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PARTISAN REVIEW
members. A list of them is not uninformative.
It
contains many
nonentities, several conscientious scholars, one brilliant critic. It
included for a time Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a first-rate poet
known to the English-speaking world only for his Strauss libretti
such as
Der Rosenkavalier.
That many of the Circle were extremely
handsome, Wolters repeatedly testifies. Wolters' pretense that
their history is "the intellectual history of Germany" is, of course,
monstrous, but it shows how the group thought of itself. The Circle
was a closed one. I very seldom find the name of Rilke and never
that of Thomas Mann mentioned by any of them.
Die Blatter fur die Kunst-its
title taken from
Ecrits pour
l'Art-was
founded by George and his first recruit (1890), Karl
August Klein, chosen by George because, it seems, he was easy to
dominate. George's magazine lived twenty-seven years because he
allowed no brother near the throne. In 1893 a nucleus had been
formed, consisting of Ludwig Klages, Alfred Schuler, Karl Wolf–
skehl, Leopold Andrian. Wolters mentions also a George Edward
who was subsequently a professor in America. Andrian is a Vien–
nese Jew sometimes identified with the decadent school. Wolfskehl,
also a Jew, was a somewhat precarious ally of the anti-semitic
Schuler and his friend Klages. Schuler was an amazing person
full of ancient lore and superstition much of which he believed.
He and Klages introduced their comrades to the work
of
Bachofen,
a nineteenth-century anthropologist who found matriarchy to be
the first and best state of society. Our three "Cosmiker," as Wol–
ters calls them, discuss Eros and make free with the prefix
ur.
Wolters announces that around 1902 their theories-which attrib–
uted primacy to the feminine-proved so offensive to the Master
that he broke with two of them. Wolfskehl remained after the
purge.
This first Georgean group was composed of men about his
own age. Melchior Lechter, who designed the extant editions of
George, was indeed three years older than George. But elders and
coevals did not provide the inspiration and leadership which
George needed. Increasingly he turned to the young. In 1896 a
beautiful English boy, Cyril Scott, brilliant and learned beyond
his years, entered the Circle. Any Englishman who wishes to judge
the extent of Wolters' exaggerations should read the section on
Cyril Scott. One would think that this very minor disciple of
Debussy was as celebrated in England as Elgar or Delius.
