"While looking once at Dobler's paintings of misty landscapes I was surprised by the whimsical question of whether it was possible to produce such chaotic creations in words, whether it was possible to utter misty images. It is no doubt unpleasant for the critic to have to confess that in this case his critical autonomy will vibrate against the galvanized nerves of an external reminiscence, as the fading sound of a dying note echoes in the strings. Nevertheless I would prefer to renounce any attempt at a bewigged and boring analysis of pedantic insensitivity than to deny that tone which the charming muse of the German refugee caused to resonate in my sensibility. This ground note of Kinkel's paintings, this sounding board of his chords is the sonorous, creative, formative and gradually shaping 'word' -- 'modern thought'. To 'judge' this thought is to lead truth out of the chaos of mendacious traditions, to constitute it as the indestructible property of the world and as such to place it under the protection of spiritually active, logical minorities who will educate the world leading it from a credulous ignorance to a state of more sceptical science. It is the task of the science of doubt to profane the mysticism of pious deceit, to undermine the absolutism of an atrophied tradition.
Science must employ scepticism, that ceaselessly labouring guillotine of philosophy, to decapitate accepted authority and to lead the nations out of the misty regions of theocracy by means of revolution into the luscious meadows of democracy" (of nonsense). "The sustained, unflagging search in the annals of mankind and the understanding of man himself is the great task of all revolutionaries and this had been understood by that proscribed poet rebel who on three recent Monday evenings uttered his subversive views before a bourgeois audience in the course of his lectures on the history of the modern theatre.""A Worker"It is generally claimed that this worker is a very close relation of Kinkel's -- namely Mockel -- as indeed seems likely from the use of such expressions as "sounding-board", "fading sound", "chords" and "galvanized nerves".
However, even this period of hard-earned pleasure was not to last forever. The Last Judgement on the existing world-order, the democratic day of judgement, namely the much celebrated May 1852 [28] was drawing ever closer. In order to confront this day all booted and spurred Kinkel had to don his political lionskin once more: he had to make contact with the "Emigration".
So we come to the London "Emigration", this hotchpotch of former members of the Frankfurt Parliament, the Berlin National Assembly, and Chamber of Deputies, of gentlemen from the Baden Campagne, Gargantuas from the Comedy of the Imperial Constitution, [29] writers without a public, loudmouths from the democratic clubs and congresses, twelfth-rate journalists and so forth.
The heroes of the 1848 revolution in Germany had been on the point of coming to a sticky end when the victory of ''tyranny'' rescued them, swept them out of the country and made saints and martyrs of them. They were saved by the counter-revolution. The course of continental politics brought most of them to London which thus became their European centre.
It is evident that something had to happen, something had to be arranged to remind the public daily of the existence of these world-liberators.
At all costs it must not become obvious that the course of universal history might be able to proceed without the intervention of these mighty men.
The more this refuse of mankind found itself hindered by its own impotence as much as by the prevailing situation from undertaking any real action, the more zealously did it indulge in spurious activity whose imagined deeds, imagined parties, imagined struggles and imagined interests have been so noisily trumpeted abroad by those involved. The less able they were to bring about a new revolution the more they discounted the importance of such an eventuality in their minds, while they concentrated on sharing out the plum jobs and enjoying the prospect of future power. The form taken by this self-important activity was that of a mutual insurance club of the heroes-to-be and the reciprocal guarantee of government posts.
