USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 26
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To sum it all up, the more intelligence any one person possesses the better all the work of their lives is accomplished, and by changing that intelligence into broader channels you do not change the nature of the person. Therefore, you men and women who are wise do not check the inspirations of any child or women for broader condi- tions of life because of any preconceived unfitness for those conditions which you approve. The more she knows and grows physically, mentally and morally, the richer will be her life and the lives of all who are near to her. And now for the last of the qualities of my woman who has come: She is not conceited. She thinks that other people have lived who are as great and good as she is. She does not agree with the correspondent of one of the morning papers who claimed that no ideal man could be found who was worthy of the ideal woman. She thinks supply and demand are about evenly balanced on both sides, and she does not feel at all lonesome. She believes in the survival of the Anglo-Saxon race, and she believes that however many stopping- places there may be that race is making for righteousness. She believes in men and women. She also believes in that land, on the hills of which walk brave women and brave men hand in hand.
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GOETHE AND SCHILLER. By MISS MARY VIRGINIA KEENE.
In the physical world, he who seeks for nuggets must dig deep in dark recesses where the treasure lies hidden. He must possess untiring strength, and much patience, to enable him to wrest from the grasp of the rocky Titans the mass of shining metal half hid- den by its baser alloy. Then the dross must be separated from the metal and the latter purified and refined before it can be used in the service of utility or beauty. Once upon a time there were two intel- lectual miners who sought to wrest from the mines of knowledge its richest nuggets of thought, its brightest gems of fancy. These men were known as Göethe and Schiller. The elder one, Goethe, was aided in his quest by Winckelmann, the Antiquary, who, like a torchbearer, preceded him, illuminating his way, pen- etrating to dark places where he himself had wrought. There he taught the young poet how to choose and where. But Goethe used also his own divining rod of Genius, whereby he discovered new treasures. These he cast into the glowing alembic of his mind, there to be transmuted into finer shapes. "Like unto plate of rare device, or jewels of rare and exquisite form," for a creative faculty was his law. In his love of form he was Greek. This love of the artistic was partly intu- MISS MARY VIRGINIA KEENE. itive, partly the result of culture. He had been greatly impressed by his study of Lessing's "Laocoön" but Winckelmann's "Philosophy of Art" was the real key which enabled him to unlock the door of achievement. Thence he passed on into a sort of intellectual vatican, where he beheld the artistic creations of the artists who had preceded him. Let us suppose that he enters the "Hall of the Muses." Here he beholds Chaucer's pictorial views of the Canterbury Pilgrims, gleam - ing like stained glass windows in the temple of primitive literature. Near by hang the brilliant tapestries of Spencer, woven in the loom of Poesy, depicting scenes in the life of the Faery Queen and her court. He gazes with reverent awe at Milton's statuesque verse, so like sculpture, and Shakespeare's wondrous word-painting, por- traying every phase of human passion and emotion. Here it was Goethe's privilege to enrich this collection by placing in German niches many a white statue of thought, many a polished gem of expression.
In childhood Goethe was taught by a good and gifted mother, who aroused his intellect and stimulated his ambition and imagination by inventing stories containing scientific truths disguised as fairy tales. From this clever mother he inherited his gift of story-telling.
He was young, rich, well-born, handsome, gifted. Is it any wonder that he was flattered, courted, fêted? He delighted to bask in the sunshine of adulation, or like
Miss Mary Virginia Keene was born in the city of Erie, Pa. Her parents were Galen Bryant and Annie B. Keene. Miss Keene's ancestors were English people who came to this country and settled in New Hampshire. She is a lineal descendant of Captain Miles Standish. One of her great-grandfathers helped throw the tea overboard in Boston harbor. She was edn- cated in the Grammar Schools of Buffalo and in a French Academy for girls. She hss traveled in the United States and Canada. Miss Keene is constantly engaged in literary pursuits and is a pleasing lecturer. She belongs to the Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is 339 Niarara Street., Buffalo, N. Y.
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a butterfly flutter above every flower of pleasure which grew in the garden of his experience. Providentially there came to Weimar at this period the noble, gifted Herder, who became Goethe's friend, and gave to the young poet a better knowledge of his wonderful possibilities.
Herder's influence upon Goethe was manifold, but mainly in the direction of poetry. He taught him that the Bible best illustrates the truth that "poetry is the product of a national spirit and not the privilege of a cultivated few." From Hebrew poetry they turned to the study of Homer and Ossian. The latter poet, then making the tour of Europe, so aroused the enthusiasm of Goethe that he made a transla- tion of "Selma," and introduced into his own sentimental novel "The Sorrows of Werther."
There is a great diversity of opinion concerning Goethe's philosophical romance, "Wilhelm Meister." The author says: "I cannot give the key to its solution." Its leading idea is renunciation; the power to sacrifice the temporary for the permanent.
While studying law at Strasburg, Goethe became interested also in theology, but he was more particularly interested in alchemy and the study of mysticism. It was then that he conceived the idea of writing his dramatic poem of "Faust," which he did not complete, however, until sixty years after. It embodies the varied experiences and the ripe scholarship of a lifetime. This drama reveals the triumph of Repent- ance over sin for not only is the soul of Marguerite redeemed, but that of her lover also.
In another dramatic poem, "Iphigenia of Taurus" the powers of evil are disarmed by the truth, fidelity and purity of Iphegenia of Taurus. One must make an exhaust- ive study of Goethe's writings to form any adequate idea of the manysidedness of his genius.
His mind was like a prism, owing to its great powers of refraction. Eckermann, who knew the poet well, says that " Goethe was most valuable in balancing the judg- ment and in suggesting thought. He cared more for the perfecting of the few than the improvement of the many. He believed more in man, than men; in thought, than action; in effort, than success; in Nature, than Providence. Goethe has been called " The Prince of German Poets," a title which he well deserves if we consider only his wonderful ability to assimilate all knowledge in the service of poetry. He is an excellent dramatist and a fine lyric poet, and the best writer of the German lan- guage, which he greatly improved by his own felicitous style and method of expres- sion. As a critic of art and literature he is fearlessly independent, although it may not be true that he taught Pantheism by his deification of Nature. In him the intel- lectual dominated the spiritual. He has said, however: "I doubt not the immortality of the soul, for Nature cannot dispense with our continual activity, and she is pledged to give me a better form of being when the present no longer sustains my spirit." He solved the enigma of life after his own fashion, independent of creed or dogma.
Perhaps, when the world has grown older, a remoter historical standpoint may afford the coming critic a better post of observation and a riper judgment of the great man, who Bayard Taylor said was " Universal in the range of his intellectual capacities and in his culture." A marked contrast exists between Goethe and Schiller.
The younger poet belongs not to Germany alone, the literature of the world claims him. The influence of his genius is too great to be restricted to one country. Unlike Goethe he was not a favorite of fortune. His boyhood and youth were full of trials. „Wishing to become a minister, he began the study of Latin with the village pastor. The lad's aptitude attracted the attention of Duke Carl Eugene, and he deter- mined upon a military career for Schiller. The slavery of a life in a military acad- emy was soon exchanged for service in the garrison as an army surgeon. The duties of his position were so irksome to him that the burden became insupportable, and he fled from his country, and for a time became a homeless wanderer. In spite of pov- erty, ill health and debts, which pursued him like cruel arrows sped from the bow of adverse fate, he managed somehow to complete his education. We find him in his
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thirtieth year at the University of Jena, occupying a professor's chair, which, how- ever, lacked the comfortable cushion of salary. He did literary " hackwork " to earn money for his daily needs. He was finally granted a pension of two hundred dollars. The restrictions of his youth awakened in him a love for liberty; thus he became "the poet of freedom." The idea of freedom is the underlying principle in all of his writings.
His fine play of " William Tell " possesses more than a literary significance in Ger- man history, written at the time when Napoleon's idea, the annihilation of Germany, seemed to be realized. When the patriot Stein found on German soil only an inse- cure footing; when the poet Kleist took his own life rather than witness the misery of his country; when Germans were found to fight Germans like gladiators, bedinning with their heart's blood the soil of alien countries- then in this time of oppression the story of Tell rang like a trumpet call throughout the land. It reanimated despondent hearts and kindled patriotic impulses and self-sacrificing ideas. This drama is a vin- dication of national and free government. It sustains a fine moral purpose in awaken- ing a love of country in the heart of him who reads it.
When Schiller began to write his noble poems, our country was at war with Eng- land. By the time peace was declared, his judgment had matured. He then wrote "Don Carlos." In this drama one of the characters lays down the law to the tyrant, Philip of Spain, for Schiller well understood that old laws sometimes becomes abuses, and reforms must be introduced to infuse new life into free political society. Such reforms must, however, be gradual, not a sudden upheaval of old ideas, lest the remedy should be worse than the disease.
While Schiller was sojourning at Rudolstadt, he became acquainted with Goethe; thus were brought together two men of exalted genius, but dissimilar in character.
The older poet took an interest in humanity, and was broad and generous in his views. Schiller concentrated power as vast on fewer subjects.
Carlyle says: "Goethe was catholic, Schiller sectarian. One was endowed with a comprehensive spirit, skilled by personal experience in human passion, therefore tolerant, fighting neither for men nor principles. The freedom he allowed himself he accorded to others.
"Schiller was carnest, enthusiastic, full of Quixotic impulses, feeling intensely because his nature was intense." To me he seems to have been at odds with himself and the world, because his ideal nature unfitted him to cope successfully with some of the stubborn facts of real life. Another point of difference was their environment. Goethe was then thirty-nine years of age, settled in life. Schiller was twenty-nine, without a fixed destiny. Goethe had traveled in Italy, had studied art, was a brilliant talker, possessed of a vast fund of knowledge and a keen sense of humor, which made his conversation like a display of intellectual pyrotechnics whose brilliancy dazzled and dazed poor Schiller, increasing his natural timidity and constraint.
Schiller thought that Goethe was an egotist, and that no intimacy could be pos- sible. The latter entertained a like unfavorable opinion. Subsequent intercourse caused each to recognize the good in the other. Goethe's zeal and love for literature made him an invaluable friend to Schiller.
Rousseau says that the best basis on which to build a friendship is: " Same senti- ments, different opinions."
May we not claim that the best coin for general circulation are kind words and good actions issued from the mint of a loving heart? The purchasing power of such currency can not be overestimated. Its mighty power was felt by these two great geniuses.
Goethe's nature was too noble to harbor envy or jealousy, as he beheld his young rival climbing to the intellectual heights which he had gained. Neither did he pose as a patron, but treated Schiller as his friend and equal, until at last they became co-workers, each one assisting and benefiting the other. Schiller was an earnest seeker after truth, a hater of shams and deceit. His aim was to make mankind, happier and bettcr.
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He seems to have been an apostle of æsthetic idealism. Only by comparison with Kant and other philosophers does he appear to be a realist. He lived in an atmosphere of contemplation, and possessed the magic power of presenting old truths in new forms. The winged Pegassus of his imagination soared aloft, bearing him to the highest regions of ideal and spiritual conceptions. His intellect was as clear as a cloudless sky, his fancies as brilliant as the rainbow after a summer shower.
In some instances his poetry is half philosophical, bearing the impress of his scientific studies. History and philosophy soothed his restless spirit and furnished inspiration for his historic records of noble deeds. Goethe taught him how to master and arrange his subjects, and Schiller aided him by helpful suggestions. Goethe once said: " People dispute as to which is the greater poet, Schiller or I; but they ought rather to rejoice that two such fellows as we are in existence."
The elder poet doubtless possessed a greater fund of knowledge, a better educa- tion and more varied accomplishments. Schiller knew much by intuition and reflec- tion. In personal appearance there was as great a dissimilarity between these two men as we find existed between their mental attributes. Lewes tells us that "Goethe's beautiful head, the calm, victorious grandeur of the Greek ideal; Schiller possessed the earnest beauty of a Christian looking toward the future." Schiller's blue eyes were eager and spiritual. His brow tense and intense; irregular features lined by thought and suffering and weakened by illness. Goethe's face wore the majesty of repose, Schiller's the look of conflict. The Greek ideal represents realism, the Chris- tian ideal represents idealism. Goethe said once, "Schiller is animated by the idea of freedom, I with the idea of nature." We observe that this distinction characterizes all their writings, Goethe always striving to let nature have free development and pro- duce the highest forms of humanity; Schiller's seeking, aspiring mind striving for something greater than nature, wishing to make men demigods.
The points of resemblance between the poets, which made them congenial, were these: Both believed that " art was a mighty influence, related to religion, by whose aid the great world-scheme was wrought into reality." They believed that culture would raise humanity to its full powers. As artists they knew no culture equal to art. With Goethe the moral ideal was evolved from the artistic; with Schiller moral ideals were instinctive, a part of his own pure nature.
Schiller has beautifully defined the idea that the "truth shall make one free " and that " beauty is its own excuse for being," in the following lines, which I quote from his. "Hymn to Art:"
"I am not held in bonds, unfettered, free, I rove throughout all space, rove near and far; Thought is my boundless realm, and here I flee, Upon the wings of words, from star to star. What heaven and earth accumulate in store,
What nature spins in her mysterious deep
I daringly unravel and explore,
For endless is the poet's soaring leap; But what more lovely can be sought of found Than in fair frame, a soul with beauty crowned."
EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. By MRS. M. K. CRAIG.
Evolution implies priority, and in tracing the evolution of American literature, we acknowledge a common ancestry with the Chaucers, Miltons and Shakespeares of England; but evolution does not imply finality, and our end is not to be found in the literature of the Mother Country.
We claim the independent and organic develop- ment of American literature, and by American we mean and include only the authors of the United States, for no other authors on the American continent are known distinctly as American, and moreover, in the centuries that have elapsed since Columbus set foot on American soil, ours is the only nation of the New World that has developed an independent litera- ture of high original thought.
To go back to the origin of our literature would be to go hand-in-hand with England's great men and women down the corridors of time, and follow the savage Teuton as he crosses the German Ocean, carry- ing with him in his frail bark the Scald and Saga men to cheer with song the hearts of the old Vikings. These long ago Scalds and Saga men were the germ of the geniuses that have passed down the torch of prose and poetic light until caught up by our own Emersons, Hawthornes, Irvings, Poes and Laniers.
MRS. M. K. CRAIG.
Still American we are, born on American soil, struggling in infancy, Herculean- like, with the serpent of doubt, disputing in the temple of tradition with the English doctors, now standing forth in the young manhood of time, slaying the scorning Thackeray, Dickens and Edinburgh Goliaths. " Faulty"-"Why not? We have time in store."
The attempt in this limited paper shall be to prove that our nation has developed authors of peculiar merits, differing widely in style and idcals from the Tennysons, Swinburnes, Carlisles and Eliots of England. In order to do this it is necessary to open the book of time, and study the motives that prompted the settlement of the two colonies, Massachusetts and Virginia, and to show why we have seen two distinct lines of thought in the North and South for nearly three centuries. We must ever seck behind the deed for the motive; and when we trace the purpose that moved our fore- fathers to attempt the settlement of a new country, we probe the source of our literature.
When we turn over the pages of history and pause at the landing of Capt. John Smith on a southern shorc, we read in this heroic man, handcuffed and chaincd, the symbol of the bondage of the Old World to be broken by the spirit to be born in the New. When we follow the little band of Puritans borne in the frail Mayflower across
Mrs. M. K. Craig is a native of Mississippi. She was born November 17, 1842. Her parents were Dr. W. J. and Mrs. E. M. Kittrell. She graduated at Wilcox Female Seminary, Camden, Ala., and has been a close student all her life. She has traveled in the Southern, Eastern and Middle States, and visited most of the large cities of the United States. She married E. E. Craig, a planter of Alabama, moved to Texas in 1873, her hushand dying in 1891. Her profession is teacher in English and Latin. Her literary works are essays for literary clubs, and magazine articles. In religious faith she is Protestant, and a member of the Presbyterian Church. Her postoffice address is 256 Cadiz St., Dallas, Texas.
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the stormy Atlantic, see them set foot upon the frozen shores of Massachusetts, we know that this resolute deed is no fanatical impulse of the hour, but is a deed born of the spirit of the age. From these two migrations sprang our ancestry; and to follow the development of American literature is to follow the East and South in the develop- ment of each in almost separate lines for nearly three centuries; and to account for the marked difference is not to attribute it to climate, as many have done, but to ancestry. Virginia was not settled, as some claim, by worthless, broken-down gentry, nor Massachusetts by blind fanatics. Bad men came over with all the colonists; but the ancestors of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry and Henry Clay could not have been entirely worthless, and neither could the ancestors of Franklin, Irving and Hawthorne have all been narrow fanatics. Yet there was a difference of character and purpose in the early colonists, the influence of which tells as greatly upon the sections of our country as do the character and purpose of the Scotch and English upon the sections of Great Britain. The Puritans, Quakers, Walloons, Salzburgers and Baptists were all dissenters, descendants of the Roundheads, the Luthers and Calvins of the Old World. They came to America as Moses went to Judea, dissatis- fied with the church, the government and all the institutions of the Mother Country. They came to establish for themselves a new church and a new government. The Cavaliers came to America as men go West today, in order to better their fortunes. They came with hearts loyal to the Mother Country, with the intention of perpetuat- ing her institutions, socially, politically and spiritually. The Dissenters settled north, and the Cavaliers settled south, and the influence of the two originated the differences in thought that have been evidenced in our speech and literature.
Colonial literature can hardly be called American, and even if it were so counted, it could not be called literature, for dry chronicles help to make history but not litera- ture. Our colonial ancestors were too busy providing for the material necessities of their new life to find time for extensive reading or writing. White, in his " Philosophy of American Literature," says that the ideal of the Southerner was ever on a lower plane than that of the Northerner. Strange that a man should say this when a South- erner is called by his people, " the father of his country;" when a Southerner wrote the Declaration of Independence; when a Southerner is called "the father of the Con- stitution." He also speaks of the dearth of authors in the South.
The value of literature is determined by its quality and not by its quantity, and when we subtract the worthless, the histories and text-books from the authorship of the north, but few authors would be left of which she could boast.
The Puritan life was idealistic, and it was natural that it should develop writers. The Southerner was a man of deeds, developed the statesman, warrior, the orator and the colonizer of America. The one was as necessary to the building up of a nation as the other, and while we accord to the North the majority of authors, let it not be done to the disparagement of the South, which has contributed in other ways just as honorable and necessary as the contributions of the North.
New England established the first college, Virginia the first university and Georgia the first female college. The broad university training of the South has told upon the culture of her people, and the narrow intense, college training of the North told upon her Cotton Mathers and Edwards.
The Puritan spirit of New England developed theologians, psychologists and melancholy poets. Her narrow training has given us our text-book literature. The Cotton Mathers, Hopkins, Emersons, Dwights, Bradfords, Bradstreets, Edwards and 'Hookers have given us the greatest divines and metaphysical authors of America.
When man becomes extreme in thought, his extremity is God's opportunity, and out of the extreme Puritanism of Wigglesworth and John Cotton was evolved Ben- jamin Franklin, who was really the first man to show that the old life had done its work, that the persecutions and bigotry of the fathers had reacted in the broad spirit of a new man in a new world. Benjamin Franklin, the printer, lightning-rod man, stove man, newspaper man, author, statesman and diplomat, an all-around Yankee, a
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typical American. A new spirit is born, the old eliminated, and with the period of Franklin we can begin to lay claim to American literature. To him can be traced the humor of our American authors, the birth of the " short story " in " Dogood Papers." His services were required along other lines than that of authorship, else we should have seen in Franklin an American Swift or Smollett.
Pre-revolutionary writers can be summed up in a few names. Men were busy making history then, and not literature, yet in the pamphlets of Tory and Whig we see the germ of our future authors.
For some time after the Revolution our people were absorbed in the work of fram- ing the Constitution and in restoring order, and were too busy in the details of nation- forming to devote attention to literature. We should like to dwell upon the spirit of those days, but in a limited paper like this we can only point out the leading authors in American literature.
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