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PARTISAN REVIEW
and the surprising thing is that they deal with the favorite subject
of Holderlin and Nietzsche: the rebirth of manhood out of catas–
trophe, the victory of semi-divine youth. Henceforth this was
George's subject. Here are some lines of Kronberger's which
George used as an epigraph for his poem
Die Winke
in
Das Neue
Reich:
Jezt naht nach tausenden von jahren
Ein einziger freier augenblick:
Da brechen endlich aile ketten
Und aus der weitgeborstnen erde
Steigt jung und schon ein neuer halbgott auf.*
Kronberger's journal is an unincriminating account of trivial
incidents. We have a glimpse of the all-too-human George whom
Wolters conceals with his screen of pretentiousness, a moody,
unhappy, 'unstable man, maladjusted to others and perhaps to him–
self. His moodiness on one occasion resulted in a temporary
estrangement from Kronberger; the boy was hurt but uncompre–
hending. On other occasions there was mutual satisfaction. Once
George said: Max, do you believe that there exists a friendship
higher than love? And Max answered Yes.
Of George's later life little has yet been written. He lived
always in seclusion from the great world, in the company of a few
friends. He appears to have possessed little money and yet never
to have worked for his living. He had this at least in common with
Jesus that he lived on his friends. His name was never in his life–
time bruited among the vulgar, though some of his followers such
as Lothar Treuge and Ludwig Derleth sought to give his life-view
wider currency. The Master frowned upon these attempts. He
died at Locarno in
1933.
The last famous photograph of him
taken in
1928
shows him obdurate as ever, handsome, ascetic,
magnificent.
What was George's attitude to the events of
1914-1933?
Progressively he and his friends shifted away from their aestheti–
cism. In fact they claimed never to have been aesthetes but to have
avoided both Zola's naturalism and Wilde's aestheticism in their
synthesis of the best elements of both. That they avoided natural–
ism is obvious. That they avoided aestheticism has to be argued
*"Now after thousands of years draws near a single free moment : finall y all chains
are breaking, and from the earth, burst wide open, rises a new demigod, young and
fai r."
