?”), “Death” (“Death is here and death is there”), and “The Wandering Jew’s Soliloquy”). The volume ends on an ironic note, rare in Shelley editions, which usually emphasize his suffering. The last text is the ballad The Devil’s Walk, which appeared as a broadsheet in 1812 and is rarely anthologized.86 A comparison lays open the techniques R. R. used to ﬂesh out Shelley’s text: Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose, With care his sweet person adorning, He put on his Sunday clothes. (ll. 1–4, SW 878) Belzebub einst früh erhob sich Von der Wollust Lagerstätte, Schlüpfte in die Sonntagskleider, Seinen holden Leib zu schmücken.87

Unlike Shelley, R. R. omits the rhyme but provides a metrical translation. Each of his trochaic lines bears four stresses and evokes the poet Heine, whose formal trademark was the use of precisely this meter. The ironic tone, which R. R. retained throughout the translation, must have been new to most of Shelley’s German readers. The poem is reminiscent of Queen Mab in its radical outlook, particularly as the devil is a commentator ﬁgure through whose eyes the reader perceives the priests’ and kings’ inhuman actions. The formal properties of R. R.’s translation make the texts recitable and provide this volume with a potential for political activism during a decade of strikes and radical unrest. Moreover, R. R. departs from all traditional presentations of Shelley by refusing to elevate him as the

50

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

poet of sublime suffering, returning to an earlier, preangelic, pre-Christianized Shelley. The political message is mirrored by the material appearance of the edition. If the volumes by Seybt, Strodtmann, and Höhne are hardcovers and present themselves as valuable and timeless classics, R. R.’s Kampf is unique in possessing a contemporary drawing on its cover in the 1920s minimalist style so fashionable at a time when the new design concept of the Bauhaus was the rage of the day. It shows uniform-looking male workers and a child, sketched in clear, simple lines, under a red sun, the symbol of liberty and revolutionary uprise. They are not working but standing outside a factory: perhaps waiting, perhaps on strike. A Shelley quotation frames the drawing: “Zahllos seid Ihr nichts sind sie!” in large letters on the front cover and “Unbesiegbar Eure Menge” in smaller letters on the back cover. This translation of “Ye are many—they are few”, also the motto of Herwegh’s “Federal Hymn” (1863), is strikingly rhythmic. The title of the series, Signale (“signals”), programmatically printed on the cover, makes the volume nothing less than a call for revolution. The translator may have hidden his identity to speak with Shelleyan boldness. Horst Höhne (1985) So far, the most recent important edition is the East German professor Höhne’s Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ausgewählte Werke, released by Insel/Leipzig in 1985 and reissued by Insel/Frankfurt in 1990, the ﬁrst all-German Shelley in the year of reuniﬁcation. Höhne’s Shelley contains 55 poems, the drama Prometheus Unbound, and six pieces of prose,88 commencing with a call for liberty by starting with the rarely anthologized “To the Republicans of North America:” Brothers! between you and me Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar: Yet in spirit oft I see On thy wild and winding shore Freedom’s bloodless banners wave, — (ll. 1–5, SW 872) Brüder, zwischen euch und mir Brausen Stürme, donnern Wogen; Dennoch seh ich das Pannier Eurer Freiheit hochgezogen. Oft im Geiste, ﬂeckenlos—89

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

51

As the volume ends with A Defence of Poetry, the last sentence runs: “Dichter sind die nicht anerkannten Gesetzgeber der Welt” (“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” SPP 535). Between these ideals, republican freedom and poetic power, both private, “lyrical” poems and overtly political poems are situated. The preface emphasizes the political Shelley without monopolizing this reading. Höhne’s volume is more comprehensive than Strodtmann’s and also more open, aiming at different readers (and readings) of Shelley by including poems on mutability, nature, love, death, and politics. * * * It is striking how nineteenth-century German single-author editions of Shelley modeled themselves on the narrative of the angelic sufferer, the depressed outcast. In Seybt’s as in Strodtmann’s edition, Percy Shelley’s political activism was individualized and served to explain his life, his emotional makeup. If radical readers of the numerous pirated Queen Mabs believed in the possibility of change, those turning to single-author editions of Shelley were invited to regard his political ideas as the precondition for his individual suffering, possibly even for his early death. Although most twentieth-century German Shelley editions followed these strands of reception, which go back to Mary Shelley’s editorial decisions, several noteworthy exceptions occurred. Both the rare R. R.’s and Höhne’s editions favor the political Shelley. At the same time, anthologies, which present only short pieces, began to favor yet another Shelley, the poet of love and nature, as the ﬁnal section of this chapter will show.

German Poetry Anthologies Anthologies are made for readers. If Romantic poetological thought resounds on the idea that the poet is unacknowledged and that poetry is difﬁcult to access and only fully comprehensible to the initiated few, an anthology represents a rather different concept. Anthologies want to be read by the many and are essential to the dissemination of the literary text, which is embedded into new contexts that are different from the ones in which it had been ﬁrst conceived and published.90 Depending on its neighborhood, the contexture, a poem may acquire new shades of meaning. If this is the case when a poem appears in different single-author editions, the anthologizing of a text together with texts by other authors opens it to even more various readings,

52

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

“strips” the material of “its historical and political contexts,”91 as Barbara Benedict remarks in her seminal study on eighteenth-century anthologies. The titles alone denote that they attempt to evoke pleasure: “anthology” means, literally translated, “collection of ﬂowers.” Words like “treasury”/“Schatz” or “ﬂowers”/“Blumen” often appear in titles of mid-ninteenth-century anthologies, thereby trivializing and domesticating the precious. The copying of beautiful or useful passages, a widespread cultural practice, made readers turn to short poems, which were assigned the role of helping one solve the problems of life. Whereas the ordering principle of earlier collections often resulted in no more than a mere listing of poets, nineteenth-century anthologies display deliberate arrangements with much awareness of the value of the material included. Since collections presented themselves as selections of beauty and seemingly transhistorical values, their contributors, the poets, became “eternally contemporary,” to use Benedict’s phrase.92 If eighteenth-century English and German collections often printed texts not published before, nineteenth-century editors chose popular texts that had previously appeared in print. Through their mediating role, anthologies contributed to canon formation. When German anthologists of the nineteenth century chose British texts, they focused on the Romantic period, whereas in England, owing to copyright restrictions, Romantic poets were anthologized only by the late Victorians. In the early days of international copyright law, poems did not always count, whereas English copyright law applied to poetry, too.93 With the emergence of nationalism, anthologies began to present great and weighty traditions of literature. Some anthologists compiled one country’s poetry, whereas others grouped various foreign texts together, as in Blumen aus der Fremde (Flowers from Abroad, 1862). German anthologies of English literature provide “cultural information”94 that not only contributes to constructions of Englishness but also reﬂects the view the compilers had of their own literary tradition. Nineteenth-century German attitudes toward Britain were ambivalent because economically and politically, Britain was a rival, but it also possessed exemplary status. Unlike Germany, Britain was a united nation-state and produced a literature that was increasingly attracting German readers. In the Germans’ view, Britain was a progressive nation with a big and weighty tradition, which many collections aimed to represent adequately in order to provide a model. Whereas French literature was sometimes regarded as intrinsically different, the literature of England was seen as complementing that of

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

53

Germany.95 Thus, the contrast between French classicism and English disorderliness became a new paradigm. Nineteenth-century German anthologists arranged poems after the following criteria: authors (in alphabetical or chronological order), themes, literary forms, and countries of origin. The emphasis on the author as creator had increased since the eighteenth century, as the growing bulk of short biographical notices at the back of each volume proves. The mentioning of the poets themselves had become customary only since the late eighteenth century. Short prefaces provided the reader with some kind of popular poetics and explained the emerging canon.96 Moreover, an anthology enabled a publisher to test the marketability of a poet. Unlike a single-author edition, an anthology invites easy reading. A reader may leaf through pages, skip passages, or choose individual poems. This kind of nonlinear reading receives support through an arrangement according to themes or authors. In order to appeal to a range of readers, anthology pieces had to conform to a certain standard. They were expected to be both sublime and trivial, ennobling and applicable to everyday life. Heine, for instance, was seldom printed in nineteenth-century German anthologies because his irony and his refusal to elevate the reader went against the rules of decorum.97 Some examples—ﬁrst, two English-language anthologies from the middle of the nineteenth century (Elze, Freiligrath); second, several socialist anthologies from the turn of the century; and third, Hennecke’s Englische Gedichte of 1938—will show how the ordering of the poems and the neighborhood with other texts assigned meanings to Shelley. Nineteenth-century anthologists of English poetry were frequently either related to Britain or were themselves British. Karl Elze, the editor of Englischer Liederschatz, an important mediator between English and German culture, was a teacher at a Gymnasium, a high school, in Dessau, before he became a professor of the newly founded university discipline Anglistik (“English Studies”) at the University of Halle in 1875. Ferdinand Freiligrath was familiar with English literature because, planning to work in his uncle’s Edinburgh business, he began to study English language and literature at an early age and later spent many years in London, particularly as his political activities rendered him suspicious to the German authorities. William Odell Elwell, editor of The British Lyre (1854), also crossed national and linguistic boundaries. For many years, he lived in Elberfeldt as a teacher of English language and literature. The preface to his anthology was written by Ludwig Herrig, himself the editor of an enormously successful poetry collection for educational

54

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

institutions, British Classical Authors, which went into more than a hundred editions. Herrig was to become one of the founding fathers of modern philology in Germany. In the twentieth century, most anthologists of English literature were teachers of English at schools or universities.

Shelley in German Anthologies Karl Elze, Englischer Liederschatz, 2nd ed. (1853) Elze’s collection Englischer Liederschatz aus englischen und amerikanischen Dichtern vorzugsweise des XIX. Jahrhunderts mit Nachrichten über die Verfasser (Treasury of Songs by English and American Poets, Particularly of the Nineteenth Century, with News about their Writers, 2nd ed. 1853) is a typical nineteenth-century anthology. The word “Liederschatz” (“Treasury of Songs”), indicating the value assigned both to the poets’ output and to the editor’s selection, is frequent in anthology titles. The volume measures 17 by 22 cm, is less than 500 pages long, and is thus easily portable. Elze’s collection is intended as a “treuer Ausdruck der lyrischen Welt- und Lebensanschauung des Angelsächsischen Stammes während der ersten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts” (“a faithful expression of the Anglo-Saxon tribe’s lyrical view of the world and of life in the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century”),98 and, therefore, a model of Englishness. Katz, a publisher in Dessau, produced this English-language edition for the German market. Although the poems are in English, the table of contents and the brief biographical notes appear in German, interspersed with English quotations. The entry on Shelley elevates the poet: “‘Shelley’s life,’ sagt R. Chambers, ‘was a dream of romance, a tale of mystery and grief.’”99 The motto on the title page, which begins with the words “The world is full of poetry—the air / Is living with its spirit,” offers a journey away from everyday life into the realm of the beautiful and transcendental. “Romance,” “mystery,” “spirit” are key words for a concept of Englishness that is decidedly Romantic, not classicist. The anthology falls into four thematic and two generic sections: “I. Vaterland und Heimath” (“Fatherland and Home”), “II. Welt und Natur” (“World and Nature”), “III. Das Leben” (“Life”), “IV. Die Liebe” (“Love”), “V. Episches” (“Epic”), “VI. Übersetzungen” (“Translations”). If the ﬁrst two sections are concerned with the wider context of life (institutions and nature), with structured and ordered life versus the realm of nature, the next two sections deal with the individual and his or her emotions.100

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

55

Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had become a canonical English author in Germany by the mid-1850s, appears six times in Englischer Liederschatz. The poems are: “The Cloud,” “The World’s Wanderers,” “To a Skylark” (all in section II), “Love’s Philosophy,” “To the Queen of my Heart,” and “The Indian Serenade” (all in section IV). The anthologist concentrated on the poet of love and nature, although several Shelleyan moods were available: Weltschmerz, ﬂirtatiousness, passion, reﬂections about nature, parricidal fury, and political agitation. Elze favored the ﬂirtatious Shelley and the nature poet. An English reader would expect a Romantic poem about nature to be sublime, whereas to a German reader, literary concepts of nature were much inﬂuenced by Eichendorff’s poetry,101 and therefore, he would expect such a landscape to appear as peaceful and quaint, possibly as a mirror of desire but not necessarily as majestic or awe-inspiring. Elze worked to satisfy the German reader’s expectations. Simply through the selection and arrangement, Shelley’s poetry is systematically prettiﬁed, as some examples will show. Section II, “Welt und Natur,” falls into four untitled subsections, the ﬁrst of which maps out the cosmos and praises nature, beginning with William Cullen Bryant’s “Earth,” “Forest Hymn,” and “Song of the Stars.” Shelley’s “The Cloud” and “The World’s Wanderers” are positioned toward the end of this subsection. “The Cloud” epitomizes changes in nature and draws in the whole world (sun, stars, moon, plains, mountains, ocean). It is preceded by Felicia Hemans’s “Moonlight” (“Come, gentle muse! now all is calm, / The dew descends, the air is balm”), which describes peace and harmony in a pretty but not sublime nature. The ﬁrst line of Shelley’s “The Cloud,” “I bring fresh showers for the thirsting ﬂowers,” thus acquires a quaintness one rarely associates with him. Unlike Hemans’s poem, Shelley’s describes sublime nature but is toned down through the place it has been accorded. Shelley’s “The World’s Wanderers” is also part of this neat neighborhood, where the speaker’s fundamental insecurity is reduced in its existential dimension. After the second subsection, which treats the seasons, the third subsection concerns itself with the sky and the wind and contains several poems about birds. James Hogg’s “The Skylark” is followed by Shelley’s “To a Skylark,” Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” and Richard Henry Wilde’s “To the Mocking-Bird.” Whereas Hogg’s poem focuses on a celebration of the bird’s happiness, Shelley’s and Keats’s poems contain additional metapoetic reﬂections about the nature of poetry, and in the case of Keats, about life, sensation, and death. The two multidimensional Romantic poems are thus reduced to mere descriptive texts about English animal life. Perhaps “Ode to

56

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

the West Wind” was too passionate for the quaint Biedermeier mood that prevails throughout the volume. The fourth subsection centers on the sea. Section IV of Englischer Liederschatz, “Die Liebe,” focuses on love and parting, opening with Edward Moxon’s sonnet “Love” (“There is a ﬂower that never changeth hue”), which celebrates the transhistorical power of this emotion. Moxon uses traditional, clichéd rhyme words such as “gladness” and “sadness.” Unfortunately, his poetic skill did not always sufﬁce when matching rhyming syllables, as the following couplet proves: “O Love! where is the heart that knows not thee? / Thou only blossomest everlastingly!” His sonnet is followed by Shelley’s much more skillfully crafted “Love’s Philosophy,” which sports a lightness and ﬂirtatiousness Moxon lacks. Next comes the poem “Song” (“The stars are with the voyager / Wherever he may sail”) by the Chartist poet Thomas Hood, who is thus recontextualized as a nature poet. What all these texts have in common is that they embed love scenes into idealized pastoral landscapes. The anthologist included two more of Shelley’s love poems in this section, “To the Queen of my Heart” and “The Indian Serenade,” in which nature serves as a setting for the speaker’s emotions. In “To the Queen of my Heart,” the nighttime sea reﬂects the stages of passion, whereas in “The Indian Serenade,” the sensuous night frames a fantasy of desire. These poems are grouped with other poems about clandestine love, mostly in pretty, natural settings. Thus, Elze made Shelley the herald of a sweet and pleasant kind of nature, far removed from the sublime depth of the Prometheus Unbound volume. Ferdinand Freiligrath, The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock (1853) Freiligrath’s anthology The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock: A Selection of English Poetry, Chieﬂy Modern (1853; sixth edition 1887) was so successful that it went into several editions. It will serve as an example of an arrangement favoring political themes. Freiligrath himself, a well-known political poet, has a biography typical of a mediator between two cultures: he lived in London for several years, where he acquainted himself with English literature.102 The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock appeared in two different editions, one in English and one in German, presumably for distribution within Germany. The anthology was released by Hallberger in Stuttgart, known for his magniﬁcent representative volumes.103 My own copy of the fourth edition (ca. 1868) of The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock, which I dug up in an

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

57

antique shop in Berlin in 1997, measures 17 by 12.5 cm and is slightly bigger than Elze’s anthology. It has gilt edging as well as a beautiful red cover with gilt embossing, and the handwritten dedication runs: “Der lieben Clara zum Conﬁrmationstage, 14. April 1889 aus der Bücherei Tante Johannas von ihrem Onkel Oskar.” (“To dear Clara on the day of her conﬁrmation, April 14, 1889, from Aunt Johanna’s library by her Uncle Oskar.”) The volume was a valuable object, deemed suitable to be handed down from generation to generation, similar to a family Bible, which, at that time, would also possess gilt edging and might serve as a conﬁrmation present. The quasi-religious status assigned to such volumes was mirrored in the advertising. A Schiller edition by Hallberger, also in representative format, was described as a book that ought to claim a place of honor next to the Bible.104 Freiligrath’s edition is typical of the so-called Prachtausgaben (“splendid editions”), which, despite his revolutionary fervor, conformed to the bourgeois need for self-representation and appeared as luxury items to underscore the transcendental value of all poetry.105 The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock is structured along themes such as Elze’s but also shows concern with emerging social issues that fascinated the revolutionary poet Freiligrath: “Poesy and the Poets,” “Home and Country,” “Liberty: Historical Poems,” “Society: Work and Progress,” “Changes of Life,” “Love and the Affections,” “Nature and the Seasons,” and “The Sea and the Sailor: Foreign Scenes.” The metapoetic focus of the ﬁrst section, “Poesy and the Poets,” stems from Freiligrath’s own political context, the Vormärz movement, where reﬂections about the status of literature were central. This section contains, among other poems, Shelley’s “An Exhortation,” which asks the poet to refrain from amassing wealth and power. The other poems, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Scott, Coleridge, and Byron, are more concerned with inspiration, with the power of poetry, and with paying homage to individual poets than with the poet’s role as a critic of society, which is a focus one might expect from Freiligrath. By listing poets, the section constructs an English national literary history, a model for Germany. The next section, “Home and Country,” gloriﬁes Britain by holding up this united country as an example for German readers. It begins with a passage from a poem by James Montgomery: “There is a land, of every land the pride, / Beloved by Heaven o’er the world beside.” Shelley reappears in the third section, “Liberty.” This section is introduced by Thomas Chatterton’s poem “Liberty,” and is followed by Shelley’s “Liberty” and “An Ode Written

58

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

October, 1819,” here entitled “To the Assertors of Liberty,” as in other nineteenth-century collections, thus emphasizing individual revolutionary fervor. Here, Freiligrath’s selection departs from the usually unpolitical topicality of mid-nineteenth-century German anthologies. The rest of the section is devoted to ﬁghts for liberty, both in national and international contexts. A passage from Shelley’s Hellas (SPP 434–436, ll. 34–109) comments on the recent Greek struggle for independence, along with two passages by Byron that Freiligrath had taken from The Giaour and Don Juan, “Ancient Greece” and “Modern Greece,” both celebrations of liberty.106 Byron’s texts are preceded by Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which is thus politicized. Through its contexture, the penultimate line of the ode, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” links the Greek ﬁght for political independence to a larger ﬁght for the eternally true and good, although Keats’s concept of truth referred to the subjectivity of the individual and to art, not to current political affairs. The fourth section, “Society: Work and Progress,” elaborates on a theme normally not found in anthologies of that period: social criticism and the workers’ situation. Three poems by Wordsworth entitled “The Manufacturing Spirit,” “The Factory at Night,” and “The Working Classes” are included and make this poet appear as a harbinger of revolution. The three texts, which look like individual poems about injustice and exploitation, are in fact extracts from The Excursion. It was no uncommon practice to cut out passages from long poems, provide them with new titles and let them appear as individual creations. Byron’s above-mentioned poems “Ancient Greece” and “Modern Greece” were fabricated by Freiligrath, who also created three more poems included in this section, all of which are entitled “Gold” (by Samuel Johnson, Shelley, and Hood). They are each variations on a theme, criticizing the negative inﬂuence of gold on those obsessed with it. Shelley’s “Gold” consists of 11 lines from Queen Mab (SPP 43, Canto V, ll. 53–63) and was never intended as an independent poem. The next sections turn to the individual. In “Love and the Affections,” we once again ﬁnd “Love’s Philosophy.” “Nature and the Seasons” contains “The Cloud,” “The World’s Wanderers,” and “To a Skylark.” Whereas the ﬁrst part of Freiligrath’s anthology differs from Elze’s because of its focus on political issues, the later part resembles his. If Elze aimed to entertain the reader, possibly to improve his linguistic skills, Freiligrath, in addition, intended to inform a political consciousness and did so by resorting to a material shape typical of bourgeois self-fashioning.

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

59

Socialist Anthologies (1884–1914) By the end of the nineteenth century, the changes caused by industrialization had reached the treasured German books of poetry107 and had rendered social issues, city life, and work acceptable themes. In the wake of the socialist movement, a new type of anthology or songbook emerged that pursued the aim of educating its readers and offered an international range of poetry, aiming to unite workers across the nations. Four such anthologies printed poems by Shelley: Vorwärts! Eine Sammlung von Gedichten für das arbeitende Volk (Forward! A Collection of Poetry for Working People, 1884), Buch der Freiheit (Book of Liberty, 1893), Stimmen der Freiheit. Blüthenlese der hervorragendsten Schöpfungen unserer Arbeiter- und Volksdichter (Voices of Liberty: Anthology of the Best Creations of Our Workingmen’s and People’s Poets, 1900), and Von unten auf. Ein neues Buch der Freiheit (From Below: A New Book of Liberty, 1911).108 The more successful socialist anthologies were reissued several times, while the selections of poetry changed under varying aesthetic and ideological auspices. Von unten auf later became the anthology Das Buch der Freiheit (The Book of Liberty, 1963) and was handed out as an ofﬁcial present at the “Jugendweihe,” a sort of secular communist conﬁrmation and rite of passage conducted by the East German government. The titles of the volumes and their subsections are programmatic. In Von unten auf, section headings are entitled “Prophetenstimmen” and “Julistürmen” (“prophetic voices,” and “storms of July,” respectively) to mark the revolutionary intention. For socialist anthologists, censorship was a constant danger to be reckoned with, particularly after Vorwärts! had been banned in 1884, the year of its release. It therefore had to appear abroad and could only be distributed illegally. One of the texts contained in the third edition is “Lüge und Laster” (“Lie and Vice”), an excerpt from Queen Mab, which thus once again fell into a German-speaking censor’s hands. The preface to Vorwärts! describes the poems as “Kampfpoesien” (“poetry of ﬁghting”).109 Most socialist anthologies contain Shelley’s “Liberty,” “An Ode Written October, 1819,” “Song to the Men of England,” and other political texts. The volumes themselves were often as splendid as the bourgeois poetry books and thereby, in chameleon-like fashion, mimicked the enemies’ appearance. Stimmen der Freiheit is adorned with a red carnation on the front cover and a Marianne, the symbol of the French Revolution, on its title page. The texts are not arranged by themes but by individual poets, among them Freiligrath, Prutz, and other exponents of the Vormärz movement as well as recent writers. An

60

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

appendix presents additional poets, Romantics (Platen, Byron) and contemporaries (for example, Richard Dehmel). While Byron had been more prominent in earlier bourgeois anthologies, the socialist collections give preference to Shelley. One reason why socialist anthologists included aristocrats was that apart from ﬁnding their own ideas mirrored in their works, they could use well-known and established authors in order to reduce prejudices against such collections.110 Hardly any anthology remained static while moving through several editions because the selection of verse varied. Whereas both the ﬁrst (1900) and second (1901) editions of Stimmen der Freiheit each contained ﬁve poems by Shelley, the fourth edition (1914) included only three. That the anthology had undergone a thorough process of modernization can be gleaned from the title page, which shows a row of smoking chimneys, emphasizing the increased focus on the world of manufacturing and production as opposed to political liberation. The selection of poets had also changed. Additional contemporary writers were included. British Romantics were present in such anthologies not only through varying groups of poems but even more continuously through decontextualized quotations. Herwegh’s “Bundeslied für den Allgemeinen deutschen Arbeiterverein,” headed by the motto “You are many, they are few” from The Mask of Anarchy, was frequently anthologized in such volumes as was Freiligrath’s famous slogan “Trotz alledem,” an imitation of Burns’s deﬁant “For a’ that, and a’ that” (see chapter 6). These Romantic narratives of oppression, struggle, and liberty added to the image of an industrialized England where conditions were appalling but calls to revolution possible. They coexisted with the narratives of ﬂirtatious love and quaint nature that other anthologists presented as typically English. As Shelley ﬁtted into both constructions of Englishness, the two Shelleys have continued to live side by side until today. Hans Hennecke, Englische Gedichte von Shakespeare bis W. B. Yeats (1938) Owing to the general decline in interest, only few Shelley poems were anthologized in Germany between 1933 and 1945. An anthology by Hennecke, published during the Nazi era, is unusual because it privileges neither the political nor the quaint and lyrical Shelley of the nineteenth century but, for good reasons, combines texts denoting sadness. Englische Gedichte von Shakespeare bis W. B. Yeats (English Poems from Shakespeare to W.B. Yeats, 1938), reissued with

Th e Te x t ua l C o n d i t i o n

61

additional poems in 1955, offers a mournful Shelley, represented by “A Widow Bird” and “A Lament,” and a similarly depressed Keats (“When I Have Fears,” “Why Did I Laugh Tonight?”).111 The 1938 edition ends with Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” which takes the speaker into a different, dreamlike world and indirectly expresses the wish to escape from conditions that must not be named. Hennecke was particularly interested in the American modernists T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound but did not include them because the type of poetry they wrote was anathema to the Nazis.112 However, as he had mentioned Eliot in the introduction, he made him appear as the ﬁnal exponent of a great tradition, which his anthology presents, albeit in an incomplete form. Keats’s and Shelley’s functions are twofold. On the one hand, they are part of that tradition; on the other, they provide a mournful atmosphere that can be read as an implicit comment on the political and cultural climate of fascist Germany. * * * Like single-author editions, anthologies offer different Shelleyan narratives: the ﬂirtatious love poet, the sublime or quaint nature poet, and the revolutionary. However, German anthologies that contain Shelley’s poetry, be they in German or in English, do not favor narratives of the suffering martyr, which single-author editions such as Seybt’s or Strodtmann’s present in imitation of Mary Shelley. But cases of nonappearance can be signiﬁcant: Shelley is mysteriously absent from several English textbooks and anthologies compiled by Charles Clairmont, whose acquaintance and family relationship with Shelley had caused the Austrian police to observe him in the early 1820s. He kept an “extreme reticence”113 about his deceased relative, Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose texts are not printed in any of his books and who is mentioned only in passing. Perhaps Clairmont feared that he might attract the censor’s attention and get himself once more into trouble. Having started as a language instructor, he had advanced to the position of tutor to the Kaiser’s brothers, the Archdukes Ferdinand Max and Karl Ludwig. Despite his ofﬁcial position, Clairmont expressed sympathy for the revolutionary events of 1848. His letters criticize “the old musty Beamten” (“civil servants”),114 and his analysis of English history is rather progressive in its political judgment. It is unclear whether his omission of Shelley was caused by insecurity about modern poetry, or whether he had personal reasons, or whether he had simply prescribed himself a strict dose of Austrian obedience.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 3

Ger man R eaders of Shel ley

D

The Romantic Reader: Young, Male, Vulnerable, and Alone

espite the pleas of his loving father, Georg, the main protagonist of Paul Heyse’s novel Merlin (1892), refused to submit to the Teutonic academic ritual of a Habilitation.1 Instead, he opted to embark on a poet’s career and moved to the countryside. But as the high standards he had set for himself were not reconcilable to the demands of popular taste, he failed, and at the end of the novel the reader ﬁnds him lying dead near a hedge in the garden of the asylum to which he had been conﬁned: “Das Gesicht nach oben gekehrt mit einem stillen, heiteren Ausdrucke, als ob er den eben erwachenden Vögeln im Laube über ihm lausche” (“His face turned upwards with a still, serene expression, as if he were listening to the just-awakening birds in the leaves above him”).2 One of the stages of his downfall had been his avid reading of Shelley’s Cenci, which had fed his delusion that he had to write a successful history play in blank verse at a time when this genre was as unfashionable as it was unmarketable. Georg is the ideal reader the Romantics had identiﬁed for themselves: young, male, vulnerable, and alone. Whereas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reading was often a social activity,3 English and German Romantics thrived on solitude, like Goethe’s Werther, who luxuriates in nature while reading Homer, or Wordsworth, who describes solitary reading as a particular delight: . . . once, upon a summer’s noon, While he was sitting in a rocky cave By the sea-side, perusing, as it chanced,

64

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s The famous History of the Errant Knight Recorded by Cervantes, these same thoughts Came to him; and to height unusual rose While listlessly he sate, and having closed The Book, had turn’d his eyes towards the Sea.4

Such new constructions of reading were deliberate provocations. In a letter to the publisher John Taylor, Richard Woodhouse wrote of his friend John Keats: “He says he does not want ladies to read his poetry: that he writes for men.”5 Likewise, Shelley refrained from producing pretty drawing-room poetry, which in his day was automatically associated with a female readership and might have sold better than his serious texts. If Shelley refused to comply with the rituals of wooing an audience, he was nevertheless concerned with the question of how to address the public. Most of the time, he remained unsuccessful. His pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, meant to spark off a discussion of his provocative ideas, was on sale in an Oxford bookshop for 20 minutes before an enraged don ordered that the copies be removed and burned. Another highly original yet unsuccessful subversive method he employed for inciting the masses was to stick revolutionary messages into bottles, which he then dispatched into the sea. Much more ordinary was the publishing of volumes of poetry, which, however, brought him little recognition during his lifetime. Chapter 2 has shown that Shelley did not consider even his greatest texts, for example, Prometheus Unbound, as suitable for a general readership. The ﬁnal statement of his essay A Defence of Poetry crystallizes the ambivalent view he held of his own position: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” (SPP 535) This famous last sentence shows what made a true poet in the eyes of the Romantic idealist: not fame, but the lack of it. The statement may have been an unconscious gesture to save face, particularly as Shelley seems to have suffered from his lack of recognition, like Keats, who also adopted a pose of carelessness while complaining about the readers’ indifference. Both poets, contemporaries of the famous Byron, were hoping for posthumous recognition.6 Who read Shelley in Germany, why, and how? His poetry was not consumed only by the select few; more often than not it was the subject of sociable conversation and public entertainment, and was even taught at the educational institutions he had despised. In principle, systematic research into past reading habits is difﬁcult to conduct and is always in danger of becoming anecdotal. Nevertheless, there is sufﬁcient material available to trace several aspects of Shelley’s nineteenth-century German

German Readers of Shelley

65

readership: ﬁrst, the factors determining the perusal of poetry in a broader sense; second, the roles of circles and the mediating activities of women in establishing the initial reception of a Romantic author; third, radical readers; fourth, educational institutions; and ﬁfth, the virtual circle of readers constructed by magazines. All these audiences depend on the availability of “Shelley” in printed form, which has been established in chapter 2.

The Poetry Market Detailed accounts of Shelley’s impact on the individual reader’s mind are hard to ﬁnd. As testimonies such as C. F. Meyer’s, who declared in 1884 that it had been fashionable to read Shelley when he was young,7 are rare, one needs to reconstruct the German readers’ horizon of expectation, their general interest in poetry, in order to ﬂesh out the data proving Shelley’s presence. It is difﬁcult to make deﬁnite statements about nineteenth-century publishing and reading because source material is hard to come by. Numerous old records were destroyed by wars or by later generations of publishers, who viewed old documents as useless rubbish. Nevertheless, some research results concerning the status of poetry in the nineteenth century are available and provide the background for the reception of English Romanticism. Studies by Rudolf Schenda, Reinhard Wittmann, and Günter Häntzschel describe the performative aspects of poetry by considering the social and material contexts of production and reception.8 Who read poetry in the nineteenth century, and who reads it today? The simple answer is: not a lot of people. Wittmann proves that belles lettres, that is, novels, drama, and poetry, accounted for about 8–10 percent of the German book production between 1851 and 1883.9 That the proportion of poetry was tiny can be seen from statistics about circulating libraries. Whereas foreign novels were assiduously acquired, poetry met with less interest.10 The favorite poets were not necessarily those canonized authors whom we today regard as the true exponents of the nineteenth century: Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Droste, Keller, Meyer, and Fontane. Among the readers’ favorites were Geibel’s nationalist exhortations, celebrations of universal femininity such as Julius Rodenberg’s “Die reinen Frauen” (“Pure Women”), and Friedrich Bodenstedt’s orientalizing Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (Songs of Mirza Schaffy).11 Few documents bear witness to the reading habits of the lower classes, which in the nineteenth century constituted roughly 50 percent of the population. Workers, if at all interested in literature, bought cheap trashy novels.12 In the 1880s, some workers

66

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

in the bigger towns were able to afford Reclam classics, cheap and small booklets that were issued in large editions.13 Generally, few books were bought. Most poetry was read by the 23 percent of the population who belonged to the upper middle class: professionals, entrepreneurs, civil servants, administrators, high school teachers, professors, landowners, and lawyers.14 Institutionalized distribution of new literature occurred through the Lesegesellschaften (“reading societies”).15 As some university libraries were open for only a few hours every week and restricted their access to scholars,16 these societies, most of which also organized social activities, provided magazines and other reading matter for a subscription fee. They were mainly open to the bourgeoisie, the upper middle classes, but might also be frequented by the aristocracy, as a list of members of such a club in Munich, the Gesellschaft Museum, shows.17 Many of the magazines the Gesellschaft Museum had subscribed to contained articles on Shelley, for example, the Deutsche Rundschau or the Magazin für die Litteratur des In- und Auslandes. Poetry might contribute to an evening’s entertainment. As recitals were standard elements of bourgeois evening parties, suitable texts could be found in anthologies, likewise in Deklamatorien, collections of popular poems for recital, often with instructions concerning the style of presentation. Even though many of them feature popular German authors, most of whom have fallen into oblivion, a few contain English poetry in translation as well.18 As poetry was often learned by heart, read out aloud, and sung, Shelley’s frequently anthologized poems must have been ideal material for such displays of cultured respectability, sentiment, and high pathos. The large number of musical settings of his poetry (chapter 5) proves the popularity of an “easy-listening” Shelley. Among the determinants of reading habits, gender was more important than class because poetry was regarded as a female genre. The parameters of women’s reading were set by their education. Whereas the traditional high schools for boys (humanistische Gymnasien) offered a classical education, girls were sent to höhere Töchterschulen (“higher institutions for girls”), which were frequently left to organize their own curricula. Whereas the Gymnasien focused on ancient Greek and Roman literature and offered comparatively little tuition in German, the girls’ secondary schools aimed to instill general knowledge into their pupils, focusing on emotional, moral, and aesthetic education rather than on the training of cognitive faculties. A lot of time was devoted to German lessons, which included easy poetry that could be read without analytical distance.19 This popular poetry was accessible, escapist, and claimed to be of transhistorical value. With the advent

German Readers of Shelley

67

of industrialization, middle-class women had been removed from the sphere of production, a fact that contributed to a feminine culture of poetry, simply because women were at home and had enough spare time to read. Enjoying poetry was essentially a private affair, recommended for educating and ennobling the mind.20 The favorite themes of poems for women were nature, love (though representations of passionate love were considered dangerous), religious sentiment, and the nation—in short, nothing controversial. Special anthologies for women were published, such as Freudvoll und Leidvoll (Joyous and Suffering), whose title page depicted a woman sitting on a blossoming branch and reading. Poems were set to music, to be sung to piano accompaniment—another bourgeois female pastime. The two Shelley texts in Freudvoll und Leidvoll are the short pieces “Love’s Philosophy” and “Good-Night,” both suitable for easy reading. Certainly not all poetry was intended for bourgeois women, yet the fact that women constituted such an important segment of the market accounts for some of the selection criteria evident in anthologies, which tamed the sublime Shelley, turned him into a nature poet, and ﬁtted him into the bourgeois poetics that continued to be valid right into the twentieth century. At least two women edited collections of English poetry that included Shelley: Ploennies and Wilhelmine Prinzhorn. Whereas anthologies for women contained Shelley’s short and easy texts, anthologies by women took his longer and more complex poetry into account. For Englische Lyriker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (English Poets of the Nineteenth Century, 1863), Ploennies chose “Ode to the West Wind,” “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” and passages from “Lines Written on the Euganean Hills.” Through translating poetry she engaged in a marginalized and underpaid activity, as other sources document. In Heyse’s Merlin, Lili, the wife of the lonely young Shelley reader Georg, translates English texts into German to improve the young couple’s ﬁnancial situation. Yet whereas Georg’s literary plans are discussed at great length, the reader is never told what Lili translates, possibly because Heyse did not credit a female translator with artistic potential. Translations provided women with a leisurely pursuit but not with a secure income and certainly not with the aura of a creative intellectual. To some female readers and writers, Shelley must have appeared as the prototype of a being whose fervent wishes for the good of mankind (a supposedly feminine quality) could not be realized owing to social constraints and lack of acknowledgment. As Shelley embodied the situation in which many women found themselves, he attracted a surprisingly large number of female scholars and translators, among

68

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

them Helene Druskowitz and Helene Richter, both of whom wrote biographies of him. Ploennies’s anthology Englische Lyriker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts contains the following short poem, composed by herself, which introduces the section about Shelley: Ein Atheist, der heiß nach Gott gerungen, Ein Menschenfeind, von Menschenlieb’ durchdrungen; Ein starker Geist in einer schwachen Hülle, Ein Thatenarmer mit Gedankenfülle; Verkannt, verbannt als seiner Zeit verderblich, An Allem zweifelnd, der selbst unsterblich.21 [An atheist, who had fervently struggled for God, An enemy of man, imbued with love for mankind; A strong mind in a weak body, One who was weak in action but full of thoughts; Unacknowledged, banned as corrupting to his time, Doubting everything, immortal himself.]

What is striking are the sharp contrasts in the individual characteristics attributed to Shelley. Whereas most biographies adhere to either one or the other of these extremes (atheism or love of a divine principle, misanthrope or friend to the people, weakness or strength), Ploennies, familiar with Shelley’s life, combined these traits to make up a contradictory self. The contrast between strength of spirit and physical weakness and between thoughtfulness and inactivity also characterized nineteenth-century women’s writing, where this dichotomy was often expressed.

Shelley in Circles Shelley was not traded through the esoteric few but through a network of people in contact with one another. The feminine tradition of mediating culture through salons and circles played an important role for the spread of Shelley’s texts, biographies, and the myths surrounding him. Ottilie von Goethe’s salon, Ploennies’s circle of friends, and smaller and lesser-known sociable circles enabled texts and ideas to be discussed, performed, translated, and prepared for further circulation. In the nineteenth century, an author’s reputation traveled by word of mouth and needed sociability to be perceived at all. Even though spoken words are deeply problematic as sources because they evaporate the minute they are pronounced, the oral communication surrounding the ﬁrst reception of a literary text must

German Readers of Shelley

69

never be underrated.22 Although Shelley’s poetic personae were often solitary young men such as the central character of Alastor, his ﬁrst reception relied on sociable circles that were often headed by women, so that the vulnerable and lonely Romantic outsider was doomed to remain a phantom reader. If sources about Ottilie von Goethe do not provide us with a discussion of Shelley’s oeuvre by her, they nevertheless allow for the conclusion that in early nineteenth-century Germany, foreign literature was traded sociably, often with the help of travelers. A visit to Goethe’s house was a noteworthy event for German and English travelers and was therefore recorded in letters and memoirs. When William Makepeace Thackeray called on the great poet in 1830, he was treated “very kindly & rather in a more distingué manner than . . . the other Englishmen here.”23 Like other visitors, Thackeray spent much of his time in Weimar socializing with Ottilie von Goethe and others who frequented her salon. Their conversations about art and literature found a printed outlet in a trilingual weekly magazine, Das Chaos, with texts in German, English, and French, which reﬂected the international dimension of literary communication in Weimar, the backdrop for Ottilie von Goethe’s reception of Shelley. “The other evening when I went to call on her I found her with three Byrons, a Moore, and a Shelley on her table,” Thackeray noted down.24 As Shelley had not yet been translated into German at that time, it can be assumed that the edition was in English, possibly a French reprint, which would have been cheaper. Poetry readings were regular elements of evening entertainment in Ottilie von Goethe’s salon, which was renowned for its lively atmosphere and its activities: conversation, charades, and recitals. Thackeray’s observations prove that as early as 1830, Shelley was read among those who believed that they were on the forefront of literary trends. It is signiﬁcant that not only the cultural centers such as Berlin and Vienna but also small places hosted sociable circles, where contemporary literature from abroad was debated and read in its original language. Another example is Ploennies’s circle in Darmstadt, where a surprisingly large number of early Shelley readers and critics met.25 Ploennies, herself a proliﬁc writer, editor, and translator, was born in 1803 and spent most of her life in or close to the provincial residential town of Darmstadt near Frankfurt, a well-known center of literary activities and intellectual exchange, renowned for its liberalism. The foundation for Ploennies’s enchantment with poetry was laid in her school years.26 After her marriage to the court physician August von Ploennies in 1824, she found little time to write for about 15 years because she bore nine children. From about 1839 onward, she ran a sort of salon,

70

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

which developed into one of the town’s social centers and apparently reawakened her own creativity. Between 1841 and her death in 1872, she published about 20 volumes of poetry, ﬁction, and translations, among them two anthologies of English poetry. If her earlier poetry is much inﬂuenced by English Romanticism, particularly by Byron, in the 1860s she turned to writing biblically inspired and religious verse almost exclusively. When her husband died in 1847, her activities as salonnière came to an end, she left Darmstadt for several years, and withdrew from the social circles she had been engaged with. Among those who visited her and cooperated with her was Künzel, an expert on English literature who intermittently lived in London between 1838 and 1841 and whose entries on English literature for the Brockhaus encyclopedia were described earlier.27 It was presumably Künzel who brought her into contact with Shelley’s cousin Medwin, the famous author of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824) and The Shelley Papers (1833). Medwin must have communicated his fascination to Ploennies and her friends and thus directly inﬂuenced Shelley’s German fates. He had learned the language during his university days, was well read in German literature, and went to Germany around 1837 as a foreign correspondent for The Athenaeum. Later Medwin wrote for other magazines, among them the New Monthly Magazine, and returned to England more than 20 years later. His articles provided English readers with detailed information about cultural events. Among his contributions were sketches of town-life, anecdotes, stories, and translations of contemporary German poetry such as Ploennies’s “Oscar and Gianetta,” a series of six Byronic sonnets that appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1850 and testiﬁes to their ongoing cooperation.28 While assisting Medwin in preparing a German version of his Shelley biography, Ploennies wrote to Levin Schücking, then review editor of the Kölnische Zeitung, and asked him whether he would like to print some passages of Medwin’s forthcoming book in order to boost its sale.29 Ploennies’s own poetry, often concerned with religious topics, did not make her famous, nor did Medwin’s English translations, which were received favorably. Ploennies is remembered as a mediator of literature. Another important visitor to Ploennies’s salon was Freiligrath, the passionately rebellious poet of the Vormärz, the intellectual movement leading up to the 1848 revolution in Germany. Freiligrath’s own poetry is indebted to Wordsworth, Byron, Hemans, and Burns, whose fascination with nature, with oriental settings, and with political themes led him to write a crisp poetry that soon achieved popularity. Freiligrath is also known as the editor of the anthology

German Readers of Shelley

71

The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock: A Selection of English Poetry, Chieﬂy Modern, which became so successful that it went into six editions between 1853 and 1887. Together with Freiligrath and Künzel, Ploennies planned to found an Anglo-German magazine in 1841, to be named Britannia, which however came to nothing because the publisher withdrew. Inspired by this endeavor, Ploennies took the title for an anthology of English poetry with parallel German translations printed on opposite pages. Britannia (1843) contains several Shelley poems: “A Summer Evening Churchyard,” “Love’s Philosophy,” “To Night,” “The Indian Serenade.” It was the poet of nature, atmosphere, and feeling whom she had selected. A second anthology, Englische Lyriker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (English Poets of the Nineteenth Century, 1863), continued her project of mediating English poetry. Among the admirers of English Romanticism with whom Ploennies socialized were Gutzkow, who wrote a long biographical sketch of Shelley for the Frankfurter Telegraph in 1837, and Wilhelm Hamm, Künzel’s brother-in-law, who published a novella about Shelley in 1858.30 One can imagine that lively discussions about Shelley took place, as several among her entourage produced texts about him: biographical sketches, ﬁction, translations, and editions. Ploennies’s circle proves that reception processes occur in clusters and are not spread out evenly. Another such salon met in Hamburg in the winter of 1840–1841 and was later described in Hamm’s Jugenderinnerungen (Memories of My Youth).31 Hamm may have come across Shelley during the 1840s German Shelley vogue, possibly during his journey through England, France, and Belgium and before he began to study agriculture under the direction of Justus Liebig in Gießen. Hamm stayed in Hamburg for several months to regain his health and gained access to a literary circle that held play readings. Among its habitués were Gutzkow and two nieces of Karl Ense von Varnhagen. As the ﬁrst German Shelley translation of 1830, a booklet containing “The Cloud,” had been dedicated to Varnhagen by the translator Paul von Haugwitz, the two young women, who were extremely well read, may have known Shelley. Hamm describes them as freethinkers, adding: “Sie schwärmten für das dunkle Kapitel der Frauenemanzipation.” (“They were enthusing about the dark chapter of women’s emancipation.”)32 Shelley’s radical views on marriage and women’s rights must have pleased them, provided they had access to his texts. As Hamburg was geographically close to England, English literature was readily available, and although we have no records of conversations about Shelley in this circle, it is more than likely that a group with such

72

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

literary interests would have discussed an author about whom several of its members were so well informed. Hamm later met Mary Shelley during her sojourn in Germany. These examples are merely the beginning of many more German conversations about Shelley. They prove that reception studies ought to consider traces of orality in diaries, biographies, memoirs, travelogues, and other sources. The type of lonely male reader envisaged by the Romantics certainly existed but was usually surrounded by sociable talk. Shelley’s initial German reception, particularly the 1830s and 1840s fashion, did not spread regularly but was apparently instigated by cultural mediators who knew one another and communicated about the poet. Shelley was thus traded through networks established by sociable women, not through solitary male thinkers.

Radical Readers By no means was Shelley’s poetry always seen as innocent reading matter and deemed suitable for young women. In an article on the English educational system, Charles Kingsley even referred to “the forbidden fruits” of Byron and Shelley.33 Shelley was rather controversial in England, where his scandalous conduct and his radical ideas were better known than in Germany. Even though his poetry was quickly absorbed into the bourgeois German canon while his biography was rewritten as that of an ineffective exponent of Weltschmerz, he nevertheless had an impact among German socialists, too, thanks to Engels, who possessed a radically unabridged Queen Mab and reported in his Letters from London in 1843: Byron und Shelley werden fast nur von den unteren Ständen gelesen; des letztern Werke dürfte kein “respektabler” Mann auf seinem Tisch liegen haben, ohne in den schrecklichsten Verruf zu kommen. Es bleibt dabei: selig sind die Armen, denn ihrer ist das Himmelreich, und wie lange wird’s dauern—auch das Reich dieser Welt.34 [Byron and Shelley are read almost only by the lower classes. No “respectable” man could have the works of the latter on his table without defaming himself. It remains true: blessed are the poor because the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs, and no matter how long it is going to take—also the Kingdom of this world.]

Shelley’s path to German radicals, however, was strewn with obstacles. When Engels planned to translate Shelley in 1840, he asked for a fee of ten Thaler per sheet and was turned down by the publisher,

German Readers of Shelley

73

who was more interested in proﬁt than in contributing to the spread of a noteworthy author. In a letter to Schücking, he complained: Was nun unsren Shelley-Plan betrifft, so besprach ich mich gleich gestern mit Schünemann; bei den zehn Thalern Honorar fuhr er wie blitzgetroffen zurück und sagte gleich, er könne sich darauf nicht einlassen . . . Das dumme Buchhändlervolk meint, bei einem Commentar über die Briefe Johannis, der vielleicht 2 Thaler Honorar kostet und schlecht ausgestattet, aber auch vielleicht von 20 Studenten höchstens gekauft wird, weniger zu riskiren, als bei Shelley, dessen Ausstattung und Honorar vielleicht verhältnißmäßig das Dreifache kostet, an dem aber die ganze Nation Theil nimmt. So eben war ich wieder bei Schünemann, um aus seinem Munde die deﬁnitive Erklärung zu vernehmen, daß er sich zu diesen Bedingungen darauf nicht einlassen könne; ein Bogen Gedichte enthalte nur den vierten Theil eines Bogens Prosa, so daß der Bogen eigentlich 40 Th. Honorar zu stehen käme. Ich sagte ihm, es sei kein Kinderspiel den Shelley zu übersetzen, und wenn ers nicht wolle, so mög’ ers in Gottes Namen bleiben lassen; er stehe sich übrigens selbst im Licht.35 [As far as our Shelley plan is concerned, I spoke to Schünemann yesterday. When I mentioned the fee of ten Thaler, he started as if struck by lightening and said immediately that he could not agree . . . The stupid tribe of booksellers thinks that they take fewer risks with a comment on the epistles of St. John, which may cost two Thaler in fees and, badly produced, will be bought by 20 students at the most, than with Shelley, whose production and fee may cost three times as much in comparison but in whom the entire nation is interested. I have just been to Schünemann once more to hear a deﬁnitive declaration that he could not agree under these conditions, that one sheet of poetry contained only a fourth of what a sheet of prose contained and that the fee per sheet was in fact 40 Thaler. I told him that translating Shelley was by no means easy but if he did not want it he should leave it in God’s name, and that he was barring himself from light.]

Engels’s project ﬁnally came to nothing, not only because of Schünemann’s lack of interest but also because the ﬁrst installment of Seybt’s translation appeared in 1840. Meanwhile, poetry with a political focus increased in importance. Whereas the bourgeoisie happily contented themselves with uncontroversial pieces, the organizers of the working-class movement tried to use poetry as a means of political agitation. Numerous workingmen’s songbooks suggest that poems about political issues were popular.36 Like collections aimed at the middle class, those compiled for workingmen favored German poetry; only the larger anthologies had a clear international focus and included

74

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

writers such as Shelley, Hood, and Byron. Both in England and Germany, the poems in workingmen’s and socialist anthologies were recited at meetings and festive occasions, probably in front of large audiences. In a letter dated February 22, 1845, Engels described such a meeting: Hier in Elberfeld geschehen Wunderdinge. Wir haben gestern im größten Saale und ersten Gasthof der Stadt unsre dritte kommunistische Versammlung abgehalten. Die erste 40, die zweite 130, die dritte wenigstens 200 Menschen stark. Ganz Elberfeld und Barmen von der Geldaristokratie bis zur épicerie, nur das Proletariat ausgeschlossen, war vertreten. Heß hielt einen Vortrag. Gedichte von Müller, Püttmann und Stücke aus Shelley wurden gelesen ebenso der Artikel über die bestehenden kommunistischen Kolonien im Bürgerbuch. Nachher diskutirt bis ein Uhr. Das Ding zieht ungeheuer. Man spricht von Nichts als vom Kommunismus, und jeden Tag fallen uns neue Anhänger zu.37 [Miraculous things happen here in Elberfeld. Yesterday we had our third communist meeting in the town’s biggest hall and best inn. The ﬁrst was attended by 40, the second by 130, the third by 200. The whole of Elberfeld and Barmen, from the ﬁnancial aristocracy to the epicérie was present, but excluding the proletariat. Heß delivered a speech. Poems by Müller, Püttmann as well as pieces by Shelley were recited, likewise the article on existing communist colonies from the citizen’s book. Afterwards we had discussions until one o’ clock. The issue is immensely attractive. Nothing is spoken about but communism, and every day new supporters join.]

The audience consisted of members of the bourgeoisie and artisans, but no “proletariat.” One can assume that Shelley, whose poetry was also included in Hermann Püttmann’s anthology Album of 1847, was read out at other meetings, too. Poetry recitals soon became part of the emerging working-class culture. Early social democratic meetings were sometimes conducted in a festive style, with agendas that offered not only debates but also quasi-liturgical elements, among them poetry recitals, drama, music, while other forms of entertainment included dancing, excursions, lotteries. These events combined political education with socializing and with displays of respectability.38 The poems in socialist anthologies were sung to well-known tunes, like hymns in church.39 It is noteworthy that Shelley’s radical readings were staged in public, not in secluded bourgeois living rooms. Thus, Shelley posthumously experienced the recognition of the masses for which he had striven.

German Readers of Shelley

75

Institutionalized Poetry: Schools and Universities Whereas in the eighteenth century, English was mainly studied privately, that is, at home and with a tutor, it began to be taught at schools and universities in the course of the nineteenth century. Because of England’s position as an industrial and mercantile nation, a good knowledge of its language became essential, and English was made an obligatory subject in some technical and merchants’ schools, particularly in the north of Germany, while French continued to remain the dominant foreign language.40 The teachers who gave language lessons frequently ignored the difference between classical and modern languages and accorded a central place to grammar. In a move to counteract such teaching methods, language practice and the reading of literary texts were advocated. Criteria for the inclusion of authors and texts were suitability, relevance within the English cultural context, and linguistic level. English-language anthologies for schools with surveys of British literary history began to be published at a time when Elze’s, Elwell’s, and Freiligrath’s collections reached the peak of their popularity.41 Particularly successful was the collection The British Classical Authors, edited by Ludwig Herrig, which combined poetry and prose and ﬁrst appeared in 1850. It was reissued in a variety of changed, improved, and abridged versions in more than 100 editions, last as British and American Classical Poems by Horst Meller and Rudolf Sühnel in 1966. Although the selection of Shelleyan texts varied greatly, Shelley remained in the collection over a time-span of more than 100 years. The British Classical Authors in the ninety-second edition of 1911, newly edited by Max Förster, contains “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” “Ode to the West Wind,” “The Cloud,” “To a Skylark,” passages from Alastor, Prometheus Unbound, Adonais, and “To Night” but not Queen Mab.42 Shelley, the enemy of educational institutions, had become an exemplary exponent of cultural values held up to schoolboys. Needless to say, neither the radical nor the ﬂirtatious Shelley found his way into these schoolbooks. Reading Shelley was a serious matter, at least for young men gathered in classrooms. In 1892, University College Oxford erected a statue of Shelley that exhibits the passive, feminized poet in a gilded cage.43 The teaching of English literature in schools was very much under the inﬂuence of the emerging universities. Before 1800, English was taught by Sprachmeister (“language masters”), that is, native speakers who enjoyed the same status as dancing and fencing masters

76

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

and were enlisted to turn the students, young aristocrats, into men of the world. Literature played an important part in such lessons. As modern languages were not institutionalized subjects and as no degree courses existed, professors of philosophy, history, and even medicine lectured on English literature. In 1845–1846, a Lektor (“language instructor”) with a PhD, Dr. Solly,44 offered an entire lecture series on Byron and Shelley in Berlin. In the wake of industrial developments, English literature gradually became a university discipline in Britain and America, where it was taught in the tradition of humanism and regarded as worthy of serious scholarly inquiry and as conducive to character building.45 German universities established English mainly for the purpose of teacher training in the second half of the nineteenth century. Does the idea of Shelley in academia not constitute a contradiction per se? Like other Romantics, Shelley has been shaped by academia. If the ﬁrst shaping, the teaching Shelley himself experienced, added considerably to his hatred of all educational institutions, the second shaping, the posthumous teaching of Shelley’s works, has taken more account of his individuality with the aim of ﬁtting him into academic discourses. First of all, Shelley was reinvented as a Romantic, although English Romanticism—unlike German Romanticism—never existed as a movement.46 Whereas Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were regarded as the exponents of the “Lake School” by their contemporaries, Shelley would have seen himself as a coterie poet, or as a lonely prophet in the wilderness but not as the central exponent of a mainstream literary movement. In German academia, Shelley was the seventh most frequently taught British author between 1881 and 1945 and a popular subject for research, particularly for female scholars.47 Two markedly different research paradigms shaped academic literary analysis in the decades up to 1933, when numerous PhDs and other studies about Shelley were written: positivism and Geistesgeschichte. Several readings of Prometheus Unbound can serve as examples to clarify these varying German approaches. A typical example of positivist scholarship with its focus on inﬂuence, imagery, or verse is an essay by Ackermann, “Studien über Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound” (1892), a detailed exploration of Aeschylus’s inﬂuence on Shelley’s drama.48 In a move to counteract such fact-oriented studies, a new type of analysis was established through Geistesgeschichte, which aimed to account for abstract ideas and made use of organic and metaphysical imagery, as a programmatic article by Hans Hecht (1925) about new research paradigms shows. Hecht compares English literature to a “Stromsystem,” a system of natural waterways.49 As Hecht believed that Romanticism

German Readers of Shelley

77

inspired man to achieve the very best, he envisaged the poets as being situated on the individual steps of a mountain ascent: Byron is closest to the world and the worldly, superseded by Keats and Coleridge, and ﬁnally by Shelley, who had spoken decisive words in A Defence of Poetry and is closest to the divine.50 In Hecht’s reading, Prometheus Unbound offers transcendental mystical unity: “Man hat gesehen: hinter den Einzelheiten erheben sich Einheiten, schließen sich Gruppen zu Typen zusammen, weist endlich der Urtyp zurück auf ein Letztes, Äußerstes, aus dem lebendige Kraft ﬂießt und zu schöpferischer Tat wird.”51 (“One has seen: behind the details are units, groups join together to types, and ﬁnally the Ur-type points back to the last, the most extreme, from which ﬂows living strength to become the creative act.”) As English was a comparatively small discipline in Germany, its publications were rarely noticed outside the circle of the initiated few. It may be symptomatic that the most profound study of Shelley was produced by a woman, Helene Richter, who stood outside the mainstream of academia and whose reading of Prometheus Unbound as a reﬂection on the ideal of passive resistance in the face of tyranny departs from the interpretative fashion of her day.52 Shelley remained a favorite in German universities until the mid1930s. In the Third Reich, English Studies were expected to concentrate on current issues, ranging from the political system to racial questions, while the analysis of Romantic poetry was regarded as an unhealthy expression of aestheticism.53 Moreover, Shelley did not possess the seeming adaptability of Shakespeare, who was remodeled as a kindred spirit of the Germans. The decreased research output on Shelley between 1937 and 1945 also mirrors the decline of interest in Shelley in Britain. An article on Prometheus Unbound by Walter Jacobi54 (1939), remarkable as it robs the drama of all its political components and treats it as a mere lyrical text, was the most subversive analysis possible for an academic who had stayed in Germany. Even though Shelley did not receive much attention in the shape of publications, one may ask what happened to Shelley scholars and other Shelley readers in Nazi Germany. Förster, professor at Munich, whose wife had Jewish family, was pensioned off in 1934. Hecht, professor at Göttingen, had welcomed fascism in 1933 but had been forced to retire in 1935 at the age of 59 because he had some Jewish ancestry. Theodor Spira (Königsberg), the author of a book about Shelley, lost his chair in 1940 because of his Christian paciﬁst thinking.55 Richter died in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in 1943, at the age of 82.56 Other Shelley readers emigrated, including Wolfenstein, who committed suicide while in exile in Paris. Oskar Maria Graf,57 Brecht,

78

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

and others left Germany. Many of those who departed were from Jewish families and were readers of the revolutionary Shelley. The interest in Shelley returned soon after World War II, when the two emerging political systems in the two parts of Germany led to marked differences in the treatment of English Romanticism. East and West German exponents of Anglistik each reinvented their own Shelleys, who bore little resemblance to each other. Compare the following two extracts from studies by the West German critic Wolfgang Clemen and the East German critic Gustav Kirchner, both of which appeared in 1948 and seem to deal with two entirely different authors: Neben der vielfarbigen, aber unbeständigen sichtbaren Welt gab es für Shelley eine unsichtbare Welt. Sie ist erfüllt von den Wirkkräften, den bewegenden Ursachen für all das, was in so wechselvollem Kleid uns in der sichtbaren Welt gegenübertritt. Diese unsichtbare Welt ist für Shelley etwas sehr Lebendiges, Sprechendes. Sie ist, wie wir sahen, auch vielstuﬁg und weitgespannt und reicht von dem niedrigsten, elementaren Bereich bis zu dem Bezirk, in dem die hohen Ideen, Liebe, Freiheit usw. zu Hause sind.58 [Beside the colorful but inconstant visible world, there was an invisible world for Shelley. It is full of the powers, the ﬁrst causes for all that confronts us in such varied dress in the visible world. To Shelley, this invisible world is very lively, eloquent. As we have seen, it has several levels and stretches far, ranging from the lowest, elementary region to the realm where high ideas, love, freedom, et cetera are at home.] Sein ausgeprägter Haß gegen Unterdrückung, Tyrannei und Unrecht jeder Art, gegen jede Vergewaltigung des Individuums und politische Rechtlosigkeit, ein Haß, der nur durch sein unendliches Mitgefühl für alle Armen, Schwachen und Unterdrückten übertroffen werden konnte, ließ sich nicht mit den Jahren aus Nützlichkeits- oder anderen Erwägungen heraus langsam in sein Gegenteil verkehren! Shelley ist im Gegensatz zu vielen berühmten Zeitgenossen wie Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge der unerschrockene Revolutionär geblieben, der er in jungen Jahren war.59 [His intense hatred of oppression, tyranny, and injustice of any kind, of any act of violence against an individual, of political lawlessness, a hatred only to be surpassed by his immense sympathy for all who were poor, weak, and oppressed, did not lend itself to being gradually turned into its opposite over the years, for reasons of utility or due to any other reﬂections! In contrast to many other famous contemporaries, like Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Shelley remained the fearless revolutionary he had been in his youth.]

German Readers of Shelley

79

If Kirchner regarded Shelley as a social revolutionary, Clemen focused on the abstract qualities in his thought, situated him in a spiritual world, and thereby tied him to the interpretative practices of New Criticism, which favored lyrical over political readings. Whereas Clemen read Queen Mab as a powerful fairy, Kirchner situated her within the political situation Shelley criticized so fervently. Likewise, the German reception of Blake fell into a political and a lyrical strand.60 While the political separation between East and West Germany led to a different reception of all literature, the treatment of the English Romantic poets opened up readings that were particularly diverse, especially from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. In the last two decades, the two readings—lyrical and political—have coexisted without being mutually exclusive, and despite their differences, the two German Shelleys, like the two German Blakes, have been stable entities in educational institutions.

Magazines Magazines, which had contributed to shaping the emerging public sphere in the eighteenth century, were also among the media that helped to spread an author’s fame. In the times before television and radio, they constituted an important source of information and entertainment. Whereas in the early nineteenth century, magazines offered their readers a wide range of issues, they narrowed their focus toward the end of the century and often became the carriers of a limited aesthetic or political program.61 As each issue might be read by up to 20 people, individual magazines were of considerable inﬂuence. If readers are hard to trace in retrospect, three examples will nevertheless show how magazines, which contributed to the spread of Shelley’s works, constructed their respective audiences. Whereas the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes helped to introduce Shelley to a German readership in the 1830s and 1840s, later magazines presented passages from the oeuvre of an already well-known poet, such as Ret Marut’s Ziegelbrenner (1917–1921) or Das Wort (1936–1939), edited during the Nazi years by exiled intellectuals from outside Germany. The ﬁrst printed German reference to Shelley appeared in the Literaturblatt in 1819 and was soon followed by articles in other magazines. In the 1830s, the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes (since 1832) and Pﬁzer’s Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslandes (1836–1840) played a central role in the mediation of contemporary British literature. Magazines with a focus on

80

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

foreign literature had already existed in the eighteenth century, but when the Magazin was founded, soon to be followed by the Blätter, the respective editors, Joseph Lehmann and Gustav Pﬁzer, were responding to a quickly growing interest in the literary market.62 Both provided their readership with information about contemporary European literature. The Magazin offered a wide range of reviews, often little more than plot summaries, and recommended not only literary works but also books of political and historical interest. Lehmann frequently printed translations of articles that had appeared in foreign magazines. Besides, the Magazin offered regular surveys of new developments in a country’s literature and took both newly translated and untranslated books into account. Among the British authors considered or reviewed in the ﬁrst two decades were Blake, Hemans, Bulwer, Lamb, Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Browning, Marlowe, Southey, Campbell, Dickens, Cobbett, Chatterton, Landor, Wordsworth, and Landon. In the 1840s, social and political concerns began to absorb more space: industrialization, factory work, Ireland, the railways, and so on. Between 1832 and 1848, in Shelley’s initial reception phase, several articles about him appeared. In 1832, the Magazin printed an anonymous biographical sketch from the Edinburgh Review, followed by Kühne’s review of Medwin’s Memoirs (1834), extracts from the notes of Queen Mab (1839), an article on translations of Shelley’s works (1845), and another sketch of his life (1848).63 One focus of the Shelley articles was on biography because much of the reception of contemporary English literature in Germany was concerned with the artist as a celebrity. Lehmann, the editor of the Magazin, adhered to Goethe’s ideal of world literature. This ideal became central to the concept of literature propagated by the Young Germans, who believed that the European nations’ exchange of ideas and insights would ultimately result in a reconciliation of humanity. Above all, this world literature was to be critical literature. As the more conservative Pﬁzer, the editor of the Blätter, disliked this concept, his articles on Shelley present the poet as the champion not of individual freedom but of national emancipation.64 These two examples of early reception in magazines show to what extent an author’s life could be used to forward a critic’s own poetical and political ideas. Both magazines printed not only articles on Shelley but also translations of his poetry and acquainted German readers with his oeuvre. The Magazin had a circulation of 1,200 copies in 1832, and the Blätter of 700 copies in 1837.65 One can assume that each copy was read by more than one person and that these magazines had a decisive role in shaping Shelley’s audience.

German Readers of Shelley

81

Whereas in the 1830s and 1840s, magazines introduced the poet to readers hitherto unfamiliar with him, later magazines printed Shelley’s poetry as a cultural commodity already familiar in a German context. Ret Marut’s Ziegelbrenner, an expressionist magazine that appeared in Munich between 1917 and 1921, published Shelley’s poetry and prose several times. Marut chose texts that were critical of the government and promoted the cause of individual freedom, for example, “Ozymandias” or “Declaration of Rights,”66 and positioned them together with other writings carrying the same message. His Shelley is an advocate of peace and a critic of the mighty. Marut’s Shelley was not the lyrical poet selected for editions and anthologies. As the circulation of Marut’s subversive journal was small and mainly restricted to the Munich area, Shelley had once again acquired the status of an underground poet. Yet unlike the earlier magazines, those published in the twentieth century were less weighty in the mediating process. Another subversive Shelley was employed in Das Wort, edited by Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Willi Bredel from Moscow. This magazine aimed to distribute the literature of a free Germany, give exiled authors the chance to publish in German, criticize National Socialism, and call for resistance. Occasionally, the editors included texts by English writers, for example, a passage from Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy in a recent translation by Wolfenstein, thus invoking an alternative red and antifascist canon of opposition. Through its title “Sie sind wenige—Ihr seid viel!,”67 (“Ye are many—they are few”), the passage constitutes a call for resistance under new historical auspices. This Shelley, “the trumpet of a prophecy,” is enlisted in the ﬁght against European fascism, a brother-in-spirit of writers whose texts were printed or reviewed in Das Wort: Thomas Mann, Walther Rathenau, Ernst Toller, Walter Benjamin, and Max Brod.

The Uses of Reading Shelley Shelley had manifold German readerships: lonely young men, sociable women, exiled writers, radicals, students, and respectable citizens of the middle class. Particularly in the early reception phase, his fame did not spread evenly because knowledge about him was passed on through clusters, literary circles, where some of those who later wrote about Shelley met. What was to be gained from reading Shelley? How much status could one obtain through Shelley, what positions did he open up? If translating Shelley brought little recognition or money, academic studies might. Had Georg stood up to the rigors

82

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

of academia, he would have had excellent chances of making a living from his interest. The sudden and early death of this literary character is the realization of an enormously popular myth: that of the gifted young man who died too young. This myth had been shaped partly by Shelley’s own writing (Alastor, Adonais) but also by the legends woven around the poet who had lived and died outside the norms of social acceptability.

Chapter 4

The Lives of a Failed Martyr : S helley and Biography

T

he Romantic age was a time when the star of the author as creative artist began to rise and furnished future generations of aspiring writers with ample identiﬁcation. Percy Shelley’s German afterlives, which often met with more interest than his poetry, continued Mary Shelley’s myth of the sufferer and added new ingredients: Weltschmerz, political inertia, and sometimes revolutionary fervor. Among the ﬁrst to be attracted by this odd mixture of hagiography and martyrology was Gutzkow, whose novel Wally had been banned in 1835 and who felt that he himself was another victim of an unjust society.1 His six-page article in the Frankfurter Telegraph (1837) celebrates a feminized, violated innocent: Vor dem Posthause in Pisa stand im Jahre 1820 ein schöner, langaufschossener, aber kränklich aussehender Englishman und fragte, ob nichts für ihn poste restante angekommen wäre? Wie heißen Sie? fragte der Postofﬁziant. Shelley! In dem Augenblick erhielt der Engländer einen fürchterlichen Schlag auf den Kopf, nachdem er kaum gehört hatte, daß ein hinter ihm stehender Landsmann ausrief: Was, sind Sie der Gottesläugner? Der Elende entlief. Shelley war besinnungslos niedergesunken. Als er sich erholte, lechzte seine gekränkte Ehre nach Rache. Er hört, der Fremde sei nach Genua abgereist. Er eilt ihm nach; er will für die gemeine Mißhandlung Genugthuung haben. Er ﬁndet ihn nicht: er ist außer sich über den Schuft, bis er hört, daß er nach Lissabon gereist war. Es war ein englischer Lieutenant in portugiesischen Diensten. Was sollte Shelley

84

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s thun? Er war leidend, hinfällig, er sah dem Tode, der ihn später in den Fluthen des mittelländischen Meeres ereilte, längst schon mit gebrochenen Augen ins Angesicht. Er ertrug und verwand seinen Schmerz. Der Mann von Geist hat gegen die Brutalität keine andere Waffe, als Stillschweigen, Mitleid, Verachtung.2 [In the year 1820, a handsome, tall, yet sickly-looking Englishman was standing outside the post ofﬁce of Pisa and inquired whether any mail had arrived for him poste restante. What is your name? The post ofﬁcial asked. Shelley! That very moment, the Englishman received a terrible blow on his head, immediately after hearing a fellow countryman, who was standing behind him, call out: What, are you the denier of God? The wretched one ran away. Shelley had sunk down unconscious. When he recovered, his offended honor was screaming for revenge. He hears that the stranger has left for Genoa. He follows him, wants satisfaction for the mean abuse. He cannot ﬁnd him. He is beside himself whenever he thinks of the villain until he hears that he has departed for Lisbon. He was an English lieutenant in Portuguese service. What should Shelley do? He was suffering, frail, looking into the face of the death he would later meet in the ﬂoods of the Mediterranean, with the eyes of a dead man. He endured and got over his pain. The man of intellect has no other weapon against brutality than silence, pity, contempt.]

Like other biographers, Gutzkow used Shelley’s poetry to explain his life. The pure martyr, driven into isolation and death by a brutal society, the innocent, who sinks down unconscious, embody Shelley’s favorite image of the suffering poet (“I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!,” “I die! I faint! I fail!”).3 As the demarcation between biography and poetry was blurred, his imagery found its way into constructions of his persona. Another section of Gutzkow’s article casts him as the sensitive plant of his own poem: “Ich, Shelley, bin ein armer leidender Mann, der nach Klarheit und Offenbarung ringt; ich bin empﬁndsam, wie die Sinnpﬂanze.” (“I, Shelley, am a poor, suffering man, striving for clarity and revelation; I am as sensitive as the sensitive plant.”)4 Inﬂuenced by Medwin, Gutzkow presented an idolized picture of the poet and used a literary text that ends in decay and death to explain his supposedly melancholy personality. Likewise, André Maurois’s and the other biographers’ Ariel can be traced back to the imagery of air and wind in Shelley’s works. Gutzkow’s sketch is only one of the numerous German lives of Shelley. While Maurois’s best-selling biography, originally written in French and translated into several languages, is one of the most famous

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

85

accounts, less notorious sources are awaiting their rediscovery. If historicist studies have traced the Victorian bardolatry around Keats, Byron, and Wordsworth,5 comparative aspects concerning the reception of British Romantic lives have largely been neglected. This chapter intends to remedy such shortcomings by selecting some striking examples from a torrent of material: prefaces, biographical sketches, novellas, plays, and poems. After mapping out the scope of Romantic life-writing, I want to analyze how Shelley’s poetic images (the suffering poet, the sensitive plant, the Aeolian harp) became the master tropes of his biographies. Several typical poses and episodes—Young Germany’s failed martyr of error, his death and funeral, the Ariel myth—will serve to highlight the special qualities of German Shelley biographies, which situate him between Weltschmerz poet and immaterial angel.

Life-Writing The literary genre of biography, closely linked to the history of individuality, is very old. Originating in Greek and Roman literature, accounts of lives achieved new importance in the early modern period,6 when the deeds of extraordinary men were regarded as worthy of consideration. From the eighteenth century onward, biographies, and autobiographies such as Rousseau’s Confessions, became concerned with a person’s inner life and emotions. As they began to display love for detail and factual accuracy, they increased in length, a development exempliﬁed by James Boswell’s two-volume Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). If the nineteenth century is the age of voluminous and detailed positivist studies, it also saw the success of brief essays modeled on Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.7 The series English Men of Letters and the Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen, offered such typical, short pieces. In Germany, another short form, the biographical sketch, which goes back to Friedrich Schlegel’s Charakteristik (“characterization”) and combines essay, systematic analysis, and ﬁctionalizing elements, was immensely popular in the 1830s and 1840s.8 Long biographies began to prevail from the mid-nineteenth century onward.9 If numerous nineteenth-century accounts focus on ethical and moral questions, the early twentieth century saw psychoanalysis entering the genre, which thereby came to devote even more space to reﬂections about the secret motivations of the persons in question.10 Biographies are fact and ﬁction, describing and constructing not only the subject in the limelight but also the hidden biographer, his times, his politics, and his desires. If The Life of Samuel Johnson is as much about Boswell as about Johnson, Young Germany’s portraits

86

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

of Shelley predominantly reﬂect the German writers’ concerns. Although life-writing may want to emphasize achievement, it often contains elements of a “passion narrative,” which privileges suffering and turns tribulations into “a strange sort of beauty,” as Geoffrey Hartman stated.11 Therefore, any critical reading of a biography may inquire after the reader’s own hidden desires for identiﬁcation with the described object. Situated between the documentary and the literary, biographies are based on facts, which are selected and arranged by the biographer. Because they aim to be accurate accounts, they are sometimes taken as reliable historical sources. Recent studies such as Ira Bruce Nadel’s and David Amigoni’s have convincingly argued for reading them as products of the historical and cultural contexts of the time in which they were written, as discursive constructs rather than as fountains of truth.12 Biographies are often structured along underlying tropes: images, dichotomies such as failure versus success, or personiﬁcations of abstract ideas such as “fate.” Maurois poetically speaks of “some sort of mysterious rhythm,” of “recurrent themes” a biographer ought to use.13 In his own Shelley biography, Ariel, the poet’s angelic essence, his aerial lightness, serves as a central topos that determined Maurois’s representation of the English poet.

Shelley’s Poetry, Shelley’s Personae Romantic poems, from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” to Byron’s Childe Harold or Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” all play with the author’s “experiential self,”14 his reinvented, aestheticized identities, which become fused with literary characters. If Byron, the Romantic poser per se, oscillates between pathos and satire, Shelley, in contrast, ﬁgures as a sincere, sensitive being, incapable of pretending. Not only his ﬁrst editor, Mary Shelley, but also most of his early biographers, Hogg and Medwin in particular, emphasized his sincerity and profoundness: “As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life most conspicuous”15; and “Solitude and isolation were indispensable to him, for the development of his profound and metaphysical ideas.”16 Although this pure and celestial genius seemed incapable of deliberate self-fashioning, Shelley cultivated his very own favorite poses, which biographers substituted with images taken from his poetry. In addition, Mary Shelley’s editorial work helped to project him as an angelic sufferer. What eventually emerged was a poetic persona, a consistent set of available features, from which critics have borrowed for their own constructions of “Shelley.”

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

87

How did his poetry supply his biographers with such features? One key text for the celebration of the creative sufferer is Adonais, Shelley’s elegy on Keats’s premature death, which idealizes the unacknowledged outsider. It is well known that Shelley’s preface invented one of the most popular myths surrounding Keats, namely, that he had died from a scathing review. Yet Adonais is also a fantasy about belated recognition: the poet receives adequate tribute only through being mourned and recognized posthumously. The fact that Shelley, too, was soon buried in Rome, “under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius” (SPP 409), gives his preface to the elegy an eerie quality and prepares the path for the confusion of ﬁctional with real lives: Shelley’s and Keats’s greatness is founded on suffering caused by a lack of recognition. Another failed Romantic is at the center of Alastor, a fantasy about a narcissistic poet driven to extremes, much in the tradition of Rousseau’s misanthropic sentimentalism.17 That intense suffering is connected to social failure, even the destruction of the lonely self, is also the theme of Julian and Maddalo. Likewise, the solitary and depressed Shelleyan subject is epitomized in part III of “The Sensitive Plant,” where the funeral procession and the decaying garden indicate decline. Apart from the mode of delicate suffering, Shelley has several other typical tones: love, outrage, irony, and radical fury. Different kinds of love ﬁnd their expression in his poetry: passionate love for an ideal woman in Epipsychidion, light ﬂirtatious love in the sparse lyrics to Jane Williams, and love for mankind in Prometheus Unbound. Outrage and grim satire, on the other hand, dominate The Mask of Anarchy, a furious account of the abuse of power. Both revolutionary hope and pessimism in the face of unchanging social conditions prevail throughout Shelley’s political oeuvre. Despite his rebellious fury, the individuals in his poetry perform “mechanically,” as in Queen Mab, where the characters are oppressed by hierarchies and fail to act for themselves.18 That Shelley is capable of irony, for example, in The Devil’s Walk and other early poems, may come as a surprise, particularly if one considers the sincerity and profoundness with which his early biographers credit him. Skepticism and idealism are two other tones in his repertoire.19 That he is often described in terms of imagery relating to air, wind, and ﬂoating, taken from poems like “Ode to the West Wind,” “The Cloud,” and the shorter lyrics, ﬁts his unworldly idealism. The skylark’s metaphoric ﬂight and song, symbolizing the poet’s own endeavor, facilitate the construction of Shelley as angel, as Ariel, as ethereal beauty. Because his poetry is so abstract and he uses so few concrete images, it seems natural to celebrate him as a spirit.

88

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Immaterial, innocent, and victimized, Shelley was no celebrity in his days. If Byron, renowned for his wit and his poses, achieved Europe-wide fame during his lifetime, other Romantic poets suffered from a lack of recognition and looked to future generations for belated approval. Andrew Bennett’s study Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity describes this typical Romantic gesture, for which “contemporary neglect” is one central condition.20 The poet gains his identity through posterity—like Shelley, whose reinvention as an ethereal, unworldly sufferer occurred after his demise. This “survival in posterity” not only compensates for previously withheld recognition but becomes a “redemptive supplement of life itself.”21

English and German Biographies of Shelley Shelley’s newly invented life possessed supreme attraction because it united several components that together comprise what Engelberg calls the “Shelley myth”: his ﬁrst marriage, his death, his atheism, and rumors that he was mentally deranged.22 This was material for hagiographies and martyrologies. If German readers delighted in Shelley’s suffering, the English attached great importance to his lax morals.23 Therefore, Shelley’s friends and family were concerned to emphasize his goodness and sincerity, while his English commentators cherished their favorite scandals: the elopement with Mary in 1814 (while he was still married to Harriet) and Harriet’s suicide in 1816 (followed by his marriage to Mary). Numerous early reactions omitted or distorted these events. If English critics of the 1820s and 1830s either spoke in a tone of moral indignation or tried to make apologies, early biographies and sketches of his life, often written by friends, either disregard these episodes or circumscribe them with euphemisms. For example, Medwin’s Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley mentions the elopement with Mary but has her vanish after the trip to the continent in 1814, so that the reader is kept ignorant about what might be regarded as immoral cohabitation. Likewise, Mary Shelley’s notes to the 1839 edition are silent about these events. Donald Reiman proves that leading English nineteenth-century encyclopedias gave favorable descriptions of Shelley but often left out the scandalous events, as the National Encyclopedia of 1867–1868 did. Likewise, German encyclopedias of the nineteenth century omitted these scandals, for example, Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1874–1878): Seine mit der von ihm aus der Pension entführten Miß Westbrook, der Tochter eines Londoner Kaffeewirts, eingegangene Ehe war keine

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

89

glückliche und wurde schon nach drei Jahren wieder gelöst. Um seine erschöpfte Gesundheit wieder herzustellen, unternahm S. 1814 eine Reise nach dem Kontinent und verweilte längere Zeit am Vierwaldstättersee . . . 1816 ging er eine zweite Ehe ein mit Miß Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, der Tochter William Godwins, und lebte mit ihr den Sommer über an den Ufern des Genfer Sees.24 [His marriage with Miss Westbrook, the daughter of a London coffeehouse proprietor, whom he had abducted from her boarding-school, was not happy and was annulled after only three years. In order to restitute his exhausted health, S. traveled to the continent in 1814 and spent some time by Lake Lucerne . . . In 1816, he married again, this time Miss Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, William Godwin’s daughter, and lived with her by Lake Geneva for the summer.]

As the elopement of 1814 is not mentioned at all, the reader is wrongly led to believe that Shelley’s ﬁrst marriage had ended before he married Mary Godwin and that they were already husband and wife when they traveled to the continent in 1816. Knowledge about the circumstances of Percy and Mary’s ﬂight to the continent arrived late in Germany. Felix Adolphi’s (Schack’s) preface to his 1837 translation of The Cenci not only wrongly claims that Percy’s marriage to Mary had been preceded by a divorce from Harriet but also fails to mention that Mary went to the continent with him in 1814. Later German biographers mentioned the elopement and subsequent cohabitation with Mary, like Richter, who, however, makes apologies for his deeds. In Germany, unlike in England, these events were not referred to with the aim of morally condemning Shelley. A possible reason for such differing reactions may be that to an English audience, Shelley, who had ﬁercely attacked the pillars of English society—monarchy, the church, the family—had failed to fulﬁll the exemplary function associated with a national poet. In a German context, transgressions against the institutions of a foreign state weighed less heavily. Moreover, the “paranoid” rhetoric used to condemn Shelley in review articles were part of the national political culture of early nineteenth-century England.25 While English critics depicted him either as monster or as saint, German biographers simply ignored such extremes. Norman’s study, the best survey of Shelley biography, shows to what extent his former companions, familiar with his poetry and intent on softening him, contributed to the weaving of his angelic life. As Mary never published a full biography of her late husband, mainly because of Sir Timothy’s threat to cut off her allowance, the task fell to

90

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

his friends. A Shelley far removed from sainthood appears in Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey (1818), a parody of a Gothic novel, which presents a character named Scythrop (alias Shelley) as a comic idealist: “He passed whole mornings in his study, immersed in gloomy reverie, stalking about the room in his nightcap, which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him like the mantle of a conspirator.”26 That Shelley appeared restless and hectic to his contemporaries was conﬁrmed by William Hazlitt: “[Shelley] has a ﬁre in his eyes, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic ﬂutter in his speech.”27 This is hardly an angel. Yet Hogg, who had been expelled from Oxford with the poet, presented him as a sensitive plant as early as 1832, quite in line with Mary’s activities.28 Another mythologizing account was Trelawny’s frequently reprinted Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858), later republished as Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878), no full biography but, as the title indicates, a description of the ﬁnal days of their lives and their deaths. Trelawny’s Gothic tale about the cremation of Shelley’s corpse inspired numerous artistic responses. His contrast between the masculine Byron and the feminine Shelley became a topos imitated by many writers. Medwin, another friend, wrote the inﬂuential Shelley Papers (1833) and The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847), and has him appear in his Conversations of Lord Byron (1824).29 Medwin’s accounts, kept in a spirit of genuine friendship, are as inaccurate as Trelawny’s and soon fed into the hagiography promoted by the family, particularly by Lady Shelley, the wife of Percy and Mary’s only surviving son, Percy Florence, who turned Boscombe Manor near Bournemouth into a shrine of cult objects. Those biographers who had known Shelley during his lifetime were intent on defending him against criticism fueled by moral indignation and stressed his sincerity to ensure that he would obtain Victorian approval. Soon a new generation of critics went to work, whose main sources were the early studies with their idealizing focus. The ﬁrst ofﬁcial Shelley biographer was Edward Dowden, a university professor from Dublin, whose Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley appeared in 1886. Dowden, born too late to know Shelley personally, compared the invitation to write this book to “the offer of a bishopric”.30 This proves how effective the early idealizing strategy had been, how tame the ofﬁcial Shelley had become, and how little offense he gave. Maurois’s famous novel Ariel (1923) also belongs to this tradition. Two fairly recent biographies, however, break with the image of the angelic sufferer and present an ambivalent hero: Richard Holmes’s Shelley: The Pursuit (1974) and William St Clair’s The Godwins and the

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

91

Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (1989) let the supposedly “great” Romantic poet appear enthusiastic yet immature, irresponsible toward his women and children, and neither saint nor monster but a complex and contradictory human being. They return to Peacock’s and Hazlitt’s preangelic Shelley.31 Likewise, ﬁctional accounts testify to the steady interest in Shelley’s life. Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826) was one of the ﬁrst novels to depict protagonists akin to Byron and Shelley, whose rivalry and friendship are also reworked in the Oedipal constellation of Benjamin Disraeli’s Venetia (1837). The controversial fame surrounding them ensured that Shelleyan characters like Ladislaw in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871–1872) would be recognized as such by nineteenth-century readers.32 Kingsley’s novels Alton Locke (1849), Yeast (1849), and Two Years Ago (1857) also reﬂect Shelleyan ideas, promoted by rebellious characters.33 Moreover, a large number of Victorian poems, hardly known today, pay homage to Shelley.34 That literary adaptations of Romantic lives are in vogue to the present day is proved by a number of plays: Elma Dangerﬁeld’s Mad Shelley (1936), Ann Jellicoe’s Shelley or The Idealist (1965), and Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry (1984) all stage Shelley as a character, while Tom Stoppard’s highly successful Arcadia (1993) stars a Byron who is even more fascinating through his absence. If nineteenth-century texts tended to glorify Byron, recent ﬁctionalizations have treated him with irony, like Amanda Prantera’s Conversations with Lord Byron on Perversion, 163 Years after his Lordship’s Death (1987), which speculates about the mysteries of his love life. Twentieth-century lives of Shelley, in contrast, tend to be serious.35 The genre of biography was popular in nineteenth-century Germany, too, but never as much as in England. Because the components of the “Shelley myth” were little known to a wider German audience, the ﬁrst critics who wrote about him had the task of introducing him rather than of softening him down for an already prejudiced readership. Therefore, the early articles in the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes and other magazines as well as the prefaces by Adolphi, Seybt, and others foreground information. In general, German writers devote less space to justifying Shelley, simply because the question of his moral acceptability is of far less concern to them. As in England, ostensibly accurate biographies by Druskowitz (1884), Richter (1898), and Ackermann (1906) appeared alongside ﬁctionalizations such as Hamm’s novella Shelley (1858), Emil Claar’s drama Shelley (1876), and Mikeleitis’s novella Ariel. Shelleys Vollendung (1948). A curiosity is Eugen Kerpel-Claudius’s Himmel und Hölle um

92

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Shelley (1943), a dramatic work of high pathos, published in Hungary.36 Neither the circumstances surrounding its writing nor any production can be traced. The most successful “German” Shelley novel, however, is Maurois’s Ariel, translated and reissued several times.37

Young Germany and the Failed Martyr The interest in Shelley ﬁrst peaked in the 1830s and 1840s among the exponents of Young Germany (Heinrich Laube, Gutzkow, Kühne, Herwegh).38 Although Seybt’s Shelley edition, which appeared in installments between 1840 and 1844, introduced the texts to a wider audience, most writers reacted to the poet’s life, and, as they became increasingly aware of the poems, used his imagery to construct his persona, while simultaneously embedding him into their own contexts: their political inertia, their fear of oppression, their frustrated feelings of futility. Laube’s sketch of Byron (1834) epitomizes the Shelley of Young Germany: Das Meer erbarmt sich des Verstoßenen, die Wellen bedecken sein Leben, und sie bringen dem suchenden Byron den gequälten Leib plätschernd an’s Ufer. Lord Byron errichtete einen Scheiterhaufen, um die Erdmasse des Freundes, welche so schwer auf ihm gelegen, zu verﬂüchtigen.39 [The sea takes pity on the outcast, the waves cover his life, and, splashing, they take the tortured body ashore to the searching Byron. Lord Byron erected a funeral pyre to evaporate his friend’s earthly mass, which had weighed him down so heavily.]

The reﬂections about the poet-friend end on the exclamation: “Armer Shelley! Wie viel hast du für uns gelitten!” (“Poor Shelley! How much have you suffered for us!”). Laube alludes to the persona of “Ode to the West Wind,” using failure and suffering as underlying tropes to present Shelley as a martyr and a Christlike ﬁgure, capable of redeeming mankind through his agony and his selﬂess deeds. By stressing such aspects, the ﬁrst German critics employed material that Shelley’s English friends had provided to refute accusations leveled against him. However, in German contexts, Shelley’s softness was no longer angelic but a sign of weakness and ineffectiveness. The abovequoted passage is a striking example of how a trope can be rewritten when crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries. Young Germany had not constituted itself as a group under that name.40 On December 10, 1835, a decision by the Bundesversammlung (“Federal Assembly”) banned ﬁve writers from publishing not in one

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

93

but in all 38 German states of the Bund (“Federal Union”), naming Heine, Gutzkow, Ludolf Wienbarg, Laube, and Theodor Mundt, who have since been subsumed under the label Jungdeutsche (“Young Germans”). Kühne, although not included in this list, can be regarded as part of the movement. The ban was more or less lifted in 1836. The Young Germans did not necessarily wish to write the new literature they propagated, but rather aimed to prepare the ground by producing a criticism that described not only an author and his times but also voiced opinions on social and political questions. Contemporary foreign literature was reviewed frequently, and English authors in particular were esteemed highly.41 Overawed by but also highly critical of the great Goethe’s voluminous works, the Young Germans cultivated the brief biographical sketch as one favorite form. Magazines, their main forum, printed articles and biographical portraits, which combined facts, analysis, commentary, and acted as vehicles for their views. Further examples of such brief biographies are prefaces, which often amount to short characteristics. Another medium for impressionistic sketches of Shelley’s life are poems by Herwegh, Pﬁzer, H. Wilke, Anafestos Kern, Alfred Meißner, and Rudolf Gottschall, all written in the 1830s and 1840s. Shelley also ﬁgures in Kühne’s novella Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause (A Quarantine in the Madhouse, 1835), one of the most bizarre and refreshing reception documents. At least some biographical texts were inﬂuenced by Medwin’s idealizations and also by Mary’s and Seybt’s narratives of the suffering poet, while Shelley’s political views had surprisingly little impact on the freethinkers of the 1830s and 1840s. For example, Gutzkow, who felt persecuted and powerless, treated Shelley as his mirror image, but even though the English poet’s social criticism was akin to his own, he devoted little space to Shelleyan thought. His identiﬁcation with Shelley occurred on a much more emotional level, documented by the episode outside the post ofﬁce, where Shelley was knocked down because of his atheism. In the above-quoted article, Gutzkow repeatedly emphasized that Shelley was surrounded by rumors: “Shelley galt für einen Gottesläugner” (“Shelley was regarded as a denier of God”), “galt als Atheist” (“was regarded as an atheist”).42 His true Shelley was the sensitive plant, the skylark,43 passive and ethereal. Throughout the article, Shelley shows a marked lack of agency: Seine Braut wurde ihm entrissen, als ihn dieser Ruf zu verfolgen anﬁng, sein Vater, ein außerordentlich reiches Glied der englischen Aristokratie, verstieß ihn und ließ ihn darben, hungern sogar; die Kinder einer Ehe, die er schloß, weil sein Herz einer Anknüpfung bedurfte, und welche

94

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s Scheidung trennen mußte, wurden durch Beschluß des Lordkanzlers von England aus seiner Nähe genommen; er ﬂoh, verfolgt von den Verwünschungen der Prüderie und dem Indifferentismus der Masse, nach Italien.44 [His bride was torn away from him when this reputation began to follow him, and his father, an extraordinarily rich aristocrat, disowned him and let him live in want, in hunger even. The children from his marriage, which he entered because his heart needed closeness and which a divorce had to separate, were taken away from him through a decision of the Lord Chancellor of England; he ﬂed to Italy, persecuted by the masses’ prudish and indifferent curses.]

The words “torn away” and “persecuted” exaggerate the suffering, while his father’s supposed wealth and Shelley’s own “hunger” magnify the conﬂict. However, all prejudices are belied by a goodness that transcends the falseness of this world. The painful discrepancy between appearance and essence is caused by the age in which Shelley lived: “Er war ein Sohn der Zeit” (“He was a son of his time”), “Er trug, wie keiner, den Fluch einer Epoche, die nur von Gährungen und halben Ahnungen bezeichnet wird” (“Like no-one else, he carried the curse of an era that is characterized only by fermentation and half-bred premonitions”).45 “Zeit” (“time”) and terms related to it were among the key words of the Young Germans,46 who felt that the negative effects of a reactionary past were dragging on into the present and had to be overcome as part of a search for a better future. Despite his identiﬁcation with Shelley, Gutzkow also criticized him: “Ich bin ein schwaches Rohr, das vom Zugwind seiner Zweifel hin und hergeweht wird” (“I am a weak cane, blown about by the wind of doubt”).47 This Shelley lacks the stamina, the “Konsequenz” Gutzkow himself regarded as essential in the arguments surrounding his own novel, Wally.48 Gutzkow’s Shelley is his mirror image, worthy of attention but not to be emulated. The poet’s weakness also looms large in Kühne’s texts about Shelley, which take the fascination with death and depression one step further. Kühne, “on the periphery” of Young Germany, was not included in the ban of 1835,49 but because of their anti-Catholic bent, his Klosternovellen (Novellas of a Convent) fell prey to the censor in 1837. He later became the editor of the periodical Europa, a virtual site of refuge for important liberals. One of Kühne’s early pieces is a review of Medwin’s Shelley Papers, published in the Magazin (1834). Kühne’s underlying tropes are error, fate, and personal weakness, expressed by words like “Räthsel,” “Erschütterung,” “Härte,” “Unglücksfälle,” “Verwirrung” (“mystery,” “shock,” “severity,” “accidents,” “confusion”).50 Although

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

95

Kühne mentions that the English poet was in conﬂict with the norms of society, the main focus is on his bitter fate, on a man characterized not so much by weakness as by a depression (“schwermüthig”) due to continuous persecution. Reading his untimely death as unintentional suicide, Kühne casts Shelley as a hypochondriac: “Seiner damaligen Mißstimmung scheint mir nachfolgendes Gedicht anzugehören, das einen Aufruf an Castlereagh enthält und eine überreizte Hypochondrie verräth” (“The following poem, which contains a call to Castlereagh and betrays overexcited hypochondria, seems to belong to the ill feelings of those days”).51 It is surprising that “Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration,” a critique of the government’s injustice, did not appeal more to this Young German, who failed to see the revolutionary agenda behind the political outrage. Yet Kühne regarded Shelley as passive, as a failure, in contrast with the active Byron: Byron aber fühlte in dem plötzlichen Tode des Geliebten eine tiefe Mahnung, seine sich zersplitternden Kräfte zusammenzufassen und einem großen Ziele zu widmen, um nicht in dem schwelgerischen Müßiggang seiner Italiänischen Intriguen allmälig auch innerlich unterzugehen oder, vom Tode überrascht, spurlos zu verschwinden. Einsam und müßig hatte Shelley seinen Päan der Freiheit gesungen; Byron wollte ihn frei unter freiem Volk anstimmen und ging nach Griechenland.52 [Through the sudden death of his beloved, Byron felt deeply admonished to gather his scattering powers and to devote them to a major aim in order to avoid a gradual inward decline in the self-indulgent idleness of his Italian intrigues or, surprised by death, a disappearance without trace. Shelley had sung his paean of liberty alone and in vain; Byron wanted to sing it freely among a free people and went to Greece.]

Unlike the hypochondriac Shelley, Byron pursues his aims vigorously. That Shelley was no example to be emulated is obvious in the novella Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause as well.53 After the central character, a writer supposedly involved in the political activities of student fraternities, is arrested, his uncle, president of the ﬁctitious “Welmar,” one of Germany’s numerous tiny states, has him relegated to a lunatic asylum, where he regains his lost balance. The reader is acquainted with him through his diary, which reﬂects his reading. The only book he carries with him is Medwin’s Shelley Papers. In due course, Shelley’s spirit begins to materialize: Es gab eine Zeit, wo ich nur mit Zittern und geheimer Furcht nach der Feder griff, um irgend einen Gedanken, einen Einfall aufzusetzen,

96

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s denn der bleiche Shelley bückte sich jedesmal über meine Schulter und ﬂüsterte mir stille Worte zu oder färbte mit seinem Geisterhauch die meinigen. Es waren schlimme Tage meines Lebens. Ich fühlte mich verkannt, verlassen, vereinsamt, ich wähnte keinen Freund zu haben unter Denen, die meine Bekannte hießen.54 [There was a time when I only took up a pen trembling and full of secret fear to sketch some thought or idea, for every time the pale Shelley bent over my shoulder and whispered still words to me or, with his ghostly breath, colored mine. Those were awful days of my life. I felt misunderstood, deserted, lonely, I assumed that I had no friend among those who were called my acquaintances.]

The diarist, whose sanity is questionable, tacitly assumes Shelleyan qualities and fuses with this spirit, who visits him at dusk: Ich liebkoste den Armen, Verkannten, Verödeten, bis in den Tod Verfolgten, ich streichelte seine fahlen Wangen, ich weinte in sein gedankendüstres, gramumﬂortes Angesicht und nannte ihn meinen liebsten, weil meinen einzigen Freund, denn er war ich selber.55 [I caressed the poor, misunderstood, desolate one, who had been persecuted into his death, I fondled his pale cheeks, wept into his face, obscured with thought, adorned with grief, and called him my dearest, my only friend, because he was myself.]

The supreme attraction of Shelley’s morbid appearance, which has the quality of an apparition (“fahle Wangen,” “pale cheeks”), invites the narrator to become his imaginary necrophiliac lover (“liebkoste,” “caressed”). Popular German horror stories from the Romantic period may have served as a model. Ultimately, Shelley embodies a life-threatening lethargy and stands for a state of mind that must be overcome.56 A different stance is taken by Herwegh, a poet who emigrated to Switzerland in 1839 to avoid the draft and who considered Shelley an eloquent spokesman of the oppressed. Herwegh participated in military action during the 1848 revolution and pursued a career marked by activity, not by contemplation. His sonnet “Shelley” (1841), probably the most frequently anthologized literary treatment of Shelley in German, is the eleventh of 52 in the cycle Sonette. Aus einer größeren Sammlung “Dissonanzen” (Sonnets: From a Larger Collection “Dissonances”).57 The musical metaphor “dissonances” in

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

97

the title underscores the tension between poet and society, the main theme of the collection. Shelley Um seinen Gott sich doppelt schmerzlich mühend, War er ihm, selbsterrungen, doppelt theuer, Dem Ewigen war keine Seele treuer, Kein Glaube je so ungeschwächt und blühend. Mit allen Pulsen für die Menschheit glühend, Saß immer mit der Hoffnung er am Steuer, Wenn er auch zürnte, seines Zornes Feuer Nur gegen Sklaven und Tyrannen sprühend. Ein Elfengeist in einem Menschenleibe, Von der Natur Altar ein reiner Funken, Und drum für Englands Pöbelsinn die Scheibe; Ein Herz vom süßen Duft des Himmels trunken, Verﬂucht vom Vater und geliebt vom Weibe, Zuletzt ein Stern im wilden Meer versunken.

Medwin, who spent years in Germany, prefaced his biography of Shelley with his own translation of Herwegh’s sonnet: With agony of thought, intensely striving To work out God, his God was doubly dear: A faith more ﬁrm had never poet here, A brighter pledge of bliss immortal giving: With all his pulses throbbing for his kind, Hope steered his course thro’ the world’s stormy wave If anger moved, but rufﬂed his calm mind, A hatred of the tyrant and the slave. In form of man a subtle elﬁn sprite— From Nature’s altar pure a hallowed ﬁre— A mark for every canting hypocrite— Yearning for Heaven with all his soul’s desire— Cursed by his father—a fond wife’s delight— Starlike in a wild ocean to expire!58

98

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

The poem draws on the usual components of the Shelley myth: his love for mankind, his Christlike qualities, and his persecution. New and striking is the activity with which it credits Shelley, who is cast as a ﬁery protester, like Herwegh himself. As this ﬁghter-poet is not a ghostly apparition but a full-blooded, sexually active human being, his death is not the suicide of a manic depressive. On the contrary, the comparison with a comet denotes strength, power, and impact. Fire and stars are among the underlying patterns of the entire collection. After sonnet I, in which the speaker describes his bouts of despair and doubt, sonnet II considers the wider social context, presents the poet as a ﬁghter for the people, and criticizes the mere prophet: “Der nicht voran, ein Feuerzeichen, geht, / Und Seher ist wie sonst? Ich rufe: Nein! / Und dreimal: Nein! und stimme für Protest!” (“The one who does not walk forward, a sign of ﬁre, / And a seer is, as usual? I shout: No! / And three times: No! and vote for protest!” ).59 Herwegh is unlikely to have known A Defence of Poetry, published in 1840, but seems to have been familiar with “Ode to the West Wind,” where the role of the poetprophet is also promoted. Another sonnet in the collection, sonnet IX, criticizes poetry about nature for its lack of topical relevance. Through its context, the sonnet “Shelley” (XI) attains additional connotations not apparent when read in isolation. The words “blühend,” “glühend,” “zürnte,” “trunken” (“blooming,” “glowing,” “raged,” “drunk”), which indicate the passionate emotions with which Shelley pursued his aims, make him appear as the lonely prophet, fascinating and doomed on his downward trajectory. In sonnet XIII, which takes its imagery from “Ode to the West Wind,” the poet-prophet drowns before he is taken to heaven through ﬁre. The loosely connected narrative of this cycle emphasizes the poet’s Christlike features by providing him with an ascent to heaven, which posthumously justiﬁes his prophecies. Much of Herwegh’s own poetry evolves around themes close to Shelley’s, whose inﬂuence is obvious in the “Federal Hymn” (see chapter 6) and in “Der Gang um Mitternacht” (“The Walk at Midnight”), which contains a passage in imitation of Queen Mab.60 Unlike other Young Germans, Herwegh regarded Shelley as the successful initiator of ideas, whose untimely death had been a tragedy. Karl Marx and his daughter, who took interest in Shelley’s ﬁght, followed this strand of reception. Laube, Gutzkow, and Kühne, however, credited Shelley with passivity and weakness, which found a symbolic expression in his early demise. It is hardly surprising that the majority of these writers succumbed to the temptations of fantasizing about Shelley’s corpse, which, in nineteenth-century German contexts, was projected as an exceptionally beautiful body.

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

99

Death, Funeral, Apotheosis Shelley was drowned in a storm on July 8, 1822, off the harbor of Livorno, which he had left along with Edward Williams and a boat boy to sail for Lerici on the Ariel. Ten days later, when the mutilated bodies were washed up, he was only identiﬁable by his clothes and by a volume of Keats’s poetry in his pocket. The strict quarantine laws demanded immediate burial in the sand. On August 15 and 16, the bodies were exhumed and burned on the beach in the presence of Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt, who staged the cremation as a pagan ritual, worthy of a Homeric hero. While Shelley’s ashes were interred near Keats’s grave in Rome, the heart (more likely the liver), which was not consumed by the ﬂames, was taken to England. This was wonderful material for hagiographies, some of which came to regard this episode as the climax of Shelley’s earthly existence. Wheatley has convincingly shown that the cremation narratives by Trelawny, Hunt, and Medwin were competing stories, which were rewritten several times and contributed to Shelley’s mystiﬁcation. In the nineteenth century, not only dead women were an immensely popular topic “on the periphery of cliché,” as Elisabeth Bronfen’s seminal study Over Her Dead Body proves; men who had died young featured prominently in literary works, painting, and opera of the time as well. Corpses exist in an in-between state, between life and death, between physical destruction and transcendence, between singular attention and anonymity.61 Literary deaths are death processes and consist of several components that lend themselves to aesthetic representation: the moment preceding death, the dying, the exhibition of the corpse, the funeral, the afterlife of selected body parts, and the grave. All these point to a reality, a truth that transcends the everyday. Werther’s suicide is not only an act of physical destruction but also an event that symbolizes the fundamental split between desire and reality. By dying without the emotional and sexual gratiﬁcation he had been yearning for, Werther situates himself as an eternal subject of desire. Shelley underwent a similar apotheosis, when various stages of his disappearance from earth began to attain cult status in Germany, where two aspects of his death in particular were aestheticized: his angelic corpse and the cremation. German accounts of the cremation differ from British ones insofar as they focus on the beautiful corpse, unaware of the fact that Shelley’s remains were already in a bad state of decay when they were exhumed. Notwithstanding its true gruesome state, the body was imagined as graceful, as a transcendent object, a momentary vision that appealed

100

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

to the beholders’ eyes before it was consumed by ﬂames. Nineteenthcentury literary deaths, especially when they were cruel and meaningless, frequently became the subject of literary texts such as Fontane’s Efﬁ Briest and Grete Minde or of operas by composers such as Richard Wagner. In the German cultural context, these deaths attained a sublime status that was hardly compatible with the image of a rotting corpse. Shelley’s posthumous image was therefore ﬁxed as that of an angelic young man, far removed from Peacock’s or Hazlitt’s eccentric. In such representations, the corpse is more than pure (or putrid) matter, it is a trope imbued with additional dimensions of meaning, a mirror of the poet’s pure soul, of his true essence. And thus, a ritualistic cremation is the only possible end for this body because it avoids the degrading putrefaction that it would otherwise have to undergo (and, in reality, underwent). The grave, visited by Ottilie von Goethe, Heine, Friedrich Hebbel, and many others, was a place of pilgrimage, a shrine, because it promised a glimpse of the sublime.62 That the cremation attained cult status was in part due to Byron’s popularity. The event impressed many German writers, among them the popular poet Geibel, who planned an epic entitled Clotar, a humorous imitation of Childe Harold and Don Juan centered on a German variant of a Byronic hero whose best friend was to drown at sea and then be burned on the beach.63 The poet Hermann Lingg, little known today but a celebrity in his times, wrote a poem on the burning of Caesar’s and Shelley’s corpses, which he recited before the “Verein für Feuerbestattung” (“Association for the Promotion of Cremation”).64 Likewise, Byron’s demise was mythical: when Jakob Schipper, professor of English at Vienna University, retired in 1913, he devoted his last public lecture to Byron’s death, in a room adorned with ﬂowers and laurel.65 Several examples testify to this German obsession, which may have been fueled by Werther’s impact. If Meißner’s and Pﬁzer’s poems (1842, 1831) embed the cremation into a Gothic scenario and thereby assign sublime status to it, German twentieth-century representations favor the death as such (Mikeleitis, 1948) or visit the scenario in retrospect, as two poems by Georg von der Vring (1956) and Eckart Kleßmann (1963) in the next section will show. The reason for this may be that after two World Wars and the horrors of Auschwitz, the representation of an aestheticized corpse is no longer possible. This change in focus from Shelley on the beach to Shelley in or after the storm seems to have occurred subsequent to World War I. Meißner, one of the politicized 1840s writers, was deeply impressed by Shelley’s life and works.66 His long poem “Eine Bestattung

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

101

(18. August 1822)” (“A Funeral [August 18, 1822]), ﬁrst printed in 1842, focuses on Shelley’s cremation, the moment of ultimate transcendence, and ignores all other details of Shelley’s life: . . . denn am Strande war Ein mächt’ger Scheiterhaufen aufgeschichtet, Es drängte sich um ihn die bleiche Schaar Erschrockner Menschen, deren Blick gerichtet Auf eine Leiche, die auf jenen Scheitern Mild da lag, wie ein Träumer, wenn er dichtet. Ein Mann, vorragend unter den Begleitern, Wie unter Menschenvolk ein Göttersohn, Küßt’ einmal noch den Mund, den todesheitern, Dem der Gesang für immerdar entﬂohn. Der Mann war jung! Ob schmerzliches Erkennen Die weiße Stirn gefurcht, und bittrer Hohn Die Lipp’ umzuckte, war er schön zu nennen, Schön wie ein Seraph, der zur Erde kam, Für schöne Erdentöchter zu entbrennen. Ein schwarzer Mantel deckt’ ihn. Er war lahm, Wie jene großen Engel, die gefallen, Und denen Gott den farb’gen Fittich nahm. Was auch sein Name war in Geisterhallen, Hier: Noel Byron, König, dessen Reiche Die Menschenherzen, Träume die Vasallen. Und Shelley, Shelley, war die schöne Leiche, Die hingestreckt auf jenem Holzstoß lag, Voll Gottesruh’ das Angesicht, das bleiche.67 [ . . . for, on the beach, A mighty pyre was erected, Around it, pressing, the pale crowd Of frightened people, their eyes directed To a corpse, which on those logs Was mildly stretched out like a dreamer, when he writes. A man, standing out from his companions, Like a god’s son among human people, Kissed once more the mouth, serene in death, Whose song had ﬂed forever. The man was young! Whether painful recognition Had wrinkled the white forehead, and bitter mockery Was playing on his lips, he could be called beautiful, Beautiful like a seraph, who came to earth To incense the earth’s beautiful daughters. A black coat covered him. He was lame,

102

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s Like those great angels, who had fallen And whose colorful pinions God took. His name was also in ghostly halls, Here: Noel Byron, king, whose empire Were human hearts, dreams were vassals. And Shelley, Shelley, was the beautiful corpse, Stretched out on that pyre, Full of God’s peace, that pale face.]

The size of the audience (in reality, some ﬁshermen and militia) is of Meißner’s own invention. “Die bleiche Schaar / Erschrockner Menschen” (“the pale crowd / Of frightened people”) symbolizes mankind, who can only watch in silence but will never participate in the sanctioned rituals only permissible to the poets themselves. The drama that is about to unfold is Byron’s and Shelley’s last union, followed by their ﬁnal parting. While Byron, fatal and seductive like Lucifer, takes the man’s part, Shelley is feminized: he is “mild,” “schön” (“mild,” “beautiful”), and trusting as a child. Numerous adaptations of the cremation episode draw on this contrast between fascinating demon and innocent, lovely sufferer, which follows Gothic conventions. Shelley’s own poem Julian and Maddalo is the blueprint for this contrast, which Medwin reworked, thereby shaping all future cremation accounts.68 Meißner’s version, in which Byron kisses the dead Shelley, turns the corpse into an erotic object, decoratively bedded onto the pyre, waiting to be ravaged in a ﬁery climax, which is simultaneously fulﬁllment and annihilation. The poem ends with Shelley’s consumption through the ﬂames, which stands for the sexual act but also symbolizes transcendence. If, in English texts, Shelley’s physique is destroyed by seawater, German texts let the attractive Byron, ruler over many female hearts, lay hands on the lovely Shelley. The latent necrophiliac homoeroticism of this episode is the prehistory of a new and divinely sanctioned union. Byron, whose death Meißner treated next in his 1872 Collected Writings, mediates between earth and heaven before ascending. He is Lucifer on his way back. Likewise, in Rudolf Gottschall’s poem “Des Dichters Tod” (“The Poet’s Death,” 1842), which is mainly concerned with Byron but also contains some stanzas on Shelley, the latter’s feminine mildness and softness receive particular attention: Er war so sanft, von mädchenhafter Milde, Sein Aug’ ein lindes Regenbogenlicht; Ein Abendsonnenschein, der das Geﬁlde Warm überthauend, durch die Wolken bricht.

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

103

Sein Herz so weich, auf Blüthen hingebettet, Die er zum Kranz der Menschheit liebend wand; Ja, jede Blüthe, von dem Sturm errettet, Ein treu Asyl in seinem Busen fand.69 [He was so soft, of girl-like mildness, His eye a gentle rainbow’s light; An evening’s sunshine, pouring warm dew Over the ﬁelds, breaking through the clouds. His heart so tender, bedded onto ﬂowers, Which he, loving mankind, bound into a wreath; Yes, every blossom, saved from the storm Found a faithful sanctuary in his bosom.]

Shelley’s appearance mirrors his supposed ineffectiveness. The corpse possesses physical traits and emotional attributes such as beauty, soft skin, and mildness, characteristics a poet would usually seek in a young woman. The allusions to ﬂowers and wreath-making underscore this feminization. The reader, made aware of Shelley’s extraordinary qualities, is drawn in as an admirer, as a potential lover, like the narrator in Kühne’s novella.70 Another feature of the funeral narratives is the reworking of the surrounding landscape in terms of the Gothic mode. One typical example is the poem “Shelley’s Leichenbegängnis” (“Shelley’s Funeral”) by Pﬁzer, published in 1831. Pﬁzer tried his hand at poetry for some time and was rebuked by Goethe and Heine, who felt that his lyrical effusions were hardly to be rated among the best of the 1830s. In his Shelley poem, Pﬁzer, who later succeeded as a critic, produced a grim scenario with Gothic stock elements: Allmälig sanken ein die düstern Gluten, Mit Wolken sich des Rauches Gipfel mischte, Und tropfenweis fühlt’ ich mein Herz verbluten. Da ward ich aufgeschreckt vom Flügelschlage— Entstiegen war ein Vogel aus den Fluthen! Vor Grau’n erstarrte mir im Mund die Klage, Als er umﬂatterte die edle Leiche, Und ich gedachte mancher grausen Sage; Warum verließ er seine feuchten Reiche? Um Leichenduft und Todtenqualm zu trinken? Und sucht’ ihn auch zu schrecken, daß er weiche; Doch er sah ruh’g den Blitz des Pulvers blinken, Die Flügel nur schlug zürnend er zusammen; Den Holzstoß ließ er ganz in Asche sinken,

104

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s Dann hob er sich, gesättigt von den Flammen, Und seewärts hörten wir ihn wieder rauschen, Er mochte wohl dem nassen Reich entstammen, Ein Bote seyn, die Klagen zu belauschen, Womit den Todten die Genossen ehrten, Und höhnend in den Flammen sich berauschen, Die meinen Shelley allzufrüh verzehrten.71 [Gradually, the dark embers sank in, The clouds mixed with the smoke’s peaks, And drop by drop I felt my heart bleed to death. When I was roused by the wings’ beating— A bird had risen from the ﬂoods! Out of horror, my plaintive cry died down When he was ﬂapping his wings around the noble corpse, And I thought of many a gruesome folktale; Why did he leave his damp realms? To drink a corpse’s scent and smoke of the dead? And I tried to frighten him so that he would leave, But quietly he watched the powder’s lightning Only beat his wings together angrily; He let the pyre sink to ashes entirely, Then he lifted himself up, satiated by the ﬂames, And seawards did we hear him rustling once again, He may well have risen from the wet realm, A messenger, to listen to the dirge Through which the companions honored the dead one, And, mocking, got drunk through the ﬂames, Which consumed my Shelley far too early.]

Like Meißner, Pﬁzer focuses on the cremation alone. The moment when the ﬂames consume the body, the sublime climax of most funeral narratives, is staged with an appropriate backdrop (“Gluten,” “Blitz,” “Rauch,” “Wolken”; “embers,” “lightning,” “smoke,” “clouds”). The sheer size of the elements (“Rauches Gipfel,” “feuchte Reiche”; “smoke’s peaks,” “damp realms”) is typical of the Romantic sublime and evokes the atmosphere of Gothic novels. The bird, which also appears in some of the English tales, goes back to Medwin, who turns what may have been a seagull into a symbol of Shelley’s soul, aspiring to heaven. In Pﬁzer’s text however, the bird, reminiscent of Coleridge’s albatross from The Ancient Mariner, becomes an inexplicable messenger from another world, frightening to the survivors. Thus, the cremation opens up a door toward an eerie world of otherness, of potent forces normally

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

105

not visible. By making the funeral pyre collapse, the huge bird symbolizes the power of nature, and thus, Shelley’s death appears as a return to this nature, which he had loved and which now welcomes him. It is a union of kindred spirits that transforms him, yet leaves the survivors in a state of fear and unfulﬁlled desire. The last line of the poem returns to the speaker’s own feelings of mourning. Gothic horrors and individual suffering coincide. Kerpel-Claudius’s play Himmel und Hölle um Shelley. Tragödie (Heaven and Hell around Shelley: A Tragedy, 1943) situates the poet in a literary tradition that spans antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. The last of ﬁve acts, entitled “Mysterium des Scheiterhaufens” (“Mystery of the Pyre”), abounds with references to ancient Greek rituals. Shelley, turned into an Orestes-like ﬁgure, is sublimely burned in what the author regards as Hellenic fashion: “Alles geschieht laut altem hellenischem Brauch” (“Everything is done according to ancient Hellenic custom”),72 a dragoon explains. Shelley becomes a reincarnation of the Italian poet Dante, a traveler through heaven and hell, and the solemn burning is a tribute to him that enables Shelley to be accepted into the pantheon of great authors. Kerpel-Claudius’s play is full of grand heroic gestures. The soldiers function as guards symbolizing the state’s approval, which had hitherto been withheld but is now granted. Unlike the writers of Young Germany, Kerpel-Claudius places little emphasis on any injustices Shelley had to bear. The discourse of sensibility, which prevails throughout most 1830s and 1840s accounts of Shelley’s life and death, is of little consequence to him. Shelley’s ﬁnal days, his supposed conversion to Christianity without the pagan cremation story, is recounted in Mikeleitis’s novella Ariel (1948), the only version that completes Mary’s project of rechristianizing her late husband. Whereas, in 1822, an anonymous obituary could sarcastically comment: “Shelley, the writer of some inﬁdel poetry, has been drowned; . . . now he knows whether there is a God or no,”73 Mikeleitis provides an answer to clarify Shelley’s posthumous spiritual development: the atheist Shelley returned to God. The beginning of her novella, set in Pisa, contrasts the idealistic, angelic, and prophetic Shelley with the materialistic Byron and thereby follows the model provided by Julian and Maddalo and by Trelawny’s rewriting. Mikeleitis assigns a spiritual guide to Shelley through Gaspara, a simple and pious Italian girl, who tries to keep him from sailing away and eventually takes the boat boy’s place to be near him. Owing to her intense purity, she becomes a mirror of Shelley’s beautiful soul. In the storm, her inﬂuence makes him reach out for eternity, love, and, eventually, God. In a passionate prayer, Shelley renounces paganism

106

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

and turns to the Christian God. The reader watches Shelley through Gaspara’s eyes and thereby witnesses his salvation: “Du bist es . . . lichter Leib . . . leibliches Licht! . . . Die Götter— Prometheus,—alles nur Bilder, nur Abbilder, aber keine Wahrheit! Du allein bist die Gestalt! Alles Wissen mündet in Dir! Alles Hoffen endet bei Dir! Alle Liebe meinet nur Dich! Immer habe ich Dich geliebt, aber ich wußte es nicht bis zu diesem Augenblick. Du bist es allein, Du, die Liebe, das Leben und der Sieg!”74 [“It is you . . . bright body . . . bodily brightness! . . . The Gods— Prometheus,—are only images, only likenesses, but no truth! You alone are the true form! All knowledge leads to you! All hope ends with you! All love only means you! I have always loved you, but I have not known it until this very moment. You alone are love, life, and victory.”]

The last words echo the ﬁnal lines of Prometheus Unbound, whose pagan world Shelley renounces. The passionate prayer is answered by lightning and death. After Williams has been swept off the boat, Shelley recognizes the existence of Christ, Gaspara falls down on her knees, and in this very moment, the waters tear both of them down. The last thing Gaspara perceives is Shelley’s exultation, his sudden recognition of Christ’s symbolic deed: “Er hat wahrhaftig den Tod überwunden . . . Es gibt nur Leben . . . Nicht zu früh geschah dieses hier, denn ich habe die Wahrheit gesehen . . . und mehr ist einem Menschen nicht beschieden.”75 [“He has truly overcome death . . . there is only life . . . this here has not happened too early because I have seen the truth . . . and more cannot be given to a human being.”]

This is also the last sentence of the novella. As in previous narratives, Shelley’s death achieves symbolic value and transcends the purely material. If the Young Germans only hinted at Shelley’s proximity to Christ, Mikeleitis goes one step further in suggesting a union with God. As her novella ignores practically all historical contexts, it is not concerned with Shelley’s political impact and therefore can regard his life as a success on the basis of his repentance. Unlike the poets of the 1830s and 1840s, who describe the funeral pyre, Mikeleitis does not aestheticize the corpse. Yet her Shelley also has an ethereal beauty, enhanced through the threat of annihilation, which casts an angelic hue over his face immediately before the split of material body and soul occurs. Like many 1840s

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

107

poets, Mikeleitis assigns Shelley a physique that symbolically transcends mortality. She draws on the trope of Shelley as angel, which many of his biographers have used to intensify his spiritual, unearthly qualities.

The Angel: Ariel After death comes canonization. Shelley’s life has always been viewed from the perspective of his untimely demise. Had he died in his bed at the age of 72, surrounded by dozens of legitimate grandchildren, no one would have dreamed of comparing him to an angel. This equation, like Shelley’s own stylization of Keats as Adonais, belongs to the “emerging grammar” of the English Romantic movement, which shrank from, fought, and resisted the material world.76 Through his essay A Defence of Poetry, Shelley had prepared the ground for an image of the poet as a divine messenger, which was soon applied to himself. However, the angelic qualities do not relate to Shelley’s poetic skills but to his goodness. When Matthew Arnold called Shelley a “beautiful and ineffectual angel”77 in the preface to his Byron edition of 1881, he coined a phrase that summed up previous stylizations and that soon achieved a notoriety of its own. By using this image, Arnold positioned himself in the tradition of Shelley editions and biographies, where this trope was frequently used to stress his ineffectiveness and his goodness, to deradicalize him. This reading of Shelley went hand in hand with the selection of his texts. From about 1860 onward, Shelley became “the poet of clouds, the poet of sunsets,”78 of air, of wind. This development was more noticeable in England, whereas in Germany, particularly around the turn of the century, texts like Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci became fashionable (see chapter 7), which did not lend themselves to constructions of angelic passivity. Richter, one of Shelley’s ﬁrst serious German biographers, placed little emphasis on the angelic Shelley promoted so eagerly by the English Shelley Society, nor did Rudolf Kassner’s inﬂuential book Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben (Mysticism, Artists, and Life, 1900). When German writers of the nineteenth century emphasized Shelley’s passivity, they concentrated on his Weltschmerz and his ineffectiveness rather than his goodness and compared him either to Christ or to a girl. The angel metaphor, so important to Shelley’s British afterlife, had a belated reception in Germany and only really took off with Maurois’s ﬁctional biography Ariel ou la vie de Shelley (French original 1923, English translation 1924, German translation 1928). The image soon found admirers like Rainer Maria Rilke, who added Ariel to his

108

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

own name for a while after reading Maurois, thereby proving that he, too, was more interested in the legend than the poetry.79 Both English and German writers have constructed the image of the angelic Shelley on the basis of similar elements: slimness, beauty, femininity, radiance, lack of power, goodness, and lightness. They are conveyed through tropes related to the element air and to movements associated with it, for example, ﬂoating. Shelley’s own rather abstract poetry, which often took the stars, clouds, and the wind as its favorite images, contributed to such constructions. These tropes culminate and merge in the name of Shelley’s boat, which capsized in the storm: the Ariel, which had formerly belonged to Byron under the name of Don Juan. The contrast implied between the two names and thereby between the two poets’ lives is striking: immateriality versus materiality, feminine asexuality versus masculine sexuality, passivity versus activity, asceticism versus exuberance. Shelley’s long poem Julian and Maddalo, sometimes read as autobiographical, had prepared the path for the construction of this dichotomy. If Shelley’s contemporaries described him as an ordinary-looking young man, later biographers, such as the 1830s and 1840s authors presented above, aestheticized him to emphasize his essential moral goodness. If they concentrated on his beauty at the time of the funeral, when his body was entirely passive, Maurois’s Ariel accentuated Shelley’s feminine traits and his angelic likeness to turn him into a desirable and blushing girl, as these two passages from the English translation show: “What an extraordinary creature!” thought he [Hogg] as he went up to his room . . . “the grace of a young girl, the purity of a maiden who has never left her mother’s side . . . and nevertheless an indomitable force . . . the soul of a Benedictine monk, with the ideas of a Jacobin.” Shelley glided in, blushing like a girl, and holding out his two hands gave the sailor’s a warm pressure. Trelawny looked at him with surprise. It was hard to believe that this ﬂushed and artless face could be that of the genius and rebel, reviled as a monster in England, and whom the Lord Chancellor had deprived of his rights as a father. Shelley, on his side, admired Trelawny’s bold, wild face, raven-black moustache, handsome half-Arab type.80

Shelley’s essential quality is femininity, as the changing colors of his face and his artless openness imply. He is frequently contrasted with Byron, or, as in the above passage, with the masculine adventurer Trelawny. The comparison is between light and darkness, female and male, heaven and earth. His beauty ﬁnds its complement in his

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

109

apparent immateriality, his light movements. In Kerpel-Claudius’s drama, a stage direction runs: “Shelley erscheint jäh, lautlos” (“Shelley appears suddenly, without making a sound”).81 His spiritlike, delicate movements, emphasized by several biographers, ﬁnd their complement in an imagery of light, as in Mikeleitis’s novella, where he appears radiantly angelic, even prior to his conversion: Doch ehe Shelley sich in das Gefährt setzte, sah er Byron mit einem jener leuchtenden blauen Blicke an, die den anderen wehrlos machten. Shelleys Augen hatten die Eigenschaft, aus sich selbst Strahlen zu erzeugen, und es schien aus ihnen ein Licht, das seinen Ursprung nicht in der irdischen Sonne, sondern im Geist hatte. An solchem Blick mochten Menschen Engel erkannt haben, deren heilige Strahlung auch das schlichteste Gewand nicht verbergen konnte.82 [Yet before Shelley took his seat in the vehicle, he looked at Byron with one of those glowing blue looks, which made the beholder defenseless. Shelley’s eyes had the ability to create rays out of themselves, and a light emanated from them, which had its origin not in the earth’s sun but in the spirit. By such a look, humans may have recognized angels, whose holy radiance could not be hidden by the simplest garment.]

This Shelley is nothing less than holy. That he denies God is a contradiction that needs to be smoothed out in the course of the novella, until he eventually acknowledges his maker, immediately before his death. Mikeleitis’s Shelley is too ethereal to even feel hunger or thirst: “So spürte er weder Hunger noch Durst, wenn er arbeitete, und tagelanges Fasten bedeutete für ihn nichts.”83 (“He felt neither hunger nor thirst when he was working, and fasting for days meant nothing to him.”) This Shelley, who is only spirit and no body, is a radicalization of Maurois’s trope. If Maurois’s Shelley appears as a playful girl, Mikeleitis’s has lost all childlike qualities, is glowing with love, and is absolutely serious. A lighter tone is introduced in two short Shelley poems by Vring and Kleßmann. If, up until Mikeleitis, most German biographers cherished Shelley’s multiple deaths and rewrote the Gothic elements of the scenario, Vring’s poem “Shelleys Woge” (“Shelley’s Wave,” 1956) constitutes a departure by making Shelley’s aerial lightness its basic mood while ignoring all the pathos characteristic of previous biographies.84 Vring himself edited two anthologies of English poetry in 1953 and 1962, in which he included some of Shelley’s short lyrics, both love poems full of yearning such as “The Indian Serenade,” and texts with a mournful mood like “A Widow Bird.”85 This mixture of

110

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

sadness and lightness also pervades his adaptation of Shelley’s afterlife. The speaker of Vring’s poem, which consists of two parts of 16 lines each, is in a holiday mood. Part I is situated in Italy and part II in Nice. The setting of part I, entitled “Finale Marina,” is characterized by swallows, a seaman, empty bottles, and the sea, and part II, entitled “Nizza,” by light, smells, and local food. The poem, devoid of grand heroic gestures, focuses on everyday objects, observations, and sensations. Shelley’s name is mentioned once in part I, in the two ﬁnal lines: “Schwalben, hört mich: Shelley’s Woge—/ Schwalben, schaut:—sie trägt ihn her.” (“Swallows, hear me: Shelley’s wave—/ Swallows, look:—it takes him here.”) Shelley’s wave, the surge that killed him, metamorphoses into a genius loci, which unites the present-day spirit and the past poet. As the speaker is not interested in the actual struggle of death, the poem only expresses a slight tinge of melancholy. In part II, “Nizza,” Shelley’s alluring presence becomes even more dominant as the Boulevard Gambetta, the trees, and the odors are described. While reﬂecting on the scenery, the speaker ponders: “Werd ich fortgehn? Werd ich bleiben? / Winkt mir Shelleys Woge schon?” (“Will I leave? Will I stay? / Does Shelley’s wave signal to me already?”) After buying a jar of olives, his eyes move back to the sea: Der Boulevard Gambetta mündet, Wo das Meer im Grellen ﬂießt: Wellenwiege, zart geründet— Saphirgrab, das nie sich schließt— (ll. 13–16) [The Boulevard Gambetta joins Where the sea ﬂows in the glaring light, Wavy cradle, tenderly rounded— Sapphire grave, which never closes—]

The poem does not end on a period but a dash: it breaks off in the middle of the clause, leaving the outcome open. Shelley himself used this device, which signals openness, in “The Waning Moon.” The “Sapphire grave” alludes to imagery Shelley used in Hellas (“sapphire water,” “sapphire lake,” “sapphire sea,” SPP 438, 448, 460; ll. 172, 572, 1049) and denotes value and beauty. The question left open is whether the speaker will emulate Shelley’s alluring example, whether he will follow him. While Shelley’s sublime death remains fascinating, an ironic distancing occurs through the juxtaposition of the grand, mythical demise with everyday, banal objects such as olives and bottles. The former

T h e L i v e s o f a Fa i l e d M a r t y r

111

pathos is no longer valid and has given way to an open-ended game with different possibilities that are only hinted at. This poet-speaker remains a holidaymaker, waiting for inspiration to wash up on the beach. Kleßmann, who wrote several poems on artists such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Johann Sebastian Bach, or Maurice Ravel and their respective deaths and afterlives, composed a similarly indirect representation of Shelley. His sonnet “Percy Bysshe Shelley” (1963) appeared in the volume Seestücke (Sea Pieces), which presents episodes, sensations, and associations linked to maritime places. This poem about Shelley is set in a Mediterranean landscape and concerns itself not with a death but an absence that is only alluded to, not fully described. Shelley is merely a faint memory, a disembodied voice, one of many sounds that merge with the surrounding nature: the birds’ screams, the rustling leaves of the olive tree, the wind, the sea. Ungreifbar, unbegriffen und entzogen Dem Wortgespinst der ungezählten Seiten; Erinnerung, vom Westwind überﬂogen.86 [Not to be grasped or understood, withdrawn From the spun words of uncounted pages; Memory, overﬂown by the West Wind.]

That the English poet is the topic of the sonnet is indicated by the title alone but not by the body of the poem, which reﬂects an atmosphere more than it relates events. Shelley constitutes a perceivable presence through his voice, in fact Ariel’s voice, which has become part of the surrounding landscape. As the poem emphasizes mutability, a typically Shelleyan theme, and uses the sea and the wind as images, it alludes to “Ode to the West Wind.” Again, the speaker ﬁnds himself basking in a Mediterranean landscape, which, however, as in Vring’s poem, is no static idyll. It is pervaded by uneasiness (“trügerische Sicherheit,” “deceptive security”) and decay. Shelley has fused with the elements like a ghost and reminds the speaker of fate, of an invisible, mythical power, namely, the sea god Neptune, who had destroyed him. Unlike in Vring’s poem, this speaker has no choice about whether he wants to listen to Shelley or not. Shelley is more dominant than in the previous poem, because his airy qualities, which make him appear like a wind or a sound, secure his permanence and eternity over all the previous and present changes. * * *

112

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Martyr of error, sensitive plant, Ariel, beautiful corpse, disembodied voice—Shelley has undergone numerous stylizations, many of which have originated from his own poetry. That his German afterlives are so full of suffering, brimming with Weltschmerz, so death-ridden that his angelic lightness received a belated recognition, is due to many German writers’ and intellectuals’ contexts, to the political inertia of the nineteenth-century German bourgeoisie, who favored his lyrical texts over radical ones and promoted Shelley either as a quaint nature poet or as a languishing sufferer. German sketches of Shelley’s life have continued to rewrite the myth of the angel in agony, which has also informed lyrical imitations, translations, and musical settings, all of which have added to the reinvention of a depoliticized Shelley.

Chapter 5

Lyr ical Shelley

Maurois’s angelic Ariel of the previous chapter is the biographical

embodiment of a lyrical Shelley, who experienced recognition mostly in the nineteenth century. If Shelley’s political oeuvre, as well as those texts that sport Titanic champions, possesses a clearly discernible focus, the lyrical section of his works remains somewhat of a rattlebag, depending on the deﬁnition of “lyrical.”1 Many theories include two criteria: the speaker’s emotional disposition and the poem’s imagery. August Wilhelm Schlegel explained the lyrical as subjective, closely connected to one’s innermost feelings.2 Most speakers of Shelley’s poems correspond to this Romantic notion because they are lonely individuals devoid of social contexts, as in “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” or part of a solitary pair as in “Love’s Philosophy,” far away from civilization, where nature becomes a mirror of one’s soul. Shelley’s lyrical poems rarely contain plot structures connected with outward action but display the speaker’s complex emotions and stage the drama that takes place within him, not in the outside world. Another solitary persona frequently equated with Shelley himself is the poet-priest, the mediator between two worlds, the “trumpet of a prophecy.” If imagery is essential to poetry, Shelley’s poses a problem in that respect. Demogorgon’s statement that “the deep truth is imageless”3 is symptomatic of a poetry that is modern in its abstractedness. Shelley’s texts abound with wind, clouds, stars, sounds, movements such as mingling, and abstract forms such as circles, and thereby present imagery as elusive as his famous skylark. Moreover, his favorite themes of change and mutability are too vague to be traced in reception documents. All attempts to catch the skylark, the lyrical Shelley,

114

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

only lead to the discovery that the poet escapes without leaving all too many traces. Owing to the absence of deﬁnite, memorable images, the lyrical Shelley, who affects moods or settings, can hardly ever be clearly identiﬁed as an inﬂuence, whereas Byronic heroes, gloomy and despairing, can be tracked down more easily. Shelley’s stars, clouds, and winds, his lyrical qualities, his very lightness, make it difﬁcult to measure the aesthetic and structural consequences of his impact on German literature.4 If traceable at all, his German lyrical reception has followed his own distinction between “esoteric” and “exoteric” readers, the elite few and the many. While the latter kind of reception occurred within the popularization of the lyrical in the nineteenth century, which caused Shelley’s poetry to be translated, set to music, and imitated, often in the style of Eichendorff, the ﬁn-de-siècle reception by the esoteric circle around Stefan George, in contrast, acquainted the elite few with a Shelley who was exemplary in his sensuous languishing and promoted the role of the poet-priest.

Translations Most nineteenth-century readers who encountered the lyrical Shelley did so through translations, mainly printed in collections that each constructed their own poet. A number of socialist songbooks (Vorwärts! of 1884; Stimmen der Freiheit of 1900) only included red Shelley’s political texts, for example “Song to the Men of England” or “Liberty,” while anthologies that had been compiled to please promoted the lyrical Shelley, who frequently appeared as a poet of nature and love. If Shelley’s short poems, especially the lyrics to Jane, are remarkable for their lightness, German translations tied them to dominant lyrical discourses. Two examples will show how he was ﬁtted into the pastoral mode in the style of Eichendorff and into the ﬁn-de-siècle fashion of unfulﬁlled languishing.5 Among the most frequently read nineteenth-century German nature poems were many Romantic and Biedermeier texts, particularly Eichendorff’s descriptions of rural idylls. In an age of urbanization and industrialization, of technical and social change, they satisﬁed a demand for a harmonious space that had to be free from conﬂicts. The increasing interest in environmental protection contributed to the fashion of pretty, undisturbed landscapes, which were regarded as the essence of all things German.6 Likewise, English constructions of nature of that period were imbued with an ideology that regarded the rural countryside as a mythical source of national strength, necessary to support the building of the empire. Right into the twentieth century, Eichendorff,

Lyrical Shelley

115

Catholic and conservative, remained a shaping inﬂuence, not only on poets but also on readers.7 Many of his poems depict individuals in harmonious settings, striving for the fulﬁllment of an unspeciﬁed desire. That the (by then) rather traditional and apolitical celebration of nature in the style of Eichendorff was the underlying pattern for translations of English nature poetry can be seen from a German version of “Love’s Philosophy,” printed in the successful anthology Freudvoll und Leidvoll (7th ed., 1894), which aimed at a female readership. The anthology includes poems about nature, home, love, with titles such as “Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär!” (“If I Were a Little Bird!,” a folk song) or “Hätt ich zwei Flüglein klein” (“If I Had Two Little Wings”), attributed to Coleridge, which sketch alternative aesthetics of the pleasant and the domestic, far removed from the Romantic ideal of the sublime. Compare Shelley’s poem and the German translation of the ﬁrst stanza: The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the Ocean, The winds of Heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine? (SW 583, ll. 1–8) Es drängt die Quelle sich zum Flusse Der rauschend sie zum Meere trägt, Umfangen halten sich im Kusse Des Himmels Lüfte süß bewegt Kein Wesen soll vereinsamt stehen, Ein jedes nach dem Spruch des Herrn Soll in ein andres übergehen, Warum denn steh ich Dir noch fern?8

A comparison between Shelley’s text and the German translation shows discrepancies. The German text is full of striving, which is frequent in Eichendorff’s poems, for example in “Mondnacht” (“Moon-lit Night”).9 Here, this striving is expressed by “Es drängt die Quelle sich zum Flusse” (“The fountains mingle with the river”). Unlike “drängen,” “mingle” does not connote urgency. The last line of the ﬁrst stanza of the translation, “Warum denn steh ich Dir noch fern?” (“Why not I with thine?”) introduces the notion of a remote “you,” while spatial distance is absent from Shelley’s original. Nature is rather

116

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

quaint in the German version: “Des Himmels Lüfte süß bewegt” is reminiscent of a famous poem by Eduard Mörike, “Er ist’s” (“It is Him”), written in 1829. Frühling läßt sein blaues Band Wieder ﬂattern durch die Lüfte; Süße, wohlbekannte Düfte Streifen ahnungsvoll das Land.10 [Spring lets his blue ribbon Once again ﬂutter through the air. Sweet, familiar fragrancies Are roaming through the land.]

In the English text not the air but the emotions are “sweet.” Moreover, the anonymous translator introduces a male God-the-father ﬁgure: “nach dem Spruch des Herrn,” a deviation from Shelley’s atheism (or pantheism), which would only accept a “law divine.” Shelley’s abstract setting is turned into a pretty landscape, presided over by a male God. The German poem follows a traditional notion of natural and divine order not present in the English text because a popular German blueprint for nature poetry has imposed its discursive pattern on Shelley. Another translation is by Strodtmann, published in his 1866 edition of Shelley’s poetry. Strodtmann, a former supporter of the radical cause of 1848, took account of the poet’s lyrical and political voice when he selected the poems. His translation of the ﬁrst stanza of “Love’s Philosophy” runs: Quelle eint sich mit dem Strome, Daß der Strom ins Meer vertauche; Wind und Wind am blauen Dome Mischen sich mit sanftem Hauche. Nichts auf weiter Welt ist einsam, Jedes folgt und weiht sich hier Einem Andern allgemeinsam Warum denn nicht wir?11

Strodtmann does not aim to continue the Eichendorff tradition, and the sense of urgency conveyed in the anonymous translation in Freudvoll und Leidvoll is missing. For example: Strodtmann translates “mingle” as “einen” (“unite”). The “law divine” is not turned into a personal God, Strodtmann does not even refer to any sort of divinity,

Lyrical Shelley

117

and the holiness of the union is conveyed through the verb “weiht” (“consecrates”). Strodtmann’s version is far less quaint, less focused on hierarchies. Such examples show how translations can subtly change the discursive ﬁeld in which a poem is situated. It is a general effect of anthologizing that poems are appropriated and decontextualized, simply through the processes of selecting and ordering. Yet if they are translated as well, they may be adapted to German discourses, and may join in or depart from German literary traditions. Another frequently anthologized popular short poem is “The Indian Girl’s Song,” also known under the titles “Lines to an Indian Air” and “The Indian Serenade,” which neatly ﬁts into the ﬁn-de-siècle fashion of languishing. Although the version “The Indian Girl’s Song” in Fraistat and Reiman’s Norton Critical Edition (SPP 466–467), which goes back to Shelley’s fair copy and makes the speaker a woman, is much to be preferred over variants in older Shelley editions, I have used an older version because in the nineteenth century, only those variants were available which leave the gendering open to the reader or even suggest that the poem has a male speaker. One of the many translations was produced by George and is part of his aesthetic program, namely to present a movement of kindred spirits suitable to reawaken European poetry.12 His Shelley is a precursor of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne. This translation, probably written in his school days and published in Die Fibel in 1901, exempliﬁes the contemporary cult of languishing, which counted George among its devoted followers. It is one of his early texts and does not yet embody the hermetic style of his later poems but describes a hermetic scenario: two lovers in a vague oriental setting that is inaccessible to the ordinary reader, entirely alone, concerned only with themselves: I arise from dreams of thee In the ﬁrst sweet sleep of night. When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are burning bright: I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led me—who knows how? To thy chamber window, Sweet! The wandering airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream— The Champak odours fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The nightingale’s complaint—

118

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s It dies upon her heart; As I must on thine O, belovèd as thou art! O lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast;— Oh! press it close to thine own again Where it will break at last. (SW 580) Erwach ich aus dem traum von dir Im ersten süssen schlaf der nacht So scheinen mir die sterne hell Und winde wehen sacht. Erwach ich aus dem traum von dir So bin ich ich—Süsse!—wie nur ach Von einem geist in mir geführt?— Vor deinem schlafgemach. Der lüfte wanderung verschwebt In dunklen stromes schaum Der ﬂiederbüsche duft verhaucht Wie süsser wunsch im traum. Der nachtigallen klagesang An ihrem herz gestorben ist Wie ich an deinem sterben muss Geliebt so wie du bist. Ich schmachte sterbe sinke hin! O hebe mich empor vom grund! In küssen regne deine gunst Auf aug und bleichen mund Ach meine wange bleicht erstarrt Mein herz pocht laut und rastet nicht— O schliess es wieder eng an deins Wo es zuletzt noch bricht.13

The exclusiveness is underlined by a specially cut rare Antiqua, in which the entire edition is set. The translation bears the typical features of George’s poetry, for which drunkenness of the senses and languishing are central features.14 While his translations aim to imitate the original closely, they retain his own poetic style with

Lyrical Shelley

119

its characteristic inversions of genitives, a grammatical reﬂection of the popular ornaments of Jugendstil (art nouveau), as in “der lüfte wanderung” for “the wandering airs” and “der ﬂiederbüsche duft” for “the Champak odours.” Whereas Shelley’s lover and beloved are not clearly deﬁned as male or female, George assigns the female sex to the person addressed (“Süsse!”). The beloved remains strangely impersonal because the speaker himself is concerned with his own narcissistic desires, not with the other person. George intensiﬁed Shelley’s delighted suffering by increasing the sensuality of the images. He turned the nightingale’s “complaint” into “klagesang,” thereby adding the connotation of melodious, aesthetically pleasant suffering. “My cheek is cold and white, alas!” becomes “ach meine wange bleicht erstarrt.” Whereas to Shelley, coldness and whiteness are ﬁxed states, George emphasizes the moment of transition from movement to stillness, to the “erstarren.” In addition, the sexual content is made more explicit through “schlafgemach” (“bedroom”) instead of “chamber window.” Likewise, “Ich schmachte sterbe sinke hin!,” not punctuated by exclamation marks or commas, for “I die! I faint! I fail!” increases the atmosphere of delighted suffering. “Schmachte” (“languish”) and “sinke hin” (“sink down”) are of George’s own invention. The preference of ecstatic languishing over fulﬁllment reﬂects a fashionable discourse and may account for the fascination George exuded both among his ﬁrst few followers and among the masses, who later admired his poetry. Despite his elitist self-fashioning, he chose a very popular text, as is proved by the fact that 150 musical settings (if not more) exist, most of which date from the nineteenth century.

Musical Settings Shelley was not only translated into German but also into music numerous times. Musical settings of Romantic poetry, especially by Byron, Shelley, and Tennyson, were much in demand in the nineteenth century. As successful pieces were not tied to any one national context, the musical reception of Shelley has always been an international phenomenon; in fact, it contributed to the rise of Shelley’s European fame. His texts invite musical settings because musical themes can be found in many of them. If in Alastor, music functions “as a foil to silence,”15 it is also a major theme in Prometheus Unbound, whose short, lyrical pieces became popular settings, while the drama The Cenci was turned into opera. “Love’s Philosophy” was not only a favorite among anthologists but also one of the most

120

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

popular Shelley pieces among composers: 89 settings are known.16 Another famous adaptation is Hans Werner Henze’s “Ode to the West Wind” for cello and orchestra, published in 1955.17 If the short pieces were to be played and enjoyed at home, the longer and later versions were produced for concert halls and shifted musical performances of Shelley from private to public spaces. Although numerous musical settings of Shelley poems were published between the 1880s and the 1920s, at the time of Shelley’s European revival, the initial wave of interest in the poet left musical traces, too, and inspired composers such as Robert Schumann, whose “Die Flüchtlinge” (“The Fugitives”) of 1852 belongs to this ﬁrst surge of the Shelley fashion. Many of the songs published in Germany had English texts, such as those by Henry Pearson.18 Pearson (sometimes spelt Pierson), who attended the same school and college as Shelley’s son, Percy Florence, went to live in Germany in 1839. The poems he set to music between 1839 and 1841 were “On a Faded Violet,” “Arethusa,” “Invocation to Night,” “Hymn of Proserpine,” “The Indian Serenade,” and “Dirge” (“Rough Wind”). Together with several settings for songs by Burns dating from 1842, these pieces, some of which were published by the Leipzig ﬁrm of Breitkopf and Härtel, were the basis for his early fame.19 Pearson’s choice was typical in as far as he selected short poems, some of which were set to music several times. On her visit to Germany in 1842, Mary and Percy Florence Shelley met the composer in a picturesque spot near the village of Rabenau. Mary Shelley later described Pearson’s settings in her Rambles in Germany and Italy and contemplated their attractiveness: Thanks to them, Shelley’s Poems have found an echo of sweet sounds worthy of them. The fanciful wildness, the tender melancholy, the holy calm of the poet, have met a similar inspiration on the part of the musician. They have as much melody as the Italian, as much science as the German school—they appertain most, indeed, to the last; but the airs themselves are original. The song of “Arethusa,” and that entitled “Spirit of Night,” are perhaps the best. The one, light and fanciful; the other, solemn and impassioned; both, beautiful.20

Mary Shelley’s reaction is that of an individual listener who followed in the lonely poet’s footsteps (“tender melancholy,” “holy calm”) and added to the delicate image of Shelley as suffering angel. However, in the nineteenth century, music was rarely enjoyed by solitary listeners; it was more often performed for an audience at home. Many pieces were written for amateurs with modest technical skills, often sentimental in

Lyrical Shelley

121

tone, while experiments were regarded with suspicion. The composers’ main task was “to capture mood in melody.”21 Listening to music was a social activity, often connected with entertainments and gatherings in the living rooms of the bourgeoisie. The salon, the space of sociability and of performances, was the representative centerpiece of a bourgeois home, where the taming of the lyrical Shelley occurred.

Popular Imitations: Geibel Such salons also functioned as a stage for poetry readings and recitals, where the best-selling poet Emanuel Geibel was a cultural icon. Geibel, a celebrity in the nineteenth century but little known today, was much inﬂuenced by the English Romantics, especially by Byron, Moore, and Shelley, and translated Milton, Byron, Hood, and Tennyson.22 If some of his poetry is nationalist with a historical focus, other texts deal with a nature far removed from everyday reality.23 In that respect, he follows Eichendorff without possessing any of his beauty or complexity. Geibel’s poems “Nachts am Meere” (“At Night, by the Sea,” 1845) and “Am Meere” (“By the Sea,” 1848) both resemble Shelley’s “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” and are good examples of the strategies involved in popular imitations: changes of imagery, for example of the color scheme, reafﬁrmation of hierarchy, a focus on the domestic. Compare the ﬁrst stanza of Geibel’s “Am Meere,” where the speaker is standing on the shore to reﬂect on life, to the ﬁrst stanza of Shelley’s poem: O leiser Wogenschlag, eintönig Lied, Dazu die Harfe rührt der müde Wind, Wenn Well’ auf Welle blinkend strandwärts zieht, Und dann auf goldnem Ufersand verrinnt, Wie oft in märchenhaftes Traumgebiet Verlockte mich dein Wohllaut schon als Kind. Versunken stand ich dann und lauschte tief, Bis mich die Nacht vom lieben Strande rief.24 [O quietly pounding waves, monotonous song, While the tired wind touches the harp, When wave on wave moves beachwards, gleaming To trickle away on the shore’s golden sand. How often did your melodious sound Allure me into fairy dream regions When as a child I stood, lost in thought, and listened deeply Until the night called me away from the dear beach.]

122

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent might, The breath of the moist earth is light, Around its unexpanded buds; Like many a voice of one delight, The winds, the birds, the ocean-ﬂoods, The City’s voice itself is soft, like Solitude’s. (SW 561, ll. 1–9)

Both speakers contemplate nature while standing by the sea. While Shelley’s poem starts in a cheerful mood, Geibel’s, in contrast, is more melancholy. Yet, in the third, fourth and ﬁfth stanzas, Shelley’s speaker, the uninvolved and seemingly happy observer of nature, suddenly reveals himself as depressed and unhappy (“Alas! I have nor hope nor health,” l. 19), as an outsider, who cannot participate in the surrounding warmth and quiet harmony he has just described. Geibel’s speaker, in contrast, sees himself and his Weltschmerz mirrored in the surrounding seascape straight away (“O leiser Wogenschlag, eintönig Lied” / “O quietly pounding waves, monotonous song”). What is typical in Geibel’s imitation is the Byronic narcissism of the solitary speaker, which lacks the subtle nuances of Shelley’s poetry.25 Whereas Shelley’s speaker and the surrounding nature are irreconcilable in their respective moods, they still ﬁnd themselves in a complex relationship of mutual closeness and distance. Geibel’s speaker is happily integrated into this nonambivalent world, and moreover, he is restricted to a minimum of sensuality. The phrase “Well’ auf Welle” (“wave on wave”) conveys a sense of order and thus stands in marked contrast with Shelley’s dancing waves. The differing use of imagery is striking, too: Geibel’s colors, for example golden, are much brighter than Shelley’s. If Shelley’s sea is an untamed wilderness, Geibel’s houses quasi-human, unquestioned hierarchies, superseded by a male king on a throne: Und alles, was Geheimnisvolles je Mir kund ward, dämmert’ auf in meinen Sinnen: Durchsicht’ge Schlösser auf dem Grund der See Mit Silberpfeilern und Korallenzinnen; Meerkönig saß mit seinem Bart von Schnee Auf buntem Muschelstuhl, und harrte drinnen, Und Nixen spannen zu dem süßen Schall Von goldnen Spindeln Fäden von Kristall.26

Lyrical Shelley

123

[And everything mysterious that ever Became known to me, dawned in my thoughts: Transparent castles at the bottom of the sea With silvery pillars and coral pinnacles; Sea king was sitting with a beard of snow On a gaudy shell chair and stayed inside, And mermaids were spinning by the sweet sound Threads of crystal from golden spindles.]

Shelley’s second stanza, describing the sea, runs: I see the Deep’s untrampled ﬂoor With green and purple seaweeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown: I sit upon the sands alone,— The lightning of the noontide ocean Is ﬂashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. (SW 561, ll. 10–18)

Shelley’s sea is a vision of untouched nature (“untrampled,” “seaweeds strown”). In Geibel’s world, no space is left untamed, his sea is a civilized, prettiﬁed realm; it mimics a human court (“Schlösser,” “Korallenzinnen,” “Muschelstuhl”), and is peopled by a sea-king and mermaids, who exert housewifely inﬂuences through their spinning. This ocean is in no way sublime but is a mirror of domesticity, which Geibel celebrated elsewhere too. The fairy-tale atmosphere lifts the scenario out of the everyday but returns the reader to the saturated normality Shelley attempted to escape from. The ending of the poem is typical of Geibel’s ﬂowery style: Mir aber liegst du fern schon wie ein Traum, Du meines Herzens süße Veilchenzeit, Du goldne Dämmrung, ach mit allen Wonnen Verweht im Wind, wie Flut und Schaum zerronnen.—27 [You are already as far from me as a dream, You, my heart’s sweet violet time, You golden dawn, o with all pleasures Scattered by the wind, gone like the high tide and the foam.—]

124

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Compare Shelley: . . . when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. (SW 562, ll. 43–45)

In both poems, the ﬁnal theme is mutability, change, expressed through the image of the sunset. In Geibel’s poem, the sweet violets as well as the golden dawn prettify the ending, while Shelley’s poem ends on a sublime note. Whereas Shelley’s speaker returns to the positive outlook of the ﬁrst stanza, Geibel’s basks in sweet and ﬂowery dreams. That his poetry was of enormous appeal to a reading public that relished his poems alongside those of Eichendorff is due to their simplicity. Shelley’s sublime self, the torn individual, becomes a Biedermeier gentleman, who prefers pretty ﬂowers over naked, untamed nature. In England as in Germany, ﬂoral imagery had become commercialized and was central to any representation of nature.28 Geibel’s imitation is a typical example of cultural transfer because it adds elements from a popular discourse to its model.29 Less popular nineteenth-century imitations of Shelley’s lyrical poems are hard to ﬁnd. Gottfried Keller may have reworked Shelleyan imagery in his “Abendlied” (“Evening Song,” 1879).30 Yet it seems doubtful whether the phrase “wie zwei Sternlein innerlich zu seh’n” (“like two stars, visible only internally,” l. 10) can be really traced back to Alastor because the image of the double star, denoting a person’s eyes, is too common to be uniquely Shelleyan. No record of any interest in Shelley on Keller’s part exists. This example shows how difﬁcult it is to trace the aesthetic impact of a poetry devoid of concrete comparisons, how any imitator of Shelley’s imagery must be elusive for the critic. Meißner, who wrote a famous account of Shelley’s cremation (see chapter 4), composed several lyrical poems in imitation of Shelley, among them “In der Gebirgswüste” (“In the Mountain Desert”) and “Zurechtweisung” (“Rebuke”), for which he reworked the device of looking at the earth from a distant star, taken from Queen Mab.31 Another early fan of Shelley’s was Engels, who wrote and translated poetry in his youth and published an article on landscapes under the name “Friedrich Oswald,” in which he explicitly referred to Shelley and included a poem for which the English Romantic seems to have been a shaping inﬂuence: Und nun vergiß der Schmerzen, Die man Dir angethan, Und geh’ mit ganzem Herzen

Lyrical Shelley

125

Die große freie Bahn. Der Himmel beugt sich nieder Wird Eines mit dem Meer— Du willst zerrissen wieder Fahren dazwischen her? [And now forget the wrong, That has been done to you. And move with your whole heart On the great, free path. The sky bows down Becomes one with the sea— Do you, torn, once more Want to interfere?]32

This ﬁrst stanza of three uses two favorite Shelleyan images and combines the union of sky and sea with the torn individual. Engels, who had wanted to publish Shelley’s poetry to make him more accessible in Germany, is far removed from Geibel’s Kitsch rewriting. He later translated several short passages from Shelley’s poetry, some of which, however, he never published.33 Engels was drawn not only to Shelley’s political oeuvre, as one might expect, but also to his lyrical poetry.

The George Circle If Geibel’s imitations, popular yet ephemeral, were soon forgotten by the reading masses, some of the more esoteric texts written in George’s circle around the ﬁn de siècle achieved fame. The writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who came from an Austrian-Jewish family, described an early meeting with George, which took place in 1892: “Wir kamen dann einige Male zusammen: die Namen Verlaine, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Rossetti, Shelley wurden dabei in einer gewissen Weise genannt—man fühlte sich als Verbundene”34 (“We then met several times: the names Verlaine, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Rossetti, Shelley were pronounced in a certain way—we felt close”). The poets’ names helped to evoke familiarity, even to forge an alliance. That Hofmannsthal and George read and communicated about the English Romantics, among them Shelley, who was one of the writers one knew in the 1890s, is well documented. Numerous ﬁn-de-siècle authors particularly in Vienna were inﬂuenced by English literature, especially by poetry but also by prose. Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and Oscar Wilde came to be seen as spiritual forerunners of a European decadence that was to be emulated, both as a cultural movement and in terms of lifestyle.35 Moreover, George and Hofmannsthal felt that German poetry had to liberate itself

126

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

from Eichendorff’s inﬂuence. While Hofmannsthal was particularly attracted to Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, and the Pre-Raphaelites because of their sensuality,36 the circle around George cherished Romantic visions about the unacknowledged yet prophetic poet. George in particular felt that the poet was obliged to resist the surrounding world of commerce and to escape from ephemeral banalities. His circle, mostly men, adhered to a highly elitist and esoteric concept of poetry, in which the poet was assigned a priest-like role that corresponded to Shelleyan notions and expressed George’s claim to take up the leadership of a movement. The hierarchically structured group had a master and disciples, whose closeness to the master determined their respective status. The literary output was published in Blätter für die Kunst, which, unlike other contemporary magazines, were intended for a very tiny group of readers only. A passage from a text by Karl Wolfskehl, published in the Blätter, shows the George circle’s understanding of poetry and the poet: Blicke und Blitze I Oft neigt sich der adler des Zeus sterblichen zu—nur Ganymedes doch erhebt auf ewig sich zum glanz des olympes. II Wie mag der schaffende ein erkennender sein? Mannesmacht und weibeswählen sind die pole der welt. III Sie atmen in ihrer zukunft: die falter ungeborener lenze haben ihre stirnen geküsst. Shelley, Novalis. IV Mit dem epheukranz in den locken wollte er gebete stammeln und siehe: sein mund verwirrte sich. Hölderlin.37

[Glances and Flashes I Often, Zeus’s eagle bows down to mortals—yet only Ganymede ascends forever to the radiance of mount olympus. II How can he who creates perceive? Manpower and womanchoice are the poles of the world.

Lyrical Shelley

127

III They are breathing in their future: the butterﬂies of unborn springs have kissed their foreheads. Shelley, Novalis. IV With a wreath of ivy in his curls he wanted to stammer prayers, and see: his mouth got confused. Hölderlin.]

The ﬁrst sentence states that only a few are among the elect, the elevated. The name Ganymede, Zeus’s mythical cupbearer, who was abducted because of his beauty, has a twofold signiﬁcance: it connotes a relationship between master and servant and signals homoerotic attraction. Both components were relevant to the structure of the George circle. Only three chosen poets are named—Shelley, Novalis, and Hölderlin—two of whom died early and survived in the popular memory as young men, boyish like Ganymede. Although Wolfskehl does not mention himself anywhere, he inscribes himself into the text through this reference, maybe because he wishes to be one of the select young men, Ganymede, the one closest to the leader. As in the previously mentioned conversation between George and Hofmannsthal, Shelley becomes a symbol of erotic attraction in a text that describes the process of literary creation as a celebration of sensuality and a temporary loss of individuality, thereby implicitly likening it to the sexual act. This sexualized creative process, metaphorically called “Blicke und Blitze” (“Glances and Flashes”) is superior to any rational reﬂection and needs no moral dimension. Presumably this sketch of unfulﬁlled desire reﬂects the atmosphere of the George circle.38 George’s disciples were grouped hierarchically in different categories or circles, depending on how close they were to the master. As such a poetological program needed a central leading ﬁgure, the herald of an art situated beyond the narrow conﬁnes of the ephemeral, it is not surprising that both the master and his disciples absorbed Shelley’s concept of the poet as unacknowledged legislator. Edith Landmann, one of the few women on the periphery of the George circle, deﬁned poetry and the true poet in “Das Wesen des Dichters” (“The Poet’s Essence”): Daher formiert und regeneriert sich die Welt an Gedichten, daher sind Dichter ihrem Wesen nach was sie im Altertum waren, die allein berufenen Erzieher des Volkes und, wie es Shelley sagte, die unanerkannten Gesetzgeber der Welt. 39 [Therefore, the world forms and regenerates itself through poems, therefore, by their very essence, poets are what they were in antiquity,

128

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

the sole appointed educators of the people and, as Shelley said, the unacknowledged legislators of the world.]

A Defence of Poetry also appeared on a reading list compiled by George himself, where he grouped writers into three categories: “die Unbedingten,” “die Nötigen,” “die Nützlichen” (“the essential ones,” “the necessary ones,” “the useful ones”). Shelley was in the second category,40 necessary because his concept of poetry, which was close to George’s, assigned all power to the poet as legislator yet regretted the lack of acknowledgment, of active involvement, thereby helping to justify the hermeticism of the George circle. Shelley neither made claims of mastery, nor did he make himself unseen deliberately, while George cultivated his inaccessibility for the general public.41 When his followers took up positions in the outside world, they sometimes did so at the price of losing their master’s approval. When Hofmannsthal eventually broke with George, he also turned to a new concept of poetry, inspired by Keats’s famous image of the poet as chameleon.42 Whereas George’s poet is secretly in control of the world, Keats’s becomes part of his environment and therefore necessarily loses his dominance.43 Hofmannsthal, who began his friendship with George under the auspices of a shared interest in the Romantics, cherished particularly Keats’s and Shelley’s sensuousness and, in his own poetry, devoted much attention to speakers who were drunk with inspiration or sensuous perception and became one with their environment. In this sense, Hofmannsthal is a typical exponent of the Viennese ﬁn de siècle, where the crisis of the self was cultivated in manifold ways (see chapter 7). Hofmannsthal mentioned Shelley several times and seems to have been familiar with an essay by William Butler Yeats, “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry,” which mentions the different states of existence described in “The Sensitive Plant.”44 A handwritten note left by Hofmannsthal suggests that his poem “Der Jüngling und die Spinne” (“The Young Man and the Spider”) is inﬂuenced by Shelley, speciﬁcally by the following four lines from Shelley’s poem: For each one was interpenetrated With the light and odour its neighbour shed Like young lovers, whom youth and love makes dear, Wrapt and ﬁlled by their mutual atmosphere. (SPP 288, part I, ll. 66–69)

These four lines are taken from “The Sensitive Plant,” a dreamlike poem that presents the cycles of nature and life. At its center is the

Lyrical Shelley

129

sensitive plant, “companionless” (SPP 287, I. l. 12) like many of Shelley’s poetic personae, loving, growing in a peaceful environment. Yet the harmony of the garden is suddenly invaded by death through the decease of the beautiful lady, followed by the plant’s death. Not only the movement toward death but also the dreamlike quality of life is imitated in “Der Jüngling und die Spinne,” where the speaker is drunk with sensation (“. . . an den hügeln / Spür ich in einem wundervoll entfernten / Traumbilde sich mein innerstes entriegeln”45, ll. 17—19; “. . . by the hills / I feel in a wonderfully remote / Dream shape my innermost self unlocking.”) Hofmannsthal, who attempted to translate Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” was fascinated with the idea of the drunken, mad, and visionary poet, and his speaker’s euphoric dream encompasses the totality of present and future life. While Shelley’s poem presents a quiet harmony, Hofmannsthal develops this atmosphere into drunken yearning. In both poems, a fusion of subject and object, of observer and observed, occurs, but while in Shelley’s text two lovers became intertwined, in Hofmannsthal’s the speaker enters into a mystical union with the world surrounding him. The ﬁrst part of his poem culminates in a vision of individual, ecstatic apotheosis: Nach welcher zukunft greif ich trunkner da? Doch schwebt sie her, ich darf sie schon berühren: Denn zu den sternen steigt, was längst geschah, Empor, und andre, andre ströme führen Das ungeschehene herauf, die erde Läßt es empor aus unsichtbaren thüren, Bezwungen von der bittenden geberde! (ll. 28–34) [For what future do I reach, drunken, Yet it ﬂoats to me, I may already touch it: For what happened long ago rises to the stars, Up, and other, other streams lead up What has not happened yet, the Earth Allows it to ascend out of invisible doors Conquered by the pleading gesture!]

At this point, the monologue of the poem is interrupted by a prose passage, a stage direction, which intensiﬁes the dramatic quality of the poem: the young man moves to the window and observes how a big spider destroys a smaller creature. The generic switch from poetry to prose underlines this atmospheric and thematic change from drunken poetic dreams about omnipresence to prosaic discussions

130

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

about unavoidable death. During the pause, the young man steps back before speaking/dreaming again in verse. With the invasion of death and violence, the drunken and dreamy reality of the ﬁrst part suddenly disappears: “Der grossen träume wundervolle nähe / Klingt ab, wie irgendwo das ferne rollen / Von einem wasserfall” (ll. 38—40 “The big dreams’ wonderful closeness / Abates, like somewhere the remote thunder / Of a waterfall”), the speaker comprehends the inescapability of death and violence, of pain: Im vorgefühl: ich werde dies gewinnen: Schmerzen zu leiden, schmerzen zuzufügen. Nun spür ich schaudernd etwas mich umgeben, Es türmt sich auf bis an die hohen sterne, Und seinen namen weiss ich nun: das leben. (ll. 55–59) [In my foreboding: I will gain this: To suffer pain, to cause pain. Now I feel, shuddering, that something surrounds me; It towers up to the high stars, And now I know its name: life.]

Finally, the speaker arrives at a new awareness of life’s cruelty. As the previous passive and sensuous dream mutates into a wish for active participation in the new life, the acknowledgment of death and violence lead to new vitality. This dissolving self that is in tension with a consolidating self is a frequent topos in the writings of the young Hofmannsthal46 and points back to Keats’s image of the chameleon poet. In Shelley’s poem, the harmony of the garden is destroyed through the lady’s death, followed by winter and the death of the plant. Yet the poem ends with an afﬁrmation of life: For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change: their might Exceeds our organs—which endure No light—being themselves obscure. (SPP 295, “Conclusion,” ll. 21–25)

The ideals remain but may not be perceptible to humans. If in “Der Jüngling und die Spinne,” the tension between life and death is situated at the level of the speaker’s psyche, the life-death dichotomy in “The Sensitive Plant” occurs on the level of plot, which describes the natural cycle of growing and dying, of death and rebirth. In his note Ad me ipsum, Hofmannsthal wrote of this poem: “Bangen und Sehnsucht,

Lyrical Shelley

131

diesen Zustand <der Praeexistenz> zu verlassen: auf welchem Weg?”47 (“Anxiety and desire to leave this state , on which way?”). This is precisely the concern of the poem: how to experience, how to participate in life, how to move beyond it. On September 21, 1897, Hofmannsthal sent this together with three other poems to Stefan George for publication in his Blätter für die Kunst, where it appeared in 1899. The Dutch poet Albert Verwey also partook in this circle’s intellectual exchange but eventually distanced himself from George, too. Like the great master, Verwey, who belonged to a movement called “Tachtigers,” pursued the declared aim of renewing the poetry of his country.48 He was a keen admirer of Shelley, whose works he translated into Dutch, and wrote several poems in imitation of him, for example “Cor Cordium,” which contains elements of Epipsychidion and appeared in the Blätter für die Kunst in 1902–1903 in a translation by Friedrich Gundolf and George.49 Shelley’s Epipsychidion describes how the speaker discovers a kindred spirit, a sisterly soul. On a biographical level, Epipsychidion was motivated by Shelley’s acquaintance with Emilia Viviani, who had been locked up in a convent by her parents. Part of the poem elaborates on Shelley’s dream of running away with her. On a symbolic level, the speaker is in search of an ideal, which he ﬁnds embodied in Emily, so that real love for a woman and ideal love for a soul mirror one another. Likewise, Verwey’s text is concerned with a poetic persona who hunts after an ideal alter ego, not so much to gain love but to escape from everyday reality. When he eventually ﬁnds her, he suffers the painful loss of self entailed by this relationship.50 “Cor Cordium” presents a speaker who lives in his dreams, in an overall atmosphere of desire, suffering, and eventually mourning: “So wird der weinen der sein selbst vergisst. / Als ob das mehr als lebens leben wäre.” (“So he who forgets himself will be crying. / As if this were more than life’s life.”)51 This combination of yearning and suffering also marks the end of Epipsychidion: . . . Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of love’s rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its ﬂight of ﬁre.— I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire! (SPP 407, ll. 587–591)

If Shelley’s speaker breaks off at the height of passion, Verwey’s remains lonely as well as disillusioned after a sexual union and ﬂees into art. In “Cor Cordium,” cruelty and suffering are celebrated,

132

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

whereas in Epipsychidion, the dream of fulﬁllment comes true and supersedes languishing. Despite the circle’s declared esoteric understanding of poetry, George, Hofmannsthal, Wolfskehl, and Verwey drew on the popular contemporary discourse of languishing, for which some of Shelley’s poetry was a veritable goldmine. If George’s early translation of “The Indian Serenade” was full of clichés—the breaking heart, the shower of kisses, the paleness—later texts were less traditional in their imagery but retained the basic mood of delighted suffering. The combination of lust for power and hermeticism, both seemingly justiﬁed through Shelley’s Defence, added to his attractiveness. It is paradoxical that Geibel’s “exoteric” imitations are largely forgotten today, whereas the George circle’s “esoteric” reactions to Shelley are well known, particularly in academia, where some of his early disciples taught and promoted his concepts of poetry.

Lyrical Shelley and Academia German academia in particular has supported the lyrical Shelley (see chapter 3). Wolfgang Clemen’s interpretation of “Ode to the West Wind” (1950) and Thomas Metscher’s ﬁerce reply (1976) show how poetological concepts which prevail in academia can be traced back to the ﬁn-de-siècle cult around Shelley’s concept of the poet.52 Wolfgang Clemen had links to the George circle because his father, the renowned art historian Paul Clemen, had personal contact with the great master himself and, on the occasion of George’s death in 1933, delivered a speech, which was published as a booklet. This obituary pays homage to the leader George (“Führer”),53 to the prophet who aimed to reestablish the poet as priest.54 A number of German professors were close to or even came from the concentric circles around the master, who was not a central power factor in academia55 but whose poetological concept had afﬁnities with the methodological demands of Geistesgeschichte, the new paradigm in literary studies that had emerged in the 1920s. Similarities existed: canon formation, the centrality of certain authors, the ideal of the poet as prophet and as the embodiment of the spirit of an age, the notion of the text as organic unity, the lack of clearly deﬁned hermeneutic methods, and the role of the academic as an interpreter, who would approach a text as respectfully as a disciple would come near a master.56 Both Wilhelm Dilthey, a major exponent of Geistesgeschichte,57 and Gundolf, the author of a seminal study on Shakespeare, were close to George. It is striking that several Shelley readers belonged

Lyrical Shelley

133

to this circle: for example, Cassirer, who later published a Shelley edition with translations by Wolfenstein, emphasized a message of love and individual liberty, which was far from George’s elite hermeticism.58 Clemen, an important ﬁgure of West German English Studies after World War II, was close to the George circle’s concept of poetry because he retained the authoritarian position of the exegete in his analysis of “Ode to the West Wind.” Clemen’s interpretation begins with the literary text itself, the “Ode to the West Wind,” printed without comment, thus presenting itself as a ritual incantation. After the poet’s speech, the critic explains his words to the less knowledgeable academic public. Clemen displays enormous sensitivity toward the text and its language, here as in other studies,59 yet the absence of clear categories of analysis allows him to retain the position of an exegete. Despite the clarity of his argument, Clemen’s methodology is not transparent. His aim was to show how the aesthetic components of the ode add up to the creation of an organic whole. This concept of the literary text is essentially Romantic and situates Clemen in the critical tradition of Dilthey. It is also close to M. H. Abrams’s approach. As one would expect in an interpretation in the New Critical/Romantic tradition, the ﬁgure of the poet, Shelley, appears as priest and prophet and has to fulﬁll a holy mission.60 Thereby, Clemen accepted Shelley’s self-stylization of A Defence of Poetry. Clemen’s reading attracted ﬁerce protest in the 1970s, when literary studies in Germany broke away from the tenets of Geistesgeschichte, New Criticism, and related methods. In the ﬁrst issue of the newly founded magazine gulliver, which demanded a restitution of social and historical contexts to the study of English literature, a programmatic article by Metscher provided a fundamental critique of Clemen’s interpretation, which he described as symptomatic of bourgeois literary criticism and its apologetic approach. Metscher offered an alternative reading by concentrating on the political dimension of Shelley’s poem, explained the west wind as a revolutionary metaphor, and thereby attempted to reestablish the revolutionary Shelley, who had sought to incite the working classes. This political Shelley had been virtually nonexistent to George and Hofmannsthal, who abhorred the curious gaze of the uncomprehending and uneducated masses. Neither would Geibel and others, who saw themselves as followers of a tradition installed by Eichendorff, acknowledge Shelley as a revolutionary poet. Nevertheless, the red Shelley of The Mask of Anarchy, of “Men of England,” not only happily coexisted with his languishing lyrical counterpart but inspired numerous German readers, writers, and academics.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 6

R evolu tionary Shelley

S

helley, born three years after the storming of the Bastille, witnessed both the spread and the suppression of the ideals of the French Revolution. Liberty and equality remained catchwords, waiting to be turned into forbidden action. Having arrived on the scene too late to take an active part, Shelley hoped for belated acknowledgment as a radical. Indeed, his life as an outcast and his subversive ideas appealed to his red readers so much that they styled the poet of “Song to the Men of England” as a revolutionary spokesman of the masses. Especially among the Chartists, he achieved more posthumous fame than Byron. Lectures on Shelley were popular, journalists frequently quoted him, and his poetry was recited at meetings. As many of the Chartist leaders were poets themselves, they felt inspired by Shelley’s radical ideas, expressed in his inﬂuential poem Queen Mab, which was distributed widely through a large number of cheap pirated editions. To what extent Shelley and Chartism were synonymous is evident in Kingsley’s novel Alton Locke (1849), where the protagonist leaves the room in the middle of a lecture on Shelley, thereby symbolically turning away from all rebellion. Kingsley, critical of radicalism, thus led his hero toward salvation. Yet among the majority of Chartists, Shelley possessed a popularity and authority that impressed even Engels.1 The radical Shelley ﬁrst gained ground in Germany through the Nuremberg publisher Campe’s Queen Mab (1832), although the main focus of interest during the 1830s and 1840s remained his biography. The belated start of industrialization in Germany meant that Shelley’s reception as a poet for the working masses began only in the second half of the nineteenth century. When the exponents of the 1848 revolution and their followers turned to Shelley, Burns, and

136

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Byron, they felt that these poets’ ideas supported their own demands for more citizen rights. Whereas the lyrical Shelley of the previous chapter has often been traded as an esoteric and private poet, the revolutionary Shelley, in contrast, is a prominent public ﬁgure whose various appearances are accounted for in this chapter. First, slogans and songs, easy to memorize, are indicators of a writer’s political impact. The Scottish poet Burns serves as a complement to Shelley for highlighting the successful afterlife of a slogan. Herwegh’s “Federal Hymn,” inspired by Shelley’s “Song to the Men of England,” is an example of a political song that achieved notoriety. Second, Brecht’s imitation of The Mask of Anarchy, the ballad “Freiheit und Democracy” (1947), a satirical panorama of West German society, led to several performances of the famous Anachronistische Zug (Anachronistic Procession). Shelley, the distributor of unread pamphlets and bottled messages, never initiated this type of agitation himself but would have been delighted about the controversies it caused. Third, B. Traven alias Ret Marut, the secretive author of best-selling adventure stories who claimed Shelley among his major inﬂuences, shaped at least two central characters in his ﬁctional works after Shelleyan ideas. Fourth, to the sedate rebel, the revolutionary-turned-bourgeois, the English poet’s radical life was available as narrative ﬁction. Hamm’s novella Shelley (1858) presents Shelleyan ideas and discusses questions of a Northern cultural identity, a cultural unity envisioned by those who had demanded national union in 1848, like Hamm himself.

Public Protest: Freiligrath and Herwegh Political poetry, always in need of an audience to be effective, can take several shapes. It may appear as a decontextualized quotation (Freiligrath) or as a song to awaken the masses (Herwegh). A prime example of the slogan, the successful decontextualized quotation, is Burns’s “For a’ that, and a’ that,” which became the German Social Democrats’ deﬁant “Trotz alledem!” While the Austrian censors had grasped Shelley’s revolutionary potential as early as 1822, he was certainly not the only British Romantic to make subversive history on the continent. The Scottish poet Burns also found numerous readers in nineteenth-century Germany, such as Freiligrath, whose anthology The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock (1853) includes several poems by the Scotch bard. It was Freiligrath’s translation that immortalized Burns in the history of the German Social Democratic Party. In 1843, Freiligrath translated Burns’s “A Man’s a Man for A’ That,” a popular song about

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y

137

poverty, but had it returned in January 1844 by the censor, who did not wish to see it printed in the Kölner Zeitung.2 Several months later, the translation appeared in a volume of poetry, Ein Glaubensbekenntnis (A Creed), but was conﬁscated immediately. In Burns’s poem, which is ﬁve stanzas long, the honest poor man deﬁes the rich: Is there for honest poverty That hings his head, an a’ that? The coward slave, we pass him by— We dare be poor for a’ that! For a’ that, and a’ that, Our toils obscure, and a’ that, The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, The man’s the gowd for a’ that.3

Freiligrath’s translation: Ob Armut euer Los auch sei, Hebt hoch die Stirn, trotz alledem! Geht kühn den feigen Knecht vorbei; Wagt’s, arm zu sein trotz alledem! Trotz alledem und alledem, Trotz niederm Plack und alledem, Der Rang ist das Gepräge nur, Der Mann das Gold trotz alledem!4

By translating Burns’s motto “For a’ that, and a’ that” as “Trotz alledem,” Freiligrath coined a powerful political slogan that soon led a life of its own. Freiligrath recycled it when he published a new version, a rather free imitation of Burns’s song, in June 1848, three months after the revolution. In this new poem, nearly twice as long as the earlier one, he used nature imagery to suggest that the current political events were unnatural. If the fever of revolution had heated up March, the chilling wind of reaction was turning the present month of June into winter: Das war ’ne heiße Märzenzeit, Trotz Regen, Schnee und alledem! Nun aber, da es Blüten schneit, Nun ist es kalt, trotz alledem! Trotz alledem und alledem— Trotz Wien, Berlin und alledem— Ein schnöder scharfer Winterwind Durchfröstelt uns trotz alledem!5 (ll. 1–8)

138

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s [It was a hot time in March Despite rain, snow, and all that! But now, when it snows blossoms, Now it is cold, for a’ that, and a’ that! For a’ that, and a’ that— Despite Vienna, Berlin, and all that— An unpleasant biting winterly wind Makes us shiver, for a’ that!]

Freiligrath’s crisp slogan soon acquired fame. In the years following 1848, “Trotz alledem!” became a pithy motto of resistance against reaction,6 an invocation of deﬁance and hope, and by 1918–1919 had advanced to the status of a revolutionary greeting. Rosa Luxemburg used this phrase in several of her letters from prison, both as a personal and as a political motto. Karl Liebknecht’s last article, written the day before he was murdered, ended with these invigorating words. Wolf Biermann, one of East Germany’s most prominent songwriter-poets, followed in Freiligrath’s footsteps with a record entitled “Trotz alledem!,” which he issued after he had been forced to emigrate to West Germany.7 The German career of Burns’s “For a’ that, and a’ that” is unusual because decontextualized quotations rarely travel across linguistic boundaries. Shelley’s “Ye are many—they are few” from The Mask of Anarchy is a fortifying catchphrase of similar notoriety that never impacted in Germany with the same degree of intensity.8 More frequently, the presentation of political ideas through poetry took the shape of recitals or songs, which were at the center of many workingmen’s meetings. Socialist rallies employed quasi-liturgical elements in order to elevate their audiences. Herwegh’s “Bundeslied für den Allgemeinen deutschen Arbeiterverein” (“Federal Hymn for the General Association of the German Workers,” written in 1863) takes up Shelleyan themes and images and even uses a quotation from The Mask of Anarchy as its motto:9 You are many, they are few (Eurer sind viele, ihrer sind wenige.) Bet’ und arbeit’! ruft die Welt, Bete kurz! denn Zeit ist Geld. An die Türe pocht die Not— Bete kurz! denn Zeit ist Brot. Und du ackerst und du säst, Und du nietest und du nähst,

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y Und du hämmerst und du spinnst— Sag’, o Volk, was du gewinnst! ... Mann der Arbeit, aufgewacht! Und erkenne deine Macht! Alle Räder stehen still, Wenn dein starker Arm es will. Deiner Dränger Schar erblaßt, Wenn du, müde deiner Last, In die Ecke lehnst den Pﬂug, Wenn du rufst: Es ist genug! Brecht das Doppeljoch entzwei! Brecht die Not der Sklaverei! Brecht die Sklaverei der Not! Brot ist Freiheit, Freiheit Brot!10 [Pray and work! calls the world, Pray quickly! for time is money. Need is knocking on the door— Pray quickly! for time is bread. And you plough and you sow, And you rivet and you sew, And you hammer and you spin – Tell me, o people, what you win! ... Man of labor, wake up! And recognize your power! All wheels stand still, When your strong arm wills. The host of those who urge you turns pale, As you, tired of your load, Lean the plough into the corner, As you call: Enough! Break the dual yoke in two! Break the misery of slavery! Break the slavery of misery! Bread is freedom, freedom bread.]

139

140

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Shelley’s famous “Song to the Men of England,” which was presumably Herwegh’s model, uses similar images to describe poverty and to defy the rich. Formally, the two poems are alike because they both employ trochaic tetrameter couplets and stanzas of four lines: Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear? ... Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm? Or what is it ye buy so dear With your pain and with your fear? The The The The

seed ye sow, another reaps; wealth ye ﬁnd, another keeps; robes ye weave, another wears; arms ye forge, another bears.

... With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, Trace your grave, and build your tomb, And weave your winding-sheet, till fair England be your sepulchre. (SW, 572 573, ll. 1–4, 13–20, 29–32)

Both poems speak to their intended audience, but while Shelley addresses the entire nation (“Men of England”), Herwegh calls only upon members of the working class (“Mann der Arbeit”). When Herwegh wrote the “Federal Hymn” more than 40 years after Shelley had composed his poem, knowledge about the workers’ situation and theories about possible solutions, reform or revolution, were widespread. The overall tone of the two poems differs: Shelley’s ends on a note of misery and despair, while Herwegh’s is more utopian in its demand for strike and rebellion.11 Herwegh’s motto, “You are many, they are few,” the ﬁnal lines of The Mask of Anarchy, calls attention to the absurdity of a rule of the few over the many. In this poem, Shelley does not propagate revolution but a passive resistance similar to the general strike theorized by the early socialists and advocated by

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y

141

Herwegh. The last stanza, however, ends with a call for action, which Herwegh positioned at the beginning of his own poem, thereby turning Shelley’s apocalyptic dream into a bold demand: Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number— Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few. (SPP 326, ll. 368–372)

The “Federal Hymn,” which had been commissioned by Ferdinand Lasalle, was widely circulated. Not only were 12,000 copies printed and distributed in Germany as soon as it was ﬁnished, the hymn was also set to music to be sung at workers’ meetings. Even before its completion, Lasalle kept enquiring with impatience: Vor Allem aber: wo bleibt ihr Hülfscorps, das geﬂügelte Gedicht? Nie käme es mehr zurecht als jetzt. Bülow schwärmt bereits bei dem Gedanken, es zu komponiren. Er will es sowohl einstimmig, als vierstimmig, als noch in verschiedenen Formen thun. Aber Eile! Eile!12 [However: Where is your relief corps, the winged poem? It was never more needed than now. Bülow is already enthusing about setting it to music. He wants to do it for one voice and for four, and in several other forms, too. But hurry up! Hurry up!]

That Bülow was planning not one but two different musical settings shows the political signiﬁcance he accorded to the “Federal Hymn.” When he signed his composition, he used the pseudonym “Solinger,” thus acknowledging the ironworkers at Solingen as his inspiration.13 Several Social Democratic songbooks printed the “Federal Hymn” with the popular melody of “Schleswig-Holstein, meerumschlungen” (“Schleswig-Holstein, Embraced by the Sea”); other musical settings existed as well.14 The “Federal Hymn” was no lyrical poem to be read by solitary young men but aimed at the workers Shelley had envisaged when he planned the little edition of songs that never appeared during his lifetime. In the workers’ movement, songs served as instruments of propaganda, meant to awaken political consciousness. The Social Democrats’ opponents took this function of workingmen’s songs so seriously that they had such songbooks banned under the “Sozialistengesetz,” legislation aimed at reducing the spread of socialist ideas.15 However, the “Federal Hymn” remained popular until the early twentieth century. Sometimes, only individual stanzas

142

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

were recited and could even be found as written slogans in working families’ homes.16 In January 1918, a passage from the text was used to call for a general strike.17 By traveling through Europe, popular texts such as the “Federal Hymn” fulﬁlled the internationalist claim of socialism. A Polish translation of the hymn appeared in 1881, and it was included in two Polish anthologies of 1882 and 1888. As the latter collection also contains Shelley’s “Song to the Men of England,” the connection between the two poets, Shelley and Herwegh, was once more established.18 Socialist anthologies from Germany and England suggest that “Song to the Men of England” remained a popular item in the international psalmody of radicalism. An article by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1892, describes how a meeting held in memory of the centenary of Shelley’s birth in London was concluded by a recital of the poem, which the audience received with “thunders of applause.”19

Brecht’s Anachronistic Procession Brecht would have said that Shelley’s radical poetry had “Gebrauchswert”20 (“user value”), which Brecht himself strove to increase through his imitation of The Mask of Anarchy, thereby generating further artistic reactions. Brecht ﬁrst concerned himself with this poem in his essay “Weite und Vielfalt der realistischen Schreibweise” (“The Scope and Diversity of Realist Writing”),21 in which he included passages from Shelley’s panoramic poem to advocate a new understanding of realism. His essay needs to be read in the context of the 1930s debate about social realism that was taking place in the Soviet Union. Brecht used The Mask of Anarchy as an example to argue that realism was much more than mere naturalism, that it could not be deﬁned in purely formal terms as absence of imagination, that verisimilitude ﬁrst of all meant telling the truth, the truth about oppression and abuse of power. Realism, Brecht stated, ought to employ symbols in order to show reality. When he wrote this essay in 1938 while already in exile, he was posing the fundamental question of how to combat fascism by aesthetic means.22 While Romanticism had been decried by 1930s communist critics because of its supposed afﬁnity with fascism, strategies derived from realism were seen as superior. Brecht, who attacked and parodied Romantic texts, extended the deﬁnition of realism by including allegorical writing like Shelley’s, provided it supported the workers’ cause. As Brecht wanted Shelleyan ideas to have an impact, he toned down the English poet’s angelic qualities: “Sein Flug erhob sich nicht zu hoch über den Erdboden” (“His ﬂight did not lift itself

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y

143

too much above ground”).23 Thereby, Brecht justiﬁed his own use of literary techniques derived from modernism. His satirical ballad “Der anachronistische Zug oder Freiheit und Democracy” (“The Anachronistic Procession or Freedom and Democracy”), written in 1947, imitates Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy.24 Processions and marches, which loom large elsewhere in Brecht, often serve to present an allegory or a panorama of society. Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy, a 91-stanza poem of protest, deals with the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when a peaceful rally on St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, was dispersed by militia. Several people were killed, many injured. Shelley took this event to show that an irresponsible ruling class was abusing its power. The ﬁrst part of his poem describes a grotesque rally of violent and corrupt statesmen, followed by the personiﬁcation of Anarchy, whose victorious march is halted by a ﬁgure of hope, who, in the second part of the poem, describes the people’s misery and ﬁnally calls for rebellion. The Mask of Anarchy commences with a vision of the dreaming poet, far away in a distant land: “As I lay asleep in Italy / There came a voice from over the Sea” (SPP 316, ll. 1–2). Like Shelley, Brecht, who was in exile in America, was far from his home country at the time of composition. The procession of his satirical ballad, 40 stanzas long, is a ghastly train of reaction that moves through the German landscape, which is marked by destruction but is also a landscape of spring, a symbol of renewal. If by 1947 the allied powers had implemented a program of denaziﬁcation, Brecht’s poem emphasizes the continuity of fascism in a newly democratic and free Germany. His ragged train encompasses representatives of numerous professions: churchmen, teachers, doctors, researchers, judges, who all cover up their Nazi past while sporting the slogan “Freedom and Democracy.” When the train arrives in Munich, six leader ﬁgures who resemble Shelley’s allegorized statesmen—Oppression, Leprosy, Fraud, Stupidity, Murder, Robbery—emerge. Behind them comes a huge hearse, followed by rats. Like Shelley, Brecht uses grotesque ﬁgures and symbols as an aesthetic means of unveiling a reality otherwise invisible. He questions the new Germany’s sincerity by accusing the participants of the procession of pasting over their Nazi past, of masquerading as democrats. Their insincerity is most visibly expressed through a ﬂag carried by monks, who have reworked a swastika into a cross: Doch dem Kreuz dort auf dem Laken Fehlten heute ein paar Haken Da man mit den Zeiten lebt Sind die Haken überklebt.

144

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s [On their ﬂag the cross looked thicker Than the previous swastika. Now the latter was outdated It had been obliterated.]25

As the poem alludes to the three Western allies (“Allons, enfants” for France, “God save the King” for Britain, and “And the dollar, Kling, Kling, Kling” for the United States, ll. 24–25) while omitting the Soviet Union, it presents the old-new Germany as ruled by the Western powers, whose slogans and values, freedom and democracy, ring hollow in view of this ghastly train. The fact that the boards display the English word “democracy” for the German “Demokratie” and the reference to dollars let this desolate commonwealth appear as an American product determined by economic factors. In the German Democratic Republic, the socialist East German state, where Brecht quickly became a cultural icon, the ballad was set to music twice, by Hanns Eisler and by Paul Dessau. In West Germany, it achieved no such public acclaim until the late 1970s, when the Munich theater group Der Rote Wecker (“The Red Alarm”) and other grassroots activists rewrote this allegory of German postwar society and reworked it into a famous parade, “The Anachronistic Procession,” in which the participants acted in the roles described by Brecht. It was ﬁrst staged in the German capital of Bonn on May 23, 1979,26 on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the German Constitution and the election of a new federal president, adding a note of dissonance to what had been intended as the birthday party of a consolidated democratic state. Hanne Hiob, Brecht’s daughter, recited her father’s poem while the procession was moving along. The participants of this provocative rally, which was reminiscent of the traditional German carnival procession, had masks with politicians’ faces and wore old Nazi uniforms and symbols to emphasize the continuities between Nazi Germany and present-day institutions. The authorities rerouted and restricted the procession. For example, the masks could not be worn but had to be carried in the participants’ hands. The parody turned on itself when some actors were arrested for wearing Nazi uniforms because the police had identiﬁed them with the symbols and clothes they were using for satirical purposes. Thus, the procession involuntarily provided proof of the German authorities’ lack of critical judgment in view of their own history. The anachronistic train saw several further performances. In 1980, it crossed the Federal Republic prior to the elections, sporting the slogan “Brecht statt Strauß” (“Brecht instead of Strauss”), thereby attacking Franz Josef Strauß, the candidate for the position of the chancellor and chairman of

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y

145

the CSU, the Christian Social Union, which is the Bavarian branch of the conservatives. One year later, a Bavarian court ﬁned three participants for having insulted Strauß. The procession went back on its journey shortly after uniﬁcation in 1990, again during the federal election campaign of 1994, once more on December 31, 1999, to celebrate the new millennium, and likewise on New Year’s Eve, 2000. Another satirical imitation, a grim panorama of West German society similar to Brecht’s, was created by the left-wing songwriter-poet Franz Josef Degenhardt: “Der anachronistische Zug oder die Freiheit, die sie meinen” (“The Anachronistic Procession, or the Freedom They Mean,” 1973),27 to be sung and accompanied by the guitar. Like Shelley’s and Brecht’s trains, Degenhardt’s is made up of representatives of his own contemporary society: theologians, the army, the secret services, judges, professors, secretaries of state, and those involved in cultural life, who all ﬁle past a group of top executives. His target is a proﬁt-oriented ruling class, whose main deﬁciency is the lack of a sense of true freedom and democracy. The poem, printed with musical instructions, is only ten stanzas long and meant to be sung, perhaps at political meetings or by the campﬁre, and thus be circulated. The 1970s and 1980s were a period of political grassroots campaigns such as the peace movement and the ecological movement, where all criticism of the powers-to-be would have been cheerfully welcomed. Shelley’s programmatic allegory thus once more proved its user value.

Protesters’ Lives: Ret Marut alias B. Traven Marut alias Traven is one of the most secretive and fascinating Shelley readers, a fervent hater of all institutionalized powers and bourgeois norms and a revolutionary admirer of the English poet, whose ideas he ﬁctionalized.28 Marut/Traven, who admitted that he was deeply inﬂuenced by Shelley, projected his desire for being an outsider onto two of his own literary characters: Khundar, the protagonist of a fairy tale, and Gale, the antihero of his best-selling novel Das Totenschiff (The Death Ship). Traven’s own obscure identities have given rise to speculation and have assigned cult status to his person and his writings. From 1907 onward, he traveled as an actor, settled down in Munich in 1915, and in 1917 began to edit Der Ziegelbrenner, a small left-wing journal that was restricted to the area around Munich and that voiced protest against World War I. Der Ziegelbrenner published several of Shelley’s texts in translations by Marut, among them, in 1918, a translation of Shelley’s “Declaration of Rights,” presumably aiming to incite a revolutionary reaction.29 Marut had titled his translation “Die Menschenrechte” (“Human Rights).” His was the ﬁrst German translation of a text that,

146

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

despite the Shelley vogue, was not frequently reprinted even in Britain. Marut seems to have been involved in the turbulent 1918 revolution in Munich, which followed in the wake of the war. After being temporarily arrested in 1919, he went underground and probably emigrated to Mexico in 1924, where he began to write best-selling adventure stories under the name Traven. From then on, his deeply Romantic aura of secrecy considerably heightened his popularity. Shelley’s inﬂuence is most noticeable in Marut’s fairy tale Khundar, which resembles Shelley’s Alastor.30 The protagonist’s name “Khundar” can be traced to the Old High German word “chundari,” meaning “herald” (or “Künder” in modern German), and the story is an allegory of the predicament of the artist who attempts to lend his voice to truth.31 Like Alastor, Khundar is a lonely wanderer, albeit on a journey toward redemption.32 He is frequently referred to by the German word “man,” which stands both for the male and for “one” and is ambiguous in this tale, where, contrary to German usage, all nouns are spelled with small letters. The protagonist Khundar is everyman and every male. By starting with a description of his isolated suffering, the allegorical tale supplies its hero with a Christlike aura. Like Shelley’s Alastor, Khundar stands outside society and even has to bear the name “Lumpenhund” (“lumpendog”).33 This term imitates Marx’s coinage “lumpenproletariat” and denotes extreme poverty and disenfranchisement. At the beginning of the novella, Khundar observes a train that solemnly carries the dead king and his symbols. This episode connotes the death of Khundar’s public persona and leads him to go on a journey of self-discovery. He ﬁnds the beautiful queen, with whom he enters into a mystical union. The queen may be read as a fantasy of the bliss Khundar would have won through a successful revolution, as an unfulﬁlled day dream about the unity of self and society. Yet the queen, like the revolution, dies, and Khundar leaves the country to disappear like Alastor. While the tale starts out on a note of social criticism, it eventually becomes a story of individual withdrawal. The ﬁnal sentence anticipates Marut’s own mysterious disappearance: Erlösung wird kommen durch fragen und suchen und wandern! Auf denn, laßt uns gehen in die irre, allwo allein die wahrheit ist, die weisheit, die erlösung und das leben. Und da er also gesprochen ging er von dannen in ein fernes land noch am selbigen abend.34 [Redemption will come through questioning and searching and wandering! Let us go astray to where alone there is truth, wisdom, salvation, and life.

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y

147

And as he had spoken, he went into a distant land, the very same evening.]

By introducing the idea of redemption, Marut makes Khundar’s suffering meaningful, a sacriﬁce for humankind that mirrors Marut’s own. After his arrest in Munich, Marut left Bavaria, and later Germany, and emigrated to South America, where he continued to write under the name Traven as a Shelleyan herald of human rights and justice. If Marut’s journal Der Ziegelbrenner was accessible to a small readership only, Traven’s popular novels were published in large editions by the Büchergilde Gutenberg, a famous left-wing book club aiming to provide workers with high-quality reading matter. Like Jack London’s novels, which were widely read in Germany, Traven’s describe adventures but also voice social criticism, directed at institutions and their abuse of power in particular. The South American and other exotic settings he chose for his protagonists made it easier for him to express his protest. Das Totenschiff (1926) is a macabre story that revives the topos of the ghost ship. The ﬁrst-person narrator, the seaman Gerard Gale, has lost his documents of identiﬁcation and ends up working on the Yorikke, which, as the allusion to Hamlet indicates, is a ship of death. The crewmembers possess no legal documents such as passports; have no ofﬁcial identities; and are therefore devoid of any citizen rights. As an old ship such as the Yorikke is bound to sink sooner or later, the owners would proﬁt from the insurance, and thus the crewmembers, already legally dead, are steering toward their physical annihilation. The name “Gale” was well known in the 1920s because Linn Gale, a critical journalist, had become one of the best-known American draft-dodgers in 1918 and had subsequently ﬂed to Mexico, where he stayed until 1921. Like Traven’s ﬁctitious character, he had experienced a loss of fundamental citizen rights.35 Although Das Totenschiff contains no explicit references to Shelley, the English poet’s inﬂuence is clearly discernible when the ﬁrstperson narrator condemns the abuse of power, the concept of national citizenship, and the destructiveness of capitalism. In his “Declaration of Rights,” Shelley had argued in favor of a world citizenship beyond national boundaries: “Man, whatever be his country, has the same rights in one place as another, the rights of universal citizenship.”36 These rights, however, are contested in the grim reality of Das Totenschiff: Das Zeitalter der Tyrannen, das Zeitalter der Despoten, der absoluten Herrscher, der Könige, Kaiser und deren Lakaien und Mätressen ist besiegt worden, und der Sieger ist das Zeitalter eines größeren

148

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Tyrannen, das Zeitalter der Landesﬂagge, das Zeitalter des Staates und seiner Lakaien. Erhebe die Freiheit zu einem religiösen Symbol, und sie wird leicht die blutigsten Religionskriege entfesseln. Wahre Freiheit ist relativ. Keine Religion ist relativ. Am wenigsten relativ ist die Proﬁtgier. Sie ist die älteste Religion, hat die besten Pfaffen und die schönsten Kirchen. Yes, Sir.37 [The age of tyrants, the age of despots, of absolute rulers, kings, emperors and their lackeys and mistresses has been defeated, and the winner is a new age of an even greater tyrant, the age of the national ﬂag, the age of the state and his lackeys. Raise freedom to be a religious symbol, and it will easily spark off a bloody war of religion. True freedom is relative. No religion is relative. Least relative is the greed for proﬁt. It is the oldest religion with the best priests and the most beautiful churches. Yes, Sir.]

Traven develops many of Shelley’s themes: his critique of despotism, of religion, and of greed. Many of Gale’s embittered accusations are reminiscent of the accusations brought forward against priests and kings in Queen Mab. Yet despite his awareness of injustice, Gale does not manage to escape as Khundar did. The ﬁnal sentence of Shelley’s “Declaration of Rights,” translated by Marut as “Erwache!—Erhebe Dich!—oder falle für ewig.” (“Awake!—arise!—or be for ever fallen.”)38 becomes true for Gale in a tragic manner: having failed to rise against oppression, he is abducted, ﬁnds himself on another ship of death, and is left alone in the middle of the sea after shipwreck, unlikely to be saved.39

Recollection in Tranquility: Hamm If Traven pursued the political aim of creating awareness in the face of injustice, Hamm ﬁctionalized Shelley’s radicalism for the nostalgic postrevolutionary middle-class reader, who would enjoy criticism of institutions while leaning back in his armchair. Hamm published his novella Shelley. Biographische Novelle (Shelley: A Biographical Novella) in 1858, when he was 38, probably under the inﬂuence of the 1840s Shelley cult, which was by then a thing of the past, a fond memory of days gone by. The novella mirrors both his youthful enthusiasm for Shelley’s ideas and his own saturated views. Hamm, a famous agriculturalist and former student of Justus Liebig, was a downto-earth person. He had published Der praktische Viehzüchter, Die Wahl der Milchkühe, Die landwirthschaftlichen Geräthe und

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y

149

Maschinen Englands (The Practical Cattle-Raiser, The Choice of Milk Cows, Implements and Machines for Agriculture in England) and other books on farming, yet kept his interest in literature and his devotion to the development of agricultural techniques apart. What happens if a prosaic person comes to write about an immaterial angel? Hamm reinvented the ﬁnal months of Shelley’s life and his admiration for the 19-year-old Emilia Viviani, the Emily of the poem Epipsychidion. This Shelley, who ﬁghts his pursuers with pistols and defends himself, is more masculine and aggressive than the agonized angel of other biographical sketches. Hamm turned Shelley’s literary fantasy about Emilia into a budding love affair. The two lovers elope in a barge, but Emilia is captured by her father and incarcerated in a monastery, where she dies, leaving the poet heartbroken. The protagonist Shelley’s speech is frequently made up of quotations from Epipsychidion and Queen Mab, for example, when he argues in favor of free love. While conforming to Hamm’s ideal of masculine activity, Shelley remains an ambivalent character because he acts irresponsibly. His own bliss and his personal desire for emotional gratiﬁcation supersede all considerations for fellow humans, particularly for his wife, Mary. Yet Hamm’s novella is more than an account of the poet’s life. He used the story as a vehicle to develop his own political ideals about nationalism, about the failed cause of the 1848 revolution, and constructed a concept of Englishness that he saw embodied in Shelley’s friend Lionel (Williams). That Shelley is erring on more than one level becomes obvious in an episode in which he and Lionel discuss the respective merits of England and Italy. As the two sail down the river Arno, Lionel remarks: “Mit jedem will ich wetten, Hundert gegen Eins, daß dies das erste Fahrzeug ist, das unter englischer Flagge den Arno hinabsegelt in das Wassergebiet, das halb unsere Heimat ist” (“I will enter into any wager, set the odds at one against one hundred, that this is the ﬁrst vessel under English ﬂag sailing down the Arno into the area of water that is our second home”).40 Lionel expresses pride in England’s role as a seafaring nation. To many Germans, England was a political model because it was a uniﬁed nation-state. Lionel’s remark sparks off a dispute about England and Italy. Whereas Shelley criticizes his own country for being damp and dirty, Lionel defends England: Ich würde Dir reden von weitschattigen Eichen auf grünem Sammetrasen, unter welchen stolze Hirsche stehen; von normannischen Rittersitzen und den steinernen Blumen gothischer Dome; von grünumhägten Aehrenfeldern und lauschigen Cottages; von Kraft und Gesundheit der Männer, von Adel und Zartheit der Frauen; von

150

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

der Brandung am weißen, zinnengekrönten Felsen, von stolzer Masten Wald; von den blauen Hochlandbergen und ihren geheimnißvollen Elfenseen; vom Nebelkönig, der über die duftige Heide reitet.41 [I would tell you of oaks with wide shadows on green silk lawns, under which proud stags are standing; of Norman knights’ seats and the stone ﬂowers of Gothic cathedrals; of ﬁelds of corn embroidered by green and of snug cottages; of the strength and health of men, of the nobility and delicacy of women; of the surf on the white, pinnacle-crowned rock, of the proud forest of masts; of the blue highland mountains and their mysterious fairy lakes; of the erlking, who rides across the fragrant heath.]

The oak trees, the deer, Gothic architecture, and the heath are all in line with the 1848 constructions of German nationalism that appealed to Hamm. He used Lionel in order to build a northern European identity, in which the Germans partake implicitly. This Northernness manifests itself in gestures of mastery, particularly on the side of the swaggering Lionel: “Wenn Du Dich nicht sogleich fort machst, so soll Dich englisches Blei begrüßen!” (“If you do not disappear straight away, an English bullet will welcome you!”).42 Above all, the English gentlemen’s pastimes are superior: Beide [Lionel and Shelley] trieben sich fortwährend auf dem Molo oder in den Häfen umher, krochen durch die Schiffe, veranstalteten eine Regatta, warfen Geldstücke in’s Wasser, nach welchen die Jungen tauchten, boxten mit englischen Matrosen oder unterwiesen die Piscatori in der wunderbaren Kunst des Fly-ﬁshing.43 [Both [Lionel and Shelley] were always around the molo or the harbors, crept through the ships, organized a regatta, threw coins into the water, after which boys would dive, they sparred with English sailors or taught the Piscatori the wonderful art of ﬂy-ﬁshing.]

The English even claim to be able to teach the Italian ﬁshermen. Fashionable Anglomania looms large throughout the novella, which is interspersed with English words, for example, “wenn die Tumblers die Runde machen” (“when the tumblers are handed round”).44 Englishness connotes a lifestyle that Hamm found impressive and appealing. In the ten years between 1848 and 1858, his notions of Englishness underwent a change. His England, once a political prototype, had metamorphosed into a model of fashionable lifestyle. Unlike Lionel, Shelley abhors England, yet cannot escape his share of Englishness. Although the real Shelley had brown hair, Hamm emphasizes that the Shelley of his novella is blond and Northern45

R e vo lu t i o n a ry S h e l l e y

151

and thereby makes him the exponent of his ideal. Because of his courage and his leisurely lifestyle, Shelley appears as the epitome of the English gentleman, yet he is erring because he does not recognize England’s value and feels no obligation toward his own country. This lack of national commitment ﬁnds its complement in the neglectful way in which he treats his wife. To Hamm, who had spent seven months in England in 1840 and had visited the world exhibition in London in 1851, the English were exemplary because of their advanced technology and their trade, in which he took a keen interest. In the mid-nineteenth century, English agriculture was held up as a model to Germany. Hamm’s notion of English gentlemanliness was derived from his professional interest. He saw technological and economic achievement mirrored by the gentleman as the icon of cultural perfection. A passage in Hamm’s memoirs criticizes the French, who failed to conform to his ideal: “Der Franzose hat nur das äußere Ansehen eines gebildeten Mannes, eines Gentleman, in den meisten Fällen ist er’s aber nicht auch inwendig” (“The Frenchman only has the outer appearance of an educated man, of a gentleman, in most instances, however, he is no true gentleman”).46 Gentlemanliness is an attitude, a way of life, much more than the outward appearance of good manners. By failing to recognize his country’s achievements and by ignoring English superiority, Hamm’s Shelley, so suited to perfection, commits a tragic error. This novella is exceptional in constructing Englishness around a left-wing Shelley. While a twentieth-century reader would ﬁnd Traven’s ideal of internationalism attractive, a mid-nineteenthcentury rebellious reader would have promoted German nationalism as a left-wing cause. Despite some reviews that expressed no more than “half-hearted approval,”47 the book seems to have been a success because a second edition was printed in the same year. Hamm’s target group were probably the former supporters of the 1848 movement, now politically more sedate, who were also interested in questions of lifestyle. For some nineteenth-century bourgeois readers, Shelley must have embodied the transgressions they could not realize in their own lives. Thus, by rewriting Shelley’s biography, Hamm also rewrote his own life. Unlike Traven, Hamm restricted the Shelleyan impact to his literary production, refraining from emulating the poet in any other way. Shelley’s biographers have frequently projected their own desire for escape from the everyday world onto the object of their literary production or research. Like other sedate exponents of previously youthful and rebellious political movements, Hamm, by now the bourgeois voice of reason, contributed to the reinvention

152

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

of a glorious memory, recollected in tranquility and imbued with associations of his own youth but also with an increasing interest in questions of lifestyle.48 *** Shelley’s German fates as a politically charged writer show that those who followed in his footsteps often did so while being abroad. Brecht wrote “Freiheit und Democracy” in America, Hamm explored Englishness in Britain, and Freiligrath, to whom Burns had been an inspiration, spent years of his life in London. Shelley himself wrote some of his best-known political texts while in Italy. Thus, his political oeuvre is closely linked to geographical displacement, which went hand in hand with legal displacement. In the turbulent history of German-speaking countries, Queen Mab fell prey to the censors and could only be circulated through pirated editions, while later on, German law inhibited the spread of socialist songs, and the performance of Brecht’s panoramic satire led to arrests. Nevertheless, the political Shelley’s appeal, his red aura, has continued to attract readers and writers drawn to a culture of contention.

Chapter 7

Fau sti an, M ystical, Parr i cidal : Shelley’s Strong Selves

T

he distinction between the lyrical and the political Shelley may lead readers to overlook one further aspect of reception particularly signiﬁcant in Germany, namely, Shelley’s strong selves: the Faustian liberator Prometheus, the diabolic Count Cenci and his parricidal daughter, and the mystical poet who commands an all-encompassing vision. This strand of Shelley’s reception dominates the ﬁve decades between 1870 and 1920, the ﬁn de siècle and the years surrounding it, the period during which traditional concepts of the self were increasingly questioned. Ernst Mach’s famous dictum “Das Ich ist unrettbar” (“The self cannot be saved”),1 Freud’s unveiling of the illusion of a coherent self and Nietzsche’s claim that man was essentially lonely all let the subject appear fragile and contributed to a growing awareness of its ﬁctions and autoﬁctions.2 If, on the one hand, self-doubt and fragmentation were cultivated in the context of Viennese Modernity, another reaction to this crisis of the self led to a reassessment of strong ﬁgures such as Goethe’s Faust or Nietzsche’s superhuman Übermensch.3 The reception of Nietzsche, who gained inﬂuence in the 1890s,4 and of Faust, read widely throughout the nineteenth century, is tied to that of the Titanic Shelley. His plays Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, which achieved the height of their popularity at a time when the modern self was perceived as weak and threatened, both dramatize powerful characters. If Prometheus develops into the liberator of mankind, The Cenci represents a ﬁght between evil and good, embodied by two forceful characters, Count Cenci and his daughter, Beatrice, who oscillate between superhuman

154

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

strength and human weakness. Prometheus, Beatrice, and Cenci are exposed to suffering, to conﬂicting urges, and to social restraints, which limit their respective absolute wills. In Germany, this fascination with strong yet alienated individuals politically coincided with the foundation of the Reich in 1871 and an upsurge of nationalism that motivated military deﬁance beyond the end of World War I. Twelve German editions of Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, which appeared between 1876 and 1924 and testify to a corresponding cultural obsession with strong selves, can be traced. This chapter aims to map out the interconnection between this cultural mania and the reception of Shelley and focuses on three aspects. First, the German reception of Prometheus Unbound was only possible because of the strong interest in Faust and was furthered by the gradual spread of Nietzsche’s ideas. Second, Kassner’s Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben (Mysticism, Artists, and Life, 1900) offers a projection of the poet’s own mystical vision as one of all-encompassing totality. This mystical Shelley is a further response to the cultural crisis of the self. Third, another reaction is the urge to destroy these strong selves, a response favored, for example, by expressionist writers such as Georg Heym. The parricidal incest drama of The Cenci proves that the need for strong leading ﬁgures entailed fantasies of their demolition.

P ROMETHEUS U NBOUND , Nietzsche, and F AUST Firebringer, helper of mankind, revolutionary liberator, Titanic overreacher: Prometheus, imbued with a variety of meanings, has been the subject of a large number of adaptations, from Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound (5th century B. C.) to Heiner Müller’s Prometheus (1969).5 When Shelley wrote his play in 1818 and 1819, he was ﬁrmly embedded in a Romantic tradition, and his adaptation of this political icon resembled that of other contemporaries who regarded Prometheus as the liberator from tyranny:6 Byron and Goethe each wrote about a Prometheus who substitutes divine with revolutionary rights. Shelley’s version can be read on an individual and a political level. After intense suffering, Prometheus achieves personal renewal, while politically, his ﬁght for the beneﬁt of humankind leads to a new, visionary society based on love and freedom. Whereas Shelley’s early poem Queen Mab is an accusation of injustice and shows a marked lack of agency on the side of the oppressed, Prometheus Unbound celebrates the liberation from this injustice and suggests that rebellion is not only possible but can be successful. As Jupiter falls from

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

155

power, Prometheus’s initial state of hopelessness metamorphoses into harmony, expressed through music, which symbolizes renewed clarity of vision, happiness, and liberty. Shelley’s play thus integrates individual and political aspects. The downfall of all institutional power is a precondition for human happiness, which, however, ﬁnally turns out to be a mere dream, not a permanent reality. Goethe’s Faust, which according to Shelley might “furnish the germ of other poems” (L II, 407), was one major inﬂuence on Prometheus Unbound. Shelley, one of the ﬁrst in England to understand the signiﬁcance of Faust, had translated passages, probably as early as 1815: the “Prologue in Heaven” and “May-Day Night.” Faustian striving and Faustian despair were familiar to him. Both Faust and Prometheus Unbound depict a man’s unlimited striving, punctuated by ﬁghts between good and evil. Like Faust, Prometheus is a Romantic rebel, an overreacher, driven to move beyond the narrow conﬁnes of the human. Despite their dynamic force and their masculine strength, they feature weaknesses attractive to the ﬁn-de-siècle reader: self-doubt, loneliness, and alienation. Their suffering is caused by the limits of human existence, which they attempt to overcome. Nietzsche was a second major factor that contributed to shaping the German cult of strong selves. Nietzsche admired Byron, on whom he had delivered a lecture at the age of 17, in 1861.7 If his somber Manfred-Meditation (1872), a piece of music perceived after Byron’s lyrical drama Manfred, suggests his closeness to the torn, brooding, and lonely Byronic self, Nietzsche was also fascinated by Byron’s vitality. Nietzsche’s reading of Shelley left traces too. The beginning of Shelley’s Revolt of Islam, which describes an “Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in ﬁght” (SW 42, canto I, l. 193), resembles the emblematic animals Zarathustra sees: “Und siehe! Ein Adler zog in weiten Kreisen durch die Luft, und an ihm hieng eine Schlange, nicht einer Beute gleich, sondern einer Freundin: denn sie hielt sich um seinen Hals geringelt” (“And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it kept itself coiled round the eagle’s neck”).8 Whereas in The Revolt of Islam and Prometheus Unbound the forces of good and evil are antagonistic, this old moral dichotomy does not count for Nietzsche. If Nietzsche was attracted to characters of dynamic force, to a negation of social values as exempliﬁed by Byron, none of these traits can easily be reconciled with Shelley’s life or literary ﬁgures. In a fragment from 1885, Nietzsche turns against false idealism (“falschen Idealismus”) and states: “Und daß solche Shelleys, Hölderlins, Leopardis zu Grunde gehn, ist billig, ich halte nicht gar viel von solchen Menschen” (“And

156

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

that these Shelleys, Hölderlins, and Leopardis go under is only fair, I hold no high opinion of such people”).9 Nietzsche was not a likely supporter of Shelley’s plea for moral responsibility. It is not difﬁcult to see how Prometheus Unbound ﬁtted neatly into a German horizon of expectations shaped by Nietzsche and Faust. The crisis of the self had led to two polarized concepts of the individual. At one end of the spectrum towers the self as a dynamic and invincible force, imbued with masculine immoralism, whereas at the opposite end, nervous self-doubt, passivity, and suffering are nursed. Even though many late nineteenth-century readings of Faust situate this text in the regions of the dynamic Übermensch, no one can ignore its other aspects: the striving, the split, and the doubts. Likewise, Shelley’s Prometheus is situated between human suffering and superhuman power, between despair and love, between imprisonment and freedom. The multiple ﬁn-de-siècle perspectives on strong selves can even be traced in translations of Prometheus Unbound. Alfred Graf Wickenburg and Helene Richter each produced German translations of Shelley’s drama, which originally appeared in 1876 and 1887, respectively, and were reissued as cheap booklets: Wickenburg’s in 1902 with Hendel (Halle) and Richter’s, probably in 1895, with Reclam (Stuttgart). As these publishers aimed at a mass readership, they must have expected signiﬁcant audiences and large sales ﬁgures. The list of German Shelley editions in chapter 2 shows that between 1876 and 1924 alone, 12 editions of Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci appeared in German-speaking countries, as German, GermanEnglish, or English editions. Although the two competing translations by Wickenburg and Richter both attempted to proﬁt from the popularity of Titanic striving, remarkable differences exist. Wickenburg’s preface hails the loving Shelley as an evangelist of optimism. His kind and caring Prometheus is the advocate of all mortals, no ﬁghter for good or against evil but an embodiment of the world’s primal power.10 Richter’s preface situates Shelley in his historical contexts to stress that individual and political liberty were ideals that caused him to ﬁght oppression. The ﬁnal lines of Prometheus Unbound may serve as an example to highlight the divergent images of Prometheus. Demogorgon, whose mysterious identity—law, history, or necessity?—has led to many speculations, simultaneously addresses the Titan Prometheus and humankind: To suffer woes which Hope thinks inﬁnite; To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night; To defy Power which seems Omnipotent;

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

157

To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change not falter nor repent: This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory. (SPP 285–286, act IV, ll. 570–578)

Wickenburg’s translation: Zu tragen Leid, das ihr unendlich meint, Der Macht zu trotzen, die allmächtig scheint, Unrecht verzeihn, das schwarz wie Tod und Nacht, Und lieben, hoffen, bis der Hoffnung Kraft Aus ihren Trümmern das Ersehnte schafft, Nicht straucheln, schwanken, nicht der Reue Macht In müß’ger Thränenﬂut den Nacken biegen— Gleich deinem Ruhm, Titan, heißt dies allein Gut, groß und frei und schön und freudig sein, Ja, dies allein heißt leben, herrschen, siegen!11

Richter’s version: Leiden ertragen, das der Hoffnung dünkt endlose Not; Unrecht vergeben, das schwärzer als Nacht ist und Tod; Mächte, die übergewaltig erscheinen, nicht scheuen, Lieben und dulden und hoffen, bis der Hoffnung Kraft Neu aus dem eigenen Wrack das Ersehnte schafft; Nimmer sich wandeln, nicht schwanken, noch jemals bereuen: Dies heißt, Titan, wie dein Ruhm sein, groß, herrlich und rein, Frei und beglückt, schön und gütig; und dies ist allein Freude, Herrschaft und Sieg und wahrhaftiges Sein.12

Whereas Wickenburg’s translation ends with a call for victory (“siegen”), Richter’s postulates “wahrhaftiges Sein” (“truthful existence”). Wickenburg envisions an invincible Prometheus, strong through his love, masculine, dynamic, similar to respective constructions of Faust. A review in the Deutsche Rundschau quoted the ﬁnal lines of his translation and enthusiastically praised it as a heroic deed (“Heldenstück”).13 Wickenburg’s translation, which turns Shelley’s “Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory” into “leben, herrschen, siegen!”, imitates the iambic pentameter of Prometheus Unbound, to which Shelley himself did not always adhere strictly and from which he departed in these ﬁnal lines. Through the changed rhythm, the four nouns “Life, Joy, Empire,

158

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

and Victory” each achieve additional emphasis, and a reader who recites them is made to slow down because two of the nouns consist of only one syllable each. Wickenburg, in contrast, fused the three verbs into a rhythmic string, a Nietzschean slogan. If Wickenburg’s text reﬂects the primal power he admired, Richter’s emphasizes inner qualities, as her translation of the ﬁnal line shows: “Freude, Herrschaft und Sieg und wahrhaftiges Sein.” She added the connotations of “wahrhaftig” (“truthful”), rearranged Shelley’s nouns, and shifted “Life” to the very end of the line. Therefore, “truthful existence” (“wahrhaftiges Sein”) appears as a result of “Joy,” “Empire,” and “Victory” (“Freude, Herrschaft und Sieg”). This concept of truthfulness suggests strong awareness of moral categories and, like “dulden” and “gütig,” refers to the vocabulary of Protestant Innerlichkeit, the culture of exploring oneself as a prerequisite to individual moral improvement. This Protestant Christian context played an important role in Richter’s upbringing and presumably made her envision Prometheus and Shelley as embodiments of a need for moral responsibility.14 That such cultural icons could also be used politically is well documented in the case of Faust, the epitome of the new Germany. Faust experienced a mythical and quasi-religious apotheosis in the context of the political uniﬁcation of Germany, the foundation of the Reich, in 1871. In the process of appointing gods to a German national pantheon, he became a ﬁgure of identiﬁcation because of his seemingly Germanic traits: strong-willed, masterful, and capable of liberating himself. As his individual characteristics were turned into national properties, Faust became Germany.15 That these constructions might be extended to other, similar literary characters, is exempliﬁed through a victorious Prometheus, who is at the center of an academic article “Shelley und der Weltkrieg” (“Shelley and the Great War”), published in a scholarly journal in 1917, whose author, W. Wagner, positioned the invincible Titan in a national military context: Shelleys Prometheus ist der duldende, heldenhaft ausharrende Kämpfer, der einer Welt von Feinden, dem obersten Gott und der ganzen Götterwelt gegenübersteht; er ist der Genius des deutschen Heeres und desjenigen unserer Verbündeten. Er ist wohlwollend und befreiend . . . Die sittlichen und geistigen Kräfte, die Shelleys Prometheus entfaltet, sind dieselben, die das deutsche Volk, die deutschen Truppen und Heerführer in diesem schweren Kriege entfalten mussten, um das zu erreichen, was bis jetzt erreicht wurde und noch erreicht werden soll. Das Ausharren des Prometheus, ist es nicht das treue unerschütterliche und opferwillige Durchhalten des deutschen Volkes während der ganzen Dauer dieses Krieges? . . .

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

159

Die ganze Kraft, mit der das Wundervolle in diesem Kriege vollbracht wurde, ist prometheisch. Jedermann kennt den Ausdruck titanisch oder titanenhaft; er ist eben der Inbegriff alles Heldenhaften, Trotzigen und Kraftvollen, das Wesen des Titanen Prometheus.16 [Shelley’s Prometheus is the suffering, heroically enduring ﬁghter, who stands opposite a world of enemies, opposite the supreme god, opposite an entire world of gods; he is the genius of the German army and of our allieds’. He is benevolent and liberating . . . The moral and intellectual powers, which Shelley’s Prometheus unfolds, are those that the German people, the German troops and the military leaders had to unfold in this hard war in order to achieve that which has been achieved so far and must be achieved yet. Prometheus’s endurance, is it not the German people’s faithful, imperturbable, and self-sacriﬁcing persistence throughout the entire duration of this war? . . . The whole strength, through which the miraculous in this war has been achieved, is Promethean. Everyone knows the expression Titanic; he is the epitome of all that is heroic, deﬁant, and strong, the very essence of the Titan Prometheus.]

This fantasy of the Titanic Prometheus assigns moral and military virtues to a literary character in order to justify a war on a hitherto unknown scale as a necessary rebellion against evil, a rebellion motivated by national strength. Like the Teutonic Faust, Wagner’s Prometheus is a ﬁghter for this national cause, who symbolizes both strength and stoicism in the face of setbacks (“heldenhaft,” “unerschütterlich,” “opferwillig,” “trotzig,” “kraftvoll”; “heroic,” “imperturbable,” “selfsacriﬁcing,” “deﬁant,” “strong”). Prior to arriving at this equation of Prometheus with the German army, Wagner describes Shelley’s life as one of conﬂict between an upright individual and the despotic English nation, which leads him to the conclusion that the military enemy of the English, the Germans, cannot but welcome Shelley. If an appropriation of the enemy’s cultural values is typical of wartime propaganda, Wagner’s article is nevertheless unusual because his reading of a Faustian ﬁgure as a Titan of German nationalism and militarism turns Shelley’s Prometheus into his opposite. He is no longer the liberator of mankind, the revolutionary denier of institutionalized power, but its supporter.

Shelley as a Mystical Poet: Yeats and Kassner Another aspect of the crisis of the self is reﬂected in the mystical melting of poetic subjects and objects described in Kassner’s Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben (1900). If the mystic’s vision aims

160

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

at achieving an all-encompassing unity, a totality, in which all things become one and transcend the mundane material world,17 he reacts against the anxiety of fragmentation felt by many writers around the turn of the century. It is the fear of losing oneself that is counteracted by turning to a Blake or Shelley, whose symbols enable the reader to envision wholeness, a better world run according to different rules. In such readings, the poet emerges as powerful because he possesses the mastery of the gaze. Seeing and knowing everything is one form of power. In the mystic’s vision, every aspect of reality, every detail becomes relevant, as in Blake’s poetry, which was rediscovered around the turn of the century.18 The Europe-wide interest in Blake, which set in around 1900, hardly considered the historical circumstances of his writing but focused on his visions. Blake, Shelley, and their Titanic characters were read and discussed alongside by Yeats, Kassner, and Hofmannsthal. The upsurge of interest in Blake was inﬂuenced by his editor Yeats, who read both him and Shelley as mystical poets. Yeats promoted an antirationalist Blake, for whom imagination was the medium of leaving the narrow conﬁnes of the material world behind: “If he spoke confusedly and obscurely it was because he spoke of things for whose speaking he could ﬁnd no models in the world he knew.”19 Blake’s symbolism and the mythology he had crafted for himself fueled Yeats’s own poetological concept. He saw both Romantic poets as mythographers, as exegetes of human and cosmic totality.20 Shelley’s Prometheus resembles Blake’s Albion, the one man who had fallen, had been torn apart, and had struggled to regain his wholeness. Yeats toned down the visionary Shelley’s political dimension and termed Prometheus Unbound “a sacred book”21 in his essay “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry,” written in 1900. It was wrong, he felt, to read the poems as “Political Justice put into rhyme,” particularly as “liberty” and “regeneration” were much more than political catchphrases to Shelley.22 A Defence of Poetry ﬁtted well into Yeats’s own image of the poet as divine legislator, carrier of a truth situated beyond reason, prophet of love and beauty. Yeats praised Shelley’s central metaphors: sailing, the sea, caves, rivers, symbols of human existence, and visions of another existence, and wrote his poetry, for example “The Second Coming,” under the inﬂuence of Shelley, whose myths and visions he reworked in his own concept of cultural memory.23 Yeats quoted extensively from the English Romantic. Yeats’s approach resembles Kassner’s, who included the visionary, jubilant Shelley in his survey of English poets and artists of the nineteenth century. Although Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben24

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

161

found few enthusiastic reviewers, it had a strong impact on Hofmannsthal, Rilke, and George. Kassner himself belonged to the ﬁnde-siècle Viennese circles of writers and artists, was immensely well read, and wrote a number of books that do not lend themselves easily to any categorization. Handicapped by polio in his childhood, he was fascinated by secret correspondences between body, soul, mind, earth, and cosmic forces, opposed psychoanalysis as the symptom of cultural crisis, and instead of fragmentation favored the mystic’s whole vision,25 further developed in his later study Die Grundlagen der Physiognomik (The Foundation of Physiognomics, 1922). His early work Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben, revised in 1920, attempts to save the individual through unity of vision and wholeness and offers a survey of exemplary nineteenth-century English artists and poets: Blake, Shelley, Keats, the Pre-Raphaelites, D. G. Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Burne-Jones, and Browning. The study commences with Blake, the most visionary of them all, whose mysticism becomes a leitmotif for Kassner to set the standard for the entire gallery of artists on show: . . . wenn man Blake gefragt hätte, wo denn sein Paradies liege, würde er geantwortet haben: In der Phantasie, dort, wo die Dinge Visionen sind. Sie ist die erste und einzige Thatsache. Sie war da vor der Erschaffung der sichtbaren Dinge und was wir sehen, sind nur Schatten, die das ewige Licht wirft.26 [. . . if one had asked Blake where his paradise was located, he would have answered: in the imagination, there, where things are visions. It is the ﬁrst and only fact. It existed before the creation of things visible and what we see are mere shadows, thrown by the eternal light.]

This is an ideal Blake, who had overcome the opposition between art and life,27 constructed under the inﬂuence of Plato, as the image of the shadows and the light shows. Kassner had little interest in the historical situation, which he regarded as no more than an inadequate background, a chain, which endangers great visionaries because it ties them down. About Shelley he wrote: “Und nun denke man sich einen so begabten Menschen in eine kleinliche, erbärmliche Zeit versetzt, in die Zeit etwa nach der französischen Revolution” (“And now imagine such a gifted man situated in a small-minded, wretched time, like that following the French Revolution”).28 If Yeats toned down the political Shelley by arguing that his oeuvre contained more than mere political thought, Kassner went further by denying the revolutionary poet: “Shelley ist nur Dichter, nur Genie, alles Andere an ihm ist schlechte

162

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Form, Misverständnis, popular,” and “Shelley darf nicht angewandt werden, das hiesse ihn zerstören”29 (“Shelley is only poet, only genius, everything else about him is bad form, misunderstanding, popular,” and “Shelley must not be applied, that would mean to destroy him”). In Kassner’s view, engaging in political activities could only keep the visionary from developing. Even life is only a shadow of the artist’s ideal existence: “nur ein armer Ersatz ist für die Unmöglichkeit, jeden Augenblick Dichter zu sein” (“only a poor substitute for the impossibility of being an artist in every moment”).30 In describing the art of the genius Shelley, Kassner uses the words “Mythus,” “Ekstase,” “Einheit,” “Sehnsucht” (“myth,” “ecstasy,” “unity,” “desire”).31 If Shelley’s poetry is an expression of ecstasy, then he is jubilant, triumphant, in no way the suffering, soppy angel the nineteenth century had made him out to be. Like Blake, Kassner’s Shelley is striving for cosmic unity and perfection, best expressed in Prometheus Unbound.32 Kassner’s mystical Prometheus bears little resemblance to the dynamic and invincible ﬁghter because his main concern is wholeness on several levels: unity of body and soul is complemented by universal harmony. The reader, in turn, is invited to take up Blake’s and Shelley’s visionary role himself, to share the poets’ perception and thus partake in this unio mystica. Although Kassner’s Prometheus differs from the Faustian readings discussed before, he also constitutes a reaction to the crisis of the self. If the Faustian Titan is strong and invincible, Kassner’s indulges in a fantasy of jubilant, all-encompassing harmony. His Shelley is contradictory. On the one hand, he is weak and suffering from the circumstances of his own historical time, and on the other hand he has the strong and powerful vision of the artist. Like Faust and Prometheus, he unites the opposites of the fragile and of the strong self, so fascinating to ﬁn-de-siècle readers. Kassner’s reviewers were less enthusiastic and showed ambivalent reactions to a book they found interesting but that did not ﬁt well into any horizon of expectation.33 Kassner later distanced himself from his youthful enthusiasm for Shelley. In 1947 he wrote: “Shelley hält nicht ganz die Farbe, man muß ihn als Jüngling lesen” (“Shelley does not quite retain his lustre, one must read him when young”).34 If Kassner quietly turned away from his powerful poet-hero, other writers were more aggressive. They did not cast off the strong egos in silence but destroyed them. In this they followed Beatrice Cenci, the female embodiment of Shelley’s own “parricidal imagination.”35

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

163

T HE C ENCI , Parricide, and Expressionism Einem Litteraturhistoriker muß es von großem Interesse sein, später einmal meinen Wegen nachzugehen. Ich glaube, er wird da viel interessantes ﬁnden. Nur eines: Ich wäre einer der größten Dichter geworden, wenn ich nicht einen solchen schweinernen Vater gehabt hätte.36 Georg Heym [To a literary historian it must be of great interest to follow my path one day. I believe he will ﬁnd much that is of interest. Just one thing: I would have become one of the greatest poets if I had not had such a pig for a father.]

Parricide, the ultimate rebellion against the father’s authority, is one of the great Romantic myths aestheticized by writers as varied as Schiller, Blake, and Shelley. The fathers not only stood for institutionalized power but also for its frequent abuses. Schiller’s Robbers, Blake’s “Nobodaddy,” Shelley’s Cenci all constitute different variations on a major theme, a conﬂict, which several Romantic poets experienced in their own lives. Shelley’s father showed no understanding either of his son’s idealism or of his writing, and when Percy sent him a copy of The Necessity of Atheism (1811), an early outlet of his deicidal and parricidal imagination, Timothy Shelley scrawled the word “Impious!” on the ﬂyleaf (L I, 55), thus exercising both parental and theological judgment. If Percy Shelley regarded his father as the bane of his life, Sir Timothy saw his son as a stain on the family’s honor and cut his allowance several times, causing Percy to react with utmost anger at what he regarded as a vicious scheme designed to make him give up his way of thinking, writing, and living. That he discovered The Cenci, a fantasy of parricidal revenge, as suitable material for drama is not surprising. Two years after The Necessity of Atheism, he attacked the paternal power of kings and priests in the long poem Queen Mab (1813), which he later came to view as “rather rough” (L II, 350). By the time he wrote Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, his poetic style had become more sophisticated, but his intense hatred of father ﬁgures had not subsided. Each of these plays centers on the fall of an abusive paternal ﬁgure. After completing the ﬁrst three acts of Prometheus Unbound and before writing the fourth act, Shelley composed The Cenci. The fall of Jupiter, which occurs precisely at this point, apparently sidetracked him into yet another parricidal fantasy.

164

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

The popular subject of The Cenci, based on historical events in the Rome of 1599, inspired numerous literary reactions that combined a postrevolutionary lust for violence with the vogue for revisions of the Italian Renaissance. Friedrich Schön’s tragedy Beatrice Cenci appeared in 1835, followed by Stendhal’s novella in 1837. In the same year, the ﬁrst German translation of Shelley’s drama by Felix Adolphi (Schack) appeared. Adolphi also wrote Die Pisaner (The Pisans, 1872), a play whose structure and conﬁguration parallel The Cenci’s. Likewise, Hardy’s The Dynasts (1904–1908) bears Shelley’s inﬂuence.37 That The Cenci aroused particular interest in Germany is proved by the translations alone. I could trace seven editions, which appeared between 1888 and 1924: two in English, four in German, and one that can only be traced in catalogs. The Strodtmann edition (of 1866) was reissued ca. 1886–1888, followed by W. Oetzmann’s and Neuendorff’s translations (1904 and 1909). Tauchnitz and Insel each issued English-language editions. In 1907, Stefan Zweig intended to translate The Cenci but eventually abandoned his plan.38 Wolfenstein’s expressionist rewriting of the play in 1924 marks the climax and end of this vogue. The interest in The Cenci was so widespread that even the circumstances surrounding Shelley’s composition attracted attention. A short notice in the journal Die Literatur of 1924–1925, for example, reports the ﬁnding of the original manuscript in Italy.39 Several plays of the period resemble The Cenci in dealing with incest, like Heym’s Atalanta or Herbert Eulenberg’s Anna Walewska.40 The French dramatist Antonin Artaud’s Les Cenci (1935), based on Stendhal and Shelley, also partook in the fascination with the vibrations of cruelty, from which he developed his own, distinct concept of the “theater of cruelty.”41 The stage history of The Cenci is unusual because it was the only one of Shelley’s texts that went into a second edition during his lifetime, but as incest and rape were taboo subjects on the Victorian stage, it was not performed for decades to come. The ﬁrst production, organized by the Shelley Society in 1886, was private, while the ﬁrst public staging in England took place as late as 1922 at the New Theatre in London, one hundred years after Shelley’s death. Two German productions can be traced for these years: one in Coburg in 1919, about which little is known, followed by the much-acclaimed performance of Wolfenstein’s translation in Frankfurt ﬁve years later.42 The Cenci is a complex tale of incest, rape, murder, and revenge. At its center stands the diabolic Count Cenci, who mistreats his children, and, in an act of unsurpassed violation of all natural laws, rapes his daughter, Beatrice. This forced incest, not shown on stage, is

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

165

the climax of a long series of cruel and immoral misdeeds, which are condoned by the authorities. These violent events occur in a world governed by corruption, where all human relationships are marked by dishonesty, where churches are not safe havens but symbolize the abuse of paternal power. Although the Cenci family’s plot to have the count murdered is successful, it is uncovered and results in the execution of his wife and children. By revolving around the themes of violence and resistance, power and abuse of power, self-assertion, justice and injustice, The Cenci reﬂects the human condition in its ambivalence, which is intensiﬁed by an imagery of darkness and light. As the institutional powers fail to force any restraints on Cenci, his family can only keep him from further acts of injustice by committing one such act themselves, his murder, which eventually induces their own extinction. Although Cenci and Beatrice can be seen as embodiments of the dichotomy of evil versus good, they also mirror each other because they both pervert the revolutionary impulse, of which contemporary readers would have been aware, through their own violence.43 When Beatrice’s father attempts to destroy her physically and spiritually through the rape, Beatrice opts for parricide, in fact, as Stuart Curran pointed out, for “deicide.”44 Shelley made Count Cenci a forceful god and therefore even more deserving of death, like Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound. Whereas the latter ends with a vision of love, The Cenci results in the reality of multiple deaths: Cenci’s and his children’s. Shelley had interrupted the composition of Prometheus Unbound when the fall of Jupiter, the father-god, occurred. After writing The Cenci, a satiated parricide returned to writing the fourth and ﬁnal act of Prometheus Unbound as a vision of peace, love, and harmony, a dream, not a reality. It seems that to Shelley, evil was real, while love was illusionary yet certainly worth dreaming about. This worldview paralleled that of German expressionism, a movement of writers and painters who reacted against a mercantile and imperialist Germany and foregrounded the predicament of bourgeois society while underscoring the liberating function of art. They searched their society for symptoms of a deep crisis and found images of decay, war, apocalypse, and depression. Literary expressionism preferred the genres of poetry and drama. As the crisis of the self, at the center of many plays, took the shape of rebellion against powerful male ﬁgures, Shelley’s parricidal incest drama appealed to Heym and Wolfenstein. What Heym found in The Cenci was the essential loneliness and existential insecurity of the self, which was exposed to uncontrollable powers. Wolfenstein’s adaptation focused on liberation, on Beatrice’s struggle for freedom, her agony, which,

166

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

to him, was representative of all human suffering.45 As neither Heym nor Wolfenstein were interested in naturalist representations of social conditions, Shelley’s grand metaphysical scheme appealed to them. Heym was one of the young expressionists who felt driven by extremes, was attracted to themes such as alienation, destruction, death, and died young himself. He was drowned at the age of 24. He was extremely well read and saw himself in a pantheon of poetic gods—Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Keats, and Shelley—whose enthusiasm, sensitivity, and melancholia deeply impressed him.46 Heym left a brief handwritten sketch, a rough draft, for an adaptation of The Cenci (C1), and jotted down one scene, which in part corresponds to the ﬁrst scene of Shelley’s play, the meeting between Francesco Cenci and the pope’s legate (C2).47 Whereas the draft C1 awards a central position to Beatrice, the completed scene C2 constitutes a character sketch of Cenci. Both fragments date from 1911 and focus on the nature of evil. In the fragmentary draft of the play (C1) Cenci is not powerful and abusive but insecure, and oscillates between good and bad. To Heym, the good is weak as well as mediocre and can therefore never be exemplary. The contrast between good and evil leads to no solution but lets the characters submerge in fatalism. Ich bin so weit in meinem Tun geschritten, Daß ich nicht weiß, was gut und böse ist. Doch böse Taten haben größren Ruf, Und liebt man nicht, so zollt man Ehrfurcht doch. Die Guten werden *aber dumm gescholten In dieser Erde weitem Distelfeld, In diesem Unrat, Kram und Haufen Nichts. *Geborstne Gräber sieht man allenthalben, *Dran kränkelnd eine Traueresche hängt. Not reißt am Kleide in den Straßen dich. Die Fieberkranken schleppen sich herum. Was ist da Gutes? . . . Wer weiß, vielleicht belohnt den Schlechten Gott, Die Edelmütgen jagt zum Orkus er.48 [I have advanced so far in my actions That I cannot recognize good and evil. Yet evil deeds are more acclaimed And if one loves not, one still offers reverence. The good are scolded for being stupid On this earth’s wide ﬁeld of thistles In this ﬁlth, junk, and pile of nothing.

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

167

Burst graves one sees everywhere, On which a mournful ash is hanging sickly. Need tears you by your clothes in the street. The feverish drag themselves around. What is good? . . . Who knows, maybe God rewards the bad, The noble he chases to hell.]

Cenci’s outcry, which accuses the world of being evil and unfair, is deeply moral. As even God sides with a corrupt world, Cenci concludes that by doing good or accepting responsibility one may inﬂict damage on oneself. The imagery of death and decay, typical of expressionist writing, underscores the mood of despair and futility. The vision of the earth as a ﬁeld of thistles, of the open graves, of diseased people, leaves little room for hope. Rather than deny or contest God, Heym’s Cenci turns away from him, regarding God as a moral failure and accusing him of embracing evil. This fragmentary soliloquy, which Heym meant to place after the conﬂicts between Cenci and his family, lets his protagonist appear as a new Faust, who also makes a fundamental decision about good and evil at the beginning of the play. To Heym, Cenci’s evil nature is not provoked by Faustian striving for a higher absolute but by his frustration about the inevitability of suffering and death. In this respect, he differs from Shelley’s Cenci, who aims to transcend the limitations of human existence through his essential badness. Heym’s second text, C2, the scene with the conversation between Cenci and the legate, which resembles the beginning of Shelley’s play, depicts a different Cenci, one who attempts to convince the pope’s representative of his lack of power, of his goodness. Heym’s Cenci describes himself as the benefactor of the poor, unlike Shelley’s Cenci, who revels in his misdeeds and publicly expresses joy about his sons’ deaths. Yet gradually, Heym’s Cenci drops his mask, even offers a bribe to the pope to be exempt from punishment, to be able to continuously mistreat his family. His grand monologue culminates in a vision of incest, dominated by himself as an oversized paternal ﬁgure, as Beatrice’s child’s father and grandfather: Was wären wir, wenn nicht Blutschande einst Uns fortgeholfen, wo nicht Adams Kinder In einem Bett gesteckt, wie? Wenn’s der Vater Mit seiner Tochter tut, das ist dasselbe. Ob ich mich selbst zum Schwiegersohne nehme, Wen geht das etwas an. Ob ich mich selbst

168

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s Ins Bett der Tochter stopfe, oder So einen andern, Kind ist Kind, wie? Wenn auch Ich ihrer Frucht Vater und Großvater gleich, Wen kümmert das? Ach, diese neue Zeit, Wo man sich keine Freude gönnen darf, Und sei sie noch so unschuldig.49 [What would we be, had not once incest Helped—had not Adam’s children Been in one bed, what? If the father Does it with his daughter, it is the same. Whether I will take myself son-in-law, Whose business is it? If I cram Myself into my daughter’s bed, or Someone else, child is child, what? Even though I would be both her fruit’s father and grandfather, Who cares? O, this new time, In which one may not grant oneself a joy, No matter how innocent.]

In the course of the brief scene C2, the reader witnesses how Heym’s Cenci, initially friendly, turns into a monster and ﬁnally resembles Shelley’s Cenci, the negative Über-father Heym had polemically envisaged in his diary. This Cenci is only aware of moral laws when he regrets the inhibitions they prescribe. The scene differs in tone and outlook from the handwritten draft because Heym’s second Cenci does not subordinate himself to a fatalistic interpretation of the world but uses his ﬁne-tuned awareness of good and evil to juggle with these concepts and to mislead deliberately. Like Shelley’s diabolic Cenci, he has evil intentions yet hides them even more cunningly. Heym’s Beatrice, at the center of C1, fares even worse than Shelley’s. In making her the victim of sexual assault not only through her father but also through the pope’s uncle, Heym introduces a new plot element. Whereas in Shelley’s drama, the family—Beatrice, her brothers, her stepmother—comfort one another, Heym’s Beatrice is entirely isolated after the rape. Her brother has hanged himself, her lover suspects her of having complied, and her jealous mother reports her to the authorities. The tragedy of Heym’s Beatrice is not the evil to which she is exposed through her father but the lack of support she encounters. This cruel world is the creation of a God, who, if not absent, fosters evil. Heym gave his heroine one soliloquy, which expresses as much fatalistic resignation as her father’s. When she declares that God had told her to take revenge on her father, she

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

169

passes the blame on to another paternal ﬁgure and once again demonstrates her fatalism. What is a heroic deed in Shelley’s play becomes resignation in Heym’s draft, where Beatrice and Cenci are the victims of a weak God. Wolfenstein’s version of The Cenci, Die Cenci (1924), differs from Heym’s and Shelley’s both in its thematic focus on liberation and in its aesthetic structure. Shelley embodied Wolfenstein’s ideal of the ﬁghter-poet, who was to combine art and political awareness and fuse ethics and beauty.50 Wolfenstein, who was Jewish, may have seen his own social position as outsider reﬂected in Shelley’s biography. He had to leave Germany in 1933, and committed suicide in Paris in January 1945; he is still awaiting his rediscovery as a major expressionist poet, dramatist, and translator. Wolfenstein kept the ﬁve-act structure but, as in his selection of Shelley’s poetry (1922), rearranged and condensed the original text while omitting some passages altogether. Die Cenci breaks up the long speeches to turn them into shorter dialogues, which, through the brevity of the replies, are more dynamic. Shelley’s rather heavy iambic pentameter is substituted by free verse, better suited to emphasize the speakers’ emotional turmoil. As minor ﬁgures are moved to the background, the conﬂict between Beatrice and her father occupies center stage. If Heym’s adaptation lets Cenci and Beatrice hover in moral ambivalence, Wolfenstein’s Cenci is as evil as Beatrice is pure, good, and beautiful. Wolfenstein’s Cenci imitates Shelley’s imagery of darkness and light, which stands for the dichotomy of evil and good, thus emphasizing the metaphysical dimension. The following example shows the aesthetic qualities of his text. In act 2, scene 1, Cenci’s visit to his family is followed by a soliloquy about his evil intentions, implicitly expressed through imagery of day and night. Shelley: The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear A busy stir of men about the streets; I see the bright sky through the window panes: It is a garish, broad, and peering day; Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears, And every little corner, nook, and hole Is penetrated with the insolent light. Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me? And wherefore should I wish for night, who do A deed which shall confound both night and day? ’Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist Of horror: if there be a sun in heaven She shall not dare to look upon its beams;

170

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s Nor feel its warmth. Let her then wish for night; The act I think shall soon extinguish all For me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom Than the earth’s shade, or interlunar air, Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud, In which I walk secure and unbeheld Towards my purpose.—Would that it were done. (SPP, 159–160, act 2, scene 1, ll. 174–193)

Wolfenstein: Die Strahlen füllen weiß das Fenster, Ich höre das geschäftige Geräusch Der Menschen auf der Straße, Es ist ein ausgelassener reicher Tag, Frech, voll lebendiger Augen und Ohren, Und jeder Winkel, jedes Loch besucht Vom Licht. Doch was ist mir der Tag? Komm, Finsternis. Doch was ist mir die Nacht? Ich brauche Sie auch nicht. Denn mein Plan mischt Nacht und Tag Und schafft sich alles selbst. Auch sie irrt jetzt schon durch die Dämmrung ihrer Angst, In Sonne wagt sie nicht zu schauen Noch ihre Wärme zu empﬁnden, Und da sie meinen Gang schon hört, bedrückt Des Himmels Schönheit sie nur tiefer. Drum wünscht sie sich die Nacht und tappt doch nur In etwas,—dunkler Als Erdschatten bei Sonnenﬁnsternis und Neumondsluft Und Wolken vor den Sternen. Also gehe ich Unbeugsam, unsichtbar an meine Tat.51

Wolfenstein’s translation intensiﬁes Shelley’s image of light: “I see the bright sky through the window panes” becomes “Die Strahlen füllen weiß das Fenster” (“The rays are ﬁlling the window with white”), indicating that Cenci is overwhelmed by so much radiance. In both texts, Cenci diabolically invites darkness “Come darkness!”/ “Komm, Finsternis.” While remaining fascinated by light, Wolfenstein’s Cenci does not call it “insolent” but describes the sun and the sky as warm and beautiful. It is precisely the world’s warmth and beauty of which he wants to rob his daughter. Wolfenstein’s Cenci pursues the declared aim of making her desire night, of throwing her into perpetual anxiety and forcing on her a constant awareness of his paternal power. His destructive actions seek to establish himself at the center

Fau s t i a n , M y s t i c a l , Pa r r i c i d a l

171

of her life, through which she is to move in what Shelley’s Cenci calls “bewildering mist,” translated as “Dämmrung ihrer Angst” (“dawn of her anxiety”), yet another image of darkness. Wolfenstein’s Cenci envisages himself as a missionary of evil, whose path to a rather sinister version of sainthood is paved with acts of destruction. Therefore, his text displays an intense imagery of death, as in the following passage. After suffering sexual abuse, Beatrice approaches her stepmother: The sunshine on the ﬂoor is black! The air Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps A clinging, black, contaminating mist About me . . . ’tis substantial, heavy, thick, I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues My ﬁngers and my limbs to one another (SPP 164, act 3, scene 1, ll. 14–20) Jetzt hält es—wird so eng Wie Arme—heiß—schwarz spielt die Sonne über mich hin— Geruch wie eine Leiche—kommt—zu mir— Küßt mich—O— Ich ersticke—aus dem Grabe Steigt es herein—ist modrig schwer Und stark—Ich würde es doch abschütteln, Wenns nicht so klebrig wäre—meine Glieder lahm52

Again, the imagery of darkness and light undergoes a subtle change: “The sunshine on the ﬂoor is black!” becomes “schwarz spielt die Sonne über mich hin” (“Black the sun plays above me”). Unlike in Shelley’s text, Beatrice refers to herself as the hidden focus of sunlight, which, however, she can no longer feel. Shelley’s words “dead” and “charnel” correspond semantically to Wolfenstein’s “Geruch wie eine Leiche,” “Grabe,”and “modrig” (“smell like a corpse,” “grave,” “decaying”). The translation makes use of expressionism’s favorite semantic ﬁelds: death and decay. A few lines further down, Shelley’s “poisoning” becomes “Gift ausgießt” (“pouring out poison”), which evokes the association of a slow and deliberate act. When Beatrice eventually participates in the plans for her father’s assassination, she does much more than kill a rapist. Both in Shelley’s and Wolfenstein’s texts, the murder is a victory over evil, a holy and sublime act. * * *

172

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Shelley’s strong oversized selves, be they pure or evil, were fascinating to German writers and readers, who were happy to exchange the mid-nineteenth century’s soppy and angelic Shelley for a liberator, ﬁghter, and visionary whose magniﬁed characters offered an alternative to the crisis of self so fashionably cultivated at the ﬁn de siècle. The vogue of the Faustian, mystical, and parricidal Shelleyan characters was unique to Germany, and presumably inﬂuenced by Nietzsche and Faust. Faust, one of Shelley’s own earliest literary fascinations, thus traveled back to his origins. Although the fascination with Shelley’s Titanic characters subsided after the 1920s, Prometheus Unbound achieved yet another revolutionary German reading. When Höhne, an East German professor of English, published an article about Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound in 1989,53 the year when the Berlin Wall came down, he emphasized this character’s revolutionary potential and thus used him as a symbol of the desired political liberation.

Conclu sion

T

his book has concerned itself with the cultural processes that have turned Shelley into a cultural presence in the German-speaking countries. The Weltschmerz and the Faustian striving that prevail in many of Shelley’s texts make his German reception particularly interesting. If earlier studies of literary reception have focused on the inﬂuence one great author exerts upon another, I have attempted to prove that source material not always considered elsewhere—anthologies, biographical sketches, travelogues, popular magazines—is also essential to mapping out an author’s fates, and that a reception study needs to focus on mediator ﬁgures such as readers, anthologists, translators, salonnières, and teachers as well. Although Shelley is the least down-to-earth of all Romantic poets and is frequently presented as an immaterial angel, he is nevertheless tied to the material dimension simply because he appeared in print. Therefore, a history of Shelley’s realizations in Germany and in German needs to be based on book history. Book history, furthermore, helps to establish the ups and downs of Shelley’s popularity, which began to be noticeable in the 1830s and 1840s, soared between 1866 and 1924, and then again rose from the 1950s onward. Because Shelley’s texts deal with a large number of issues and cover a range of moods, his reception falls into several strands: biographical, lyrical, revolutionary, and Faustian. If a reception study traditionally inquires into the inﬂuence exerted by literary texts, the case of Shelley proves that the passionate tales of a poet’s life, suffering, death, and redemption through posthumous recognition can loom larger than any poetry. Preconceptions of his life as a futile martyr or a disembodied Ariel were based on the personae in his very own literary texts. None of his German admirers realized that by celebrating Shelley’s

174

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Weltschmerz, they were reimporting a cultural item that Shelley had borrowed from Germany. As the nineteenth century progressed, Shelley acquired countless readers. If single-author editions of Shelley, simply through their selection and ordering of poetry, adhered to a narrative of the depressed outcast, anthologies presented a quaint nature poet. And indeed, most of Shelley’s lyrical output was perceived through anthologies of English poetry in translation, which took Eichendorff’s nature poetry as its stylistic model. Around the turn of the century, Shelley’s poetry partook in yet another lyrical mode, the fashion of languishing made popular through the George circle, whose master and disciples regarded Shelley as a major author whom they read, reworked, and translated. Likewise, the revolutionary Shelley’s output—“Song to the Men of England” and The Mask of Anarchy—found its readers in the midst of nineteenth-century radicalism that was channeled into political action. If the lyrical Shelley’s imitations are at times hard to trace, his political oeuvre inﬂuenced several major German authors, such as Herwegh, Traven, and Brecht, who carried Shelley’s revolutionary torch by continuing to use his ideas. While the lyrical and the revolutionary Shelley’s impact can also be traced in other European countries, the Titanic Shelley of the ﬁn de siècle is a major “German” author. As the reception of The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound coincided with a strong interest in Goethe’s Faust as a national hero, with a general fascination with powerful, invincible selves, it is hardly surprising that Shelley’s long texts were translated and reissued several times. They inﬂuenced a number of well-known expressionist writers, among them Heym and Wolfenstein, who prepared Shelley’s parricidal fantasies for the German stage. The broader implications of this analysis of the German Shelley are that reception studies carefully need to reconsider the model of “inﬂuence,” which privileges great authors over processes of mediation and cultural transfer. Shelley’s impact in Germany cannot be doubted, but it induced only a limited amount of traceable intertextuality. What is much more relevant are manifestations of interest that range from recitals at radical meetings to musical settings, from tacky biographies to nationalist exhortations. These documents prove that Shelley was an author with whom German readers lived, whom they regarded as their own cultural property. What does the future hold for reception studies? The large number of translations alone proves that Shelley, like other Romantics, has enjoyed international acclaim, which needs to be further explored. If the German readers have shared Shelley’s fascination with strong

Conclusion

175

Faustian ﬁgures such as Cenci and Prometheus, Artaud’s theater of cruelty proves that Cenci could also be integrated into a French cultural context. Besides, reception studies ought to take cases of triangular transfer into account, as Campe’s German-French-American pirated edition of Queen Mab proves.1 The volumes edited through the project The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe will make further material available. The project aims to “analyse the intellectual history of Britain as part of the wider European cultural heritage” by examining how British authors have been published, read, translated, and staged in Europe.2 Even more crucial is the question whether, in an age of global communication, national reception studies still make sense. While academic websites have increased the accessibility of literary texts, it must be noted that literature also has an immense popular reception through the World Wide Web, which may be far removed from academic issues. On nonacademic websites, Shelley may be listed as a vegetarian (together with Gandhi and Jesus), or quotations from his poetry may be displayed. Of all literary genres, poetry is the one most suitable for the Internet, the new anthology of the twentyﬁrst century. Whereas novels and plays are difﬁcult to peruse on a computer screen, poems and quotations are ﬂashy bits of language, concise and brief, and short enough to be read on a screen without too many uses of the “page down” button. Moreover, the Internet offers a variety of additional technical possibilities, which can turn the reading of a poem into a multimedia event. One example: the homepage of a French website offers access to a variety of poems, such as “To a Skylark” and “L’ alouette,” both in English and in French.3 When the poem appears on the screen, a bird slowly ﬂies across it. Some websites give a couple of decontextualized quotations without naming the sources, for example “Creative Quotations from Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet”.4 Among the quotations are: “The more we study the more we discover our ignorance,” “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar,” and “Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deiﬁed its peculiar errors.” As the website offers some links, for example to an online bookstore, one may assume that the Shelley quotations are part of an advertising strategy. These decontextualized quotations attain symbolic value because they originate from a poet, that is, from someone who seems to have the necessary authority to speak the “truth.” This practice of pasting quotations on a website resembles the nineteenth-century practice of copying beautiful passages of

176

S h e l l e y ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

poetry. The selection processes seem to be similar to those used for compiling anthologies. Again, Shelley falls into two categories: lyrical and political. The website “Poets’ Corner” offers a sort of anthology, containing, among others, “Love’s Philosophy,” “Music when Soft Voices Die,” and “To Night.” In this context, the “Ode to the West Wind” can easily be read as a nature poem.5 It thus follows the familiar constructions of the lyrical Shelley, whereas “Thoughts Worth Thinking,” a website with a political focus, provides links to “England in 1819” and “Ozymandias.”6 Despite its variety, the Internet perpetuates old stereotypes rather than break them up. These websites mirror anthologies; moreover, they radicalize the mode of reading prescribed by anthologies because, rather than invite linear reading, they enable the user to move through a series of related texts by clicking on the links provided. Contemporary song texts offer another avenue for the transmission of English Romanticism. Unlike nineteenth-century musical settings, rock and pop songs are usually in English and are distributed worldwide. A surprisingly large number of them use decontextualized quotations, sometimes from the Romantics, like Jim Morrison’s famous Doors song, “End of the Night,” (1967), which contains a slightly adapted passage from Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence.” While such music is marketed on an international scale, it is no longer possible to distinguish between an American, English, or German reception. As such quotations can no longer be traced back to one individual author(ity), they become general property and thus continue the strategy Freiligrath and Herwegh used in their recycling of Burns’s “For a’ that, and a’ that” and Shelley’s “Ye are many—they are few.” Even the most unlikely readers of Shelley can rework themes or characters. A song by the punk band The Cure follows in the footsteps of Shelley’s Adonais, who dreams himself away into an angel’s eternity.

Appendix 1

Anthologizing Shelley: A List of Anthologies by Date of Appearance The following list of anthologies, partly based on an unpublished list by Horst Meller, serves as a basis for the count of the most popular Shelley poems in chapter 2. Unless stated otherwise, the anthologies mentioned in brackets, usually later and sometimes enlarged editions, were not used for the count. The anthologies are listed chronologically. L. Herrig’s anthology was omitted because it went through so many editions (over 100) with varying textual selections that it would have been difﬁcult to include, especially as virtually no library owns more than a handful of editions. Note: E ⫽ English only, G ⫽ German only, and E/G ⫽ English and German. 1828 The British Poets of the Nineteenth Century including the Select Works of Crabbe, Wilson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Rogers, Campbell, Miss Landon, Barton, Montgomery, Southey, Hogg, Barry Cornwall, and Others, being a Supplementary Volume to the Poetical Works of Byron, Scott and Moore (Francfort o. M.: H. L. Broenner, 1828; E).

178

S h e l ly ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

1843 Britannia: A Selection of British Poetry Ancient and Modern. Britannia. Eine Auswahl englischer Dichtungen alter und neuer Zeit. In’s Deutsche übersetzt von Louise von Ploennies (Frankfurt am Main: Schmerber, 1843; E/G). 1847 Album. Originalpoesien von George Weerth, R..h..s, Friedrich Saß, H. Semmig, Theodor Opitz, Miß Speridan Carrey, Alfred Meißner, Karl Beck, Shelley, Weitling, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Anastasius Grün, Heinrich Heine, Adolph Schults, Karl Eck, Johannes Scherr, Rudolph Schwerdtlein, Joseph Schweitzer, G. W., Herrmann Everbeck, Richard Reinhardt, Volksstimmen, Edward P. Mead in Birmingham, Ludwig Köhler, L. Seeger und dem Herausgeber H. Püttmann (Borna: Albert Reiche, 1847; G). 1853 The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock: A Selection of English Poetry, Chieﬂy Modern. By Ferdinand Freiligrath (Stuttgart: Edward Hallberger, 1853; 4th ed. 1868, 5th rev. ed. 1874; E). Englischer Liederschatz aus englischen und amerikanischen Dichtern vorzugsweise des XIX. Jahrhunderts mit Nachrichten über die Verfasser, herausgegeben von Karl Elze (Dessau: Katz, 2. Auﬂ. 1853; E). 1854 The British Lyre, by William Odell Elwell (Brunswick: Westermann, 1854; E). 1856 English Poets: A Selection from the Works of the British Poets from Chaucer to Tennyson by O. L. H.....r [Otto Leonhard Hübner]. Englische Dichter. Eine Auswahl englischer Dichtungen mit deutscher Uebersetzung von O. L. H.....r (Leipzig: Wigand, 1856; E/G). 1862 Blumen aus der Fremde. Poesien von Gongora, Manrique, Camoëns, Milton, Giusti, Leopardi, Longfellow, Th. Moore, Wordsworth, Burns, Lamartine u. v. A. Neu übertragen von P. Heyse, K. Krafft, E. Mörike,

Appendix 1

179

F. Notter, L. Seeger (Stuttgart: Schweizerhart’sche Buchhandlung, 1862; G). Lieder- und Balladenbuch amerikanischer und englischer Dichter der Gegenwart. In Versmaßen der Originale übersetzt und von Lebensskizzen der Verfasser begleitet, mit einem Zuneigungsbriefe an Ferd. Freiligrath, von Adolf Strodtmann (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1862; G). 1863 Englische Lyriker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, ins Deutsche übertragen von Luise von Ploennies (München: Fleischmann, 1863; G). 1869 Bildersaal der Weltliteratur. Von Prof. Dr. Johannes Scherr, 2. umgearb. Auﬂ. (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1869; 2 Bde.; 1st ed. 1848, 3rd ed. 1885; G). 1881 Aus beiden Hemisphären. Englische Dichtung des XIX. Jahrhunderts, übersetzt von Edmund Freiherr von Beaulieu-Marconnay (Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, 1881; G). 1885 England und Amerika. Fünf Bücher englischer und amerikanischer Gedichte von den Anfängen bis auf die Gegenwart. In deutschen Uebersetzungen. Chronologisch geordnet mit litterarhistorisch-kritischen Notizen und einer Einleitung: Ueber den Geist und Entwicklung der englischen Poësie von Julius Hart (Minden: Bruns, 1885; G). 1886 Vorwärts! Eine Sammlung von Gedichten für das arbeitende Volk [herausgegeben von Rudolf Lavant], 3. Auﬂage (Zürich: Volksbuchhandlung, 1884; 1st ed. also 1884; G). 1893 Buch der Freiheit, herausgegeben von Karl Henckell (Berlin: Verlag der Expedition des “Vorwärts” Berliner Volksblatt [Th. Glocke], 1893; G).

180

S h e l ly ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

1894 Von beiden Ufern des Atlantic. Eine englisch-amerikanische Anthologie (Von James Thomson bis zur Gegenwart), herausgegeben von Wilhelmine Prinzhorn (Halle: Otto Hendel, 1894; G). ca. 1894 Freudvoll und Leidvoll. Liebesgrüße von nah und fern, 7. verm. Auﬂ. (Berlin: Brachvogel & Ranst, [ca. 1894]; G). Friedensstimmen. Eine Anthologie, herausgegeben von Leopold Katschner. Eingeleitet von Konr. Ferd. Meyer und Berta v. Suttner (Leipzig: Hoppe, no year [dedication 1894]; G). 1896–1897 Sonnenblumen, herausgegeben von Karl Henckell (Henckell: Zürich u. Leipzig, 1895–1896 to 1898–1899; separate sheets; G). 1898 Englische Dichter. Übersetzungen nach Percy B. Shelley, Thomas Moore, John Keats, Algernon Charles Swinburne und Anderen, von Gisberte Freiligrath (Halle: Otto Hendel, 1898 G). 1900 Stimmen der Freiheit. Blüthenlese der hervorragendsten Schöpfungen unserer Arbeiter- und Volksdichter. Mit 37 Portraits, herausgegeben von Konrad Beißwanger (Nürnberg: Verlag für Volks- und Arbeiterlitteratur, 1900; G). 1903 The Great English Poets of the XIXth Century: An Anthology of Specimens, with Notes, and a Glossary by Richard Ackermann PhD. Neusprachliche Reformbibliothek 21 (Leipzig: Verlag der Dyckschen Buchhandlung; E). 1907 Die Lyrik des Auslandes in neuerer Zeit. Herausgegeben von Hans Bethge (Leipzig: Max Hesse, 1907; G).

Appendix 1

181

1911 Von unten auf. Ein neues Buch der Freiheit. Gesammelt und gestaltet von Franz Diederich (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1911; 2 Bde.; 2nd ed. 1920, 3rd ed. 1928; G). (1963: Das Buch der Freiheit. Stimmen der Völker und Nationen aus vier Jahrtausenden, herausgegeben von Anna Siemsen and Julius Zerfaß [Berlin: Zentraler Jugendweihe-Ausschuß, 1963]). 1936 Englische Dichter. Deutsch von Rudolf Borchardt (Wien: Phaidon, 1936; G). Die Fähre. Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten. Übersetzt von Richard Flatter (Wien/Leipzig/Zürich: Reichner, 1936; G). 1938 Englische Gedichte von Shakespeare bis W. B. Yeats. Einführungen, Urtexte und Übertragungen, von Hans Hennecke (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1938; E/G). (New edition: Gedichte von Shakespeare bis Ezra Pound. Einführungen, Urtexte und Übertragungen [Wiebaden: Limes, 1955]). Stimmen der Völker. Die schönsten Gedichte aller Zeiten und Länder, herausgegeben von Alfred Wolfenstein (Amsterdam: Querido, 1938; G). 1945 Ewiges England. Dichtung aus sieben Jahrhunderten von Chaucer bis Eliot. Englisch und Deutsch, herausgegeben von Hans Feist (Zürich: Amstutz, 1944; E/G). Englische Romantiker. R. Burns, Lord Byron, P. B. Shelley, F. Hemans, Bleibendes Gut: Bedeutendes aus eigener und fremder Literatur (Zürich: Scientia-Verlag, 1945; G). 1946 Englische Dichtung, übertragen von Max Geilinger (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1946; G).

182

S h e l ly ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

1947 Freiheit und Würde des Menschen. Stimmen aus drei Jahrtausenden, herausgegeben von Hans von Eckardt (München: Piper, 1947; G). Der Garten der Liebe. Englische Lyrik des 19. Jahrhunderts in Umdichtung von Alexander von Bernus, 2. erweiterte Auﬂage (Heidelberg: Meister, 1947; G). [The ﬁrst edition of 1946 contains no poems by Shelley.] Das irdische Paradies. Englische Lyrik des XIX. Jahrhunderts, in Umdichtung von Alexander von Bernus, 2 Bde. (Nürnberg: Carl, 1947; G). 1949 Englische Dichtung. Deutsch. Mit den Urtexten, übersetzt von Walter Schmiele (Darmstadt: Eduard Rother, 1949; E/G). 1953 Englisch Horn. Anthologie angelsächsischer Lyrik von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, übertragen von Georg von der Vring (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1953; G). Lyrik des Abendlandes, gemeinsam mit Hans Hennecke, Curt Hohoff und Karl Vossler. Ausgewählt von Georg Britting (München: Hanser, 1953; G). 1956 Englische Gedichte aus sieben Jahrhunderten Englisch-Deutsch, herausgegeben von Levin L. Schücking (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1956; E/G). 1962 Die Stimmen der Meister. Eine Einführung in Meisterwerke des englischen Dichtens und Denkens, herausgegeben von Walter Hübner, 2. durchgesehene und ergänzte Auﬂage (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1962; G). Angelsächsische Lyrik aus sechs Jahrhunderten. Englisch-Deutsch. Übertragung und biographische Notizen von Georg von der Vring (Köln/Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1962; E/G).

Appendix 1

183

1965 English Poems: Englische Gedichte, ausgewählt und in Prosa übersetzt von Dieter Mehl (Ebenhausen: Langewiesche-Brandt, 1965; E/G). 1967 Tränen und Rosen. Krieg und Frieden in Gedichten aus fünf Jahrtausenden, ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Achim Röscher, 2. erweiterte und verbesserte Auﬂage (Berlin: Verlag der Nationen, 1967; G). Lyrik der englischen Romantik, herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Siegfried Schmitz (München: Winkler, 1967; G). 1974 Die fremde Muse. Übertragungen von Rudolf Borchardt. In Verbindung mit Marie Luise Borchardt und Francis Golfﬁng herausgegeben von Ulrich Ott (Stuttgart: Klett, 1974; G). 1980 Gedichte der englischen Romantik. Englisch/deutsch, herausgegeben von Raimund Borgmeier (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1980; E/G). Ein Ding von Schönheit ist ein Glück auf immer. Gedichte der englischen und schottischen Romantik. Englisch und deutsch, herausgegeben von Horst Höhne (Leipzig: Reclam, 1980; E/G). 1981 Poesie der Welt. England, herausgegeben von Walter Schmiele (Berlin: Edition Stichnote im Propyläen Verlag, 1981; E/G). 1984 Freiheitslyrik. Von der französischen Revolution bis zu den Nationalen Befreiungsbewegungen unserer Tage, ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Ernst M. Frank (München: Heyne, 1984; G). 1999 Byron, Shelley, Keats. Ein biographisches Lesebuch von Susanne Schmid (München: dtv, 1999; E/G).

184

S h e l ly ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

2000 Englische und amerikanische Dichtung, herausgegeben von Eva Hesse, Heinz Ickstadt, Friedhelm Kemp, Werner von Koppenfels, Horst Meller, Manfred Pﬁster, Klaus Reichert, 4 Bände (München: Beck, 2000; E/G).

Appendix 2

German Shelley Editions One asterisk (*) indicates that I have not seen these editions myself but have taken the bibliographical details from Horst Meller’s list, Kayser’s Bücherlexikon, or the Gesamtverzeichnis des deutschsprachigen Schrifttums. Two asterisks (**) indicate that nothing could be found about the contents of the edition and that it has therefore not been included in the count in chapter 2. As older translations often omit the year of publication, I had to rely on catalogs. The Cloud. By Shelley. Die Wolke. Nach Shelley [übersetzt von Paul Haugwitz] ([Berlin: Privatdruck, 1830]). Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Campe’s Edition. (Nuremberg/ Paris: Heideloff and Campe, [1832]). **Percy Bissche Shelly. Poetical Works (London and Berlin: Asher, 1837). Die Cenci. Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen von Percy Bysshe Shelley. Aus dem Englischen nebst einer Lebensskizze des Dichters von Felix Adolphi [Adolf Graf von Schack] (Stuttgart: Verlag der Klassiker, 1837). **Percy Bysshe Shelleys Schriften. Deutsch bearbeitet von Dr. Ludwig Herrig und Ferdinand Prössel (Braunschweig: Meyer, 1840). Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetische Werke in einem Bande. Aus dem Englischen übertragen von Julius Seybt (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1844).

186

S h e l ly ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

Einige Dichtungen Percy Bysshe Shelley’s. Deutsch von Ferd. Prössel. Mit dem Leben des Dichters, und dem Bildnisse desselben (Braunschweig: Verlag von G. C. C. Meyer sen., 1845). Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ausgewählte Dichtungen. Deutsch von Adolf Strodtmann, Bibliothek ausländischer Klassiker in deutscher Übertragung 29–30 (Hildburghausen: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1866). A Selection from the Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited with a memoir by Mathilde Blind, Collection of British Authors 1207 (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1872). Der entfesselte Prometheus. Lyrisches Drama in 4 Akten von Percy Bysshe Shelley. Deutsch von Albrecht Graf Wickenburg (Wien: Rosner, 1876). Shelleys Feenkönigin (Queen Mab). Metrisch übertragen von Dr. Carl Weiser (Leipzig: Reclam, 1878). *Queen Mab. By Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Library 16 (Zürich: Rudolphi & Klemm, 1881). Der entfesselte Prometheus. Ein lyrisches Drama in vier Akten von Shelley. Deutsch in den Versmaßen des Originals von H. Richter (Stuttgart: Max Waag, 1887). *Percy Bysshe Shelley. Die Cenci. Ein Trauerspiel in 5 Aufzügen. Aus dem Englischen von Adolf Strodtmann, Meyers Volksbücher 522–523 (Leipzig: Meyer, [ca. 1886–1888]). **Percy Bysshe Shelley. Lyrische Gedichte. Alastor. Aus dem Englischen von Adolf Strodtmann, Meyers Volksbücher 581 (Leipzig: Meyer, [ca. 1886–1888]). *Percy Bysshe Shelley. Königin Mab. Ein Gedicht. Aus dem Englischen von Adolf Strodtmann, Meyers Volksbücher 582 (Leipzig: Meyer, [ca. 1886–1888]). Der entfesselte Prometheus. Ein lyrisches Drama in vier Aufzügen von Percy Bysshe Shelley. Deutsch in den Versmaßen des Originals und mit Anmerkungen versehen von H. Richter, Universal-Bibliothek 3321–3322 (Leipzig: Reclam, [1895]).

Appendix 2

187

Shelley’s Epipsychidion und Adonais. Mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen herausgegeben von Richard Ackermann, Englische Textbibliothek 5 (Berlin: Felber, 1900). Der entfesselte Prometheus. Lyrisches Drama in vier Akten von Percy Bysshe Shelley. Deutsch von Albrecht Graf Wickenburg, Bibliothek der Gesamtlitteratur des In- und Auslandes 1564 (Halle: Hendel, 1902). Die Cenci. Eine Tragödie in fünf Aufzügen von Percy Bysshe Shelley. Übersetzt und mit einer Vorbemerkung versehen von W. Oetzmann, Bibliothek der Gesamtlitteratur des In- und Auslandes 1748 (Halle: Hendel, 1904). Percy B. Shelley. Prometheus Unbound. A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts. Erste kritische Textausgabe mit Einleitung und Kommentar von Richard Ackermann, Englische Textbibliothek 13 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1908). Die Cenci. Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen von Percy Bysshe Shelley. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt und mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen versehen von Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff, Universalbibliothek 4902 (Leipzig: Reclam, 1909). **Percy Bysshe Shelley. Sämtliche Dichtungen. In Einzelübertragungen. Herausgegeben von Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff. Alastor. Mit einer Einleitung (Dresden: Pierson, 1909). *Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Cenci, Tauchnitz Pocket Library 65 (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1916). *Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Cenci, Pandora 22 (Leipzig: Insel, 1920). **Percy Bysshe Shelley. Prometheus Unbound: A lyrical drama, Rhombus Edition 64 (Wien/Leipzig: G. Freytag, 1922). Shelley. Dichtungen. In neuer Übertragung von Alfred Wolfenstein (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1922). Shelley. Die Cenci. Drama in fünf Akten. In neuer deutscher Bearbeitung von Alfred Wolfenstein (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1924). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Kampf. Gedichte. Übersetzt von R.R., Signale 30–31 (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Leipzig/Wien: Taifun, 1924).

188

S h e l ly ’s G e r m a n A f t e r l i v e s

**Percy Bysshe Shelley. Select Poetry and Prose. Edited, with notes and a glossary by Richard Ackermann, Diesterwegs neusprachliche Reformausgaben 70 (Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg, 1924). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Liebe. Ein Fragment. Lyrische Fragmente. Deutsch von Hans Bütow, Des Bücherfreundes Fahrten ins Blaue 9 (Berlin: Silomon, ca. 1938). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Über die Liebe, das Leben und die Kunst. Ins Deutsche übertragen von Albert Hess (Zürich: Classen, 1946). Shelley/Keats. Oden und Hymnen. Übersetzt von Ursula Clemen (München-Pasing: Filser-Verlag, 1949). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Selected Poems. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Clemen. Englische Mustertexte 6 (Augsburg: Manu-Verlag, 1949). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Gedichte. Übertragen von Alexander von Bernus, Walter Schmiele, Rudolf Borchardt und Felix Braun (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1958). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Das brennende Herz. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Koeppen (München/Wien/Basel: Desch, 1958). **Percy Bysshe Shelley. Alastor. Nachdichtung von Kurt Rüdiger. Ill. von Fritz Möser (Karlsruhe: Der Karlsruher Bote, 1960). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Der entfesselte Prometheus. Lyrisches Drama in vier Akten. Deutsch von Rainer Kirsch. Hg. von Manfred Wojcik, der auch das Vorwort übersetzte, Insel-Bücherei 651 (Leipzig: Insel, 1979). Percy B. Shelley. Die Maske der Anarchie und andere Gedichte. 7 Gedichte aus dem Englischen übertragen von Reinhard Harbaum (Göttingen: Altaquito, 1985). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ausgewählte Werke. Dichtung und Prosa. Herausgegeben und mit einer Einführung versehen von Horst Höhne (Leipzig: Insel, 1985).

Notes Chapter 1 1. Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (London: Newby, 1847), 2:172. 2. Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence, ed. Thomas Sadler, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1869), 2:434. 3. Ibid., 439. This anecdote is related in Eudo C. Mason, Deutsche und englische Romantik. Eine Gegenüberstellung, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 111–121. 4. Robinson, Diary, 2:437. 5. Ibid., 390. 6. Kanzler von Müller, Unterhaltungen mit Goethe, ed. Ernst Grumach (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1956), 124. 7. Horst Oppel, Englisch-deutsche Literaturbeziehungen, 2 vols. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1971); Lawrence Marsden Price, English Literature in Germany (Berkeley: University of California, 1953). 8. Oppel, Englisch-deutsche Literaturbeziehungen, 1:127. The mediation of German literature into England could occur via French translations, see Robert Alan Charles, “French Mediation and Intermediaries, 1750–1815,” in Anglo-German and AmericanGerman Crosscurrents, ed. Philip Allison Shelley with Arthur O. Lewis and William W. Betts, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957), 1:1–38. 9. William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” in Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, 1797–1800, ed. James Butler and Karen Green (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 740–760, here 747. 10. Oppel, Englisch-deutsche Literaturbeziehungen, 2:35–36. 11. Günther Blaicher, ed., Die Rezeption Byrons in der deutschen Kritik (1820–1914): Eine Dokumentation. Mit einer Byronbibliographie (1820–1914) von Brigitte Glaser (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001); Birgit Bödeker and Sybille Rohde-Gaur, “Zur Rezeption britischer Literatur in Deutschland (1800–1870). Grundlagen und zwei Beispiele,” in Weltliteratur in deutschen Versanthologien des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Helga Eßmann and Udo Schöning (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1996), 51–76.

190

N ot e s

12. Rosemary Anne Selle, The Parritch and the Partridge: The Reception of Robert Burns in Germany: A History (Heidelberg: unpubl. diss., 1981); Selle, “Aufnahme und Wirkung: Burns in Deutschland,” in Robert Burns. Liebe und Freiheit. Lieder und Gedichte Zweisprachig, ed. Rudi Camerer with Rosemary Selle, Horst Meller, and Joachim Utz, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1988), 309–328. See also F. W. Stokoe, German Inﬂuence in the English Romantic Period 1788–1818 with Special Reference to Scott, Coleridge, Shelley and Byron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926). 13. Timothy Webb, The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 143. Nora Crook and Webb suggest that the translation may date from 1815 or 1816. Nora Crook and Timothy Webb, “Introduction” in The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, ed. Donald Reiman, vol. 19, ed. Nora Crook and Timothy Webb (Garland: New York, 1997): xxvii–lxxxvi, here lvii. 14. [Gustav Pﬁzer], “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslands 2 (1837): 269–271, 273–274, 277–279, 281–282, 286–287, 290–292, here 277. 15. Timothy Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 2. The quotations are from “Ode to the West Wind” (SPP 300), l. 54, and “The Indian Serenade” (SW 580), l. 18. 16. Christian Friedrich Schubart, “Der ewige Jude” [1783], in Gedichte. Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Gustav Hauff (Leipzig: Reclam, [1921]), 366–369, here 369. See also M. Roxana Klapper, The German Literary Inﬂuence on Shelley (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1975), 88. 17. Gustav Ferdinand Kühne, “Medwin’s Memoiren über Shelley,” Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes 5 (1834): 197–198, 202–203, here 197. 18. George Bernard Shaw, “Shaming the Devil about Shelley” [1892], in Pen Portraits and Reviews (London: Constable and Company Limited, 1932, repr. 1949), 236–246, here 244. 19. Matthew Arnold, “Byron” [1881], in The Complete Prose of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super, 11 vols. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960–1977), 9:217–237, here 237. Shelley’s family and friends were the main forces behind the production of myths around Shelley, see Sylva Norman, Flight of the Skylark: The Development of Shelley’s Reputation (London: Reinhardt, 1954). 20. Paul Foot, Red Shelley [1980] (London: Bookmarks, 1984), 10–11. 21. István Rácz, “Shelley’s Reception in Hungary,” Hungarian Studies in English 18 (1985): 59–69. 22. Akiko Okada, “Japanese Scholarship on Keats,” Keats-Shelley Journal 39 (1990): 166–179; Shigeloshi Ishikawa, “Shelley Studies in Japan,” Keats-Shelley Journal 42 (1993): 142–155; Hiroshi Harata,

N ot e s

23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

191

“A Bibliography of Shelley Studies in Japan,” Keats-Shelley Journal 42 (1993): 156–207. Newman Ivey White, Shelley, 2 vols. (London: Secker & Warburg, 1947), 2:389–418. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran, eds., Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Eric O. Clarke, “Shelley’s Heart: Sexual Politics and Cultural Value,” Yale Journal of Criticism 8 (1995): 187–208; Stuart Curran, Shelley’s Cenci: Scorpions Ringed with Fire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 183–256; Karsten Klejs Engelberg, The Making of the Shelley Myth: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley 1822–1860 (London: Mansell, 1988); Mark Kipperman, “Absorbing a Revolution: Shelley Becomes a Romantic,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 47 (1992): 187–211; Bouthaina Shaaban, “Shelley in the Chartist Press,” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 34 (1983): 41–60; Shaaban, “Shelley and the Barmbys,” Keats-Shelley Journal 41 (1992): 122–138; Shaaban, “Shelley and the Chartists,” in Bennett and Curran, Shelley, 114–125; Kim Wheatley, Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999); Kim Wheatley, “‘Attracted by the Body’: Accounts of Shelley’s Cremation,” KeatsShelley Journal 49 (2000): 162–182. William St Clair’s monumental opus The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) mentions Shelley numerous times. Neil Fraistat, “Illegitimate Shelley: Radical Piracy and the Textual Edition as Cultural Performance,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 109 (1994): 409–423; Charles H. Taylor, Jr., The Early Collected Editions of Shelley’s Poems: A Study in the History and Transmission of the Printed Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958). Roland A. Duerksen, Shelleyan Ideas in Victorian Literature (London: Mouton, 1966); see also the following articles: Phyllis Bartlett, “‘Seraph of Heaven’: A Shelleyan Dream in Hardy’s Fiction,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 70 (1955): 624–635; Phyllis Bartlett, “Hardy’s Shelley,” Keats-Shelley Journal 4 (1955): 15–29; Harris Chewning, “William Michael Rossetti and the Shelley Renaissance,” Keats-Shelley Journal 4 (1955): 81–96; Valeria Tinkler-Villani, “Victorian Shelley: Perspectives on a Romantic Poet,” in Conﬁguring Romanticism: Essays Offered to C. C. Barfoot, ed. Theo D’haen, Peter Liebregts, and Wim Tigges, assisted by Colin Ewen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), 89–104. Andrew Elfenbein, Byron and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Gerhart Hoffmeister, Byron und der europäische Byronismus (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983).

192

N ot e s

28. Solomon Liptzin, Shelley in Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), reviewed by Karl Arns, “Shelley in Germany. By Solomon Liptzin,” Die Literatur 27 (1924–1925): 243; A. Busse, “Echo des Auslands. Amerikanischer Brief,” Die Literatur 27 (1924–1925): 546–549; Ernst Rose, “Shelley in Germany. By Solomon Liptzin. The Weavers in German Literature. By Solomon Liptzin,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 26 (1927): 140–143; Enno Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? Studien zur Rezeption Percy Bysshe Shelleys im “Vormärz” (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996). A typical example of a positivist study is Luise Sigmann, Die englische Literatur von 1800–1850 im Urteil der zeitgenössischen deutschen Kritik (Heidelberg: Winter, 1918). Two recent studies on the Greek poetess Sappho follow a newer approach and are a good point of comparison. Both Joan DeJean’s Fictions of Sappho and Yopie Prins’s Victorian Sappho investigate the cultural contexts and projections of critics by drawing on nonliterary texts: Joan DeJean, Fictions of Sappho 1546–1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Yopie Prins, Victorian Sappho (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 29. Horst Meller, “Shelley in Germany,” in Romantic Discourses: Papers delivered at the Symposium on the Bicentenary of the Birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ahrenshoop, October 2–5, 1992, ed. Horst Höhne (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1994), 47–60; Stefan Mitze, “Idealizing Shelley: Alfred Meißner and the Political Poets of the German Vormärz,” in The Literary Reception of British Romanticism on the European Continent: Papers delivered at the 6th International Symposium of the “Gesellschaft für englische Romantik” held at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Oktober 1994), ed. Michael Gassenmeier, Katrin Kamolz, Jens Gurr, and Frank-Erik Pointner (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996), 103–115; Wilhelm Rechnitz, “Shelley in Deutschland,” Das Inselschiff 11 (1930): 294–302; Susanne Schmid, “Martyr? Gentleman? Atheist? Christian?—Nineteenth-Century German Constructions of Shelley,” in Anglistentag 1998 Erfurt. Proceedings, ed. Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann and Sabine Schülting (Trier: WVT, 1999), 339–348; Schmid, “Bewunderung, Kritik und Vielstimmigkeit. England und englische Literatur im Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes von 1832 bis 1849,” in Beiträge zur Rezeption der britischen und irischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen Raum, ed. Norbert Bachleitner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 107–117; Schmid, “Reception as Performance: The Case of Shelley in Germany,” in Romantic Poetry, ed. Angela Esterhammer (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002), 461–472; Schmid, “The Act of Reading an Anthology,” Comparative Critical Studies 1 (2004): 53–69; Klaus Siebenhaar, “Ästhetik und Utopie. Das Shelley-Bild Alfred Wolfensteins—Anmerkungen zum Verhältnis von Dichtung und Gesellschaft im Spätexpressionismus,” in Preis der Vernunft. Literatur und Kunst zwischen Aufklärung, Widerstand und Anpassung.

N ot e s

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

193

Festschrift für Walter Huder, ed. Klaus Siebenhaar and Hermann Haarmann (Berlin: Medusa, 1982), 121–133. The website is www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/rbae. Richard Cardwell, ed., The Reception of Byron in Europe, 2 vols. (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005); Elinor Shaffer and Edoardo Zuccato, eds., The Reception of Coleridge in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, forthcoming in 2007); Michael Rossington and Susanne Schmid, eds., The Reception of Shelley in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, forthcoming in 2008). Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Manfred Naumann, Dieter Schlenstedt, Karlheinz Barck, Dieter Kliche, and Rosemarie Lenzer, Gesellschaft, Literatur, Lesen. Literaturrezeption in theoretischer Sicht (Berlin: Aufbau, 1973); Rainer Warning, ed., Rezeptionsästhetik. Theorie und Praxis (Munich: Fink, 1975); Hans Robert Jauß, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970). For a survey see Peter V. Zima, Komparatistik. Eine Einführung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft. Unter Mitarbeit von Johann Strutz (Tübingen: Francke, 1992); Gunter Grimm, “Rezeptionsgeschichte. Prämissen und Möglichkeiten historischer Darstellungen,” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 2 (1977): 144–186; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “Konsequenzen der Rezeptionsästhetik oder Literaturwissenschaft als Kommunikationssoziologie,” Poetica 7 (1975): 388–413. The absence of book history in Germany is remarked on by Uwe Jochum, “Textgestalt und Buchgestalt. Überlegungen zu einer Literaturgeschichte des gedruckten Buches,” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 26/103 (1996): 20–34, here 20. A survey of theoretical approaches can be found in James L. Machor and Philip Goldstein, eds., Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 2001). Jerome J. McGann, The Textual Condition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Robert Darnton, “What is the History of Books?” in The Kiss of Lamourette: Reﬂections in Cultural History (New York: Norton, 1990), 107–135, here 107. M. H. Abrams uses the lamp as an image of the poetic mind: M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 54, 58–60. Edith Mikeleitis, Ariel. Shelleys Vollendung. Novelle (Shelley’s Perfection: A Novella) (Heidelberg-Waibstadt: Kemper, 1948), 5. McGann, Textual Condition, 3. McGann puns on the equation of sexuality and textuality. Ibid., 4. Jerome J. McGann, “Shall These Bones Live?”, in The Beauty of Inﬂections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 90–110, here 91.

194

N ot e s

39. “Meaning in poetry is neither the ideology of the poem nor the ideology of the critic; it is the process in which those ideologies have found their existence and expression. All the meanings which have ever been ascribed to poems will only be understood and comprehended when these meanings have been grasped as parts of the histories which poems reﬂect and reproduce” (ibid., 1–13, here 10). Although McGann has been heavily criticized for his use of the concepts “meaning” and “intention,” his criteria have opened new paths for research into the reception of Romanticism. For criticism see G. Thomas Tanselle, “Textual Instability and Editorial Idealism,” Studies in Bibliography 49 (1995): 1–60. 40. Jerome J. McGann, “The Monks and the Giants: Textual and Bibliographical Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works,” in Beauty of Inﬂections, 69–89, here 82–83. See also “The Ancient Mariner: the Meaning of Meanings,” Beauty of Inﬂections, 135–172. 41. McGann, Textual Condition, 6. 42. James McLaverty, “The Mode of Existence of Literary Works of Art: The Case of the Dunciad Variorum,” Studies in Bibliography 37 (1984): 82–105, here 82. McGann mentions McLaverty in Textual Condition, 9. 43. McLaverty, “Mode of Existence,” 84–85. 44. Jan Mukarˇovský, Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1970), 90–92; Rainer Warning, “Rezeptionsästhetik als literaturwissenschaftliche Pragmatik,” in Warning, Rezeptionsästhetik, 9–41, here 13. 45. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, “Editorial Overview,” in The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, so far 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000–), 1:xix–xxxix; Neil Fraistat, “The Workshop of Shelley’s Poetry,” Romanticism on the Net 19 (August 2000) www.erudit.org/ revue/ron/2000/v/n19/005929ar.html. 46. The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904); see Foot, Red Shelley, 244. 47. The German coinage is “Kultur als Performance,” in Erika FischerLichte, “Für eine Ästhetik des Performativen,” in Literaturforschung Heute, ed. Eckart Goebel and Wolfgang Klein (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999), 221–228, here 221. 48. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993). 49. Angela Esterhammer, The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 50. Fraistat, “Illegitimate Shelley,” 409. See also Peter L. Shillingsburg, “Text as Matter, Concept, and Action,” Studies in Bibliography 44 (1991), 31–82, here 61: “ . . . the writer’s utterance takes place, so to speak, in the presence of an absent reader, and the reader’s reception

N ot e s

51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58.

59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

195

or construction of utterance takes place in the presence of an absent writer . . . Finally, to complicate things even more, the writer’s writing is seldom seen by the reader who usually has instead the printer’s printing. So a written work entails at least three separate events (performances) whereas the spoken word is one event.” The term “performance” is also used in Wolfgang Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). Ibid., 34. Schmid, “Act of Reading an Anthology,” 55–58. René Wellek, “The Concept of ‘Romanticism’ in Literary History,” Comparative Literature 1 (1949): 1–23, 147–172, here 147. For a survey of Romanticisms see Peter J. Kitson, “Introduction,” in Coleridge, Shelley, Keats: A New Casebook, ed. Peter J. Kitson (Houndsmill: Macmillan, 1996), 1–24. This passage is also quoted in Jerome J. McGann, The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 69. Ibid., 1. Andrew Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Two important articles are: Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, “Deutsch-französischer Kulturtransfer als Forschungsgegenstand. Eine Problemskizze,” in Transferts. Les relations interculturelles dans l‘espace franco-allemand (XVIIIe et XIXe siècle), ed. Michel Espagne and Michael Werner (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988), 11–34; Matthias Middell, “Einleitung: Archiv und interkulturelles Gedächtnis,” in Archiv und Gedächtnis. Studien zur interkulturellen Überlieferung, ed. Michel Espagne, Katharina Middell, and Matthias Middell (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2000), 7–35. Anonymous, “Percy Bysshe Shelley. Eine biographische Skizze,” Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes 2 (1832): 383–384. As the article could not be traced in the Edinburgh Review, the source must be another British periodical. Hermann Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, Briefe eines Verstorbenen. Vollständige Ausgabe, ed. Heinz Ohff (Berlin: Kupfergraben, 1986), 111. Theodor Fontane, Werke, ed. Edgar Groß, Kurt Schreinert, Rainer Bachmann, Charlotte Jolles, and Jutta Neuendorff-Fürstenau, 25 vols. (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1959–1975), vol. 17, Aus England und Schottland, ed. Charlotte Jolles, 51. Bernhard Fabian, “Die erste englische Buchhandlung auf dem Kontinent,” in Festschrift für Rainer Gruenter, ed. Bernhard Fabian (Heidelberg: Winter, 1978), 122–144. Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? 93. Walther Fischer, Des Darmstädter Schriftstellers Johann Heinrich Künzel (1810–1873) Beziehungen zu England. Mit ungedruckten

196

N ot e s (oder wenig bekannten) Briefen von Carlyle, Dickens, Macauly, Chr. von Bunsen, F. Freiligrath u.a. (Gießen: Wilhelm Schmitz Verlag, 1939), 9–10. Conversationslexikon der Gegenwart, 4 vols. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1838–1841), 1:1170–1191. This article covers the years from 1833 to 1838.

Chapter 2 1. Paul Foot, Red Shelley [1980] (London: Bookmarks, 1984), 229–245. 2. Julius Marx, Österreichs Kampf gegen die liberalen, radikalen und kommunistischen Schriften 1835–1848 (Beschlagnahme, Schedenverbot, Debitentzug), Archiv für österreichische Geschichte 128 (Vienna: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1969); Julius Marx, “Die amtlichen Verbotslisten. Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der österreichischen Zensur im Vormärz,” Mitteilungen des österreichischen Staatsarchivs 11 (1958): 412–466; Sybil White Wyatt, The English Romantic Novel and Austrian Reaction: A Study in Hapsburg-Metternich Censorship (New York: Exposition Press, 1967). 3. This dossier is quoted in R. Glynn Grylls, Claire Clairmont: Mother of Byron’s Allegra (London: Murray, 1939), 170. Grylls saw it in 1927, after it had been damaged by a ﬁre in the same year. 4. Karl Brunner, “Byron und die österreichische Polizei,” Archiv N. S. 48 (1925): 28–41, here 32–34; Herbert Huscher, “Charles and Claire Clairmont,” Englische Studien 76 (1944): 55–117, here 61–63. 5. F., “Review,” in The Theological Inquirer, or Polemical Magazine 1 (March–July 1815): 34–39, 105–110, 205–209, 358–362, here 34. The article is reprinted in Shelley: The Critical Heritage, ed. James E. Barcus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 63–70. 6. Kim Wheatley, Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 73. 7. Anonymous, Literaturblatt 80 (1819): 320; 95 (1820): 380; 25 (1824): 99; 31 (1824): 124; Anonymous, Literarisches Wochenblatt 6/49 (1824): 196. For a list of early reviews see Ruge’s extensive bibliography. The texts in question are The Cenci and Shelley’s translation of Faust. 8. Earl Miner, “Some Issues for Study of Integrated Collections,” in Poems in Their Place: The Intertextuality and Order of Poetic Collections, ed. Neil Fraistat (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 18–43, here 24. Ted Hughes’s reordering of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel volume is described in: Marjorie Perloff, “The Two Ariels. The (Re)Making of the Sylvia Plath Canon,” in Fraistat, Poems in Their Place, 308–333. 9. The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats (Paris: Galignani, 1829). Appendix 2 contains a list of all German Shelley editions.

N ot e s

197

10. Giles Barber, “Galignani’s and the Publication of English Books in France from 1800 to 1852,” Library 16 (1961): 267–286; James J. Barnes, “Galignani and the Publication of English Books in France: A Postscript,” Library 25 (1970): 294–313; “SC 789 Lord Byron to J. A. Galignani, April 28, 1820,” in Shelley and his Circle 1773–1822, ed. Kenneth Neill Cameron, Donald H. Reiman, and Doucet Devin Fischer, 10 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961–2002), 9:306–337; William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 293–306. 11. G. P. R. James, “Some Observations on the Book Trade, as connected with Literature, in England,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 6 (1843): 50–60, here 58. 12. Galignani’s Messenger, June 18, 1831, 4. 13. James, “Some Observations,” 56. 14. On the development of copyright law in the nineteenth century see St. Clair, Reading Nation, and Simon Nowell-Smith, International Copyright Law and the Publisher in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Up to the Berne convention of 1887, Britain had bilateral copyright agreements with individual European countries, among them some German states. 15. Charles H. Taylor, Jr., The Early Collected Editions of Shelley’s Poems: A Study in the History and Transmission of the Printed Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), 8–9. 16. St. Clair, Reading Nation, 298. A history of Brönner of 1927 on the occasion of the bicentenary fails to mention English-language reprints: Gustav Mori, ed., 200 Jahre Frankfurter Druckgewerbe an Hand der Geschichte der H. L. Brönner’s Buchdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt in Frankfurt a. M. 1727–1927. Eine Erinnerungsgabe zum 1. Oktober 1927 (Frankfurt: Brönner, 1927). 17. Elisabeth Reynst, Friedrich Campe und sein Bilderbogen-Verlag zu Nürnberg. Mit einer Schilderung des Nürnberger Kunstbetriebes im 18. und in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Nuremberg: Stadtbibliothek, 1962); August Jegel, Friedrich Campe. Das Leben eines deutschen Buchhändlers (Nuremberg: Glock und Lutz [1947]). 18. The Works of Benjamin Franklin (Nuremberg and New York: Fr. Campe, n.d.) list the following books: Byron, The Corsair; The Giaour and Mazeppa; Dodsley, The Economy of Human Life; Gay, Fables; Goldsmith, Poetical Works; Gray, Poetical Works; Moore, The Loves of the Angels; Pope, Essay on Man; Shakespeare, Cymbeline; Hamlet; Julius Caesar; King John; King Henry VIII; King Lear; King Richard; Macbeth; Measure for Measure; The Merchant of Venice; The Merry Wives of Windsor; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Much Ado About Nothing; Othello; Romeo and Juliet; The Tempest; The Two Gentlemen of Verona; A Winter’s Tale; Sheridan, The Rivals; The School for Scandal; Knowles, William Tell. They were all priced at 24 Xr. each.

198

19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

N ot e s The next group was on sale for 36 Xr.: Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope, and other Poems; Coleridge, Poetical Works; Cooper, The History of England; Johnson, Rasselas; [Mackenzie], The Man of Feeling; Montague, Letters; Ossian, Fingal and other Poems; Shakespeare, Poetical Works; Shelley, Queen Mab; Sterne, Sentimental Journey; Thomson, The Seasons. The following texts were 48 Xr. each: Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakeﬁeld; Kirke White, Remains; Moore, Lalla Rookh; Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The next four were 1 Fl. 12 Xr. each: Gleanings from the Works of Sterne; Burns, Poetical Works; Junius, Letters; Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. His Don Juan (16 cantos) and Franklin’s Works were priced at 1 Fl. 21 Xr. The list ends on four differently priced items: Chateaubriand, Atala (24 Xr.); Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Paul et Virginie (24 Xr.); The Constitution of the United States of America (18 Xr.); Letters on Various Subjects from Eminent Writers (1Fl. 12 Xr.). The last four items were probably added to the list at a later date. Campe also published German literature. A 1832 Faust edition from Heidelberg by Heideloff/Campe is listed in Faust-Bibliographie, ed. Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der klasischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar, bearbeitet von Hans Henning, 3 vols. (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1966–1976), 2/1:10. Christian Gottlob Kayser, ed., Bücherlexikon 1750–1832, 8 vols. (Leipzig: Schumann, 1834–1842), 5:240. Shelley, Queen Mab. A Philosophical Poem (London: Clark, 1821), further editions in 1822 and 1823. The 1822 and 1823 identical editions give Carlile as a publisher at the beginning of the volume. On the last page, all three copies give Clark as the printer and publisher. The copies I used (1821, 1822, 1823) are in the British Library. On Clark’s and Carlile’s editions see Harry Buxton Forman, The Shelley Library. An Essay in Bibliography. Shelley’s Own Books, Pamphlets & Broadsides. Posthumous Separate Issues and Posthumous Books Wholly or Mainly By Him (London: Reeves and Turner, 1886), 35–58; Forman, The Vicissitudes of Shelley’s Queen Mab: A Chapter in the History of Reform (London: privately printed, 1887), 19; Foot, 227–239; Kyle Grimes, “Queen Mab, the Law of Libel, and the Forms of Shelley’s Politics,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 94 (1995): 1–18; St Clair, Reading Nation, 317–320, 680–682. Campe’s text follows Clark’s 1821 edition with some exceptions. A collation of Shelley’s original Queen Mab with Campe’s shows that Campe’s omitted the mottos of the title page and the dedication to Harriet. The main body of the text is nearly complete, apart from minor variations. The ﬁnal sentence of the note to VII, ll. 135–136, is missing both from Campe’s and Clark’s 1821 edition: “Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity carry its own infamy and refutation with itself?” (SW 825). Barber, “Galignani’s and the Publication of English Books,” 273. Watson had worked for Carlile (St Clair, Reading Nation, 314).

N ot e s

199

24. The two Campe editions only differ as far as the title page is concerned. 25. Forman mentions the Nuremberg/New York Queen Mab in The Shelley Library, 57. Kayser’s Bücherlexikon 1833–1840, 5:240, gives only “Nürnb. et New-York” as the place of the imprint. A Queen Mab by Campe printed in Nuremberg and New York is mentioned by Wm. H. Peet, [“Reply”], Notes & Queries, sixth series, 9 (1884): 31–32. A study on Shelley in America frequently refers to Queen Mab but does not consider pirate prints: Julia Power, Shelley in America in the Nineteenth Century: His Relation to American Critical Thought and His Inﬂuence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1940). 26. Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography: The Classic Manual of Bibliography (Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1974), 318. 27. Austrian censorship lists, March 1835: “Verzeichnis der in der ersten Hälfte des Monats März 1835 von der k. k. Central-Censur in Wien mit allerhöchster Genehmigung verbotenen Werke,” 622 (“List of works forbidden by the k. k. central censorship in Vienna in the ﬁrst half of March 1835 with the highest permission”). Source: Archiv der Universität Wien, Facs. V Lu. B. Qu. 322 m 22. See also Wilfred S. Dowden, “Byron and the Austrian Censorship,” Keats-Shelley Journal 4 (1955): 67–75, here 75. 28. Wyatt, The English Romantic Novel, 134–136; Marx, “Die amtlichen Verbotslisten,” 449. 29. It is not known whether this was the result of a cooperation with Julius Campe, see Heinrich Hubert Houben, Verbotene Literatur von der klassischen Zeit bis zur Gegenwart. Ein kritisch-historisches Lexikon über verbotene Bücher, Zeitschriften und Theaterstücke, Schriftsteller und Verleger, 2 vols. (Berlin/Bremen: Rowohlt/Schünemann, 1924–1928), 1:397–405. On the publication of Börne see Carl Brinitzer, Das streitbare Leben des Verlegers Julius Campe (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1962), 108–118. 30. Houben, Verbotene Literatur, 2:271–275. 31. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe, ed. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der Kommunistischen Partei der Sowjetunion/Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands/ Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung, 4 series (Berlin: Dietz/Akademie-Verlag, 1975–), 1/3:1308. 32. Veˇra Machácˇková, Der junge Engels und die Literatur 1838–1844 (Berlin: Dietz 1961), 195–197. Engels eventually had his translations printed in the following article: Edward Aveling and Eleanor MarxAveling, “Shelley als Sozialist” (“Shelley as a Socialist”), Die Neue Zeit 6 (1888): 540–550. On the radical Shelley see chap. 6. 33. Percy Bissche Shelly [sic], Poetical Works (London, Berlin: Asher, 1837) in Kayser, Bücherlexikon 1833–1840, 8:371; Thomas Keiderling,

200

34.

35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

N ot e s “Der deutsch-englische Kommissionsbuchhandel über Leipzig von 1800 bis 1875,” Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte 6 (1996): 211–282, here 222. Keiderling’s article describes German publishers’ trade links with Britain. It is unclear to what extent the rather expensive English editions were sold in Germany. They were advertised by bookshops and publishers in the Börsenblatt des deutschen Buchhandels. One can assume that this business, which had Leipzig as its center, complemented the practice of reprinting English classics. Much printed matter from England was nonliterary (maps, music sheets, scientiﬁc and medical texts). Klaus Hanson, “The Tauchnitz Collection of British and American Authors Between 1841 and 1900,” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 16 (1967): 53–59; Bernhard Tauchnitz, The Harvest. Being the Record of One Hundred Years of Publishing 1837–1937. Offered in Gratitude to the Friends of the Firm (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1937), 27; Nowell-Smith, 41–63. The Shelley volume was sold at the same price as the other volumes in the series, Mk 1.60. Mathilde Blind, “Memoir of Shelley,” in A Selection from the Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Mathilde Blind (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1872), vi–xxxviii, here vi, xiii. From p. 2 of the jacket of Epipsychidion und Adonais: “Die Ausgaben sind in erster Linie für den Gebrauch auf Universitäten, sowie für alle diejenigen bestimmt, denen es um ein wissenschaftliches Studium der englischen Litteraturgeschichte zu thun ist.” (“The editions are primarily intended for use at universities but also for those who want to study English literary history in an academic fashion.”) Other English-language texts by Shelley appeared, like Queen Mab (1881) by Rudolphi & Klemm, a Zurich publisher, who produced a series called “English Library.” Source: Gesamtverzeichnis des deutschsprachigen Schrifttums (GV) 1700–1910, ed. Reinhard Oberschelp, rev. under the direction of Hilmar Schmuck and Willy Gorzny, 160 vols. (Munich: Dokumentation/Saur, 1979–1987); Gesamtverzeichnis des deutschsprachigen Schrifttums (GV) 1911–1965, ed. Reinhard Oberschelp, rev. under the direction of Willy Gorzny, 150 vols. (Munich: Dokumentation/Saur, 1976–1981). For magazines see chap. 3. My thanks go to Horst Meller for providing me with an unpublished list of German Shelley translations, of which a database exists at the University of Heidelberg. Apart from various library catalogs, I have used Kayser’s Bücherlexikon and the Gesamtverzeichnis des deutschsprachigen Schrifttums. The British Library General Catalogue of Printed Books to 1975, 360 vols. (London: Bingley/Saur, 1975–1987), 300:383–397; The British Library General Catalogue of Printed Books to 1975: Supplement, 6 vols. (London: Saur, 1987–1988), 6:328; The British Library General

N ot e s

40. 41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

201

Catalogue of Printed Books 1976 to 1982, 50 vols. (London: Saur, 1983), 40:571, and subsequent British Library catalogs up to 2000. The Shelley Birthday Book and Calendar, ed. J. R. Tutin (London: Fisher Unwin, 1885). The name of the translator of this volume is given as “P. H.” The copy in the Berliner Staatsbibliothek, from Varnhagen’s library, contains the handwritten dedication: “(Vom Grafen Paul Haugwitz.) Geschenk vom Verfasser.” (“(From Count Paul Haugwitz.) The author’s gift.”) This makes it possible to identify the translator as Haugwitz, who also translated Byron. A review remarked: “Die Ausstattung ist elegant; der feine Druck erfordert jedoch gute Augen.” (“The appearence is elegant but the small print requires good eyes.”) (Anonymous, “Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetische Werke in Einem Bande. Aus dem Englischen von Julius Seybt,” Deutsches Literaturblatt 18 [1842]: 47–48, here 48). Friedrich Schulze, Der deutsche Buchhandel und die geistigen Strömungen der letzten hundert Jahre (Leipzig: Verlag des Börsenvereins, 1925), 215–216. Horst Heiderhoff, Antiqua oder Fraktur? Zur Problemgeschichte eines Streits (Frankfurt: Polygraph Verlag, 1971); Silvia Hartmann, Fraktur oder Antiqua. Der Schriftstreit von 1881 bis 1941 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1998). Annette Hunewinkel and Kerstin Stochhecke, “Verlegerische Initiativen zur Buchgestaltung,” in Buchgestaltung in Deutschland 1900–1945. Ausstellung der Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld vom 16.12.1987–31.1.1988, ed. Walter Kambartel (Bielefeld: Antiquariat Granier, 1987), 25–33, here 29. John Keats, Gedichte, translated by Gisela Etzel (Leipzig: Insel, 1910), 155. The anthologies I have used appear in Appendix 1. Fraistat, “Introduction: The Place of the Book and the Book as Place,” in Poems in Their Place, 3–17. Fraistat, “Introduction,” 3. Anne Ferry, Tradition and the Individual Poem: An Inquiry into Anthologies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 39–68. Miner, “Some Issues for Study of Integrated Collections,” 24. For descriptions of early Shelley editions see Taylor, The Early Collected Editions, 89–101. My categories are derived from and develop those suggested by Jerome J. McGann in “The Monks and the Giants: Textual and Bibliographical Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works,” in The Beauty of Inﬂections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 69–89, here 81–84. Neil Fraistat, The Poem and the Book: Interpreting Collections of Romantic Poetry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 25.

202

N ot e s

55. Mary Favret, “Mary Shelley’s Sympathy and Irony: The Editor and Her Corpus,” in The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein, ed. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 17–38, here 18. 56. Fraistat, The Poem and the Book, 27. 57. The early poetry of Victor and Cazire, of Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, and of his two Gothic novels hardly ever appears in popular anthologies or Shelley editions. 58. A more detailed description of the volumes can be found in Forman, The Shelley Library. See also Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, so far two vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000–), 1:xxii. 59. Fraistat, The Poem and the Book, 34. 60. For an investigation of the Prometheus Unbound volume see Fraistat, The Poem and the Book, 141–187. My observations summarize Fraistat’s ﬁndings. 61. Ferry devotes part of a chapter to “framing poems” and “sequences,” see Tradition and the Individual Poem, 51–59. 62. Susan Wolfson, “Editorial Privilege: Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley’s Audiences,” in Fisch, Mellor, and Schor, The Other Mary Shelley, 39–72, here 43. 63. Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (London: Flamingo, 1995), 593. 64. Wolfson, “Editorial Privilege,” 40. 65. The second edition appeared in 1839 but bears an 1840 imprint. 66. The edition by Reiman and Fraistat presents the poems in the order in which Shelley released them to his intended readers. 67. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Mary Shelley, 4 vols. (London: Moxon, 1839), 3:206–207. 68. Favret, “Mary Shelley’s Sympathy,” 18. 69. Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 3:163–164. 70. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. William Michael Rossetti (London: Moxon, 1870). 71. Palgrave’s selection led Webb to judge: “He paid Shelley the compliment of including twenty-two poems, but that selection has done great damage to Shelley’s reputation.” Timothy Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 18. 72. Hans Adler, ed., Literarische Geheimberichte. Protokolle der Metternich-Agenten, 2 vols. (Köln: Informationspresse, 1977–1981), 1:68–69, 219–222. 73. He must have used the second edition of 1840 because some of the texts he includes are not in the 1839 edition. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetische Werke in einem Bande. Aus dem Englischen übertragen von Julius Seybt (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1844).

N ot e s

203

74. The 1818, 1819, and 1821 sections may serve as examples. For the sake of consistency, I have used the same titles as in the rest of this study. Mary Shelley’s 1839 edition contains the following poems: 1818 Rosalind and Helen, “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills,” “Song for Tasso,” “Passage of the Appennines,” “To Mary—,” “The Past,” “Marenghi,” “The Woodman and the Nightingale,” “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” “Invocation to Misery,” “On a Faded Violet,” “Sonnet” (“Lift not the Painted Veil”). 1819 The Mask of Anarchy, “Song to the Men of England,” “Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration,” “Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819,” “An Ode Written October, 1819,” “England in 1819,” “To William Shelley,” “On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci,” “Ode to Heaven,” “An Exhortation,” “Ode to the West Wind.” 1821 Epipsychidion, Adonais, “To Emilia Viviani,” “Time,” “Mutability” (“The ﬂower”), “From the Arabic,” “Lines” (“Far, far away”), “To—” (“Music, when soft voices die”), “To Night,” “The Fugitives,” “To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,” “Song” (“Rarely, rarely”), “To—” (“As passion’s trance”), “Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon,” “Evening,” “A Fragment” (“As a violet’s”), “Ginevra,” “To-morrow,” “A Fragment” (“They were two cousins”), “A Bridal Song,” “Remembrance,” “ To—” (“One word”), “The Boat on the Serchio,” “The Aziola,” “The Indian Serenade,” “Music,” “Good-Night,” “A Lament” (“O world! O life! O time!”), “To Edward Williams,” “Sonnet: Political Greatness,” “Dirge for the Year.” Seybt arranged the poems in the following manner: 1818 “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills,” “Invocation to Misery,” “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” “The Past,” “Marenghi,” “Passage of the Appennines,” “Sonnet” (“Lift not the Painted Veil”). 1819 The Mask of Anarchy, “Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration,” “Song to the Men of England,” “An Ode Written October, 1819,” “Ode to Heaven,” “Ode to the West Wind,” “England in 1819,” “On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci.” 1821 Adonais, Epipsychidion, “The Fugitives,” “The Indian Serenade,” “To Night,” “Evening,” “The Boat on the Serchio,” “Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon,” “Time,” “Song” (“Rarely, rarely”), “Mutability” (“The ﬂower”), “To-morrow,” “To Edward Williams,” “A Fragment” (“They were two cousins”), “From the Arabic,” “A Bridal Song”, “To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,” “Ginevra,” “Sonnet: Political Greatness,” “Remembrance,” “To Emilia Viviani,” “Music,” “ To—” (“One word”), “Good-Night,” “Lines” (“Far, far away”), “A Lament” (“O world! O life! O time!”), “To—” (“Music when soft voices die”), “Dirge for the Year.” 75. Seybt, [Preface], v–xiv, here vi. 76. William Rose, From Goethe to Byron: The Development of “Weltschmerz” in German Literature (London: Routledge, 1924), 5.

204

N ot e s

77. Enno Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? Studien zur Rezeption Percy Bysshe Shelleys im “Vormärz” (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996), 71, 98, 119. For a more detailed analysis see chap. 4 of this book. 78. Robert Prutz, “Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetische Werke,” in Hallische Jahrbücher für deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst 309–311 (1840): 2465–2469, 2473–2476, 2481–2484, here 2484. 79. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ausgewählte Dichtungen. Deutsch von Adolf Strodtmann (Hildburghausen: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1866); Erika K. Hulpke and Fritz Paul, eds., Übersetzer im Spannungsfeld verschiedener Sprachen und Literaturen. Der Fall Adolf Strodtmann (1829–1879) (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1994). 80. Adolf Strodtmann, Lieder eines Kriegsgefangenen auf der Dronning Maria (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1848). 81. Strodtmann, Shelley, 188. 82. Strodtmann, Shelley, 9. 83. Strodtmann terms The Revolt of Islam “Tendenzpoesie” (“poetry following a political creed”) and concludes that the epic is hardly suitable for the pure artistic taste (8). Strodtmann developed a new ideal of poetry, which neatly ﬁtted his image of Shelley. An article in Strodtmann’s magazine Orion of 1863 describes new developments in German poetry and claims that, since the turn of the century, under the inﬂuence of Kant and other philosophers, the role of religion had declined: there had been a “Befreiung von dem Joche alter Satzungen auf sittlichem, religiösem und politischem Felde” (“a liberation from the yoke of old laws on the moral, religious and political ﬁeld”). In his view, the new poetry was more philosophical and took account of this split. Although Shelley is not mentioned in this article, the preface to the 1866 edition uses similar terminology in order to praise his poetry. Shelley is an ideal candidate for any poetological concept based on a torn personality because of the stylizations surrounding his life. See Adolf Strodtmann, “Das humanistische Element in der deutschen Dichtung der Gegenwart,” Orion. Monatsschrift für Literatur und Kunst 1 (1863): 345–364, here 348. 84. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Kampf. Gedichte. Übersetzt von R. R. (Frankfurt: Taifun, 1924). R. R. may be the anarchist Rudolf Rocker, an acquaintance of B. Traven, another rebellious reader of Shelley (see chap. 6). 85. R. R., Shelley, 5. For the anecdote see Holmes, 342. 86. R. R.’s selection contains a surprisingly large number of early poems, many of which only became available in the later nineteenth century. 87. R. R., Shelley, 46. 88. The poems appear in English and German translations, mostly by Karl Heinz Berger, Roland Erb, and Rainer Kirsch. The prose is only in German. 89. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ausgewählte Werke. Dichtung und Prosa. Herausgegeben und mit einer Einführung versehen von Horst Höhne (Leipzig: Insel, 1985), 69.

N ot e s

205

90. Barbara M. Benedict, Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3–33; Walter Höllerer, “Vorwort,” in Die deutschsprachige Anthologie, ed. Joachim Bark and Dietger Pforte, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1969–1970), 1:vii–xi; Pforte, “Die deutschsprachige Anthologie. Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Theorie,” in Bark and Pforte, Die deutschsprachige Anthologie, 1:xiii–cxxiv; Helga Eßmann and Udo Schöning, eds., Weltliteratur in deutschen Versanthologien des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1996); Anne Ferry, Tradition and the Individual Poem; Daniel Göske, Poets and Great Audiences. Amerikanische Dichtung in Anthologien, 1745–1950 (Frankfurt: Lang, 2005); Harald Kittel, ed., International Anthologies of Literature in Translation (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1995); Susanne Schmid, “The Act of Reading an Anthology,” Comparative Critical Studies 1 (2004): 53–69. 91. Benedict, Making the Modern Reader, 7. Ferry’s study in particular rehistoricizes anthologies as a genre. 92. Benedict, Making the Modern Reader, 7. 93. Hazlitt’s anthology Select British Poets appeared in two editions (1824 and 1825), which include different selections of poetry because the ﬁrst edition, which contained a selection of “Living Poets,” constituted an infringement of copyright (Payson G. Gates, “Hazlitt’s Select British Poets: An American Publication,” Keats-Shelley Journal 35 (1986): 168–182). 94. Vladimír Macura, “Culture as Translation,” in Translation, History and Culture, ed. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (London: Pinter, 1990), 64–70, here 65. 95. Ulrich J. Beil, “Zwischen Fremdbestimmung und Universalitätsanspruch. Deutsche Weltliteraturanthologien als Ausdruck kultureller Selbstinterpretation,” in Eßmann and Schöning, Weltliteratur in deutschen Versanthologien des 19. Jahrhunderts, 261–310, here 278; Birgit Bödeker and Sybille Rohde-Gaur, “Zur Rezeption britischer Literatur in Deutschland (1800-1870). Grundlagen und zwei Beispiele,” in Eßmann and Schöning, Weltliteratur in deutschen Versanthologien des 19. Jahrhunderts, 51–76, here 55. Ferry’s study Tradition and the Individual Poem lists criteria to describe the grammar of anthologies. 96. Günter Häntzschel, “Lyrik und Lyrik-Markt in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 7 (1982): 199–246, here 224. 97. Walter Höllerer, “Die Poesie und das rechte Leben. Zu Anthologien für deutsche Frauen und für den Hausgebrauch,” in Bark and Pforte, Die deutschsprachige Anthologie, 2:168–198, here 169, 177–183. 98. Karl Elze, “Vorwort,” in Englischer Liederschatz aus englischen und amerikanischen Dichtern vorzugsweise des XIX. Jahrhunderts mit Nachrichten über die Verfasser, ed. Karl Elze, 2nd ed. (Dessau: Katz, 1853), v–vi, here vi.

206

N ot e s

99. Elze, Englischer Liederschatz, 444. 100. The structure of Elwell’s The British Lyre is similar because he also combines thematic and generic sections, entitled “Nature,” “Home and Country. The social and domestic affections,” “Devotion,” “Ballads.” Elwell’s volume is concerned with creation, with man’s role in it, with God, with the hierarchy of all beings. He included several poems by Shelley. 101. Susanne Schmid, “Reception as Performance: The Case of Shelley in Germany,” in Romantic Poetry, ed. Angela Esterhammer (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002), 461–472, here 466. See chap. 5. 102. The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock: A Selection of English Poetry, Chieﬂy Modern. By Ferdinand Freiligrath (Stuttgart: Edward Hallberger, 1853); M. F. Liddell, “Ferdinand Freiligrath’s Debt to English Poets,” Modern Language Review 23 (1928): 197–206, 323–335; Hans Wipperfürth, “Freiligrath, John Keats und die soziale Lyrik,” Grabbe-Jahrbuch 10 (1991): 146–161. 103. J. H. Wehle, Das Buch. Technik der Schriftstellerei. Versuch eines Handbuches für Autoren (Vienna: Hartleben, 1879), 205. Wehle provides a list of publishers known for their representative volumes. 104. Reinhard Wittmann, “Das literarische Leben 1848–1880. Mit einem Beitrag von Georg Jäger: ‘Die höhere Bildung,’” in Buchmarkt und Lektüre im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Beiträge zum literarischen Leben 1750–1880 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982), 111–231, here 138. 105. Walter Kambartel, “Die deutsche ‘Buchkunst’ im Kontext von Kunstgewerbereform und Imperialismus,” in Kambartel, Buchgestaltung in Deutschland, 9–19, here 12. 106. Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–1993), vol. 3, The Giaour, 39–82, here 43–44, ll. 103–141; vol. 5, Don Juan, canto 3, 188–192, ll. 689–784. 107. Höllerer, “Die Poesie und das rechte Leben,” 192. 108. For an analysis of these four volumes see Dietger Pforte, “Die Anthologie als Kampfbuch. Vier Lyrikanthologien der frühen deutschen Sozialdemokratie,” in Bark and Pforte, Die deutschsprachige Anthologie, 2:199–221; see also Lexikon sozialistischer deutscher Literatur von den Anfängen bis 1945. Monographisch-biographische Darstellungen (Halle: VEB Sprache und Literatur, 1963), 129–130, 479–482, 508–513. 109. Rudolf Lavant, “Vorwort,” in Vorwärts! Eine Sammlung von Gedichten für das arbeitende Volk, ed. Rudolf Lavant, 3rd ed. (Zürich: Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1886), iii–vi, here iii. 110. Stimmen der Freiheit provides model biographies of those who had suffered for the socialist cause and deﬁnes Shelley not as a political spokesman for the masses but as a victim suffering persecution for his atheism: “Geboren am 4. August 1792 auf Fieldplace, Grafschaft Sussex (England), Sohn eines Baronets, verließ, da man ihn wegen

N ot e s

111.

112.

113. 114.

207

seines Atheismus verfolgte, England und ließ sich in Italien nieder, wo er am 8. Juli 1822 gelegentlich einer Segelpartie ertrank.” (“Born August 4, 1792, at Field Place, Sussex (England), son of a baronet. Being persecuted for his atheism, he left England and settled down in Italy, where he was drowned during a sailing trip.”) (713). Englische Gedichte von Shakespeare bis W. B. Yeats. Einführungen, Urtexte und Übertragungen, von Hans Hennecke (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1938). Lothar Jordan, Europäische und nordamerikanische Gegenwartslyrik im deutschen Sprachraum 1920–1970. Studien zu ihrer Vermittlung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), 63–66. The 1955 edition includes poems by Pound and Eliot. Herbert Huscher, “Charles Gaulis Clairmont,” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 8 (1957): 9–19, here 18. Huscher, “Charles und Claire Clairmont,” 68.

Chapter 3 1. The Habilitation is a postdoctoral dissertation in the German university system. 2. Paul Heyse, Merlin, in Gesammelte Werke, 2nd series, 5 vols. (Stuttgart/Berlin: Cottasche Buchhandlung Nachfolger/Klemm, 1924), 1:227–707, here 707. 3. On reading in the nineteenth century see Amy Cruse, The Victorians and Their Books (London: Allen & Unwin, 1935, repr. 1962); Kate Flint, The Woman Reader 1837–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 4. William Wordsworth, The Thirteen-Book Prelude, ed. Mark L. Reed, 2 vols. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 1:164 (book V, ll. 56–64). 5. Letter from Richard Woodhouse to John Taylor (September 19, 20, 1819), in The Letters of John Keats 1814–1821, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 2:163. 6. See chap. 1, note 1. 7. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, “Percy Bysshe Shelley. Von H. Druskowitz,” Magazin für die Litteratur des In- und Auslandes 53 (1884): 85–86: “Und auch wir Jüngeren lasen Shelley noch mit vieler Andacht” (“And also we younger ones read Shelley with much devotion,” 85). 8. Schenda’s seminal study Volk ohne Buch, which focuses on popular reading matter, offers an excellent survey of the years between 1770 and 1910, especially of the literary market; Rudolf Schenda, Volk ohne Buch. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populären Lesestoffe 1770–1910 (Munich: dtv, 1977); Reinhard Wittmann, “Das literarische Leben 1848–1880.

208

9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

N ot e s Mit einem Beitrag von Georg Jäger: ‘Die höhere Bildung,’” in Buchmarkt und Lektüre im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Beiträge zum lite-rarischen Leben 1750–1880 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982), 111–231. “Das literarische Leben 1848–1880” provides another detailed summary. Two comprehensive surveys of the poetry market by Häntzschel complement the picture: “Lyrik und Lyrik-Markt”; “Die häusliche Deklamationspraxis. Ein Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte der Lyrik in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Zur Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur von der Aufklärung bis zur Jahrhundertwende. Einzelstudien, ed. Günter Häntzschel, John Omrod, and Karl N. Renner (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985), 203–233. Bark and Pforte’s study of German anthologies also provides useful insights. All those studies sketch different aspects of a social history of literature and of poetry in particular. Witmann, “Das literarische Leben 1848–1880,” 118. Alberto Martino, Die deutsche Leihbibliothek. Geschichte einer literarischen Institution (1756–1914) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990). Statistics produced on the basis of source material from a lending library in Vienna shows that around 1876–1886 only 0.38 % of the readers subscribed to poetry (324). Friedrich Bodenstedt, Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (Berlin: Wecker, 1851); Julius Rodenberg, “Die Reinen Frauen,” in Lieder und Gedichte, 4th ed. (Berlin: Paetel, 1880), 25. “Kolportageromane,” see Wittmann, “Das literarische Leben,” 201. Wittmann, “Das literarische Leben,” 202. For the ﬁgures see Häntzschel, “Lyrik und Lyrikmarkt,” 203. John Omrod, “Bürgerliche Organisation und Lektüre in den literarisch-geselligen Vereinen der Restaurationsepoche,” in Häntzschel, Omrod, and Renner, Zur Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur von der Aufklärung bis zur Jahrhundertwende, 123–149. Herbert G. Göpfert, Vom Autor zum Leser. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Buchwesens (Munich: Hanser, 1977), 83. Anonymous, Gesellschaft Museum in München. Festschrift zur Hundertjahr-Feier 1802–1902 (Munich: Wolf, 1902), 47–48, lists the 165 founding members. Maximilian Bern, ed., Deklamatorium. Eine Mustersammlung ernster und heiterer Vortragsdichtungen aus der Weltlitteratur, 10th ed. (Leipzig: Reclam, [1910]). Bern’s anthology includes texts by Hood, Poe, Southey, and Wordsworth. Häntzschel, “Lyrik und Lyrikmarkt,” 205. On women’s poetry see Walter Höllerer, “Die Poesie und das rechte Leben. Zu Anthologien für deutsche Frauen und für den Hausgebrauch,” in Die deutschsprachige Anthologie, ed. Joachim Bark and Dietger Pforte, 2 vols., (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1969–1970), 2:168–198, here 168–169. Caroline S. J. Milde, “Lectüre,” in Der deutschen Jungfrau Wesen und Wirken. Winke für das geistige und praktische Leben, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Amelang, 1872), 182–193, quoted after Bildung und

N ot e s

21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

209

Kultur bürgerlicher Frauen 1850–1918. Eine Quellendokumentation aus Anstandsbüchern und Lebenshilfen für Mädchen und Frauen als Beitrag zur weiblichen literarischen Sozialisation, ed. Günter Häntzschel (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986), 403–411. Englische Lyriker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, ins Deutsche übertragen von Luise von Ploennies (Munich: Fleischmann, 1863), 89. On the relevance of circles for English Romanticism see Susanne Schmid, “Holland House and Mary Berry’s Drawing-Room: Salons, Salonnières and Writers,” The Wordsworth Circle 35 (2004): 77–80. Even though, strictly speaking, not all such formations conformed to the model of the French aristocratic “salon” of the ancien régime, the term continues to be used synonymously with “circle.” William Makepeace Thackeray, Letters and Private Papers, ed. Gordon N. Ray, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945–1946), 1:130. Thackeray, 1:131. On Das Chaos see Trevor D. Jones, “English Contributors to Ottilie von Goethe’s ‘Chaos,’” Publications of the English Goethe Society N. S. 9 (1931–1933): 68–91; Almut Otto and Thomas Schmidt, “‘Ilm-Athen’ oder ‘Deutsches Babel’? Der Salon der Ottilie von Goethe zwischen Weltläuﬁgkeit und Provinzialisierung,” in Europa—ein Salon? Beiträge zur Internationalität des literarischen Salons, ed. Roberto Simanowski, Horst Turk, and Thomas Schmidt (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999), 161–189. Gabriele Käfer-Dittmar, Luise von Ploennies 1803–1872. Annäherung an eine vergessene Dichterin (Darmstadt: Schlapp, 1999). Anonymous, Luise von Plönnies (Kassel: Balde, 1854), 13–15. See chap. 1. Luise von Ploennies, “Oscar and Gianetta,” New Monthly Magazine 91 (1850): 360–361; Heimy Taylor, “Thomas Medwin: Intermediary of German Literature and Culture,” in Anglo-German and American-German Crosscurrents, ed. Arthur O. Lewis, W. Lamarr Kopp, and Edward J. Danis (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990), 4:69–85. Käfer-Dittmar, Luise von Ploennies, 71. Apparently it was never published. See chap. 6. Wilhelm Hamm, Jugenderinnerungen, ed. Karl Esselborn (Darmstadt: Selbstverlag, 1926), 160–171. Ibid., 169. Charles Kingsley, “On English Literature,” in Charles Kingsley. The Works, 28 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1880–1885), 20:245–265, here 250; Flint, Woman Reader, 126; Sylva Norman, Flight of the Skylark: The Development of Shelley’s Reputation (London: Reinhardt, 1954), 104. Friedrich Engels, Briefe aus London, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe, ed. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der Kommunistischen Partei der Sowjetunion/Institut für

210

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

N ot e s Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands/Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung, 4 series (Berlin: Dietz/Akademie-Verlag, 1975–), 1/3:451–466, here 452. Letter from Friedrich Engels to Levin Schücking (June 18, 1840), in Marx and Engels, Gesamtausgabe, 3 / 1: 183–184, here 183. On writers’ and translators’ fees see Walter Krieg, Materialien zu einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Bücher-Preise und des Autoren-Honorars vom 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert nebst einem Anhange kleiner Notizen zur Auﬂagengeschichte der Bücher im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Stubenrauch, 1953). Krieg gives no systematic account of developments but offers a compilation of detailed examples. Vernon Lidtke, “Lieder der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 1864–1914,” in Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft 5, Arbeiterkultur im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Jürgen Kocka (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 54–82. Letter from Friedrich Engels to Karl Marx (February 22–March 7, 1845), in Marx and Engels, Gesamtausgabe, 3/1: 266–269, here 267. Thomas Welskopp, Das Banner der Brüderlichkeit. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie vom Vormärz bis zum Sozialistengesetz (Bonn: Dietz, 2000), 339–383. In England, socialist songbooks contained canonized poems. See Chris Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture 1884–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 97–130. In nine socialist songbooks published between 1888 and 1912, 16% of the songs were by canonized poets such as Blake, Burns, Whitman, and Shelley. H. P. Junker, “Englischer Unterricht, geschichtlicher Abriß,” in Enzyklopädisches Handbuch der Pädagogik, ed. W. Rein, 2nd ed., 11 vols. (Langensalza: Beyer, 1903–1911), 2:406–421; Emil Hausknecht, “Englischer Unterricht,” in Rein, Enzyklopädisches Handbuch der Pädagogik, 2:421–433. See chap. 2. The British Classical Authors. Select Specimens of the National Literature of England with Biographical and Critical Sketches. Poetry and Prose, ed. L. Herrig, 20th ed. (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1869); British Classical Authors with Biographical Notices on the Basis of a Selection by L. Herrig, ed. Max Förster, 2 vols., 92nd ed. (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1911). This is a true schoolbook with a neutral brown cover and several maps. A maximum of information is provided on as little space as possible. Paul Foot, Red Shelley [1980] (London: Bookmarks, 1984), 9. Thomas Finkenstaedt, Kleine Geschichte der Anglistik in Deutschland. Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983), 36–45; Konrad Schröder, Die Entwicklung des Englischunterrichts an den deutschsprachigen Universitäten bis zum Jahre 1850

N ot e s

45.

46. 47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

211

(Ratingen: Henn, 1969), 89. Schröder lists several courses about Byron taught at German universities between 1821 and 1846. See also Renate Haas, V. A. Huber, S. Imanuel und die Formationsphase der deutschen Anglistik. Zur Philologisierung der Fremdsprache des Liberalismus und der sozialen Demokratie (Frankfurt: Lang, 1990). An interesting case study about the beginning of English at Vienna is Brigitte Reiffenstein, “Zu den Anfängen des Englischunterrichts an der Universität Wien und zur frühen wissenschaftlichen Anglistik in Wien,” in A Yearbook of Studies in English Language and Literature 1985/86: Festschrift für Siegfried Korninger, ed. Otto Rauchbauer (Vienna: Braunmüller, 1986), 163–185. John Rieder, “Wordsworth and Romanticism in the Academy,” in At the Limits of Romanticism: Essays in Cultural, Feminist, and Materialist Criticism, ed. Mary A. Favret and Nicola J. Watson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 21–39; Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 1–15. See Mark Kipperman, “Absorbing a Revolution: Shelley Becomes a Romantic,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 47 (1992): 187–211. Finkenstaedt, Kleine Geschichte der Anglistik, 253. Shelley was preceded by Shakespeare, Byron, Milton, Tennyson, Burns, and Browning. Wordsworth came eleventh, Keats nineteenth, and Coleridge twenty-third. Richard Ackermann, “Studien über Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound,” Englische Studien 16 (1892): 19–39. Ackermann was the author of a number of studies on Shelley. Another example of such a positivist analysis is Wilhelm Wagner’s Shelley’s “The Cenci.” Analyse, Quellen und innerer Zusammenhang mit des Dichters Ideen (PhD diss., University of Rostock, 1903). Hans Hecht, “Wege neuerer englischer Literaturforschung,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift 3 (1925): 273–292, here 278. Ibid., 292. Ibid., 274. Helene Richter, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Weimar: Felber, 1898), 412. Frank-Rutger Hausmann, Anglistik und Amerikanistik im “Dritten Reich” (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2003). Walter Jacobi, “Bühnen- und Lesedrama. Eine Untersuchung an Shelleys ‘Prometheus Unbound,’” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 27 (1939): 207–217. Theodor Spira, Shelleys geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung (Giessen: Englisches Seminar der Universität, 1923); Finkenstaedt, Kleine Geschichte der Anglistik, 161–168. Hiltrud Häntzschel, “Frauen jüdischer Herkunft an bayerischen Universitäten. Zum Zusammenhang von Religion, Geschlecht und ‘Rasse,’” in Bedrohlich gescheit. Ein Jahrhundert Frauen und Wissenschaft in Bayern, ed. Hiltrud Häntzschel and Hadumod Bußmann

212

57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

65. 66.

N ot e s (Munich: Beck, 1997), 105–136, here 117, 131. Helene Richter was the sister of the renowned “‘Romanistin”‘ Elise Richter. On their lives see also Hans Helmut Christmann, Frau und “Jüdin” an der Universität. Die Romanistin Elise Richter (Wien 1865–Theresienstadt 1943) (Mainz: Steiner, 1980). Graf mentioned Shelley in an article written while in exile. See Oskar Maria Graf, “Zum ‘Kultur-Erbe,’” in Reden und Aufsätze aus dem Exil, ed. Helmut F. Pfanner (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1989), 191–195, here 194. Wolfgang Clemen, Shelleys Geisterwelt. Eine Studie zum Verständnis Shelleyscher Dichtung (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1948), 67. Gustav Kirchner, Percy Bysshe Shelley als revolutionärer Dichter (Iserlohn: Silva-Verlag, 1948), 16. The 1970s produced several ﬁerce attacks on a bourgeois and lyrical Shelley, like Metscher’s reply (1976) to Clemen’s interpretation of “Ode to the West Wind” (1950), see chap. 5. Ulrich Kinzel, “Die Zeitschrift und die Wiederbelebung der Ökonomik. Zur ‘Bildungspresse’ im 19. Jahrhundert,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift 67 (1993): 669–716, here 671. See also Mark Parker, Literary Magazines and British Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Jon P. Klancher, The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790–1832 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987). See Ernst Appel, Das “Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes”—ein Spiegel der internationalen Presse von 1832–1872 (Ein Beitrag zur Pressegeschichte) (Munich: unpubl. diss., 1953), and Susanne Schmid, “Bewunderung, Kritik und Vielstimmigkeit. England und englische Literatur im Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes von 1832 bis 1849,” in Beiträge zur Rezeption der britischen und irischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen Raum, ed. Norbert Bachleitner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 107–117. Anonymous, “Shelley’s Vorschläge zur Regeneration des Menschengeschlechts,” Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes 16 (1839): 469–471, 474–476; Luise von Ploennies, “Einige Gedichte Percy Bisshe Shelley’s. Uebersetzt und mit der Uebertragung durch J. Seybt verglichen,” Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes 29 (1845): 505–506, 515; Anonymous, “Aus Shelley’s Leben,” Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes 33 (1848): 137–138, 142–143. Enno Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? Studien zur Rezeption Percy Bysshe Shelleys im “Vormärz” (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996), 162–177, 220. On Young Germany see chap. 4. Appel, Magazin, 8; Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? 137. Shelley, “Ozymandias,” translated by Ret Marut, Der Ziegelbrenner 1/1 (1917): 7–8; “Die Menschenrechte,” translated by Ret Marut, Der Ziegelbrenner 2/4 (1918): 73–77. See chap. 6.

N ot e s

213

67. Shelley, “Sie sind wenige—Ihr seid viel!” translated by Alfred Wolfenstein, Das Wort 2/6 (1937): 63–65.

Chapter 4 1. Karl Gutzkow, Wally, die Zweiﬂerin [1835], ed. Günter Heintz (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1983). 2. K[arl] G[utzkow], “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” Frankfurter Telegraph 3 (1837): 41–46, here 41. 3. “Ode to the West Wind” (SPP 300), l. 54; “The Indian Serenade,” (SW 580), l. 18. See also Enno Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? Studien zur Rezeption Percy Bysshe Shelleys im “Vormärz” (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996), 101. 4. Gutzkow, “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” 42. 5. Stephen Gill, Wordsworth and the Victorians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Andrew Elfenbein, Byron and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); James Najarian, Victorian Keats: Manliness, Sexuality, and Desire (Houndsmill: Palgrave, 2002). 6. Jan Romein, Die Biographie. Einführung in ihre Geschichte und ihre Problematik (Bern: Francke, 1948), 27–39. 7. Ira Bruce Nadel, Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form (London: Macmillan, 1984), 13–66. See also Catherine N. Parker, Biography: Writing Lives (New York: Twayne, 1996). 8. Günter Oesterle, “‘Kunstwerk als Kritik’ oder ‘Vorübung zur Geschichtsschreibung’? Form- und Funktionswandel der Charakteristik in Romantik und Vormärz,” in Literaturkritik—Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. DFG-Symposion 1989, ed. Wilfried Barner (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990), 64–86; Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? 57. 9. Helmut Scheuer, Biographie. Studien zur Funktion und zum Wandel einer literarischen Gattung vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 55–56. 10. Stefan Zweig partakes in this line of tradition with his collection of essays Drei Dichter ihres Lebens. Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoi (1928) and Der Kampf mit dem Dämon. Hölderlin. Kleist. Nietzsche (1925). Another model is exempliﬁed in Friedrich Gundolf’s biographies, for example, Goethe (1916), where the hero is presented as a legend and timeless monument. 11. Geoffrey Hartman, “Narrative and Beyond,” Literature and Medicine 23 (2004): 334–345, here 334. 12. For a theoretical embedding of biography as discourse see David Amigoni, Victorian Biography: Intellectuals and the Ordering of Discourse (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 18–40. 13. André Maurois, [no title], in Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560–1960, ed. James L. Clifford (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 162–174, here 172.

214

N ot e s

14. Michael O’Neill, “‘The Tears Shed or Unshed’: Romantic Poetry and Questions of Biography,” in Romantic Biography, ed. Arthur Bradley and Alan Rawes (London: Ashgate, 2003), 1–17, here 3. 15. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (London: Moxon, 1858), 1:127. 16. Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (London: Newby, 1847), 2:177. 17. Timothy Clark, Embodying Revolution: The Figure of the Poet in Shelley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 96. 18. Kim Wheatley, Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 60. 19. On Shelley and irony see Kevin L. Cope, “Shelley is Damned Funny After All, or, Reclaiming, Revisioning, and Re-Laughing at Early Romantic Jokes and Jests,” in Romantic Discourses: Papers delivered at the Symposium on the Bicentenary of the Birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ahrenshoop, October 2–5, 1992, ed. Horst Höhne, (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1994), 168–87; on skepticism see C. E. Pulos, The Deep Truth: A Study of Shelley’s Skepticism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1954); Earl R. Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971). 20. Andrew Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 17. 21. Ibid. 22. Karsten Klejs Engelberg, The Making of the Shelley Myth: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley 1822–1860 (London: Mansell, 1988), 1–82. Engelberg omits atheism as a major criterion. 23. Shelley’s death was even regarded as “divine retribution” (Engelberg, Making of the Shelley Myth, 17). See also Ian Hamilton, Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1992), 128–143. 24. Donald H. Reiman, “Shelley in the Encyclopedias,” Keats-Shelley Journal 12 (1963): 55–65. Anonymous, “Shelley, Percy Bysshe,” in Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. Eine Encyklopädie des allgemeinen Wissens, 3rd ed., 16 vols. (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1874–1878), 14:632–633, here 632. 25. Wheatley, Shelley and His Readers, 1. 26. Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, in The Works of Thomas Love Peacock. Halliford Edition, ed. Herbert-Francis Brett-Smith and Clifford Ernest Jones, 10 vols. (London: Constable, 1924–1934), 3:1–149, here 15. 27. William Hazlitt, “On Paradox and Common-Place,” in Table-Talk: The Complete Works, ed. P. P. Howe, 21 vols. (London: Dent, 1930–1934), 8:146–156, here 148. 28. Timothy Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 8. Part of Hogg’s material was

N ot e s

29.

30. 31.

32. 33.

34.

35.

215

published in 1832, but the two-volume biography only appeared in 1858. Kim Wheatley, “‘Attracted by the Body’: Accounts of Shelley’s Cremation,” Keats-Shelley Journal 49 (2000): 162–182, explains the origins of the cremation myth by resorting to these different versions. Thomas Medwin, The Shelley Papers (London: Whitaker, Treacher, and Co., 1833); Thomas Medwin, Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: Noted during a Residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822 (London: Colburn, 1824); Edward John Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (London: Moxon, 1858); Edward John Trelawny, Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (London: Pickering, 1878). Hamilton, Keepers of the Flame, 137. See also Christopher Small, Ariel like a Harpy: Shelley, Mary and Frankenstein (London: Gollancz, 1972); William St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (London: Faber and Faber, 1989). Despite the rise of thoroughly researched academic biographies, brief lives have remained fashionable, too, from the symbolist John Addington Symonds’s Shelley (London: Macmillan, 1878), which appeared in the English Men of Letters series, to Paul Foot’s Red Shelley (1980), written to debunk the myth of the angelic Shelley. On Shelley and the Victorians see Roland A. Duerksen, Shelleyan Ideas in Victorian Literature (London: Mouton, 1966). Yeast and Alton Locke were reviewed in Germany after 1850 and translated in 1890 and 1891, respectively. Norbert Bachleitner, Der englische und französische Sozialroman des 19. Jahrhunderts und seine Rezeption in Deutschland (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 577, 598. Databases like LION are useful sources and enable the user to ﬁnd poems on Shelley by numerous authors such as George Barlow, Francis William Bourdillon, Aubrey Thomas De Vere, Julian Henry Charles Fane, Richard Garnett, Thomas Hardy, Frances Anne Kemble, Edward Cracroft Lefroy, Ernest James Myers, Frederic William Henry Myers, Francis Turner Palgrave, Emily Jane Pfeiffer, Ernest Radford, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Bell Scott, James Thomson, Thomas Wade, William Watson, and Oscar Wilde. Swinburne wrote a poem on Shelley that remained unknown until the 1970s: Anonymous, “‘Shelley’: A Poem by Swinburne,” Keats-Shelley Journal 24 (1975): 171–172. In some ﬁctional accounts of Byron, Shelley serves as a contrasting character and is presented as an eccentric, for example, in Reinhard Kaiser’s Der kalte Sommer des Doktor Polidori (Frankfurt: Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, 1991). This development began rather early, as Wilhelm Müller’s biography Lord Byron (1825) shows, where Shelley also ﬁgures as a minor protagonist. He is termed an “übermütiger Spötter” (“a boisterous mocker”) because he had signed a priory’s

216

36.

37.

38. 39. 40.

41.

N ot e s guestbook with the Greek word for “atheist.” Wilhelm Müller, Lord Byron [1825], in Werke, ed. Maria-Verena Leistner, 5 vols. (Berlin: Gatza, 1994), 4:157–288, here 214–215. In Kasimir Edschmid’s novel Lord Byron. Roman einer Leidenschaft (Berlin: Zsolnay, 1929), Shelley also appears as a minor character. The other texts are: Howard Brenton, Bloody Poetry (London: Methuen, 1985), ﬁrst staged in 1984; Elma Dangerﬁeld, “Mad Shelley”: A Dramatic Life in Five Acts (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1936); Ann Jellicoe, Shelley or The Idealist (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), ﬁrst staged in 1965; Amanda Prantera, Conversations with Lord Byron on Perversion, 163 Years after his Lordship’s Death (London: Cape, 1987); Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (London: Faber and Faber, 1993). On Prantera’s amusing novel see Martin Middeke, “The Triumph of Analogous Text over Digital Truth: Biography, Différance, and Deconstructive Play in Amanda Prantera’s Conversations with Lord Byron on Perversion, 163 Years after his Lordship’s Death,” in Bioﬁctions: The Rewriting of Romantic Lives in Contemporary Fiction and Drama, ed. Martin Middeke and Werner Huber (New York: Camden House, 1999), 120–137. Helene Druskowitz, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Berlin: Oppenheim, 1884); Helene Richter, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Weimar: Felber, 1898); Richard Ackermann, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Der Mann, der Dichter und seine Werke. Nach den besten Quellen dargestellt (Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1906); Wilhelm Hamm, Shelley. Biographische Novelle (Leipzig: Thomas, 1858); Emil Claar, Shelley. Trauerspiel in 5 Aufzügen (Vienna Rosner, 1876); Eugen Kerpel-Claudius, Himmel und Hölle um Shelley. Tragödie ([Budapest:] Bibliotheca, 1943). Maurois, André, Ariel ou la vie de Shelley (Paris: Grasset, 1923); Maurois, André, Ariel: The Life of Shelley (New York: Appleton, 1924); Maurois, André, Ariel oder das Leben Shelleys (Leipzig: Insel, 1928). Ruge’s study offers a thorough survey of Young Germany. Heinrich Laube, “Lord Byron,” [1834] in Reisenovellen, 5 vols. (Leipzig: Wiegand, 1834–1837), 2:474–490, here 485. On Young Germany see Helmut Koopmann, Das Junge Deutschland. Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993); John Whyte, Young Germany in Its Relations to Britain (Menasha: Collegiate Press, 1917). Articles on Shelley appeared in the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes (Anonymous, 1832; Kühne, 1834; Anonymous, 1839; Ploennies, 1845; Anonymous, 1848) and in the Frankfurter Telegraph (Gutzkow, 1837). Kühne described Shelley in his Weibliche und männliche Charaktere, 2 vols. (Female and Male Characters) (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1838), 2:81–117. The magazine Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslandes also issued several articles about Shelley (Anonymous, 1837; Anonymous, 1838; Anonymous, 1838). Ruge’s The Trumpet of a Prophecy? (129–233) proves that their author was presumably Gustav Pﬁzer.

N ot e s 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60.

61. 62.

217

Gutzkow, “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” 41, 42. Ibid., 42, 44. Ibid., 41–42. Ibid., 42. Wulf Wülﬁng, Schlagworte des Jungen Deutschland. Mit einer Einführung in die Schlagwortforschung (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1982), 76–158. Gutzkow, “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” 42. Gutzkow to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, in Wally, 242–243, here 242; see Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? 103. Jeffrey L. Sammons, “Ferdinand Gustav Kühne: Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause,” in Six Essays on the Young German Novel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 81–103, here 81. Kühne, “Medwin’s Memoiren über Shelley,” 197. Ibid., 202. Ibid., 203. Ferdinand Gustav Kühne, Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause. Aus den Papieren eines Mondsteiners (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1835). My reading is based on Ruge’s The Trumpet of a Prophecy? 86–93. See also William P. Hanson, “F. G. Kühne—A Forgotten Young German,” German Life and Letters 17 (1964): 335–338. Kühne, Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause, 65. Ibid., 65–66. In his analysis of Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause, Ruge concludes that Kühne’s Shelley embodies the tensions between artist and society. Kühne even calls Shelley “ein Märthyrer des Irrthums” (“a martyr of error,” Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause, 71), and his Weibliche und männliche Charaktere (1838) presents Shelley as naive and irrational. Georg Herwegh, “Shelley,” in Gedichte eines Lebendigen (Zürich: Verlag des literarischen Comptoirs, 1841), 129–182, here 141. The sonnet was written in 1840. Other short poems about Shelley’s life are: H. Wilke, “Der ewige Schiffer (Ballade) (Nach Shelley),” Mitternachtszeitung für gebildete Stände 11 (1836): 733; Anafestos Kern, “P. B. Shelley,” in Zeitgedichte (Vienna: Heubner, 1848), 87–88. Medwin, “Sonnet on Shelley: From the German of Herwegh,” in The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1:[x]. Herwegh, “[Sonnet II],” in Gedichte eines Lebendigen, 132, ll. 12–14. Herwegh, “Der Gang um Mitternacht,” in Gedichte eines Lebendigen, 92–95, and Queen Mab (canto III, ll. 57–73, SW 771). The inﬂuence is pointed out by Solomon Liptzin, Shelley in Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), 49. Elisabeth Bronfen, Over her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 3, 7. The poet Wilhelm Waiblinger, who had mentioned Shelley’s grave in Die Briten in Rom, was himself buried beside it. Wilhelm Waiblinger, Die Briten in Rom, in Werke und Briefe, ed. Hans Königer, 5

218

63.

64. 65.

66. 67.

68. 69.

70.

71. 72. 73.

N ot e s vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1980–1988), 2:409–518, here 485; see also Peter Bumm, August Graf von Platen. Eine Biographie (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1990), 541. Heinrich Volkenborn, Emanuel Geibel als Übersetzer und Nachahmer englischer Dichtungen (Münster: Theissingsche Buchhandlung, 1910), 60–62. Hermann von Lingg, Meine Lebensreise. Autobiographie (Berlin: Schuster & Loefﬂer, 1899), 185. Brigitte Reiffenstein, “Zu den Anfängen des Englischunterrichts an der Universität Wien und zur frühen wissenschaftlichen Anglistik in Wien,” in A Yearbook of Studies in English Language and Literature 1985/86: Festschrift für Siegfried Korninger, ed. Otto Rauchbauer (Vienna: Braunmüller, 1986), 163–185, here 180. Liptzin, Shelley in Germany, 51–56; Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? 125–127. Alfred Meißner, “Eine Bestattung (18. August 1822),” in Gesammelte Schriften, 18 vols. (Leipzig: Grunow, 1871–1876), 18:100–102, here 101, ll. 13–36. On Meißner and Gottschall see Stefan Mitze, “Idealizing Shelley: Alfred Meißner and the Political Poets of the German Vormärz,” in The Literary Reception of British Romanticism on the European Continent: Papers delivered at the 6th International Symposium of the “Gesellschaft für englische Romantik” held at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Oktober 1994), ed. Michael Gassenmeier, Katrin Kamolz, Jens Gurr, and Frank-Erik Pointner (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996), 103–115. Wheatley, “Attracted by the Body,” 169. Rudolf Gottschall, “Des Dichters Tod,” in Gedichte (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1849), 189–194, here 191, ll. 33–40. See also Ruge, The Trumpet of a Prophecy? 123–124. Keats’s death was aestheticized in a similar vein, as a poem by Rilke shows: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Zu der Zeichnung, John Keats im Tode darstellend,” in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Rilke-Archiv, in connection with Ruth Sieber-Rilke, carried out by Ernst Zinn, 6 vols. (Frankfurt: Insel, 1955–1966), 2:75–76. The sensuality of the scene is striking. If the “Jugendmund” (“youth’s mouth”) evokes imaginary kisses, the word “zärtlich” (“tender”) emphasizes the erotic attraction of the young man, who, like the lovers in Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” remains forever young and cannot grow old. For an analysis of this poem see Sandra Pott, Poetiken. Poetologische Lyrik, Poetik und Ästhetik von Novalis bis Rilke (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 291–315. Gustav Pﬁzer, “Shelley’s Leichenbegängnis,” in Gedichte (Stuttgart: Neff, 1831), 163–165, here 165, ll. 59–79. Kerpel-Claudius, Himmel und Hölle um Shelley, 136. [Obituary notice on Shelley], The Courier 9/616 (August 5, 1822), [3]; quoted in Engelberg, Making of the Shelley Myth, 17, 108.

N ot e s

219

74. Edith Mikeleitis, Ariel. Shelleys Vollendung. Novelle (Shelley’s Perfection: A Novella) (Heidelberg-Waibstadt: Kemper, 1948), 70. 75. Ibid., 71. 76. Mark Kipperman, “Absorbing a Revolution: Shelley Becomes a Romantic,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 47 (1992): 187–211, here 197; see also Susan Wolfson, “Keats Enters History: Autopsy, Adonais, and the Fame of Keats,” in Keats and History, ed. Nicholas Roe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 17–45, here 32. 77. Matthew Arnold, “Byron” [1881], in The Complete Prose of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super, 11 vols. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960–1977), 9:217–237, here 237; George Mathewson, “Matthew Arnold’s ‘Ineffectual Angel,’” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 21 (1970): 3–6. 78. Arnold, “Byron,” 218. 79. Eudo C. Mason, Rilke, Europe, and the English-Speaking World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 103–105. 80. Maurois, Ariel, 23, 289. 81. Kerpel-Claudius, Himmel und Hölle um Shelley, 15. 82. Mikeleitis, Ariel, 11. 83. Ibid., 24. 84. Georg von der Vring, “Shelleys Woge” [1956], in Die Gedichte, ed. Christiane Peter and Kristian Wachinger (Ebenhausen: LangewiescheBrandt, 1989), 250–251. See Jens Aden, Die Lyrik von der Vrings. Themen, Formen, Traditionen, frühe Rezeption. Eine Monographie über das lyrische Werk des Schriftstellers und Malers (1899–1968) (Frankfurt: Lang, 1993). 85. Englisch Horn (1953) includes the following Shelley poems: “When the Lamp is Shattered,” a passage from Prometheus Unbound (act 1, 11. 737–749) “Dirge,” “I Fear thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden,” “To the Moon,” “The Waning Moon,” “The Indian Serenade,” “To—” (“One Word is Too Often Profaned”), “A Widow Bird,” “A Lament,” “A Fragment: To Music.” Angelsächsische Lyrik aus sechs Jahrhunderten (1962) contains “Ode to the West Wind” and “Ozymandias.” The poems were translated by Vring himself. 86. Eckart Kleßmann, “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” in Seestücke. Gedichte 1962–1965 (Frankfurt: Corvus Verlag, 1975), 21, ll. 1–3. Other biographical poems are in Kleßmann, Fünf Winter später. Gedichte (Mainz: Hase & Köhler, 1993).

Chapter 5 1. For a comprehensive survey see Ludwig Völker, ed., Lyriktheorie. Texte vom Barock bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990). 2. August Wilhelm Schlegel, “das Lyrische, das rein Subjektive” (“the lyrical, the purely subjective”), in Kritische Schriften und Briefe, ed.

220

N ot e s

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

Edgar Lohner, 7 vols. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962–1967), vol. 2, Die Kunstlehre, 306; “Das lyrische Gedicht ist der musikalische Ausdruck von Gemütsbewegungen durch Sprache” (“The lyrical poem is the musical expression of emotions through language”), “Dritte Vorlesung,” in Kritische Schriften und Briefe, vol. 5, Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 39–47, here 40. Prometheus Unbound, act 2, scene 4, l. 116 (SPP 250). Many indexed editions of German writers’ journals or letters list Shelley, proving that he was much read. However, this method of tracing an author’s fame has its pitfalls because it privileges male elite readers, whose texts are available as academic editions. On translation as cultural transfer see Mary Snell-Hornby, Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach, rev. ed. (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1995), 39–63. Thomas Adam, “Parallele Wege. Geschichtsvereine und Naturschutzbewegung in Deutschland,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48 (1997): 413–428. On the German reception of Eichendorff see Eberhard Lämmert, “Eichendorffs Wandel unter den Deutschen. Überlegungen zur Wirkungsgeschichte seiner Dichtung,” in Die deutsche Romantik. Poetik, Formen und Motive, ed. Hans Steffen, 3rd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 219–252. Freudvoll und Leidvoll. Liebesgrüße von nah und fern, 7th ed. (Berlin: Brachvogel & Ranst, [1894]), 190. Joseph von Eichendorff, “Mondnacht,” in Werke, ed. Wolfgang Frühwald, Brigitte Schillbach, and Hartwig Schultz, 6 vols. (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–1993), 1:322–323. Eduard Mörike, “Er ist’s,” in Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Werke und Briefe, ed. Hubert Arbogast, Hans-Henrik Krummacher, Herbert Meyer, and Bernhard Zeller, 20 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1967–2005), 1/1:41, ll. 1–4. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ausgewählte Dichtungen. Deutsch von Adolf Strodtmann (Hildburghausen: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1866), 154. Rainer Emig, “Übertragene Dekadenz. Überlegungen zur Rezeption britischer ﬁn de siècle-Literatur bei Stefan George und Hugo von Hofmannsthal,” in Norbert Bachleitner, ed., Beiträge zur Rezeption der britischen und irischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen Raum (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 317–343. Stefan George, “Zu einer indischen Weise. Nach Shelley,” in Die Fibel. Auswahl erster Verse (Berlin: Bondi, 1901), 58–59. Ralph Farrell, Stefan Georges Beziehungen zur englischen Dichtung (Berlin: Ebering, 1937), 105–114. Jean L. de Palacio, “Music and Musical Themes in Shelley’s Poetry,” Modern Language Review 59 (1964): 345–359, here 347.

N ot e s

221

16. Burton R. Pollin, Music for Shelley’s Poetry: An Annotated Bibliography of Musical Settings of Shelley’s Poetry (New York: Da Capo Press, 1974), 155–156. Shorter surveys can be found in dictionaries: Percy M. Young, “Shelley, Percy Bysshe,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, ed. Friedrich Blume, 17 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–86), 12: col. 634–636; Jeremy Dibble, “Shelley, Percy Bysshe,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 2nd ed., 29 vols. (London: Macmillan, 2001), 22:249; Paul Chancellor, “British Bards and Continental Composers,” The Musical Quarterly 46 (1960): 1–11. Pollin presents a large number of musical settings, many of which have a German text or were published in Germany. The names of most composers are no longer familiar today. 17. Pollin, Music for Shelley’s Poetry, 58. 18. Alice Pollin and Burton Pollin, “In Pursuit of Pearson’s Shelley Songs,” Music and Letters 46 (1965): 322–331. 19. Ibid., 327. 20. Mary Shelley, Rambles in Germany and Italy, ed. Jeanne Moskal, in The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley, ed. Nora Crook with Pamela Clemit, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1996), 8:49–386, here 197. 21. J. W. Smeed, German Song and its Poetry (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 146. 22. Heinrich Volkenborn, Emanuel Geibel als Übersetzer und Nachahmer englischer Dichtungen (Münster: Theissingsche Buchhandlung, 1910), 10. 23. Walter Hinck, “Epigonendichtung und Nationalidee. Zur Lyrik Emanuel Geibels,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 85 (1966): 267–284; Herbert Kaiser, “Die ästhetische Einheit der Lyrik Geibels,” Wirkendes Wort 27 (1977): 244–257. 24. Emanuel Geibel, “Am Meere,” in Gesammelte Werke, 4th ed., 8 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1906), 2:55–56, here 55, ll. 1–8. For the dating see Geibels Werke, ed. Wolfgang Stammler, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1918), 1:431–435, 448–449. 25. Hinck, “Epigonendichtung und Nationalidee,” 275. 26. Geibel, “Am Meere,” ll. 9–16. 27. Ibid., ll. 53–56. 28. See Alan Bewell, “Keats’s ‘Realm of Flora,’” Studies in Romanticism 31 (1992): 71–98, here 73. 29. Geibel’s “Nachts am Meere” also resembles Shelley’s “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples.” It presents a quiet natural setting: a silvery moon, the sea, and amber sand (“Nachts am Meere,” in Gesammelte Werke, 2:41–42). The speaker eventually turns to God, declares the value of hierarchy, and thereby imbues Shelley’s model with un-Shelleyan spirit.

222

N ot e s

30. Gottfried Keller, “Abendlied,” in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Thomas Böning, Gerhard Kaiser, Kai Kauffmann, Dominik Müller, Bettina Schulte-Böning, and Peter Villwock, 7 vols. (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–1996), 1:407; Leonard Forster, “Gottfried Keller: Some Echoes,” German Life and Letters 10 (1957): 177–182. 31. Alfred Meißner, “In der Gebirgswüste,” “Zurechtweisung,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 18 vols. (Leipzig: Grunow, 1871–1876), 18:48–49, 73. 32. Friedrich Oswald [Friedrich Engels], “Landschaften” [1840], in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe, ed. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der Kommunistischen Partei der Sowjetunion/Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands/ Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung, 4 series (Berlin: Dietz/Akademie-Verlag, 1975–), 1/3:127–131, here 130, ll. 1–8. 33. Two sheets with unpublished Shelley translations (short passages from The Revolt of Islam and Prince Athanase), probably dating from 1888, in Marx and Engels, Gesamtausgabe, 1/31:577–578, 1325–1331. The article by Aveling and Marx-Aveling also contains translations, some of which are possibly by Engels. 34. Letter from Hugo von Hofmannsthal to Walther Brecht (February 20, 1929), in Briefwechsel zwischen George und Hofmannsthal, 2nd rev. ed. (Munich: Küpper, 1953), 234–236, here 235. 35. Michael Hamburger, “Hofmannsthal’s Debt to the English-Speaking World,” in Hofmannsthal: Three Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 133–155; Annette Simonis, “Hofmannsthal und die englische Tradition. Rezeption und Adaptation englischsprachiger Literatur in den Schriften Hugo von Hofmannsthals,” arcadia 30 (1995): 286–302; Hanna B. Lewis, “Hofmannsthal, Shelley, and Keats,” German Life and Letters 27 (1974): 220–234; Emig, “Übertragene Dekadenz,” 317–343. 36. H. R. Klieneberger, George, Rilke, Hofmannsthal and the Romantic Tradition (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1991), 86–91. 37. Karl Wolfskehl, “Blicke und Blitze,” Blätter für die Kunst 3 (1896): 22–23, here 22. 38. On the George circle see Rainer Kolk, Literarische Gruppenbildung. Am Beispiel des George-Kreises 1890–1945 (Niemeyer: Tübingen, 1998). 39. Edith Landmann, “Das Wesen des Dichters,” in Georgika, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: Weiß’sche Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1924), 5–34, here 33. 40. Ernst Glöckner, Begegnungen mit Stefan George. Auszüge aus Briefen und Tagebüchern 1913–1934 (Heidelberg: Stiehm, 1972), 219–223. The only other English poet named is Shakespeare, also in category

N ot e s

41.

42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51. 52.

53.

54.

55. 56. 57.

223

two. George regarded contemporary English poetry as “necessary,” but no authors are speciﬁed. On George and hermeticism see Gert Mattenklott, Bilderdienst. Ästhetische Opposition bei Beardsley und George, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt: Syndikat, 1985), 305. Letter from Hofmannsthal to Stephan Gruss (January 23, 1907), in Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Briefe 1900–1909 (Vienna: BermannFischer, 1937), 253–255, here 254. Lewis, “Hofmannsthal, Shelley, and Keats,” 230. Ibid., 222–223; W. B. Yeats, “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry,” in Essays and Introductions (London: Macmillan, 1961), 65–95, here 73–74. Yeats, too, was inﬂuenced by Shelley’s imagery (see chap. 7). Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Der Jüngling und die Spinne,” Blätter für die Kunst 4 (1899), 74–76, here 74. On Hofmannsthal’s poetic persona see Karl Pestalozzi, Die Entstehung des lyrischen Ich. Studien zum Motiv der Erhebung in der Lyrik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970), 283–290. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Rudolf Hirsch, Clemens Köttelwesch, Heinz Rölleke, and Ernst Zinn, 31 vols. (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1975–2001), 1:322. B. M. Baxter, Albert Verwey’s Translation from Shelley’s Poetical Works: A Study of Their Style and Rhythm and a Consideration of Their Value as Translations (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden, 1963), 1. Albert Verwey, “Cor Cordium,” Blätter für die Kunst 6 (1902–1903): 111–121. See also Karlhans Kluncker, Blätter für die Kunst. Zeitschrift der Dichterschule Stefan Georges (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1974). “Cor Cordium” is the inscription on Shelley’s tomb. That the motif of ﬁnding one’s ideal counterpart inﬂuenced Verwey can be seen from an article on his translation of Alastor: Albert Verwey, “Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude. Translated into Dutch,” English Studies 4 (1922): 152–170. Verwey, “Cor Cordium,” 120, part 5, l. 74. Wolfgang Clemen, “Shelleys ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ Eine Interpretation,” Anglia 69 (1950): 335–375; Thomas Metscher, “Shelley und Hölderlin—Zur Kritik bürgerlicher Literaturwissenschaft,” gulliver 1 (1976): 44–70. Paul Clemen, Gedenkrede auf Stefan George. Gehalten am 13. Dezember 1933 in der Aula der Universität Bonn (Bonn: Scheur, 1934). The word “Führer” is used several times, for example, 5, 12. Paul Clemen spoke about “die Rückkehr des Dichterberufs zur priesterlichen Würde” (“the return of the poet’s profession to priestly dignity,” 7). Kolk, Literarische Gruppenbildung, 406–416. Ibid., 188–194. For a discussion of this term, see chap. 3.

224

N ot e s

58. On Wolfenstein and Shelley see chap. 7. 59. Wolfgang Weiß, “Clemen, Wolfgang,” in Literaturlexikon. Autoren und Werke deutscher Sprache, ed. Walther Killy, 15 vols. (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1988–1993), 2:430. 60. Clemen, “Shelleys ‘Ode to the Westwind,’” 364, “Das heißt, der Dichter fühlt sich als einer, der zur ganzen Menschheit spricht, er hat einen heiligen Auftrag an sie.” (“That means, the poet feels as one who speaks to all of humankind, he has a holy mission for them.”)

Chapter 6 1. Bouthaina Shaaban, “Shelley in the Chartist Press,” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 34 (1983): 41–60; Shaaban, “Shelley and the Barmbys,” Keats-Shelley Journal 41 (1992): 122–138; Shaaban, “Shelley and the Chartists,” in Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World, ed. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 114–125. On Engels and Campe’s Queen Mab, see chap. 2. 2. Rosemary Selle, “Aufnahme und Wirkung: Burns in Deutschland,” in Robert Burns. Liebe und Freiheit. Lieder und Gedichte Zweisprachig, ed. Rudi Camerer with Rosemary Selle, Horst Meller, and Joachim Utz, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1988), 319. Freiligrath’s imitations are discussed in the same volume, 243–245. See also Selle, The Parritch and the Partridge: The Reception of Robert Burns in Germany: A History (Heidelberg: unpubl. diss., 1981), 76–89, 188–194. 3. Robert Burns, “A Man’s a Man for A’ That,” in The Complete Works, ed. James A. Mackay (Ayrshire: Alloway Publishing, 1986), 535–536, here 535, ll. 1–8. 4. Ferdinand Freiligrath, “Trotz alledem!” in Werke in sechs Teilen, ed. Julius Schwering, 6 vols. (Berlin: Bong, no year), 2:34–35, ll. 1–8. 5. Ibid., 2:129–131, here 129. 6. Horst Meller, “Einzelaspekt Gedicht,” in Handbuch Englisch als Fremdsprache, ed. Rüdiger Ahrens, Wolf-Dietrich Bald, and Werner Hüllen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1995), 405–411, here 407–408. 7. Wolf Biermann, Trotz Alledem! LP (CBS Schallplatten 82975, 1978). 8. English Romantic poetry was misused in Nazi Germany, when a passage from Freiligrath’s poem “Requiescat,” an imitation of Keats’s “Robin Hood—To a Friend,” was recited at festivities on May 1, National Labor Day. Two stanzas were extracted in order to celebrate a blood-and-soil ideology, with which Freiligrath’s liberal 1848 nationalism had nothing in common (Hans Wipperfürth, “Freiligrath, John Keats und die soziale Lyrik,” Grabbe-Jahrbuch 10 (1991): 146–161, here 146).

N ot e s

225

9. Solomon Liptzin, Shelley in Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), 72–74, points out that The Mask of Anarchy is among the inﬂuences on the “Federal Hymn.” See also Wolfgang Büttner, Georg Herwegh—Ein Sänger des Proletariats. Der Weg eines bürgerlichdemokratischen Poeten zum Streiter für die Arbeiterbewegung. Mit einem Anhang ungedruckter Briefe und Dokumente über Herweghs Verhältnis zur Arbeiterbewegung, 2nd rev. ed. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1976), 141–148; Theophil Zolling, “Lasalle, Herwegh und die Socialdemokratie,” Die Gegenwart 50 (1896): 373–377; Horst Meller, “Shelley in Germany,” in Romantic Discourses: Papers delivered at the Symposium on the Bicentenary of the Birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ahrenshoop, October 2–5, 1992, ed. Horst Höhne (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1994), 47–60, here 47–51. On the Social Democrats’ festive culture, see chap. 3. 10. Georg Herwegh, “Bundeslied für den Allgemeinen deutschen Arbeiterverein,” in Herweghs Werke in drei Teilen, ed. Hermann Tardel, 3 vols. (Berlin: Bong, 1909), 3:88–89, ll. 1–8, 37–48. 11. The different endings of the poems were remarked upon by Franz Mehring: “Aber in den Schlußstrophen ruft Herweghs Gedicht zum Kampfe auf, während Shelley die Männer Englands nur ihre eigene Gruft graben läßt” (“Yet in the ﬁnal stanzas, Herwegh’s poem calls for a ﬁght, whereas Shelley has the men of England digging their own vault”). See Franz Mehring, “Sozialistische Lyrik. G. Herwegh— F. Freiligrath—H. Heine” [1914], in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Thomas Höhle, Hans Koch, and Josef Schleifstein, 15 vols. (Berlin: Dietz, 1960–1967), vol. 10, Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur von Klopstock bis Weerth, 395–421, here 404. 12. Letter from Ferdinand Lasalle to Georg Herwegh (October 8, 1863), in Ferdinand Lasalle’s Briefe an Georg Herwegh, ed. Marcel Herwegh (Zürich: Müller, 1896), 78–79, here 79. 13. Zolling, “Lasalle, Herwegh und die Socialdemokratie,” 374. 14. Inge Lammel, Das Arbeiterlied, 3rd rev. ed. (Leipzig: Reclam, 1980), 213–214; Vernon Lidtke, “Lieder der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 1864–1914,” in Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft 5, Arbeiterkultur im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Jürgen Kocka (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 61. For socialist festive culture and the role assigned to music, see chap. 3. 15. Lidtke, “Lieder der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 1864–1914,” 56. 16. Lammel, Das Arbeiterlied, 214. 17. Büttner, Georg Herwegh, 145. 18. Werner Rieck, “Georg Herwegh und Percy Shelley in frühen Liedsammlungen polnischer Sozialisten,” Pädagogische Hochschule “Karl Liebknecht” Potsdam. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 28 (1984): 259–262. 19. George Bernard Shaw, “Shaming the Devil about Shelley” [1892], in Pen Portraits and Reviews (London: Constable and Company Limited, 1932, repr. 1949), 244.

226

N ot e s

20. Bertolt Brecht, “Kurzer Bericht über 400 (vierhundert) junge Lyriker,” in Werke. Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, and Klaus-Detlev Müller, 30 vols. (Berlin/Frankfurt: Aufbau/Suhrkamp, 1988–2000), 21:191–193, here 191. 21. Brecht, “Weite und Vielfalt der realistischen Schreibweise” [1938], in Werke, 22/1:424–433. 22. “Sollte seine große Ballade ‘Der Maskenzug der Anarchie’, geschrieben unmittelbar nach den von der Bourgeoisie blutig untedrückten Unruhen in Manchester (1819), nicht den gewöhnlichen Beschreibungen einer realistischen Schreibweise entsprechen, so hätten wir dafür zu sorgen, daß die Beschreibung realistischer Schreibweise eben geändert, erweitert, vervollständigt wird” (“Should his great ballad ‘The Mask of Anarchy,’ written immediately after the unrest in Manchester [1819], which had been suppressed with bloodshed by the bourgeoisie, not have corresponded to the usual descriptions of realist writing, then we would have to ensure that the description of realist writing is changed, enlarged, completed”), Brecht, “Weite und Vielfalt der realistischen Schreibweise,” 425. Brecht wrote another poem in reaction to Shelley: “Nachdenkend, wie ich höre” (“Pondering, as I Hear”), in Werke, 15:46. 23. Brecht, “Weite und Vielfalt der realistischen Schreibweise,” 430. 24. Marja-Leena Hakkarainen, Das Turnier der Texte. Stellenwert und Funktion der Intertextualität im Werk Bertolt Brechts (Frankfurt: Lang, 1994), 151–160; Christel Hartinger, Bertolt Brecht—das Gedicht nach Krieg und Wiederkehr. Studien zum lyrischen Werk 1945–1956 (Berlin: Brecht-Zentrum der DDR, 1982), 91–143; Christel Hartinger, “Freiheit und Democracy,” in Brecht Handbuch in fünf Bänden, ed. Jan Knopf, 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001–2003), 2:407–412; Horst Höhne, “Bertolt Brecht’s Treatment of the English Romantics or, His Use and Misuse of Shelley’s Reform Poetry,” in The Literary Reception of British Romanticism on the European Continent: Papers delivered at the 6th International Symposium of the “Gesellschaft für englische Romantik” held at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Oktober 1994), ed. Michael Gassenmeier, Katrin Kamolz, Jens Gurr, and Frank-Erik Pointner (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996), 128–138; Steven E. Jones, “Shelley’s Satire of Succession and Brecht’s Anatomy of Regression: ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ and Der anachronistische Zug oder Freiheit und Democracy,” in Bennett and Curran, Shelley, 193–200. 25. Brecht, “Freiheit und Democracy,” in Werke, 15:183–188, here 184, ll. 29–32; the translation in Brecht, Poems, ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London: Methuen, 1976), 410. 26. Freiheit und Democracy. Der anachronistische Zug. Ein deutsches Bilderbuch, ed. Hermann Gremliza, Angela Kammrad, Ute Schilde,

N ot e s

27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

227

Willy Thomczyk, and Günter Wallraff, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1980); Hartinger, “Freiheit und Democracy,” 411–412. Franz Josef Degenhardt, “Der anachronistische Zug oder Freiheit, die sie meinen,” in Kommt an den Tisch unter Pﬂaumenbäumen. Sämtliche Lieder mit Noten (Munich: dtv, 1981), no. 99. The song was released on the following record: Franz Josef Degenhardt, Kommt an den Tisch unter Pﬂaumenbäumen (Polydor Stereo 2371380, 1973). Rolf Recknagel, “Der Empörer B. Traven. Eine Einschätzung der wichtigsten Werke,” Weimarer Beiträge 9 (1963): 751–791, here 763–767; Armin Richter, Der Ziegelbrenner. Das individualistische Kampforgan des frühen B. Traven (Bonn: Bouvier, 1977), 81–82; Jörg Thunecke, ed., B. Traven the Writer: Der Schriftsteller B. Traven (Nottingham: Refugium, 2003). Shelley, “Ozymandias,” “Zeit” (“Time”), “Morgen” (“To-morrow”), Der Ziegelbrenner 1 (1) (1917): 7–8, “Die Menschenrechte,” Der Ziegelbrenner 2 (4) (1918): 73–77. For advertisements of the “Menschenrechte,” see Richter, Der Ziegelbrenner, 376–377. Ret Marut, Khundar, Der Ziegelbrenner 4 (26–30) (1920): 1–72. Richter, Der Ziegelbrenner, 323. Recknagel, “Der Empörer,” 763. Marut, Khundar, 6. Ibid., 72. Thunecke, “Einleitung,” in Thunecke, B. Traven the Writer, 6–50, here 18–19. Shelley, “Declaration of Rights,” in The Complete Works, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, 10 vols. (New York: Gordian Press, 1965), 5:269–275, here 273. B. Traven, Das Totenschiff. Die Geschichte eines amerikanischen Seemanns (Berlin: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1926), 167. Shelley, “Die Menschenrechte,” 77; Shelley, “Declaration of Rights,” 275. Other novels by Traven, many of which are set in South America, tackle oppression, too. For example, Die Baumwollpﬂücker (1928) starts with a song reminiscent of Shelley’s ideas. Wilhelm Hamm, Shelley. Biographische Novelle (Leipzig: Thomas, 1858), 74. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 94–95. Ibid., 86. Hamm calls him “einen blonden Nordländer” (“a blond Northlander,” 65), “Fremder mit den blonden Locken” (“foreigner with the blond curls,” 70). Hamm, Jugenderinnerungen, 20. Liptzin, Shelley in Germany, 80.

228

N ot e s

48. Another rebellious version of the English poet’s life is Emil Claar’s drama Shelley; see Liptzin, Shelley in Germany, 81–87.

Chapter 7 1. Ernst Mach, Analyse der Empﬁndungen [1886], 5th ed. (Jena: G. Fischer, 1906), 20; see also Judith Ryan, “Die andere Psychologie. Ernst Mach und die Folgen,” in Österreichische Gegenwart. Die moderne Literatur und ihr Verhältnis zur Tradition, ed. Wolfgang Paulsen (Bern: Francke, 1980), 11–24. 2. Jacques Le Rider, Modernity and Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 30–45. 3. Le Rider mentions three new ﬁgures: “the mystic, Narcissus, and the genius” (45). On the reception of Faust, see Jochen Schmidt, Goethes Faust. Erster und Zweiter Teil. Grundlagen—Werk—Wirkung (Munich: Beck, 1999), 305–324; Hans Schwerte, Faust und das Faustische. Ein Kapitel deutscher Ideologie (Stuttgart: Klett, 1962), 148–242. 4. Steven E. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany 1890–1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 17. 5. For a detailed survey, see Raymond Trousson, Le Thème de Prométhée dans la littérature européenne, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1964); Elisabeth Frenzel, “Prometheus,” in Stoffe der Weltliteratur. Ein Lexikon dichtungsgeschichtlicher Längsschnitte, 6th ed. (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1983), 622–627. 6. Stuart Curran, “The Political Prometheus,” in Spirits of Fire: English Romantic Writers and Contemporary Historical Methods, ed. G. A. Rosso and Daniel P. Watkins (Rutherford: Associated University Presses, 1990), 260–284. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Ueber die dramatischen Dichtungen Byrons,” in Nietzsche, Frühe Schriften 1861–1864, ed. Hans Joachim Mette (Munich: dtv, 1994), 9–15; David S. Thatcher, “Nietzsche and Byron,” Nietzsche-Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch für NietzscheForschung 3 (1974): 130–151, here 133. 8. Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 2nd ed., 15 vols. (Munich/Berlin: dtv/de Gruyter, 1999), vol. 4, Also sprach Zarathustra, 27; Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common, in The Complete Works, ed. Oscar Levy, 18 vols. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), 9:21. Thatcher points out several other stylistic echoes (132). 9. Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 11, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1884–1885, 451. 10. Albrecht Graf Wickenburg, “Vorwort des Übersetzers,” in Der entfesselte Prometheus. Lyrisches Drama in vier Akten von Percy Bysshe Shelley (Halle: Hendel, 1902), 3–11, here 4, 6, and 8. 11. Wickenburg, Shelley, 96.

N ot e s

229

12. Der entfesselte Prometheus. Ein lyrisches Drama in vier Aufzügen von Percy Bysshe Shelley. Deutsch in den Versmaßen des Originals und mit Anmerkungen versehen von H. Richter (Leipzig: Reclam [1895]), 110. 13. Robert Zimmermann, “Shelley’s entfesselter Prometheus in deutscher Uebersetzung,” Deutsche Rundschau 9 (1876): 144–146, here 145. 14. Hans Helmut Christmann, Frau und “Jüdin” an der Universität. Die Romanistin Elise Richter (Wien 1865–Theresienstadt 1943) (Mainz: Steiner, 1980), 8–9. Richter’s book and her scholarly articles interpret the English poet in this way. 15. Schwerte, Faust und das Faustische, 173–186. 16. W. Wagner, “Shelley und der Weltkrieg,” Zeitschrift für französischen und englischen Unterricht 16 (1917): 11–32, here 28–29. 17. Le Rider, Modernity and Crises of Identity, 46–59. 18. Uwe Böker, “Die Anfänge der europäischen Blake-Rezeption,” arcadia 16 (1981): 266–283, here 271. 19. W. B. Yeats, “William Blake and the Imagination,” in Essays and Introductions (London: Macmillan, 1961), 111–115, here 111. 20. Böker, “Die Anfänge der europäischen Blake-Rezeption,” 267. 21. Yeats, “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry,” in Essays and Introductions, 65–95, here 65. 22. Ibid., 66–67. 23. Donald Weeks, “Image and Idea in Yeats’ The Second Coming,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 63 (1948): 281–292; George Bornstein, Yeats and Shelley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Adele M. Dalsimer, The Unappeasable Shadow: Shelley’s Inﬂuence on Yeats (New York: Garland, 1988). 24. Rudolf Kassner, Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben. Über englische Dichter und Maler im 19. Jahrhundert. Accorde [1900], in Kassner, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Ernst Zinn and Klaus E. Bohnenkamp, 10 vols. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1969-91), 1:5–313. 25. On Kassner, see Eudo C. Mason, “Rudolf Kassner zum Gedächtnis,” in Exzentrische Bahnen. Studien zum Dichterbewußtsein der Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 168–180; for Kassner’s reading of Keats, see Sandra Pott, Poetiken. Poetologische Lyrik. Poetik und Ästhetik von Novalis bis Rilke (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 306–332. 26. Kassner, Mystik, 30. 27. Böker, “Die Anfänge der europäischen Blake-Rezeption,” 275. 28. Kassner, Mystik, 70. 29. Ibid., 16–17. 30. Ibid., 86. 31. Ibid., 88, 91, 103, and other passages. 32. Ibid., 103. 33. One critic wrote: “Der Verf., der seine Widmung aus Wien datirt, verbindet eine sehr schöne Kenntniss der neuern englischen Litteratur mit einem seltsamen, aphoristischen Stil, der prophetisch sein will,

230

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

41.

N ot e s thatsächlich aber chaotisch wirkt.” (“The author, who dates his dedication from Vienna, combines a very good knowledge of recent English literature with a strange, aphoristic style, which wants to be prophetic but in fact appears chaotic.”) (A. Brandl, “Rudolf Kassner; Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben,” Deutsche Litteraturzeitung 21 [April 21, 1900]: col. 1133–1134, here 1133). Another review written in a similar vein is: Otto Stoeßl, “Rudolf Kassner; Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben,” Die Nation. Wochenschrift für Politik, Volkswirthschaft und Litteratur, May 26, 1900, 482. Kassner, “Erinnerung an England,” in Umgang der Jahre. Gleichnis—Gespräch—Essay—Erinnerung, in Kassner, Sämtliche Werke, 9:281–357, here 353. See Horst Meller, “The Parricidal Imagination: Schiller, Blake, Fuseli and the Romantic Revolt against the Father,” in The Romantic Imagination: Literature and Art in England and Germany, ed. Frederick Burwick and Jürgen Klein (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 75–94. Georg Heym, Dichtungen und Schriften. Gesamtausgabe, ed. Karl Ludwig Schneider and Georg Burckhardt, 4 vols. (Hamburg/ Munich: Ellermann/Beck, 1960–1968), 3:171. Friedrich Schön, Beatrice Cenci. Ein Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen (Vienna: Wimmer, 1835); Stendhal, “Les Cenci,” in Chroniques Italiennes, ed. Roland Beyer (Paris: Juillard, 1964), 157–191; Adolph Schack, Die Pisaner (Berlin: Hertz, 1872); Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts, ed. Harold Orel (London: Macmillan, 1978); Solomon Liptzin, Shelley in Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), 31–36; see also the poem by Hermann Lingg, “Beatrice Cenci,” in Schlußsteine. Neue Gedichte (Berlin: Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1878), 92–93. Letter from Stefan Zweig to Ludwig Barnay (March 22, 1907), in Zweig, Briefe 1897–1914, ed. Knut Beck, Jeffrey B. Berlin, and Natascha Weschenbach-Feggeler (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1995), 143–145, here 144. See also Zweig, “Legende und Wahrheit der Beatrice Cenci” [1926], in Zeiten und Schicksale. Aufsätze und Vorträge aus den Jahren 1902–1942, ed. Knut Beck (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1990), 302–312. Anonymous, “Nachrichten,” Die Literatur 27 (1924–1925): 573–574, here 574. Herbert Eulenberg, Anna Walewska, in Ausgewählte Werke in fünf Bänden, 5 vols. (Stuttgart: J. Engelhorns Nachfolger, 1925–1926), 2:109–188. Antonin Artaud, Les Cenci [1935], in Oeuvres Complètes, 26 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976–1994), 4:147–271; Constanze Spreen, “Resisting the Plague: The French Reactionary Right and Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty,” Modern Language Quarterly 64 (2003): 71–96.

N ot e s

231

42. For the stage history, see Curran, Shelley’s Cenci: Scorpions Ringed with Fire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 183–256; Kenneth N. Cameron and Horst Frenz, “The Stage History of Shelley’s The Cenci,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 60 (1945): 1080–1105; Bert O. States, Jr., “Addendum: The Stage History of Shelley’s The Cenci,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 72 (1957): 633–644. Of interest is the Dutch reception: Kris Steyaert, “A ‘Massive Dramatic Plumpudding’: The Politics of Reception in the Antwerp Performance of Shelley’s The Cenci,” Keats-Shelley Journal 50 (2001): 14–26. 43. Suzanne Ferris, “Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci and the Rhetoric of Tyranny,” in British Romantic Drama: Historical and Critical Essays, ed. Terence Allan Hoagwood and Daniel P. Watkins (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998), 208–228. 44. Curran, Shelley’s Cenci, 138. 45. Cameron and Frenz, “Stage History of Shelley’s The Cenci,” 1094. 46. [Diary entry of November 5, 1910], in Heym, Dichtungen und Schriften, 3:149. 47. Heym, [“Cenci/Handschrift”] in Bernd W. Seiler, Die historischen Dichtungen Georg Heyms. Analyse und Kommentar (Munich: Fink, 1972), 244–246, and Heym, “Cenci,” in Dichtungen und Schriften, 2:867–878, henceforth referred to as C1 and C2. 48. Heym, [“Cenci/Handschrift”], 244. Seiler, whose study provides several transcriptions of Heym’s manuscripts, uses an asterisk (*) to indicate that the following word is not clearly legible. 49. Heym, “Cenci,” 875. 50. Klaus Siebenhaar, “Ästhetik und Utopie. Das Shelley-Bild Alfred Wolfensteins—Anmerkungen zum Verhältnis von Dichtung und Gesellschaft im Spätexpressionismus,” in Preis der Vernunft. Literatur und Kunst zwischen Aufklärung, Widerstand und Anpassung. Festschrift für Walter Huder, ed. Klaus Siebenhaar and Hermann Haarmann (Berlin: Medusa, 1982), 121–133, here 123; Alfred Wolfenstein, “Kämpfer Künstler,” Zeit-Echo no. 12, 1915–1916, 177–179; Curran, Shelley’s Cenci, 218–223; Cameron and Frenz, “Stage History of Shelley’s The Cenci,” 1093–1097. 51. Shelley. Die Cenci. Drama in fünf Akten. In neuer deutscher Bearbeitung von Alfred Wolfenstein (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1924), 37–38. 52. Ibid., 46. 53. Horst Höhne, “Shelleys ‘Der entfesselte Prometheus,’” Weimarer Beiträge 35 (1989): 2006–2026.

232

N ot e s

Conclusion 1. Sandra Pott and Sebastian Neumeister, eds., Triangulärer Transfer. Großbritannien, Frankreich und Deutschland um 1800, GermanischRomanische Monatsschrift 56 (2006). 2. See http://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/rbae/introduction.htm. 3. See “L’alouette” at http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/alouette.htm. 4. See http://www.creativequotations.com/one/218.htm. 5. See http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/shell01.html. 6. See http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/ozymandias/ozymandias/html.

Index

Index (A) lists authors, agents involved in acts of reception, critics whose approaches are discussed, and publishing houses. It also includes the authors and editors mentioned in appendixes 1 and 2. For further criticism see the endnotes. Index (B) lists journals, magazines, and newspapers instrumental in spreading Shelley’s fame. Index (C) lists Shelley’s literary texts.

(A) PERSONS AND PUBLISHERS Abrams, M. H., 133, 193n34 Ackermann, Richard, 28, 30, 31, 32, 76, 91, 180, 187, 188 Adolphi, Felix (see also Schack, Graf), 30, 89, 91, 164, 185 Adrian, Johann Valentin, 18 Aeschylus, 154 Altaquito, 31 Amigoni, David, 86 Archimedes, 25 Aristotle, 40 Arnold, Matthew, 6, 107 Artaud, Antonin, 164, 175 Asher, Abraham Isaac, 28, 30 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 111 Baldwin, 26 Barlow, George, 215n34 Barthes, Roland, 11 Barton, Bernard, 177 Baudelaire, Charles, 125, 166 Baudry, 23 Beaulieu-Marconnay, Edmund von, 179

Beck, Karl, 178 Beddoes, Thomas, 3 Beißwanger, Konrad, 180 Benedict, Barbara, 52 Benjamin, Walter, 81 Bennett, Andrew, 88 Bennett, Betty T., 7 Berger, Karl Heinz, 204n88 Bernus, Alexander von, 31, 182, 188 Bethge, Hans, 180 Bibliographisches Institut, 30 Biermann, Wolf, 138 Blake, William, 3, 79, 80, 160–162, 163, 176, 210n39 Blind, Mathilde, 28, 30, 186 Borchardt, Marie Luise, 183 Borchardt, Rudolf, 181, 183, 188 Borgmeier, Raimund, 183 Börne, Ludwig, 199n29 Boswell, James, 85 Bourdillon, Francis William, 215n34 Brandl, A., 229, 230n33 Braun, Felix, 188 Brecht, Bertolt, 19, 77, 81, 136, 142–145, 152, 174, 226n22 Bredel, Willi, 81 Breitkopf und Härtel, 120

234

Index

Brenton, Howard, 91 Britting, Georg, 182 Brockhaus, 20 Brod, Max, 81 Bronfen, Elisabeth, 99 Brönner, 24, 197n16 Brooks, John, 26 Browning, Robert, 8, 80, 161, 211n47 Bryant, William Cullen, 55 Büchergilde Gutenberg, 147 Bülow, Hans von, 141 Bulwer Lytton, Edward, 23, 80 Burne-Jones, Edward, 161 Burns, Robert, 3, 33, 60, 70, 120, 135, 136–138, 152, 176, 178, 181, 198n18, 210n39, 211n47 Butler, Judith, 14 Bütow, Hans, 31, 188 Byron, George Gordon, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26, 33, 38, 46, 49, 57, 58, 60, 64, 69, 70, 72, 74, 76, 77, 80, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105, 107, 108, 109, 114, 119, 121, 122, 135, 136, 154, 155, 177, 181, 197n18, 198n18, 211n47, 215n35 Caesar, 100 Camoëns, Luis de, 178 Campbell, Thomas, 23, 80, 177, 198n18 Campe, Friedrich, 23–29, 135, 175, 198n18, 198n21, 199n24, 199n25, 224n1 Campe, Julius, 24, 199n29 Carlile, Richard, 198n20 Carrey, Speridan, 178 Cassirer, Paul, 31, 33, 133 Castlereagh, Lord, 95 Chambers, R., 54 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 198n18 Chatterton, Thomas, 57, 80

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 33, 181 Chénier, André, 5, 6 Claar, Emil, 91, 228n48 Claassen, 31 Clairmont, Charles, 21, 61 Clairmont, Claire, 21 Clark, William, 26, 198n20, 198n21 Clemen, Paul, 132, 223n54 Clemen, Ursula, 31, 188 Clemen, Wolfgang, 31, 78, 79, 132, 133, 188, 212n60, 224n60 Cobbett, William, 80 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 19, 22, 24, 38, 41, 57, 76, 77, 78, 80, 86, 104, 115, 129, 177, 198n18, 211n47 Cooper, J., 198n18 Cooper, James Fenimore, 23 Cornwall, Barry, 177 Crabbe, George, 23, 177 Crook, Nora, 190n13 Cure, The, 176 Curran, Stuart, 7, 165 Dangerﬁeld, Elma, 91 Dante Alighieri, 105 Degenhardt, Franz Josef, 145 Dehmel, Richard, 60 DeJean, Joan, 192n28 Desch, 31 Dessau, Paul, 144 De Vere, Aubrey Thomas, 215n34 Dickens, Charles, 23, 80 Diederich, Franz, 181 Diesterweg, 31 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 132, 133 Disraeli, Benjamin, 91 Dodsley, Robert, 197n18 Dowden, Edward, 90 Droste-Hülsoff, Annette von, 65 Druskowitz, Helene, 68, 91 Duerksen, Roland A., 8 Eck, Karl, 178 Eckardt, Hans von, 182 Edschmid, Kasimir, 216n35

Index Eichendorff, Joseph von, 7, 55, 114–117, 121, 124, 126, 133, 174 Eisler, Hanns, 144 Eldon, Lord Chancellor, 21, 46, 94, 108 Eliot, George, 8, 91, 207n112 Eliot, T. S., 61, 181 Elwell, William Odell, 53, 75, 178, 206n100 Elze, Karl, 53, 54–56, 57, 58, 75, 178 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 57 Engelberg, Karsten Klejs, 7, 88 Engelmann, 30 Engels, Friedrich, 19, 23, 28, 72–74, 124, 125, 135, 199n32 Erb, Roland, 204n88 Espagne, Michel, 16 Esterhammer, Angela, 14 Eulenberg, Herbert, 164 Everback, Herrmann, 178 Fane, Julian Henry Charles, 215n34 Feist, Hans, 181 Felber, 30 Ferdinand Max, Archduke, 61 Ferry, Anne, 36, 202n61, 205n91, 205n95 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 81 Fielding, Henry, 33 Filser, 31 Flatter, Richard, 181 Fontane, Theodor, 18, 65, 100 Foot, Paul, 6, 7, 215n31 Förster, Max, 75, 77 Foucault, Michel, 11 Fraistat, Neil, 7, 14, 36, 38, 117, 202n60, 202n66 Frank, Ernst M., 183 Franklin, Benjamin, 25, 27, 198n18 Freiligrath, Ferdinand, 53, 56–58, 59, 70, 71, 75, 136–138, 152, 176, 178, 179, 224n8 Freiligrath, Gisberte, 180 Freytag, 31

235

Gale, Linn, 147 Galignani, 18, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 41 Gandhi, Mahatma, 175 Garnett, Richard, 215n34 Gay, John, 197n18 Geibel, Emanuel, 17, 65, 100, 121–124, 125, 132, 133, 221n29 Geilinger, Max, 181 George, Stefan, 19, 33, 114, 117–119, 125–128, 131, 132, 133, 161, 174, 223n40 Gisborne, John, 40 Giusti, Guiseppe, 178 Godwin, William, 89, 90 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 2, 3, 4, 5, 17, 20, 63, 65, 69, 80, 93, 103, 153, 154, 155, 174 Goethe, Ottilie von, 68, 69, 100 Goldsmith, Oliver, 197n18, 198n18 Golfﬁng, Francis, 183 Góngora, Luis de, 178 Gottschall, Rudolf, 93, 102, 103 Graf, Oskar Maria, 77, 212n57 Gray, Thomas, 86, 197n18 Grün, Anastasius, 24, 178 Grylls, R. Glynn, 196n3 Gundolf, Friedrich, 131, 132, 213n10 Gutzkow, Karl, 45, 71, 83, 84, 92, 93, 94, 98, 216n41 Hallberger, 56, 57 Hamm, Wilhelm, 71, 72, 91, 136, 148–152, 227n45 Häntzschel, Günter, 65 Harbaum, Reinhard, 31, 188 Hardy, Thomas, 8, 164, 215n34 Hart, Julius, 179 Hartman, Geoffrey, 86 Haugwitz, Paul (also Haugwitz, Paul von), 30, 32, 71, 185, 201n41 Hazlitt, William, 90, 91, 100, 205n93

236

Index

Hebbel, Friedrich, 100 Hecht, Hans, 76, 77 Heideloff and Campe, 27, 28, 198n18 Heideloff, Carl, 27 Heine, Heinrich, 17, 24, 27, 46, 49, 53, 65, 93, 100, 103, 178 Hemans, Felicia, 55, 70, 80, 181 Henckell, Karl, 179, 180 Hendel, 30, 32, 33, 156 Hennecke, Hans, 53, 60, 61, 181, 182 Henze, Hans Werner, 120 Herbert, George, 38 Herrig, Ludwig, 30, 53, 54, 75, 177, 185 Herwegh, Georg, 7, 45, 50, 60, 92, 93, 96–98, 136, 138–142, 174, 176, 225n11 Hess, Albert, 31, 188 Hesse, Eva, 184 Heß, Moses, 74 Hetherington, H., 26 Heym, Georg, 154, 163–169, 174 Heyse, Paul, 63, 67, 178 Hiob, Hanne, 144 Hoffmann and Campe, 24 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 111 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 17, 19, 125, 126, 127, 128–131, 132, 133, 160, 161 Hogg, James, 55, 177 Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 41, 86, 90, 108, 214n28 Höhne, Horst, 31, 44, 50, 51, 172, 183, 188 Hohoff, Kurt, 182 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 126, 127, 155, 156 Holmes, Richard, 90 Homer, 63 Hood, Thomas, 56, 58, 74, 121, 208n18 Hübner, Otto Leonhard, 178 Hübner, Walter, 182 Hughes, Ted, 196n8

Hunt, Leigh, 40, 99 Hunt, Stephen, 26 Ibsen, Henrik, 32 Ickstadt, Heinz, 184 Insel, 31, 33, 50, 164 Iser, Wolfgang, 9, 15 Jacobi, Walter, 77 James, G. P. R., 23, 24 Jauß, Hans Robert, 9 Jellicoe, Ann, 91 Johnson, Samuel, 58, 85, 198n18 Junius, 198n18 Kaiser, Reinhard, 215n35 Kant, Immanuel, 3, 32, 204n83 Karl Ludwig, Archduke, 61 Kassner, Rudolf, 107, 154, 159–162 Katschner, Leopold, 180 Katz, 54 Keats, John, 3, 7, 19, 22, 24, 31, 32, 33, 38, 41, 55, 58, 61, 64, 77, 85, 87, 99, 107, 126, 128, 130, 161, 166, 180, 211n47, 218n70, 224n8 Keiderling, Thomas, 200n33 Keller, Gottfried, 65, 124 Kemble, Frances Anne, 215n34 Kemp, Friedhelm, 184 Kern, Anafestos, 93, 217n57 Kerpel-Claudius, Eugen, 91, 105, 109 Kingsley, Charles, 8, 72, 91, 135 Kirchner, Gustav, 78, 79 Kirsch, Rainer, 31, 188, 204n88 Kleßmann, Eckart, 100, 109, 111 Knowles, James, 197n18 Koeppen, Wolfgang, 31, 188 Köhler, Ludwig, 178 Koppenfels, Werner von, 184 Kotzebue, August von, 1, 22 Krafft, K., 178

Index Kühne, Gustav Ferdinand, 5, 45, 80, 92, 93, 94–96, 98, 103, 216n41, 217n56 Künzel, Johann Heinrich, 20, 70, 71 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 178 Lamb, Charles, 80 Lambert Schneider, 31 Landmann, Edith, 127 Landon, Letitia, 80, 177 Landor, Walter Savage, 80 Lasalle, Ferdinand, 141 Laube, Heinrich, 92, 93, 98 Lavant, Rudolf, 179 Lefroy, Edward Cracroft, 215n34 Lehmann, Joseph, 80 Lenau, Nikolaus, 45 Leopardi, Giacomo, 155, 156, 178 Le Rider, Jacques, 228n3 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 3 Liebig, Justus, 71, 148 Liebknecht, Karl, 138 Lingg, Hermann, 100 Liptzin, Solomon, 8, 19 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 33, 178 Luxemburg, Rosa, 138 Mach, Ernst, 153 Mackenzie, Henry, 198n18 MacPherson, James, 3 Man, Paul de, 11 Mann, Thomas, 81 Manrique, Jorge, 178 Manu, 31 Marlowe, Christopher, 80 Marut, Ret (see also Traven, B.), 79, 81, 136, 145–148 Marx, Karl, 98, 146 Maurois, André, 84, 86, 90, 92, 107–109, 113 McGann, Jerome J., 11, 15, 16, 193n36, 194n39, 194n42, 201n53 McLaverty, James, 11, 194n42 Mead, Edward P., 178

237

Medwin, Thomas, 1, 5, 27, 70, 80, 84, 86, 88, 90, 93, 95, 97, 99, 102, 104 Mehl, Dieter, 183 Mehring, Franz, 225n11 Meißner, Alfred, 93, 100–102, 104, 124, 178 Meller, Horst, 8, 75, 177, 184, 185, 200n38 Metscher, Thomas, 132, 133, 212n60 Metternich, Clemens von, 21, 44 Meyer, 30 Meyer, Conrad (also Konrad) Ferdinand, 65, 180, 207n7 Mickiewicz, Adam, 27 Mikeleitis, Edith, 10, 11, 91, 100, 105–107, 109 Milton, John, 121, 178, 211n47 Miner, Earl, 22 Mitze, Stefan, 8 Montague, 198n18 Montgomery, James, 57, 177 Moore, Thomas, 3, 23, 25, 69, 121, 177, 178, 180, 197n18, 198n18 Mörike, Eduard, 116, 178 Morris, William, 161 Morrison, Jim, 176 Möser, Fritz, 188 Moxon, Edward, 56 Mukarovský, Jan, 12 Müller, Heiner, 154 Müller, Wilhelm, 74, 215n35 Mundt, Theodor, 93 Myers, Ernest, 215n34 Myers, Frederic, 215n34 Nadel, Ira Bruce, 86 Neuendorff, Georg Hellmuth, 31, 32, 164, 187 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4, 13, 153–158, 172 Norman, Sylva, 7, 89 Notter, F., 179 Novalis, 126, 127

238

Index

Oetzmann, W., 30, 164, 187 Ollier, Charles, 40 Opitz, Theodor, 178 Oppel, Horst, 3, 18 Palgrave, 43, 202n71 Palgrave, Francis Turner, 215n34 Pater, Walter, 125 Paul, Jean, 45 Peacock, Thomas Love, 90, 91, 100 Pearson (see also Pierson), Henry, 120 Percy, Thomas, 3 Petöﬁ, Sándor, 7 Pfeiffer, Emily Jane, 215n34 Pﬁster, Manfred, 184 Pﬁzer, Gustav, 4, 79, 80, 93, 100, 103–105, 216n41 Pierson, 31 Pierson (see also Pearson), Henry, 120 Platen, August von, 45, 60 Plath, Sylvia, 196n8 Plato, 161 Ploennies, August von, 69 Ploennies, Louise (also Luise) von, 17, 20, 67, 68, 69–71, 178, 179 Plutarch, 85 Poe, Edgar, Allan, 208n18 Pope, Alexander, 197n18 Pound, Ezra, 61, 181, 207n112 Prantera, Amanda, 91 Price, Lawrence Marsden, 3 Prins, Yopie, 192n28 Prinzhorn, Wilhelmine, 67, 180 Prössel, Ferdinand, 30, 185, 186 Prutz, Robert E., 45, 59 Pückler-Muskau, Hermann von, 18 Püttmann, Hermann, 74, 178 R. R., 31, 44, 48–50, 51, 187, 204n84 Radford, Ernest, 215n34 Rathenau, Walther, 81 Ravel, Maurice, 111

Reclam, 30, 31, 32, 33, 66, 156 Reichert, Klaus, 184 Reiman, Donald, 88, 117, 202n66 Reinhardt, Richard, 178 Richardson, Samuel, 3 Richter, Elise, 212n56 Richter, Helene, 13, 30, 32, 68, 77, 89, 91, 107, 156–158, 186, 212n56 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 107, 161, 218n70 Rimbaud, Arthur, 166 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 2 Rodenberg, Julius, 65 Rogers, Samuel, 23, 177 Röscher, Achim, 183 Rosner, 30 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 117, 125, 161, 215n34 Rossetti, William Michael, 43 Rote Wecker, Der, 144 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 85, 87 Rüdiger, Kurt, 31, 188 Rudolphi & Klemm, 30, 200n36 Ruge, Enno, 8, 196n7, 216n41, 217n53, 217n56 Ruskin, John, 125 Saint Pierre, Bernardin de, 198n18 Saß, Friedrich, 178 Schack, Graf, see Adolphi, Felix Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, 3 Schenda, Rudolf, 65, 207n8 Scherr, Johannes, 178, 179 Schiller, Friedrich, 32, 57, 65, 163 Schipper, Jakob, 100 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 113, 219n2 Schlegel, Friedrich, 85 Schmid, Susanne, 183 Schmiele, Walter, 182, 183, 188 Schmitz, Siegfried, 183 Schön, Friedrich, 164 Schubart, Christian Friedrich, 4 Schücking, Levin L., 182 Schücking, Levin, 70, 73

Index Schünemann, Gustav Bernhard, 73 Schults, Adolph, 178 Schumann, Robert, 120 Schweitzer, Joseph, 178 Schwerdtlein, Rudolph, 178 Scott, Walter, 3, 23, 25, 57, 80, 177, 198n18 Scott, William Bell, 215n34 Seeger, L., 178, 179 Semmig, H., 178 Seybt, Julius, 30, 32, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 61, 73, 91, 92, 93, 185 Shaffer, Elinor, 8 Shakespeare, William, 3, 25, 33, 60, 80, 197n18, 198n18, 211n47, 222n40 Shaw, George Bernard, 142 Shelley (Westbrook), Harriet, 6, 25, 88, 89, 198n 21 Shelley, Jane, 90 Shelley, Mary, 6, 21, 22, 24, 27, 29, 36, 37, 40–46, 48, 51, 61, 72, 83, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 105, 120, 149 Shelley, Percy Florence, 90, 120 Shelley, Timothy, 24, 36, 41, 89, 163 Sheridan, Richard, 197n18 Shillingsburg, Peter L., 194/195n50 Siebenhaar, Klaus, 8 Siemsen, Anna, 181 Silomon, 31 Solly, Dr., 76 Southey, Robert, 23, 76, 78, 80, 177, 208n18 Spira, Theodor, 77 St Clair, William, 90 Stendhal, 164 Stephen, Leslie, 85 Sterne, Laurence, 198n18 Stoppard, Tom, 91 Strauß, Franz Josef, 144, 145 Strodtmann, Adolf, 19, 30, 32, 44, 45–48, 50, 51, 61, 116, 117, 164, 179, 186, 204n83 Sühnel, Rudolf, 75

239

Suttner, Berta von, 180 Swinburne, Algernon, 117, 125, 126, 161, 180, 215n34 Symonds, John Addington, 215n31 Taifun, 31 Tauchnitz, 18, 23, 24, 28, 30, 31, 164 Taylor, Charles H., Jr., 7 Taylor, John, 64 Tennyson, Alfred, 46, 119, 121, 211n47 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 69 Thomson, James, 3, 198n18, 215n34 Toller, Ernst, 81 Traven, B. (see also Marut, Ret), 136, 145, 147, 148, 151, 174, 204n84, 227n39 Trelawny, Edward John, 41, 90, 99, 105, 108 Varnhagen, Karl Ense von, 71, 201n41 Verlaine, Paul, 125, 166 Verwey, Albert, 131, 132, 223n50 Viviani, Emilia, 131, 149 Vossler, Karl, 182 Vring, Georg von der, 100, 109–111, 182 Waag, 30 Wade, Thomas, 215n34 Wagner, Richard, 100 Wagner, W., 158, 159 Waiblinger, Wilhelm, 217n62 Watson, James, 26, 198n23 Watson, William, 215n34 Webb, Timothy, 190n13, 202n71 Weerth, Georg, 178 Weiser, Carl, 30, 186 Weitling, Wilhelm, 178 Wellek, René, 15 Wheatley, Kim, 7, 22, 99 White, Henry Kirke, 198n18 White, Newman Ivey, 7

240

Index

Whitman, Walt, 210n39 Wickenburg, Alfred Graf, 13, 30, 33, 156–158, 186, 187 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 4 Wienbarg, Ludolf, 93 Wilde, Oscar, 6, 125, 215n34 Wilde, Richard Henry, 55 Wilke, H., 93, 217n57 Williams, Edward, 99, 106, 149 Williams, Jane, 40, 87 Wilson, John, 177 Winter, 31, 32 Wittmann, Reinhard, 65 Wojcik, Manfred, 188 Wolfenstein, Alfred, 19, 31, 33, 77, 81, 133, 164, 165, 166, 169–171, 174, 181, 187 Wolfskehl, Karl, 126, 127, 132 Woodhouse, Richard, 64 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 19 Wordsworth, William, 2, 3, 19, 23, 38, 58, 63, 70, 76, 78, 80, 85, 177, 178, 208n18, 211n47 Yeats, William Butler, 60, 61, 128, 159–161, 181 Young, Edward, 3 Zerfaß, Julius, 181 Zweig, Stefan, 164, 213n10 (B) JOURNALS Athenaeum, 70 Blätter für die Kunst, 33, 126, 131 Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslandes, 79, 80, 216n41 Börsenblatt des deutschen Buchhandels, 200n33 Britannia, 71 Chaos, Das, 69 Deutsche Rundschau, 66, 157 Edinburgh Review, 17, 80, 195n59 Europa, 94 Frankfurter Telegraph, 71, 83, 216n41

Galignani’s Messenger, 23 gulliver, 133 Hallische Jahrbücher, 45 Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 23 Kölner Zeitung, 137 Kölnische Zeitung, 70 Literatur, Die, 164 Literaturblatt zum Morgenblatt für Gebildete Stände, 79 Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes, 17, 79, 80, 91, 94, 216n41 Magazin für die Litteratur des Inund Auslandes, 66 New Monthly Magazine, 70 Orion, 204n83 Theological Inquirer, 22 Wort, Das, 79, 81 Ziegelbrenner, Der, 79, 81, 145, 147 (C) SHELLEY’S WORKS An Address to the Irish People, 37 Adonais, 28, 30, 32, 37, 75, 82, 87, 107, 176, 187, 200n36, 203n74 Alastor, 30, 31, 35, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 69, 75, 82, 87, 119, 124, 146, 186, 187, 188, 223n50 “Arethusa,” 120 “The Aziola,” 203n74 “Ballad of the Starving Mother,” 40 “The Boat on the Serchio,” 203n74 “A Bridal Song,” 41, 203n74 The Cenci, 7, 19, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 45, 63, 89, 107, 119, 153, 154, 156, 162, 163–171, 174, 175, 185, 186, 187, 196n7 “The Cloud,” 30, 32, 35, 38, 39, 42, 55, 58, 71, 75, 87, 185 The Daemon of the World, 38, 39 “Death” (“Death is here and death is there”), 41, 49 “Declaration of Rights,” 81, 145, 147, 148, 227n29, 227n38

Index A Defence of Poetry, 16, 42, 51, 64, 77, 98, 107, 128, 132, 133, 160 The Devil’s Walk: a Ballad, 37, 49, 87 “Dirge” (also “A Dirge” (“Rough Wind”)), 120, 219n85 “Dirge for the Year,” 45, 203n74 “England in 1819,” 40, 46, 48, 176, 203n74 Epipsychidion, 28, 30, 32, 37, 40, 47, 87, 131, 132, 149, 187, 200n36, 203n74 “Evening,” 203n74 “An Exhortation,” 38, 39, 42, 57, 203n74 “Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte,” 35, 38, 46 “A Fragment” (“As a violet’s”), 203n74 “A Fragment” (“They were two cousins”), 203n74 “A Fragment: To Music,” 219n85 “From the Arabic,” 203n74 “From the Greek of Moschus,” 38 “The Fugitives,” 120, 203n74 “Ginevra,” 203n74 “Good Night,” 35, 67, 203n74 Hellas, 34, 37, 58, 110 “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” 38, 39 “Hymn of Proserpine” (also “Song of Proserpine”), 120 “The Indian Serenade” (also “Lines to an Indian Air,” “The Indian Girl’s Song”), 34, 35, 55, 56, 71, 84, 109, 117–119, 120, 190n15, 203n74, 213n3, 219n85 “Invocation to Misery,” 44, 203n74 “Invocation to Night” (also “To Night”), 35, 71, 75, 120, 176, 203n74 Julian and Maddalo, 41, 87, 102, 105, 108

241

“The Keen Stars were Twinkling,” 40 “A Lament” (“O world! O life! O time!”), 35, 61, 203n74, 219n85 Laon and Cythna, 37 Letter to Maria Gisborne, 41 “Liberty,” 35, 57, 59, 114 “Lift Not the Painted Veil,” 46, 203n74 “Lines” (“Far, far away”), 203n74 “Lines to an Indian Air” (also “The Indian Serenade,” “The Indian Girl’s Song”), 34, 35, 55, 56, 71, 84, 109, 117–119, 120, 190n15, 203n74, 213n3, 219n85 “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills,” 38, 39, 43, 44, 67, 203n74 “Lines Written during the Castlereagh Administration,” 40, 48, 95, 203n74 “Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon,” 203n74 “Love’s Philosophy,” 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49, 55, 56, 58, 67, 71, 113, 115–117, 119, 176 “Marenghi,” 203n74 The Mask of Anarchy, 6, 31, 40, 48, 50, 60, 81, 87, 131, 133, 135, 136, 138–145, 174, 176, 188, 203n74 “May-Day Night,” 155, 196n7 “Men of England” (also “Song to the Men of England”), 34, 35, 40, 43, 46, 48, 59, 114, 133, 135, 136, 140, 142, 174, 203n74 “Music,” 203n74 “Music when Soft Voices Die,” 176, 203n74 “Mutability” (“The ﬂower”), 203n74

242

Index

“Mutability” (“We are as clouds”), 35, 38, 46 The Necessity of Atheism, 6, 37, 64, 163 “A New National Anthem,” 40 “Ode to Heaven,” 38, 42, 203n74 “Ode to Liberty,” 28, 38, 39 “Ode to the West Wind,” 15, 34, 35, 38, 39, 43, 47, 55, 56, 67, 75, 81, 84, 87, 92, 98, 111, 113, 120, 132, 133, 176, 190n15, 203n74, 213n3, 219n85 “An Ode Written October, 1819,” 35, 38, 39, 46, 57, 58, 59, 203n74 Oedipus Tyrannus, 37 “On a Faded Violet,” 44, 120, 203n74 “On Death,” 38 “On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci,” 203n74 Original Poetry; By Victor and Cazire, 37 “Ozymandias,” 35, 38, 39, 44, 46, 81, 176, 219n85, 227n29 “Passage of the Apennines,” 203n74 “The Past,” 41, 203n74 Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, 37, 202n57 Posthumous Poems, 24, 41 Prince Athanase, 222n33 “Prologue in Heaven,” 155, 196n7 Prometheus Unbound, 4, 7, 13, 19, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 50, 56, 64, 75, 76, 77, 87, 106, 107, 113, 119, 153–160, 162, 163, 165, 172, 174, 175, 186, 187, 188, 202n60, 219n85, 220n3 Queen Mab, 6, 7, 10, 13, 19, 21–29, 30, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 43, 45, 49, 51, 58, 59, 72, 75, 79, 80, 87, 98, 124, 135, 148, 149, 152, 154, 163, 175, 185, 186, 198n18, 198n21, 199n25, 200n36

“Remembrance,” 41, 203n74 The Revolt of Islam, 37, 155, 204n83, 222n33 Rosalind and Helen, 37, 38, 39, 203n74 “The Sensitive Plant,” 38, 84, 87, 93, 128, 129, 130 “Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819,” 40, 203n74 “Song” (“Rarely, rarely”), 203n74 “Song” (also “A Widow Bird”), 35, 61, 109, 219n85 “Song for Tasso,” 203n74 “Song of Proserpine” (also “Hymn to Proserpine”), 120 “Song to the Men of England” (also “Men of England”), 34, 35, 40, 43, 46, 48, 59, 114, 133, 135, 136, 140, 142, 174, 203n74 “Sonnet from the Italian of Dante,” 38 “Sonnet: Political Greatness,” 203n74 “Sonnet to Byron,” 49 “Stanzas, April 1814,” 38 “Stanzas, Written in Dejection, near Naples,” 35, 41, 67, 75, 113, 121–124, 203n74, 221n29 “A Summer Evening Churchyard,” 38, 71 “The Sunset,” 41 “Time,” 203n74, 227n29 “That Time Is Dead Forever,” 44 “To–” (“As passion’s trance”), 203n74 “To–” (“I fear thy kisses”), 42, 219n85 “To–” (“Oh there are spirits of the air”), 38 “To–” (“One word”), 203n74, 219n85 “To a Friend Released from Prison,” 49 “To a Skylark,” 6, 35, 38, 39, 47, 55, 58, 75, 87, 93, 175

Index “To Constantia, Singing,” 41 “To Death” (“Death! where is thy victory?”), 49 “To Edward Williams,” 203n74 “To Emilia Viviani,” 203n74 “To Jane: The Invitation,” 41 “To Mary–,” 41, 44, 203n74 “To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,” 203n74 “To Night” (also “Invocation to Night”), 35, 71, 75, 120, 176, 203n74 “To the Moon,” 10, 219n85 “To the Queen of my Heart,” 55, 56 “To the Republicans of North America,” 50 “To William Shelley,” 41, 46, 203n74

243

“To Wordsworth,” 38 “To-morrow,” 203n74, 227n29 The Triumph of Life, 41 Victor and Cazire, 202n57 “A Vision of the Sea,” 38, 42 “The Wandering Jew’s Soliloquy,” 49 “The Waning Moon,” 110, 219n85 “What Men Gain Fairly,” 40 “When the Lamp is Shattered,” 35, 43, 46, 47, 219n85 “A Widow Bird” (also “Song”), 35, 61, 109, 219n85 The Witch of Atlas, 41 “The Woodman and the Nightingale,” 203n74 “The World’s Wanderers,” 35, 55, 58 “Ye Hasten to the Grave,” 47 Zastrozzi, 4

Shelley's German Afterlives: 1814-2000 (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)