Laughing Truths/Introduction

In 1887 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to Ferdinand Avenarius, founder and editor of the Kunstwart, recommending Carl Spitteler as a suitable contributor for that well-known Munich periodical. He described Spitteler's æsthetic essays as marked by an extraordinarily thoughtful and keen sense for the history and criticism of art and culture, and added that ("thank heavens!") they were instinct with a delightful humour. The papers here collected undoubtedly contain much of the material that led Nietzsche to this judgment. Besides essays contributed to the Kunstwart and other periodicals, the volume includes various lectures and addresses.

The first collection of the essays, made in 1898, contained also some material not previously published. The present English version was made from the second and slightly altered German edition of 1905. A few of the papers in the German volume have been omitted from the English translation, either because their interest has now somewhat evaporated or because it is of too local a character to appeal to English readers.

The title, "Laughing Truths," is obviously meant to indicate that the views in the essays, though treated in a light and whimsical way, are truths that the writer really had at heart.^[1] On the other hand, when the irony and ​whimsicality are especially evident, it may be interpreted as an invitation not to take the opinions expressed too seriously. To those who are familiar with Spitteler's life and writings it is clear that in no instance are the essays written to order. They represent the personal standpoint of the writer, and reflect his actual and interested convictions. There is no need to labour this point; but, by way of example, it may be noted that the views he here expounds of the epic, the ballad, and the lyric are those he followed in his own poems; that his criticism of pedantry and academicism is highly characteristic; that the musical papers represent his pronounced musical tastes very clearly; and, even, that the essay on the winter landscape might almost be taken as the formula for much of the scenery in his great epics.

Carl Spitteler was born in 1845 at Liestal, the quaint little capital of the half-canton of Bâle-Campagne, where his father held an official position.

At an early age he showed unusual gifts both in music and art; his own wish was to be a painter. Circumstances, however, prevented this; and so, after school and college education in Bâle, he studied theology and qualified himself for the church. He turned back, however, on the threshold of this career and, faute de mieux, took to teaching as a means of livelihood. For eight years (1871–79) he was tutor in the houses of two Russian families in St. Petersburg and Finland. This period must have been one of great significance in his moral and intellectual development; but for any detailed ​account of it we must await the biography which Professor Fränkel, of Berne, has now in hand.

Spitteler's first important literary work was the prose epic of Prometheus and Epimetheus, published in 1880–81, at the age of thirty-six. It appeared under the pseudonym of "Felix Tandem", chosen because, in his own words, he felt happy in having at length produced something that he dared lay at the sacred feet of Poesy. This epic is in a quasi-Biblical, hieratic, rhythmical prose, resembling that used by Nietzsche in Zarathustra, which, however, did not appear till two or three years after Spitteler's work. Prometheus was received with such indifference that its author practically made up his mind to abandon literature as a career, though he published a volume of short poems, entitled Schmetterlinge (Butterflies) in 1889. In 1892, however, he became financially independent, so that for the rest of his life, spent in Lucerne, he was able to devote himself heart and soul to work on his poems, romances, and essays. Among the firstfruits of this leisure was a volume of Balladen (1896), which contains many admirable examples of the "ballad" as he envisaged it.

Even from the first a few competent critics recognised the value of Spitteler's work. Prominent among these was Joseph Victor Widmann, literary editor of the Berner Bund. It was not, however, till 1904, when Felix Weingartner, the eminent conductor and composer, published an eloquent panegyric on him, that Spitteler became known outside of Switzerland. The poet always called Weingartner his Entdecker, or discoverer.

The work that excited Weingartner's enthusiasm was ​Der Olympische Frühling or Olympian Spring, the first draft of which appeared between 1900 and 1905, while the final version dates from 1910. This long epic, arranged in six-foot rhymed iambic couplets, is probably the most popular of Spitteler's works; and it was assigned as the main reason for awarding him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919. It is full of imagination and humour, with a Keats-like beauty of diction. In 1906 appeared another volume of short poems, entitled Glockenlieder (Bell Songs), including some of the most graceful and charming of all his lyrics.

Among his prose works were several imaginative romances, such as Conrad der Leutnant (1898) and Imago (1906). Of the latter Spitteler himself said it represented in everyday and concrete life the same theme as that handled poetically in Prometheus and Epimetheus. Die Mädchenfeinde (1907), or Girls' Enemies, is a picturesque expansion of an episode of his own boyhood.^[2] The little book of recollections of his childhood, Meine Frühesten Erlebnisse (1914), which ends with his fifth year, is surely one of the most wonderful and most convincing resuscitations of the child's point of view ever made. Two other books that may be mentioned are Extramundana, which might in some respects be described as an early anticipation of The Olympian Spring, and Literarische Gleichnisse (Literary Parables), a satirical work in verse. Spitteler himself attached no ​very high importance to Extramundana; but it is doubtful whether its readers would agree with him in this view.

Towards the close of his life Spitteler returned to the subject of "Prometheus" (just as Goethe did with "Faust") and produced a metrical version of it under the title of Prometheus der Dulder (Prometheus the Long-Suffering). This, however, though concerned with the same main theme, is no mere working over of the original prose epic. Rather do the two epics stand side by side, like two Madonnas by the same painter. The Dulder, shorter and in verse, represents the maturer, the more finished, the more classic form of a theme originally handled with the romantic exuberance of youth. It is the profoundest and final expression of this many-sided genius. For it was published only a very short time before his death.

Spitteler's life at Lucerne was a quiet and secluded one, devoted wholly to his work. He associated himself with no group—political, religious, literary, or academic. Self-advertisement was utterly alien to him. Once, and once only, he emerged from this retirement. The occasion was an address to a meeting of German-Swiss notables at Zurich on December 14, 1914. The burden of the speech was the necessity, in the interest of Swiss unity, of realising that racial sympathy must on no account be the determining factor in the attitude of the German Swiss to the War. The tone of the address was correct and detached; but Spitteler did not hesitate to blame the violation of Belgium or to give the Allies their due. Of our own country he said: "We owe to the English a special debt of gratitude. More ​than once England has come to our aid in times of great stress. England is, it is true, not the only friend of Switzerland, but she is the most trustworthy".

The address, of a nobility that raised it far above all ephemeral political writing, was received with enthusiasm. It was felt that Switzerland, once for all, had definitely formulated the position of the small neutral countries. Spitteler, as he himself remarked somewhat ironically, became better known to his countrymen by his forty minutes as a politician than by forty years of writing. He had, however, said his say and refused all other appeals to intervene in political matters.

Many other tributes to Spitteler from European men of mark might be quoted. In 1915 a banquet in honour of his seventieth birthday was held at Geneva; and among those who expressed their sympathy and admiration on this occasion were such distinguished foreigners as Maeterlinck, Rostand, Verhaeren, Boutroux, and Bergson. The French Academy also saluted him at this time, and in 1916 he received the medal of the Société des Gens de Lettres de France. M. Baudouin, who is an enthusiastic admirer, has characterised Laughing Truths as one of the most attractive, most elevated, and most powerful of critical volumes; and the perspicacity and Gallic grace of these essays have been repeatedly recognised. Professor J. G. Robertson (University of London), one of the few Englishmen who have spoken of Spitteler in print, calls The Olympian Spring "the greatest poem in this, the last epoch of German literature", and comments on the "incredible neglect" Spitteler has suffered for his ​defiance of tradition and convention. And these citations take no account of the naturally much more numerous eulogies in the German language.

No apology need be offered for the selection of a prose work to introduce Spitteler to the British public. The translation of prose requires much less courage than the translation of poetry. The risk that the traduttore may prove a traditore is sensibly reduced. Moreover, this volume of essays covers practically the whole field of Spitteler's interests and preoccupations, not only as author but as musician, artist, citizen, nature-lover, and man. From this point of view it may in some respects serve better as an "introduction" to Spitteler than any one poem could do. And, in spite of Spitteler's own forcible plea in the essay in this volume entitled "The Forbidden Epic", it may be doubted whether the British public would at the present time willingly lend their ears to a long epic, no matter how beautiful, offered to them in translation.

Carl Spitteler died at Lucerne, in his 80th year, on December 28, 1924. He lies in a sequestered corner of the picturesque Friedental Cemetery, under a rough flat stone, inscribed simply "Carl Spitteler".

The sincere gratitude of the translator is due to Spitteler's biographer, Professor Fränkel, and to Spitteler's friend, Herr C. A. Loosli (both of Berne), whose help in dealing with difficult constructions and in explaining unfamiliar references has been invaluable.