18. F. Engels. German Socialism in Verse and Prose
[Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 73, September 12, 1847]
Songs about the Poor Man begins with a song to a wealthy house.
TO THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD
To prevent misunderstandings, the poet addresses God as "LORD" and the house of Rothschild as Lord.
Right at the beginning he records his petty-bourgeois illusion that the "rule of gold" obeys Rothschild's "whims"; an illusion which gives rise to a whole series of fancies about the power of the house of Rothschild.
It is not the destruction of Rothschild's real power, of the social conditions on which it is based, which the poet threatens; he merely desires it to be humanely applied. He laments that bankers are not socialist philanthropists, not enthusiasts for an ideal, not benefactors of mankind, but just — bankers. Beck sings of the cowardly petty-bourgeois wretchedness, of the "poor man", the pauvre honteux with his poor, pious and contradictory wishes of the "little man" in all his manifestations, and not of the proud, threatening, and revolutionary proletarian. The threats and reproaches which Beck showers on the house of Rothschild, sound, for all his good intentions, even more farcical to the reader than a Capuchin's sermon. They are founded on the most infantile illusion about the power of the Rothschilds, on total ignorance of the connection between this power and existing conditions, and on a complete misapprehension about the means which the Rothschilds had to use to acquire power and to retain power. Pusillanimity and lack of understanding, womanish sentimentality and the wretched, prosaically sober attitudes of the petty bourgeoisie, theSe are the muses of this lyre, and in vain they do violence to themselves in an attempt to appear terrible. They only appear ridiculous. Their forced bass is constantly breaking into a comic falsetto, their dramatic rendering of the titanic struggle of an Enceladus only succeeds in producing the farcical, disjointed jerks of a puppet.
The rule of gold obeys your whims
Oh, would your works could be as splendid And your heart as great as is your power! (p. 4).
It is a pity that Rothschild has the power and our poet the heart. "Were but the two of them one, it had been too much for the earth." (Herr Ludwig of Bavaria.)[3]
The first figure with whom Rothschild is confronted is of course the minstrel himself, to be precise, the German minstrel who dwells in "lofty, heavenly garrets".
Singing of justice, light and freedom,
The one true GOD in trinity,
The lute of the bards is with melody inspired:
Now men with listening ears will follow
The spirits (p. 5).
This "GOD", borrowed from the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitungs motto,[100] precisely because of his existence as a trinity, has no effect on the Jew Rothschild but produces quite magical effects on German youth.
Restored to health, youth speaks a warning
And the fertile seed of inspiration Sprouts up in myriad splendid names (p.[p. 5-]6).
Rothschild's verdict on the German poets is different:
The song the spirits had us sing, You call it hunger for fame and food [p. 6]. Although youth is speaking a warning and its myriad splendid names are sprouting up, their splendour consisting in the very fact that they never get further than mere inspiration, although "the bugles bravely sound for battle" and "the heart beats so loud at night",
The foolish heart, it feels the stress Of a celestial impregnation (p. 7). That foolish heart, that Virgin Mary!—although
Youth like a sombre Saul (by Karl Beck,(1) published
by Engelmann, Leipzig, 1840), At odds with GOD and with itself [p. 8.], for all that and all that, Rothschild maintains the armed peace which, as Beck believes, depends on him alone.
The newspaper report that the Holy See has sent Rothschild the Order of the Redeemer provides our poet with the chance to demonstrate that Rothschild is no redeemer; similarly it could just as well have been the occasion for the equally interesting proof that Christ, Redeemer though he was, was nevertheless not a knight of the Order of the Redeemer.
You, a redeemer? (p. 11).
And he then proves to him that unlike Christ he never wrestled in bitter night, he never sacrificed proud earthly power
For a merciful gladdening mission To you entrusted by the great SPIRIT (p. 11).
It must be said of the great SPIRIT that it does not exhibit much spiritual sagacity in its choice of missionaries and has approached the wrong man for acts of mercy. The only great thing about it is its block capitals.
Rothschild's paucity of talent as a redeemer is amply demonstrated to him by means of three examples: how he reacted towards the July Revolution, the Poles and the Jews.
Up rose the dauntless scion of the Franks (p. 12),
in a word, the July Revolution broke out.
Were you prepared? Did your gold resound Happy as the twittering of larks in welcome To the springtime stirring in the world? Which made young again those yearning hopes Sleeping deeply buried in our breasts, And brought them back into the living world? (p. 12).
The springtime that was stirring was the springtime of the bourgeoisie, to whom gold, Rothschild's gold as much as any other, does indeed resound happy as the twittering of larks. To be sure, the hopes which at the time of the Restoration were sleeping deeply buried not only in the breast but also in the Carbonari Ventes[101] were at that time made young again and brought back into the living world, and Beck's poor man was left to pick up the crumbs. But as soon as Rothschild had convinced himself that the new government had firm foundations, he was happy enough to set his larks twittering — at the usual interest rates, of course.
Just how completely Beck is entangled in petty-bourgeois illusions is shown by the saintly status Laffitte is accorded in comparison with Rothschild:
in other words, Laffitte's dwelling. The inspired petty bourgeois is proud of the bourgeois character of his house compared with the much-coveted halls of the Hotel Rothschild. His ideal, the Laffitte of his imagination, must naturally also live in true bourgeois simplicity; the Hotel Laffitte shrinks into a German burgher's dwelling. Laffitte himself is depicted as a virtuous householder, a man pure in heart, he is compared with Mucius Scaevola and is said to have sacrificed his fortune in order to put mankind and the century (is Beck perhaps thinking of the Paris Siècle?}) back on their feet again. He is called a youthful dreamer and finally a beggar. His funeral is touchingly described:
Accompanying the funeral cortège Marched with muffled tread the Marseillaise (p. 14).
Alongside the Marseillaise went the carriages of the royal family, and right behind them M. Sauzet, M. Duchâtel and all the ventrue(2)
and loups-cerviers* of the Chamber of Deputies.
How the Marseillaise really must have muffled her tread, though, when Laffitte led his compère,(3) the Duke of Orléans, in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville after the July revolution and made the striking statement that from now on the bankers would rule?
In the case of the Poles, criticism goes no further than that Rothschild did not show enough charity to the emigres. The attack on Rothschild is here reduced to the level of a small-town anecdote and quite loses the appearance of an attack on the power of money in general which is represented by Rothschild. We all know how the bourgeoisie has welcomed the Poles with open arms and even with enthusiasm wherever it is in power.
An example of this compunction: enter a Pole, begging and praying. Rothschild gives him a silver coin, the Pole
Trembling with joy accepts the silver coin And speaks his blessing on you and your line [p. 1(5],
a predicament from which the Polish Committee in Paris has so far on Lie whole saved the Poles. The whole episode with the Pole only serves to permit our poet to strike an attitude:
But I hurl back that beggar's happiness
Contemptuously into your money-bag,
Avenging thus mankind offended! (p. 16),
such a bull's-eye at the money-bag requiring much practice and skill in throwing. Finally Beck insures himself against proceedings for assault and battery by acting not in his own name but in that of mankind.
As early as p. 9 Rothschild is taken to task for accepting a patent of citizenship from Austria's fat imperial city,
Where your much-harassed fellow-Jews Pay for their daylight and their air. Beck really believes that with this Viennese patent of citizenship Rothschild has obtained the blessings of freedom. Now, on p. 19, he is asked:
Have you set your own people free That ever hopes and meekly suffers? Rothschild ought then to have become the redeemer of the Jews. And how ought Rothschild to have set about this? The Jews had chosen him as king because his gold weighed the heaviest. He should have taught them how to despise gold, "how to suffer deprivation for the world's sake" (p. 21).
He ought to have wiped their memories clean of selfishness, cunning and the practice of usury, in short, he ought to have appeared in sackcloth and ashes as a preacher of morality and atonement. Our poet's daring demand is the equivalent of requiring Louis-Philippe to teach the bourgeoisie of the July revolution to abolish property. If either were so insane, they would lose their power forthwith, but the Jews would not wipe their memories clean of haggling, nor the bourgeoisie theirs of property.
On p. 24 Rothschild is criticised for bleeding the bourgeoisie white, as though it were not desirable that the bourgeoisie should be bled white.
On p. 25 he is said to have led the princes astray. Ought they not to be led astray?
We have already evidence enough of the fabulous power Beck attributes to Rothschild. But he goes on in a crescendo. Having indulged on p. 26 in fantasies as to all the things he (Beck) would do if he were propriétaireof the sun, that is, not even the hundredth part of what the sun is doing without him — it suddenly occurs to him that Rothschild is not the only sinner, but that other wealthy men exist besides him. However:
So Lord Rothschild could have prevented the development of trade and industry, competition, the concentration of property, the national debt and agiotage, in short, the whole development of modern bourgeois society, if only he had had somewhat more conscience. It really requires toute la désolante naïveté de la poésie allemande* for one to dare to publish such nursery tales. Rothschild is turned into a regular Aladdin.
Still not satisfied, Beck confers on Rothschild
The dizzy grandeur of the mission
The whole world's sufferings to assuage [p. 28], a mission which all the capitalists in the whole world are not remotely capable of fulfilling. Does our poet not realise then that the more sublime and awe-inspiring he attempts to appear, the more ridiculous he becomes? that all his criticisms of Rothschild are transmuted into the most slavish flattery? that he is extolling Rothschild's power as the most cunning panegyrist could not have extolled it? Rothschild must congratulate himself when he sees what a monstrous form his puny personality assumes as reflected in the mind of a German poet.
After our poet has so far versified the romantic and ignorant fantasies of a German petty bourgeois concerning what is within the power of a big capitalist if only he were a man of good will, after he has puffed up the fantasy of this power as far as it will go in the puffed-up dizzy grandeur of his mission, he gives vent to the moral indignation of a petty bourgeois at the discrepancy between ideal and reality, in an emotional paroxysm which would give rise to fits of laughter even in a Pennsylvanian Quaker:
Alas, alack, when in long night (December 21)
I pondered with a fevered brow
Then did my locks rear up on end, Methought I was at GOD's own heartstrings tugging, A bellman at the fire-bell (p. 28), which must surely have been the last nail in the old man's coffin. He thinks the "spirits of history" have thus entrusted him with ideas, which he is not permitted either to whisper or proclaim aloud. In fact he comes to the desperate decision to dance the cancan in his grave:
But when in mouldering shroud I lie,
My corse shall shake with joyful tremors,
When down to me (the corse) the tiding comes
That victims on the altars smoke (p. 29).
I begin to find young Karl disturbing.(4)
Thus ends the song about the House of Rothschild. There now follows, as is customary with modern lyric poets, a rhymed reflection on this canto and the role the poet has played in it.
I know your mighty arm Can chastise me till the blood does flow (p. 30),
in other words, he can give him fifty of the best. The Austrian never forgets the birch. In the face of this danger, a feeling of exaltation gives him strength:
At GOD's command and without fear I sang full freely what I knew [p. 30].
The German poet always sings to command. Of course, the master is responsible and not the servant, and so Rothschild has to face up to GOD and not to Beck, his servant. It is indeed the general practice of modern lyric poets:
1. To boast of the danger they think they are exposing themselves to in their harmless songs;
2. to take a thrashing and then commend themselves to God. The song "To the House of Rothschild" closes with a few stirring sentiments about the aforementioned song, which is here slander-ously described in the following terms:
Free it is and proud, it may command you, Tell you the things by which in faith it swears (p. 32),
that is, by its own excellence, as instanced in this conclusion. We fear that Rothschild may take Beck to court, not on account of the song, but on account of this piece of perjury.
[Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 74, September 16, 1847]
O, SCATTER THE GOLDEN BLESSING!
The rich are called upon to give support to those in need,
Until your industry for wife and child Security ensured [p. 35].
And all this is to happen
That you may keep your virtue As a burgher and a man [p. 35],
summa summarum, a good philistine.* Beck is thereby reduced to his ideal.
SERVINGMAN AND MAID
The poet takes as his theme two souls most pleasing to God and describes in an exceptionally dull fashion how they only come to share a chaste marriage-bed only after many years of cheese-paring and moral living.
To kiss? Shame would o'ercome them! To dally? O so discreetly! Flowers there were indeed — the flowers on the frosted pane; A dance on crutches, O God!, a poor butterfly in winter, Half in the bloom of childhood, half in withered age [p. 50].
Instead of concluding with this, the one good verse in the whole poem, he then sets them crowing and quivering, and all for joy over their few chattels, that "at their own hearth their own settles stand", a cliché uttered not ironically but with heartfelt tears of pathos. Nor will he have done at that:
God alone is their Lord, who bids the stars shine in the darkness And observes with a kindly eye the slave who breaks his chains [p. 50].
And with this any point in the ending is happily blunted. Beck's indecision and lack of self-confidence constantly reveal themselves in the fact that he spins out every poem for as long as he can, and can never complete it until some piece of sentimentality has betrayed his petty-bourgeois outlook. The Kleistian hexameters appear to be deliberately chosen so as to subject the reader to the same boredom as the two lovers bring upon themselves by their craven morality during their long period of trial.
THE JEWISH SECOND-HAND DEALER
There are some naive, appealing bits in the description of the Jewish second-hand dealer, e.g.:
The week flies by, five days only
The week allows you for your work.
Bestir yourself, don't pause for breath,
Earn, earn your daily bread. Saturdays the Father does forbid you, Sundays are forbidden by the Son [p. 55].
But later Beck succumbs completely to that kind of blathering about the Jews which is typical of the liberal Young Germans.[103] The poetry dries, up so entirely that one might think one was listening to a scrofulous speech in the scrofulous Saxon Assembly of Estates: You cannot become a craftsman, nor an "alderman of the mercers' guild", nor tiller of the soil, nor professor, but a career in medicine is open to you. This finds poetical expression as follows:
A working trade they would deny you, Deny you too a field to till. You may not from the teacher's chair Offer discourse to the young;
You may heal the country's sick [p. 57].
Could one not in the same way versify the Collected Statutes of Prussia and set Herr Ludwig of Bavaria's verse to music? Having declaimed to his son:
You must labour and be grasping, Always covetous of property and gold [p. 57],
the Jew consoles him with:
Your honesty endures for ever [pp. 57-58].
LORELEI This Lorelei is none other than Gold.
Then did turpitude flood in Upon all purity of spirit, Drowning all things sound [p. 64].
This Deluge of the spirit and drowning of all things sound is a most depressing mixture of the banal and the bombastic. There follow petty tirades against the evil and immorality of money.
Its (love's) quest is money and precious stones And never hearts nor parity of souls, No simple hut for dwelling [p. 67].
If money had done no more than discredit this German quest for hearts and parity of souls and Schiller's meanest hut with its space for a happy loving pair,(5) its revolutionary effects would deserve recognition.
DRUM-SONG
In this poem our socialist poet once more shows how through being trapped in the German petty-bourgeois misery, he is constantly obliged to spoil what little effect he achieves.
A regiment marches off with its band playing. The people call upon the soldiers to make common cause with them. The reader is glad that the poet is at last summoning up courage. But oh dear! We finally discover that the occasion is merely the Emperor's name-day and the people's words are only the improvised and unspoken reverie of a youth watching the parade. Probably a gymnasium boy:
Thus dreams a youth with burning heart [p. 76].
Whilst in the hands of Heine the same material, with the same point, would contain the most bitter satire on the German people, in Beck's case all that emerges is a satire on the poet himself, who identifies himself with the powerlessly rapturous youth. In Heine's case, the raptures of the bourgeoisie are deliberately high-pitched, so that they may equally deliberately then be brought down to earth with a bump; in Beck's case it is the poet himself who is associated with these fantasies and who naturally also suffers the consequences when he comes crashing down to earth. In the case of the one the bourgeoisie feels indignation at the poet's impertinence, in the case of the other reassurance at the attitudes of mind they have in common. The Prague uprising[104] in any case presented him with an opportunity to work up material of a quite different character from this farce.
THE EMIGRANT
I broke a bough from off a tree,
The keeper made complaint,
The master bound me to a post
And dealt me this grave injury [p. 86].
The only thing missing here is the complaint delivered in similarly versified form.
THE WOODEN LEG
Here the poet tries his hand at narrative and fails in a really pathetic fashion. This complete inability to tell a story and create a situation, which is evident throughout the book, is characteristic of the poetry of true socialism. True socialism, in its vagueness, provides no opportunity to relate the individual facts of the narrative to general conditions and thus bring out what is striking or significant about them. That is why the true socialists shy away from history in their prose as well. Where they cannot avoid it, they content themselves either with philosophical constructions or with producing an arid and boring catalogue of isolated instances of misfortune and social cases. Furthermore, they all lack the necessary talent for narrative, both in prose and poetry, and this is connected with the vagueness of their whole outlook.
THE POTATO
Tune: Morgenrot, Morgenrot!
Sacred bread!
You that came in our distress,
You that came at heaven's bidding
Into the world, that men might eat—
Farewell, for now you are dead! [p. 105].
In the second verse he calls the potato
...that little relic Left to us from Eden,
and describes potato-blight:
Among angels the plague rampages.
In the third verse Beck advises the poor to put mourning on:
You, the poor!
Go and put mourning on.
You now have need of nought,
Alas, all you own is gone,
Weep, who still have tears to shed!
Dead in the sand
Lies your God, o melancholy land.
Yet let these words speak comfort to you:
Never did redeemer perish
Who did not later rise again! [p. 106].
Weep, who still have tears to shed, with the poet! Were he not as bereft of energy as his poor man is of wholesome potatoes, he would have rejoiced at the substance acquired last autumn by that bourgeois god, the potato, one of the pivots of the existing bourgeois society. The landowners and burghers of Germany would have done themselves no harm by having this poem sung in the churches.
For this effort Beck deserves a garland of potato-blossom.
THE OLD MAID
We shall not look more closely at this poem since it drags on interminably, extending over full ninety pages with unspeakable boredom. The old maid, who in civilised countries is mostly only a nominal occurrence, is in Germany admittedly a significant "social case".
The most common kind of socialist self-complacent reflection is to say that all would be well if only it were not for the poor on the other side. This argument may be developed with any conceivable subject-matter. At the heart of this argument lies the philanthropic petty-bourgeois hypocrisy which is perfectly happy with the positive aspects of existing society and laments only that the negative aspect of poverty exists alongside them, inseparably bound up with present society, and only wishes that this society may continue to exist without the conditions of its existence.
Beck develops this argument in this poem often in the most trivial possible way, for example, in connection with Christmas:
O day that gently edifies men's hearts,
You would be gentler still and doubly dear—
Did there not lodge in poor children's hearts
Whose orphan gaze surveys the festive
Rooms of their rich playmates,
Envy and the seeds of sin,
Along with rabid blasphemy!
Yes
... more sweetly would the children's merry cheer
Sound to my ears in the Christmas candlelight,
If only in damp caverns destitution
Were not shivering on putrid straw [p. 149].
There are, by the way, occasional fine passages in this amorphous and interminable poem, for example the description of the lumpen proletariat:
Who day by day unwearyingly
Hunt garbage in the fetid gutters;
Who flit like sparrows after food,
Mending pans and grinding knives,
Starching linen with stiff fingers,
Pushing breathless at the heavy cart,
Laden with but scarcely ripened fruits,
Crying piteously: Who'll buy, who'll buy?
Who fight over a copper in the dirt;
Who at the corner-stones each day
Sing praise to the God in whom they believe,
But scarcely dare hold out their hands,
Begging being against the law;
Who with deaf ears, beset by hunger,
Pluck the harp and blow upon the flute, Year in, year out, the same old tune— Beneath each window, at each gate— Setting the nursemaid's feet adance But hearing not the melody themselves; Who after dusk illuminate the city But have no light for their own home; Who shoulder burdens and split firewood, Who have no master, and who have too many; Who dash to pray, procure and steal And drown with drink the vestige of a soul [pp. 158-160].
Beck here rises for the first time above the usual morality of the German bourgeoisie by putting these lines in the mouth of an old beggar whose daughter is asking for his permission to go to a rendezvous with an officer. In the above lines he gives her an embittered picture of the classes to which her child would then belong, he derives his objections from her immediate social position and does not preach morality to her, and for this he deserves credit.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
The virtuous servant of a Russian, whom the servant himself characterises as a worthy master, robs his apparently sleeping master during the night in order to maintain his old father. The Russian follows him surreptitiously and looks over his shoulder just as he is penning the following note to the same old man:
Take this money! I have stolen!
Father, pray to our Redeemer
That he may one day from his throne
Allow forgiveness to his servant!
I will labour and earn money,
And from my palliasse chase fatigue,
Till I can pay my worthy master
Back the money I have stolen [p. 241].
The virtuous servant's worthy master is so moved by these awful revelations that he cannot speak, but places his hand on the servant's head in blessing.
But the latter's life had left him— And his heart had broken with terror [p. 242].
Can anything more comical be committed to paper? Beck here descends lower than Kotzebue and Iffland, the servant's tragedy surpasses even the middle-class tragedy.
NEW GODS AND OLD SORROWS
In this poem, Ronge, the Friends of Light,[105] the New Jews, the barber, the washerwoman and the Leipzig citizen with his modicum of liberty are often effectively lampooned. At the end, the poet defends himself against the philistines who will criticise him for it, although he too
The song of light Sang out into the storm and night [p. 298].
He then himself propounds a doctrine of brotherly love and practical religion, modified by socialism and founded on a kind of nature-deism, and thus enlists one aspect of his opponents against the other. So Beck can never let matters rest until he has spoilt his own case, because he is himself too much entangled in German misery and gives too much thought to himself, to the poet, in his verse. With the modern lyrical poets in general, the bard has reverted to a fabulously trimmed, heroically posturing figure. He is not an active person situated in real society, who writes poetry, but "the poet", hovering in the clouds, these clouds being none other than the nebulous fantasies of the German bourgeoisie.—Beck constantly drops from the most heroical bombast into the soberest of bourgeois prose styles, and from a petty warlike wit against present conditions into a sentimental acceptance of them. It is constantly occurring to him that it is he himself de quo fabula narratur.* That is why his songs are not revolutionary in effect, but resemble
Three doses of salts To calm the blood (p. 293).
The conclusion to the whole volume is therefore most approp-riately provided by the following weak wail of resignation:
When will life upon this earth
Be bearable, O God?
In longing I am doubly strong
And hence in patience doubly wearied [p. 324].
Beck has incontestably more talent and at the outset more energy too than most of the German scribbling fraternity. His great lament is the German misery, amongst whose theoretical manifestations also belong Beck's pompously sentimental socialism and Young German reminiscences. Until social conflicts in Germany are given a more acute form by a more distinct differentiation between classes and a momentary acquisition of political power by [the] bourgeoisie, there can be little hope for a German poet in Germany itself. On the one hand, it is impossible for him to adopt a revolutionary stance in German society because the revolutionary elements themselves are not yet sufficiently developed, and on the other, the chronic misery surrounding him on all sides has too debilitating an effect for him to be able to rise above it, to be free of it and to laugh at it, without succumbing to it again himself. For the present the only advice we can give to all German poets who still have a little talent is to emigrate to civilised countries.
Endnotes
[3] The Jacobin revolutionary government headed by Robespierre fell as a result of the coup of 9-10 Thermidor (July 27-28), 1794. 5 8 12 ing an armed uprising of the plebeian masses against the bourgeois regime of the Directory and establishing a revolutionary dictatorship as a transitional stage to "pure democracy" and "egalitarian communism". The conspiracy was disclosed in May 1796. At the end of May 1797 its leaders were executed.
[100] The words "Wahrheit und Recht, Freiheit und Gesetz" (Truth and Right, Freedom and Law) were used as an epigraph to the progressive German newspaper Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung, banned in Prussia in 1842, and in Saxony early in 1843. p 236
[101] Restoration—see Note 72. Carbonari—see Note 29. The carbonari held their meetings under the guise of charcoal sales (Ventes).
[103] An allusion to "Young Germany"—a literary group which appeared in Germany in the 1830s and was under the influence of Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne. The group included such writers as Gutzkow, Wienbarg, Mundt, Laube and Jung, whose stories and articles voiced the opposition sentiments of petty-bourgeois and intellectual advocates of freedom of conscience and the press, the introduction of a constitution, emancipation of women, etc. Some of them advocated granting civil 2λ rights to Jews. Their political views were vague and inconsistent; most of them soon became ordinary liberals.
[104] The reference is to a spontaneous rising of textile workers in Prague in the latter half of June 1844. The events in Prague led to workers' uprisings in many other industrial centres of Bohemia. The workers' movement, which was accompanied by factory and machine wrecking, was suppressed by government troops.
[105] The Friends of Light was a religious trend opposed to the pietism predominant in the official church and supported by Junker circles.