spectacle so humiliating that it would have bowed down in shame a spirit even less proud and sensitive than Hoelderlin’s.  The French emissaries conducted themselves like lords of Germany, while the German princes vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant Frenchmen.  And it was the apathy of the average German, as Hoelderlin conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused him to put such bitter words of contumely into the mouth of Hyperion:  “Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiss und Wissenschaft und selbst durch Religion barbarischer geworden, tief unfaehig jedes goettlichen Gefuehls—­beleidigend fuer jede gut geartete Seele, dumpf und harmonielos, wie die Scherben eines weggeworfenen Gefaesses—­das, mein Bellarmin! waren meine Troester."[46] In another letter Hyperion explains their incapacity for finer feeling and appreciation when he writes:  “Neide die Leidensfreien nicht, die Goetzen von Holz, denen nichts mangelt, weil ihre Seele so arm ist, die nichts fragen nach Regen und Sonnenschein, weil sie nichts haben, was der Pflege beduerfte.  Ja, ja, es ist recht sehr leicht, gluecklich, ruhig zu sein mit seichtem Herzen und eingeschraenktem Geiste."[47] Their work he characterizes as “Stuemperarbeit,” and their virtues as brilliant evils and nothing more.  There is nothing sacred, he claims, that has not been desecrated by this nation.  But it is chiefly his own experience which he recites, when, in speaking of the sad plight of German poets, of those who still love the beautiful, he says:  “Es ist auch herzzerreissend, wenn man eure Dichter, eure Kuenstler sieht—­die Guten, sie leben in der Welt, wie Fremdlinge im eigenen Hause."[48] Still more extravagantly does the poet caricature his own people when he writes:  “Wenn doch einmal diesen Gottverlassnen einer sagte, dass bei ihnen nur so unvollkommen alles ist, weil sie nichts Reines unverdorben, nichts Heiliges unbetastet lassen mit den plumpen Haenden—­dass bei ihnen eigentlich das Leben schaal und sorgenschwer ist, weil sie den Genius verschmaehen—­und darum fuerchten sie auch den Tod so sehr, und leiden um des Austernlebens willen alle Schmach, weil Hoehres sie nicht kennen, als ihr Machwerk, das sie sich gestoppelt."[49]

But we should get an extremely unjust and one-sided idea of Hoelderlin’s attitude toward his country from these quotations alone.  The point which they illustrate is his growing estrangement from his own people, which in the very nature of the case must have had an important bearing upon his Weltschmerz.  But his feelings in regard to Germany and the Germans were not all contempt.  In many of his poems there is the true patriotic ring.  It is true, we can nowhere find any clear political program, neither could we expect one from a poet who was so absorbed in his own feelings, and whose ideals soared so high above the sphere of practical politics.  In this too Hoelderlin was the product of previous influences.