Is Theodor Fontane the German Hardy?

Again, I don't know enough to say. I did just read Unterm Birnbaum (Under the Pear Tree) and there were things about it that reminded me of Hardy - the strong sense of place, the use of local dialect, the pastoral setting combined with some very dark themes. The prose is deceptively simple, also, I think, like Hardy's. There's also the fact that Hardy and Fontane both seem to be in that rarefied set of writers who've achieved greatness both as poets and novelists. And that both touched on topics that were seen as 'inappropriate' by the society of the time.

Fontane seems most well-known in the German-speaking world for his ballad 'John Maynard' about a steamship captain on Lake Erie whose ship caught fire but who stayed with it and steered it to shore. Bizarrely to my mind, the repeated, 'Und noch ---- Minuten bis Buffalo!' ('And ----- minutes more to Buffalo!) has apparently been etched into the memory of generations of German school children. It is an exciting poem. The rest of Fontane's ballads read as very alien nowadays, even (or maybe especially) the 'English-Scottish' ones.

Fontane's lyric poetry, though, is straightforward, lucid, and, I would say, moving. (In the first two of these qualities his lyric poems are different to Hardy's.) I just wanted to post a couple here. The beauty is all in the simplicity - a simplicity which is, again, often a slightly deceptive one.

Der erste Schnee.

Die Sonne schien, doch Winters Näh’
     Verrieth ein Flockenpaar;
Es gleicht das erste Flöckchen Schnee
     Dem ersten weißen Haar.

5

Noch wird – wie wohl von lieber Hand

     Der erste Schnee dem Haupt –
So auch der erste Schnee dem Land
     Vom Sonnenstrahl geraubt.

[6]

Doch habet Acht! mit einem Mal

10

     Ist Haupt und Erde weiß,

Und Freundeshand und Sonnenstrahl
     Sich nicht zu helfen weiß.

I don't have any great grasp of German poetry, but the simplicity, the 'naive' joy in nature, and the bittersweetness of the ending - the sense that certain kinds of longing are inevitable - reminds me of nothing so much of Wilhelm Müller's Winterreise, as famously set to music by Schubert. All these notes - simplicity, an intimacy with nature, and, finally, of the inevitability of life's joys passing - all that is even stronger here:

In der Krankheit.

(Brief an E.)

     Mein ganzes Zimmer riecht nach Wald,
Das machen die kiehnenen Tische,
Glaub mir, ich muß genesen bald
In dieser Harzesfrische.

5

     Du bist noch kaum bei uns daheim

An unsres Kindes Bettchen,
Und sieh, schon sitzt ein muntrer Reim
Auf meinem Fensterbrettchen.

     Er sitzt allda und schaut mich an

10

Wie auf dem Felde die Lerchen

Und singt: „Du hast ganz wohlgethan,
Dich still hier einzupferchen.

[21]

     „Steh nur früh auf und schweif umher

Und lache wie der Morgen,

15

So wird dies grüne Waldesmeer

Schon weiter für Dich sorgen.

     „Und schied’st Du doch zu dieser Frist,
So tu es ohne Trauern,
Das Leben, weil so schön es ist,

20

Kann es nicht ewig dauern.“

The Rediscovery of Johnny Baloney

Another thing it turns out I'm ignorant about (although I might have suspected it) is the short-lived but spectacular flowering of cast-bronze sculpture in southern Germany around 1600. This took place mainly in Munich, seat of the Wittelsbach princes, and Augsburg, home of the HNW Fuggers - no coincidence, since casting large-scale sculptures is bronze is enormously expensive. The 'Neptune ...taming a sea-horse...which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me' that the speaker of Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess' draws his guest's attention towards is supposed to speak loudly about his spending-power. It's also a quiet reminder of a river of artistic influence on which bronze deities of all sorts flowed between northern Italians states and southern German ones as the 16th century drew to a close. 

At the head of this river was a Dutchman, usually known by the less than compellingly Dutch name Giambologna (French Jean de Boulogne). A portrait of him by Hendrick Goltzius (more convincing Dutch name) is above, partly so that he'll stand at the head of a river of images in this post. And partly as a thanks for leading, directly or indirectly, to the flood of monumental bronzes that visitors to Munich can now wade into. 

There's at least one weighty tome on this topic by others who know vastly more about it than I do. So instead of trying to write anything much about it, here's a quick intro in images.

Let's start with two works by Giambologna himself, both on classical themes: the Rape of the Sabines (1574-82) and Hercules and Nessus (1599), both now in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence.

Literal tonnes of smaller bronze versions of these are around (including in a room in the Bayerisches Staatsmuseum  in which my personal rediscovery of Johnny Baloney was made). Some are better than others; here are two chosen at random:

One bronze in Munich that is by Giambologna himself is the towering crucifix in Michaelskirche, a gift to the Wittelsbachs by their fellow jet-setters the Medici. There was a connection there, with Albrecht V of Bavaria's sister-in-law marrying Francesco de Medici in 1565. And, of course, their wedding forged a link in the bronze-casting chain, with Hubert Gerhard, a student of Giambologna,  going on to work for both the Fuggers in Augsburg and the Wittelsbachs in Munich. Here are two examples of his efforts, the archangel Michael defeating Lucifer on the facade of the Michaelskirche, and Perseus holding up the head of Medusa (this one in the Wittelsbachs' Residenz palace in Munich):

Soon the Wittelsbachs decided to breed their own sculptors by sending talented sons of Bayern to Florence. Two of the most successful of the new crop were Hanses Reichle and Krumper. Here's another Michael by the one Hans, above the entrance to the Zeughaus in Augsburg; and the tomb monument of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV (a Wittelsbach) by the other Hans, in the Munich Frauenkirche:

I've saved probably the most recognizable of Giambologna's works for last, the Flying Mercury from around 1580. This one has been extensively copied and played off, and has turned up all over Europe - including, of course, in the Wittlesbach's home in Munich. What better image of the swiftness and borderlessness of artistic influence could there be?

Accomplished accomplices

The other day I went on a day-trip to the city of Augsburg, just outside of Munich. It's well worth a visit: for centuries an autonomous city-state within the Holy Roman Empire, it's a very pleasant place to wander around, and has, besides, a number of interesting things to see. There's the cathedral (with an excellent museum attached to it), the Golden Hall (which richly deserves its name) in the Town Hall, and the Fuggerei, one of the world's earliest experiments of social housing, set up by the Fuggers, the Silicon Valley billionaires of their day. (Rent was set at one Rhenish Guilder back in the 16th century, and you can still live there for €0.88 a year - all you have to do is say a few prayers each day for the souls of the Fugger family). 

Just down the river from the Fuggerei, another extraordinary encouragement to prayer was being constructed around the same time. These are the three enormous late Gothic/early Baroque altars set up in the church of local saints Ulrich and Afra. (There are actually two churches - one Protestant and one Catholic - in what used to be an independent monastic complex. The ornate altars I'm talking about are obviously in the Catholic one.) These are the work of the Bavarian master Hans Degler, and you can get a sense of them in the picture above. Only a sense, though - I couldn't really find any photos online that succeeded in reproducing the effect of entering the church with the light falling in late winter, and seeing these enormous, shadowy structures looming at the far end of the nave. 

What's so wondrous about them isn't only their hugeness, but also the proliferation of figures crowded into them and hanging off them, like on an Indian commuter train (or, indeed, a Hindu temple). The southern altar (on the right) shows Christ rising from the dead (apparently with a Swiss flag), with Augustine on one side of him and Ambrosius on the left. The northern altar (on the left) is dedicated to the Holy Spirit possessing the Apostles at Pentecost (fifty days, as the Greek term suggests, after the resurrection). It's also dedicated to St. Afra, and shows her martyrdom, in the presence of Saints Ursula, Catherine of Alexandria, Barbara and Cecilia. 

Finally, there's the high altar, in the middle of the picture above, marked with a cross. (Of course, all of the altars are high, but this one earns its name with five stories, one more than the others have.) At the centre of this one is the familiar scene of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. One story above him, his mother is being crowned, with Peter and Paul the paid bouncers beside her. 

And that's only a pathetically quick description of some of the main figures. I've left out Gregory and Jerome (Fathers of the Church); Saints Rochus and Sebastian; and Mary as Queen of the Martyrs, among many others. And as a matter of fact, it's this super-abundance of focal points that got me thinking on the forty-minute train trip back to Munich. As a good non-theist with an interest (both senses) in meditative techniques, I've been praying the Hail Mary, you see, and one of the things that popped into my mind was the Marian motto 'to Jesus through Mary.' 

Another thing that I was reminded of after staring at those altars was the 'refuge tree' I'd encountered at Diamond Way Buddhist centres. Again the proliferation of figures, deities and semi-deities, Buddhas male and female, young and old, green and blue and white. 

One question that might occur to us when looking at such things is why a monotheistic religion needs them - not to mention a religion which, technically, isn't focused on a divinity at all. If the point is God/Jesus, what's the point of contemplating the saints? And if the point is awakening, or (at a pinch) the Buddha as a guide to awakening, why the profusion of spinning green houris? 

One idea I had is that omething like the following might be going on. As we're always being told (by science as much as religion) the human mind is weak and easily distracted. Because of that, even the simple techniques that have grown up with the idea of calming or strengthening it are quite hard to do - at least, they're hard to do with any degree of success (if by success you mean succeeding on focusing on something without your mind wandering). If you sit someone down in front of a crucifix or a Buddha, chances are their mind will wander to the closest new thing it comes across.

Why not, then, make sure the closest things it comes across guides it back to the meditation object? You could just put up more Jesus or Buddha statues (it's been tried), but the mind would probably just reject all of them in one go. But a saint or a minor Buddha that reminds you of a story involving the Anointed or Enlightened One - that's just the right amount of difference to catch the attention and draw it back. Maybe this is part of how the rosary works - by stringing us along with talk of Mary until we're subtly roped back into God through the changeable tags at the ends of the phrases (which usually tie in Jesus).

I don't know if there's been any scientific work or whether this is how these things really work in the minds of Catholics or Buddhists who dedicate themselves to the these practices. I also don't know of any very explicit passages in the writings of these religions which state that this is what's going on (or should be going on). If you know of any, please let me know in the comments below. If I've lost you at this point but you're still haunted by those altars I was describing before your mind wandered, I'd definitely recommend getting on a train from Munich and being haunted by them again up close.