The Teutonic Knights

From Heinrich von Treitschke, Origins of Prussianism (1862):

Who can understand the innermost nature of the Prussian people and the Prussians State unless he has familiarized his mind wtih those pitiless racial conflicts whose vestiges, be we aware of them or not, live on mysteriously in the habits of our people. A spell rises from the ground which was drenched with the noblest German blood in the fight on behalf of the name of Germany and the most sublime gifts of mankind.

As soon as the power of the Ascaniers in Brandenburg collapsed, the Teutonic Knights valiantly took up their position to defend the breach in German civilization, and once more after the victory of the Poles in Prussia the House of Hohenzollern took measures to restore order in distracted Brandenburg.

Of all the German lands, Prussia alone could at this time rank with the west in respect of the triumphant position of chivalry. For it was no mere pugnacity or love of adventure which impelled the Teutonic Knights into the Lithuanian war. The essential qualities of a militarist State were at work. The more capable among the Grand Masters knew very well how to maintain religious discipline in the Order, how to discourage participation in the tournament craze of the new times, and yet how to turn to chivalry’s own advantage its finer imaginative trends. “It was in Prussia that he became a knight” — such was for generations the highest praise that could be given to a Christian nobleman; and the knight errant who had been in Prussia would proudly wear the black cross of the Teutonic Knights to the end of his days. Even kings regarded it as an honour when the Order enroled them among its associate brethren, and no higher praise could Chaucer find for the knight among the Canterbury pilgrims than to say: “In Lettow had he reysed and in Ruce.”

Wherever they went, the Knights were wont to dispaly an almost ostentatious valiancy and ingenuity.

-trans. Eden & Cedar Paul
-German title: Das deutsche Ordensland Preußen.

''The Faustian cathedral''

From Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. I, 1922:

The character of the Faustian cathedral is that of the forest. The mighty elevation of the nave above the flanking aisles, in contrast to the flat roof of the basilica; the transformation of the columns, which with base and capital had been set as self-contained individuals in space, into pillars and clustered-pillars that grow up out of the earth and spread on high into an infinite subdivision and interlacing of lines and branches; the giant windows by which the wall is dissolved and the interior filled with mysterious light — these are the architectural actualizing of a world-feeling that had found the first of all its symbols in the high forest of the Northern plains, the deciduous forest with its mysterious tracery, its whispering of ever-mobile foliage over men’s heads, its branches straining through the trunks to be free of earth. Think of Romanesque ornamentation and its deep affinity to the sense of the woods. The endless, lonely, twilight wood became and remained the secret wistfulness in all Western building-forms, so that when the form-energy of the style died down — in late Gothic as in closing Baroque — the controlled abstract line-language resolved itself immediately into naturalistic branches, shoots, twigs and leaves.

(Illustration is Carl Blechen, Ruins of a Gothic Church, 1826.)

''The loneliest heroes in all the cultures''

From Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. I, 1922:

Infinite solitude is felt as the home of the Faustian soul. . . . Valhalla is something beyond all sensible actualities floating in remote, dim Faustian regions. Olympus rests on the homely Greek soil, the Paradise of the Fathers is a magic garden somewhere in the Universe, but Valhalla is nowhere. Lost in the limitless, it appears with its inharmonious gods and heroes the supreme symbol of solitude. Siegfried, Parzeval, Tristan, Hamlet, Faust are the loneliest heroes in all the Cultures. Read the wondrous awakening of the inner life in Wolfram’s Parzeval. The longing for the woods, the mysterious compassion, the ineffable sense of forsakenness—it is all Faustian and only Faustian.

-trans. Charles Francis Atkinson

(Illustration is Carl Gustav Carus, Faust in the Mountains, 1821.)

''A stranger to his own century''

From Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter IX (1794):

The artist is indeed the child of his age; but woe to him if he is at the same time its ward or, worse still, its minion! Let some beneficent deity snatch the suckling betimes from his mother’s breast, nourish him with the milk of a better age, and suffer him to come to maturity under a distant Grecian sky. Then, when he has become a man, let him return, a stranger, to his own century; not, however, to gladden it by his appearance, but rather, terrible like Agamemnon’s son, to cleanse and to purify it. His theme he will, indeed, take from the present; but his form he will borrow from a nobler time, nay, from beyond time altogether, from the absolute, unchanging unity of his being. Here, from the pure ether of his genius, the living source of beauty flows down, untainted by the corruption of the generations and ages wallowing in the dark eddies below.

The theme of his work may be degraded by vagaries of the public mood, even as this has been known to ennoble it; but its form, inviolate, will remain immune from such vicissitudes. The Roman of the first century had long been bowing the knee before his emperors when statues still portrayed him erect; temples continued to be sacred to the eye long after the gods had become objects of derision; and the infamous crimes of a Nero or a Commodus were put to shame by the noble style of the building whose frame lent them cover.

Humanity has lost its dignity; but art has rescued it and preserved it in significant stone. Truth lives on in the illusion of art, and it is from this copy, or afterimage, that the original image will once again be restored. Just as the nobility of art survived the nobility of nature, so now art goes before her, a voice rousing from slumber and preparing the shape of things to come. Even before truth’s triumphant light can penetrate the recesses of the human heart, the poet’s imagination will intercept its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be radiant while the dews of night still linger in the valley.

But how is the artist to protect himself against the corruption of the age that besets him on all sides? By disdaining its opinion. Let him direct his gaze upwards, to the dignity of his calling and the universal law, not downwards toward fortune and the needs of daily life.

Work for your contemporaries; but create what they need, not what they praise. . . . Banish from their pleasures caprice, frivolity, and coarseness, and imperceptibly you will banish these from their actions and, eventually, from their inclinations too. Surround them, wherever you meet them, with the great and noble forms of genius, and encompass them about with the symbols of perfection, until semblance conquer reality, and art triumph over nature.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818.)

The Sublime and the Beautiful

THE SUBLIME


THE BEAUTIFUL

From Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764):

Finer feeling, which we now wish to consider, is chiefly of two kinds: the feeling of the sublime and that of the beautiful. The stirring of each is pleasant, but in different ways.

The sight of a mountain whose snow-covered peak rises above the clouds, the description of a raging storm, or Milton's portrayal of the infernal kingdom, arouse enjoyment but with horror; on the other hand, the sight of flower-strewn meadows, valleys with winding brooks and covered with grazing flocks, the description of Elysium, or Homer’s portrayal of the girdle of Venus, also occasion a pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling. In order that the former impression could occur to us in due strength, we must have a feeling of the sublime, and, in order to enjoy the latter well, a feeling of the beautiful.

Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime; flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed in hedges are beautiful. Night is sublime, day is beautiful.

The sublime moves, the beautiful charms.

The mien of a man who is undergoing the full feeling of the sublime is earnest, sometimes rigid and astonished. On the other hand the lively sensation of the beautiful proclaims itself through shining cheerfulness in the eyes, through smiling features, and often through audible mirth.

Deep loneliness is sublime, but in a way that stirs terror. Hence great far-reaching solitudes, like the colossal Komul Desert in Tartary, have always given us occasion for peopling them with fearsome spirits, goblins, and ghouls.

The sublime must always be great; the beautiful can also be small.

Open bold revenge, following a great offense, bears something of the great about it; and as unlawful as it may be, nevertheless its telling moves one with both horror and gratification....

Resolute audacity in a rogue is of the greatest danger, but it moves in the telling, and even if he is dragged to a disgraceful death he nevertheless ennobles it to some extent by going to it defiantly and with disdain.

-German title: Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen.

(Illustrations are John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath, 1851-53; and The Celestial City and the River of Bliss, 1841.)

"I belong to a different age"

From Franz Endler, Karajan: An Autobiography (1989):

"Many of my critics write, and will go on writing, that I conduct too lavishly. That may be so. During my day people have been somewhat extravagant in terms of art and music. I believed this was the right attitude to adopt, and so I've supported it. It has something to do with respect towards art, and if this respect is old-fashioned, so be it, I've no intention of dissociating myself from it. When I was young, we approached music with a sense of awe and celebrated each such approach as a special event. I can see, of course, that times have changed, that people don't want to know about respect any longer, and that it is not in keeping with the times to celebrate a concert. People are going to great lengths to make themselves ugly, to wear ugly clothes, and to feel precious little enthusiasm for beauty. I've been observing this for years . . . I know there's nothing that can be done at present to change all this. But no one can expect me to seek a polite or understanding explanation for this, still less that I should agree with it and conform. I belong to a different age. And what I want to preserve for myself and posterity also belongs to a different age."

Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) was the greatest conductor the world has ever known. His recordings comprise the definitive account of the classical repertoire. In his opera stagings he rejected modern left-wing political fashions, instead realizing the works in tune with the composers' own wishes. Nothing less than a musical Übermensch, he was a true Romantic in an anti-Romantic age, and the last great interpreter of the German tradition.

Karajan Tribute Site

''Art is a conservative power''

From Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918):

Art will never be moral in the political sense, never virtuous; progress will never be able to depend upon it. It has a basically undependable, treacherous tendency; its joy in scandalous antireason, its tendency to beauty-creating "barbarism," cannot be rooted out, yes, even if one calls this tendency hysterical, anti-intellectual, and immoral to the point of being a danger to the world: it is an immortal fact, and if one wanted to, or could, extirpate it from the world, one would certainly have freed the world from a grave danger, but at the same time one would almost certainly have freed it of art as well -- and only a few want that. An irrational power, but a great power; and the attachment of people to it proves that people neither can nor want to make do with rationality, that is; with the famous three-part equation of democratic wisdom, "reason = virtue = happiness."

Let one read, in this connection, the sinfully enthusiastic description that Baudelaire gives of the Tannhäuser march! "Who could," he cries, "in listening to these chords, which are so rich and proud, to this elegantly cadenced, magnificent rhythm, these royal fanfares, imagine anything else than a magical pomp, a parade of heroic men in shining costumes, all of great stature, all of strong will and naive belief, just as magnificent in their joys as terrible in their battles?"


And who, let us add, could fail to recognize that it is, in the sense of political virtue, the most questionable ideas that art awakens here?

Yesterday I heard Tschaikowsky's Symphonie Pathétique, this thoroughly dangerous work in its sweetness and savagery, which one neither hears nor understands without experiencing the irreconcilable antithesis of art and the spirit of literary virtue. I am thinking of the third movement with its malicious march music, which, if we had a censor in the service of democratic enlightenment, would absolutely have to be forbidden. So long as such things may not only be composed, but also performed; so long as this trumpet blare and cymbal clash is allowed among cultured people; so long, allow me to say, will there be wars on earth.

Art is a conservative power, the strongest of all; it preserves spiritual possibilities that without it -- perhaps -- would die out. So long as poets are possible -- and they will always be so -- whose wish and lament is to lie down in the deepest woods to forget "these stupid times,"

Of princely deeds and works
Of ancient honour and pomp,
And what may strengthen the soul,
Dreaming away the long night--

so long as their forward-directed longing will call forth the time when the Lord will put an end to things and tear from the deceitful one their unjust power:

Then Aurora will dawn
High up over the forest,
Then there will be something to sing and defeat
Then, loyal ones, awake--

--so long, I say, will the rule of that three-part equation, will democracy on earth, not be secure.

Let every utopia of progress, let the sanctification of the earth by reason -- every dream of social eudæmonism be fulfilled, the pacified, esperanto world become reality: air buses breeze over a "human race" that is clothed in white, pious with reason, statelessly-unified, monolingual, in the ultimate mastery of technology, with electric television: art will still live, and it will form an element of uncertainty and preserve the possibility, the conceivability, of relapse. It will speak of passion and unreason; it will present, cultivate and celebrate passion and unreason, hold primordial thoughts and instincts in honour, keep them awake or reawaken them with great force, the thought and instinct of war, for example. One will not be able to forbid it, because that would go against freedom.

Or will "the human race" live under absolutism, under the tyranny of reason, of virtue and of happiness?" Then it is all the more probable that art will go completely into the opposition -- and that everything that finds itself opposed to this ultimate tyranny will hold passionately to it. Art will seize the leadership of that party that seeks to overthrow the rule of virtue -- and it is a ravishing leader. In short, then: war, heroism of a reactionary type, all the mischief of unreason, will be thinkable and therefore possible so long as art exists, and its life will last and end only with that of the "human race."

-trans. W.D. Morris

Nietzsche: ''My conception of freedom''

From Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889):

My conception of freedom. -- The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it -- what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic -- every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.

These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free -- and how much more the spirit who has become free -- spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.

How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. [...] This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong -- otherwise one will never become strong.

-trans. Kaufmann/Hollingdale

(Illustration is John Henry Fuseli, Odysseus before Scylla and Charybdis, 1794-96.)

On German Romanticism

From Oskar Walzel, German Romanticism (1932):

The solitude and enchantment of the forest, the rushing mill-stream, the nocturnal stillness of the German village, the cry of the night watchman, splashing fountains, palace ruins and a neglected garden in which weatherbeaten statues crumble, the fragments of a demolished fortress: everything that creates the yearning to escape from the monotony of daily life is romantic. This yearning lured the German romanticist not only to distant realms but also to peculiarly native customs, to old German art and manners. The romanticist would fain have learned to feel again as a German and to fashion out of this strengthened national feeling a newer and more virile Germanism. Though he cast his eyes upon the glories of the past, the romanticist nevertheless heralded a spiritually quickened golden age of the future. His dreamy eye became unexpectedly bright and clear; ironic luminaries gave a sudden but transient light. Hard upon the glorification of death and the world beyond came the brisk, clear call to the joyous life of actual deeds, to vigorous self-contemplation, and to eager activity in behalf of humanity.

-trans. A.E. Lussky.

(Illustration is Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Castle by the River (Schloß am Strom) (1820) in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.)