Minnesangs Frühling, 40, 19ff.Author(s): A. T. HattoSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1938), pp. 266-268Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3715015 .

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Miscellaneous Notes Miscellaneous Notes

de me baisser; pour vacquer plus commodement a ma besogne, je m'etais mis a genoux devant le foyer. En retournant cette masse, qui jetait plus de fumee que de flamme, je parvins a faire glisser entre mes genoux quelques papiers qui, se trouvant au centre, n'avaient pas encore ete atteints du feu, et ils furent ainsi soustraits a la vue de ces messieurs, dans un moment ou elle n'etait pas tombee sur moi. Apres ce deplorable incendie, etant sorti de l'appartement, je n'eus rien de plus presse que de savoir ce que j'avais fait entrer furtivement dans ma poche: c'etait un cahier de papier a lettres, qui contenait, en ecriture fort menue, un Traite de Metaphysique; et le reste consistait en plusieurs lettres detachees.' A cock-and-bull story? For once the evidence is in favour of Longchamp's veracity. He sold the manuscript to Pankoucke, who sold it in his turn to Beaumarchais.

Of the fate of the manuscript subsequent to these transactions nothing appears to be known. Its survival, after the collapse of the Kehl

establishment, is a matter for doubt, diligent searching and wide inquiry having failed to locate it. Can it have been destroyed during the revolt of the Kehl employees against their tyrannical foreman, when so much

damage was done to the imprimerie? Or was it conveyed by Beau- marchais with the remainders and other material to his fine Paris home, three times raided and ransacked during the Revolution? Was it

salvaged among other papers, and subsequently deposited for safety in his obscure garret? It might be fitting that this sensational document should have come to a sensational end; but until the problem of its pre- servation has been solved we are dependent upon the beautiful but erratic Kehl edition for the most authentic text.

H. TEMPLE PATTERSON. EMSWORTH, HANTS.

MINNESANGS FRUHLING, 40, 19ff.

In spite of the latest contribution to the understanding of this clever

poem (a brilliant conjecture by Koch in Paul-Braunes Beitrdge, LX,

p. 180) it cannot be said that its inner relations are perfectly understood. A prose translation with a note on the amorous situation to which it would seem to refer may prove more useful than a strict analysis line for line.

If ever a woman were without fault, it were she to whom I have given myself as a serf. She ravishes my wits, she is as fair as the sunshine. I am no Saracen capon: she should have mercy on me and reflect that I have long been subject to her.

What need had a woman that I should lose myself and my wits as completely as I did? She is not so closely kept as that: nevertheless she is one of the right sort, so

de me baisser; pour vacquer plus commodement a ma besogne, je m'etais mis a genoux devant le foyer. En retournant cette masse, qui jetait plus de fumee que de flamme, je parvins a faire glisser entre mes genoux quelques papiers qui, se trouvant au centre, n'avaient pas encore ete atteints du feu, et ils furent ainsi soustraits a la vue de ces messieurs, dans un moment ou elle n'etait pas tombee sur moi. Apres ce deplorable incendie, etant sorti de l'appartement, je n'eus rien de plus presse que de savoir ce que j'avais fait entrer furtivement dans ma poche: c'etait un cahier de papier a lettres, qui contenait, en ecriture fort menue, un Traite de Metaphysique; et le reste consistait en plusieurs lettres detachees.' A cock-and-bull story? For once the evidence is in favour of Longchamp's veracity. He sold the manuscript to Pankoucke, who sold it in his turn to Beaumarchais.

Of the fate of the manuscript subsequent to these transactions nothing appears to be known. Its survival, after the collapse of the Kehl

establishment, is a matter for doubt, diligent searching and wide inquiry having failed to locate it. Can it have been destroyed during the revolt of the Kehl employees against their tyrannical foreman, when so much

damage was done to the imprimerie? Or was it conveyed by Beau- marchais with the remainders and other material to his fine Paris home, three times raided and ransacked during the Revolution? Was it

salvaged among other papers, and subsequently deposited for safety in his obscure garret? It might be fitting that this sensational document should have come to a sensational end; but until the problem of its pre- servation has been solved we are dependent upon the beautiful but erratic Kehl edition for the most authentic text.

H. TEMPLE PATTERSON. EMSWORTH, HANTS.

MINNESANGS FRUHLING, 40, 19ff.

In spite of the latest contribution to the understanding of this clever

poem (a brilliant conjecture by Koch in Paul-Braunes Beitrdge, LX,

p. 180) it cannot be said that its inner relations are perfectly understood. A prose translation with a note on the amorous situation to which it would seem to refer may prove more useful than a strict analysis line for line.

If ever a woman were without fault, it were she to whom I have given myself as a serf. She ravishes my wits, she is as fair as the sunshine. I am no Saracen capon: she should have mercy on me and reflect that I have long been subject to her.

What need had a woman that I should lose myself and my wits as completely as I did? She is not so closely kept as that: nevertheless she is one of the right sort, so

266 266

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Miscellaneous Notes

I shall convince her of that, otherwise it will be a sad blow to my lady (C miner fr6we, or 'to my high hopes' L miner froide): she should reflect whether perhaps she didn't make believe with me.

'What is the good man reproaching me with now? I have done him no harm-he's amusing the people without reason. I shall never cease to regret what he has been telling them about me. He shall lose my favour. His wicked chatter does not disconcert me in the least: what does it matter that we made believe? I was ne'er a woman to him.'

It is impossible to miss the bantering tone of this poem. Its sentiments are not unlike those which a Restoration buck would bandy with his

lady, though they are by no means without parallel in their own time. It would be mistaken to suppose that the poet is at pains to render a

dialogue impartially, whether real or imagined. He is using his poem to woo, or simulate wooing, for him, and shows considerable skill in masking subtlety with bluffness. It is not by chance that he wins his suit in

theory in the last and most scornful of the lines he imputes to his lady. 'She is not so closely kept as that': that is, as to have been able to

do no more than cause him to lose his wits. 'I shall convince her of that':

namely, that she is able to make other use of whatever liberty her custodians allow her than hitherto, than making believe. 'She is one of the right sort': the same use of guot that we find in a poem by Ulrich von Liechtenstein (Frauendienst, xxvi, 1. 26) meaning 'likely to requite a lover of the poet's sort'. It is difficult to make a choice between the two MS. readings in L and C with such a saucy author.1

The last lines of each strophe reveal a progression. At the end of the first strophe, having left no doubt as to the nature of the mercy he

expects, the knight asks his lady to reflect (si sol...gedenken) that his claim to mercy is well-founded in service. At the end of the second, after

equally bold allusions, he repeats the phrase si sol gedenken, and what follows this phrase is likely to be symmetrical. This would imply that toerschez bzligen would also constitute a just claim to further favours. To those who place no faith in the symmetrical structure of such poems it can be answered immediately that in Provence, at least, a successful show of chaste behaviour in a lover during such a test was considered to strengthen his claims to her favour (cf. A. Liideritz, Die Liebestheorie der Provenzalen, 1904, pp. 56f.). The poet's skill is admirable. Where he might have used a flat daz, he uses the diplomatic ob...ie. The

corresponding lines of the third strophe, after an energetic but airy

1 Froide and frouwe are not infrequently confused in Middle German MSS., by way of the form frouwede (Freude), see C. von Kraus, Zu den Liedern Heinrichs von Morungen, 1916, p. 155, and M. Jellinek, Zur Kritik einiger Lieder Walthers von der Vogelweide, PBB., 1918, LIII, p. 14. We await the publication of von Kraus's Notes to Minnesangs Friihling to learn why he has reversed Vogt's reading and printed frouwen.

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M iscellaneous Notes M iscellaneous Notes

rejection of the knight, contain the lady's surprising admission der toerschen bi mir lac, which is further disguised by its nexus with the

deprecatory phrase with which the poem ends. But this last phrase, for all its disavowal, establishes the poet's claim-he passed the test!

Whether the poem had any relation to experience or not, it is conceived in the spirit of the most adroit cavalier wooing.

A. T. HATTO. LONDON.

TWO LITTLE-KNOWN REFERENCES TO

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

Considerable study has been devoted in recent years to the relationship of Henry Crabb Robinson with the Germany of his time.1 It may therefore be of some interest to consider two little-known references, showing something of the opinion of Crabb Robinson held by his German friends. They are to be found in Bettina von Arnim's Friihlingskranz and Clemens Th. Perthes' Friedrich Perthes Leben, and run as follows:

Nun kommt dieser Welthanswurst, der Robinson, und will von mir profitieren... ein guter Kerl, eine Art von wunderlichem Leonhardi.2

Minner wie Robinson werden stets eine sehr seltene Erscheinung in England bleiben. Einen besseren Vertreter als diesen merkwirdigen und anziehenden Mann kann Deutschland nicht haben und unwillkurlich stelle ich ihn... neben Villers und dann tritt die Verschiedenheit des Einflusses welchen grundliche deutsche Bildung auf den Franzosen und den Englander hat, mir in sehr scharfen Ziigen hervor.3

It is hardly surprising that these two remarks should strike different notes; they criticize Henry Crabb Robinson at very different periods of his life. In the first instance, in Frankfurt, he was the young student thrown into a strange and embarrassing world, endeavouring to hold his own in a crowd of gifted and temperamental, artistic people: in the second he was the London barrister, an expert on German questions, the

acknowledged representative of Anglo-German understanding. Moreover the two men who passed these judgments were very different

types: Clemens Brentano the romantic poet, and Besser the Hamburg merchant and publisher. Both are fairly good representatives of the circles in which Crabb Robinson moved, first as a student at Jena University from 1802 to 1805, and later as foreign correspondent of The Times in Altona in 1807. Clemens Brentano's verdict is very much in keeping

1 Cf. F. Norman, Henry Crabb Robinson and Goethe, Pub. Eng. Goethe Soc., 1930; E. Morley, Henry Crabb Robinson in Germany, London, 1929; G. M. Barker, Henry Crabb Robinson, London, 1937.

2 B. von Arnim, Frihlingskranz Clemens Brentanos, Berlin, 1920, p. 316. 3 Clemens Th. Perthes, Friedrich Perthes Leben, Gotha, 1848, II, p. 96.

rejection of the knight, contain the lady's surprising admission der toerschen bi mir lac, which is further disguised by its nexus with the

deprecatory phrase with which the poem ends. But this last phrase, for all its disavowal, establishes the poet's claim-he passed the test!

Whether the poem had any relation to experience or not, it is conceived in the spirit of the most adroit cavalier wooing.

A. T. HATTO. LONDON.

TWO LITTLE-KNOWN REFERENCES TO

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

Considerable study has been devoted in recent years to the relationship of Henry Crabb Robinson with the Germany of his time.1 It may therefore be of some interest to consider two little-known references, showing something of the opinion of Crabb Robinson held by his German friends. They are to be found in Bettina von Arnim's Friihlingskranz and Clemens Th. Perthes' Friedrich Perthes Leben, and run as follows:

Nun kommt dieser Welthanswurst, der Robinson, und will von mir profitieren... ein guter Kerl, eine Art von wunderlichem Leonhardi.2

Minner wie Robinson werden stets eine sehr seltene Erscheinung in England bleiben. Einen besseren Vertreter als diesen merkwirdigen und anziehenden Mann kann Deutschland nicht haben und unwillkurlich stelle ich ihn... neben Villers und dann tritt die Verschiedenheit des Einflusses welchen grundliche deutsche Bildung auf den Franzosen und den Englander hat, mir in sehr scharfen Ziigen hervor.3

It is hardly surprising that these two remarks should strike different notes; they criticize Henry Crabb Robinson at very different periods of his life. In the first instance, in Frankfurt, he was the young student thrown into a strange and embarrassing world, endeavouring to hold his own in a crowd of gifted and temperamental, artistic people: in the second he was the London barrister, an expert on German questions, the

acknowledged representative of Anglo-German understanding. Moreover the two men who passed these judgments were very different

types: Clemens Brentano the romantic poet, and Besser the Hamburg merchant and publisher. Both are fairly good representatives of the circles in which Crabb Robinson moved, first as a student at Jena University from 1802 to 1805, and later as foreign correspondent of The Times in Altona in 1807. Clemens Brentano's verdict is very much in keeping

1 Cf. F. Norman, Henry Crabb Robinson and Goethe, Pub. Eng. Goethe Soc., 1930; E. Morley, Henry Crabb Robinson in Germany, London, 1929; G. M. Barker, Henry Crabb Robinson, London, 1937.

2 B. von Arnim, Frihlingskranz Clemens Brentanos, Berlin, 1920, p. 316. 3 Clemens Th. Perthes, Friedrich Perthes Leben, Gotha, 1848, II, p. 96.

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