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It is said that from the ruined castle of Auerbach a fragrant perfume of wine sometimes steals upon the air, and then the country folk whisper, The cooper is tasting his wine. And if asked for the reason of this saying they tell the following story.
The story of Eastern life grew and rounded in its proportions, and Auerbach, who seemed most of all entranced, insisted that the source of so fascinating a narrative should be guided through the "canal of the pen into the sea of publicity."
His importance to us does not lie in the circumstance that his autobiography "that wonderful bit of Autobiography," as George Eliot speaks of it, or "that curious and rare book," as Dean Milman calls it and the pictures drawn of him by Berthold Auerbach and Israel Zangwill have made him the hero of some of the world's best biographies and novels.
On the other hand, I sincerely enjoyed the thoughtful eloquence of Berthold Auerbach, who understood how to invest with poetic charm not only great and noble subjects, but trivial ones gathered from the dust. If I am permitted to record the memories of my later life, I shall have more to say of him.
As soon as the snows melt and the cows can be driven afield, he betakes himself to his buron on the alp, if married, leaving his wife in the valley below. Have the fromager of the Cantal hills and the Caussenard of the Lozerien steppe their legends, folklore, songs? Have their love-stories been chronicled by some French Auerbach, their ballads found a translator in a French Hebel?
This is one of the numerous imitations of the celebrated "Dorfgeschichten," by Berthold Auerbach. The latter introduced, in a time of literary poverty, a wide range of new subjects for epical treatment, the life of German peasants, with their simple, healthy, vigorous natures undepraved by a spurious civilization.
I have collected at Auerbach, Weinheim, Wiesloch, etc. But before all else, observe carefully and often the wonderful structure of plants, those lovely children of the earth and sky. Ponder them with child-like mind, for children marvel at the phenomena of nature, while grown people often think themselves too wise to wonder, and yet they know little more than the children.
Perhaps this was because I had reached the point through my acquaintance with Tolstoy where I was impatient even of the artifice that hid itself. In 'Smoke' I was now aware of an artifice that kept out of sight, but was still always present somewhere, invisibly operating the story. I must not fail to own the great pleasure that I have had in some of the stories of Auerbach.
Doubtless he had not heard of Webster or Alexander Hamilton, and many of his countrymen would be inclined to place Longfellow before Emerson. Petrarch, and the author of "Gil Bias," might be placed on a level with Hawthorne, but certainly not above him. Those whom he most closely resembles in style and subject matter are Goldsmith, Manzoni, and Auerbach.
I remember having read "an appeal to the German nation," by Berthold Auerbach, in which every sentence was un-German, distorted and false, and which, as a whole, resembled a soulless mosaic of words cemented together with international syntax. As to the disgracefully slipshod German with which Edward Devrient solemnised the death of Mendelssohn, I do not even wish to do more than refer to it.
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