PROPAGANDA OR PARTISANSHIP?
from a phrase in police and judicial terminology to an esthetic one.
(This development seems to have been largely German; the French ten-
dency plays of the middle nineteenth century, for instance, were called
"drames
a
these.") In
1841
Engels commented on the "tendency" in the
work of the German romantic poet Arndt.
One of Heinrich Heine's
poems in his
Zeitgedichte
is called
Die Tendenz,
its last stanza reading:
Blase, schmettre, donnre taglich,
Bis der letzte Dranger flieht-
Singe nur in dieser Richtung,
Aber halte diese Dichtung
Nur so allgemein als moglich.
Heine's ironical conclusion, written at a time when he was further
removed from "pure art" than ever before or after, shows that, with a
poet's fine instinct. he strongly disapproved of the nature of the "ten-
dency art" of the time.
In this poem (and in other of his comtemporary
writings) he combatted the subjectivist, opinionated (and hence abstract
and general) nature of "tendentious" literature.
The social bases for this
abstractness will be dealt with later.
An example, taken from another contemporary poet, who likewise
viewed poetry as a weapon, justifies Heine's ironic comment. The German
poets Georg Herwegh and Ferdinand Freiligrath engaged in a significant
controversy over partisanship versus neutrality in poetry (in'
1845).-
Herwegh wrote:
...
Ein Schwert in euer Hand sei das Gedicht.
o
wahlt ein Banner, und ich bin zufrieden,
Obs auch ein andres, denn das meine sei ...
Here we see Herwegh supporting partisanship
in general,
as against
Freiligrath's view that "the poet stands above parties." Two aspects of
Herwegh's position interest us here.
First, he held the question of parti-
sanship or neutrality [in later terminology: "propaganda" vs. "pure art"]
-Georg Herwegh (1817-1875),
German bourgeois revolutionary poet, took part in
the 184-8 Revolution at the head of a column of revolutionary troops.
His major
work is
Gedichte eines Lebenaigetl
("Poems of a Living Man");
some of his
best-known revolutionary poetry is to be found in 184-8:
Ein Lesebuch fiir Arbeiter.
Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876),
German post-Romantic poet and a political
exile from Germany for many years, was one of the leading ,figures in the bour-
geois-revolutionary school of writers.
