Achievements
Despite the critical controversy that still exists concerning the literary value of his works, especially the novels, Adalbert Stifter might well be regarded as the most important mediator of nineteenth century Austrian culture, landscape, and spirit. His first published novella, The Condor, was an instant success with the public. Most of his early narratives were received with enthusiasm by readers and critics alike. In Abdias the Jew and other tales that were collected in Studien (studies), Stifter revealed a serious attitude toward literature and a commitment to the dignity and majesty of art. The refinement of his prose won for him continuing acclaim during the 1840’s.
Later, critics and even serious writers of the time rejected Stifter’s novellas as shallow and inconsequential. The quiet author was especially pained by the criticism of the dramatist Friedrich Hebbel, who viewed his stories as trivial, judging Stifter incapable of writing about anything of substance. Stifter’s response to Hebbel, the novella cycle Bunte Steine (colored stones), with its famous preface, is one of the most beautiful collections of prose in all Austrian literature. Bunte Steine, however, was the last of his works to receive wide critical praise during his lifetime. His success declined sharply after the middle of the 1850’s, because Indian Summer and Witiko, his two novels (the other works listed above are novellas), were largely misunderstood. Following his death, Stifter was forgotten until near the end of the nineteenth century.
Friedrich Nietzsche, whose aesthetic enthusiasm was especially awakened by Indian Summer, must be given ultimate credit for the rediscovery of Stifter. Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann, who in turn developed significant appreciation for the novels, also participated in the Stifter revival. Witiko eventually came to be viewed as the only nineteenth century prose epic in the German language that is executed in elevated style with total and uncompromising logical consistency. Dismissed as harmless curiosities by many nineteenth century critics, Stifter’s novellas and novels are now recognized as monuments of a rich, deep, and highly moral spirit committed to the purity and ethical purpose of art.
Biography
Adalbert Stifter’s childhood in a village environment was a significant formative experience for the author. The quiet rural and forest landscape of his native surroundings informs the scenery of much of his literature. From his early youth he absorbed the simple things and processes of nature as great personal revelations. In 1818, Stifter began his secondary schooling at the Benedictine Abbey in Kremsmünster. There, he received solid humanistic training that permanently shaped his fundamental attitudes toward life. The best pupil in his class, he concerned himself extensively with art, music, and literature. Between 1818 and 1825, he began to paint and wrote his first lyric poems. His gifts as a teacher became apparent, and he earned money by tutoring younger pupils. Later, he looked back fondly at those school years as the purest, most beautiful period of his existence.
After leaving Kremsmünster, Stifter entered the University of Vienna, where he studied law. Unable to commit himself fully to a course of public service, he ended his studies without formally completing them. Mathematics and science attracted him, and his extensive background in a variety of fields enabled him to become a successful tutor in homes of the Viennese aristocracy. Among his pupils were Princess Anna Maria von Schwarzenberg and Klemens Metternich’s son, Richard.
While at the university, Stifter published a few poems under the pseudonym Ostade. His primary artistic interest, however, was in painting, which remained important to him throughout his life. It provided him with supplementary income during the early years of his marriage and gave him an orientation toward art that later had a profound impact on his writing.
Early reverence for his parents and grandparents led Stifter to view an effective life within the family as an ultimate ideal. His own lack of success in that area of endeavor had significant implications and consequences for his career. After an unsuccessful relationship with a merchant’s daughter, Fanny Greipl, he married Amalie Mohaupt, a poor but beautiful girl with whom he had little in common. Their emotionally unrewarding marriage—childless, except for the daughter from Amalie’s previous marriage—provided a frustrating background from which Stifter poured his heart out into his stories.
By accident, a friend read the manuscript of The Condor and subsequently mediated its publication. Spurred by the novella’s success, Stifter began a fruitful creative period that produced some of his best prose narratives. By 1853, he had published ten books and many essays and had reached the peak of his literary popularity.
The Revolution of 1848 and its aftermath played an important role in the shaping of Stifter’s mature works. He reacted strongly to the violence that shredded the values that he held most dear. The “gentle law” that governed all that he wrote after 1850 is largely the codification of his rejection of the Revolution’s destructiveness. Acceptance in 1850 of an administrative position in the Upper Austrian school system and his subsequent involvement in various civic enterprises allowed him to respond to negative influences of the political upheaval and partially realize his goals for educational and cultural reform. The major concerns that dominated his public and private life in Linz are visible in his novels.
Stifter’s last years were burdened with ill health and misfortune. He was psychologically devastated by the decline of his literary reputation and by several family disasters. In 1865, he began to suffer from a liver ailment from which he never fully recovered. These physical and spiritual torments finally defeated him in January, 1868, and he attempted suicide. The ministrations of a doctor succeeded only in prolonging his misery for two additional days.
Analysis
The basic directional principle that governs Adalbert Stifter’s narrative prose is the search for order in a person’s relationship to him- or herself and his or her external world. Stifter’s novellas and novels document the lifelong pursuit of an artistic unity of physical experience and reality of the soul, of universal meaning derived from the perception and understanding of individual phenomena, of resolution of the pain of existence in the discovery of faith in the basic goodness of life.
In their original form, Stifter’s early novellas differ markedly from his mature epics in their dynamic focus on humankind’s failure to realize an effective harmony with surrounding people and things. Human passion emerges as a destructive force when uncontrolled by reason, assuming the role of a fate that condemns humans to affliction and loneliness because of guilt. Unreasoned obsession is a tragic factor in most of the narratives in Studien, but the sharply fatalistic conception that dominates My Great-Grandfather’s Note-book, Crazy Castle, and Brigitta takes a somewhat different form in Abdias the Jew, in which fate becomes a clear manifestation of cause and effect rather than a product of unmastered feeling. The author revised these novellas, altering their initial form to temper the impact of inner compulsion on the lives of his characters, making them more visibly subject to the gentle law.
Stifter arrived only gradually at the concretely defined philosophy of life and literature for which he is best known. Nevertheless, his preface to Bunte Steine is commonly recognized as the key to interpretation of his oeuvre. The gentle law, as it has since become known, is a categorical rejection of the demoniac, catastrophe-oriented dramatic art of Hebbel. It ardently affirms the peace of a quietly benevolent world order and attests Stifter’s conviction that the universe is governed by a calmly divine principle in which Christian and humanistic ethics merge. He asserts that the small, still miracles of existence, the flowering of plants, the rustling of the brook, the shimmer of stars are the truly great phenomena of human experience, because they most accurately reflect the actual form of God’s plan. By contrast, the randomly violent outbursts of natural force in the physical world and the destructive emotions of humans are of less moment in the absolute framework. They are not typical of the overall pattern but remain products of isolated causes that are subject to far higher laws. In their revelation of tension within humans caused by the confrontation of the harmonious natural ideal with the chaos of unbridled passion, the most important novellas in Studien document the tragedy of human noncompliance with the dictates of the gentle law. The later works, on the other hand, offer a vision of the idyllic existence that is possible under a patiently rational humanistic order.
Central to Stifter’s worldview is his perception of nature. Influenced by Jean Paul, at the beginning of his career he attempted to discover in small things the secret of humankind’s being. The experience of landscape became especially meaningful as nature assumed the role not of background and scenery for the play of human events, but rather of elemental essence with independent presence, having rank equal to humankind’s own. Objective examination of nature’s every detail provides the individual with an unclouded knowledge of truth undistorted by passion, yielding a viable model for society and a resolution of civilization’s problems. For that reason, Stifter cultivated intimate descriptions of forest and meadow, water and stone, interactions of animals and growing things with natural processes. Each of his narrations weaves together the softly majestic beauties of earth and sky, past and present, eternity and transitoriness, year and day, the physical elements, the large and the minute, everything coexisting with equal right. There is a clear rejection of urban haste and an insistent advocacy of quiet, slow, imperceptible growth apace with the peaceful change of the seasons. In nature, Stifter saw the means for personal achievement of the ultimate goal: serenity of the soul.
In Studien, the six-volume compilation of Stifter’s early works, specific novellas stand out as especially successful. Abdias the Jew, the poignant tale of a North African Jew whose life is a mirror of human helplessness vis-à-vis the miracle and tragedy of natural events, is a masterpiece of description in its portrayal of a landscape that Stifter never saw. The melancholy, haunting love story Brigitta is perhaps the author’s most penetrating interpretation of erotic suffering and fateful loneliness that arise from human imperfection. Neither of these narratives, however, is as important as My Great-Grandfather’s Note-book within the broader spectrum of the author’s creative legacy.
My Great-Grandfather’s Note-book
A profoundly personal epic, My Great-Grandfather’s Note-book is a document of cosmic feeling for existence, filled with peaks and abysses, mysteries and revelations, strengths of the earth and gratitude for ancestral heritage. This description of the life of the rural doctor Augustinus, a man who is purified through pain and work and fulfilled through love and the learning of self-control, occupied Stifter’s attention from the beginning to the end of his literary career.
Portions of the novella exist in four different versions, the last of which was left unfinished at the author’s death; their variations reflect the evolution of Stifter’s style and of his perception of reality. The first version is informed by his ties to the literary currents of his time, especially the gushing subjectivity of the late Romantics and Jean Paul’s demand for sensual individuality of presented phenomena. The pessimistic fatalism of this version, however, represents a break with the Romantics, while the characters’ experiences of identity loss and the determining effect of history, origins, and social environment are related to approaches to reality taken by Georg Büchner, Heinrich Heine, and the Young Germans. In later revisions, Stifter attempted to weaken and even eliminate the dimension of gloomy determinism, thereby reducing the dramatic conflicts while advocating bourgeois ideals of propriety and balance. Carried to the extreme in the last rendition, Stifter’s pursuit of these goals finally robbed the work of much of its richness and strength, replacing them with sparseness and sterility in both substance and language.
Of special importance for the character of the later narratives is the insistence on authentic, often scientifically precise descriptions of nature. The idyllic harmony of stones and flowers, soil and sky, fosters bonds of love that are shattered when the characters allow harsh internal passion to suppress the benevolent influence of the external order. The deft weaving together of physical milieu and the landscape of the soul gives warmth, vitality, and profound meaning to Augustinus’s loss of Margarita’s love, the eventual tempering of his spirit, and the couple’s final reunion and reconciliation.
Bunte Steine
Impressive though Stifter’s representations of landscape may be, his most successful treatments of natural models focus not on flowers, trees, and stones but rather on children as elements of nature and symbols for humankind’s role in the pattern of existence. In Bunte Steine, a collection of novellas about—but not for—children, Stifter created visions of natural harmony that are unexcelled in their descriptive power anywhere in world literature. Experiences of the young are meticulously braided with carefully evoked beauties of setting such that each illuminates the other parabolically. The fairy-tale quality of the stories points to the miracle of the real world in its never-ending regeneration of life, as visually experienced objects of inorganic nature become metaphors for human fates.
The polished jewel of Bunte Steine is Rock Crystal, with its portrayal of a young brother and sister who become lost as they walk along a mountain path during a snowstorm. Infinite power and beauty lie in the little girl’s complete trust of her companion, who leads her along, soothing away each silent doubt. The boy’s inner assurance is complemented by the simple majesty and peaceful wonder of their salvation as they find refuge from the storm in a glacial cavern. Rock Crystal is especially remarkable for its demonstration of a capacity for observation that enabled Stifter to transform a visual encounter with children out walking, generating from it a convincing sequence of pictures that culminates within the chamber of ice. At the same time, the author’s deep love for youth allowed him to penetrate the psychological dimension of his characters with fine precision.
In the other stories in Bunte Steine, Stifter used relationships between children and adults to lay bare the unconquerable spirit that is present in even the most humble individual. Limestone portrays the sacrifices of a rural parson who saves his every penny to build a school for the village children. At his death, his savings are insufficient for the task, yet the example of his love moves others to bring his dream to fruition. Autobiographical elements inform Granit, a poignant interpretation of a boyhood experience that Stifter had with his grandfather, while “Katzensilber,” the only work written expressly for Bunte Steine, deals with the problems of taming a difficult girl, a figure modeled on Stifter’s foster daughter, Julianne Mohaupt. Destructive passion and the overwhelming tragedy of the lonely and helpless are presented with special vividness in Tourmaline, an account of a developmentally disabled child who suffers for her parents’ sins. Only Bergmilch, with its sentimental treatment of war’s insanity, fails to measure up to the high standard of literary quality that otherwise typifies this cycle of novellas.
Stifter’s codification of the gentle law in the preface to Bunte Steine was, among other things, a reaction to the effects of the Revolution of 1848 on Austrian society. The novels of his waning years document his search for valid alternatives to the intolerable changes that occurred around him.
Indian Summer
Indian Summer offers a solution in the return to an idealized version of the Austrian world as it existed before the Revolution, while Witiko represents a more drastic spiritual escape into an archetypal natural political order, symbolized in the birth of the Bohemian state during the twelfth century. One of the most controversial novels of the nineteenth century, Indian Summer is a bildungsroman that projects Stifter’s personal educational ideals against the utopian framework of moral beauty experienced in an artistic paradise. The author’s declared purpose was to create a portrait of life on a higher plane that would elevate the reader above normal existence and give him or her a spiritual milieu in which to experience him- or herself as a human being more purely and perfectly.
On one level, Indian Summer is the history of Heinrich Drendorf’s development into a truly cosmopolitan person. Key events include his first, chance visit to Baron Risach’s home and repeated returns during which Risach educates him in areas of experience that Stifter considered to be especially important: nature, art, society, history, and religion. Between encounters with his mentor, Heinrich is exposed to specific aspects of city life and to natural science via geological study excursions into the mountains. At the same time, Heinrich undergoes an education of another kind as he observes Risach’s relationship with his companion Mathilde, the passionless, painless, quiet love of old age that serves as a model for implementation of the gentle law in the proper nurturing of the bond that grows between Heinrich and Mathilde’s daughter, Natalie.
In a more general sense, Indian Summer is a revelation of Stifter’s deepest personal longings. The title’s metaphor, the love of Risach and Mathilde in the harmony of their late years, stands for the ultimate joy of founding a happy family life. At the same time, Risach’s position within the sociopolitical framework of the novel illustrates Stifter’s perception of the ideals of old Austria.
The novel is peculiar for its lack of conflicts, crises, and other signs of a hostile universe. Instead of true plot, Indian Summer offers an eternal state of being. The events of the novel can be told in a few lines, yet such a summary would hardly do justice to a massive content that magically encompasses the totality of Stifter’s ideal world. Nevertheless, the absence of narrative motion, an element of structural repetitiveness, and a certain weakness of plastic representation of the characters have caused some critics to reject as boring and unreadable the author’s most deliberate return to the classical idealism of Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Witiko
In his final novel, Stifter expanded his focus from the creation of the humane individual to the evolution of the humanistic nation. Witiko, with its stylization of the twelfth century history of southern Bohemia into a mythic vision of the growth of a natural constitutional state, illustrates the idea that the political fate of a people depends on the transformation of humanity through the gentle law. The formative principle that governs Witiko is Stifter’s belief that right determines the history of the world. His creative process transfigures the narrative’s actual hero, the Bohemian people, through their spokesman Witiko in the retrospective light of the future.
Although Stifter was familiar with important scholarly studies concerning the era, his Witiko is not the historical personage. The story is a symbolic rendering of the life of a leader who is pledged to things of the soul and to goodness rather than to force and brutality. It describes an archetype of the struggling and protecting creator-founder, who deservingly becomes ruler because he perceives and chooses what is right and acts accordingly, thereby winning the trust and friendship of both the king and the forest people whom he comes to rule. Witiko weaves together the account of one man whose commitment to duty and propriety are exemplary with the panorama of national fates in which divine law is realized.
The influence of Romanticism is visible in the return to a time of strong people, unspoiled natural conditions, and unified relationships. Nevertheless, the Romantic elements are incorporated into a clear, sharply bounded material reality, in which individual and nation, physical surroundings and Christianity, politics and humanism form an ordered unity. Witiko is Stifter’s final attempt to create theodicy through history as a religious and artistic act, presenting the divine pattern of things in the framework of historical occurrence.
Witiko is undoubtedly the least successful of Stifter’s narratives. Despite the consistency of elevated style that makes it unique among German prose epics, the execution remains unconvincing. The novel’s characters are like statues with realistic masks. Anachronistic embellishment of the twelfth century with features of the nineteenth century, coupled with formulaic ornamental speeches, distorts the realism of the work. Here and there, the abilities of the aging writer fail and strict art becomes painful affectation. Yet Stifter’s oeuvre would be incomplete without Witiko. It complements Indian Summer to form a whole that extends the impact of the gentle law into every sphere of human endeavor.
