New Haven, Yale
University
Press, 1954.
Stefan George - Studies
Stefan George.
Bennett, Edwin Keppel.
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1954.
http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336
Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain, meaning that it is not subject to copyright. Users are free to copy, use, and redistribute the work in part or in whole. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions. Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc. (indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly, non-commercial purposes.
? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? EX LIBRIS
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
FROM THE FUND
ESTABLISHED AT YALE
IN 1927 BY
WILLIAM H. CROCKER
OF THE CLASS OF 1882
SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL
YALE UNIVERSITY
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STUDIES IN MODERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE
AND THOUGHT
General Editor:
ERICH HELLER
Professor of German
in the University College of Swansea
STEFAN GEORGE
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Also published in this Series
Arturo Barea: unamuno
Roy Campbell: lorca
Hugh F. Garten: gerhart hauptmann
Rayner Heppenstall: leon bloy
Hans Egon Holthusen: rilke
P. Mansell Jones: baudelaire
Martin Jarrett-Kerr: Francois mauriac
Janko Lavrin: goncharov
Rob Lyle: mistral
Richard March: kleist
Iris Murdoch: s art re
L. S. Salzberger: HOLDERLIN
Elizabeth Sewell: PAUL valery
Cecil Sprigge: Benedetto croce
Enid Starkie: andre gide
J. P. Stern: ernst junger
E. W. F. Tornlin: simone weil
Martin Turnell: jacques riviere
Bernard Wall: alessandro manzoni
Other titles are in preparation*
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STEFAN GEORGE
BY
E. K. . BENNETT
NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1954
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced,
in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers
for the public press) without written permission from
the publishers.
gut
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? For
TERENCE WINDLE
M887135
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? CONTENTS
Introduction page 9
1 11
ii 18
in 20
iv 26
v 31
vi 45
vii 56
Appendix 59
Biographical Dates 62
Select Bibliography 63
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Introduction
Unlike his contemporaries Rilke and Thomas Mann, Stefan
George has not excited great interest in the reading world out-
side his native country. Few translations of his poetry have
appeared in English and only occasional essays have attempted
an assessment of his place in modern European poetry. Even in
Germany he has not yet been given his definite place in the
order of its poets. For his importance has been much disputed,
and like Helena in the second part of Goethe's Faust he appears
as one greatly admired but also greatly blamed. The admiration
and the blame have concerned themselves not merely with his
poetry but with his personality, and the influence which his
personality had upon his contemporaries. That his poetry is
^ cold, mannered, too consciously willed, unmusical, is the
charge brought against it by his detractors; whilst as a person-
ality he has been charged with self-glorification, arrogance and
the perversion of_youth, now towards aestheticism, now towards
Nazisnv
A forceful and compelling personality may be an asset to a
poet; it is not necessarily one. Considered in itself its drawback
is that its greatest effectiveness can be felt only by those who
come into immediate contact with it--a limited number of
persons; the wider public knows of it only in so far as it is
revealed in his poetry or--more debatably--through rumours
and reports, and these tend on the whole to arouse aversion
rather than sympathy. Thus there was a George-legend, the
reaction to which was vaguely hostile among the general public
in Germany before there was any wide-spread acquaintance with
the poet's actual works. Some excuse for this hostile attitude to
George amongst the general public may be found in the deliber-
ate exclusiveness of the appeal which the poet made. Some
years passed and a number of volumes had been printed before
the actual publication of his works took place in the ordinary
way. The earlier volumes were addressed to and accessible only
to an elite. Only slowly and with the passing of years did George
acquire a 'public' and that a restricted one, so that it can be said
that his works never penetrated into the consciousness--far less
the affection--of a wide public, nor indeed did he ever wish
them to do so.
In 1914 when Der Stern des Bundes became to some extent
the breviary of the young intellectuals who set forth to war, they
were taking with them a book which was originally intended for
a circle of initiates. Some of Rilke's works, notably the Cornet
and Die Geschichten vom lieben Gott, became popular; no work
9
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? of George's ever did. He had devotees--the immediate members
of his circle--his avowed disciples; he had a certain limited
public among the intellectuals who were convinced of his
merits as a poet--a larger circle than that of his devotees; out-
side of that there was only an indifferent or even hostile world
mainly of detractors. Only towards the very end of his life did
George allow any of his poems to appear in anthologies--the
most easy means of access to a poet. Nor did any selection of his
poems in German appear until after his death. It may be said
that in withholding his assent to such forms of publication
George was wise, for his poems gain greatly by being read in
their proper framework; and in the arrangement of each volume
of his works the same principle of form is at work as in each
individual poem.
Many books have been written on Stefan George in German
by those who were actually members of his circle or those who
were closely connected with it. They are not in the strict sense
critical works. The personality of the poet impinges too greatly
upon the writers' consciousness for a critical attitude to the
poems to be possible for them. The principle of loyalty to the
Master hampers any freedom of judgment. The poetry is accepted
as great poetry and no detailed investigation of individual
poems is attempted. Where references are made to other poets
they are to Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. It is tacitly assumed
that George's place is with these. To assign him a place beside
Platen or Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, with whom amongst German
poets he has formally the greatest affinity, would seem little
short of impiety. Yet, though he is unquestionably a greater
poet than either of these, he is equally unquestionably of a
lesser stature than Holderlin. Some of the latest important
writings on him are still written by those who actually knew
him. There are, nevertheless, indications in the essays occasion-
ally appearing in literary journals at present that there is a
growing feeling, after some years of neglect, that the time has
come for a more detached assessment of him, an assessment
which can be made only by those who did not come under
the immediate influence of his personality.
That he was a great and forceful personality there can be no
doubt; that he was a man of the highest intellectual ability
with an understanding and grasp of the problems of his age
seems equally indubitable; that he was a great poet in the strict-
est sense of the word 'great' cannot so easily be maintained.
And whether the atmosphere of grandeur which surrounded him
can convincingly be preserved when those who knew him and
helped to create it have passed away is even more problematical.
10
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? I
Stefan Anton George was born on the 12th July 1868, in Bu? des-
heim near Bingen on the Rhine, the son of a well-to-do owner
of vineyards who afterwards owned a wineshop in Bingen itself.
The family was peasant in origin, but the poet's father had be-
come affluent enough to enable his son to devote his life to
poetry without requiring of him that he should take up any of
the accepted money-making professions. There seem to have
been no parental conflicts: both father and mother accepted
tacitly the way of life their son had chosen. After the usual
school education George spent some time at the University of
Berlin. But the years of travel, rather than university studies,
completed an education based on the classical training of a
German Gymnasium (Darmstadt) in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century. From his childhood George had shown a great
interest in words, and whilst still a child he invented a language
of his own. Later in life he returned to this idea and carried it
out more fully in a sort of lingua franca, which included
Latin, Provencal, Catalan and Spanish elements; so fully indeed
was this artificial language developed that he was able to use it
for poetical composition, and two poems in Der Siebente Ring
were originally written in it. The last two lines of the poem
i Urspruenge in the same volume are written in the language he
invented as a child.
He was at home in many European languages; and his trans-
lations of English, French, Italian and Spanish poetry, as well as
his translations into English and French of his own poems, bear
witness to his mastery of these languages.
His travels took him to London, where he spent some
months, to France, Austria, Spain and Italy. His visits to France
and to Austria have outstanding importance in the history of
his career as a poet. In Paris he was introduced to the circle of
Symbolist poets, and accepted from them the then prevailing
Symbolist mode of poetry which determined his own develop-
ment as a poet. In Vienna he made the acquaintance of the young
Hofmannsthal, in whom he believed he had found a poet who
confirmed him in his own conception of poetry. With him,
however, he failed to establish a relationship on the lines which
he wished.
At home in Germany, where the greater part of his life was
spent, he lived for some years in Bingen in the house of his
parents. Later his chief centres of residence were Berlin, Munich
and Heidelberg, in each of which towns he had a pied-a-terre,
usually only a single room, in which he lived and received his
11
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl.
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1954.
http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336
Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain, meaning that it is not subject to copyright. Users are free to copy, use, and redistribute the work in part or in whole. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions. Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc. (indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly, non-commercial purposes.
? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? EX LIBRIS
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
FROM THE FUND
ESTABLISHED AT YALE
IN 1927 BY
WILLIAM H. CROCKER
OF THE CLASS OF 1882
SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL
YALE UNIVERSITY
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STUDIES IN MODERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE
AND THOUGHT
General Editor:
ERICH HELLER
Professor of German
in the University College of Swansea
STEFAN GEORGE
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Also published in this Series
Arturo Barea: unamuno
Roy Campbell: lorca
Hugh F. Garten: gerhart hauptmann
Rayner Heppenstall: leon bloy
Hans Egon Holthusen: rilke
P. Mansell Jones: baudelaire
Martin Jarrett-Kerr: Francois mauriac
Janko Lavrin: goncharov
Rob Lyle: mistral
Richard March: kleist
Iris Murdoch: s art re
L. S. Salzberger: HOLDERLIN
Elizabeth Sewell: PAUL valery
Cecil Sprigge: Benedetto croce
Enid Starkie: andre gide
J. P. Stern: ernst junger
E. W. F. Tornlin: simone weil
Martin Turnell: jacques riviere
Bernard Wall: alessandro manzoni
Other titles are in preparation*
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STEFAN GEORGE
BY
E. K. . BENNETT
NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1954
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced,
in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers
for the public press) without written permission from
the publishers.
gut
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? For
TERENCE WINDLE
M887135
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? CONTENTS
Introduction page 9
1 11
ii 18
in 20
iv 26
v 31
vi 45
vii 56
Appendix 59
Biographical Dates 62
Select Bibliography 63
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Introduction
Unlike his contemporaries Rilke and Thomas Mann, Stefan
George has not excited great interest in the reading world out-
side his native country. Few translations of his poetry have
appeared in English and only occasional essays have attempted
an assessment of his place in modern European poetry. Even in
Germany he has not yet been given his definite place in the
order of its poets. For his importance has been much disputed,
and like Helena in the second part of Goethe's Faust he appears
as one greatly admired but also greatly blamed. The admiration
and the blame have concerned themselves not merely with his
poetry but with his personality, and the influence which his
personality had upon his contemporaries. That his poetry is
^ cold, mannered, too consciously willed, unmusical, is the
charge brought against it by his detractors; whilst as a person-
ality he has been charged with self-glorification, arrogance and
the perversion of_youth, now towards aestheticism, now towards
Nazisnv
A forceful and compelling personality may be an asset to a
poet; it is not necessarily one. Considered in itself its drawback
is that its greatest effectiveness can be felt only by those who
come into immediate contact with it--a limited number of
persons; the wider public knows of it only in so far as it is
revealed in his poetry or--more debatably--through rumours
and reports, and these tend on the whole to arouse aversion
rather than sympathy. Thus there was a George-legend, the
reaction to which was vaguely hostile among the general public
in Germany before there was any wide-spread acquaintance with
the poet's actual works. Some excuse for this hostile attitude to
George amongst the general public may be found in the deliber-
ate exclusiveness of the appeal which the poet made. Some
years passed and a number of volumes had been printed before
the actual publication of his works took place in the ordinary
way. The earlier volumes were addressed to and accessible only
to an elite. Only slowly and with the passing of years did George
acquire a 'public' and that a restricted one, so that it can be said
that his works never penetrated into the consciousness--far less
the affection--of a wide public, nor indeed did he ever wish
them to do so.
In 1914 when Der Stern des Bundes became to some extent
the breviary of the young intellectuals who set forth to war, they
were taking with them a book which was originally intended for
a circle of initiates. Some of Rilke's works, notably the Cornet
and Die Geschichten vom lieben Gott, became popular; no work
9
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? of George's ever did. He had devotees--the immediate members
of his circle--his avowed disciples; he had a certain limited
public among the intellectuals who were convinced of his
merits as a poet--a larger circle than that of his devotees; out-
side of that there was only an indifferent or even hostile world
mainly of detractors. Only towards the very end of his life did
George allow any of his poems to appear in anthologies--the
most easy means of access to a poet. Nor did any selection of his
poems in German appear until after his death. It may be said
that in withholding his assent to such forms of publication
George was wise, for his poems gain greatly by being read in
their proper framework; and in the arrangement of each volume
of his works the same principle of form is at work as in each
individual poem.
Many books have been written on Stefan George in German
by those who were actually members of his circle or those who
were closely connected with it. They are not in the strict sense
critical works. The personality of the poet impinges too greatly
upon the writers' consciousness for a critical attitude to the
poems to be possible for them. The principle of loyalty to the
Master hampers any freedom of judgment. The poetry is accepted
as great poetry and no detailed investigation of individual
poems is attempted. Where references are made to other poets
they are to Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. It is tacitly assumed
that George's place is with these. To assign him a place beside
Platen or Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, with whom amongst German
poets he has formally the greatest affinity, would seem little
short of impiety. Yet, though he is unquestionably a greater
poet than either of these, he is equally unquestionably of a
lesser stature than Holderlin. Some of the latest important
writings on him are still written by those who actually knew
him. There are, nevertheless, indications in the essays occasion-
ally appearing in literary journals at present that there is a
growing feeling, after some years of neglect, that the time has
come for a more detached assessment of him, an assessment
which can be made only by those who did not come under
the immediate influence of his personality.
That he was a great and forceful personality there can be no
doubt; that he was a man of the highest intellectual ability
with an understanding and grasp of the problems of his age
seems equally indubitable; that he was a great poet in the strict-
est sense of the word 'great' cannot so easily be maintained.
And whether the atmosphere of grandeur which surrounded him
can convincingly be preserved when those who knew him and
helped to create it have passed away is even more problematical.
10
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? I
Stefan Anton George was born on the 12th July 1868, in Bu? des-
heim near Bingen on the Rhine, the son of a well-to-do owner
of vineyards who afterwards owned a wineshop in Bingen itself.
The family was peasant in origin, but the poet's father had be-
come affluent enough to enable his son to devote his life to
poetry without requiring of him that he should take up any of
the accepted money-making professions. There seem to have
been no parental conflicts: both father and mother accepted
tacitly the way of life their son had chosen. After the usual
school education George spent some time at the University of
Berlin. But the years of travel, rather than university studies,
completed an education based on the classical training of a
German Gymnasium (Darmstadt) in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century. From his childhood George had shown a great
interest in words, and whilst still a child he invented a language
of his own. Later in life he returned to this idea and carried it
out more fully in a sort of lingua franca, which included
Latin, Provencal, Catalan and Spanish elements; so fully indeed
was this artificial language developed that he was able to use it
for poetical composition, and two poems in Der Siebente Ring
were originally written in it. The last two lines of the poem
i Urspruenge in the same volume are written in the language he
invented as a child.
He was at home in many European languages; and his trans-
lations of English, French, Italian and Spanish poetry, as well as
his translations into English and French of his own poems, bear
witness to his mastery of these languages.
His travels took him to London, where he spent some
months, to France, Austria, Spain and Italy. His visits to France
and to Austria have outstanding importance in the history of
his career as a poet. In Paris he was introduced to the circle of
Symbolist poets, and accepted from them the then prevailing
Symbolist mode of poetry which determined his own develop-
ment as a poet. In Vienna he made the acquaintance of the young
Hofmannsthal, in whom he believed he had found a poet who
confirmed him in his own conception of poetry. With him,
however, he failed to establish a relationship on the lines which
he wished.
At home in Germany, where the greater part of his life was
spent, he lived for some years in Bingen in the house of his
parents. Later his chief centres of residence were Berlin, Munich
and Heidelberg, in each of which towns he had a pied-a-terre,
usually only a single room, in which he lived and received his
11
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
Bennett, Edwin Keppel.
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1954.
http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336
Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain, meaning that it is not subject to copyright. Users are free to copy, use, and redistribute the work in part or in whole. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions. Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc. (indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly, non-commercial purposes.
? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? EX LIBRIS
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
FROM THE FUND
ESTABLISHED AT YALE
IN 1927 BY
WILLIAM H. CROCKER
OF THE CLASS OF 1882
SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL
YALE UNIVERSITY
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STUDIES IN MODERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE
AND THOUGHT
General Editor:
ERICH HELLER
Professor of German
in the University College of Swansea
STEFAN GEORGE
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Also published in this Series
Arturo Barea: unamuno
Roy Campbell: lorca
Hugh F. Garten: gerhart hauptmann
Rayner Heppenstall: leon bloy
Hans Egon Holthusen: rilke
P. Mansell Jones: baudelaire
Martin Jarrett-Kerr: Francois mauriac
Janko Lavrin: goncharov
Rob Lyle: mistral
Richard March: kleist
Iris Murdoch: s art re
L. S. Salzberger: HOLDERLIN
Elizabeth Sewell: PAUL valery
Cecil Sprigge: Benedetto croce
Enid Starkie: andre gide
J. P. Stern: ernst junger
E. W. F. Tornlin: simone weil
Martin Turnell: jacques riviere
Bernard Wall: alessandro manzoni
Other titles are in preparation*
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STEFAN GEORGE
BY
E. K. . BENNETT
NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1954
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced,
in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers
for the public press) without written permission from
the publishers.
gut
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? For
TERENCE WINDLE
M887135
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? CONTENTS
Introduction page 9
1 11
ii 18
in 20
iv 26
v 31
vi 45
vii 56
Appendix 59
Biographical Dates 62
Select Bibliography 63
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Introduction
Unlike his contemporaries Rilke and Thomas Mann, Stefan
George has not excited great interest in the reading world out-
side his native country. Few translations of his poetry have
appeared in English and only occasional essays have attempted
an assessment of his place in modern European poetry. Even in
Germany he has not yet been given his definite place in the
order of its poets. For his importance has been much disputed,
and like Helena in the second part of Goethe's Faust he appears
as one greatly admired but also greatly blamed. The admiration
and the blame have concerned themselves not merely with his
poetry but with his personality, and the influence which his
personality had upon his contemporaries. That his poetry is
^ cold, mannered, too consciously willed, unmusical, is the
charge brought against it by his detractors; whilst as a person-
ality he has been charged with self-glorification, arrogance and
the perversion of_youth, now towards aestheticism, now towards
Nazisnv
A forceful and compelling personality may be an asset to a
poet; it is not necessarily one. Considered in itself its drawback
is that its greatest effectiveness can be felt only by those who
come into immediate contact with it--a limited number of
persons; the wider public knows of it only in so far as it is
revealed in his poetry or--more debatably--through rumours
and reports, and these tend on the whole to arouse aversion
rather than sympathy. Thus there was a George-legend, the
reaction to which was vaguely hostile among the general public
in Germany before there was any wide-spread acquaintance with
the poet's actual works. Some excuse for this hostile attitude to
George amongst the general public may be found in the deliber-
ate exclusiveness of the appeal which the poet made. Some
years passed and a number of volumes had been printed before
the actual publication of his works took place in the ordinary
way. The earlier volumes were addressed to and accessible only
to an elite. Only slowly and with the passing of years did George
acquire a 'public' and that a restricted one, so that it can be said
that his works never penetrated into the consciousness--far less
the affection--of a wide public, nor indeed did he ever wish
them to do so.
In 1914 when Der Stern des Bundes became to some extent
the breviary of the young intellectuals who set forth to war, they
were taking with them a book which was originally intended for
a circle of initiates. Some of Rilke's works, notably the Cornet
and Die Geschichten vom lieben Gott, became popular; no work
9
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? of George's ever did. He had devotees--the immediate members
of his circle--his avowed disciples; he had a certain limited
public among the intellectuals who were convinced of his
merits as a poet--a larger circle than that of his devotees; out-
side of that there was only an indifferent or even hostile world
mainly of detractors. Only towards the very end of his life did
George allow any of his poems to appear in anthologies--the
most easy means of access to a poet. Nor did any selection of his
poems in German appear until after his death. It may be said
that in withholding his assent to such forms of publication
George was wise, for his poems gain greatly by being read in
their proper framework; and in the arrangement of each volume
of his works the same principle of form is at work as in each
individual poem.
Many books have been written on Stefan George in German
by those who were actually members of his circle or those who
were closely connected with it. They are not in the strict sense
critical works. The personality of the poet impinges too greatly
upon the writers' consciousness for a critical attitude to the
poems to be possible for them. The principle of loyalty to the
Master hampers any freedom of judgment. The poetry is accepted
as great poetry and no detailed investigation of individual
poems is attempted. Where references are made to other poets
they are to Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. It is tacitly assumed
that George's place is with these. To assign him a place beside
Platen or Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, with whom amongst German
poets he has formally the greatest affinity, would seem little
short of impiety. Yet, though he is unquestionably a greater
poet than either of these, he is equally unquestionably of a
lesser stature than Holderlin. Some of the latest important
writings on him are still written by those who actually knew
him. There are, nevertheless, indications in the essays occasion-
ally appearing in literary journals at present that there is a
growing feeling, after some years of neglect, that the time has
come for a more detached assessment of him, an assessment
which can be made only by those who did not come under
the immediate influence of his personality.
That he was a great and forceful personality there can be no
doubt; that he was a man of the highest intellectual ability
with an understanding and grasp of the problems of his age
seems equally indubitable; that he was a great poet in the strict-
est sense of the word 'great' cannot so easily be maintained.
And whether the atmosphere of grandeur which surrounded him
can convincingly be preserved when those who knew him and
helped to create it have passed away is even more problematical.
10
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? I
Stefan Anton George was born on the 12th July 1868, in Bu? des-
heim near Bingen on the Rhine, the son of a well-to-do owner
of vineyards who afterwards owned a wineshop in Bingen itself.
The family was peasant in origin, but the poet's father had be-
come affluent enough to enable his son to devote his life to
poetry without requiring of him that he should take up any of
the accepted money-making professions. There seem to have
been no parental conflicts: both father and mother accepted
tacitly the way of life their son had chosen. After the usual
school education George spent some time at the University of
Berlin. But the years of travel, rather than university studies,
completed an education based on the classical training of a
German Gymnasium (Darmstadt) in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century. From his childhood George had shown a great
interest in words, and whilst still a child he invented a language
of his own. Later in life he returned to this idea and carried it
out more fully in a sort of lingua franca, which included
Latin, Provencal, Catalan and Spanish elements; so fully indeed
was this artificial language developed that he was able to use it
for poetical composition, and two poems in Der Siebente Ring
were originally written in it. The last two lines of the poem
i Urspruenge in the same volume are written in the language he
invented as a child.
He was at home in many European languages; and his trans-
lations of English, French, Italian and Spanish poetry, as well as
his translations into English and French of his own poems, bear
witness to his mastery of these languages.
His travels took him to London, where he spent some
months, to France, Austria, Spain and Italy. His visits to France
and to Austria have outstanding importance in the history of
his career as a poet. In Paris he was introduced to the circle of
Symbolist poets, and accepted from them the then prevailing
Symbolist mode of poetry which determined his own develop-
ment as a poet. In Vienna he made the acquaintance of the young
Hofmannsthal, in whom he believed he had found a poet who
confirmed him in his own conception of poetry. With him,
however, he failed to establish a relationship on the lines which
he wished.
At home in Germany, where the greater part of his life was
spent, he lived for some years in Bingen in the house of his
parents. Later his chief centres of residence were Berlin, Munich
and Heidelberg, in each of which towns he had a pied-a-terre,
usually only a single room, in which he lived and received his
11
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl.
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1954.
http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336
Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain, meaning that it is not subject to copyright. Users are free to copy, use, and redistribute the work in part or in whole. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions. Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc. (indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly, non-commercial purposes.
? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? EX LIBRIS
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
FROM THE FUND
ESTABLISHED AT YALE
IN 1927 BY
WILLIAM H. CROCKER
OF THE CLASS OF 1882
SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL
YALE UNIVERSITY
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STUDIES IN MODERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE
AND THOUGHT
General Editor:
ERICH HELLER
Professor of German
in the University College of Swansea
STEFAN GEORGE
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Also published in this Series
Arturo Barea: unamuno
Roy Campbell: lorca
Hugh F. Garten: gerhart hauptmann
Rayner Heppenstall: leon bloy
Hans Egon Holthusen: rilke
P. Mansell Jones: baudelaire
Martin Jarrett-Kerr: Francois mauriac
Janko Lavrin: goncharov
Rob Lyle: mistral
Richard March: kleist
Iris Murdoch: s art re
L. S. Salzberger: HOLDERLIN
Elizabeth Sewell: PAUL valery
Cecil Sprigge: Benedetto croce
Enid Starkie: andre gide
J. P. Stern: ernst junger
E. W. F. Tornlin: simone weil
Martin Turnell: jacques riviere
Bernard Wall: alessandro manzoni
Other titles are in preparation*
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? STEFAN GEORGE
BY
E. K. . BENNETT
NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1954
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced,
in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers
for the public press) without written permission from
the publishers.
gut
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? For
TERENCE WINDLE
M887135
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? CONTENTS
Introduction page 9
1 11
ii 18
in 20
iv 26
v 31
vi 45
vii 56
Appendix 59
Biographical Dates 62
Select Bibliography 63
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Introduction
Unlike his contemporaries Rilke and Thomas Mann, Stefan
George has not excited great interest in the reading world out-
side his native country. Few translations of his poetry have
appeared in English and only occasional essays have attempted
an assessment of his place in modern European poetry. Even in
Germany he has not yet been given his definite place in the
order of its poets. For his importance has been much disputed,
and like Helena in the second part of Goethe's Faust he appears
as one greatly admired but also greatly blamed. The admiration
and the blame have concerned themselves not merely with his
poetry but with his personality, and the influence which his
personality had upon his contemporaries. That his poetry is
^ cold, mannered, too consciously willed, unmusical, is the
charge brought against it by his detractors; whilst as a person-
ality he has been charged with self-glorification, arrogance and
the perversion of_youth, now towards aestheticism, now towards
Nazisnv
A forceful and compelling personality may be an asset to a
poet; it is not necessarily one. Considered in itself its drawback
is that its greatest effectiveness can be felt only by those who
come into immediate contact with it--a limited number of
persons; the wider public knows of it only in so far as it is
revealed in his poetry or--more debatably--through rumours
and reports, and these tend on the whole to arouse aversion
rather than sympathy. Thus there was a George-legend, the
reaction to which was vaguely hostile among the general public
in Germany before there was any wide-spread acquaintance with
the poet's actual works. Some excuse for this hostile attitude to
George amongst the general public may be found in the deliber-
ate exclusiveness of the appeal which the poet made. Some
years passed and a number of volumes had been printed before
the actual publication of his works took place in the ordinary
way. The earlier volumes were addressed to and accessible only
to an elite. Only slowly and with the passing of years did George
acquire a 'public' and that a restricted one, so that it can be said
that his works never penetrated into the consciousness--far less
the affection--of a wide public, nor indeed did he ever wish
them to do so.
In 1914 when Der Stern des Bundes became to some extent
the breviary of the young intellectuals who set forth to war, they
were taking with them a book which was originally intended for
a circle of initiates. Some of Rilke's works, notably the Cornet
and Die Geschichten vom lieben Gott, became popular; no work
9
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? of George's ever did. He had devotees--the immediate members
of his circle--his avowed disciples; he had a certain limited
public among the intellectuals who were convinced of his
merits as a poet--a larger circle than that of his devotees; out-
side of that there was only an indifferent or even hostile world
mainly of detractors. Only towards the very end of his life did
George allow any of his poems to appear in anthologies--the
most easy means of access to a poet. Nor did any selection of his
poems in German appear until after his death. It may be said
that in withholding his assent to such forms of publication
George was wise, for his poems gain greatly by being read in
their proper framework; and in the arrangement of each volume
of his works the same principle of form is at work as in each
individual poem.
Many books have been written on Stefan George in German
by those who were actually members of his circle or those who
were closely connected with it. They are not in the strict sense
critical works. The personality of the poet impinges too greatly
upon the writers' consciousness for a critical attitude to the
poems to be possible for them. The principle of loyalty to the
Master hampers any freedom of judgment. The poetry is accepted
as great poetry and no detailed investigation of individual
poems is attempted. Where references are made to other poets
they are to Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. It is tacitly assumed
that George's place is with these. To assign him a place beside
Platen or Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, with whom amongst German
poets he has formally the greatest affinity, would seem little
short of impiety. Yet, though he is unquestionably a greater
poet than either of these, he is equally unquestionably of a
lesser stature than Holderlin. Some of the latest important
writings on him are still written by those who actually knew
him. There are, nevertheless, indications in the essays occasion-
ally appearing in literary journals at present that there is a
growing feeling, after some years of neglect, that the time has
come for a more detached assessment of him, an assessment
which can be made only by those who did not come under
the immediate influence of his personality.
That he was a great and forceful personality there can be no
doubt; that he was a man of the highest intellectual ability
with an understanding and grasp of the problems of his age
seems equally indubitable; that he was a great poet in the strict-
est sense of the word 'great' cannot so easily be maintained.
And whether the atmosphere of grandeur which surrounded him
can convincingly be preserved when those who knew him and
helped to create it have passed away is even more problematical.
10
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? I
Stefan Anton George was born on the 12th July 1868, in Bu? des-
heim near Bingen on the Rhine, the son of a well-to-do owner
of vineyards who afterwards owned a wineshop in Bingen itself.
The family was peasant in origin, but the poet's father had be-
come affluent enough to enable his son to devote his life to
poetry without requiring of him that he should take up any of
the accepted money-making professions. There seem to have
been no parental conflicts: both father and mother accepted
tacitly the way of life their son had chosen. After the usual
school education George spent some time at the University of
Berlin. But the years of travel, rather than university studies,
completed an education based on the classical training of a
German Gymnasium (Darmstadt) in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century. From his childhood George had shown a great
interest in words, and whilst still a child he invented a language
of his own. Later in life he returned to this idea and carried it
out more fully in a sort of lingua franca, which included
Latin, Provencal, Catalan and Spanish elements; so fully indeed
was this artificial language developed that he was able to use it
for poetical composition, and two poems in Der Siebente Ring
were originally written in it. The last two lines of the poem
i Urspruenge in the same volume are written in the language he
invented as a child.
He was at home in many European languages; and his trans-
lations of English, French, Italian and Spanish poetry, as well as
his translations into English and French of his own poems, bear
witness to his mastery of these languages.
His travels took him to London, where he spent some
months, to France, Austria, Spain and Italy. His visits to France
and to Austria have outstanding importance in the history of
his career as a poet. In Paris he was introduced to the circle of
Symbolist poets, and accepted from them the then prevailing
Symbolist mode of poetry which determined his own develop-
ment as a poet. In Vienna he made the acquaintance of the young
Hofmannsthal, in whom he believed he had found a poet who
confirmed him in his own conception of poetry. With him,
however, he failed to establish a relationship on the lines which
he wished.
At home in Germany, where the greater part of his life was
spent, he lived for some years in Bingen in the house of his
parents. Later his chief centres of residence were Berlin, Munich
and Heidelberg, in each of which towns he had a pied-a-terre,
usually only a single room, in which he lived and received his
11
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-18 00:55 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. b3633336 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
