Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 9

Excerpt

ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO

(1781-1838)

ouis Charles Adelaide de Chamisso, known as Adelbert von Chamisso, the youngest son of Count Louis Marie de Chamisso, was born in the paternal castle of Boncourt, in Champagne, January 30th, 1781. Driven into exile by the Revolution, the family of loyalists sought refuge in the Low Countries and afterward in Germany, settling in Berlin in 1797. In later years the other members of the family returned to France and established themselves once more as Frenchmen in their native land; but Adelbert von Chamisso, German by nature and characteristics as well as by virtue of his early education and environment, struck root in Germany and was the genuine product of German soil. In 1796 the young Chamisso became page to Queen Louise of Prussia, and while at court, by the Queen's directions, he received the most careful education. He was made ensign in 1798 and lieutenant in 1801, in the Regiment von Goetze. A military career was repugnant to him, and his French antecedents did not tend to make his life agreeable among the German officers. That the service was not wholly without interest, however, is shown by the two treatises upon military subjects written by him in 1798 and 1799.

As a young officer he belonged to a romantic brotherhood calling itself "The Polar Star," which counted among its members his lifelong friend Hitzig, Alexander zur Lippe, Varnhagen, and other young writers of the day. He diligently applied himself to the mastery of the German tongue, made translations of poems and dramas, and to relieve the irksomeness of his military life incessantly studied Homer. His most ambitious literary effort of this time was a 'Faust' (1803), a metaphysical, somewhat sophomoric attempt, but the only one of his early poems that he admitted into his collected works.

While still in the Prussian army, he edited with Varnhagen and Neumann a periodical called the Musenalmanach (1804), which existed three years. After repeated but vain efforts to obtain release from the uncongenial military service, the capitulation of Hameln at length set him free (1806). He left Germany and went to France; but, disappointed in his hopes, unsettled and without plans, he returned, and several years were lost in profitless and desultory wanderings. From 1810 to 1812 he was again in France. Here he became acquainted with Alexander von Humboldt and Uhland, and renewed his friendship with Wilhelm Schlegel. With Helmina von Chézy he undertook the translation into French of Schlegel's Vienna lectures upon art and literature. Chamisso was indifferent to the task, and the translation went on but slowly. To expedite the work he was invited to stay at Chaumont, the residence of Madame de Staël, where Schlegel was a member of her household. Here his careless personal habits and his inevitable pipe brought odium upon him in that polished circle.

Madame de Staël was always his friend, and in 1811 he went to her at Coppet, where by a happy chance he took up the study of botany, with August de Staël as instructor. Filled with enthusiasm for his new pursuit, he made excursions through Switzerland, collecting and botanizing. The period of indecision was at an end, and in 1812, at the age of thirty-one, he matriculated as student of medicine at the University of Berlin, and applied himself with resolution to the study of the natural sciences. During the war against Napoleon he sought refuge in Kunersdorf with the Itzenplitz family, where he occupied his time with botany and the instruction of young Itzenplitz. It was during this time (1813) that 'Peter Schlemihl's Wundersame Geschichte' (Peter Schlemihl's Wonderful History) was written,—one of the masterpieces of German literature. His 'Faust' and 'Fortunatus' had in some degree foreshadowed his later and more famous work,—'Faust' in the compact with the devil, 'Fortunatus' in the possession of the magical wishing-bag. The simple motif of popular superstition, the loss of one's shadow, familiar in folk-stories and already developed by Goethe in his 'Tales,' and by Körner in 'Der Teufel von Salamanca' (The Devil of Salamanca), was treated by Chamisso with admirable simplicity, directness of style, and realism of detail.

Chamisso's divided allegiance to France and Germany made the political situation of the times very trying for him, and it was with joy that he welcomed an appointment as scientist to a Russian polar expedition, fitted out under the direction of Count Romanzoff, and commanded by Captain Kotzebue (1815-1818). The record of the scientific results of this expedition, as published by Kotzebue, was full of misstatements; and to correct these, Chamisso wrote the 'Tagebuch' (Journal) in 1835, a work whose pure and plastic style places it in the first order of books of travel, and entitles its author, in point of description, to rank with Von Humboldt among the best writers of travels of the first half of the century....