[Bremen, May 24-June 15, 1839] 

My dear William,’ 

Today is May 24, and still not a line from any of you. You are 
again qualifying for non-receipt of poems. I don’t understand you. 
Nevertheless, you shall have contributions on present-day litera- 
ture. 

Collected Works of Ludwig Borne. Vols. 1 and 2. Dramaturgische 
Blätter— Borne, the great fighter for freedom and _ justice, is 
concerned here with questions of aesthetics. And here too he is in 
his element; what he says is so precise and clear, coming from 
such a true feeling for beauty and demonstrated so convincingly, 
that there can be no question of contradiction. It is all flooded in a 
sea of the most exuberant wit, and here and there, the firm and 
sharp ideas of freedom rise out of it like rocks. Most of these 
reviews (for that is what the book is made up of) were written at 
the time when the plays discussed had just appeared, that is, at a 
time when critical judgments on them were still blindly and 
hesitatingly groping about. But B6rne’s vision penetrated to the 
innermost threads of the action. The most excellent are his 
criticisms of Schiller’s Tell, an essay which for more than twenty 

To Wilhelm Graeber, May 24-June 15, 1839 449 

years has opposed the usual view without being refuted, precisely 
because it is irrefutable.°°—Immermann’s Cardenio and Hofer, 
Raupach’s Isidor und Olga, Clauren’s Wollmarkt, with which other 
interests are connected, Houwald’s Leuchtturm and Bild, his 
criticism of which is so devastating that nothing, absolutely 
nothing, remains, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He reveals him- 
self throughout as a great man who stirred up a controversy 
the consequences of which are still not to be foreseen, and 
these two volumes would already ensure Bérne a place alongside 
Lessing. But he became a Lessing in a different field; may 
Karl Beck follow him as his Goethe! 

Ndachte. Gepanzerte Lieder by Karl Beck 

I am a Sultan, driven by storms that blow, 
My warrior hosts are armoured forms of song, 
And grief has laid a turban on my brow 

With many mysteries its folds among.* 

If such images are already contained in the second verse of a 
prologue, what will the book itself be like? If a youngster of 
twenty has such ideas, what kind of song will the mature man 
sing? — Karl Beck is a poetic talent without equal since Schiller. I 
find a remarkable affinity between Schiller’s Rauber and Beck’s 
Ndchte, the same ardent spirit of freedom, the same unrestrained 
fantasy, the same youthful exuberance, the same mistakes. Schiller 
strove for freedom in the Rauber, which was an earnest warning to 
his servile age. But at that time such a striving could not yet take a 
definite form. In Young Germany, we now have a definite, 
systematic trend. Karl Beck comes forward and calls loudly to his 
age to recognise this trend, and to join it. Benedictus, qui venit in 
nomine Domini!” 

Der fahrende Poet. Poems by Karl Beck, The first work of the 
young poet has hardly appeared before he presents us with a 
second, which in power of expression, wealth of ideas, lyrical verve 
and depth is not a whit inferior to the first, but infinitely surpasses 
it in excellence of form and in its classicism. What an advance 
from Schöpfung in the Ndchte to the sonnets on Schiller and 
Goethe in Der fahrende Poet! Gutzkow thinks that the sonnet 

form is harmful to the effect of the work as a whole, but I would 
maintain that this Shakespearean sonnet is precisely the me- 
dium between the epic stanza and the individual poem which 
this peculiar type of poetry requires. Of course, it is not an 
epic poem but a purely lyrical one with a loose epic thread 
running through it, still looser than in Byron’s Childe Harold. 
But it is a good thing for us Germans that Karl Beck was 
born. 

Blasedow und seine Söhne. A comic novel by Karl Gutzkow. Vol. 1. 
This novel in 3 volumes is based on the idea of a modern Don 
Quixote—an idea which has already been frequently used but 
generally has been badly adaptated, and by no means exhausted. 
The character of this modern Don Quixote (Blasedow, a country 
parson), as Gutzkow originally conceived him, was splendid, but 
something is clearly wanting in the execution. At any rate, this 
novel by the barely thirty-year-old Gutzkow (and which, moreover, 
is said to have been finished three years ago) is very inferior to 
Cervantes’ presentation which, of course, is the work of a mature 
man. On the other hand, the secondary characters-— Tobianus 
seems to correspond to Sancho Panza—the situations and the 
language are excellent. 

So much for my reviews. I shall continue when you have 
written— Do you know when your letters arrived? On June 15! 
And the ones before came on April 15! That makes exactly two 
months! Is that right? I herewith decree that, on pain of not being 
sent any more poems, Wurm’s influence on the dispatch of letters 
be totally withdrawn. And if Wurm does not get his letter finished 
by the proper time, then send yours off without his. Isn’t 14 days 
long enough to write me two quarto-size pages? It is scandalous. 
You put no date on your letter again, I don’t think that’s right, 
either—— The article in the Telegraph? is my own indisputable 
property, and pleased W. Blank enormously. It was also ap- 
plauded very much in Barmen and, in addition, was quoted with 
praise in the Nuremberg Athendum. There may be individual 
exaggerations in it, but on the whole it gives a correct picture 
if seen from a reasonable standpoint. However, if read with 
the preconceived opinion that it is a jumbled botch, it must ap- 
pear to be precisely that— What you say about the comedy is 
justum.? 

To Wilhelm Graeber, May 24-June 15, 1839 451 

Justus judex ultionis, 
Donum fac remissionis.* 

You have not made the slightest mention of the canzone. This 
to be rectified. 

Candidates of Musenalmanach» 

With regard to Leo and Michelet, I only know about the matter 
from Leo’s Hegelingen” and a number of works written against it, 
and from these I have learned: 1) that, according to his own 
statements, Leo has abandoned all philosophy for the past 11 years 
and therefore cannot pass any judgment; 2) that only his extrava- 
gant and boastful brain made him believe he had a vocation for it; 
3) that he attacked conclusions which, by the specific character of 
the Hegelian dialectic, necessarily follow from generally accepted 
premises instead of attacking the dialectic itself, and failing which 
he should have let these conclusions stand; 4) that he resorted 
only to coarse exclamations and indeed abuse to refute what was 
written against him; 5) that he regards himself as being far 
superior to his opponents, puffs himself up, and then on the very 
next page smirks with an infinite humility; 6) that he only attacks 
four persons, though by so doing he attacked the whole school, 
which cannot be separated from them, for although Gans, etc., 
may indeed have dissociated themselves from them on particular