32
PARTISAN REVIEW
his interest in Lenz was not so much scientific as sympathetic. The
aesthetic principles of Lenz-and other writers of the
Sturm und Drang
school-link up with Buchner's own innovations, but especially with his
creation of a poetic realism which combines the accurate documentation
of facts with an imaginative interpretation of character. The aesthetic
theories propounded by the Lenz of Buchner's story are adapted from
the theoretical writings of Lenz himself, such as the following from his
Anmerkungen zum Theater:
" . .. But since the world has no bridges
and we have to content ourselves with the things that are there, we do
at least feel an accretion to our existence, happiness, by re-creating its
Creation on a small scale." Buchner's Lenz says almost the same thing
in slightly different words: "I take it that God has made the world
as it should be ... our only aspiration should be to re-create modestly
in His manner." Buchner applied the same principle to
Lenz;
but in
spite of his modest ambition to re-create, rather than to invent, he in–
variably improved on his material.
Buchner's material provided him with all the facts and some of the
circumstances; but all the descriptions of landscapes-landscapes seen
through the eyes of Lenz-and of Lenz's thoughts and feelings are
Buchner's contribution. This synthesis of fact and imagination is char–
acteristic of Buchner's work; for he hated Idealism in philosophy and
Romanticism in literature. His alternative to these two dominant trends
of his time was so disturbingly individual that his works were not ap–
preciated until more than half a century after his death. Since then they
have been admired by writers of every school, from the Naturalists to
the Symbolists and Expressionists. Some of the finest German prose of
this century-such as Hofmannsthal's
Andreas
fragment-shows the un–
mistakable influence of
Lenz.
On the 20th of January Lenz went across the mountains. The
summits and the high slopes covered with snow, gray stones all the
way down to the valleys, green plains, rocks and pine-trees.
It was damp and cold; water trickled down the rocks and
gushed over the path. The branches of the pine trees drooped heavily
in
the moist air. Gray clouds traveled in the sky, but all was so dense–
and then the mist rose like steam, slow and clammy, climbed through
the shrubs, so lazy, so awkward. Indifferently he moved on; the way
did not matter to him, up or down. He felt no tiredness, only some–
times it struck him as unpleasant that he could not walk on his head.
