Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Magdalena von Dobeneck's Letters from Ireland to Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach (Author: Magdalena von Dobeneck née Feuerbach)
Chapter 3
2 June.
Dublin is built quite in the style of London, and the impressions it conveyed to me were the same as there; except for the hearses I saw rolling by incessantly, because the cholera is no gentler here than in Paris. I remembered the farmer who cried out in front of the city gate of Paris, calling out after our carriage: ‘Just keep running from the cholera, it will catch up with you!’ We departed once again on a
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Friday, now heading for the castle through the Irish realm of mourning. We spent the night in Newry. Despite the hurried journey, I was surprised to see dinner always served at the same hour and in the same style as at home. The ale was not wanting either. I remembered the only beer drinker this time: Jean Paul. A simple Bayreuth beer was enough to inspire him to aptly imitate the humour of the English; but how much darker and deeper his works would be for the sentimental world had he transplanted his poetry onto English soil, to an ale-well. — Anyway, dear father, I cannot but laugh heartily, as often as I remember certain German spinsters, shamefully concealing their faces when reading Jean Paul's humorous passages, while during emotional and bombastic phrases they are moved to tears, offering him a laurel wreath, and almost dissolving into ether. Their favourite ambrosian nourishment is, for example, the following passage from ‘Titan’: ‘The fair spring-breezes of her ended love she let breathe again, but in a higher region; they were now thin, mild, ethereal zephyrs, breaths of flowers. Her tears flowed out as sweetly as sighs, as evening dew out of evening redness. — As one sinks, blissfully cradled, in joyous dreams, so she floated, long borne up, drawn slowly onward, with buoyant fleshly-garment, on the flood of death.’4
In my opinion Jean Paul is true when he is funny, and I like him like that; but his sentimental outpourings seem to me like the aftermath of a so-called
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hangover, like the froth from an open bottle of champagne. But humour is a fiery wine. I leave all his sweet sensations-stuff to him and to that delicate virgin choir. Many are even rumoured to have once paid so much homage to their master Jean Paul that they cut hairs off from the poet's spitz, his envied companion dog, to wear them around their necks, enclosed in a locket. — There is a disease known as bone softening, and I would also call sentimentalism a soul-softening, marrow-consuming disease. — You have proven abundantly, dear father, that even great criminals have emerged from the school of sensibility (the sister of the lie) in your work on criminal cases, Criminalfälle5 And likewise ... Just now my Emily comes in singing, the dear child, holding a stick in her hand, which she pretends to have turned into Tamino's magic flute. The sounds she elicits are not magical — dear me! I'm dizzy! I cannot even think of writing any more now — she wraps her little arm around me and kisses me on the forehead.
Goodbye! My next hour of rest and leisure will be yours.
On 28 April we arrived in Dungannon. What a difference between England and Ireland! What miserable huts! They are built of earth, the smoke escapes from the thatched roof — or rarely a small window —
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and instead of a door, there is a small opening, and here humans and animals live together. These are the huts of brute savages. Many men, dressed in brown tailcoats, laboriously helped pull the plough, having flattened faces, misshapen mouths and lips, red, shaggy hair and bared teeth — but there is a young man, and here is a circle of women, such noble, wild figures! — Nature is full of contrasts, too. Here a rich manor with proud avenues, there a stony infield, which yields only potatoes, and with difficulty. — The castle of Dungannon is situated in the middle of a park replete with the most beautiful designs. Where have I ever seen more beautiful trees? The eye loves to linger on the gently rolling mountains and refreshes itself again gazing over the brilliantly green meadows, and groves of ivy. The large lake is surrounded by solemn broad oaks and white poplars; slender birches and weeping willows sway their branches and bow down to the damp ground. I go on through the dense dark grove, every now and then picking a plant yet unknown to me. The light of the already passing day is shining through the branches — I am alone — the magic tales from prehistory and Erin's bards pass by, and like the sounds of softly fading harps, the evening breeze touches the tree-tops; they seem more gigantic to me and more densely they enclose me — Away! Away into the open! Along the hill, on a narrow path, I see a shepherd boy driving his flock home; he approaches, salutes me
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and I him, and I walk along with him, asking him many things, such as: ‘What do you do at home? Can you read, and what do you read?’ ‘The Bible!’ the boy said seriously and smiled, giving the trailing wether a rough slap on the back, saluted once more, and disappeared sideways in the bushes, while I hurried back through the tunnel (it is a passage leading through a hill) across the large meadow to the castle. The appearance of the shepherd boy, his answer, so fraught with meaning, is quite the opposite of the whirlpool surrounding me now; but so much the deeper is the impression I got; I envy his lot, oh! and feel how a yearning never to be satisfied consumes the essence of life! —
Yesterday I received a letter from Paris, and immediately recognized the stumbling handwriting of Maestro Gomis, who reports to me that his latest opera, composed for the great opera in Paris, is to be performed on the first of January.6 Since he trusted me with his ideas about his opera, I am looking forward to the creation of this brilliant work with love and great interest, as I, being his student, ought to. — In my view, a composer ranks higher than a merely executing artist. All too often the latter is nothing more than the instrument of an instrument. His soul is either in his fingers or in his throat. Somebody else is the creator, and so he remains a material clod of earth. But the melody originates in the composer's soul, and his thinking mind creates eternal harmonies. —
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With no small fright I notice my talkativeness, and yet my litany is not yet finished. Gomis writes to me in his very own laconic manner: ‘I thought I was going to surprise you on your return, but since I like to do so quickly, I am warning you that I have just published a Spanish song dedicated to Madame de D.....’ Too bad! that this composition will hardly stray to an Ansbach publisher while she is already sailing to Spanish America. The letter is true to himself, full of peculiarities, yet reasonable, clear and childlike.
To judge by the constellation of the Irish sky, we will probably stay here for another five months. But the climate prevailing here is not my friend. June is already here, and in the chimneys the fires are still blazing. Every day there must be rain, that is the wont. The whipped up sea air, limp and cool, may well be the best means to clear the complexion (according to the principle of the ladies), but the body itself suffers the more. My somewhat leonine nature will be able to withstand these influences with God's help. To warm myself up, I sometimes walk through the beautiful conservatory; the products of India and America shall compensate me for the tearful skies of Ireland.
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