The Story of Stefan G·eorg.e
Eric Russell Bentley
Derleth: Warum geschehen keine grosse Tatcn? Weil sie keiner
tut!
George: Nein, weil sie keiner
sieht!
-From Wolters'
Stefan George.
Stefan George scheidet die Welt nicht mehr in ihre Lager, aber
die Seele in ihre Krafte.
-Rudolph Borchardt, in 1908.
EARLY
IN
1889 Friedrich Nietzsche, hitherto the greatest mind
in Europe, left Turin, a mental corpse. Just at this time there
enter,ed Turin a young German who was to continue Nietzsche's
work, though as yet he did not know it. This was Stefan George,
already the author of several volumes of distinguished lyrics.
Nietzsche had often hoped to form an elite of young intellectuals.
George took up the idea and formed his Circle (Georgekreis).
Nietzsche's first editor, Fritz Koegler, was for a time a member.
Another Nietzschean, Kurt Breysig, a Berlin professor who had
spoken at Nietzsche's funeral, was also a friend of George. In the
early years of the twentieth century, the historian of the move–
ment tells us, some members of the Circle studied naturalism, some
Tolstoi, some Ibsen. But all, he emphasizes, were bewitched
('hingerissen' ) by Nietzsche.
The story of Stefan George should be told from the beginning
-a
formidable task, for at present no complete or concise account
is
·available. The short books on George are hopelessly fragmen–
tary, the long ones-with one exception-non-biographical. The
exception is Friedrich Wolters'
Stefan George
und
die Blatter fur
die Kunst: deutsche Geistesgeschichte seit 1890.
This preposterous
book is the official life. George was no lover of biography, and
this book was put out to stifle rumors; Wolters' information,
emanating from the Master, as he calls George, was to be regarded
as final. His book was to be a life to end lives.
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