Debit and Credit Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag

CHARLOTTENBERG, NEAR HEIDELBERG, 10th October, 1857.

DEAR SIR,--It is now about five months since you expressed to me a wish that I might be induced to imbody, in a few pages, my views on the peculiar interest I attached--as you had been informed by a common friend--to the most popular German novel of the age, Gustav Freytag's Soll und Haben. I confess I was at first startled by your proposal. It is true that, although I have not the honor of knowing the author personally, his book inspired me with uncommon interest when I read it soon after its appearance in 1855, and I did not hesitate to recommend translation into English, as I had, in London, recommended that of the Life of Perthes, since so successfully translated and edited under your auspices. I also admit that I thought, and continue to think, the English public at large would the better appreciate, not only the merits, but also the importance of the work, if they were informed of the bearing that it has upon the reality of things on the Continent; for, although Soll und Haben is a work altogether of fiction, and not what is called a book of tendency, political or social, it exhibits, nevertheless, more strikingly than any other I know, some highly important social facts, which are more generally felt than understood. It reveals a state of the relations of the higher and of the middle classes of society, in the eastern provinces of Prussia and the adjacent German and Slavonic countries, which are evidently connected with a general social movement proceeding from irresistible realities, and, in the main, independent of local circumstances and of political events. A few explanatory words might certainly assist the English reader in appreciating the truth and impartiality of the picture of reality exhibited in this novel, and thus considerably enhance the enjoyment of its poetical beauties, which speak for themselves.

At the same time, I thought that many other persons might explain this much better than I, who am besides, and have been ever since I left England, exclusively engaged in studies and compositions of a different character. As, however, you thought the English public would like to read what I might have to say on the subject, and that some observations on the book in general, and on the circumstances alluded to in particular, would prove a good means of introducing the author and his work to your countrymen, I gladly engaged to employ a time of recreation in one of our German baths in writing a few pages on the subject, to be ready by the 1st of August. I was the more encouraged to do so when, early in July, you communicated to me the proof-sheets of the first volume of a translation, which I found not only to be faithful in an eminent degree, but also to rival successfully the spirited tone and classical style for which the German original is justly and universally admired.

I began, accordingly, on the 15th July, to write the Introductory Remarks desired by you, when circumstances occurred over which I had no control, and neither leisure nor strength could be found for a literary composition.

Now that I have regained both, I have thought it advisable to let you have the best I can offer you in the shortest time possible, and therefore send you a short Memoir on the subject, written in German, placing it wholly at your disposal, and leaving it entirely to you to give it either in part or in its totality to the English public, as may seem best adapted to the occasion.

I shall be glad to hear of the success of your Translation, and remain, with sincere consideration,

Dear sir, yours truly, BUNSEN.

TO THOMAS CONSTABLE, ESQ.

PREFACE BY CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

THE HISTORY AND SPIRIT OF THE BOOK.

Since our German literature attained maturity, no novel has achieved a reputation so immediate, or one so likely to increase and to endure, as Soll und Haben, by Gustav Freytag. In the present, apparently apathetic tone and temper of our nation, a book must be of rare excellence which, in spite of its relatively high price (15s.), has passed through six editions within two years; and which, notwithstanding the carping criticism of a certain party in Church and State, has won most honorable recognition on every hand. To form a just conception of the hold the work has taken of the hearts of men in the educated middle rank, it needs but to be told that hundreds of fathers belonging to the higher industrious classes have presented this novel to their sons at the outset of their career, not less as a work of national interest than as a testimony to the dignity and high importance they attribute to the social position they are called to occupy, and to their faith in the future that awaits it.

The author, a man about fifty years of age, and by birth a Silesian, is editor of the Grenz-bote (Border Messenger), a highly-esteemed political and literary journal, published in Leipsic. His residence alternates between that city and a small estate near Gotha. Growing up amid the influences of a highly cultivated family circle, and having become an accomplished philologist under Lachmann, of Berlin, he early acquired valuable life-experience, and formed distinguished social connections. He also gained reputation as an author by skillfully arranged and carefully elaborated dramatic compositions--the weak point in the modern German school.

The enthusiastic reception of his novel can not, however, be attributed to these earlier labors, nor to the personal influence of its author. The favor of the public has certainly been obtained in great measure by the rare intrinsic merit of the composition, in which we find aptly chosen and melodious language, thoroughly artistic conception, life-like portraiture, and highly cultivated literary taste. We see before us a national and classic writer, not one of those mere journalists who count nowadays in Germany for men of letters.

The story, very unpretending in its opening, soon expands and becomes more exciting, always increasing in significance as it proceeds. The pattern of the web is soon disclosed after the various threads have been arranged upon the loom; and yet the reader is occasionally surprised, now by the appearance on the stage of a clever Americanized German, now by the unexpected introduction of threatening complications, and even of important political events. Though confined within a seemingly narrow circle, every incident, and especially the Polish struggle, is depicted grandly and to the life. In all this the author proves himself to be a perfect artist and a true poet, not only in the treatment of separate events, but in the far more rare and higher art of leading his conception to a satisfactory development and denouement. As this requirement does not seem to be generally apprehended either by the writers or the critics of our modern novels, I shall take the liberty of somewhat more earnestly attempting its vindication.

The romance of modern times, if at all deserving of the name it inherits from its predecessors in the romantic Middle Ages, represents the latest stadium of the epic.

Every romance is intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero. If we pass in review the romances of the last three centuries, we shall find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two generations which have satisfied this requirement. Every other romance, let it moralize ever so loudly, is still immoral; let it offer ever so much of so-called wisdom, is still irrational. The excellence of a romance, like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and truthful exhibition of the course of human things.

Candide, which may appear to be an exception, owes its prolonged existence to the charm of style and language; and, after all, how much less it is now read than Robinson Crusoe, the work of the talented De Foe; or than the Vicar of Wakefield, that simple narrative by Voltaire's English contemporary. Whether or not the cause can be clearly defined is here of little consequence; but an unskillfully developed romance is like a musical composition that concludes with discord unresolved--without perhaps inquiring wherefore, it leaves an unpleasant impression on the mind.

If we carry our investigation deeper, we shall find that any such defect violates our sense of artistic propriety, because it offends against our healthy human instinct of the fundamental natural laws; and the artistic merit, as well of a romance as of an epic, rises in proportion as the plot is naturally developed, instead of being conducted to its solution by a series of violent leaps and make-shifts, or even by a pretentious sham. We shall take occasion hereafter to illustrate these views by suitable examples.

That the work we are now considering fulfills, in a high degree, this requirement of refined artistic feeling and artistic treatment, will be at once apparent to all discriminating readers, though it can not be denied that there are many of the higher and more delicate chords which Soll und Haben never strikes. The characters to whom we are introduced appear to breathe a certain prosaic atmosphere, and the humorous and comic scenes occasionally interwoven with the narrative bear no comparison, in poetic delicacy of touch, with the creations of Cervantes, nor yet with the plastic power of those of Fielding.

The author has given most evidence of poetic power in the delineation of those dark characters who intrude like ghosts and demons upon the fair and healthy current of the book, and vanish anon into the caverns and cellars whence they came.

The great importance of the work, and the key to the almost unexampled favor it has won, must be sought in a quite different direction--in the close relation to the real and actual in our present social condition, maintained throughout its pages. Such a relation is manifested, in very various ways, in every novel of distinguished excellence. The object of all alike is the same--to exhibit and establish, by means of a narrative more or less fictitious, the really true and enduring elements in the complicated or contradictory phenomena of a period or a character. The poetic truthfulness of the immortal Don Quixote lies not so much in the absurdities of an effete Spanish chivalry as in the portraiture that lies beneath, of the insignificance and profligacy of the life of the higher ranks, which had succeeded the more decorous manners of the Middle Ages. Don Quixote is not the only hero of the book, but also the shattered Spanish people, among whom he moves with gipsies and smugglers for companions, treading with all the freshness of imperishable youth upon the buried ruins of political and spiritual life, rejoicing in the geniality of the climate and the tranquillity of the country, reposing proudly on his ancestral dignity. This conception--and not alone the pure and lofty nature of the crazy besieger of wind-mills, who, in spite of all, stands forth as at once the worthiest, and fundamentally the wisest character in the book--constitutes the poetic background, and the twilight glimmer amid the prevailing darkness in the life of the higher classes. We feel that there is assuredly something deeply human and of living power in these elements, and this reality will one day obtain the victory over all opponents.