existence, which can even comprehend the absurd; and the com-
plement to this--the absurdity of existence, pointing to God as the
only solution.

Both these aspects were present in the work of younger men
working in Morgenstern's last years, who carried the experiments
which he had initiated to a much further point. The Dadaists and
the Surrealists began where Morgenstern left off. But in other ways
too his work was oddly in step with the vanguard of his contem-
poraries in other fields; I have mentioned Rilke, whose "Evan-
gelium der Dinge" Morgenstern so strangely puts into practice, and
Kafka; one could go on and say that Fisches Nachtgesang could
almost have been written to be sung by one of those fish which the
young Paul Klee was to paint, some fifteen years after the poem
was written. But Morgenstern's continuing vogue does not depend
on his having been abreast or slightly ahead of his own time; it is
due to the perennial attraction of nonsense itself. Morgenstern has
become a part of the inheritance of educated Germans because he
offers an escape world--an uncommitted world in a committed age
--much as Lear and Carroll do for us, but it is a different world; it
is a world of half-tones, of gentleness in an age of conflicting ideolo-
gies and concentration camps; there is pathos in it but no tragedy,
there is absurdity in it but no hopeless frustration; there is love
and charity in it.

[Part of this essay was incorporated in the author's inaugural
lecture in Cambridge. I am greatly indebted to the Cambridge
University Press for granting permission to reprint it. I would also
like to thank Mr. W. R. Hughes for allowing me to use his
unpublished translations of Morgenstern's poetry--ED.]

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