Moonlight and Moonshine : A Disquisition on Eichendorff's Novels

Abstract

Despite opinion to the contrary, Eichendorff' novels do not describe a consciously unreal world of escapist fantasy, but are concerned with revitalizing man's diminishing understanding of the world's poetic aspect. The task of poetry is to remythologize the world. No situation or motif in the two novels Ahnung und Gegenwart and Dichter und ihre Gesellen exists just for the plot alone; each is also an image permitting a glimpse of a wider, hidden realm. Particularly the fairy-tale elements connote a recognition of the archetypal nature of situations, the seemingly unrealistic elements of the plot, the shifting perspectives, the connections between seemingly unconnected things, the apparent formlessness of the structure are all a conscious artistic effort to embrace a vision whose order includes disorder within itself and where chance is affirmed as an organizing principle. The reader of a romantic novel must always perceive that the motifs and situations are also images of the incursions of a world beyond, but at the same time these novels reflect a concern with man's appreciation of the unity, wonder, and richness of the world.