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Updated: August 22, 2024
Some little time thereafter, whilst on a visit to the court of Poland, he made one night in his cups a droll story of the amorous persecution which he had suffered at Madame von Platen's hands. It was a tale that set the profligate company in a roar. But there was one present who afterwards sent a report of it to the Countess, and you conceive the nature of the emotions it aroused in her.
Platen's poetry falls into two periods the early German tentative period and the later or foreign period, the poems of which were mostly written in Italy and in imitation of, or adapted from, foreign metres. Platen is always represented as a master of form, and, since Jacob Grimm's characterization of him, has been accused of "marble coldness."
But the weak and vulgar imitations of the category outnumbered the powerful plays in the genre, and the well-merited death-blow was given them by Platen's The Fateful Fork . Like his fellow-Königsberger, Werner, he went through a period of wildest dissipation, and all his life was easily influenced by alcohol. He was a painter, a writer, and a musician.
And Eichendorff in turn credited Goethe with the remark that "Loeben war der vorzüglichste Dichter jener Zeit." His influence on Platen is not quite so certain; Loeben was Platen's senior by ten years, and they resembled each other in their ability to employ difficult verse and strophe forms, and Platen read Loeben in 1824.
But they must use caution, for they were being spied upon. Madame von Platen's over-eagerness had in part betrayed her. It was, indeed, their consciousness of espionage which had led to this dangerous meeting in the seclusion of the pavilion, and which urged him to linger after Sophia had left him. They were not to be seen to emerge together.
His Cossacks, under their Demikows, Romanzows; capable of no good fighting, but of endless incendiary mischief in the neighborhood; shoot far ahead into Prussian territory: Platen, Hordt with his Free-Corps, are beautifully sharp upon them; but many beatings avail little. Not to be checked by Platen's best diligence; not, in the end, by Platen and Dohna together.
It was into this atmosphere of hostility that the advent of the elegant, romantic Königsmark took place. He found the stage set for comedy of a grim and bitter kind, which he was himself, by his recklessness, to convert into tragedy. It began by the Countess von Platen's falling in love with him. It was some time before he suspected it, though heaven knows he did not lack for self-esteem.
If today you ask the opinion of your forty-eight million fellow-countrymen, and compare their views and those of the bulk of the German army with the bugbear which had found lodging in German hearts at the time of Platen's Polish songs, you surely cannot despair of further development. We may, you must agree, register progress, although it is slow and there are lapses.
General Renwick's loss of his faded and feeble spouse, the far-famed "Poor Thing" of much polite apology for her socially aristocratic ailments; Vane Tempest's singular elopement with the beautiful wife of a green subaltern; Harry Chillingly's untoward end while potting tigers; Count Platen's enormous winnings at Baccarat; Fitzgerald Law's falling into a peerage; and Mrs.
This proof of Madame Platen's favour hindered her coming hither.
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