MAIN CURRENTS IN
NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE
BY
GEORGE BRANDES
IN SIX VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED
I
THE EMIGRANT LITERATURE
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
MCMVI
To the Memory
of
HANS BRÖCHNER
INTRODUCTION
It is my intention in the present work to trace the outlines of apsychology of the first half of the nineteenth century by means of thestudy of certain main groups and movements in European literature. Thestormy year 1848, a historical turning-point, and hence a break, isthe limit to which I purpose following the process of development. Theperiod between the beginning and the middle of the century presentsthe spectacle of many scattered and apparently disconnected literaryefforts and phenomena. But he who carefully observes the main currentsof literature perceives that their movements are all conditionedby one great leading movement with its ebb and flow, namely, thegradual fading away and disappearance of the ideas and feelings of thepreceding century, and the return of the idea of progress in new, everhigher-mounting waves.
The central subject of this work is, then, the reaction in the firstdecades of the nineteenth century against the literature of theeighteenth, and the vanquishment of that reaction. This historicincident is of European interest, and can only be understood by acomparative study of European literature. Such a study I purposeattempting by simultaneously tracing the course of the most importantmovements in French, German, and English literature. The comparativeview possesses the double advantage of bringing foreign literature sonear to us that we can assimilate it, and of removing our own untilwe are enabled to see it in its true perspective. We neither see whatis too near the eye nor what is too far away from it. The scientificview of literature provides us with a telescope of which the oneend magnifies and the other diminishes; it must be so focussed as toremedy the illusions of unassisted eyesight. The different nationshave hitherto stood so remote from each other, as far as literature isconcerned, that they have only to a very limited extent been able tobenefit by each other's productions. For an image of the position as itis, or was, we must go back to the old fable of the fox and the stork.Every one knows that the fox, having invited the stork to dinner,arranged all his dainties upon a flat dish from which the stork withhis long bill could pick up little or nothing. We also know how thestork revenged himself. He served his delicacies in a tall vase witha long and slender neck, down which it was easy for him to thrust hisbill, but which made it impossible for the fox, with his sharp muzzle,to get anything. The various nations have long played fox and stork inthis fashion. It has been and is a great literary problem how to placethe contents of the stork's larder upon the fox's table, and viceversâ.
Literary history is, in its profoundest significance, psychology, thestudy, the history of the soul. A book which belongs to the literatureof a nation, be it romance, drama, or historical work, is a gallery ofcharacter p