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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 270.: GARNIER'S DEUTSCHES LEBEN, KUNST, UND POESIE [2] EXAMINER, 14 SEPT., 1834, P. 581 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

270.: GARNIER’S DEUTSCHES LEBEN, KUNST, UND POESIE [2] EXAMINER, 14 SEPT., 1834, P. 581 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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270.

GARNIER’S DEUTSCHES LEBEN, KUNST, UND POESIE [2]

EXAMINER, 14 SEPT., 1834, P. 581

For the context, see No. 267. The review, the only article in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “Deutsches Leben, Kunst, und Poesie. Herausgegeben: von J.H. Garnier, No. I and II.” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A notice of the first two numbers of Garnier’s German Periodical ‘Deutsches Leben, Kunst und Poesie’ in the Examiner of 14th September 1834” (MacMinn, p. 42). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of ‘Deutsches Leben’ ”; it is the last item listed by Mill in that set.

this is, we believe, the first German periodical ever published in England; the founder, Mr. Garnier, was the editor of the Swabian Liberal (Freisinnige),1 and was, we believe, compelled to quit Germany, because he had become obnoxious to the government; but his journal is by no means exclusively political. Indeed, the first number is wholly literary, and consists chiefly of a review, with copious extracts, of the poems of Heine, one of the cleverest of the young German writers, also driven from his country in consequence of his political opinions.2 Some of the shorter poems, extracted by Mr. Garnier, from Heine’s volume, are extremely beautiful, and will, we hope, contribute to make the author advantageously known in this country.

The following passage from Mr. Garnier’s prospectus, announces the notion he entertains of the function of a literary critic, and this notion is so remote from the vulgar one, that we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of translating it.

Aesthetic subtleties and system work, empty prattle on the beautiful and the not-beautiful, we abandon to the time-killers and the bel esprit journals, for the amusement of fine ladies, so abundant in Germany. We seek in the writer, above all, the man. How he, in and for himself, figures himself to us from his writings, we shall endeavour to unfold; and when we have pictured to ourselves the man, we shall next inquire what phasis, if any, of German life, he and his existence are the reflexion of; in what manner the age, and his individual circumstances, have influenced the formation of his character as a man and as a writer; or, on the other hand, what influence he himself has exercised on the age and on his circumstances; and, in this perpetual reference to actual life, many political leanings may possibly evince themselves, not, we conceive, without cause. This political tendency we shall least of all be able to avoid, if we likewise endeavour to show what the writer did not become, in consequence of the wretchedness of his times; and how often the fairest flowers of the German mind have, by the pressure of circumstances, been snapped off, or prevented from duly unfolding themselves. For it is not the greatness of many of our writers which ought to astonish us, but often that it was possible for them to attain any greatness whatever.3

The second number is more miscellaneous than the first. The longest article relates to the unfortunate Caspar Hauser, whose real parentage the author believes himself to have made out.4 We are not yet sufficiently masters of his theory, and of the grounds of it, to express any opinion of our own on the subject.

Mr. Garnier is evidently a man of considerable acquirements and talents, and of some humour; and we heartily wish him success. Harro Harring, the well-known author of Poland under the Dominion of Russia,5 will, it seems, shortly arrive in England, to take a share in the editorship of this work; and the aid of other German writers of reputation is confidently promised by Mr. Garnier.

[1 ]Der Freisinnige; Freiburger politische Blätter, founded and edited by Karl von Rotteck (1790-1869) and Karl Theodor Welcker (1790-1869), appeared only from 2 Mar. to 19 July, 1832, when it was proscribed by the government. Garnier claimed he was offered the editorship, but seems not actually to have been editor.

[2 ]Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), poet and liberal critic, had lived in Paris from 1831; his Buch der Lieder (Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1827) was the subject of the review.

[3 ]No copy of the prospectus has been located.

[4 ]Garnier, “Caspar Hauser,” Deutsches Leben, II (5 Sept., 1834), 17-28. Caspar Hauser (ca. 1812-33), a foundling whose rumoured noble birth aroused great curiosity, was stabbed to death at a meeting held to determine his true origins. Garnier argues that he was the eldest son of Carl, Grosherzog von Baden (1786-1818) and his wife, Stephanie Napoleon.

[5 ]Harro Paul Harring (1798-1870), Poland under the Dominion of Russia (1831), trans. from German by I.S. Syzmanski (London: n.p., 1834). A radical German politician and author, friend of Mazzini, Harring appears not to have arrived in London until 1836.