Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry | Page 6

share of
misfortune. This overtook him early in life, for when but two years of
age his father died. His widowed mother now lived for a few years in
complete retirement with her two children--the poet's sister Henrietta
having been born just a few weeks after his father's demise. But it was
not long before death again entered the household and robbed it of
Hölderlin's aunt, his deceased father's sister, who was herself a widow
and the faithful companion of the poet's mother. When the latter found
herself again alone with her two little ones, whose care was weighing
heavily upon her, she consented to become the wife of her late
husband's friend, Kammerrat Gock, and accompanied him to his home
in the little town of Nürtingen on the Neckar. But this re-established
marital happiness was to be of brief duration, for in 1779 her second
husband died, and the mother was now left with four little children to
care and provide for.
The frequency with which death visited the family during his childhood
and youth, familiarized him at an early age with scenes of sorrow and
grief. No doubt he was too young when his father died to comprehend
the calamity that had come upon the household, but it was not many
months before he knew the meaning of his mother's tears, not only for
his father, but also for his sister, who died in her infancy. Referring to
his father's death, he writes in one of his early poems, "Einst und
Jetzt":[16]
Einst schlugst du mir so ruhig, empörtes Herz!
* * * * *
Einst in des Vaters Schoosse, des liebenden Geliebten Vaters,--aber der
Würger kam, Wir weinten, flehten, doch der Würger Schnellte den
Pfeil, und es sank die Stütze.
At his tenderest and most impressionable age, the boy was thus made
sadly aware of the fleetingness of human life and the pains of
bereavement. We cannot wonder then at finding these impressions

reflected in his most juvenile poetic attempts. His poem "Das
menschliche Leben," written at the age of fifteen, begins:
Menschen, Menschen! was ist euer Leben, Eure Welt, die thränenvolle
Welt! Dieser Schauplatz, kann er Freude geben Wo sich Trauern nicht
dazu gesellt?[17]
But a time of still greater unhappiness was in store for him when he left
his home at the age of fourteen to enter the convent school at
Denkendorf, where he began his preparation for a theological course. A
more direct antithesis to all that his body and soul yearned for and
needed for their proper development could scarcely have been devised
than that which existed in the chilling atmosphere and rigorous
discipline of the monastery. He had not even an incentive to endure
hardships for the sake of what lay beyond, for it was merely in passive
submission to his mother's wish that he had decided to enter holy orders.
And now, clad in a sombre monkish gown, deprived of all freedom of
thought or movement and forced into companionship with twenty-five
or thirty fellows of his own age, who nearly all misunderstood him,
Hölderlin felt himself wretched indeed. "Wär' ich doch ewig ferne von
diesen Mauern des Elends!" he writes in a poem at Maulbronn in
1787.[18] There was for him but one way of escape. It was to isolate
himself as much as possible from the world of harsh reality about him,
to be alone, and there in his solitude to construct for himself an ideal
world of fancy, a poetic dreamland. This mental habit not only
remained with him as he grew into manhood, it may be said to have
been through life one of his most distinguishing characteristics. It
would be impossible to make room here for all the passages in his
poems and letters of this period, which reflect his love of solitude and
his habit of retreating into a world of his own imagining. His letters to
his friend Nast almost invariably contain some expression of his
heart-ache. "Bilfinger ist wohl mein Freund, aber es geht ihm zu
glücklich, als dass er sich nach mir umsehen möchte. Du wirst mich
schon verstehen--er ist immer lustig, ich hänge immer den Kopf."[19]
Another letter begins: "Wieder eine Stunde wegphantasiert!--dass es
doch so schlechte Menschen giebt, unter meinen Cameraden so elende
Kerls--wann mich die Freundschaft nicht zuweilen wieder gut machte,

so hätt' ich mich manchmal schon lieber an jeden andern Ort gewünscht,
als unter Menschengesellschaft.--Wann ich nur auch einmal etwas recht
Lustiges schreiben könnte! Nur Gedult! 's wird kommen--hoff' ich,
oder--oder hab' ich dann nicht genug getragen? Erfuhr ich nicht schon
als Bube, was den Mann seufzen machen würde? und als Jüngling,
geht's da besser?--Du lieber Gott! bin ich's denn allein? jeder andre
glücklicher als ich? Und was hab' ich dann gethan?"[20] There is a
world of pathos in this