The Poetry of Eichendorff by Joseph von Eichendorff

First published:Poems, 1837; Julian, 1853; Robert und Guiscard, 1855; Lucius, 1857

Critical Evaluation:

Joseph von Eichendorff, the most popular poet among the German Romanticists was born March 10, 1788. He spent his childhood at the castle of his parents at Lubowitz in Silesia. These childhood years in the beautifully situated castle became the reservoir for his outpouring of romantic lyricism until the end of his life. It is said that nobody did more to help Germans appreciate the beauty of nature, and German Wanderlust owes much to Eichendorff’s glorification of the wanderer. Eichendorff declares in his poem “The Happy Wanderer”:

When God, His graciousness bestowing,Sends man forth in the world so wide,He unveils Life, His wonders showingIn wood, field, stream, and mountain-side.The slothful, who at home are lying,Are not refreshed by dawn’s clear red;They only know of children’s crying,Of sorrow, pain, and need of bread.

Many Germans living in a motorized age still agree with him.

Although Eichendorff was a wanderer, he was not trying to wander away from something. All his pilgrimages are inward. He was a member of the old Silesian aristocracy, and one literary critic named him the “last knight of knights.” His feelings correspond to the experience of ordinary people, however, and folkloristic elements are always present in his work. The Napoleonic Wars overshadowed his childhood paradise in Silesia, and to shelter young Eichendorff from proximity to war his parents sent him to the universities of Halle and Heidelberg. In Heidelberg he met the two writers credited with starting the German movement of Romanticism: Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, who had published, in 1806, DES KNABEN WUNDERHORN, a major collection of German folksongs.

The romantically inclined Eichendorff became above all a lyricist, probably the most important one of the whole movement with the possible exception of Brentano. Eichendorff also wrote many prose pieces, but few are remembered now. Even his best known humoristic prose work AUS DEM LEBEN EINES TAUGENICHTS is mainly remembered for its lyrical qualities. His poems are always simple in theme and expression. He used a varied meter, and, refusing to develop a set pattern, adjusted the rhythm of language to the theme of the poem. His recipe for a poet was this: “. . . Rise early in the morning; write under an open sky, in beautiful scenery when the soul is alert and the trees are singing. . . .” All subjects dear to the Romanticist are present in his poems: worship of nature, homesickness, eternal roaming, moonlit nights, old chapels, deserted ruins, and moods of melancholy.

I wander through the quiet night;There glides the gentle moon so white,Oft breaking dark cloud-banks away,And sometimes in the valeAwakes a nightingale:Then once more all is still andgray. . . .

In one regard, however, Eichendorff differs from his fellow Romanticists: he had committed himself to Catholicism. He was opposed to the prevailing trend of his time of esthetical Catholicism, but there was never any doubt in his mind about his faith. Romanticism, which has been frequently interpreted as a substitution of adoration of nature for the adoration of God served Eichendorff only to display his belief in God’s orderly world:

The small child rests from playing,Soft Night knocks on the pane,The angels at God’s sayingAre keeping watch again.

In many other poems this theme is repeated:

I let the dear God guide my going;To brook and lark and wood andfieldAnd Earth and Heaven favors show-ing,My life He will from all harm shield.

His Catholicism was an almost revolutionary approach if one considers the prevailing liberal trends in literature at his time, as well as the fact that the preceding classicism was mainly expressed in Protestant terms. It is true that Eichendorff did not offer any great new ideas and his poems are without a passionate climax. He is not a philosopher, but this fact is probably the key for his enduring popularity. His poems, written with ease and charm, are free from tension and moralizing. When he paints with the dark colors of grief, he never fails to contrast them with the soft colors of consolation. Always present in his work is a sense of the great order of things, in which man becomes a part of the whole when he is only willing to take time to reflect upon himself while observing the wonders of nature.

There’s a sleeping song in all things,Which dream on in peace unheard;Yet the world awakes and loud sings,If you know the magic word.

One of his poems describes how he was saddened by an encounter with evil, and yet while he was composing his poem the angels came and opened a door which radiated so much life that he could no longer see the evil. The melancholy of lost love found its greatest monument in his poem and folksong “The Broken Ring,” which can be found in every collection of German folksongs:

In a spot cool and shady,A mill wheel turns in state.My loved one has gone from me,Who lived there but of late. . . .Hear I that mill wheel turning,I know not what I will:For death I most am yearning,That all cares might be still.

The grief described here is not the tragic pain to be found in Goethe’s THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER, which caused a suicide wave among unfortunate lovers after its publication. This poem shows the faraway wanderer and his remembrance of a loved one. A longing for faraway places (Fernweh) is frequently contrasted with homesickness (Heimweh), but grief is sublimated to increase sensibility, a participation in universal suffering (Weltschmerz) and joy.

In Heidelberg he also met another friend of Arnim and Brentano, Josef Gorres, who was a Romanticist and the literary leader of German Catholicism. Gorres succeeded in converting Eichendorff, by temperament a dreamer, into a member of a national resistance movement against the conquerer, Napoleon. Thus, in 1813, Eichendorff became a member of the much glorified voluntary Prussian Corps Luetzow. In 1814 he married Luise von Larisch, the daughter of a country squire. After Napoleon returned from Elba he joined the army once more, but before he reached the front the Battle of Waterloo had decided Napoleon’s fate. Eichendorff was now twenty-seven years old. He could not return to his childhood paradise in Silesia, for the castle and his father’s fortune had been lost as a result of the war. He also was determined not to isolate himself as a poet. Especially he abhorred the scatterbrained scurrility which he described as the usual malady of poets. He took a position as a government official.

Eichendorff remained in government service for religious and educational affairs until 1844. When conflicts arose between his faithful adherence to the Catholic Church and the increasing government policy to reject Church influence in public life, he resigned. In 1837, Eichendorff published his first collection of poems. After his resignation he was able to devote even more time to his writing. When he visited Vienna, he was well received and declared in surprise, “By all means, they want to make a famous man out of me.” In Vienna he also completed the first part of his history of literature under the title Romantic Poetry. Here he met the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel, a convert to Roman Catholicism, and a great friendship developed. Eichendorff’s marriage was a happy one; he had two sons and two daughters. His most beloved youngest daughter died at an early age and her death was the greatest tragedy he ever experienced. What he said in his poems, he acted out in his life. He was able to find comfort in the belief that even his daughter’s early death must be a part of God’s plan. In 1855, Eichendorff retired with his family to the country estate of his son-in-law in Neisse. In the same year his wife died. Two years later Eichendorff followed her.

Eichendorff’s life, with the exception of his daughter’s death, was free from any dramatics. A happy childhood, an education in Germany’s best universities, a life among friends with common interests, and a happy marriage gave him the opportunity to lead the life he desired. Even when he joined the army he was spared the sight of battle. And he always found time for reflection:

When man’s pleasure cry for rest,Earth soft whispers as in dreams now,Strangely sighing through each greenboughWhat the heart has hardly guessed:Of old times, mild sorrow’s shim-mer,—And there flashes awe’s pale glimmer,Swift like lightning through the breast.

A justified question is whether a poet of such a period and such experiences can have any meaning for later generations who have problems about which the dreamer Eichendorff never imagined. The continued popularity of the Romanticists answers this question. People compelled to cut their traditional roots as the result of force or voluntary decision as members of a more mobile society are grateful for the rest haven of Romanticism, which permits a pause for re-examination and rejuvenation.

The breeze in the wood stirs the tree-topsFrom dreams of the cliffs that thrill;For the Lord moves over the hill-topsAnd blesses the land so still.

The consolation of Eichendorff, the belief that everything is right in this world if we can learn to understand that even our grief is part of something greater than we, is the message from the wanderer of the nineteenth century to the wanderer of the twentieth century.