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Otto Ludwig and the Process of Poetic Creation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the account of his method of poetic (actually, dramatic) production entitled Mein Verfahren beim poetischen Schaffen, Otto Ludwig tells us that what he begins with is a mood, specifically a musical one; this changes to a color; then he sees figures, one or several, in some attitude or gesture singly or in relation to each other, like an engraving on paper of that color, or, more exactly, like sculpture seen in light of that color. He observes parenthetically that he has this color-sensation also when he is deeply moved by a work of literature: thus Goethe gives him a rich golden-yellow or golden-brown, Schiller, a radiant crimson; each of Shakespeare's plays has for him a color of its own, of which each scene is a nuance.
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References
1 Otto Ludwigs gesammelte Schriften, ed. Schmidt and Stern (Leipzig: Grunow, 1891), vi' 215-219. Hereafter cited as Schr.
2 Ina further “confession,” Das Farben- und Formenspektrum, ibid., 220, he says that, while listening to a Beethoven symphony, he suddenly saw the figure of the Erbförster before him, in glowing crimson light, and he did not yet know who the figure was nor what its gesture signified.
3 It is very probable that Ludwig was a true synaesthetic, with musical, chromatic, and sculptural perceptions.
4 Elsewhere Ludwig tells of waking up in the night and having a plot come into his mind and develop so rapidly that in a half-hour he had a complete play with all details, “und die Gestalten vor mir standen.” (Schr. vi, 321, and similarly 397).
5 That the vision has paled before he begins to work is revealed by the phrase “solange es noch in klarster Sinnlichkeit dastand,” ibid., 219, bot. It is now only a memory-image of that original hallucinatory perception which persisted even against the most heterogeneous background (ibid.).
6 Sigismund Rahmer, Aus der Werkstatt des dramatischen Genies (München: Reinhardt, 1906), p. 10.
7 In How Flint and Fire Started and Grew, cited by T. C. Pollock, The Nature of Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), 185 ff.—One is reminded of Wordsworth's phrase “more than usual organic sensibility.”
8 Marguerite Wilkinson, The Way of the Makers (New York: Macmillan, 1925), pp. 260 f.
9 Agnes Mure MacKenzie, The Process of Literature (London: Allen and Unwin, 1929), pp. 273 ff.
10 F. C. Prescott, The Poetic Mind (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 137.
11 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 264.
12 Otto Ludwig, Briefe, herausgegeben von Kurt Vogtherr (Weimar: Böhlau, 1935), I, 177; Schr., vi, 342.
13 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 261.
14 Ibid., 107-109.
15 Briefe, ed. Vogtherr, i, 179; Schr., vi, 344.
16 Wilhelm Dilthey, Dichterische Einbildungskraft und Wahnsinn, in Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig: Teubner, 1924), vi, 101.
17 Emil Kuh, Biographie Friedrich Hebbels, 2. Aufl. (Wien und Leipzig: Braumüller, 1907), ii, 474.
18 Werke, 2. Aufl., ed. Minde-Pouet (Leipzig: Bibliog. Inst. [1937]), ii, 262.
19 Sämtl. Wke., ed. Elster (Leipzig: Bibliog. Inst., [1887 ff.]), iv, 342-348. Discussed in my article Heine's Synaesthesia, in PMLA, lvii (1942), 474 ff.
20 Richard Benz, Die deutsche Romantik (Leipzig: Reclam [1937]), pp. 123 f.
21 Sämtl. Wke., ed. Sauer, 5. Ausg. (Stuttgart: Cotta [1892]), xix, 97.
22 Andreas Streicher, Schillers Flucht von Stuttgart, 1836, ed. Hans Hofmann, Deutsche Literaturdenkmale des 18. u. 19. Jhs., No. 134, 89 f.
23 Schillers Briefe, ed. Jonas, iii, 202 f.
24 Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, ed. Borcherdt (Bong), i, 169.
24a Their consanguinity in another respect is implicit in Goethe's observation on Schiller, “der ein wahrhaft poetisches Naturell hatte, dessen Geist sich aber zur Reflexion stark hinneigte und manches, was beim Dichter unbewusst und freiwillig entspringen soll, durch die Gewalt des Nachdenkens zwang.” (Sämtl. Wke., Jubil.-Ausg., xxxvii, 335).
25 Cited by Otto Behaghel, Bewusstes und Unbewusstes im dichterischen Schaffen (Leipzig: Freytag, 1907), pp. 15, 42.
26 Kuh, op. cit., ii, 474.
27 Werke, 2. Aufl., ed. Minde-Pouet, ii, 262.
28 Rahmer, op. cit.
29 Letter to Taine, cited by Dilthey, Ges. Schriften, vi, 93. Some doubt has been cast on the accuracy of this statement, and it may be a case of the self-dramatization of which psychologists warn us; see June E. Downey, Creative Imagination, Studies in the Psychology of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1929), p. 172.
30 Forster, Life of Dickens, quoted by Prescott, op. cit., p. 189.
31 Prescott, op. cit., p. 190; Dilthey, Die Einbildungskraft des Dichters, in Zeller Festschrift (Leipzig, 1887), p. 133.
32 Sämtl. Wke. (Berlin: Reimer, 1826-1838), xlii, 62 f. Similarly in one of his letters, quoted ibid., 63, footnote: “Der echte Dichter ist im Schreiben nur der Zuhörer, nicht der Sprachlehrer seiner Charaktere, … er schaut sie, wie im Traume, lebendig an, und dann hört er sie.”
33 Mary M. Colum, From These Roots (New York: Scribners, 1937), p. 305.
34 Quoted by Dilthey, Ges. Schriften, vi, 100.
35 Kuh, op. cit., ii, 474.
36 AE (George Russell), in his Candle of Vision, makes the novel suggestion that the higher power that manifests itself in inspiration is a sort of inherited ancestral wisdom, a “memory of the spirit” that is the basis of imagination; see Wilkinson, op. cit., 111 f.
37 Werke (Leipzig: Naumann, 1901-1909), vi, vi f.
38 Letter to Butts, quoted by Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 117.
39 Quoted by Downey, op. cit., p. 171.
40 Ibid.
41 Prescott, op. cit., p. 102.
42 See the cases of Anselm Feuerbach and Ludwig Richter reported by Richard Müller-Freienfels, Zur Analyse der schöpferischen Phantasie, in Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftl. Philosophie u. Soziologie, xxxiii, N. F. 8 (1909), p. 347.—Paul Heyse had stories come to him complete to the last detail and needing only to be written down: cf. Heyse-Storm Briefwechsel, ed. Plotke (München: Lehmann, 1917-18), ii, 76, 156.
43 Quoted by J. K. Kreibig, Beiträge zur Psychologie des Kunstschaffens, in Zeitschrift für Ästhetik u. allgem. Kunstwissenschaft, iv (1909), 534.
44 See Afterword to Andivius Hedulio, summarized in Downey, op. cit., pp. 169-171.
45 To Eckermann, January 2, 1824. Goethe said he wrote Werther “ziemlich unbewusst, einem Nachtwandler ähnlich” (Sämtl. Wke., Jubil.-Ausg., xxiv, 169). An illuminating passage on his “nachtwandlerisches Dichten” ibid., xxv, 10.
46 Sämtl. Wke., ed. Werner (Berlin: Behr, 1901 ff.), iii, 487.
47 Quoted by Kreibig, op. cit., p. 534.
48 M. H. Abrams, The Milk of Paradise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934).
49 Prescott, op. cit., p. 25.
50 J. A. Symonds, Shelley (London: Macmillan, 1881), p. 91.
51 Quoted by Downey, op. cit., p. 169.
52 Prescott, op. cit., pp. 34 f.
53 Sämtl. Wke., ed. Sauer, S. Ausg., xix, 153.
54 Sämtl. Wke., 1826-38, xlii, 62.
55 Downey, op. cit., p. 172.
56 Prescott, op. cit., pp. 16, 67.
57 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 264.
58 In his Tagebuch, March 27, 1837, he speaks of “meinem gewöhnlichen Ekel an meinen eignen Werken, wenn sie einmal fertig sind.” Similarly, a letter to Devrient: Briefe, ed. Vogtherr, i, 177.
59 A Defence of Poetry, ed. Mrs. Shelley, reprinted (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill [1904]), p. 78.
60 Henry Cowell, The Process of Musical Creation, in American Journal of Psychology, xxxvii (1926), 236.
61 Kritik der Urteilskraft, in Sämtl. Wke., ed. Hartenstein (Leipzig: Voss, 1867-68), v, 327.
62 Briefw. zw. Schiller u. Goethe, ed. Borcherdt, II, 389 f.
63 Ibid., 392. Cf. also his letter to Schiller, June 22, 1796, on the “inexplicable instinct” that produces poems, ibid., i, 181.—Schiller appears to yield the ground on which the “sentimental” poet stands, when he avers: “Naiv muss jedes wahre Genie sein, oder es ist keines” (Sämtl. Wke., Säkularausg., xii, 173).
64 Barker Fairley, Goethe as Revealed in his Poetry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), pp. 122, 130.
65 John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927).
66 Tagebücher, ed. Werner, iv, 347; i, 238.
67 “Idee” here signifies not a rational idea, but an image of the imagination, in Kant's sense of “ästhetische Idee”; cf. Kritik der Urteilskraft: “Man kann dergleichen Vorstellungen der Einbildungskraft Ideen nennen,” etc., Sämtl. Wke., ed. Hartenstein, v, 324.
68 Briefw. zw. Schiller u. Goethe, ed. Borcherdt, ii, 389 f.
69 Müller-Freienfels, op. cit., p. 326.
70 I am aware that the discrimination of conscious and unconscious processes is not so absolute as the present study, for heuristic purposes, assumes; there is a certain amount of “give and take” between them, and their boundary is fluid. Even as the poet puts his “vision” into words, he is modifying it in terms of his waking thoughts. Again, the conscious mind of genius makes its choices with a speed and sureness that one may call instinctive. In a writer like Grillparzer, the unconsciousness has something of the orderly and coherent quality of consciousness, and in Lessing, on the other hand, the intellect possesses much of the fervor and “Begeisterung” characteristic of fantasy.
71 Cf. Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, 8. Aufl. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1922), pp. 457 f. Hölderlin's sense of rhythm, on the other hand, seems to have remained comparatively unimpaired. The same point is proved, from the humorous side, by Mörike's “Katzenjammergedicht” Zur Warnung.
72 Quoted by Müller-Freienfels, op. cit., p. 346.
73 Prescott, op. cit., p. 200.
74 Rahmer, op. cit., p. 11, note.
75 Thoughts on the Making of Poetry, quoted by Wilkinson, op. cit., 256 ff. This is essentially what Grillparzer calls “sich auf dem Standpunkte der Anschauung erhalten”— “sobald ich zur Reflexion Zuflucht nehmen musste, war alles verloren” (Sämtl. Wke., ed. Sauer, 5. Ausg., xix, 79). This, again, can be strikingly paralleled in Ludwig, who admonishes himself to work “aus der augenblicklichen Anschauung heraus … Sowie ich einmal anfange zu zweifeln und kritisch abzuwägen, dann steht mir nichts mehr fest” (Schr., vi, 362).
76 C. G. Jung, Psychologie und Dichtung, in Philosophie der Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Ermatinger (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1930), p. 329.
77 E.g., by Paul Keller, in a letter quoted by Oswald Kroh in Zeitschrift für Psychologie, lxxxv (1920), 157, note 2. Ludwig himself uses similar terms, Schr., vi, 220.
78 Sämtl. Wke., ed. Sauer, 5. Ausg., xix, 63 ff.
79 In his Philosophy of Composition.
80 Note the revealing words (italicized by me): “die Idee, die, mir unbewusst, die schaffende Kraft und der Zusammenhang der Erscheinungen war” (Schr., vi, 216, mid.). One might also see in the use of the definite instead of indefinite article (die Katastrophe, das Stück, 215, bot., etc.) a hint that this is not wholly unfamiliar material.
81 Schr., vi, 220, 6-9.
82 Nacklaßschriften Otto Ludwigs, ed. Heydrich (Leipzig: Cnobloch, 1874), i, 140.
83 Schr., vi, 220, 7.
84 Report of August Kretzschmar, in Ludwigs Werke, ed. Eloesser (Berlin: Bong [1908]), i, xci.
85 Adolf Stern, Otto Ludwig, ein Dichterleben, 2. Aufl. (Leipzig: Grunow, 1906), p. 154.
86 Cf. Oswald Kroh, Eidetiker unter deutschen Dichtern, in Zeitschrift für Psychologie, lxxxv (1920), 118; Downey, op. cit., p. 15.
87 Nachlaßschriften, i, 22.
88 Otto Ludwigs gesammelte Werke (Berlin: Janke, 1870), i, 1 f.
89 Stern, op. cit., p. 306.
90 It is possible that, as in the case of the similarly afflicted Heine, increasing narcotics stimulated and accelerated Ludwig's visions during the last stages of his disease.
91 Quoted by Stern, op. cit., p. 138.
92 Passages quoted by Stern, op. cit., pp. 142, 149 f. In a letter to Julian Schmidt, Ludwig sees even the distance between them in curiously personal shape: Schr., vi, 450.
93 The editor of the still-incomplete definitive edition estimates that it would require 100 additional volumes to print Ludwig's Nachaß. See Otto Ludwigs sämtl. Wke., ed. Merker (München und Leipzig: Müller, 1912 ff.), i, xiv f.
94 Very rarely, a poet is able to do this with artistic success: Mörike, in his remarkable poem An einem Wintermorgen vor Sonnenaufgang, seems to peer down into the deep well of his creative subconsciousness in the magical moment between sleep and waking. Goethe found this borderland “Zwischen Schlaf und Wachen” productive of poetry: see Italienische Reise, Jubil.-Ausg., xxvi, 141, and xxvii, 304.
95 Nachlaßschriften, i, 45-47.
96 On this, and other things common to Ludwig and Kleist, see my article The Kinship of Kleist and Ludwig, in PMLA, xl (1925), 863 ff.
97 MacKenzie, op. cit., p. 143.
98 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 262.
99 Stern, op. cit., pp. 327 f.
100 Letter to Geibel, in Stern, op. cit., p. 327.
101 Stern, op. cit., pp. 355-364.
102 Ludwig thought he had found such a last abstract formula of Shakespearean tragedy: a generally human instinct in the hero sets him a task which contradicts his individual character and wrecks him (Schr., vi, 414, bot.). This is, as Ludwig recognized, a development of an idea of Goethe's.
103 Letter of April 1, 1856, to Heydrich, quoted by Stern, op. cit., p. 324.
104 Stern, op. cit., p. 375.
105 Schr., vi, 221 f.